D&D 5E Hoard of the Dragon Queen, Linear Adventures and Sandbox Wishes

[Daern]

They are not connected. Characters will be 5th by the end of the starter and are assumed to be 1st at the beginning of Hoard. It wouldn't be that hard to beef up some of the encounters though, and maybe speed through the beginning.

 

[Cybit]

For an initial adventure; and especially one they are attempting to tie storywise across multiple games and books, I do not think sandbox makes sense. (Also, there's no Monster Manual. This could pose a problem for a sandbox game. I would not be surprised if the MM is still being worked on. )

 

[Reynard]

For an initial adventure; and especially one they are attempting to tie storywise across multiple games and books, I do not think sandbox makes sense. (Also, there's no Monster Manual. This could pose a problem for a sandbox game. I would not be surprised if the MM is still being worked on. )

It's not binary -- there is a continuum between railroad and sandbox. I was just hoping for something a little more open along the lines of the Lost Mine Starter Set adventure. I think it is valuable to provide that level of openness and player agency (which in turn promotes DM responsiveness and improvisation) in an introductory product.

 

[Jynx_lucky_j]

I hate how people treat having a story planned out as automatically being a railroad. I may plan out a story but if the players don’t follow it exactly as I planned or even disregard it entirely they can. Although if the player’s decide they don’t care about saving the town/princess/kingdom/world then I’ve know I’ve failed somehow to make the characters care about the world they’re in.

I’ve tried more traditional sand boxes in the past, but they don’t really work out for my group. For one, they want a story. Exploring and finding cool things scattered around or traditional dungeon delves don’t really do it for them. They want some kind of external motivation. Goblins attacked the town, we need to go investigate. The Princess kidnapped the dragon, we have to go rescue it. The gate to hell has been breached; we have to go plug it up. When I tried a sandbox with story threads like that scattered around they would latch on to one at a time and see it through to completion before looking for another. So in effect it was no different that if I had just presented them with a single story one at a time.

Now how exactly they go about say...tracking down the evil cult, and how they decide to deal with the trouble they caused, that stuff is all them. Even when I use a published adventure if they deviate from the path of the adventure by trying a different method I just run with it. I’ve almost never had the players just completely disregard an adventure laid before them. However, I almost always see them approach the adventure in their own way.

Really the term railroad is a bit derogatory. And not really very accurate. A railroad implies that the players have no agency, that they can’t do anything not specifically laid out for them in the adventure. Adventure path really works better. A path can fork. You can leave the path and come back to it later. Yes you have an eventual destination, but what you do on the journey is completely up to you.

 

[Reynard]

Really the term railroad is a bit derogatory. And not really very accurate. A railroad implies that the players have no agency, that they can’t do anything not specifically laid out for them in the adventure. Adventure path really works better. A path can fork. You can leave the path and come back to it later. Yes you have an eventual destination, but what you do on the journey is completely up to you.

It is a continuum. I have heard what you're describing referred to as a "funnel adventure" meaning that there is a lot of freedom to act early on, but the action narrows near the end and leads to an inevitable climax scene. Obviously, the most important thing is that you do what works for you and your group. Even if an adventure is a straight up railroad, moving from one set piece encounter to the next with a barely interactive "cut scene" between, that is only a bad thing if that is not what the players and DM are looking for. Some people want to play Skyrim, but others are okay with God of War.

 

[kenmarable]

Today's Tiamat Tuesday discusses the railroad-ness of the adventures to some extent in their advice on running the adventures. Sounds like the second one is more open and flexible.

Things start out straightforward enough in Hoard of the Dragon Queen, as you’d expect in a low-level adventure, but by halfway through, the Dungeon Master is making almost as many crucial decisions as the players are. The Rise of Tiamat asks a lot from DMs right from the beginning, with its immense background events, political component, and multitude of paths for characters to follow to their goal.

 

[ExploderWizard]

I’ve tried more traditional sand boxes in the past, but they don’t really work out for my group. For one, they want a story. Exploring and finding cool things scattered around or traditional dungeon delves don’t really do it for them. They want some kind of external motivation. Goblins attacked the town, we need to go investigate. The Princess kidnapped the dragon, we have to go rescue it. The gate to hell has been breached; we have to go plug it up.

All of those are scenarios not stories. Adventure hooks rather than complete adventures, and nothing in the sandbox mode of play prevents using them.

It is only when you start writing a definitive outline of what will happen after the players engage the hook that a story starts to be written. Your players love to follow an adventure hook until it is completely resolved to their satisfaction, again nothing wrong with that.

A railroad only happens when the players are only presented with a single hook and they must follow it to completion or the game ends.

When I tried a sandbox with story threads like that scattered around they would latch on to one at a time and see it through to completion before looking for another. So in effect it was no different that if I had just presented them with a single story one at a time.

That may be true for you, but in a dynamic sandbox world there are consequences for actions not taken as well as for those that are.

In your example lets say the PCs decided to investigate the goblin attack. In a living world the dragon has still been kidnapped and he gate to hell has started leaking. The natural consequences of these events continue to unfold with or without PC action. Which hook the players pursue first and how much time passes before they get around to following up on the others should matter. It is what gives their decision meaning. Timelines and resources available to various individuals and groups help tremendously with this.

 

[Haffrung]

All of those are scenarios not stories. Adventure hooks rather than complete adventures, and nothing in the sandbox mode of play prevents using them.

Yep. Sandboxes can have all kinds of sustained, dramatic stories. Investigations, discoveries, perils, betrayals. But those stories are generated organically by the choices the PCs make, not scripted by the DM. The job of the DM or author of a sandbox is not to create a story, but to create an environment ripe with the potential for stories.

 

[Hedonismbot]

I think Murder in Baldur's Gate and Legacy of the Crystal Shard both did a decent job of being published sandboxes. The sandbox was partially an illusion in that there were 3 different plot paths that you could bounce between and were interwoven to some degree. However, they still came together in a finale regardless of the path you took. They were not true sandboxes, but they allowed the players to lead the plot progression..

I'm quoting Tormyr but this question is addressed to everyone: Are there any other really good sandbox published modules? I'm currently running my group through the Caverns of Thracia, which is a kind of sandbox in that it is an enormous dungeon that can be explored in many ways, but I'm looking to move to a larger scale outdoor sandbox when they're finished with it.

 

[Haffrung]

I'm quoting Tormyr but this question is addressed to everyone: Are there any other really good sandbox published modules? I'm currently running my group through the Caverns of Thracia, which is a kind of sandbox in that it is an enormous dungeon that can be explored in many ways, but I'm looking to move to a larger scale outdoor sandbox when they're finished with it.

Thracia is great. Some outdoor (or mix of outdoor/dungeon) sandboxes:

Vault of Larin Karr
Lost City of Barakus
Tomb of Abysthor/ Stoneheart Valley
Ancient Kingdoms: Mesopotamia
Heart of the Sunken Lands

My favourite of the bunch is AK:M. Very cool sword and sorcery vibe. A desert haunted by necromatic armies. Weird cults. A ziggurat ruled by a ghoul queen. A huge lost city infested with all sorts of horrors out of Clark Ashton Smith. You can explore it as you like, or follow the outline of a loose story connecting the various sites.