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Message: <blockquote data-quote="JohnSnow" data-source="post: 4985538" data-attributes="member: 32164">Sandbox campaigns are inconsistent with world-threatening plots? Really?Let's take a concrete example, by pulling from a piece of fiction (albeit only very marginally fantastic) with a character we all know: Indiana Jones. In the interest of avoiding a devolving argument, I propose we ignore Crystal Skull and stick to the first 3 - chronologically going from The Temple of Doom to Raiders of the Lost Ark to The Last Crusade.I would bet most people would consider Indiana Jones a pretty "down-to-earth" hero. Sure, as the main character, he doesn't die, but fundamentally, he's a middling-high heroic level character in a pretty realistic world. Indy pulls off some pretty impressive stunts - but nothing occurs that's too outlandish. Fundamentally, he's a low-fantasy character. On the other hand, he keeps an artifact of enormous power (the Ark) out of the hands of people who would have used it to overrun the world. Effectively, Indy saved the world. Now, if he hadn't, would someone else have? Maybe. Or maybe the Nazis would have taken the Ark and some other characters would have had to steal it from them.That's how you do "world threatening plots" in a "sandbox setting" - you avoid the "imminent destruction of the world" scenario and stick to scenarios where "if nobody stops this, things will get way worse." That way, the plot your PCs ignore doesn't come back and destroy the world while their back is turned.Oddly enough, Indiana Jones plots work very well in Eberron, a setting that I'm sure many of those in this thread would describe (irrespective of the truth of the setting) as "High Fantasy" rather than "Grim & Gritty." But that gets back to the whole definition problem that was raised earlier.So...assume a D&D setting based on Indiana Jones sensibilities and plots: Is that High Fantasy? Grim & Gritty? Or something in between?</blockquote>

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