What do hirelings have to do with sandbox play?
D&D (2024) DMG 2024: Is The Sandbox Campaign Dead?
- Thread starter Reynard
- Start date
What do hirelings have to do with sandbox play?
FrozenNorth
Hero
Beats me. I was responding post 270 that suggested that the loss of hireling rules and level titles had something to do with sandbox play.
Then we're in the same boat when it comes to what is required for qualifying as a sandbox. I don't know why random encounter charts are a requirement, even if I can see why they might be handy for some people.
Paul Farquhar
Legend
I think it was a case of conflating “sandbox” with “1st edition”.
Micah Sweet
Level Up & OSR Enthusiast
Hirelings and henchmen were a thing in Basic and 2e as well, so its more "TSR and it's derivitives" than simply "1st edition".
occam
Hero
As in, reread front to back? No, but what's your point? Because, after going back through all past DMGs, I'm fairly certain that the 2024 book is the very first DMG to even mention the term "sandbox".
I can understand folks wanting more explicit support for teaching sandbox-style DMing. What I don't understand is claiming that there's some new problem with that specific to the 2024 DMG.
Leaving aside for the moment that WotC publishes adventure products featuring a variety of styles (including linear, and disconnected anthologies, and partial sandboxes, etc.), even if you buy the premise to the argument repeatedly made in this thread...
"The 2024 DMG instructs new DMs how to make adventures just like the ones they publish... thus getting them to buy more of their published adventures."
...the conclusion to that argument makes no sense. There's a gaping logical hole in it. In fact, there's a frequently quoted piece of folk wisdom that directly contradicts it, about "teaching a man to fish"...
Paul Farquhar
Legend
True, but the main reason you could use them was down to the faster turns, so it wasn’t unreasonable to run a party of 12 against 40 orcs. Fast turns is the main thing I miss from early D&D.
Micah Sweet
Level Up & OSR Enthusiast
It's easy enough to generate a simpler statblock for a henchman to use in combat while still maintaining setting sense. WotC did it with the sidekick rules, and Level Up just did it with the heroic monster rules in the recently Kickstarted Monster Menagerie 2.
EzekielRaiden
Follower of the Way
Just so we're clear: He's allowed to not like it because it permits to any meaningful degree Story Now. His expressed dislike--and claim that many many people disliked it too--is strictly because it has any support whatsoever for doing it that way.
That's what I'm taking umbrage with here.
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