What game style is 4E good at?

[Voadam]

Lorathorn wrote:

That makes sense. Is there any way to mitigate this travel encounter factor?

The early classes all had at will, encounter, daily power set ups. Later ones had different power setup options that are more always ready but less nova prone.

I've played in games where there were house rules so that daily powers were encounter based but accessed only at higher levels. This smoothed out the nova factor significantly.

DMs can keep PCs guessing on how many encounters they get in a day so they don't count on being able to nova safely.

DMs can plan on players novaing and throw in tougher individual encounters when they are likely to be the only one of the day ("That was one BIG pack of wolves.").

[Jeremy Mac Donald]

Lorathorn wrote:

That makes sense. Is there any way to mitigate this travel encounter factor?

Convince them that there might be a second encounter...but honestly I wouldn't really go out of my way to do that.

Having them go Nova is not really the end of the world if you know they are going to do so - just make the encounter harder and let them go completely nuts.

Edit:
Oops, did not see that there was a second page...what Voadam said.

[Diffan]

I'm not getting the MMO thing. I've played very few MMO and thought they were really boring and not worth my time and I've found 4e the complete opposite. I've done the whole sandbox campaign with 4E and I think it works great with the system, especially with hex-maps.

[Uchawi]

Going Nova in any edition of D&D is a problem, but more so with systems like 3E because the sub-systems and choices for classes vary greatly. It is harder for the DM to predict overall party power.

[Jeremy Mac Donald]

It really is not much a problem. Basically in 'baby dungeons' your choosing a bunch of lower level encounters and then going with a finale of around level +3. For a one off make it a level +4 encouter - should work fine.

[2097]

Diffan wrote:

I'm not getting the MMO thing. I've played very few MMO and thought they were really boring and not worth my time and I've found 4e the complete opposite. I've done the whole sandbox campaign with 4E and I think it works great with the system, especially with hex-maps.

The leveling becomes a problem. Do you put level three encounters all over the map or do you mix it up?

[Matthew Koelbl]

2097 wrote:

Diffan wrote:

I'm not getting the MMO thing. I've played very few MMO and thought they were really boring and not worth my time and I've found 4e the complete opposite. I've done the whole sandbox campaign with 4E and I think it works great with the system, especially with hex-maps.

The leveling becomes a problem. Do you put level three encounters all over the map or do you mix it up?

In my 4E sandbox game, I had a pretty healthy amount of encounters that weren't set to the PCs level. If they got in over their heads, they are usually durable enough (as 4E PCs) to run away - or creative enough to find another way out.

[Jeremy Mac Donald]

Matthew Koelbl wrote:

2097 wrote:

Diffan wrote:

I'm not getting the MMO thing. I've played very few MMO and thought they were really boring and not worth my time and I've found 4e the complete opposite. I've done the whole sandbox campaign with 4E and I think it works great with the system, especially with hex-maps.

The leveling becomes a problem. Do you put level three encounters all over the map or do you mix it up?

In my 4E sandbox game, I had a pretty healthy amount of encounters that weren't set to the PCs level. If they got in over their heads, they are usually durable enough (as 4E PCs) to run away - or creative enough to find another way out.

Suppose you could if you want. One idea would be to decide how often your players actually want to play through encounters that are too easy and or too hard and vary it by that much. so if they want to run from encounters 10% of the time and roll over them 20% of the time (your guesstimating as the DM of course) then have that many easy/hard encounters and run the rest at a level that will really challenge your group even when they go nova. My personal experience in this regard is that my players want unbalanced encounters rarely though every so often kicking butt - especially minion butt - if fun. Most of the time if the encounter was a walk over then they feel like they wasted the session that we just spent playing through the encounter. Hence I design almost all of my encounters like this as level+4.

Thing is you don't really have to vary the level. You need variety of course but not really in how difficult you as a DM happen to try and design an encounter. You simply need to design a good variety of different types of encounters. The evil adventuring party that wants to loot the PCs is a lot different from the migrating tribe of bugbears or an attack by a hunting dragon. Depending on the make up of the party and the PCs in it they are going to be better or worse against these types of encounters simply because every group is better or worse against any given line up of monsters. So this will satisfy the element of giving your PCs a range of difficulty while still keeping things difficult enough to easily handle it when they nova.

