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How do you sandbox ?
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<blockquote data-quote="Li Shenron" data-source="post: 8241101" data-attributes="member: 1465"><p>I don't exactly sandbox but for me the ideal is to have a lot of stuff up for grab for the PCs: plots to investigate, locales to explore, quests to start while having others still ongoing, and plenty of connections between everything...</p><p></p><p>One thing that helps a lot is having a stash of maps at different scale. For me an essential part of playing in a sandbox is the ability to say "we go there" while choosing a point of interest on the map, and most likely find something to do, whether it's a combat or social encounter, or an item to acquire or a piece of knowledge to discover.</p><p></p><p>For the same reason, good ready-to-use lists of everything: monsters (but the MM books are already that), NPCs, items, rumours, unusual locations, mini-adventures, and so on.</p><p></p><p>If I have time, I can just collect a bunch of each category and decide their placement on the map, but the whole thing can also be improvised and the players won't notice a difference between the randomness of your decisions during the game and the randomness of your decisions before the game. It helps a lot if you're the kind of DM who doesn't have a God complex (i.e. wants to fully design the universe top-down in advance) and you're ok with the fantasy world to come alive on its own.</p><p></p><p>A key feature of sandboxing is that the fantasy world is not tailored to the PCs, particularly in terms of difficulty level: monsters are as difficult as they are, not magically adapting to the PC's current level, so start a fight at your own risk!</p><p></p><p>However, personally I am not afraid of flat-out telling the players what is a monster's CR, or at least whether a certain fight or other kind of challenge is a deadly risk. That's because I never have a whole group of players all of which are ok with their PC dying, there's always someone who wants the opportunity to create and develop a character long-term and would be disappointed to be forced cut short.</p><p></p><p>For the purpose of making this feel more in-character, I use the concept of "zoning" i.e. the PCs have in-character knowledge of which regions are safe and which are infamously dangerous, so at least the extreme CR-PC level differences can be easily avoided.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Li Shenron, post: 8241101, member: 1465"] I don't exactly sandbox but for me the ideal is to have a lot of stuff up for grab for the PCs: plots to investigate, locales to explore, quests to start while having others still ongoing, and plenty of connections between everything... One thing that helps a lot is having a stash of maps at different scale. For me an essential part of playing in a sandbox is the ability to say "we go there" while choosing a point of interest on the map, and most likely find something to do, whether it's a combat or social encounter, or an item to acquire or a piece of knowledge to discover. For the same reason, good ready-to-use lists of everything: monsters (but the MM books are already that), NPCs, items, rumours, unusual locations, mini-adventures, and so on. If I have time, I can just collect a bunch of each category and decide their placement on the map, but the whole thing can also be improvised and the players won't notice a difference between the randomness of your decisions during the game and the randomness of your decisions before the game. It helps a lot if you're the kind of DM who doesn't have a God complex (i.e. wants to fully design the universe top-down in advance) and you're ok with the fantasy world to come alive on its own. A key feature of sandboxing is that the fantasy world is not tailored to the PCs, particularly in terms of difficulty level: monsters are as difficult as they are, not magically adapting to the PC's current level, so start a fight at your own risk! However, personally I am not afraid of flat-out telling the players what is a monster's CR, or at least whether a certain fight or other kind of challenge is a deadly risk. That's because I never have a whole group of players all of which are ok with their PC dying, there's always someone who wants the opportunity to create and develop a character long-term and would be disappointed to be forced cut short. For the purpose of making this feel more in-character, I use the concept of "zoning" i.e. the PCs have in-character knowledge of which regions are safe and which are infamously dangerous, so at least the extreme CR-PC level differences can be easily avoided. [/QUOTE]
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