Adventurous Treasure Hunters

[cavalier973]

I like both play styles btw: classical inch-by-inch crawling terrified through a dungeon as well as story driven or encounter based cinematic hero brawls.

The concept appeals to me, as well.

I'm currently having kind of a let's call it "cinematic sandbox" campaign with my group in 4E. I give the players two to three paths they can take or sites they can explore. And at every path or site I have special encounters readied.

The DM Guide had a method for creating random dungeons, and populating them with "eight to ten encounters".

As a small side thought - could the classical experience be recreated in 4E just through dropping the Healing Surges dramatically? In making 4E characters more vulnerable could one emulate a certain oldschool crawl/sandbox feel? Or does it take much more mechanical changes?

I would bump up the monster damage. Double the damage die (instead of 1d8 +6, roll 2d8 +6) or the static damage (instead of 1d8 +6, roll 1d8 +12).

 

[cavesalamander]

As a small side thought - could the classical experience be recreated in 4E just through dropping the Healing Surges dramatically? In making 4E characters more vulnerable could one emulate a certain oldschool crawl/sandbox feel? Or does it take much more mechanical changes?

I wonder that too. Say the party has a short decisive fight, where they curb-stomp a couple of goblins. If the goblins got off a lucky hit and cost the fighter a healing surge worth of hit points, the fighter will shrug that off if they have 8 or 9 surges. If they had 3 or 4? That'd be a different feel.

Houseruling that long rests can only happen in town or other safe zone (and cost money!) might also contribute to a classic wilderness crawl feel.

 

[cavesalamander]

The DM Guide had a method for creating random dungeons, and populating them with "eight to ten encounters".

Eight to ten encounters is virtually a megadungeon in 4e.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Houseruling that long rests can only happen in town or other safe zone (and cost money!) might also contribute to a classic wilderness crawl feel.

This is the most common thing to do I'd say. It is really all you NEED, you just have to let the PCs get in deeper. In an OD&D game venturing 4 hours outside of town is crazy stuff, you can die in 3 seconds flat. In 4e you'd want to suck the PCs deep into the wilds, at least a day or two, possible a couple weeks, into a situation where they gradually wear away surges, supplies, catch a disease or two, burn up their ritual components, etc. all the while finding and evading or fighting various groups of monsters.

 

[Balesir]

I can envisage a 4E sandbox as a sort of flow-chart style of network with two types of node/box. The first type is a "decision" box; the players have a decision to go any one of (ideally) several ways from here. "Town" might be the classic "decision box", with decisions to visit one of several rumoured adventure locations or to stay put and (extended) rest.

The second type of node is the "encounter box", and for a proper 4E sandbox they, too, should have several "exits", each one representing a possible encounter outcome. Encounter outcome depends upon the players' decisions and the roll of the dice, so these are in a sense similar to the "decision boxes", but a key difference is that the players may be ignorant of the implications of the outcome they choose or that the dice choose for them. The archetypal "dungeon T-junction - do you go left or right?" is in this sense more an encounter node than a decision node, since the "decision" is really a random determination, in effect.

 

[The Fighter-Cricket]

So I'm picturing a 4e sandbox as the world map from the Baldur's Gate games. The PCs are in a place, a town perhaps, and surrounding that town are encounter 'hot spots' they can travel to. If they go north, they find encounter X, if they go west, encounter Y. Travel between these encounters are elided ("after four hours of travel through light woods, you come upon..."), so the focus isn't on the journey, but the destination.

Yeah, the example of the BG-map is exactly how I would see it. It's (mostly) all about the destinations, the wonderous places the party can explore.

Or imagine Keep On The Borderlands. From the keep, the party can go find the mad hermit, or the lizardmen, or the giant spiders, each of which is its own encounter (perhaps the lizardmen's lair is broken into multiple encounters, some outside the nest and some inside). There's no wandering around the wilderness hoping to run across them (maybe there's a 'getting lost in the wilderness' skill-based encounter).

