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?

 

[S'mon]

As long as you telegraph the difficulty and have a fair means of adjudicating escape (e.g chase rules), then you should be fine and need no additional prep.

I found POTA has one specific issue. The above-ground fire temple has priests with Fireball - my level 3 group waltzed in there and nearly TPK'd. Only the sub-optimal listed enemy tactics saved them.

Earth are bad too, whereas Air & Water are Tier 1 and fine. The big problem is the Tier 1 to Tier 2 break and the above ground temples being across that break. I think the best solution is actually to start POTA at level 5 (eg after Phandelver or Icefang Spire). There are no other such huge threat jumps & the adventure can be completed by a large level 10 group, so I tend to think it fits 5-10 or 5-12 better than 1/3-15.

 

[iserith]

Improver's,
I have no problem whatsoever with your style and your enjoying it. I do not want to stomp it out or in any way diminish its success.

I do though feel that you approach these discussions with almost a religious zeal. That if only we would see the light everyone would become an improver. This is insulting to those of us who are not. When someone says X is a reason and you say but we do X with improv, it seems you are trying to beat down those peoples defenses so they concede your way is the one true way. Let me say from many years experience there is no one true way. Fun is the goal and if you have fun you are doing it right.

Now as to player agency. I think player agency is the wrong term, at least for me it is. I'd rather say player challenge. Meaning that if my player is fleeing from the monsters having just recently lost a battle and finds an escape tunnel that was already there in the design (G2 Frost Giant Jarl) and escapes that is the stuff of legend in a group. If though that tunnel appears on player command, it's ho hum. Even if it appears 55% of the time on player command it's ho hum.

The players are wanting to defeat the monsters, traps, etc... by being challenged. They want to put their minds to the job of defeating the environment around them. So combats are tactical and decided mostly by how skillfully players use their powers and maneuver/flee as necessary. Dungeons are explored and treasures found based on how well the players engage the adventure. So that is part of it.

Now to a lesser degree, the players want that everywhere they go. If they need a cleric to heal the party and go into a town they want there to be a cleric there only if there was a cleric there. That means the DM prepped the cleric ahead of time OR the DM prepped that there was an X% on any given day of a cleric being in town and rolled that number. If the DM just says "Sure there is a cleric there" then that is a form of agency stealing. So a living breathing world is one where they know the DM is playing it straight (yes that is a degree of trust but that is just one part of it) and that the NPCs exist outside of the players purview.

So I apologize if in any way I am disparaging your playstyle. I do not intend to do so. People want different things out of their roleplaying. My responses of course represent my biases as do all of our responses. I actually enjoy hearing how you all handle things. I like other perspectives. I don't have to partake of every idea I hear but I like to hear of other ideas.

It sounds like, ultimately, you're saying this is a matter of trust in the context of skilled play. (Emphasis above is mine.)

Which is what myself and others have been saying this whole time and what you and others appear to have been interpreting as promoting improvisation instead of heavy prep when we haven't actually been doing that. (There's a lot of evidence that we aren't.) We've been trying to get you and others to tease out the reason behind why you want the heavy prep there in the first place - trust in the context of skilled play.

Your post demonstrates why very clearly and supports our initial assertion (though you're still getting it wrong that we're promoting one way over another). In any case, thank you.

 

[iserith]

I found POTA has one specific issue. The above-ground fire temple has priests with Fireball - my level 3 group waltzed in there and nearly TPK'd. Only the sub-optimal listed enemy tactics saved them.

Earth are bad too, whereas Air & Water are Tier 1 and fine. The big problem is the Tier 1 to Tier 2 break and the above ground temples being across that break. I think the best solution is actually to start POTA at level 5 (eg after Phandelver or Icefang Spire). There are no other such huge threat jumps & the adventure can be completed by a large level 10 group, so I tend to think it fits 5-10 or 5-12 better than 1/3-15.

What could you do to telegraph, for example, that the fire temple priests have fireball before the PCs decide to go to the fire temple?

 

[Emerikol]

That's a tough task you took upon yourself. I understand your angle, but have you considered:
1. The party having demonstrated their toughness and ruthlessness are considered the better choice to be ruler of the empire, or at least no one will volunteer to be next victim of the party.
2. Assuming it instead goes your way,
what motive has the empire to avenge the dead emperor? And if it has one then it is a load of work determining what resources come into play now, is it just sheer man power of soldiers?

Well in a world where 20th level is achievable the PCs are not unique. If an empire is like Rome then it has figured out how to survive. If the party were Romans your idea has merit as they would view it as an internal Roman power struggle. But if the party are outsiders, which was my assumption in the example, then they would be viewed as a grave threat. The empire would assemble their own 20th level forces and go after the party. Having the resources of an empire at their disposal they likely can keep fighting longer than most would. Could the PCs just disappear and go into hiding? Sure. They are 20th level and have all the means of hiding available. Could they slug it out in a fair fight long term? Probably not. At least not if that empire at at its peak and not on the verge of collapse.

