D&D 5E How do players know they are in the "wrong" location in a sandbox campaign?

[Rya.Reisender]

For example PCs trying to go down in Sacred Stone Monastery after having visited Feathergale Spire:
"As you descent the stairs, you can feel a powerful energy. It makes it hard for you to even breathe. You start seeing illusions. Water Hook PC has a vision of a cube standing next to a river and a boat in a bottle. Fire Hook PC sees a single flame walking through Red Larch, however, it does not ignite anything. You feel you aren't ready for this. Do you want to proceed anyway?"

 

[dco]

They find a diary or a wall with some notes: "We are not lvl 6, we are doomed".
You have to leave less obvious clues or let them face the dangers and decide if they should continue.

 

[S'mon]

A problem often arises in trying to telegraph difficulty to players in game. A great example of this is...

HOARD OF THE DRAGON QUEEN SPOILERS:


In HotDQ your 1st level, newly rolled up PCs come to a town being ravaged by an ADULT blue dragon. The PCs are expected to rush to the defense of the town. But it is a known issue with that scenario that many PCs simply want to flee, and the scenario never gets started without the DM intervening and telling the players "it's OK".

I can recall a lot of low level dungeons where the background or rumours involved high level monsters (i.e. rumours of vampires where none exist or rumours that an ancient dragon used to live up there). I can recall low level adventures where the townsfolk proclaim that no one has ever returned from X. All of these should, logically discourage low level PCs.

A sandbox DM has to be very careful to avoid trying to make his level appropriate threats sound tougher than they are just for dramatic effect. Once the PCs cannot rely on your clues, the whole thing goes out the window.

So, sandbox telegraphing is a very fine art that can actually swing both ways.

Sandbox GM needs to be prepared for PCs to erroneously get the message "this is too tough" and go do something else. He also needs to be prepared for them to erroneously ignore warning signs and rush in - my level 6 group recently ignored clear signs of vampire presence in the area and lost a well liked NPC vs 5 vampire spawn (killed 2 spawn, 1 left with the NPC, 2 retreated empty handed).
Things I did with the 5 CR 5 spawn vs the 4 level 6 PCs: they had suboptimal but realistic tactics.
Most went for the tough, obvious barbarian PC who could survive their attack rather than the squishies. The one going for the NPC used its bite attack, showing how deadly they were. They were more interested in grabbing individuals to feed, rather than in coordinating to TPK the party.

 

[Libramarian]

Save that for more challenging sandboxes where you intend to reward player caution as skilled play and punish boldness as poor play.

A good sandbox rewards boldness as well as caution. If the PCs do survive an overleveled location then they get correspondingly greater rewards.

One of my issues with 5e for sandboxing is it's too easy for the PCs to prevent or ameliorate everything bad that can happen to them outside of an outright TPK. So the difference in danger levels is not very subtle: you're either in basically safe territory, or TPK territory. This makes it too compelling from a minimax perspective to stick to the "right" path. In a system with more random individual PC deaths (like 1e), even the "easy" areas are still kind of scary so there's more incentive to be bold because if you stick to easy areas you're still going to run into a poisoned needle or cursed scroll or something eventually anyway.

It's important in a sandbox that there is no path with negligible risk. Otherwise that's too obviously the right path. There should not be safe areas and dangerous areas. More like meaningless death areas and glorious death areas

It sounds like [MENTION=463]S'mon[/MENTION] uses the death of NPC companions to punish the players without killing off PCs, which is interesting.

 

[S'mon]

It sounds like [MENTION=463]S'mon[/MENTION] uses the death of NPC companions to punish the players without killing off PCs, which is interesting.

Hah, yeah, busted.

I do kill off PCs too, the newest group in my Wilderlands game lost a PC when they tried to take on a Princess of Neo-Nerath at 4th level (they should have waited to 5th!), but they also lost 2 NPCs in that battle, Kane 'the Last Avenger', & Svenya the NPC girlfriend of surviving PC Sandor Sunneson, which loss hit him pretty hard (esp as he had recently persuaded Svenya not to retire from adventuring after their last adventure, so he felt responsible).
Then last session Tania the amazon archer NPC with that group (now 6th level) got dragged off by the vampire spawn, and now they are on a near-suicide mission to get her body back (& burn it, I expect) before she can rise again next night as a vampire.