It's also what I really liked about the Chaos Scar mini-setting in the later 4E Dungeon mag. It was basically the Caves of Chaos reimagined. And I think it worked fine in 4E.

This is the most common thing to do I'd say. It is really all you NEED, you just have to let the PCs get in deeper. In an OD&D game venturing 4 hours outside of town is crazy stuff, you can die in 3 seconds flat. In 4e you'd want to suck the PCs deep into the wilds, at least a day or two, possible a couple weeks, into a situation where they gradually wear away surges, supplies, catch a disease or two, burn up their ritual components, etc. all the while finding and evading or fighting various groups of monsters.

We are talking now imo about the resource system of 4E which is based on the assumption that the party will need an extended rest after 4 to 5 normal encounters. Sure you could draw the party deep into hostile territory. But even in 4E characters will need their rest badly after 6 encounters. Only a highly optimized and tactically skilled party can survive that long without any extended rest (at least that's how I see it).
I think it can work but I'm not sure if they survive weeks in the wild without the aid of a real extended rest. But I'm fine with the base idea that there should be difficulties in finding the right spot and the right time to replenish their resources.

 

[cavalier973]

Rests that occur outside of a town setting only regenerate half the hit points/healing surges. Taking two extended rests in a row does not help.

 

[Balesir]

Rests that occur outside of a town setting only regenerate half the hit points/healing surges. Taking two extended rests in a row does not help.

Funnily enough, I came up with a 4E systemic way to handle this. In the wilds (the exact dangerousness of the area gives a "level"), finding a good place to rest is a skill challenge. The party can choose the complexity, but (a) failure gives a "wandering monster" encounter of equivalent XP budget to the failed challenge and (b) the roll, on a d6, required to recover each daily power, healing surge etc. is 7 minus the complexity of the challenge. Hence, a complexity 3 challenge gives a rest with 4+ needed on a d6 to recover each daily power, surge, etc. and a 3 standard creature encounter on a failure (level, as mentioned before, set by the area "dangerousness").

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

I can envisage a 4E sandbox as a sort of flow-chart style of network with two types of node/box. The first type is a "decision" box; the players have a decision to go any one of (ideally) several ways from here. "Town" might be the classic "decision box", with decisions to visit one of several rumoured adventure locations or to stay put and (extended) rest.

The second type of node is the "encounter box", and for a proper 4E sandbox they, too, should have several "exits", each one representing a possible encounter outcome. Encounter outcome depends upon the players' decisions and the roll of the dice, so these are in a sense similar to the "decision boxes", but a key difference is that the players may be ignorant of the implications of the outcome they choose or that the dice choose for them. The archetypal "dungeon T-junction - do you go left or right?" is in this sense more an encounter node than a decision node, since the "decision" is really a random determination, in effect.

I make all decision-points encounters. If they're not combat encounters, then they're challenges of some sort, or at the very least there's some exposition happening. I guess its possible that some very trivial decisions made without knowledge of significance could 'snowball', but I don't think that's generally good story design. At least there should be a check or something. If the rogue forgets to fill his water bottle and it leads to the party wandering the desert looking for water, there probably should be some weight put on that event even though said rogue may well not have had any inkling at the time he even WAS crossing the desert.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

We are talking now imo about the resource system of 4E which is based on the assumption that the party will need an extended rest after 4 to 5 normal encounters. Sure you could draw the party deep into hostile territory. But even in 4E characters will need their rest badly after 6 encounters. Only a highly optimized and tactically skilled party can survive that long without any extended rest (at least that's how I see it).
I think it can work but I'm not sure if they survive weeks in the wild without the aid of a real extended rest. But I'm fine with the base idea that there should be difficulties in finding the right spot and the right time to replenish their resources.

Well, 3 weeks in the desert could net you 5 encounters. You could also get partial refreshes, as others have said, or you might have chances to get a full long rest, but it might require passing an SC or fighting that 6th encounter (maybe we just head home instead and take our chances).