D&D 4E Sandbox game: should I 4e?

[FadedC]

To divert the thread for a second from the traditional argument with Derren (which seems to occur in every thread of note) one thing you can do to facilitate a sandbox world in 4e is allow players to fight a single creature from an encounter group to let them know they have no business being where they are.

In 3e if your 1st level players wandered into a troll infested swamp or other higher level area, you ran into the problem that a single troll or other nasty creature could easily TPK them, or at least kill half the party. This is what leads to metagaming where the players have to use their out of game knowledge that they can't take on a monster to avoid death. In 4e if a first level party wanders into a 6th level area you can just throw one 6th level monster at them. They can probably beat it, and they now have in game knowledge that the things that live here are way tougher then they are and that they should come back later.

 

[FitzTheRuke]

one thing you can do to facilitate a sandbox world in 4e is allow players to fight a single creature from an encounter group to let them know they have no business being where they are.

This could backfire, if they start thinking that the way they beat the one monster will be like all l the encounters in the area.

Although it works pretty good if you slap 'em around with a guy so that they think one is a nasty fight, and then have them spy 5 or 6 of the same thing over the next hill...


Fitz

 

[Rex Blunder]

"5 or 6... must be minions!" ;-)

I think it's a great idea though.

You could also adopt JoT's recent house rule, "PCs can always flee". Then you can throw whatever you want at the PCs regardless of level. You could get some boring passages though:

DM: In the distance you see a (rolls) red dragon!
PCs: Flee.
DM: Then you see (rolls more) 4 storm giants! An army of drow! 6 trolls!
PCs: Flee... flee... flee.
DM: (rolls) 2 kobolds! An orc!
PCs: Not worth breaking out the minis. Flee... flee.
DM: (rolls) 3 ogres!
PCs: OK, this sounds like a good fight.

Which works out roughly to "everything the PCs meet is roughly their level"... you gloss over the combats the PCs cakewalk through or avoid.

 

[FadedC]

This could backfire, if they start thinking that the way they beat the one monster will be like all l the encounters in the area.

Although it works pretty good if you slap 'em around with a guy so that they think one is a nasty fight, and then have them spy 5 or 6 of the same thing over the next hill...


Fitz

Yeah it works better if the players know the area they are entering is infested with these creatures and they are likely to fight more then one at a time. Fighting a single gnoll for example should be enough to discourage a first level party from an attack on a gnoll camp. This may be especially important since players used to 3.x might reasonably expect gnolls not to be much tougher then their characters.

 

[hong]

Proving a negative? Nice idea.

Bad Derren shouldn't make negative assertions if obliging Derren is unable to back them up. Silly Derren.

But the lack of those entries from the previews and how often it was said that the focus of the stats is combat only there is a strong indication that this is correct.

It is a strong indication that people who want stats for everything, as opposed to stats that are to be used, tend to get their impressions through brown-coloured glasses.

The point of a sandbox game is

The PCs can go everywhere and do anything, without a predefined plot.

that every time the PCs do something other than fight the DM has to pause the game because the pre made monsters and NPCs don't have any informations about how they can react to that and he has to check is huge list of houserules to make sure the game stays consistent?

Run-on Derren needs punctuation marks... badly.

Indeed, a DM who is unable to improvise should not run a sandbox game, in any edition. However, DMs who are willing to improvise and adapt to unexpected PC movements should find their task much facilitated by the 4E framework.

 

[small pumpkin man]

Which has nothing to do with the issue. Without out of combat information (including skills) it is much harder to create sandbox games.

This is your opinion, and I consider it completely fallacious. Any Sandbox game requires making stuff up on the fly, if the game features a solid unversal system which supports making up things on the fly, and normal gameplay allready expects GMs to make stuff up on the fly, then playing a sandbox style game will be much less of a problem. Your normal issues to do with smaller less detailed statblocks is just that, your issue, and has nothing to do with a true Sandbox style game where most NPCs and mosters often don't even have stats at all, because the PCs have gone somewhere you never even thought of.