 

[S'mon]

BTW that vampire spawn battle (it's a text-chat game):

The PCs knew there were vampires in the area (The Charmed Grotto adventure, by Dyson Logos) and had seen piled corpses of giant spiders with vampire bites.
We ended the prior session when the 5 water vampire spawn appeared from the river. Going in to this session I posted something like "hope I don't TPK you guys" - so they had ample warning they were out of their league, but didn't fully appreciate how tough the vamps would be - and that their two best archers (Tania & Drakonok)
only had mundane bows, giving the vamps Resistance (these vamps only regenerated in running
water, however).
At the start of the battle one of the more tactically minded players did suggest retreating, which would likely have worked (these water vamps take 10 dmg/round if they dry out, so they would not pursue far) but they were worried their dwarf barbarian Ursa was too slow (& too low on init - he was the only one slower than the vamps), so nothing came of that. Then after the first round of combat PCs were locked in combat, a vamp had its fangs in Tania etc and they were committed.

 

[jgsugden]

In a good D&D game, the players are going to enjoy all of the combats and encounters and feel like they're the heroes of a story. In a Sandbox game, the heroes can go anywhere in the world and continue their Adventures. In a good Sandbox game, the heroes will be able to go anywhere and feel heroic in those locations. In those good sandbox games the heroes need to be able to be successful in their Adventures wherever those Adventures may take them. That's why I feel that Princes is not a great sandbox Adventure. If it were, the heroes will be able to go to any area and do something successfully that moves the game forward.

Making a good Sandbox game often requires rescaling areas to account for the capabilities of the party when they arrived in that area. Sometimes, that will also require changing the objectives the party must face when they reach those areas. That is something that is very hard to do and a published Adventure.

 

[steeldragons]

In a good D&D game, the players are going to enjoy all of the combats and encounters and feel like they're the heroes of a story. In a Sandbox game, the heroes can go anywhere in the world and continue their Adventures. In a good Sandbox game, the heroes will be able to go anywhere and feel heroic in those locations. In those good sandbox games the heroes need to be able to be successful in their Adventures wherever those Adventures may take them. That's why I feel that Princes is not a great sandbox Adventure. If it were, the heroes will be able to go to any area and do something successfully that moves the game forward.

Making a good Sandbox game often requires rescaling areas to account for the capabilities of the party when they arrived in that area. Sometimes, that will also require changing the objectives the party must face when they reach those areas. That is something that is very hard to do and a published Adventure.

This makes a huge amount of evaluative calls (i.e. what is considered a "good" sandbox), and I can't say that I agree with most of it at all.

The "heroes" are not entitled to success every-/anywhere they go. It is NOT, in a "good" sandbox, the DM's job to adjust things to make them manageable for the players. It is the PLAYERS job, through the appropriate roleplay of their characters, to engage with and effect change with wherever/whatever they decide to do. But there is NO expectation of auto-success or unbeatable "hero-ship."

That doesn't sound like a "sandbox" at all...or even a game worth playing. Why bother even rolling dice....you already know wherever you go is hammered out into bite-sized chunks for you to digest? Sure, you have total free ["player"] agency to go anywhere...but big whoop. That doesn't make it a sandbox if you're inevitably going to "win/beat/succeed" anything you encounter or attempt.

No, thank you.

 

[Caliban]

This makes a huge amount of evaluative calls (i.e. what is considered a "good" sandbox), and I can't say that I agree with most of it at all.

The "heroes" are not entitled to success every-/anywhere they go. It is NOT, in a "good" sandbox, the DM's job to adjust things to make them manageable for the players. It is the PLAYERS job, through the appropriate roleplay of their characters, to engage with and effect change with wherever/whatever they decide to do. But there is NO expectation of auto-success or unbeatable "hero-ship."

That doesn't sound like a "sandbox" at all...or even a game worth playing. Why bother even rolling dice....you already know wherever you go is hammered out into bite-sized chunks for you to digest? Sure, you have total free ["player"] agency to go anywhere...but big whoop. That doesn't make it a sandbox if you're inevitably going to "win/beat/succeed" anything you encounter or attempt.

No, thank you.

I don't think that's what they are saying. You seem to be conflating "Scaling the enemies so they aren't instantly deadly or absurdly easy" with "Making sure the PC's always win".

There's a difference between "Making it possible to succeed" and "Making it impossible to fail".

 

[Tobold]

Isn't the goal for everybody to have fun at all times? I do believe that there is a level range where a fight is interesting and fun; anything below is boringly easy, everything above is frustrating. The level range can be large, but a sandbox which has both level 1 and level 20 encounters just isn't going to work.