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?

 

[Manbearcat]

I generally use the 10 minute OD&D Turn when calculating progress in a dungeon; 5e doesn't really have any rules for out of combat passage of time - it certainly doesn't say you can explore a dungeon at a 300'/minute walking pacei. 5e is silent on how long it takes to search a 40' x 40' room; I'll typically default to 10 minutes.

10 minutes is how long it takes to cast a Ritual in 5e, making it a handy time unit aside from its forebears.

It does. Check PHB 182 and DMG 242 (Adventuring - Travel Pace and Exploration - Dungeon Travel Pace respectively); 300 ft in a minute. This is one of the very first things I checked when the game went live (to see how well the Exploration mechanics were integrated and to see if it contained integrated Wandering Monster mechanics et al).

I agree that 10 minutes is a good increment to use for Exploration, but there is no evidence that 5e's exploration mechanics were integrated around that number (which means that you would need to rebuild it around that number).

What do you think about the other things written above? Its very difficult to me to see how someone can arrive at the opinion that 5e is a well-integrated, holistically designed Dungeon Crawl game like Moldvay Basic or Torchbearer. Its missing a lot of features and its design (including unit usage and the implications of that usage) is all over the map and it leaves a lot for the GM to elide, hack, Force, or attempt to adjudicate (presumably relying upon past system experience...except, as noted above, there are a lot of incongruencies).

 

[S'mon]

It does. Check PHB 182 and DMG 242 (Adventuring - Travel Pace and Exploration - Dungeon Travel Pace respectively); 300 ft in a minute. This is one of the very first things I checked when the game went live (to see how well the Exploration mechanics were integrated and to see if it contained integrated Wandering Monster mechanics et al).

PHB 182 says nothing about dungeons.
DMG 242 gives walking speeds & distance at different map scales, the lowest scale being 'dungeon'. This is how fast you walk through a dungeon - not searching it!

 

[S'mon]

OK the thing about 5e is that it's explicitly designed to be modular and driftable to different play styles. So it can be run in a very BX style or in a very 4e style. But it is not those systems and of course it does not contain everything they have in the core rules.

I've had a lot of success running 5e campaigns in different styles; my first big one used a lot of 4e since it was a follow on from a 4e campaign. I've used it to run Paizo/Pathfinder style very much like 3e (without the pain of high level play), now I'm doing a 1e style game with lashings of BX. Ironically I think the least fun for me was running Lost Mine of Phandelver & Princes of the Apocalypse in the 'standard 5e style'; the game lacks a strong central identity and tends to blandness if you don't set a strong tone.

 

[Mike Hinshaw]

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.

View attachment 134217

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?

Definitely Sandbox - Makes for creative thinking on the party's part.

 

[Manbearcat]

PHB 182 says nothing about dungeons.
DMG 242 gives walking speeds & distance at different map scales, the lowest scale being 'dungeon'. This is how fast you walk through a dungeon - not searching it!

Don't want to get too deeply into the weeds here and devote heavy word-count to this just yet, but let me just say this is either (a) a bit of a bizarre interpretation (more on that below) or (b) further evidence of the divide between 5e and MB (more on that below):

On (a):

Both Moldvay Basic and 1e's Dungeon Movement Rules (not the PC Movement Rate) are either (i) conjoined with exploration action economy (Moldvay's Dungeon Movement Rules abstract standard exploration and roll it into that encoded interval which then interacts with the rest of the Delving system) or (ii) provide discrete, table-facing values for individual exploration moves for a Delving Action Economy (1e).

Why in the world would a D&D include some kind of separate Dungeon Movement Rules if they don't either go the Moldvay route (i) - preferable to me - or go the 1e route (ii)? That makes no sense from a design perspective.

* You already have PC Movement Rate embedded in the PC rules.

* Why would anyone need a discrete (separate from PC Movement Rate) "stroll through the dungeon corridor/walk the tomb's foyer" value that neither embeds/abstracts exploration (as Moldvay) or discretizes individual exploration moves (as 1e)?

I can't fathom the use and the uselessness in superfluous ink/page space (which could either truncate the rules text to make it more light or be spent on something of actual use).

Overland Movement Rate during an actual Journey phase of gameplay? Absolutely makes sense. But Delving is not Journeying (neither mechanically nor as a matter of fiction).

On (b):

Lets just go ahead and say that the 5e Dungeon Movement rules are completely detached from exploration moves. Its some kind of odd Journey unit (in a Dungeon) rather than an actual (useful) Delving unit.

