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?

 

[dytrrnikl]

Really? You'd rather just roll the dice to see what level of threat you encounter? First level party can stumble into the lair of an ancient dragon with no forewarning? A level 20 party could wander into an area where the biggest threat is a goblin with a dull stick?

I don't roll the dice. I populate the area with a variety of things of different degrees of challenge from level appropriate to TPK level, including information from which the PCs pick and choose what they wish to tackle. If they ignore the information provided, jump right in without consideration, what happens after that is on them. So yes, a 1st level party can stumble into the lair of an ancient dragon, but at their own peril for ignoring the information provided. And yes, a 20th level party could wander into an area where the biggest threat is a goblin with a dull stick, if they so choose. What information lead them there? I'm not going to push or direct groups I run into challenges, they're going to direct me toward the challenges they want to tackle based on whatever information has been presented to them or some other unforseen path they decide to walk down. It's an approach to GMing that seems to go against today's current trends.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

You can take two DMs, though, and give them that world. One will be the way you describe, and the other will allow the PCs to impact the world to a great degree. This is a DMing issue, not one of prep.

I don't see how you can separate these two things. Doing prep well--neither boxing the players in, nor throwing an unfinished buggy mess at them--is a DMing thing, and is about prep. It is therefore BOTH things. A DM should prepare well, which means knowing what prep needs a particular game and group have.

 

[Emerikol]

I think it's worth a separate point to say that I 1000% (extra zero intentional) think that GMs doing strong prep and not changing it is both cool and satisfies a particular set of gaming needs. My argument about the fiction should not be read, in any way, as a disparagement of strong prep. I'm pointing out that the shared fiction is the only "real" part of the game -- everything else is alterable for any reason, and the choices of the GM, do not change this. It's only when it actually impacts the game fiction that it becomes, in any sense, "real." And, yes, prep can impact play in very subtle ways, but only when it enters the shared fiction with those subtleties.

There is no fiction in the game that is unchangeable by the DM. I'm the absolute arbiter of the game. I can rewind time, I can undo anything, I and cause anything else to happen. Rule 0. So by your "strict" interpretation of "the fiction" then in my games nothing is the fiction. It's all changeable. And my unwillingness to do such things does not negate the fact they are possible. So being possible, then nothing is fiction by your definition.

Prep is also not the only way to get a vibrant, consistent, and believable worlds, including one where things happen "offstage." Nor is the only alternative approach to prep the GM just making everything up as they want in the moment. Games like Blades in the Dark and the Powered by the Apocalypse games are very much played in the moment, with prep being difficult to impossible, but the GM is tightly constrained in these games such that they cannot just negate or allow any action as they want to. And, some of these kinds of approaches can be brought into D&D (not all, because D&D isn't built to sustain them, but some). The ways you can run a skill challenge, for instance, can allow for play that cannot be prepped, but instead played out in the moment, and the results can be as good as the best prep you'd want to put it up against in terms of vibrant, "living" worlds.

Vibrant, consistent, and believable are all subjective. I absolutely agree that some people can feel that something is all those things when I would absolutely not think they are. I suspect in these games you mention that dissociative mechanics are rampant and that alone would make me not feel the world is vibrant, consistent or believable. It's why I don't play 5e to begin with. I can't stomach the HD and the second wind, etc...

For me though, my long experience of gaming is that DMs who do no prep provide very little in the way of immersion. Now I totally agree that is my anecdotal and subjective experience. Meaning some might find such games immersive and others might agree they are not but can be immersed with a better version of that style. Now, we can argue fun vs immersion. I might have some fun playing a game that is not immersive. But with my limited gaming time, I prefer immersive games. I don't think most board games are immersive and yet I could play them. Typically in such situations though it's a two or three hour one time experience and not a years long commitment.

So you can't really say that any game is guaranteed immersive. You can say it is immersive for you. You can also not say that any style of gaming is immersive. You can say it is for you. And the same holds true for me. I can't say any game or style is not immersive. I can say it is not immersive for me.

 

[Emerikol]

Also, let me break down the other style a bit for you.

I like to think of the Pathfinder Adventure Paths, when used as the primary vehicle for the group, as the party approach. The party still likely finds a hook and picks up the clues and begins the adventure path. The DM provides the connective tissue between adventures and he provides a small modicum of underlying world info to the group as needed. The NPCs for example all exist to support the adventure path. If they do not support it then they are essentially "extras" that the DM can just randomly choose.
Often a third party world, like Pathfinders, is used because that enables the DM to provide the information without a lot of extra effort. This approach is very popular no matter what the above poll says. Not everyone comes here and those who do are more invested in roleplaying than the average gamer.

