Sandbox v Safety Rails

This post is in reply to an impromptu blog carnival started by thadeousc over on his This is my game blog.

The original post dealt with the idea of sandbox campaigns vs "safety rail" campaigns, the latter being campaigns in which every encounter was scaled to the party's level and the former being campaigns in which the maps feature that chestnut of cartography, "Here be dragons!" and the dragons were the sort that eat your adventurers without a second thought.

In his initial post thadeousc makes this comment:

Players in 4th edition D&D are given characters who are heroes to begin with; stronger and better than the average person. Every character has a bag of powers and the ability to go toe to toe with some pretty bad ass monsters. This often leaves players feeling like running or avoiding a fight is never a valid option for an encounter. I’m not sure if it is the way 4th edition has been designed or just the way players think, but something has taught us that every encounter should be winnable, and that worlds increase in level/power as players do.

It's a statement that I've heard repeated often, and I think (with all due respect) that it misses the point a little.

When having these sort of discussions, I think we need to be very careful about the distinction between the game and the game world. 

Should the game world level with the PCs, so that every enemy they could conceivably face is their level? I doubt there's a person in the world who would answer that question in the affirmative.

Should the game level so that every enemy they do face is their level? That's an entirely different question, and one that I don't think is as easy to answer. For starters, it is highly dependent on genre. No one who is knowingly playing in a Ravenloft campaign would complain about routinely encountering monsters against which their only option was to flee.

In the heroic fantasy genre (which is the genre into which I categorise Forgotten Realms, for example), I think there's much less room for the overlevelled encounter. The motif of the genre is brave heroes battling and defeating monstrous foes, and 4e plays wonderfully to that motif. Which is not to say that there's no room for it at all.

For starters, no DM should outright ban their players from going somewhere in the game world that they want to go. If your players want to take their PCs to the Dungeon of Planar Doom at 1st level, let them. They're the ones making the deliberate choice to break the heroic fantasy motif by going somewhere simply for the sake of going there. But make it clear to them that that's what they're doing and what the consequences may be.

Overlevelled encounters also serve as excellent plot and story points. Thadeousc draws on Lord of the Rings in his arguments, but I suggest he's viewing things incorrectly. The examples he gave (such as the hobbits at the black gate) aren't encounters in the D&D "fight something until it's dead" sense of the word. The failed attempt to cross Caradras? The watcher in the deep at the door to Moria? The balrog at the bridge at Khazad-Dum? These aren't really "encounters". They are scenes (and perhaps challenges) imposed by Tolkien (a.k.a. the DM) to steer the plot in a different direction.

And I think the deliberateness of the DM's act is important. I see D&D (especially 4e) as a vehicle for telling heroic stories. The heroes don't need to be infallible and they certainly don't need to be unbeatable, but I don't see the value in an overlevelled encounter just for the purposes of showing your PCs that they're not untouchable. Sticking a great wyrm dragon in the enchanted forest and letting the PCs blunder in there for no reason other than curiosity is bad storytelling. Forcing the PCs to navigate the forest to achieve their aims in the knowledge that they can't possibly defeat the dragon if it catches them is another thing altogether. It can be great storytelling, but only if you handle the mechanical challenge appropriately. Hint: Having the PCs simply roll Stealth checks and then throwing the dragon at them probably isn't the way to do it.

So returning to the original questions:

Should the game world level with the PCs? No. Definitely not.

Should the game level with the PCs. Yes. I believe it should, within reason and within the agreed genre of your game.

Previous posts in the carnival:

First Post by ThadeousC: mydndgame.net

Second Post by WolfSamurai: Phelanar’s Den

Third Post by Obsidian Crane: The Daily Encounter

Fourth Post by dkarr: dkarr’s LoreMaster Page

Fifth Post by Adam Dray: adamdray’s LiveJournal

Sixth Post by Tracy H.: SarahDarkmagic.com

Seventh Post by Deadorcs: Init or What?

Eighth Post by Brian Engard: Gamecrafter’s Guild

Ninth Post by NewbieDm: NewbieDM.com

Tenth Post by DMSamuel: RPG Musings