D&D 5E Do You Prefer Sandbox or Party Level Areas In Your Game World?

So these are two approaches that campaigns can (and do) use. They have various names, but I'm using these names. I've used both approaches in the past.

Obviously there is more nuance than the definitions below, but these are two possible extreme ends of the poll when voting feel free to choose whichever end you tend towards, or embellish in the comments.

Sandbox -- each area on the world map has a set difficulty, and if you're a low level party and wander into a dangerous area, you're in trouble. The Shire is low level, Moria is high level. Those are 'absolute' values and aren't dependent on who's traveling through.

Party -- adventurers encounter challenges appropriate to their level wherever they are on the map. A low level party in Moria just meets a few goblins. A high level party meets a balrog!

Which do you prefer?

 

[Maxperson]

A few years ago id be firmly in the sandbox camp, but its eventually wore at my immersion and sense of narrative. I do like opportunities for the PCs to punch above their weight, but the PCs wandering into something they cant handle and getting TPK'd isn't terribly fun or interesting any longer.

Wandering into something they can't handle can go many different ways. TPK is probably the least interesting, but can happen if the party is dumb about it.

 

[jmartkdr2]

Truth. I've never played in or ran a game where the DM threw out encounters of completely arbitrary challenge level compared to the party the entire campaign, which is what you would get if you were really running a "sandbox," as per the OP. The reality is that people that think they run "sandbox" might allow the group the encounter super high level monsters in certain circumstances but a lot of the time they try to make encounters that are somewhat reasonable for the party.

Put another way: a lot of people on this site will say they don't balance encounters, but I generally read that as "I don't balance encounters to be fair combats." The distinction is: the entire encounter begins before initiative unless it's an un-foreshadowed ambush, and I-don't-balance dm's don't do that. The players always get a chance to see the big threat ahead of time and make choices about how to proceed.

An ancient green dragon in the forest can be a balanced/fair encounter for a 1st-level party if they don't have to fight the thing. (Go around, sneak past, talk past)

 

[iserith]

Put another way: a lot of people on this site will say they don't balance encounters, but I generally read that as "I don't balance encounters to be fair combats." The distinction is: the entire encounter begins before initiative unless it's an un-foreshadowed ambush, and I-don't-balance dm's don't do that. The players always get a chance to see the big threat ahead of time and make choices about how to proceed.

An ancient green dragon in the forest can be a balanced/fair encounter for a 1st-level party if they don't have to fight the thing. (Go around, sneak past, talk past)

Yes. A challenge of any difficulty is fair as long as the DM telegraphs it and the players have a choice on how to proceed.

 

[cmad1977]

Sand party

 

[DND_Reborn]

Sand party

Beach party?

 

[Stormonu]

Hybrid - large area the characters can wander about with, some areas that might be too tough for them ATM, but a thread running through the whole thing [that's level appropriate] if they're stumped and don't know where to go next, or if they want to follow a story thread.

 

[Emerikol]

The prep is stating what's there. If I'm going to say that "in that forest is a green dragon"... if and when it gets encountered it's going to be a green dragon that the party can actually encounter. That's why I wouldn't say "in that forest is an ancient green dragon", because I've just now detailed an area that is never going to be used. Which is a waste of my time.

And note... I say this as a DM whose games rarely get to 10th level, let alone go past it. So anything in the adventuring area will be level appropriate (either weaker, stronger, or on level) so that the party can choose to go there and actually encounter stuff without it being an automatic TPK. Because as a story-first DM... I find TPKs to be pointless. If the party fails (and they certainly can)... it'll be failure within the narrative, not within the board game.

Whatever makes your group and you happy is working for you.

I would be unsatisfied both as a player and as a DM if everything was ad libbed all the time. I've been in those groups and I don't last long. Now you may be the greatest creative genius of all time and you may be able to trick me into thinking you've got it all worked out. Maybe such a person as you could pull it off. 99.999% of the DM's in the world could not.

 

[DEFCON 1]

Whatever makes your group and you happy is working for you.

I would be unsatisfied both as a player and as a DM if everything was ad libbed all the time. I've been in those groups and I don't last long. Now you may be the greatest creative genius of all time and you may be able to trick me into thinking you've got it all worked out. Maybe such a person as you could pull it off. 99.999% of the DM's in the world could not.

I ad-lib which modules get used when. But the actual activities within those modules have all been nicely plotted out by writers better than me.

My style of DMing is once I've decided on what/where the campaign is set (and it's always an established campaign setting-- I don't make up my own)... I basically Wiki the area to death to get as much info as I can for what's already been written there. Then I rummage through a bunch of the D&D crap I've gathered over the years and find those adventures that could apply to certain places within the area.

And if any of those adventures are off-level... if/when the time comes that the party decides to go there I'll re-do the combat encounters to be applicable to whatever level the party is at the time. After all... these could very well be adventures that are from any of the four previous editions, which means I'm going to be re-writing the encounters anyway using 5E. So if I'm doing that... I sure as heck ain't gonna waste my time re-writing them to be the level that they might've originally been written for if the party is either past it or not even close to being ready. Because what would be the point of that? If some module I re-appropriate was originally written for characters level 1-3, but the story is cool and works well for where the party is headed at when they're level 6 at the time... I'll level the encounters up as part of my re-write so that it's actually useful and fun for them.

 

[Lanefan]

However, I do a handout every week that lists job opportunities, potential adventure sites, and rumors. The adventures on that sheet are designed to be at or close to their level, irrespective of where in the world they occur.

This is a brilliant idea!

<<yoink!>>

That said, my "job opportunity" lists won't necessarily only show level-appropriate things - it'll show whatever's known or rumoured to need doing, and it'll be on the PCs to dig a little and then make their own assessment of whether they're up to the task or not (and in meta-terms, it'll be on the players to select the right characters for the team, as they each have a bunch to choose from).

 

[Quickleaf]

I like an "intentional sandbox" which gives some thought to designing specific areas (that make sense in terms of the narrative's pacing) with certain level ranges in mind, while placed within the context of random encounters across a whole range of threat levels and freedom for the players to choose their level of risk vs. reward.

An example would be my current game where there's a progression of increasingly difficult adventure sites, but then individual locations/encounters within those sites that are outliers to the "expected" threat level.