Why the World Exists

[Lanefan]

Anyhow. I would be interested in knowing how often characters die in your sandbox games. So Imaro, Raven Crowking, Reynard and others. How many characters die in your games? And how many die due to level inappropiate encounters?

In my game, they drop like flies.

But it's the level-appropriate encounters that kill 'em, or the ones that on paper are relatively easy. The over-the-top encounters that they really should run from, they clean up!

Take Keep on the Shadowfell, which I recently ran modified for 1e. That one's a somewhat typical dungeon design where things get tougher as you go deeper in. My crew lost a bunch of characters on the supposedly-easier upper level, and against the Hobgoblins downstairs; but in the last 5 encounters on the lower decks - the cube-and-undead, the statues-and-traps, the room full of zombies and ghouls, the minor priest and friends, and Kalarel et al - which are each rather nasty set-pieces, they only lost two. One of those, even, was very preventable (the party hung a disliked member out to dry); the other was truly heroic (a fighter held the line solo against the minor priest's buddies for long enough that the party could deal with their own problems first and not get surrounded).

Do I chuck in occasional random encounters that the party really ought to run from? Hell, yeh!

And all the parties do is win.

Lanefan

 

[Lanefan]

Celebrim, if "a strange land" is anywhere near Victoria BC, I want in to your game.

Lanefan

 

[Ariosto]

The notion that either the referee's or the character-player's role ought to be directly analogous to a novelist's was (in my experience) pretty ludicrous for at least the first half of the hobby's existence.

I remember cooking up a game based on literary/dramatic assumptions and getting the response that the fundamentally different concept was "cool, but too hard for any but the most advanced gamers to get." (That's a paraphrase, but all these years later perhaps the irony is clear enough.)

The field of "story-telling" games seems to have come rebelliously into its own even as conformity became a virtue among D&Ders. It is the mode that dare not name itself.

Character Concept (Old Style): Woodwind has ambitions to become a Wizard who rides a dragon and wields a Staff of Wizardry, leading the Zebra Riders to recovery of the ancient frontiers of the Silver Empire.

Character Concept (New Style): Woodwind shall become ...

Ditto Cadfan's ... solipsism? How does it matter whether Tobruk or Minas Tirith is put in hex 1350? Once it is placed, and established as not teleporting, that is the lay of the land. That this can be so hard to grasp suggests a gulf of fundamentally different conception.

 

[monboesen]

Yeah, because I'm the one who keeps claiming there's no difference between sandbox and tailored campaigns?? And telling the sandbox DM's really what you think you're doing... you aren't really doing.

No, but because you seemingly harbor the notion that players will never run into inappropiate encounters in a tailored campaign.

I can of course only speak of my own games, as player and DM, and they fall more into the tailored category.

But lets say the players decide to aggravate/attack powerful people/monsters in the campaign, well then they may easily end up dead. The kings bodyguard doesn't magically transform from 10th to 1st level warriors when low level PC's insult the king and defecate on his throne. Even without hard numbers I would still speculate that most DM's run games that way.

The tailored part means that as long as the players behave reasonably intelligent they wont face overwhelming enemies.


Net effect: Smart players face appropiate encounters (some hard, some easy), stupid and antagonistic players may easily end up dead from picking fights they really shouldn't. But they don't risk random encounters that will flat out kill them. Like huge dragons on random encounter lists.


And regarding the question of player magic item wish lists. Great idea! But I don't consider it more than a tool for better understanding what the player would like for his character. It is in no way a stone tablet that determines that from now on all magic items found must comply to the list.

I view along the lines of other player contributions to the campaign. A player may write a page about the culture of the tribal people his character comes from. But that doesn't mean I have to accept it at face value. It means I will read and consider it and likely use some or all of it. I'm still the DM and still the final decision maker. Of cultures, magic items and encounter levels

 

[Cadfan]

Ditto Cadfan's ... solipsism? How does it matter whether Tobruk or Minas Tirith is put in hex 1350? Once it is placed, and established as not teleporting, that is the lay of the land. That this can be so hard to grasp suggests a gulf of fundamentally different conception.

Heh, its not solipsism if the world really ain't real.

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

First... what is a "certain death trap?" The only way I can even fathom a situation where there is zero probability of anything but dying is I as DM fiat'ing it into that. Which is not a "here is how the world is" game either. So first please define this as there have been numerous examples of dealing with a higher CR/XP level encounter... or am I just saying auto-no to anything the PC's think up? I don't e think that's how a sandbox works.

Scenario:
PCs are in a dungeon. They have searched it through and didn't find yet what they were looking for. But they found a chamber that's apparantly a teleportation device. They can't find any clues (because there are none) where it leads to, and eventually, they decide to risk it. The first character enters, and one after another, each of them decides to risk it.
I've seen this scenario in actual play and encounters. The reason why the entire party eventually risks is is because we know that it'S a game and we're the protagonists. Whatever happens will propel the story, even if it's tough.

Or so we believe. In fact, this teleportation chamber teleports the PCs directly above a pool of lava. THey all die.

EDIT: Honestly with raise dead and resurrection magic... why not, That could be an interesting storyline, the PC's don't know what to expect until they face it, but have made precautions to haves themselves brought back if it does kill them. I mean in D&D 4e after a certain level death is a minor irritant at best.

I would say this fails the qualification for "real death trap".
Who is raising them? And isn't the reason why you get the party raised not just because it makes "sense" from a purely verisimilitude perspective, but because the "show must go on"?
But even if you do it, wouldn't it feel a little... shallow to the players? "We only survived because the DM said we should, and we only died in the first place because the DM said we would. No amount of "smart play" would have saved us or created our way out." (Smart Play it might be if the PCs ensured they have an ally that would raise them, or that have a "raise dead insurance" or a contingency spell cast on them. But is that something possible in every game world at every level?)