[Diffan]

2097 wrote:

Diffan wrote:

I'm not getting the MMO thing. I've played very few MMO and thought they were really boring and not worth my time and I've found 4e the complete opposite. I've done the whole sandbox campaign with 4E and I think it works great with the system, especially with hex-maps.

The leveling becomes a problem. Do you put level three encounters all over the map or do you mix it up?

I place encounters that are consistent with the world-view and not based on PCs level or the WoW style of zones. The players can, quite easi5, enter an area that far surpasses their level or they can get into a scrap with a group of lv. 2 Kobolds when they're Paragon tier. It depends on what they're doing, where they want to go, and how well they follow up on, ignore, or cautiously circumvent rumors the people they interact with know of.

If there's a fable of an ancient and Evil spirit haunting a nearby house they can investigate but there's no guarantee it's level - appropriate.

[2097]

Jeremy Mac Donald wrote:

One idea would be to decide how often your players actually want to play through encounters that are too easy and or too hard and vary it by that much

Not that easy in a sandbox.

[2097]

Diffan wrote:

2097 wrote:

Diffan wrote:

I'm not getting the MMO thing. I've played very few MMO and thought they were really boring and not worth my time and I've found 4e the complete opposite. I've done the whole sandbox campaign with 4E and I think it works great with the system, especially with hex-maps.

The leveling becomes a problem. Do you put level three encounters all over the map or do you mix it up?

I place encounters that are consistent with the world-view and not based on PCs level or the WoW style of zones. The players can, quite easi5, enter an area that far surpasses their level or they can get into a scrap with a group of lv. 2 Kobolds when they're Paragon tier. It depends on what they're doing, where they want to go, and how well they follow up on, ignore, or cautiously circumvent rumors the people they interact with know of.

If there's a fable of an ancient and Evil spirit haunting a nearby house they can investigate but there's no guarantee it's level - appropriate.

That's cool. So far I've been thinking "zones" for my game. Not familiar with WoW but I can guess… I have an area where the encounter table is for level three characters. If they venture further I'll make harder tables.

[Uchawi]

The key is to mix up encounter challenges so it is hard for the players to predict the story pacing, so in that sense I develop an appropriate level encounter that may encompass multiple rooms, or create the same encounter above the characters levels. The same applies for single rooms, areas, regions, etc. A true sandbox in my mind is a roller coaster ride. You never know what is around the next corner.

[thejeff]

Uchawi wrote:

The key is to mix up encounter challenges so it is hard for the players to predict the story pacing, so in that sense I develop an appropriate level encounter that may encompass multiple rooms, or create the same encounter above the characters levels. The same applies for single rooms, areas, regions, etc. A true sandbox in my mind is a roller coaster ride. You never know what is around the next corner.

How does that work?

My understanding of sandbox is that the GM doesn't restrict things to level appropriate encounters but lets the party figure out what they want to deal with. If they never know what's around the next corner, how can they choose properly?

[Matthew Koelbl]

Jeremy Mac Donald wrote:

Suppose you could if you want. One idea would be to decide how often your players actually want to play through encounters that are too easy and or too hard and vary it by that much. so if they want to run from encounters 10% of the time and roll over them 20% of the time (your guesstimating as the DM of course) then have that many easy/hard encounters and run the rest at a level that will really challenge your group even when they go nova. My personal experience in this regard is that my players want unbalanced encounters rarely though every so often kicking butt - especially minion butt - if fun. Most of the time if the encounter was a walk over then they feel like they wasted the session that we just spent playing through the encounter. Hence I design almost all of my encounters like this as level+4.

Yeah, I didn't go out of my way to throw unbalanced encounters at them. For anything core-plot related, those usually were tied to quests or the like, and I had a website running with the expected levels for such things - basically, they knew that going to confront Count Strahd, at level 6, was unlikely to end well. So there were challenges at all sorts of different threat levels, but the PCs (usually) knew whether something was out of their league or not. (Not that that always stopped them.)