 

[Emerikol]

It sounds like, ultimately, you're saying this is a matter of trust in the context of skilled play. (Emphasis above is mine.)

Which is what myself and others have been saying this whole time and what you and others appear to have been interpreting as promoting improvisation instead of heavy prep when we haven't actually been doing that. (There's a lot of evidence that we aren't.) We've been trying to get you and others to tease out the reason behind why you want the heavy prep there in the first place - trust in the context of skilled play.

Your post demonstrates why very clearly and supports our initial assertion (though you're still getting it wrong that we're promoting one way over another). In any case, thank you.

Let's assume you are a master ad libber. Perhaps with everything being done perfectly on your side of the screen which I've yet to see but I will allow as a possibility since these forums tend to attract many who are successful paragons of their style, I agree it perhaps comes down to your thesis. But practically, many of the other objections while not theoretically implied are often very common.

 

[S'mon]

What could you do to telegraph, for example, that the fire temple priests have fireball before the PCs decide to go to the fire temple?

Since they are in disguise posing as good guys, this is basically impossible within the context of the adventure I'd say. Either the party need to start at higher level, or they need to be pointed to Air & Water first, until they hit 5th level. IMC the PCs had more reason to hunt Fire from their backgrounds, and the POTA intro material actually points more towards Earth, the second deadliest Temple.

5e Bounded Accuracy is great for sandboxing, but only up to a point - that point being the Tier 1 > Tier 2 break, where PCs more than double their offensive power.

 

[iserith]

Let's assume you are a master ad libber. Perhaps with everything being done perfectly on your side of the screen which I've yet to see but I will allow as a possibility since these forums tend to attract many who are successful paragons of their style, I agree it perhaps comes down to your thesis. But practically, many of the other objections while not theoretically implied are often very common.

It takes nothing more than being an average interpreter of what people are saying in their posts and having played D&D for a while to see why some insist on heavy prep with improvisation being minimized. (It can't ever be eliminated.) It doesn't really matter how good I am at preparing or at improvising to understand why some need to feel that heavy prep was done before the game otherwise they enjoy it less (or not at all).

Given this, the interesting question to me then is why it took so long to get someone who feels this way to say why and, further, why trying to tease this out from them results in claims of elitism or one-true-wayism when none of that is in evidence in this thread so far as I can tell. It's not like admitting the desire for the DM to have a heavily prepped game is a trust issue in the context of skilled play is a bad thing, right?

 

[iserith]

Since they are in disguise posing as good guys, this is basically impossible within the context of the adventure I'd say. Either the party need to start at higher level, or they need to be pointed to Air & Water first, until they hit 5th level. IMC the PCs had more reason to hunt Fire from their backgrounds, and the POTA intro material actually points more towards Earth, the second deadliest Temple.

5e Bounded Accuracy is great for sandboxing, but only up to a point - that point being the Tier 1 > Tier 2 break, where PCs more than double their offensive power.

The DM couldn't, say, have rumors in town that some robed dudes with these weird holy symbols they tried to hide nuked a bunch of people outside of town? Or have the PCs come across some charred corpses in a 20-foot radius of ash that might offer up some clues about what they may face? Or perhaps an escaped prisoner intended for sacrifice who never got a good look at his captors but knows they possess power over fire that few men can survive?

 

[TwoSix]

Let's assume you are a master ad libber. Perhaps with everything being done perfectly on your side of the screen which I've yet to see but I will allow as a possibility since these forums tend to attract many who are successful paragons of their style, I agree it perhaps comes down to your thesis. But practically, many of the other objections while not theoretically implied are often very common.

Yep, even though I'm a heavily improv DM, I don't think there's anything BAD about a heavily prepped style. Heck, I plan on trying out a prep-based dungeon crawl style game for my next campaign, just to see if I can actually do it. (I expect to fail, but it'll be fun to try.)

 

[S'mon]

The DM couldn't, say, have rumors in town that some robed dudes with these weird holy symbols they tried to hide nuked a bunch of people outside of town? Or have the PCs come across some charred corpses in a 40-foot radius of ash that might offer up some clues about what they may face? Or perhaps an escaped prisoner intended for sacrifice who never got a good look at his captors but knows they possess power over fire that few men can survive?

Well I had burned trees & such as foreshadowing. But by the time the PCs even realise they're facing fire priests it's probably too late.

GM could just change their initial spell selection of course, that is probably the best solution and has the benefit of making their described tactics less suboptimal (compared to Fireball! Fireball!)