Sandbox gaming

[nedjer]

I think in-between is perfectly fine. The game I run has plot bits and NPCs with motivations and plans. I don't have a story planned out to every last detail, but I do give the PCs something to interact with and learn about. What they choose to do with that is their business. I had to improv last weeks adventure in it's entirety because the group decided to get off the ship they were on and go riding hippocampi into some weird rocky area they spotted from the deck. I never tell them no.
But I still plan, and I really don't think that is a bad thing.

Must stick to reading threads backwards- then I'd have known that you're a ninja GM already.

 

[Choranzanus]

The extreme that I was presented with where the world does nothing and the NPCs are all nameless and faceless with no motivation was obviously a bad example. Just as many people who have had a particularly railroady campaign have had their experience colored.

In my experience this is common threat in a sandbox style game, because when a DM must do a lot more NPCs, locations, plots there is a chance it will look more washed out, standart or boring. If you are doing entire world at once it is easy to overlook details, which is what really makes the world come alive.

 

[Ariosto]

If you are doing entire world at once it is easy to overlook details, which is what really makes the world come alive.

You must be LOOKING at the entire world at once, which is possible only from a great remove.

Zoom in from that outer-space perspective, and guess what? There are more details. You have got to do that if you are going actually to play!

In actual play, nobody is "doing the entire world at once". Some people might be doing nothing but following rigid instructions, but if so then they are just being poor substitutes for computers.

The universe is close enough to infinite in all directions -- including "down" to the smaller and "in" to the more subtle -- that there is "an entire world" in each moment.

It is rather to the point of having players that they are not perfectly predictable. There is no telling where they may turn their attention, and wherever that may be, the GM must provide something; verisimilitude abhors a vacuum.

A scenario in which "the world does nothing and the NPCs are all nameless and faceless with no motivation" can be a flat-out "railroad".

More commonly, we can have photo-realistic manikins with all the depth of cardboard cutouts, in a Potemkin Village in the Twilight Zone. Get out of town? You can't get out of town!

That can be very interesting if it's just one layer of the onion, as for instance in the movies "Dark City", "The Truman Show" and "The Matrix". It can be a pain in neck, though, if there really is "no there there" at all.

Most commonly of all, it doesn't matter how shallow the stage set is. It serves for just one scene along the plot line, and the director will be moving the players along to the next set before the paint is dry.

The big deal of course is that it is supposed to be frozen in a certain state until Chapter X. Players are not allowed to change it away from the plot line.

The actual game in a plotted scenario occurs within the boundaries of those chapters. The "space between" those borders is effectively a non-game-play domain.

So, what we have is actually a sequence of discrete games. The designers of 4e take that right down to the "encounter", which has a beginning and an end, victory conditions, and -- a bit of innovation in the game system -- more of its own independent balance than in old D&D games.

The free campaign is less like boxes and more like streams.

I am not very familiar with MMORPGs, and certainly computerization can call for different approaches. I suspect, though, that to some degree the model of streams across terrain is not just more fun for (some) players but inherently more practical logistically when you have a large number of players interacting in a continually updated "shared world".

That point may be not only hard to appreciate but personally moot if your RPG experience is entirely with "campaigns" that consist of the same few people moving the same few characters in a single group across a map that's discarded after just a couple of years.

 

[Mark CMG]

From the DM/GM/Referee/Facilitator POV, a sandbox setting/campaign has a character (NPC) focus rather than a plot focus. NPCs that are encountered react to situations before them rather than simply following predesigned tracks and ignoring circumstances. There are no railroads in a sandbox. PCs can roam the world as they please. PCs can also have an influence on NPCs (through both direct and indirect action), though that is not a given, which is why the appearance of railroading might be present. Sometimes the influence of PCs on NPCs can be negligible. Players make their PCs' choices and describe their actions, DMs/GMs/Referees/Facilitators describe the consequences and other particulars sensed by the PCs.

 

[Choranzanus]

You must be LOOKING at the entire world at once, which is possible only from a great remove.

To tell you the truth I have NO CLUE what you are trying to say with your wall of text. If you interpret my post as some kind of attack on sandbox, it isn't. I am just pointing out that when you design a "railroad" campaign you know you have to add detail, because that is effectively the only thing to design. In a sandbox campaign the DM is often overtaken by some sort of megalomania that they have to design everything PCs could ever possibly encounter or where they could go, which means doing a lot more work, which in turn can lead to game with lots of "standart ruins", "standart NPCs" etc. There might be interesting NPCs or enemies or ruins out there, but are so diluted that you are unlikely to encounter them.

 

[Choranzanus]

From the DM/GM/Referee/Facilitator POV, a sandbox setting/campaign has a character (NPC) focus rather than a plot focus. NPCs that are encountered react to situations before them rather than simply following predesigned tracks and ignoring circumstances. There are no railroads in a sandbox. PCs can roam the world as they please. PCs can also have an influence on NPCs (through both direct and indirect action), though that is not a given, which is why the appearance of railroading might be present. Sometimes the influence of PCs on NPCs can be negligible. Players make their PCs' choices and describe their actions, DMs/GMs/Referees/Facilitators describe the consequences and other particulars sensed by the PCs.

While I agree very much with the general direction of this post a slight note: a sandbox campaign should contain plots, lots of them in fact, except for the fact that these plots are going on without PCs and will continue to do so unless the PCs decide to get involved in them. If you think of plot as something that happens to PCs, your world will not come alive, even with good NPCs because they will still be something that is there just to interact with PCs, not something that has objective existence even if the players are not looking.