The other aspect of the sandbox, though, was that they were somewhat driving the story, and so often they would get into unexpected situations. At one point they met with a tribe of mongrelfolk and accidentally picked a fight with the entire tribe - not an encounter I was planning on, but one they found some a creative way to deal with despite the danger of the encounter. (In this case, the stealthy assassin stuffed the unconscious PCs in a Bag of Holding, and opened an Iron Flask looted from an evil tyrant, thus releasing a powerful Devil to rampaged on the tribe while he made his escape.)

Of course, that meant that - some ten levels later - they had to hunt down and deal with the devil that was now ruling that tribe and conquering territory on its own. And so on and so forth... That is what I liked about running the sandbox game, that the PCs were largely defining the story. And part of that was giving them leeway to get in over the hands on occasion, and see how they dealt with it when they did. Conversely, sometimes they took a while to get around to a quest or enemy of lower levels - which meant when they dealt with it, it was a walk in the park. And indulging in their ability to cakewalk over former adversaries was also often a fun experience for them, rather than having that former foe having mysteriously powered up to the same level as them for no reason.

[Diffan]

thejeff wrote:

Uchawi wrote:

The key is to mix up encounter challenges so it is hard for the players to predict the story pacing, so in that sense I develop an appropriate level encounter that may encompass multiple rooms, or create the same encounter above the characters levels. The same applies for single rooms, areas, regions, etc. A true sandbox in my mind is a roller coaster ride. You never know what is around the next corner.

How does that work?

My understanding of sandbox is that the GM doesn't restrict things to level appropriate encounters but lets the party figure out what they want to deal with. If they never know what's around the next corner, how can they choose properly?

That's my understanding as well. In my sandbox games the PCs usually start out in an area where the monster threat is minimal in terms of power level. Going into the wilderness and off the beaten path, however, can lead to unexpected dangers like Trolls, Orc warbands, hydras, dragons, and so forth. It's important for PCs to get an idea of their surrou and the local knowledge of the area, going so far as tales, rumors, and superstitions.

These things might be true or an exaggeration or completely baseless. They don't know but for sure it's not always going to be rolled out like a nice, box - shaped encounter with the exact number of monster to XP ratio. It's gonna be what is appropriate for the situation. A group who raids a Kobolds lair isn't fighting 4-6 Kobolds for every 2 to 3 rooms. If they're not cautious then they could awaken the whole tribe and that would be really bad for them.

[BlakeK]

4e is reasonably balanced (in terms of both classes & encounters), which makes it easy to run under a variety of styles without much modification. It'd probably be easier to go into the styles it doesn't work so well with, but I'm afraid that might be taken the wrong way... ;)

If you play 4e more or less as it's presented, without giving any thought to what you're trying to get out of it, you'll probably end up falling into one of two styles, depending on what you pay attention to:

1) Tactical: If you focus on combat, mechanics, and not on character much at all, you can approach the game as a series of tactical challenges. Works great if you like that sort of thing. The rules are easy to learn, yet there's a good deal of depth to it.

2) Heroic Fantasy: Really, almost 'Action Movie' type heroic fantasy. If you start to pay even a teeny bit of attention to what the characters, monsters, powers, etc are representing, you can't help but starting to notice how many 'bits' or 'tropes' from the genre you're hitting. The characters feel an heroic sort of tough right out the gate, everything from basics, like second wind, to higher level powers like Bolt of Genius, will make you flash to a scene from a movie.

Rather than go into all the directions you could go, from there, I think it'd help to look at aspects of the game and how using them different ways can get you to different styles & genres. (Oh, and I'm largely ignoring Essentials to focus on what was unique about 4e, Essentials muddies things a bit.)