In a sandbox, that adventure path could exist. It's not the only thing that exists though. It's probably not the only or even the primary set of adventures. It's just one possible choice and it's far more likely the group might quit the path early and lunge off in another direction. It's kind of like the DM has to have many adventure threads available and the party can choose to follow whichever one they want to follow. A lot of the NPCs in a sandbox are important and are part of something that is happening. Lots of them are plotting. You know as DM how it all interconnects. Adventures might lead back and forth from one thread to another. It's kind of like you are bobbling the plots of a dozen novels. If the group interferes then that novel turns out differently but if the group doesn't then the novel runs to completion with whatever consequences. I also tend to think you develop stronger relationships between PCs and NPCs. The NPCs have real personalities and are up to their own agendas.

 

[Emerikol]

There's a mixing of two things here, and it's causing a reification of the prep. The first is that it's entirely reasonable to want to do prep, fix it, and then play it. This is cool, and, despite your misunderstanding at the end of this post, I'm down with that. The second, though, is what constitutes actually in play at the table, and prep just doesn't make it. It's an input to that play, but it isn't on the same level of that play, and this is because, regardless of however a GM prefers it, it is malleable and unfixed. If you can change your mind, you choosing not to does not change that you can. The choosing is doing no work, here, and so it cannot be the cause of prep to have the same weight as play.

I addressed the "changing your mind" in a previous post. Nothing in the game world is unchangeable to a DM. So the past, present, and future are malleable by your rules. The only limit to change is the DM choosing not to change something. We very much play by rule 0 in my games.

You see, if a player asked me ten years later if I remember a campaign where he rescued a young maiden, I might say yes. He might then ask whatever happened to that maiden. Now if I wrote it down what happened then I'd answer. I would answer to the degree that I'd established it as a campaign fact. If I say she married the prince or that her brother killed her then those things happened in that campaign. Now obviously under normal circumstances I don't work out things beyond the end of the campaign but that was an example. Perhaps a better question. What if a player asks "Was old otho a traitor? Was he working for the enemy?" I can answer emphatically "yes" or "no". It would be a fact. Even though the group never found out I knew that fact. I knew that when the group told otho they were going north that he'd report to the enemy. It impacted what they might meet going north as well. And I had Otho in place from the start as a traitor because if I just imagined him at that moment I'd feel like it was cheating.

I felt it was a less contentious term than make-believe, or fantasy, or imaginings, but if you have a better term for the entirely made up parts of play, I'm all ears.

I was thinking the "story of the characters" as opposed to the truth of the campaign. The story of the characters is a subset of the truth of the campaign.

Cool, except you're wrong... on occasion. I don't stick to one approach, because I've found different approaches do different things, so I tailor my approach to what it is the table wants to get at in play. In the last few years I've run a heavy prep hex-crawl, where things were placed and discovered in play, a player-driven Planescape game where I used a lot of improv techniques with some location based prep, a Blades in the Dark game which was entirely improv (and had to be), and right now I'm running a WotC AP. So, yeah, maybe you shouldn't jump to a conclusion -- most of my recent play has been a lot closer to your approach than what you've labeled as my approach.

I don't know how anything you said indicates you have a regard for campaign truth. I am sure there are preppers who change things all the time on the fly without regard for the truth of their campaign. Being a prepper doesn't mean you respect campaign truth. Even being an improver, you can respect campaign truth I suppose but it's only what you establish as rules with the PCs and what happens during play. So you choose to limit campaign truth to those things.

So my rules are a DM will create a campaign sandbox and play it straight. He won't change the underlying truth. Now I will concede that you only have as much truth as you have established as DM. So if I have written down info about an Inn and it's inhabitants but no map, I might add a map at some point. Once the map is added I don't change it wholesale.

I think one issue Ovid is you take something that is mostly true but not always and you want to make it absolutely true 100% of the time. That is at least how I'm seeing it. No offense intended in that assessment.

 

[Emerikol]

The GM also experienced any brainstorming they did, but didn't keep all of that. They also experienced a good bit of drafting work on the prep, adding and subtracting things until it was good enough. So, at which point does the GM experiencing it reify it?

The GM establishes it as a truth of his campaign. Of course the process of creating an adventure does not lock it down room by room. Once it has been created full and put into the campaign world then it's established. Adventures are a bad example anyway. A better example would be the inhabitants and businesses in a town.

This is the point, there's not a thing you can actually point to that has meaning for the game until it's introduced into the shared fiction. Prior to that it is, at best, a strong guide to future content. This can be said even for a GM that prefers strong prep because they might notice, immediately before play, an error that makes things incoherent, and fix it on the fly.

What would an error be though? The GM saved the wrong version of work? Would not the fact he recoiled at the idea that what he had actually established was not there that he was correcting? So sure if I create adventure A and accidentally overwrite adventure B instead of putting it where A goes then I will try to get A where it belongs and restore B.

