Pathfinder 1E Sandboxes? Forked from Paizo reinvents hexcrawling

[Desdichado]

So, just for the record, could someone please define "sandbox" here, or point to a generally accepted definition online?

Open world - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nonlinear_gameplay

It's in relation to video games, but that's where the label was coined, and it's been retroactively applied back into tabletop RPGs.

The differences in definition you'll see are merely where an individual takes a specific implementation of a "sandbox" and attempts to make his specific implementation come across as a standard of some sorts.

However, as has been pointed out, really all that is meant in a general sense, that most people understand, by the term "sandbox" is the opposite of a railroad, i.e., the players decide the course of the game, where they will go, what they will do, and what interests them. The GM takes a much more passive role of reacting to the players rather than engaging the players with a specific plot or plot hook.

 

[Celebrim]

I've been in games that have approached the "railroad" endpoint. I've been in games that approach the "sandbox" endpoint.

I think that its unfair to compare 'railroad' to 'sandbox'. Railroad is generally taken as an endpoint of a plot driven campaign approach. Sandbox is not generally understood to be the end point of an exploration driven approach. Sandbox is probably in fact more a synonym for 'exploration driven' than it is a word for an extreme endpoint of an 'exploration driven' approach.

The critical aspect of a sandbox is that it is difficult or impossible to prepare the game more than a few sessions in advance (without preparing everything) because you never know where its going to go. In particular, while you can prepare locations, it's difficult to impossible to prepare events ahead of time because events happen primarily in responce to player choice. It should be obvious why publishers gravitate toward 'Adventure Paths' whether we are talking about Dragonlance or Age of Worms. With an 'Adventure Path' you can give the DM pretty much everything he needs to run the campaign using some obvious techniques. With a sandbox, this is much harder, and the scope of the information you must provide is much greater and the skill required of the DM to fill in the missing details is generally higher.

The danger of a plot driven campaign is that its brittle with regard to player choice, and this can result in a 'railroad' where the player choice is disregarded in favor of dragging the player through the scenary on the DM's predetermined path. The danger in a sandbox - or exploration driven campagin - is more akin to putting the players in a rowboat in the middle of the open ocean. While they are free to go anywhere they want, there might not be anything very interesting to see. DM laziness aside, in my opinion this most typically happens with a DM who wants to create a sandbox for idealistic reasons, but is by temperment more suited to running an adventure path. The DM creates an ocean with a few widely scattered points of interest, fails to provide a map, and then blames the PC's for not finding them.

 

[coyote6]

On the concept of NPC "stasis"...

This is something of a misleading artifact, I think. Within the NPCs' frame of reference, they've got a past, a present, and plans for the future. But none of that stuff "really" exists in the game until it's observed by the players, whether first hand or in the form of rumors, or what-have-you.

So in this conceptual sandbox, you've got the cult of the spider god "on pause" in the middle of their ritual until the PCs show up. This doesn't mean that it's actually happening for all eternity, and will keep on happening forever if the PCs never go there. All it means is that if this week the PCs decide to go into the cave of the spider god cult, that's what they'll find.

That doesn't mean it isn't a sandbox ...

FWIW, in past threads, people have said that such a set up is not a sandbox. I never quite understood what their concept of a sandbox was, or how it worked, though, so I may be misunderstanding 'em.

The big problem with the "sandbox" model is you have to have the right players for it. I once had a group where I just dropped them into my homebrew Lankhmar equivalent and they'd make their own adventures, all I had to do was moderate the dice rolls. But I've also had a group who, if I said, "What do you want to do?" would stare at me like deer at an oncoming pair of headlights and eventually say, "I don't know, what am I supposed to do?"

Hey, at least they asked; there are players that would never even do that much.

(I may be one of them, on a bad day. )

 

[Rechan]

Err... no. We're saying that it's already defined, and we've kinda moved past the definition phase of the discussion.

I'm not sure what you're struggling with exactly here.

I'm replying to this:

Describing a play style is like describing a genre of fiction - it is a vague thing, drawn only in broad strokes of tropes the thing has. If you go too far into the details, you aren't talking about the genre, you're talking about one implementation (like one novel).

And I am saying to Umbran that a genre of fiction can be quite well dissected; it's not vague. And yet this Sandbox is?

You do realize, I hope, and can imagine how perhaps other people don't play the same way you do?

You do realize how patronizing that sounds, right?