Pacing: Some styles, you want to have the party fighting desperately, all night long, others, you want them to have maybe one encounter a week on a long journey. Unmodified, 4e handles both extremes with a little consideration from the DM in encounter building. 4e's AEDU classes are quite powerful in 1-combat days, but have enough encounters, at-wills, and healing to handle quite a large number of less deadly encounters 8-16, perhaps. Thing is, they're all like that, so there's no instant class imbalance if you tend heavily one way or the other. With just one conceptual modification, you can have even more control over pacing: consider an 'encounter' a 'scene' and a 'day' a 'story,' and you can have standard-issue 4-6 encounter 'days' (whether they're 6 hours or 7 days long, in game) all campaign long. Same trick works with a lot of resource-attrition games.

Magic level: D&D defaults to a wildly high level of magic, of course, and 4e is no exception. 4e, without any homebrewing, however, lets you eschew it if you like. You flip a switch on one optional rule: inherent bonuses. The players choose non-magical classes - Fighter, Ranger, Rogue, Warlord. You give out few or no magic items. And your campaign sails along with few noticeable issues. (One thing you might notice is that minions are a little nastier in large numbers in the absence of a controller.) If you want 'low' rather than 'no' magic, you can allow magical classes in as multiclasses - including Paragon Multi-classing. Even the 'low-magic' world with high-magic PCs - that is, few magic items, but no restrictions on PC casters - works, with the removal of a few rituals - it's not even that imbalanced, since martial characters aren't all that dependent on items to make up their shorfall relative to casters.

Tone: This is where it gets harder. 4e has a fairly light or action-hero hero tone to it. You can take it downright comedic or anime pretty easily. But, while you can ratchet things up, challenge-wise, the PCs will still feel very heroic, just desperation heroics. Dragging 4e down to a grittier feel takes some re-jiggering. Reducing surges is an obvious first step - both the number of them, and the amount they heal are possibilities. A more extreme option is doing away with them, entirely: any power that says 'spend a surge to recover hps' instead grants a small number of temp hps (like level+CON mod + whatever the power says), only non-surge and very long rests actually restore hps. Trimming powers may also be appropriate - or giving them consequences or limitations. Things like: only 1 daily/encounter, or using a daily consumes a surge, or rolling at the start of combat to re-charge encounter powers used in the previous combat. Extending the length of 'rests' could have a similar effect. If a 'short' rest is a full night's sleep, for instance, and a long rest a whole week or month off, for instance, then wounds linger. You can also make wounds linger - or even fester or debilitate - by adapting the mechanics of the Disease Track to nasty, debilitating, or literally diseased wounds. Fun stuff. Again, by modifying the game at the base level (surges, rests, rules regarding power recharges), you avoid introducing any class imbalances, as all classes get impacted to a similar degree.

Combat Emphasis: While D&D has always been a very combat-oriented game, 4e does give you a few tools that can be leveraged to make it less so. They're really just jumping off points, though. The first, and most significant is the Skill Challenge - finally revised, updated & errata'd into something useable two years before the game went out of print in the 'Rules Compendium' softbound. Skill Challenges are better than nothing - they give the DM a structure to judge how difficult a non-combat challenge is, how much exp it's worth, and a straightforward mechanical way to keep everyone involved (everyone rolls). Unfortunately, while having everyone roll several times is a little more engaging and less story-blocking than having one person make one roll with everything hinging on it, it's still about as exciting as a combat where no one gets to do anything but roll to hit. To shift the emphasis away from combat, you need to embellish on that. A well-done skill challenge can be like a game-within-a-game, and quite entertaining, but it takes some real effort by the DM to frame it. The other area D&D has always done non-combat is spells - in 4e, they're Rituals that don't use up your combat spells (but do use up gp-equivalent resources), so you can run combat vs non-combat in whatever proportion you want, without badly imbalancing either as a result. Rituals also take long enough to cast and are expensive enough that they can't easily obviate other ways of approaching a non-combat challenge. Finally, there are resources you can use to track success/failure/consequences outside the combat timeframe: losing surges in place of taking damage, action points, milestones, gp and gp-equivalents like components/residuum (and Dark Sun's survival-days worth of supplies), and the aforementioned Disease track.

