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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Libramarian" data-source="post: 7150992" data-attributes="member: 6688858">I'm thinking about how to combine the sandbox and adventure path in a way that combines the best aspects of each (or at least the aspects I want of each).When I say sandbox, I have in mind an overland hexcrawl seeded with site-based adventures, region-based random encounters and civilized areas with incipient conflicts for the PCs to get in the middle of and resolve (I'm not big on "side quests" but these could be presented like that if desired). Oh and importantly, where the difficulty of the content is set at the beginning of the game, or extrapolated after campaign start in a simulationist way, not adjusted to party level.I basically know how to run this kind of game, and it's great, but I'm wondering to what extent and how an epic "main quest" can be threaded into this.There are various issues to be hashed out, but to start with, how does the DM ensure that the encounters/adventuring days associated with the main quest are of an appropriate difficulty for the PCs, without undercutting the sandbox dynamic where the players master the gameworld at their own pace? Well you could rebalance the main quest content (and only this) to party level as its introduced to the game.That might seem obvious but I don't think I've ever actually seen or heard of a tabletop campaign or videogame that does this. It's a stretch for me personally because I'm so used to DMing in sandbox mode where I'm very principled about not balancing content in this way.As for why to tie things together with a main quest...for the common sense reason, but also because there's some research in psychology that shows when people evaluate how much they liked an experience, they don't do a perfectly rational utility calculation, they mostly just think about the peak and the ending of the experience. It's wise to take psychology research with a grain of salt because common sense concepts are often operationalized in very peculiar ways and the field has a poor track record for reproducibility, but this seems pretty plausible and the peak and ending here obviously map onto the climax and ending of a story.Most of my sandbox campaigns don't really have a recognizable climax and just kind of peter out when we get bored with them or they become too complex. They play more like a neverending strategy game like SimCity or Total War than an RPG with a strong storyline. I don't think there's anything necessarily wrong with that and I generally prefer games like that, but maybe it's not so difficult to introduce just enough story into a sandbox that you have a recognizable narrative arc.Another issue: to what degree should the main storyline be adjusted dynamically not only to the level of the PCs, but also to reflect what decisions they make in the sandbox? Pretty abstract question, but I'm curious if anyone has an opinion on that other than "as it needs to to make sense".That seems pretty gamey.Basically yes, but it hasn't really worked for me in any Elder Scrolls game I've played. In Morrowind the main quest didn't grab me so I just ignored it and sandboxed until my character had an amulet of regeneration that made them basically invincible. Oblivion I didn't play for long because I found neither the main quest nor the sandbox too interesting (because all content and treasure is scaled to PC level). In Skyrim the main quest is very interesting so I just followed it without much sandboxing, because the sidequests are very lame by comparison and there was a sense that the main quest would send me to all the interesting parts of the world at some point anyway. So the balance seems difficult to get right.</blockquote>

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