D&D 5E What separates a sandbox adventure from an AP?

[Reynard]

The sandbox works well because it has clear boundaries (hence sandbox). There's a sort of meta-game, social-contract thing where the DM says to the players, "You can do whatever you want, as long as you stay within this area. Want to skip the dungeon and just start slaughtering townsfolk? Be my guest. But if you leave the valley, I ain't got no D&D material prepared, so you'll either have to suffer my spotty improvisational skills, or else we end this session and pick up next week."

This is important. "Sandbox" does not mean -- cannot mean -- "no limits." It means freedom and agency within whatever limits are set. That's why you can have both a single dungeon and a whole campaign world operate as sandboxes -- it depends on the parameters set up by the DM and agreed to by the players. Note also that there are other limits on sandbox activity that rarely get discussed, the most important of which is probably intra-party consensus. While it is certainly possible for a DM with infinite time and creative resources to run each individual player separately through their own adventures, practically speaking the group is going to operate largely as a unit. Therefore, the collective agency of the players is a limitation on each individual player to some some degree.

 

[SirAntoine]

It is if you let it be, it totally is.

and at home DM's should aim (or free themselves) to make good railroads.[/QUOTE]

..if their players like that sort of thing. Which they don't always.[/QUOTE]

The term itself is used to complain about feeling railroaded places you didn't want to go, which took up your time while you were there, and ultimately you wished you could get away from but couldn't because you always would have to get back on the train. The term is not meant for the mere fact you can be taken somewhere by the train. If it's where you're going, and efficient, it's a great format.

Players can feel led by the nose in encounters, in dungeons or other locations, or in the story. You can write any of these without leading them by the nose, though. The DM establishes the relative importance of everything, including the characters in terms of how they fit into the setting and what their opportunities will be even if they always get what they want.

A good railroad is a series of events and challenges, maintaining relevance or spicing things up, where the players can get off at any time and still be able to play with the same time. I am trying to think of a better term, given the negative connotations of railroad. Perhaps it would be a story, or an adventure synopsis. The players can decide what this will be, or the DM can make events happen.

 

[Mark CMG]

This is important. "Sandbox" does not mean -- cannot mean -- "no limits."

In theory, it does and that's why the continuum is constructed as a theoretical model with Sandbox at one end and Railroad at the other, and that is also why those are the two extremes (because it is a continuum based on "Choices / Options"). In actual practice, no single game ever is run at either extreme of the continuum. Even a series of games run with all the same players and GM, in the same campaign world, won't fall exactly at the same point on the continuum. If one had a Sandbox / Railroad meter, and could hook it up to the game (maybe even the brains of those around the table) it would fluctuate all during the course of play. Sandbox and Railroad are theoretical "ideals" that no on ever achieves.

The reasons for this are simple. No game is ever completely a Railroad because it is a game. There are players involved. They have to make some choices simply by constructing a character and the GM, by allowing this character to be made for his campaign setting (or dungeon, or whatever), is by default agreeing to certain choices being made by the player. That moves you away from the extreme Railroad end of the continuum and each player choice further does so; the more meaningful the choice, the more movement along the continuum. At the other end, each detail created by the GM or agreed upon by the GM and players regarding the setting limits choices. Each new factor introduced by the GM during gameplay when facilitating consequences becomes an additional limitation.

We all know the expression that no plan survives contact (we'll ignore the "with the enemy" part, since I don't proscribe to adversarial GMing ). This is true of both the Railroad and the Sandbox losing their pristine, idyllic states as they come into being and game plays is introduced to them.

 

[Mark CMG]

This raises the same question: who gets to decide what counts as terrible?

Okay, okay. I see what you're driving at. I'll be the decider . . .

 

[Manchu]

Incidentally, is anything besides "module" or "published adventure" meant by "adventure path"? If not, is there some reason the Paizo brand is driving the jargon?

 

[SirAntoine]

Incidentally, is anything besides "module" or "published adventure" meant by "adventure path"? If not, is there some reason the Paizo brand is driving the jargon?

An adventure path is a complete set of modules or published adventures, taking characters through a connected story and over more than one experience level. They may have named Pathfinder after this. They got their start with adventure paths for Dungeon magazine, which were new for that publication, and so they basically coined the phrase. It's really a campaign or adventure "series", but you can call it a path, too.

 

[Mark CMG]

(. . .) is there some reason the Paizo brand is driving the jargon?

They have an extensive staff of some of the best managers, designers, developers, writers, and artists in the business working on that product line that they have built up over the past decade.

 

[Manchu]

So is A1-4 an "adventure path"?

 

[Mark CMG]

So is A1-4 an "adventure path"?

Not by "brand" but one might say so in spirit, I suppose, though I think the tradition terminology is "adventure series".

 

[Reynard]

So is A1-4 an "adventure path"?

I don't think so. At least when I say "Adventure Path" I mean a series of adventures designed to be the campaign. You can have series modules without them being adventure paths because ostensibly characters come to them when they hit the right level, complete them, and go on to other adventures. The reason Dragonlance is often considered the first true Adventure Path (well before the term was coined, of course) is because the campaign starts and ends with the modules. While I am certain some folks continue play after finishing Rise of the Rune Lords or whatever,the basic assumption is that the adventure path is the limit of the campaign (with varying degrees of freedom within any given AP).