Optimization/Customization: 4e doesn't give intentional 'rewards for system mastery' but it is pretty choice-rich and player-empowering as presented. Because perfect balance is impossible, and players do have a lot of choice & agency, system masters can squeeze a noticeable, but not usually game-breaking advantage out of it. Because the mechanics are fairly transparent and consistent, it's also amenable to 're-skinning' for customization purposes. The DM who wants to de-emphasize these styles has to take more of the game under his control. The easiest and most obvious step is just not allowing make/but of magic items, so they're DM-placed only (the players can give you a 'wish list' if they want, you're under no obligation to use it). Then there's some technically optional areas you can ban or restrict: Themes and Backgrounds. Hybrids. Paragon Paths & Epic Destiny (yeah, they're optional - players aren't even technically obliged to take them). Races are simple enough to ban (or have a short list of allowed races). Banning classes is also pretty safe, as long as you leave at least one of each role (and even Controller can be dispensed with if you're careful with encounter design) - for instance, you can focus a campaign by allowing only classes of a specific Source or sources. Conversely, feats can be a PiTA to trim, because there's so many of them, and a few classes /really/ need certain 'stealth-errata' feats or 'feat taxes.'

[houstonderek]

thejeff wrote:

Uchawi wrote:

The key is to mix up encounter challenges so it is hard for the players to predict the story pacing, so in that sense I develop an appropriate level encounter that may encompass multiple rooms, or create the same encounter above the characters levels. The same applies for single rooms, areas, regions, etc. A true sandbox in my mind is a roller coaster ride. You never know what is around the next corner.

How does that work?

My understanding of sandbox is that the GM doesn't restrict things to level appropriate encounters but lets the party figure out what they want to deal with. If they never know what's around the next corner, how can they choose properly?

They used to have things called "sages" and the like in earlier editions. People found out "what was around the next corner" by consulting them. If you go into the mountains and didn't bother to ask what might live in the mountains, and you run into the great wyrm that has lived there for centuries and everyone for hundreds of miles around knows it, it's on you for not asking.

[CommandoDude]

I'm not sure if this was mentioned, I didn't notice it - but 4e really succeeded in doing something no previous edition was really able to do at all, which is balance the classes (especially along the martial/caster axis).

One thing that has typified Pathfinder for instance is how insanely powerful casters become at high levels, and how much more useful they are out of combat than the skills system that the rest of us get. 4e essentially solved that by ditching the limiting Vancian system and using the AEDU system that brought casters down to par with martials, but still allowing them unique abilities that let them perform traditional caster roles without being op. Casters no longer really had to deal with being powerless at 1st level and warriors were no longer sidelined at later levels - this means players are having fun at all stages of the game, not just when the class they're playing is "in their prime."

[thejeff]

houstonderek wrote:

thejeff wrote:

Uchawi wrote:

The key is to mix up encounter challenges so it is hard for the players to predict the story pacing, so in that sense I develop an appropriate level encounter that may encompass multiple rooms, or create the same encounter above the characters levels. The same applies for single rooms, areas, regions, etc. A true sandbox in my mind is a roller coaster ride. You never know what is around the next corner.

How does that work?

My understanding of sandbox is that the GM doesn't restrict things to level appropriate encounters but lets the party figure out what they want to deal with. If they never know what's around the next corner, how can they choose properly?

They used to have things called "sages" and the like in earlier editions. People found out "what was around the next corner" by consulting them. If you go into the mountains and didn't bother to ask what might live in the mountains, and you run into the great wyrm that has lived there for centuries and everyone for hundreds of miles around knows it, it's on you for not asking.

Which, in Uchawi's mind, wouldn't be a true sandbox.

[Diffan]

CommandoDude wrote:

I'm not sure if this was mentioned, I didn't notice it - but 4e really succeeded in doing something no previous edition was really able to do at all, which is balance the classes (especially along the martial/caster axis).

One thing that has typified Pathfinder for instance is how insanely powerful casters become at high levels, and how much more useful they are out of combat than the skills system that the rest of us get. 4e essentially solved that by ditching the limiting Vancian system and using the AEDU system that brought casters down to par with martials, but still allowing them unique abilities that let them perform traditional caster roles without being op. Casters no longer really had to deal with being powerless at 1st level and warriors were no longer sidelined at later levels - this means players are having fun at all stages of the game, not just when the class they're playing is "in their prime."