If that is indeed the case, its not clear to me whether extreme unit disparity and incongruency (yet still conceptually working within the same space) makes 5e less "Moldvay-friendly" or if occupying an entirely difference conceptual space (whereby one has a quantitative and encoded Delving Unit of Movement where Exploration is abstracted/folded within and then integrated with all of the rest of the Delving system in Moldvay....vs the other that apparently doesn't encode these things but rather leaves it entirely to GM discretion and/or negotiation) makes it less "Moldvay-friendly!"

From an engineering/design perspective, its really just a question of how wobbly the encoding is (either internally or compared to Moldvay's encoding) vs changing the entire conceptual space (no encoding) and thereby requiring the GM to entirely encode the Delving system from scratch and integrate it with the rest of the system (all of the PC build rules, the equipment rules, the Rest rules, et al).

 

[S'mon]

Don't want to get too deeply into the weeds here and devote heavy word-count to this...

Heh

 

[S'mon]

Why in the world would a D&D include some kind of separate Dungeon Movement Rules

5e doesn't have 'separate Dungeon Movement Rules' - it has a note on map scale & how that relates to walk speed. The lowest scale is called 'dungeon scale'. They could have called it 'building scale' or 'ship scale'. It's just a map scale.

Edit: A quick bit of arithmetic indicates it's 3.4 mph, which seems a fairly reasonable walk rate.

 

[Manbearcat]

5e doesn't have 'separate Dungeon Movement Rules' - it has a note on map scale & how that relates to walk speed. The lowest scale is called 'dungeon scale'. They could have called it 'building scale' or 'ship scale'. It's just a map scale.

Edit: A quick bit of arithmetic indicates it's 3.4 mph, which seems a fairly reasonable walk rate.

That would be my (b) above.

If 242 DMG isn't actual encoded (and then integrated) Delving rules (like in Moldvay), that its basically just GM interpretation/mediation or table negotiation, that is robust evidence that Delving in 5e is in no way similar to Delving in Moldvay Basic (where the Exploration Unit is encoded, table-facing, and integrated with the Action Economy of the entire Exploration Cycle and all of the rest of the system; Wandering Monsters, Required Rest, Equipment durations, Spells/loadouts, et al).

Put another way, if you remove the encoded Exploration Action Economy, or if you don't make it table-facing, or if it isn't integrated with the rest of the system...and you basically just leave all of that up to GM mediation or table negotiation...to say that isn't compatible with Moldvay doesn't quite reach the threshold of what is actually happening.

They're entirely different beasts at that point.

EDIT - It would be akin to saying something like "despite the fact that Dungeon World combat in no way mirrors D&D combat (because of the way action economy, and therefore the way the gamestate moves from a to b, is handled entirely differently in both games), the experience of combat between the two systems is effectively the same?"

 

[Manbearcat]

One final word to array my thoughts:

* Its not enough to say "you can delve in 5e and bolt on Wandering Monsters and Reaction/Morale so its sufficiently indistinguishable from Moldvay Basic." The cognitive framework and related decision-points that the participants are inhabiting and how the play loop and all the integrated parts operationalizes play needs to be pretty damn close.

* Its not enough to say "you can figure out your own subjective DCs and bolt on some kind of noncombat conflict resolution framework like the Skill Challenge and its got Short/Long Rests and Fighters with stuff that refreshes on Short Rest and Hit Dice have partial conceptual overlap with Healing Surges so its sufficiently indistinguishable from 4e." The cognitive framework and related decision-points that the participants are inhabiting and how the play loop and all the integrated parts operationalizes play needs to be pretty damn close.

 

[S'mon]

That would be my (b) above.

If 242 DMG isn't actual encoded (and then integrated) Delving rules (like in Moldvay), that its basically just GM interpretation/mediation or table negotiation, that is robust evidence that Delving in 5e is in no way similar to Delving in Moldvay Basic (where the Exploration Unit is encoded, table-facing, and integrated with the Action Economy of the entire Exploration Cycle and all of the rest of the system; Wandering Monsters, Required Rest, Equipment durations, Spells/loadouts, et al).

Put another way, if you remove the encoded Exploration Action Economy, or if you don't make it table-facing, or if it isn't integrated with the rest of the system...and you basically just leave all of that up to GM mediation or table negotiation...to say that isn't compatible with Moldvay doesn't quite reach the threshold of what is actually happening.

They're entirely different beasts at that point.

EDIT - It would be akin to saying something like "despite the fact that Dungeon World combat in no way mirrors D&D combat (because of the way action economy, and therefore the way the gamestate moves from a to b, is handled entirely differently in both games), the experience of combat between the two systems is effectively the same?"

Even when I'm running Moldvay Basic or Labyrinth Lord, it isn't nearly as process-based as what you're talking about. I feel supported by BX, not constrained. Moldvay gives me tools, not a straitjacket. It's not a board game or some crazy hipster Indie 'System Matters' game.