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?

 

[Rob Kuntz]

Tetrasodium quoth: "How are the players expected to always do the expected?"

Well, since it's a mysterious world wherein they are "adventuring" and not aisle 7 at Walmart (noted by me earlier)--the latter which informs you of where and what you are seeking is to be found no matter what (except for restocking quandaries, of course)--then this is handled fairly by the DM and in the way he/she deems fit. But you already knew that.

Is this an issue of hand-holding too much? Trying to micro-manage the details en toto? I dunno. It seems that Gary and myself never had these problems or discussions evolving from them. "Shrug".

 

[Mort]

Yep, it's a skill, and DMs trying to be cagey protecting their precious secrets is a hard habit to break.

Yeah, that's tough. I remember a game where the DM was doing a murder mystery plot, but he somehow forgot that the players had access to speak with dead. He left a fully intact body for the PCs to inspect, the cleric cast speak with dead and a panicked look just came on the DMs face. Followed by something like "uh, the body does not speak, uh some strong force must be blocking it!!!"

I knew at that point this was going to be long, unproductive session. There are many fun ways to deal with the spell (my favorite of which is to just play it completely straight; the body is very likely not a great witness but may have some leads) and he picked the absolutely worst/most boring one!

Ok this was a bit of a threadjack, sorry.

 

[iserith]

Even if one accepts that sort of "the players agreed it it so..." reasoning there is still the fact that no standard methods of play include the players knowing what is written in the GM's notes and reading the module as a player to prep or even self railroad is pretty universally accepted as egregious levels of meta gaming. How are the players expected to always do the expected?

For my part, the boundaries of what we're playing in a given adventure or campaign are laid out and agreed to in Session 0. For my current hex crawl, by way of example, the players know that leaving the map is simply out of bounds for this game. It's not railroading since they agreed to these parameters. If they go outside the map, they are breaking an agreement they made. The map is visible to all, so they can't accidentally wander off it. (Unexplored hexes are blacked out.)

Now, if I didn't set down those boundaries before play, I'd be on the hook to improvise since I have not prepped anything outside of the hexcrawl area. That said, I can totally do this and it would still be fun! It would not be as easy as relying on my prep (because D&D), but I've honed those skills over a long period of time purposefully.

As well, the world outside of the hexcrawl map has been referenced during play both by myself and the players already just by way of improvising with each other, so there's already some "prep" that's been done. That's one of the advantages of improvising - whatever is established during play is now canon, provided it doesn't contradict something that was previously established and is within the agreed-upon genre expectations. We're on session 4 this Friday. By the time we get to session 8, I guarantee there would be sufficient content for me to improvise entire games outside of the hexcrawl area if I wanted to. Six brains working in sync at the table will produce it organically just by playing.

 

[iserith]

Yeah, that's tough. I remember a game where the DM was doing a murder mystery plot, but he somehow forgot that the players had access to speak with dead. He left a fully intact body for the PCs to inspect, the cleric cast speak with dead and a panicked look just came on the DMs face. Followed by something like "uh, the body does not speak, uh some strong force must be blocking it!!!"

I knew at that point this was going to be long, unproductive session. There are many fun ways to deal with the spell (my favorite of which is to just play it completely straight; the body is very likely not a great witness but may have some leads) and he picked the absolutely worst/most boring one!

Ok this was a bit of a threadjack, sorry.

As an aside, as a player, I love casting speak with dead solely to watch the rest of the table get mad when I ask the corpse "Can you hear me?" and "How many questions do I have left?"

 

[S'mon]

Re leaving the sandbox edges, I find it does not normally need a hard "You can't go that way". Instead I find the best technique is to shift GMing mode from detailed (eg hex by hex) to very broad-brush.

"You spend a week out beyond the Kurmanur Wilds, but there seems little of interest here."

Players don't take offence at being told a summary response to their actions. They can take offence at being told "You can't do that/go there".

Shifting mode is a very important GM technique, something we all do routinely (eg exploration-combat-downtime-social). I've only ever seen Justin Alexander give it much attention, but knowing how & when to shift is a particularly powerful tool in running non-linear campaigns.

 

[Rob Kuntz]

Re leaving the sandbox edges, I find it does not normally need a hard "You can't go that way". Instead I find the best technique is to shift GMing mode from detailed (eg hex by hex) to very broad-brush.

"You spend a week out beyond the Kurmanur Wilds, but there seems little of interest here."

Players don't take offence at being told a summary response to their actions. They can take offence at being told "You can't do that/go there".

Shifting mode is a very important GM technique, something we all do routinely (eg exploration-combat-downtime-social). I've only ever seen Justin Alexander give it much attention, but knowing how & when to shift is a particularly powerful tool in running non-linear campaigns.

This of course proves that you long ago earned the 'Master' part of the title in DM.

 

[iserith]

Re leaving the sandbox edges, I find it does not normally need a hard "You can't go that way". Instead I find the best technique is to shift GMing mode from detailed (eg hex by hex) to very broad-brush.

"You spend a week out beyond the Kurmanur Wilds, but there seems little of interest here."

Players don't take offence at being told a summary response to their actions. They can take offence at being told "You can't do that/go there".

Shifting mode is a very important GM technique, something we all do routinely (eg exploration-combat-downtime-social). I've only ever seen Justin Alexander give it much attention, but knowing how & when to shift is a particularly powerful tool in running non-linear campaigns.