In a railroad, what you just said is not true. That's the whole point of a railroad. And yes, a railroad is generally viewed as a "Bad Thing™" by most people. But not by everybody. And just because it's a bad thing doesn't mean that there aren't plenty of bad GMs out there who do it, or at least approach that condition. Hence the definition.

There's an impression I'm getting from a few posters is that there's a dichotomy. "If it ain't a sandbox, it's a railroad". A poster upthread said that the Sandbox is the repudiation of the railroad. But if the Railroad is the extreme, "viewed as a bad thing by most people" as you say, then it's not an 'either/or' issue, and that most people (even those who aren't running Sandboxes) aren't running a Railroad.

Nobody in any discussion I've ever heard of, in gaming or literature, calls that a plot. That's a "plot hook" or a potential plot. Plot is either what happens when the PCs do something about it, or in a more railroady scenario, what the GM has already decided the PCs will do about it and how they will proceed, and if the PCs attempt anything else, it'll fail just because, that's not what was written beforehand. Plot, in this case, does not take on a new definition that you've made up for it, but uses a very similar one to what plot in a discussion of a book or movie would also use.

Augh. That's not what I'm saying. Please, go back and Umbran's posts, and read my responses to him.

Umbran said earlier that Sandboxes have no plot. And I am arguing that if a sandbox has a plot hook, then there's a plot attached to that hook! Thus, a sandbox has plots. If it doesn't, then there are no plot hooks and it's a series of random encounters and monster lairs with monsters waiting for the PCs to walk in their front door.

 

[The_Gneech]

FWIW, in past threads, people have said that such a set up is not a sandbox. I never quite understood what their concept of a sandbox was, or how it worked, though, so I may be misunderstanding 'em.

Well, in that case, I wouldn't understand either. Especially if we're retrofitting "sandbox" from videogames back to tabletop RPGs. In just about every videogame I've ever seen, the world "spawns" in predetermined ways, instead of just running along and amusing itself until you get there.

-The Gneech

 

[coyote6]

However, as has been pointed out, really all that is meant in a general sense, that most people understand, by the term "sandbox" is the opposite of a railroad, i.e., the players decide the course of the game, where they will go, what they will do, and what interests them. The GM takes a much more passive role of reacting to the players rather than engaging the players with a specific plot or plot hook.

I think there are more than just those two endpoints -- "sandbox" and "adventure path". There's also the "dungeon/mission of the week" -- which isn't an adventure path, because this dungeon/mission/adventure has nothing to do with last week's or next week's, but it isn't a sandbox, because no PCs or players said "let's do this". It's just what the next adventure is. It might be the module the GM just got (heck, maybe it was a present from the players), it might be what random dice rolls produced, or it might be the product of random whim.

It's episodic, which both sandboxes and adventure paths can also be, so it shares a possible characteristic with both; but I don't think it fits under either rubric.

(It's the way we played D&D when I was 12, more-or-less.)

Are there any other formats orthogonal to the "sandbox <--> adventure path" line?

Is that even a line? What if your sandbox lets the players go to Cauldron, or Diamond Lake, or Sasserine, with multiple hooks in each, some of which lead to the Shackled City, Age of Worms, or Savage Tide? Is that a sandbox of adventure paths?

 

[Rechan]

Refusing to play in the sand box is like refusing to play the adventure path, yup. But so what?

... Earlier you were saying you can't ditch the railroad. Or by ditching it, that you're no longer ont he railroad.

Well if you ditch the sandbox, you're no longer in the box.

That's the so.

 

[Rechan]

Well, in that case, I wouldn't understand either. Especially if we're retrofitting "sandbox" from videogames back to tabletop RPGs. In just about every videogame I've ever seen, the world "spawns" in predetermined ways, instead of just running along and amusing itself until you get there.

-The Gneech

Not to mention that each Quest in the video game sandbox is fairly linear. You can pick up each quest at your leisure, and abandon it and come back, but the way you resolve it is fairly linear and it has a distinct path.

Which is different than how it's being used here, where the Sandbox has no plots and non-linear.

 

[ExploderWizard]

Umbran said earlier that Sandboxes have no plot. And I am arguing that if a sandbox has a plot hook, then there's a plot attached to that hook!

It would seem logical, hence the name.

Thus, a sandbox has plots. If it doesn't, then there are no plot hooks and it's a series of random encounters and monster lairs with monsters waiting for the PCs to walk in their front door.

