Players versus the world

[qazzquimby]

My players are a bunch of munchkins and enjoy overcoming incredible challenges rather than role-playing a serious story. Since everyone's having fun I'm not going to see that as a problem. Instead my next campaign will be entirely based around the idea.

Players
The players will be allowed free reign to do anything legal by game rules. They're chaotic evil's at heart so I can see them pulling anything on their rise to power. I'm also allowing use of the gramarist class, and putting no restrictions on what can be done on the artificer. Also each player can have more than one character (to a maximum of three lets say) but only those brought to the field will collect xp.

The world
The worlds not playing nice like it does in most campaigns.
I'm thinking of running multiple interlocking "end of the world" plots (maybe elder evils?) to keep them working. Any enemies they make will be powerful, and will actively hunt them and thwart them at every turn. Seeing as one of my players in interested in summoning fiends, that should be interesting.
I'm also including planar travel and as many developed planes as I can, to make the sandbox more interesting.I'm banning some of the more boring spells, so more complicated work arounds will have to be thought through. For instance, straight up resurrection is out, but there are many ways they can trap a soul, and many things they can do with it. As the players raise in power there will probably be some politicking, unless they take the boring "blast em" route, which I'll discourage. Armies could potentially be at their command and I'll do my best to simulate the worlds response to that. Also I imagine if they become powerful enough, the gods might take notice.

What do you think? Is this a workable idea? Anything to keep in mind?

[dascarletm]

If you use the elder evils be careful to make them beefer if need be. You could have a portal to the abyss open up near where they are based. Constant flow of encounters if they need.

[qazzquimby]

forgot to mention, the game won't scale with the players nearly as much as it normally would. The world is a tough place full or liches with character levels, and if the players don't have an escape, they're going to learn from their mistakes. The world will under no circumstances go easy on them.

[Kane0]

It's entirely doable. I'm currently running a full Outer Plane campaign that is more or less a sandbox approach as well.

Throw 'em in Sigil, or if you really want to test their mettle, right into the Blood War.

If you have access to any 2nd ed Planescape books, you'd know how nasty it can get :smallamused:

[Rubik]

My players are a bunch of munchkinsYour players are cheaters?

[Randomguy]

Your players are cheaters?

There's a difference between legally stacking up a lot of bonuses to deal tons of damage (or to whatever end) and actually cheating. Munchkins follow the rules (although they can be prone to somewhat cheesy rule interpretations that still follow RAW).


I've heard that the trouble with sandbox games is that if you give the players the option to do whatever they want, they don't really know what to do. Try including a few quest hooks somewhere.

Remember to use Shrodinger's NPC: If you have an interesting NPC in a town that the players destroy completely (without meeting the NPC) or never go to, then you can make it so that the NPC always lived in another town.


It would be interesting if you gave them the opportunity to start the Tippyverse, or set the entire game in the Tippyverse or the era when the teleportation circle was just discovered.

[Fable Wright]

Munchkins follow the rules (although they can be prone to somewhat cheesy rule interpretations that still follow RAW).

This is not entirely accurate. Quite a lot of people interpret the difference between optimizing and Munchkin-ing as the fact that Munchkins are willing to bend, or occasionally break, rules to get their characters to work, and be significantly more powerful than anyone else. Munchkin is not a term usually associated with people who do play 100% by the rules.

[Randomguy]

This is not entirely accurate. Quite a lot of people interpret the difference between optimizing and Munchkin-ing as the fact that Munchkins are willing to bend, or occasionally break, rules to get their characters to work, and be significantly more powerful than anyone else. Munchkin is not a term usually associated with people who do play 100% by the rules.

Oh. My mistake.

[qazzquimby]

That would be my mistake then. They're not cheaters, they just giggle with delight whenever they can find some clever or evil way to one shot the boss monster. And like I said the world will often be trying to kill it back, so i doubt they'll be bored. Besides, im sure they can create some story of scheme. Does anyone know variant rules or ideas to make the world more hard and realistic without being game breaking?

[Randomguy]

The only things that comes to mind are Vitality and wound points, (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/variant/adventuring/vitalityAndWoundPoints.htm) Armour ad DR (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/variant/adventuring/armorAsDamageReduction.htm) and lastly Test Based Prereqs (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/variant/campaigns/testBasedPrerequisites.htm) for PrC's. I'm not sure how well any of those work, though, and you might want to make your own prerequisites for the "test based prerequisites" part.

[qazzquimby]

Thanks, I'll look into those. I was thinking more along the lines of my banning the too easy solutions like resurrection. They're smart they'll find a way. Sorry if my questions vague, I'm mostly trying to stop the thread from dying because I love the feedback I'm getting.