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

NPCs still have Skills in their stat-block
Can even people I can only see in quotes recognize this fact and not continually ignore it for the sake of making a negative point?
Every frigging stat-block I have seen contains a list of skills the creature is trained in, and also the modifiers for all skills that it's not trained in. That's in fact more that many 3E stat blocks did, since most only explicitly mentioned the skills the monster was trained in!

Or, in other words, everything you need to know about a monster to have it work in play is standing right in its stat-block. You don't even have to open the PHB to figure out what a spell-like ability it has might do. (You might need to open it if you can't remember which stat governs which skill, if you need the value for an untrained skill)

Everything* else that you need to run a game (be it railroaded, plot-driven, character-driven or sandbox) is in the DMG, the Dungeon Master Guide, or the guide for the dungeon master. Yes, I admit, I haven't seen it. But where else would you expect such stuff? In the book for players, the Player Handbook? Or in the books describing monsters, the Monster Manual?


*) for non-infinite values of everything.

 

[cr0m]

Wait, that doesn't make any sense. They are MORE likely to be reckless because the DM is LESS likely to save them? They're suicidal?

Well if they're suicidal, then it really doesn't matter now does it?

You know, I was really tired when I wrote that. I have a feeling there were two sentences that got combined, because what I wrote makes no sense at all.

 

[Rechan]

So cr0m, any word on what your decision will be?

 

[cr0m]

Good question.

First of all, I'd like to respectfully ask Derren to exit the thread. There are lots of other threads that are devoted to picking apart the pros and cons of 3e vs 4e, and I feel that your discussion has moved into that arena. Thank you for the insights that you gave up-thread re: 3e and sandbox games, but at this point, I think both sides of the argument have said all that needs to be said in that vein.

I'm still pretty torn, but I think it's going to come down to when my players want to play. If they want to play now, we'll do 3.5e. In many ways, that's more attractive to me, because I'm itching to run and we know the rules so well that I can concentrate on other things. However, the prep time thing... that's going to be a pain once the PCs hit 4th level and up. Otoh, I've got piles and piles of maps, encounters and other junk lying around for 3.5e I can use.

By the way, to clarify how I'm planning on running this sandbox: I'm not going to scale encounters. My map has ELs for each area, roughly by travel time. So the hexes right near the keep (our home base) are EL 0-1, and the further away you travel, the higher they get. I mostly do it by terrain, so the ELs are more gradual along roads, rivers and other easy terrain where the PCs can travel quickly. Mountains, forests and swamps get harder faster.

Locations in the different hexes start at the given EL and go up as you get deeper inside (they're all pretty much dungeons). The player map has some named areas filled in and some known locations, along with a brief description of each. Mostly things like "goblin territory" or "no one put ashore ever returned". I've also got some hot spots, where there's a really tough location in the middle of a relatively low-level area. These tough locations are also known by rumor.

Similarly, the tough locations have monsters that won't pursue or otherwise venture into the low level surrounding area.

One thing that I'm still working out is the role of quests. I'll likely have some minor quests: hunting down outlaws, delivering things to various barbarian tribes, the fur trade. Beyond that I don't know. My goal is to write up a general history of the area that explains why it's all wilderness and ruins. Through exploring, I'd like players to be able to discover new locations, figure out how to get to inaccessible places, and dig up information about what they might find there.

I'm hoping my prep will be relatively low. Players have to tell me where they're going before the session starts, so I plan on rolling for random overland encounters beforehand, and statting out what I expect them to get to. With luck, I'll be able to re-use those encounters as parties return to an area multiple times. I'm really not worried about TPKs. If they happen... well, now the players know that's a dangerous area.

I'm not the kind of DM who worries about meta-game knowledge. Who knows how the next batch of PCs heard about the TPK? Maybe the barbarians who trade with the goblin-king heard the story...

Anyway, I'll keep you guys posted. Thanks a lot for the advice. If you get any more insights, please let me know. It's my first sandbox game, so I'm sure there are gotchas I haven't anticipated.