Yep, the focus of the spotlight is about role within the round instead of the encounter. For example in 3e if there was an encounter that featured lots of undead or 1 powerful undead the Cleric had the potential to completely obliterate the enemy on his turn, sometimes before anyone else acted. In 4e his radiant spells help immense but the others at the table still get to engage too.

They effectively removed "I Win" buttons for the most part from the game. Still, wizards are unparalleled in terms of monster lock-down and single target penalties as well as mob/minion destruction but they still need help in other areas. Further, by allowing everyone a chance to try skills, you remove the requirement of certain classes to be in the party, like always having a Rogue to picks locks or always a cleric to heal as anyone can get Thievery skill via class, feat, and racial selection as well as other non - casters being able to heal (aka Warlord)

[glass]

Alan_Beven wrote:

4. Out of combat is freeform. Skill Challenges never worked for me.

Have you tried Stalker0's Obsidian alternative. Still not perfect, but at least we don't all groan every time an SC come round.

_
glass.

[houstonderek]

thejeff wrote:

houstonderek wrote:

thejeff wrote:

Uchawi wrote:

The key is to mix up encounter challenges so it is hard for the players to predict the story pacing, so in that sense I develop an appropriate level encounter that may encompass multiple rooms, or create the same encounter above the characters levels. The same applies for single rooms, areas, regions, etc. A true sandbox in my mind is a roller coaster ride. You never know what is around the next corner.

How does that work?

My understanding of sandbox is that the GM doesn't restrict things to level appropriate encounters but lets the party figure out what they want to deal with. If they never know what's around the next corner, how can they choose properly?

They used to have things called "sages" and the like in earlier editions. People found out "what was around the next corner" by consulting them. If you go into the mountains and didn't bother to ask what might live in the mountains, and you run into the great wyrm that has lived there for centuries and everyone for hundreds of miles around knows it, it's on you for not asking.

Which, in Uchawi's mind, wouldn't be a true sandbox.

And we care what Uchawi thinks because…?

Seriously, how does the players taking initiative and playing intelligently make something "not a sandbox"?

;-)

[thejeff]

houstonderek wrote:

thejeff wrote:

houstonderek wrote:

thejeff wrote:

Uchawi wrote:

The key is to mix up encounter challenges so it is hard for the players to predict the story pacing, so in that sense I develop an appropriate level encounter that may encompass multiple rooms, or create the same encounter above the characters levels. The same applies for single rooms, areas, regions, etc. A true sandbox in my mind is a roller coaster ride. You never know what is around the next corner.

How does that work?

My understanding of sandbox is that the GM doesn't restrict things to level appropriate encounters but lets the party figure out what they want to deal with. If they never know what's around the next corner, how can they choose properly?

They used to have things called "sages" and the like in earlier editions. People found out "what was around the next corner" by consulting them. If you go into the mountains and didn't bother to ask what might live in the mountains, and you run into the great wyrm that has lived there for centuries and everyone for hundreds of miles around knows it, it's on you for not asking.

Which, in Uchawi's mind, wouldn't be a true sandbox.

And we care what Uchawi thinks because…?

Seriously, how does the players taking initiative and playing intelligently make something "not a sandbox"?

;-)

I care, because I was asking Uchawi how his idea of sandbox worked. I wouldn't even have posted the question if he hadn't brought up a usage of sandbox that seemed non-standard to me. I was curious how or if he reconciled that with the normal usage.

Explaining the normal usage doesn't help answer that question. I'm not setting Uchawi up as some kind definitive expert on sandboxes, just trying to understand what he meant.

[houstonderek]

I doubt he knows. It's pretty obvious to me he doesn't have any idea what "sandbox" means to a bunch of people who grew up in the sandbox era.

[thejeff]

houstonderek wrote:

I doubt he knows. It's pretty obvious to me he doesn't have any idea what "sandbox" means to a bunch of people who grew up in the sandbox era.

