Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.
Rocket your D&D 5E and Level Up: Advanced 5E games into space! Alpha Star Magazine Is Launching... Right Now!

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Ariosto" data-source="post: 5024668" data-attributes="member: 80487">In a tournament scenario that provides the starting state of characters, and strongly directs the order of events, with arbitrary limits on player action in place -- naturally you have a "better grasp of relative balance between party and monsters" in encounters #1, #2, #3, etc..In an old-style campaign, you are not in charge of any of that. If the players decide that Characters A, B, and C and their henchmen will undertake a venture down a passage in the Lonely Mountain, then your job is just to adjudicate things fairly. The players are free to assess the situation and adjust their plans accordingly at any time. There is no guarantee that trying to beat a Balrog would be anything but suicidal -- but there is nothing forcing them to do so.This "sandbox" you propose appears to me to offer the worst of both worlds. You have "your planned (story) adventure", with "encounters that the party must overcome if they're to continue the adventure" -- a taking over of control as in a tournament -- but up to that point, you give players enough rope to hang themselves -- a portion of the freedom of a campaign -- by messing with your ability to predict their state when they get locked into your program of encounters.If you really want to do that, then I think you had better take responsibility for adjusting encounters on the fly to some standard of per-encounter balance. There may still be some scope for strategy on the players' part, but in essence you seem to have made each encounter a game in itself.</blockquote>

Verification