I've been thinking about making a campaign that takes place in a single city, and making it sandbox-ish within that boundary. I'll be able to flush out this city as I'm not planning on making this world for a deadline, and I was wondering if people normally have fixed CR encounters in their worlds. Usually I build the details of my world as the players move through it and it kind of adjusts for their level to keep the challenge at about a hard difficulty.
I've never done this sort of open-world before, and I was wondering what the community thought of it. I know I'll have to telegraph to my players at session zero that the world moves and changes with or without them and that they can run into instances where some things are too strong for them to handle without some serious resource allocation.
The problem with sandboxes in general is that you have to prep a lot of stuff that the PCs will bypass, because you don't know which things they're going to pay attention to. This is increased even further with a range of CRs, because you not only have the stuff they ignore, you have the stuff they might pay attention to but aren't currently at a viable level to do.
In general I recommend only giving basic hints about stuff, and fleshing it out when the players decide to investigate, but it depends on your preferred style.
I do think you need to be very, very clear with the players about it. There seems to be an expectation that all encounters are balanced for the party, and the party can win every fight. And Players hate to run away. So make it very clear that just because they hear about the ancient dragon over in that cave outside of town doesn’t mean they’ll win if they fight it at level 2. Let them know there will be things too tough for them, and they will tpk if they take those fights on.
I think it's more of a world-building exercise than anything else at this point. Just something to put some creativity into. Normally I build my world around the players, adding in plot hooks to their backstories after they've been built by the players. I think it'll be interesting to see how a mostly done world looks and can be shifted to accommodate some players. Thanks for the advice.
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I've been thinking about making a campaign that takes place in a single city, and making it sandbox-ish within that boundary. I'll be able to flush out this city as I'm not planning on making this world for a deadline, and I was wondering if people normally have fixed CR encounters in their worlds. Usually I build the details of my world as the players move through it and it kind of adjusts for their level to keep the challenge at about a hard difficulty.
I've never done this sort of open-world before, and I was wondering what the community thought of it. I know I'll have to telegraph to my players at session zero that the world moves and changes with or without them and that they can run into instances where some things are too strong for them to handle without some serious resource allocation.
The problem with sandboxes in general is that you have to prep a lot of stuff that the PCs will bypass, because you don't know which things they're going to pay attention to. This is increased even further with a range of CRs, because you not only have the stuff they ignore, you have the stuff they might pay attention to but aren't currently at a viable level to do.
In general I recommend only giving basic hints about stuff, and fleshing it out when the players decide to investigate, but it depends on your preferred style.
I do think you need to be very, very clear with the players about it. There seems to be an expectation that all encounters are balanced for the party, and the party can win every fight. And Players hate to run away. So make it very clear that just because they hear about the ancient dragon over in that cave outside of town doesn’t mean they’ll win if they fight it at level 2. Let them know there will be things too tough for them, and they will tpk if they take those fights on.
I think it's more of a world-building exercise than anything else at this point. Just something to put some creativity into. Normally I build my world around the players, adding in plot hooks to their backstories after they've been built by the players. I think it'll be interesting to see how a mostly done world looks and can be shifted to accommodate some players. Thanks for the advice.