You mean prep, here, by fiction? Because that's fine. The GM choosing to not change it means that it must be changeable, else there's no choice. If it's changeable, then it's not fixed until it cannot be changed, which is what happens when it enters the shared fiction. The imaginings of the GM that do not enter the shared fictions aren't "real".

Nothing is fixed but what you choose to fix. You've arbitrarily decided that what the players see is fixed, it's not by the way, and what hasn't been seen is not. That is your "rule" and that is fine. It's not my rule though and you keep wanting me to see your rule as an absolute truth.

 

[Maxperson]

I don't see how you can separate these two things. Doing prep well--neither boxing the players in, nor throwing an unfinished buggy mess at them--is a DMing thing, and is about prep. It is therefore BOTH things. A DM should prepare well, which means knowing what prep needs a particular game and group have.

Because prep doesn't box anyone into anything by itself. The DM can prep the world, set up where the monsters and peoples are, etc. and a group of proactive players can romp through it doing what they like, making huge changes and waves. The prep is only the back stage. The PCs are the actors, but without a set script. THEY get to decide whether they want to slay the dragon that is terrorizing the city and save hundreds of thousands of people. THEY get to decide if they want to take over a kingdom and rule it themselves. THEY get to decide if they want to rob the emperor's treasury and become infamous.

Now, if you have a passive group that just walks around and putters here and putters there, it can seem constraining, but that again is not a prep issue. It's a player issue. Passive players won't do well in a sandbox game. Or you could have a DM that doesn't want to see his precious work changed, and doesn't allow that to happen. That's a form of railroading and doesn't make for a good sandbox game, either.

Prep isn't the problem. Only DMs and players are the problem.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Prep isn't the problem. Only DMs and players are the problem.

You keep acting as though there is this hard barrier between the DM and the prep work they do. There isn't. A DM that engages in bad at-the-table-play is almost certainly also engaging in bad before-the-table prep work. By addressing the latter, it is actually quite easy to address the former. Especially for inexperienced DMs, who don't realize that over-prepping can be just as bad as (if not worse than!) under-prepping, though again, what counts as "over" or "under" varies from game to game and group to group.

These things don't exist in a vacuum. You don't have vacuum-sealed prep work totally and completely cordoned off from DM thoughts, behavior, and personality. You don't have DMs living behind Rawls' veil of ignorance until they're suddenly thrust into life with a bunch of already-made prep work in which they had no involvement.* These things feed into each other, and by addressing root causes, such as preparing badly, you can help a person BECOME a better DM.

*I am excluding official modules here, because...well, yes, that IS an example of prep work done for you. But even there, it's basically impossible for a DM to have no participation in the prep side of things, and there's plenty of skill involved in both preparing well for a published module and actually running it at the table.

 

[Maxperson]

You keep acting as though there is this hard barrier between the DM and the prep work they do. There isn't.

I'm not and never said that there was. In fact, I said that the DM can do the prep work and use it both well and badly, very strongly implying that there is no barrier at all.

A DM that engages in bad at-the-table-play is almost certainly also engaging in bad before-the-table prep work.

Bad faith DMs are bad, yes. Nothing else matters. Prep. No prep. Lots of rules. Few rules. Nothing. They will find a way to be bad DMs. As such, they really are irrelevant when discussing rules and styles of play. Only good faith players and DMs need to be considered.

Especially for inexperienced DMs, who don't realize that over-prepping can be just as bad as (if not worse than!) under-prepping, though again, what counts as "over" or "under" varies from game to game and group to group.

You can't really over prep, except that sometimes it will be wasted effort and not get used. Over prepping in a sandbox game doesn't impact the game in a negative way unless the DM is acting in bad faith, or the players are passive and just follow the prep around in circles.

These things don't exist in a vacuum. You don't have vacuum-sealed prep work totally and completely cordoned off from DM thoughts, behavior, and personality. You don't have DMs living behind Rawls' veil of ignorance until they're suddenly thrust into life with a bunch of already-made prep work in which they had no involvement.* These things feed into each other, and by addressing root causes, such as preparing badly, you can help a person BECOME a better DM.

*I am excluding official modules here, because...well, yes, that IS an example of prep work done for you. But even there, it's basically impossible for a DM to have no participation in the prep side of things, and there's plenty of skill involved in both preparing well for a published module and actually running it at the table.

Sure. Anything can be run poorly due to inexperience. Prep. Improv. Modules. You learn from experience and making mistakes isn't a reason to shy away from any of those. It's not as if poor prep is worse(or better) than poor improv.

 

[Campbell]

The reason I personally make a distinction between the shared fiction and prep is because at heart games are shared experiences. Sure. I am often constrained by my prep, but it is not tangible or part of the play space in the same way that established fiction is. Once something is part of that shared space I am bound to it on a social level. Players can depend on it. In the process of sharing it is made more real because it no longer belongs to just me.