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D&D 4E Sandbox game: should I 4e?
- Thread starter cr0m
- Start date
FitzTheRuke
Legend
cr0m said:
HE might not, but *I* do!
(Well, PoCo, actually these days, but I grew up in East Van.)
CrOm, have you heard of Hourglass Comics in Port Moody? (I own it.)
Fitz
Thanks everyone for the Sandbox explaination. I pretty much run things this way all the time, even when I'm running a plot-heavy game.
And the point in between, where the PCs can take any plot hook the DM tosses, and they can go about achieving whatever goal they please.Surgoshan said:
Or they are given challenges that are open ended, like: "You're in a canyon. A flash flood is coming. What do you do." "You're in a town that's going to be overrun by orcs in three days. What do you do."
WyzardWhately
First Post
Ah, sadly, no. I somehow got the impression it was going to be run online. Sorry to trouble you.
Jack99
Adventurer
After running 12 years of sandbox games in 2e, I stopped in 3e, since I felt it was very poorly equipped for it.
4e definitely looks like it is much better for that type of play, and I will be running a sandbox campaign come June 6th.
The two major reasons for it are: easier to run monsters on the fly, because of the more stream-lined statblocks, and, most of all, due to the fact that the power of monsters doesn't rise exponentially. In 3.x, if players ran into a combat that was out of their league, they would be dead before they realized it, unless they meta-gamed. In 4e, it seems like even low-level players could survive quite a few rounds against monsters significantly higher level than them, and still have time to escape.
Cheers
4e definitely looks like it is much better for that type of play, and I will be running a sandbox campaign come June 6th.
The two major reasons for it are: easier to run monsters on the fly, because of the more stream-lined statblocks, and, most of all, due to the fact that the power of monsters doesn't rise exponentially. In 3.x, if players ran into a combat that was out of their league, they would be dead before they realized it, unless they meta-gamed. In 4e, it seems like even low-level players could survive quite a few rounds against monsters significantly higher level than them, and still have time to escape.
Cheers
ShockMeSane
First Post
While I've only ran 3 sandbox campaigns in my D&D career (2 in 2nd, 1 in 3rd) I can tell you that 3.x is decidedly not for sandboxing. There are simply too many scenarios that someone dies or multiple people are immobilized in the first round of combat if your PC's arent perfectly prepared and metagame'd. I am hoping to give it a try in 4E. The removal of Save or Die and long-term Hold effects should go a long way towards preventing accidental TPKs, and the encounters will hopefully prove to be easier to balance, as well. Best of luck to you, my two sandbox 2E campaigns were two of my most entertaining!
Thocar
Explorer
[Disengage lurker mode]
Apologies for the length of this post, but a 4e sandbox campaign has been on my mind a lot in the past few months.
I was involved with a very lengthy and epic 2e campaign, that started with pre-written adventures and moved into a sandbox type game after about 10th level. The whole group had a blast and agreed that the sandbox style encouraged better roleplaying and more player involvement. The storytelling duty felt more evenly spread among the players, rather than it being incumbent on the DM to do everything.
We were intent on continuing it with third edition but found that 3e was too difficult to run in sandbox style, as there was less hand-waving and monster encounters needed a lot more consideration.
So with 4e, I'm excited to jump back into a sandbox game, and have spent the past few months fleshing out an area the PCs will play in.
Not to bore you with petty details of my own campaign, but I thought I might impart some of my ideas, particularly the idea of quest cards, which I saw in some official WotC document, (http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/drdd/20071121 ).
So anyway, the PCs are starting out on a sort of post apocalyptic world, where something has entirely disrupted the nature of things. Empires have fallen, monsters are everywhere, the nature of magic has changed, points of light, blah blah blah. The PCs hear of a secluded valley where the monsters are kept at bay by some ancient and mysterious means. Naturally they go to check it out.
Heading into the valley, the need to go through a cave, in which they'll be jumped by some "horned creatures" (kobolds). The PCs have their first fight and go through the cave, only to find that the kobolds had recently waylaid a merchant and his guards. The merchant is alive but the guards are dead. This is where the quest cards come into play. Basically the idea is I give the PCs some cards that have quest details on it, along with some colour coding to define threat and urgency. I used the Magic Set generator program I found in this thread (http://www.enworld.org/showthread.php?t=220953), and adapted it to make my quest cards, which I've attached.
The idea is to have a reminder of things to be done in the valley, then, when they complete the quest, I can write an XP reward at the bottom and they can file it away. The idea is that they'll always have at least one or two unresolved quest cards, so they won't run out of things to do.
Apologies for the length of this post, but a 4e sandbox campaign has been on my mind a lot in the past few months.
I was involved with a very lengthy and epic 2e campaign, that started with pre-written adventures and moved into a sandbox type game after about 10th level. The whole group had a blast and agreed that the sandbox style encouraged better roleplaying and more player involvement. The storytelling duty felt more evenly spread among the players, rather than it being incumbent on the DM to do everything.