What you say about NPCs is a general advice for any DM, whether they are running sandbox campaign or not: PLAY THE NPCs. Its a roleplaying game and you (as a DM) play the role of NPCs, just like players play their roles. If you are not reactive with NPCs then you are not doing half of your job.

 

[Ariosto]

I am just pointing out that when you design a "railroad" campaign you know you have to add detail, because that is effectively the only thing to design.

You have to design the "railroad"; adding detail is optional (as ever, with or without rails). From what I have seen, a "detail" often added is a note that something is actually a non-functional piece of set dressing rather than an actual prop (or character, for that matter)!

In a sandbox campaign the DM is often overtaken by some sort of megalomania that they have to design everything PCs could ever possibly encounter ...

In over 30 years of FRP, I have seen such compulsion only "in" non-campaigns that fail to materialize precisely because they are perpetually "not ready yet".

Anyway, the compulsion to "design" everything hardly creates a lack of design! People and places do not become less vividly depicted than when they got no attention at all.

What it seems actually to create most often -- especially when "design" means a lot of accounting as commonly in, e.g., Champions or 3E -- is an incentive to restrict the game to limited scenarios.

Players who demand such a cumbersome approach are in no position to demand an open scenario as well!

When it comes to the details that really breathe life into the game, those are mostly improvised in any case. We'll deal with about as many phenomena per unit of time whether we are stuck in a plot line in a tiny orbital module or pursuing a goal of our own choosing over sea and land.

 

[Choranzanus]

You have to design the "railroad"; adding detail is optional (as ever, with or without rails). From what I have seen, a "detail" often added is a note that something is actually a non-functional piece of set dressing rather than an actual prop (or character, for that matter)!

I have yet to see a campaign where adding of detail is a problem, but perhaps an example would serve us well?

In over 30 years of FRP, I have seen such compulsion only "in" non-campaigns that fail to materialize precisely because they are perpetually "not ready yet".

I am sure there are plenty of such, but you are of course exxagerating. Almost all campaigns will involve something DM has prepared and something he has not. If you just make up things as you go you are not playing in a sandbox campaign. Sandbox is like a dungeon but on a larger scale: you can go anywhere and DM knows or at least has rough idea what is there. Of course, in a dungeon you are making up details as you go, but it is not the kind of details that we are talking about here, like who is there and why they are here.

Anyway, the compulsion to "design" everything hardly creates a lack of design! People and places do not become less vividly depicted than when they got no attention at all.

Sure, but you only have so much time and invention to detail everything. If you are doing railroad you know what will happen and thus can detail it very much with little time. That is why people are doing it in the first place! You are not comparing your design with situation when things don't get attention. You are comparing it with situation where they get a lot of attention. Frankly I think my point is pretty obvious when you think about it.

What it seems actually to create most often -- especially when "design" means a lot of accounting as commonly in, e.g., Champions or 3E -- is an incentive to restrict the game to limited scenarios.

Sure, but we are talking here about a situation where you decided to run a sandbox campaign.

When it comes to the details that really breathe life into the game, those are mostly improvised in any case. We'll deal with about as many phenomena per unit of time whether we are stuck in a plot line in a tiny orbital module or pursuing a goal of our own choosing over sea and land.

Again it depends what exactly you mean by "details", especially since you can improvise everything. In my experience almost everything you improvise is only skin deep. This is not a problem when you are improvising dungeon texture, but it is almost certainly a problem when you are improvising entire NPCs.

 

[Mark CMG]

While I agree very much with the general direction of this post a slight note: a sandbox campaign should contain plots, lots of them in fact, except for the fact that these plots are going on without PCs and will continue to do so unless the PCs decide to get involved in them.

This misconception is largely why so many find running a sandbox campaign/setting so daunting. A plot is something you have when you decide in advance how something is going to happen, how a character (NPC or PC) idea will be put into action. Plots restrict thinking and are often a lot of additional work that comes to nothing. If or when PCs become involved, as long as the the NPC goals and abilities are defined (you need these for plots anyway), you can determine (much as a player would for a PC) how the NPCs will react in a situation to further their goals. The problem with having plots in advance is the impetus to not abandon the previous work and thus to think in terms of keeping the plot despite what has happened rather than to thinking terms of NPCs achieving their goals while other things are happening. When you run a game with predetermined plots, narrative feels past tense because what develops is often shoehorned to fit preconception of how gameplay should go. When you run a game with NPC goals in mind, all you need to do is to react to what is happening and the game narrative unfolds in the present. Sandbox is a mindset of the now.

 

[chaochou]

If or when PCs become involved, as long as the the NPC goals and abilities are defined (you need these for plots anyway), you can determine (much as a player would for a PC) how the NPCs will react in a situation to further their goals.

Cool post.

In the spirit of the thread, which I hope is talking about the 'how' rather than the 'why' or the 'definition of sandbox', could you share an example?

Like an example situation showing all the various story developments that could come from an NPC decision.

Or a method of how you ensure PCs start the game with goals and motivation that are relevant to both the player and the setting?

I think the style of play that you describe is easier to understand when it's shown rather than when it's defined. I tried to demonstrate exactly what you're talking about in this post with my OP, but it seems to have gone unnoticed.