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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Gothmog" data-source="post: 4863967" data-attributes="member: 317">I have to agree, I enjoy the sandbox-style play you're talking about here, and its become the de facto way I run my games.  And you know what?  Absolutely NOTHING prevents you from running this kind of game using 4e.  In fact, I've been doing it for over a year now with no hitches.Probably only about half the encounters my group runs into end up in straight-out combats.  Often there is some other aspect involved as well- subterfuge, negotiations, intimidation, or running away!  While many of 4e's character abilities are combat-focused, that has been true in every version of D&D (even 3.x), and people still roleplay and solve problems without being forced into combat.I tend to populate the world with people/creatures/places/etc that make sense for their locations first and foremost, and the PCs can go where they choose.  The world is NOT in any way a series of level-appropriate encounters for the group of PCs.  Usually the adventures I give them are things they can handle, but when the PCs have been told there are ogres in the nearby forest and they go there anyway as level 2 PCs, they found a warband of 8 to 12 ogres, complete with a bad-ass leader type and a shaman.  They were warned.  (That also ended with them being subdued and captured, which then lead to a daring escape where they also saved the cousin of a local noble and made an ally!).  Likewise, the party heard about a group of goblins making trouble for a town they had helped early in their careers, and when they went back as 7th level PCs, they found level 1-4 goblins causing the troubles, and trounced them handlily.I've also used weather and terrain hazards as they explore, and the group has survived flash floods, losing their food and supplies during a blizzard in the winter, and accidentally getting in the middle of a conflict between some elves and shifters that was a long-standing fued.  In those cases, we've used skill challenges, and they work beautifully, despite what the critics online say.  Success was in no way guaranteed, and we RP through the situation until such time as a skill check is needed, and only then do the dice come out.So I can say definitively that the only thing prventing folks from using 4e for sandbox style play is themselves, and their own preconceptions.  The system works just fine for it.</blockquote>

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