I feel like this is something of a bait and switch. There's a cool place outside the sandbox called the Kurmanur Wilds and every time we go there nothing happens. I'd rather just be transparent and say - before the game even begins - that these are the boundaries of the sandbox and seek player buy-in. This is just being honest with the players about the scope of the game, just as one might if the DM was running an adventure path with a plot. The game is on this plot and, if you go off that plot, there is no game.

As well, in my games, time matters. If the players spend a week on something, that comes with a cost of some kind or at the very least the situation changes in some way which may not be to their benefit. They would expect some kind of return on that expenditure or at least the chance at attaining one. Effectively wasting that time would not be a good result.

 

[tetrasodium]

For my part, the boundaries of what we're playing in a given adventure or campaign are laid out and agreed to in Session 0. For my current hex crawl, by way of example, the players know that leaving the map is simply out of bounds for this game. It's not railroading since they agreed to these parameters. If they go outside the map, they are breaking an agreement they made. The map is visible to all, so they can't accidentally wander off it. (Unexplored hexes are blacked out.)

Now, if I didn't set down those boundaries before play, I'd be on the hook to improvise since I have not prepped anything outside of the hexcrawl area. That said, I can totally do this and it would still be fun! It would not be as easy as relying on my prep (because D&D), but I've honed those skills over a long period of time purposefully.

As well, the world outside of the hexcrawl map has been referenced during play both by myself and the players already just by way of improvising with each other, so there's already some "prep" that's been done. That's one of the advantages of improvising - whatever is established during play is now canon, provided it doesn't contradict something that was previously established and is within the agreed-upon genre expectations. We're on session 4 this Friday. By the time we get to session 8, I guarantee there would be sufficient content for me to improvise entire games outside of the hexcrawl area if I wanted to. Six brains working in sync at the table will produce it organically just by playing.

It's deeper than "leaving the map", to rephrase it that way is a distortion of the absolute prep with no adlib & any amount of adlib will result in a chaotic jumbled mess of randomness position people are putting forward because that position has been put forward in conjunction that preparing everything ahead of time leads to a deeper & more engaging/interesting story in a living breathing world. Just using cliches simplified for example sake:

• Players decide the wrong guy is the bad guy, all of your prep is wasted and you have nothing to go on as they storm the wrong person/group.
• Players Decide the real bad guy is the bad guy instead of his underling group you expected them to follow breadcrumb to.
• Players decide they are going to enter through the roof or tower window using completely legitimate means their class abilities spell out rather than the route you expected
• Players decide to surveil/investigate the locals & diplomancer their way in dressed as people who belong using social engineering & completely legitimate class abilities.
• Players decide that storming keep doom will be a mess & instead come up with a completely legitimate way to force the bad guy to encounter them in a way you didn't expect
• Players decide the bad guy & subordinate org serves an important purpose & that the real problem is the organization beneath them so come up with a plan to neuter or redirect the problem elements.

These are just a few simple examples that would force a gm following a prepared module or similar from prepared notes that would cause the extreme prep only never adlib anything but maybe an off the wall question to a bartended to run off the page of their prep, throw up a wall, or adlib to some degree. Sure you can avoid all of these kinds of problems by running the game like a video game random or prefab quest dispensing job board, but that flies in the face of the reasoning used to justify the prep only never adlib anything leading to a more interesting detailed engaging & so on campaign.

 

[iserith]

It's deeper than "leaving the map", to rephrase it that way is a distortion of the absolute prep with no adlib & any amount of adlib will result in a chaotic jumbled mess of randomness position people are putting forward because that position has been put forward in conjunction that preparing everything ahead of time leads to a deeper & more engaging/interesting story in a living breathing world. Just using cliches simplified for example sake:

• Players decide the wrong guy is the bad guy, all of your prep is wasted and you have nothing to go on as they storm the wrong person/group.
• Players Decide the real bad guy is the bad guy instead of his underling group you expected them to follow breadcrumb to.
• Players decide they are going to enter through the roof or tower window using completely legitimate means their class abilities spell out rather than the route you expected
• Players decide to surveil/investigate the locals & diplomancer their way in dressed as people who belong using social engineering & completely legitimate class abilities.
• Players decide that storming keep doom will be a mess & instead come up with a completely legitimate way to force the bad guy to encounter them in a way you didn't expect
• Players decide the bad guy & subordinate org serves an important purpose & that the real problem is the organization beneath them so come up with a plan to neuter or redirect the problem elements.

These are just a few simple examples that would force a gm following a prepared module or similar from prepared notes that would cause the extreme prep only never adlib anything but maybe an off the wall question to a bartended to run off the page of their prep, throw up a wall, or adlib to some degree. Sure you can avoid all of these kinds of problems by running the game like a video game random or prefab quest dispensing job board, but that flies in the face of the reasoning used to justify the prep only never adlib anything leading to a more interesting detailed engaging & so on campaign.

I mean, any position that says there is no improvisation at all or extremely minor improvisation only is just not tenable. Anyone who has played D&D for even a short amount of time knows that. It's not even something that should be taken seriously in my view. I'm viewing it simply as hyperbole in attempt to make a point.

 

[Lanefan]

What could you do to telegraph, for example, that the fire temple priests have fireball before the PCs decide to go to the fire temple?

Not before they get there, but when they get there: before encountering anyone they could notice large circular char marks on the ground here and there, and draw their own conclusions.