Sandbox-style: What's your opinion?

Delta said:

LOL. Now that's good D&D.

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It's something the players who were involved in the incident continue to refer to, several years after it occurring. It was also basically me just improvising to react to the fact that the players had derailed the plot at this point. One of my finest moments. I think the fact that I had done a fair amount of preparation concerning the city they were in allowed me to pull this off. So, sandbox style play is good, but requires a fair amount of preparation with the ability to be flexible and adapt to WHATEVER the PCs decide to do.

Yeah, I gotta go with DannyAlcatraz on this one. A properly done sandbox game is a thing of beauty. But, it can go terribly, terribly wrong very easily.

A more quest based game (or story based, whatever) has the advantage of keeping everyone on the same page, and avoids the larger pitfalls of sandbox play. A bad quest based game is a railroad that can still be fun, if people are willing to ride the rails. A bad sandbox game is just mindlessly wandering from random encounter to random encounter. Or worse, everyone staring at everyone else around the table and not having any inclination of driving things at all.

But, on the other hand, a well done sandbox game is probably the best game in town. Certainly the most memorable.