The Campaign: Balanced or Unbalanced? The Party: Balanced or Unbalanced? Encounters: Balanced or Unbalanced? 003

One of the comments I have run into concerning Sandboxian play and balanced encounters is if you don’t balance everything for the levels of your players, then what do you do when they just hang out “safe” areas and when they are 12th to 15th level and all they do is beat up on 1st level monsters. Does anyone really have players like that? I sure don’t, my players now and bitd seek out things that challenge them and are likely to be too tough for them but they (even knowing this upfront) do it anyway. When they are high level, they may have to fight though some new mooks on the way to where they are going but they do not go looking for mooks to fight.

You don’t balance the encounters, IE. you don’t water encounters down and you don’t remove easy encounters. You just give them what comes and you provide the players (well the PCs) the information they need to make good decisions.

When the players are higher level they have usually already cleared out the first few levels of the dungeon and are aggressively going after the deeper tougher levels. When my players run into something they aren't ready for they will run away regroup and either comeback with a solid plan or get stronger and then come back and it may or may not be there later, since things are not static. My players are always on their guard because they know that death lurks around every corner. It is not a black box, but if I roll something really tough I don't water it down for them. For example, one thing about my campaign is that trolls are immortal unless killed and I have many different types. A really old troll could be very powerful and very large, you better have some serious fire power if you want to bring him down or you might try to slip into his lair while he is out foraging far and wide for food. There is a reason that you have not seen or heard any animals for quite a while and why you have seen these really large footprints. Of course the older a troll gets the craftier he gets and my trolls start as unintelligent and the older they get the smarter they get until they pass from a beast to a sentient creature.

No, there is no attempt made to make every encounter winnable, in fact IMC (while it doesn't bother me if some encounters are pushovers) the majority of the encounters, including many that they win thru great play and superior strategy and tactics, are too difficult for them, if you looked at them from a "balance" standpoint. Now this is partially because my players routinely go to places that they know up front are likely too tough for them, they don't tend to want to play it safe. As first levels they don't flee down the corridor, they instead flee down the stairway deeper into the dungeon, and similar crazy things, etc. However, I love the bold approach and I do reward it by giving them a way out if they can find it and if they take it.

I have never needed to spend time balancing encounters to achieve the results that some talk about, I want to have fun and I want my players to have fun. I don’t need to balance encounters to do that. My encounters tables are in my head and I have dozens of them. When I roll the dice I am choosing between 6-10 encounters that I have in mind, all of which are different and cover a range of difficulty. Perhaps I subconsciously balance the encounters. Perhaps! But some are definitely too tough to fight and my players know to expect that possibility. I am not limited by the rulebooks, I try new things all the time within the spirit of old school gaming.

When it comes to OD&D (both bitd and now) I still play with whomever shows up and whatever characters they have, there is no standard party so the concept of the party in my experience today is not different from what it was back then with the founders of the game, you just play with what you have. Now when I started playing in 1975 in college we did have a more consistent party from game to game to work with although I might have a party of 12 or a party of 24, but now playing with working adults it varies from game to game as to who is able to make it.

I don't do huge writeups ahead of time (I literally do not have that much time), I do my creating on the fly and whatever is behind a given door or beneath a given rock comes into being when they open the door or turn over the rock. Since I do it on the fly I have zero time for conscious thought of comparing the monsters to the party and thinking about "is it winnable". What I am thinking about is will this be fun and giving the players a good description of what they see, so they can decide what action they want to take.

As I said I have never had players that finish cleaning out the 1st level before they move on and just because only two players show up or some PCs die, does not mean that my players will stick to an appropriate level of a dungeon, my players tend to flee in what is usually considered inappropriate directions, such as, down the stairs deeper into the dungeon.. IMC portals that could lead anywhere show up as a tinted shimmering in the air. Over the last five years my players have chosen to make the decision to go through over 30 portals, they seem to love to take risks because they keep doing it.

One poster wrote:

Yeah, I can believe in a sandbox designed to be balanced, it can work. It's up to the players to choose from the differently balanced areas/sites where they want to adventure. Balance is in the overall design, instead of in single adventures.

I won't argue with that, I can accept that as a definition of balance.