We were intent on continuing it with third edition but found that 3e was too difficult to run in sandbox style, as there was less hand-waving and monster encounters needed a lot more consideration.
So with 4e, I'm excited to jump back into a sandbox game, and have spent the past few months fleshing out an area the PCs will play in.
Not to bore you with petty details of my own campaign, but I thought I might impart some of my ideas, particularly the idea of quest cards, which I saw in some official WotC document, (http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/drdd/20071121 ).
So anyway, the PCs are starting out on a sort of post apocalyptic world, where something has entirely disrupted the nature of things. Empires have fallen, monsters are everywhere, the nature of magic has changed, points of light, blah blah blah. The PCs hear of a secluded valley where the monsters are kept at bay by some ancient and mysterious means. Naturally they go to check it out.
Heading into the valley, the need to go through a cave, in which they'll be jumped by some "horned creatures" (kobolds). The PCs have their first fight and go through the cave, only to find that the kobolds had recently waylaid a merchant and his guards. The merchant is alive but the guards are dead. This is where the quest cards come into play. Basically the idea is I give the PCs some cards that have quest details on it, along with some colour coding to define threat and urgency. I used the Magic Set generator program I found in this thread (http://www.enworld.org/showthread.php?t=220953), and adapted it to make my quest cards, which I've attached.
The idea is to have a reminder of things to be done in the valley, then, when they complete the quest, I can write an XP reward at the bottom and they can file it away. The idea is that they'll always have at least one or two unresolved quest cards, so they won't run out of things to do.
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SpiderMonkey
Explorer
Thocar said:
Welcome to the "outed lurkers club" from a long-time member (but mostly still lurker)!
TerraDave
5ever, or until 2024
4E seems to be designed for "sandbox" style play:
-flatter power curve and straight forward XP: less worry about PCs matching up with a too high or too low level encounter. ie not only can they try to take on something levels higher, but something a few levels lowers should also remain interesting. (and no having to do EL calc for XP)
-easier to run monsters and npcs: more focused powers and key information right there in the statblock reduces needed prep and makes it easier for the pcs to run into anything. In 3E, mid to higher level opponents essentially required research to really use their abilities effectively.
-flex-o-matic skill challenge system: allows for DM and PCs to wing things a little more easily (this is only based on what we had heard).
-point of light default setting: danger is supposed to be around every corner.
-flatter power curve and straight forward XP: less worry about PCs matching up with a too high or too low level encounter. ie not only can they try to take on something levels higher, but something a few levels lowers should also remain interesting. (and no having to do EL calc for XP)
-easier to run monsters and npcs: more focused powers and key information right there in the statblock reduces needed prep and makes it easier for the pcs to run into anything. In 3E, mid to higher level opponents essentially required research to really use their abilities effectively.
-flex-o-matic skill challenge system: allows for DM and PCs to wing things a little more easily (this is only based on what we had heard).
-point of light default setting: danger is supposed to be around every corner.
Carnivorous_Bean
First Post
Part of the reason I've been excited about 4th edition is that it appears to be ideal for a more freeform/sandbox style of play. To illustrate my points, using the new icons as bullets 
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No more 5 minute workday. The heroes don't expend 1/4 of their resources per level-appropriate CR encounter, meaning that if they go in a direction that would logically include more than 4 encounters in a 24 hour period, I don't have the near certainty of a TPK or a total rout on my hands.
Related to the above -- I don't have to balance everything around that damn "4 encounters per day" thing. Sure, you can more or less, but then that messes with the already dubious CR.
More durable PCs. They're certainly not unkillable, but they've at least got a chance to escape if they wander into something powerful, rather than the instant kills I've seen in some cases when they disregarded various fairly obvious 'signs and portents.'
Less prep time. Often, writing up the encounters for an adventure would take hours. That's pretty hard to do on the fly. Shorter stat blocks and a clearer measure of what you should be throwing against the party (the XP thing) means that it may actually be possible to have an unplanned encounter without saying, well, we'll do this next session.
Flatter power curve. If I do mess up preparing an 'instant encounter', the PCs still have a chance of winning, rather than just being toast no matter what.
-- No more 5 minute workday. The heroes don't expend 1/4 of their resources per level-appropriate CR encounter, meaning that if they go in a direction that would logically include more than 4 encounters in a 24 hour period, I don't have the near certainty of a TPK or a total rout on my hands. Related to the above -- I don't have to balance everything around that damn "4 encounters per day" thing. Sure, you can more or less, but then that messes with the already dubious CR. More durable PCs. They're certainly not unkillable, but they've at least got a chance to escape if they wander into something powerful, rather than the instant kills I've seen in some cases when they disregarded various fairly obvious 'signs and portents.' Less prep time. Often, writing up the encounters for an adventure would take hours. That's pretty hard to do on the fly. Shorter stat blocks and a clearer measure of what you should be throwing against the party (the XP thing) means that it may actually be possible to have an unplanned encounter without saying, well, we'll do this next session. Flatter power curve. If I do mess up preparing an 'instant encounter', the PCs still have a chance of winning, rather than just being toast no matter what.Similar Threads