Who says everything stays in stasis just waiting for PC's simply because there are no plot hooks (or plots!)?

NPC's and monsters can have regular activities that they engage in. Timetables can outline these activities so that the world moves on along no matter if the PC's show up or not. Plot hooks are not required to give a campaign world a sense of motion and life, they just provide motivation and areas of interest for the players to latch onto.

 

[WizarDru]

Hmm, it's been stated that the definition of "sandbox" was already settled in the discussion (which I'm really trying to follow!). Alas, I seem to have missed it.

So, just for the record, could someone please define "sandbox" here, or point to a generally accepted definition online?

I'm curious because I'm seeing lots of differing views in conflict with each other, as well as with my own. That would really help the lurkers on this thread, I think!

Well, I don't think everyone has agreed on one definition, but I think that several people (including myself) have generally looked on Umbran's post up-thread as being a pretty straightforward and generally accepted definition.


For myself, I've always seen adventure styles working on a spectrum from Sandbox to Railroad, which most campaigns falling somewhere square in the middle. A true railroad, at least as I knew them in then 1980s, was usually the providence of the DM who didn't know how to work off-script. In this sense, railroad specifically referred to the fact that the players were FORCED to follow the pre-set plot, regardless of their actions. Not always a bad thing, but generally only the best DMs could pull it off.

A classic example of a railroad is the classic 'A' series of AD&D modules, the Slaver series. Either at the end of A3 or the beginning of A4, the party is captured, robbed of all their equipment and then traps them in a prison beneath a volcano. If the DM uses the scenario as written (these were originally tournament modules), they have no say in the matter. The railroad removes all freedom. In home play, this would often translate into situations where the DM would do a terrible job of actively thwarting the players attempts to do anything except follow the DM's pre-ordained story. Dragonlance was similarly targeted for modules that not only used pre-set stories, but used pre-set characters who HAD to follow the novel's plot...their fates entirely pre-ordained.

A 'sandbox' game, which is a relatively new term that caught fire from Grand Theft Auto III, emphasizes the exact opposite, IME. The DM provides virtually NO direction or guidance to the players, who are expected to move their own personal story along. This does not mean the DM does not provide story hooks, detailed NPCs or actual adventures. Merely that the players narrative is their own and they can weave in and out of events as they choose, regardless of how this might affect the DM's plans. The characters may wander into a tavern, ask if there are any ancient ruins about and go straight to them. Once there, they discover an ancient spirit that asks for their help and that there's a dragon below. They may help the spirit. They may ask the local lord for assistance in dealing with the dragon. They may decide that no sane person would live within 100 miles of a dragon and head North to the big city on the map. An overarching story may appear...may even be in the planning from the beginning; but the DM lets the players have unprecedented control of their destinies. The world reacts to them. If they kill a man in a town, they may get chased by the Sheriff and his men, but they chose to go to that town and how to handle that situation.

If the Railroad is a novel and the sandbox is a 'choose your own adventure' book, then most campaigns fall squarely in the middle. How well each group prefers that adventure style will vary.

In many campaigns, the players want some degree of direction and story to drive their actions, but also want some degree of freedom to pursue their own agendas. And likewise, the DM may expect or impose some limitations for the sake of meta-plot or meta-game. The players, for example, may be told they are all in the employ of a rich merchant noble. How and why may be left to them, but for the sake of getting the game going, they all accept this imposition on their freedom. They may be told that the local lord needs their help...and then one player says he refuses. The DM then comes up with a reason, in-story, for why the player's character must follow the plot. The plot continues in this fashion, with players and DM shaping it like a piece of clay.

Many of the classic modules, as printed followed one of the two extremes. Many of the 'railroad' variety were, in fact, tournament modules. They were meant to play with strangers at conventions in a matter of hours. The setting of Greyhawk, by contrast, was the exact opposite. Based on Gary's campaign, where players might be good or evil and would act as they saw fit. They might hear of a tower and decide to go there...or they might not. The game had 20 people or more playing in it, often in solo or small sessions. Something like Castle Greyhawk would attract players who heard of it, but they would choose to go somewhere and Gygax would accommodate them.

I don't think this is a generational thing, at all. Even people new to D&D have found appeal in the approach that works for them.


As far as I'm concerned, you can have fun with any position on the spectrum, if you've got a good DM and players who are on board.