There was a sandbox era? When was this?

[Jeremy Mac Donald]

thejeff wrote:

houstonderek wrote:

I doubt he knows. It's pretty obvious to me he doesn't have any idea what "sandbox" means to a bunch of people who grew up in the sandbox era.

There was a sandbox era? When was this?

Well the term does come from somewhere. I mean I kind of get your point in that I rather doubt there ever was a time when Sandbox style games where anything but a minority. On the other hand it is kind of reasonable to postulate that there was once a time where Sandboxes where more prevalent then they are today. The modern system with its wealth by level rules etc. are in some sense almost anti-sandbox. On the other hand 1st and 2nd edition, lacking such rules, better supported a Sandbox style of play.

In essence I kind of suspect that the 'Sandbox Era' if it can be called that would have been somewhere around the point when 1st was switching over to 2nd. Maybe a little before 2nd to some point after 2nd came out.

That said even if this is the height of Sandbox style play as an 'era' I don't think it holds a candle to the rise of Hickman D&D roughly during the same period with a clear emphasis away from anything that might resemble sandbox style play and a move toward heavy story based play. Dungeon Magazine was not full of adventures meant to support sand box gaming but it was chalk full of adventures hinging on interesting story lines during this period.

[davrion]

houstonderek wrote:

I doubt he knows. It's pretty obvious to me he doesn't have any idea what "sandbox" means to a bunch of people who grew up in the sandbox era.

Once you say it like that, it seems to necessitate you offering your take on the subject to be fair.

[14 sided die]

ONe thing I noticed about 4e was that it was really easy to pick up and play, and to teach to beginners, and didn't require a huge level of system mastery, since everyone works off basically the same mechanics

[thejeff]

Jeremy Mac Donald wrote:

thejeff wrote:

houstonderek wrote:

I doubt he knows. It's pretty obvious to me he doesn't have any idea what "sandbox" means to a bunch of people who grew up in the sandbox era.

There was a sandbox era? When was this?

Well the term does come from somewhere. I mean I kind of get your point in that I rather doubt there ever was a time when Sandbox style games where anything but a minority. On the other hand it is kind of reasonable to postulate that there was once a time where Sandboxes where more prevalent then they are today. The modern system with its wealth by level rules etc. are in some sense almost anti-sandbox. On the other hand 1st and 2nd edition, lacking such rules, better supported a Sandbox style of play.

In essence I kind of suspect that the 'Sandbox Era' if it can be called that would have been somewhere around the point when 1st was switching over to 2nd. Maybe a little before 2nd to some point after 2nd came out.

That said even if this is the height of Sandbox style play as an 'era' I don't think it holds a candle to the rise of Hickman D&D roughly during the same period with a clear emphasis away from anything that might resemble sandbox style play and a move toward heavy story based play. Dungeon Magazine was not full of adventures meant to support sand box gaming but it was chalk full of adventures hinging on interesting story lines during this period.

That was kind of my thought.

To some extent the stories I've heard of very early Gygax style play seem to fit the sandbox paradigm. OTOH, none of the earliest published adventures do. It certainly wasn't part of my early experiences. Once past the middle-school Monty Haul stage, we moved pretty much straight into the "Hickman story" version, though predating that, IIRC. Nor nearly so constrained. But other than through Dragon and those who went to conventions, there wasn't as much contact between groups as there is now, so it's quite possible everyone else was deep in sandbox mode.

I don't think I came across the concept until some discussions on Usenet back in the late 90s. And didn't know the term, at least in that contect until much later.

[houstonderek]

Jeremy Mac Donald wrote:

In essence I kind of suspect that the 'Sandbox Era' if it can be called that would have been somewhere around the point when 1st was switching over to 2nd. Maybe a little before 2nd to some point after 2nd came out.

It pretty much died in '85.

[thejeff]

houstonderek wrote:

Jeremy Mac Donald wrote:

In essence I kind of suspect that the 'Sandbox Era' if it can be called that would have been somewhere around the point when 1st was switching over to 2nd. Maybe a little before 2nd to some point after 2nd came out.

