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?

 

[Jack Daniel]

So I don't think I can fully agree with the thrust of your point. Even in a fully persistent milieu, the point of fixation is when material becomes accessible to one or more players.

At the risk of starting another "is the DM a player?" tangent—let's just say that depends on the DM and their method.

 

[tetrasodium]

There is a lot to like and a lot to dislike for me in this video.
1. I definitely like the idea of defining all sorts of great NPCs and their plots up front. I don't choose just one Villain and declare him the "main" villain. He'll only be the main villain if the PCs decide to go after him or her. I just create a lot of potential villains. I create a lot of plots threads that are intertwined. I even create a good number of NPCs that will be allies of the group if allowed to be. Not necessarily on the adventure but just in general. They can be valuable sources of information about what is going on in the sandbox world.

2. I don't care if the party decides to mess with the Thieves guild. I have no agenda in a campaign and there is no natural end planned for my campaign. So I never have where I want the PCs going next in my mind. They go where they want to go. So that is a bit of a strawman for prepping sandboxers. So I would never plot encounters to draw them away from mucking with the thieves guild. If that is what they want to do then do it.

3. I don't get the feeling that this guy runs dungeons at all. I do. I tend to place a lot of dungeons about for the group to find and explore. I stock those dungeons ahead of time. At least sandbox by sandbox. While the group is in sandbox one which may be a 1st through 6th level sandbox, I will be preparing the next sandbox.

4. I have a reason why every dungeon was created. I have a reason why things happen. His discussion about things happening such as events are well marked on my calendar. Caravans are raided, people murdered, people go broke,people get married, people have kids, the world goes on. Some of this is represented by die roll probabilities but not all of it.

5. I don't look ahead even one session to be honest. Obviously, I am aware if they are in a dungeon that it is likely they will continue but it's not guaranteed.

So he exposits a lot of ideas. Some I wholeheartedly embrace and others I do not. My campaigns are successful if you say having fun is the goal. COVID has set me back a bit but in the past I honestly think I could have charged money to play. Maybe not, but I always had more players than I could accept. On occasions I've ran two groups in the same world. That can get tough. So I'm not sure his use of "improve" is his secret sauce. It may be for him and perhaps for some of his group.

I do think a DM has to be quick on his feet. His primary duty in session is as arbiter of the rules. So the group can in theory do anything. The DM needs to be ready and flexible. But I don't think that is what you or him are talking about.

I'll just add again the caveat that if his crew is having fun then he is doing it right. The value of the approach to a game is very subjective.

I don't watch him run games & only stumbled on his stuff a couple weeks back with the whole illusion of choice video he did, but that same sort of plate spinning on the fly construction from notes takes a slightly different approach when it comes to running a dungeon. Less A to B & reading of descriptions from the page for things with predefined solutions, more mystery & atmospheric buildup to descriptions & design as fits the actions of the group with things that draw the characters in. If you throw in a puzzle, instead of having a solution just describe some obstacle & let the players work at creating a solution that makes gradual process until enough of the group is involved enough & has had fun building an amazing solution on the fly. Nobody will remember the cool thing they didn't find or open, your payers will remember the time they snuck into the bbeg's party as hired wait staff with staff passs bearing an arcane mark, reworked the divination on the bbeg's safe to recognize the staff pass, reworked the wards to redirect the arcane energies buzzing in the safe into plant growth vines instead of the believed disintegrate blast & had the barbarian pull the lever all alone in a room after raging only to survive with a not so bad explosion that totally wrecked the room. They will remember that because they did the whole thing oceans eleven style so will never know or care what parts were written & what parts were integrated entirely because the players came up with an awesome idea for a dc9000 safe challenge.

Here are a couple good videos

Spoiler

 

[S'mon]

At the risk of starting another "is the DM a player?" tangent—let's just say that depends on the DM and their method.

I guess fixation may in practice be a bit earlier. Eg when I finish session prep for an upcoming session. I'm not usually generating a lot of material in play, and I typically aim for a high degree of objectivity, so effective fixation may well be a little before the players encounter it. But I certainly change my mind about stuff, eg changing the identity of a prisoner held by some orcs in last Monday's game.

 

[Lanefan]

I agree it's a DMing issue but the DMing issue IS overprepping. The DM has prepped things so thoroughly that while the players have oodles and oodles of choices and options none of those seem to matter much because the prep extends so far as to minimize the PCs impact.

Hmmm...this raises an interesting thought.

A prep-heavy DM should perhaps concentrate more on prepping the past and present of the setting, and only vaguely sketch in the setting's future thus leaving it more malleable should the PCs manage to do something to it. Nailing down the future too hard can, as you say, end up meaning the PCs don't and can't actually change anything.

That said, as a player I'm not bothered if what my PCs does changes the world or not. I know I'm a small fish in a big sea, certainly to start with and often all the way through. So what? I'm still having fun playng the character.

 

[Mort]

That said, as a player I'm not bothered if what my PCs does changes the world or not. I know I'm a small fish in a big sea, certainly to start with and often all the way through. So what? I'm still having fun playng the character.

I don't expect any given character to change the world, but having little to no impact even on immediate surroundings is both irritating and strangely unrealistic.

 

[Maxperson]

I don't t expect any given character to change the world, but having little to no impact even on immediate surroundings is both irritating and strangely unrealistic.

This is true, but again this is not a prep issue. One can prep up the wazoo and let PCs have tremendous effect, and one can improv completely and shut PCs down.

