The Sandbox And The Grind

[Gansk]

Nice avatar

Likewise!

Once monsters stop looking like hot dogs and hamburgers to XP starved players you will see a decrease in thier willingness to enter dangerous/grindy long fights.

I would say that this is one element that brought about a de-emphasis of the use of wandering monsters in 3e and 4e. Of course wandering monsters are a staple of the sandbox campaign, but they were supposed to represent a negative consequence of making too much noise, getting lost, etc. They represented a moderate risk of injury/death (or at the very least resource usage) for little to no reward (meager treasure).

You can introduce house rules that give XP for treasure or story awards to help alleviate this problem, but it will not fully go away. The older editions still allowed XP to be awarded for killing monsters, it just wasn't the only source of XP.

Ultimately the players are faced with a decision every time they are introduced to an encounter - is combat worth it? The DM can encourage them with treasure or discourage them with the lack of treasure. The DM can encourage them by hinting that the encounter is a fair fight or discourage them by hinting that the encounter will be a grind/TPK. The bottom line is that the players need information to make the decision.

If there is no information, the default assumption is to fight, especially in the later editions. Why? Maybe because 90% of the rules revolve around fighting, but also maybe because the players expect a level appropriate encounter. The DMG encourages it, and the players know that. Even if the DM states up front that he or she is running a sandbox campaign and the players could meet anything under the sun, IMO the players will instinctively still choose combat over parley/RP. So apparently the players need to learn the hard way.

What some DM's seem to be saying here is that they want to reproduce the moment where players take a lot of damage on the first round and actually experience fear - fear of a TPK. The players are always going to remember that moment, whether it is a TPK, they manage to escape, or especially if they manage to win!

That's why upping the damage is being touted as the solution in 4e - if the players don't see dramatic damage, they won't experience fear, they'll end up in grindspace and will be bored stiff. Of course that doesn't address the issue when an encounter is too easy. If the DM is a simulationist sandboxer, then theoretically the NPC's also need to feel the pain to experience the fear. Then they run or surrender or whatever. But was the combat setup time worth it?

Without a grid, minis, opportunity attacks, etc. the old school games could tolerate a boring/mundane combat here and there. But now is the time investment too great? Is conveying information in a metagamey/cheesy way to help avoid boring combats really so intolerable in a simulationist sandbox?
Or is it better just to admit that the simulation is artificial anyway and make every encounter an appropriate challenge?

 

[Ariosto]

Nothing brings a fact home like experiencing it. I had some experienced 4E players giving a go at playing 1st-level characters under OD&D rules. Their vulnerability was theoretically and mathematically clear, and they got to see that other adventurers had met bad ends, but these fellows got away with a string of good luck saving them from their own bad tactics.

Then there was an occasion when they got involved in checking every part of a dungeon room except the one big, obvious place where a monster could hide. The sounds of its invisible stirring had an appropriately creepy effect, and the players had plenty of opportunity either to bail out or to take prudent measures to meet an assault.

In the event, it was SNAFU. They had their first PC casualty when the ghoulish thing slew a magic-user with one hit. The immediate effect of the shock was to galvanize them into concerted action, and they felled the monster. More frighteningly, it recovered from its seeming demise. In the end, they reduced it to scattered ashes. As it happened, they also took away a rich treasure ... but they were reeling a bit from the death.

 

[S'mon]

You are right, of course. I was being myopic.

I was focused on "play well or die!" (I like that! ) because I have no idea what "grind" means in terms of... I hate to say it, "simulationist" goals.

I agree. I don't see how 'grind' and 'sand box' relate, as I've said above. The grind problem in 4e seems to be due to high-hp, low-damage monsters & PCs. It would seem to be as much or more a problem in tightly plotted adventure paths as in sandbox play.

I do think there's a simulation issue ancillary to grind; which is that high level monsters have such weak damage output, even very low-level PCs and non-minion NPCs have little to fear from a few rounds of combat with them.

I am interested in running a 4e sandbox; my likely solution to the plausibility issue is to stat most of the world as minions, with non-minon status reserved for elites, bosses, heroes, big scary monsters and such. Thus most 'random' battles will be with all minions and not much of a challenge; but if they're fast enough I'm thinking that's not a problem. Often the point of the battle is more to see if the enemy escape/warn their friends/kill the prisoner, rather than to challenge the PCs to the edge of survival.

 

[CapnZapp]

I agree. I don't see how 'grind' and 'sand box' relate, as I've said above. The grind problem in 4e seems to be due to high-hp, low-damage monsters & PCs. It would seem to be as much or more a problem in tightly plotted adventure paths as in sandbox play.

In "tightly plotted adventure paths" the heroes encounter level-appropriate fights. The risk of happening upon an unexpectedly high-level adversary is very much reduced in official adventures at least.

And the grind is more acutely felt against high-level foes (especially a single high-level solo).

So you're right in there not being a defining difference between different styles of play. It's just that (what I call) sandbox play runs a higher risk of encountering grind: the players might have the resources to fight an unwinnable fight for hours of game time before realizing they need to flee if put up against a sufficiently lop-sided foe (with extreme hp and underwhelming damage).

This doesn't mean all sandboxes have this issue, or that no pre-defined adventures can't.

 

[S'mon]

This doesn't mean all sandboxes have this issue, or that no pre-defined adventures can't.

I'm not clear on how high-level 4e adventures manage to both challenge the PCs and avoid grind, if that is indeed the case. I understand that high level 4e PCs played well can deal a lot of damage, perhaps enough to avoid grind vs high level foes (high hp, high AC). How then do those foes challenge the PCs, when they seem to have low damage outputs?


Is it that monsters escalate defensively, while PCs escalate offensively, remaining balanced against each other?