It pretty much died in '85.

What happened in 1985?

[houstonderek]

All of the groundwork laid by Dragonlance coupled with Williams being hired in '84 came to a head, more or less. D&D started to lose the fad shine. It was pretty much the year that started the "modern" gaming style.

[Jeremy Mac Donald]

thejeff wrote:

That was kind of my thought.

To some extent the stories I've heard of very early Gygax style play seem to fit the sandbox paradigm. OTOH, none of the earliest published adventures do. It certainly wasn't part of my early experiences. Once past the middle-school Monty Haul stage, we moved pretty much straight into the "Hickman story" version, though predating that, IIRC. Nor nearly so constrained. But other than through Dragon and those who went to conventions, there wasn't as much contact between groups as there is now, so it's quite possible everyone else was deep in sandbox mode.

I don't think I came across the concept until some discussions on Usenet back in the late 90s. And didn't know the term, at least in that contect until much later.

I think to some significant degree its simply a matter of demographics. As you point out the published adventures don't really support the idea and while the system does its not really spelled out or even supported in the rules. That does not mean that mature and intelligent groups did not discover this style of gaming and get into it. I'm sure they did...but to have been part of such a group you really had to have been at least...I don't know, say, 17 years old in 1980 to have really been part of this style of gaming for any length of time. Which means if your not at least 52 years old its doubtful you could actually have been part of such a fad for any length of time. Look around the boards - how many people here are 52 years or older and where playing D&D back in 1980? That number is exceedingly small.

So yeah no doubt such games existed but very few people played in them during the actual era. Most of even the old timers around here where doing as you say Monte Haul type gaming not in depth campaign worlds done in a sandbox style during this period. Certianly I was as I was 13 years old in 1985. I was just about at the point where I'd figured out what Monte Haul style gaming was and was about to start turning my noise up at it like I was some how too mature to play in 'that style'.

There is a reason why everyone can talk about those old Adventure Modules and say what happened when they went through them - that was what was going on for the majority of gamers. One way or another your DM was leading you to the adventure and then you where going through it.

Certainly you don't see Gygax or anyone like that talking about this style of gaming and he was not running it. I just did a conversion of Isle of the Ape which was published in 1985. That adventure starts with the PCs being summoned by, I think Tenser, and he tells the PCs to go to the Isle of the Ape and get the Crook of Rao. What if the PCs have other plans? Well Gygax tells the DM that if the players balk in any way then he should stop the game and inform the players that they are role playing their characters wrong. Seriously - read the module it is in there.

I think this is in fact one of the reasons Hickman D&D was so successful - for the vast majority of groups the alternative to story driven D&D was not sandbox D&D but simply storyless D&D. Though Ravneloft and Dragonlance did a pretty phenomenal sales job as well...especially if you where more like early teens when those adventures came out.

[Tacticslion]

glass wrote:

Alan_Beven wrote:

4. Out of combat is freeform. Skill Challenges never worked for me.

Have you tried Stalker0's Obsidian alternative. Still not perfect, but at least we don't all groan every time an SC come round.

_
glass.

Is there anywhere else to get this? I'm not permitted to download either this one or the older one, because I'm not part of ENWorld.

[Diffan]

14 sided die wrote:

ONe thing I noticed about 4e was that it was really easy to pick up and play, and to teach to beginners, and didn't require a huge level of system mastery, since everyone works off basically the same mechanics

My experience as well. During a summer two years ago I had a series of friends-of-friends stop by to game occasionally and they never played before. With 2 sessions they picked up the game quite easily and was having a blast, even when one of them died.

[glass]

Tacticslion wrote:

Is there anywhere else to get this [Obsidian]? I'm not permitted to download either this one or the older one, because I'm not part of ENWorld.

There is, because I am not part of ENworld either (I used to have an account years ago, but I lost my login when my email address changed and emails to the admins for help were ignored). And I know it took me a few attempts to actually find it, but I can't remember where.

It is only 260k though, if you PM me your address I can probably email it to you.

_
glass.