 

[hawkeyefan]

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.

Not all games have a Rule 0. Nor do all GMs treat it as anything other than the exception it is intended to be. Rule 0 is there to allow the GM to make judgment calls when the rules are either unclear, or somehow result in an aberrant outcome.

I don't expect most GMs would expect to continue to have players show up if the just invoked Rule 0 to force things to go the way they’d like.

So here’s perhaps an interesting way to look at what’s expected to be “permanent” (so much as any fiction created by the game can be said to be permanent).

Rule 0 is something you implement. It’s a rule the GM invokes, and may therefore be noticeable by players. One or more player may actually disagree with a given use of Rule 0. They may not like the change made by the GM.

Now, compare that to a GM changing prep in some way. Will the players be mad at this? Will they even know if the GM doesn’t point it out to them in some way?

This is the difference. Changing something that’s already been established requires much more and involves much more than changing prep of some kind.

Yep. Saying prep is malleable because the DM can change it, even if he won't, is a distinction without a difference. If he won't change it, the prep is just as "permanent" as something that is permanent.

Does changing prep require use of Rule 0?

 

[Oofta]

Bogus. The "shared fiction" is just a theoretical construct. Maybe it has a central place in whatever table-centric model you're working with here to convey your idea of how RPGs work, but have you stopped to consider that this model does not adequately account for every possible play-style?

Not every play-style treats the "off-stage" elements of a campaign milieu as un-collapsed quantum wave-functions. Not every play-style gives supreme priority to whatever broad-strokes, high-level details are agreed upon by the DM and all those playing at a given moment.

There is a milieu-centric model, where the only fictional world that has any "reality" worth a hoot is the one that exists in its totality solely in the DM's imagination, notes, and maybe books or other apocrypha. The players get to glimpse a fraction of the whole at any given moment, but the milieu isn't "quantum," only extant when and where the players are looking at it. Rather, it's persistent.

The basic West Marches campaign setup provides a simple example. If a single DM is running a game for three separate parties (we'll call them A, B, and C) who never interact with each other directly, but whose actions upon the game-world can in turn be felt by the others, there is in no meaningful sense a "shared fiction" between parties A, B, and C—only three separate "shared fictions" during any given game session between the DM and A, the DM and B, and the DM and C. But the reality of the game world is held together by the DM, who is operating (for lack of a better analogy—I hate this one only slightly less than the abuse of quantum mechanics jargon these discussions always spawn) as the "CPU" and "RAM" of the ongoing "simulation." This does not work without the DM's reification of the entire milieu, including those setting-elements never directly encountered by any of the players. If, instead, the setting elements are treated as "quantum" (again: ugh), it's not really a persistent sandbox (which is not to discount the possibility of presenting a convincing illusion of one).

Except the DM's notes/head canon can change at any time up until a player in any of the games interacts with it. Until then it's not "real" in any meaningful sense other than how it has influenced the campaign world in some way that affects gameplay. Or at least that's how I look at it for a home campaign. Things like AL are of course a whole different ball of wax.

It doesn't have to be experienced by all players to be real, but it does have to be experienced by at least one. All IMHO of course, because this whole discussion is quite arbitrary.

 

[ccooke]

Hmm. Somewhere between for myself.
In homebrew campaigns, I come up with a difficulty range for the world, and then I scale any particular situation to that. That includes giving the players some details during chargen - a game I ran a couple of years ago, for instance, had "The average competent adult is around level 3 equivalent. Experts are around level 5, and higher levels become rarer and rarer. Level 9 is incredibly rare, and 11 is unheard of. (Level 6 spells exist as rumour and theory, and level 7 spells are mythical)"

I tend to improvise everything else, so a particular situation only gets a difficulty when I need to know it for the party, and I set it based on the specifics.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Yep. Saying prep is malleable because the DM can change it, even if he won't, is a distinction without a difference. If he won't change it, the prep is just as "permanent" as something that is permanent.

Hard disagree. Anything that isn't actually established yet--anything for which the players have neither evidence nor even opportunity to acquire evidence--doesn't exist. Once something is actually part of play, it is significantly different. Before something enters play, it's not just "well I could change it...but I won't." It's "I as DM am still ALLOWED to change it pretty much as I like."

Once something is actually part of the shared experience, even if only to the smallest degree, DM freedom is significantly curtailed if that DM actually values player agency and choices. I know many DMs think it's totally fine to rewrite the world beneath the players' feet and preventing the players from knowing this, but plenty of DMs also thought that it was a great idea to give a 3.5e-or-earlier Paladin a "choice" to be either good OR lawful, and thus guaranteed to fall no matter what they do. (That is, "if everybody were jumping off a bridge, would you do it too???" applies here. Just because a lot of people do a thing doesn't make that thing good, wise, or right.)

Something that still exists EXCLUSIVELY as prep work is not just malleable, it is absolutely so, literally all parts of it are 100% free rein to modify, delete, replace, or intensify. The moment it enters the fiction even a little bit, those freedoms are significantly restricted, as now the DM must JUSTIFY a change, not just MAKE one. Yes, you as DM can absolutely change the established fiction, but you cannot do so unilaterally. Both sensibility/logic and player-agency prevent such cavalier changes. I mean, assuming you want players who actually DO have agency and whose choices actually DO matter, as opposed to simply feeding them an illusion carefully maintained so they can never detect it.