 

[Imaro]

This, and similar posts in this thread, give me the impression of a very static campaign world. A world where dragons sleep always, until the players choose to disturb them.

And I don't think that's how you guys run your games. I think the focus on "level appropriate challenges" just makes it sound that way.

Surely the dragon gets hungry and goes hunting. Surely vile cultists kidnap the mayor's daughter for unspeakable purposes. Surely rich nobles seek to fund expeditions into the hostile wilderness. And in every case, the DM decides (through whatever process) when these creatures act and the manner in which they act.

By what means does the sandbox DM make those decisions?

Well there are a couple of methods I use to determine such things...

1. Reaction: The NPC reacts to an event caused by the PC's and/or other events in the campaign.

2. Motivations and goals: If Ugor the Ogre chieftain from the North is leading his tribe south into new lands and it will take hm 3 months to enter the Southlands... well in 3 months game time a new force of Ogre's will appear and they will attack and take from the weak along their path. Of course the PC's may discover this is happening and stop them before they reach the Southlands.

3. Relationship maps: Something I picked up from the Unknown Armies rpg. It is a chart that shows the major types of connection or feelings between groups/NPC's/Etc that have interacted with each other.

4. Chance, if all else fails create charts to simulate chance...base the percentage chance on how likely PC's are to encounter the things within an area (I use this method mainly for wildlife, rarely for NPC's or major monsters that can think at human or above level.)

 

[Imaro]

When I do sandbox, I craft the setting with a lot of level-appropriateness built in. Imaro seems to be saying that in his sandbox, if its written that the Emo Caves are full of lvl 2 goblin cutters, then that's set in stone. If the PCs visit the caves at 1st level or 10th level, that's what they find.

Emphasis mine: Not exactly... if nothing else in the world changes or affects the goblins until the PC's arrive... then yes the Emo Caves will be full of lvl 2 goblin cutters when the PC's arrive (it will not be level-dependant though)... of course the longer it takes for them to visit the less likely this is as the campaign setting changes and evolves.

 

[Raven Crowking]

This, and similar posts in this thread, give me the impression of a very static campaign world. A world where dragons sleep always, until the players choose to disturb them.

And I don't think that's how you guys run your games. I think the focus on "level appropriate challenges" just makes it sound that way.

Surely the dragon gets hungry and goes hunting. Surely vile cultists kidnap the mayor's daughter for unspeakable purposes. Surely rich nobles seek to fund expeditions into the hostile wilderness. And in every case, the DM decides (through whatever process) when these creatures act and the manner in which they act.

By what means does the sandbox DM make those decisions?

The world is not static; but neither is the world pointed toward the PCs. When a dragon goes on a hungry rampage, it isn't doing so for the players' convenience. It might hit their village; it might not. If it does, they might be there; and they might not.

Mallus' "What if the DM sends an unavoidable TPK after the PCs" is a very different animal than "What if the PCs encounter a dragon". In the first case, the DM determines what the encounter is (a TPK), and the players have nothing to do (except die). In the second case, the encounter is with a dragon, but what the encounter is is responsive to how the players react to the situation their characters are in. Is it an encounter where the PCs die heroically (or not so heroically)? Is it an encounter where they speak to the dragon? Where they run and hide? Where they buy him off? The DM doesn't know when the encounter begins.

(This doesn't mean that the DM doesn't have a proposed sketch of the encounter aforehand, merely that this sketch isn't set in stone......The DM extrapolates from it in response to the players.)

Moreover, while a dragon may encounter the PCs as a result of a wandering encounter, or as the logical result of the campaign world's progression, what does not happen is the DM deciding that he wants the PCs to encounter Smaug, therefore they will encounter Smaug.

From other discussions, I have the impression that most of the sandbox-type DMs here are non-fudgers when it comes to the dice. After all, fudging the dice to determine what happens invalidates the point of allow the players to make choices.

I also have the impression that most of the "There's no difference" folks here are fudgers when it comes to the dice. After all, not fudging the dice to determine what happens invalidates the way they planned the encounters to go.

And that is, perhaps, a good encapsulation of the difference: Whose choices does the DM empower? His, or his players'?


RC

 

[Imaro]

No, but because you seemingly harbor the notion that players will never run into inappropiate encounters in a tailored campaign.

I can of course only speak of my own games, as player and DM, and they fall more into the tailored category.

But lets say the players decide to aggravate/attack powerful people/monsters in the campaign, well then they may easily end up dead. The kings bodyguard doesn't magically transform from 10th to 1st level warriors when low level PC's insult the king and defecate on his throne. Even without hard numbers I would still speculate that most DM's run games that way.

The tailored part means that as long as the players behave reasonably intelligent they wont face overwhelming enemies.


Net effect: Smart players face appropiate encounters (some hard, some easy), stupid and antagonistic players may easily end up dead from picking fights they really shouldn't. But they don't risk random encounters that will flat out kill them. Like huge dragons on random encounter lists.


And regarding the question of player magic item wish lists. Great idea! But I don't consider it more than a tool for better understanding what the player would like for his character. It is in no way a stone tablet that determines that from now on all magic items found must comply to the list.

I view along the lines of other player contributions to the campaign. A player may write a page about the culture of the tribal people his character comes from. But that doesn't mean I have to accept it at face value. It means I will read and consider it and likely use some or all of it. I'm still the DM and still the final decision maker. Of cultures, magic items and encounter levels

Emphasis mine: Perhaps because this is what the actual discussion was originally about (a setting of level-appropriate challenges vs. a setting of level-independant challenges. Now if you do things different...great, but that wasn't what I was discussing.