Sandbox gaming

[Choranzanus]

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.

Properly developed NPCs don't need just abilities and goals but also plans how they want to achieve these goals. That is what I mean by "plots". Of course if you know all this you also know what will happen without PCs since you are the one who plays these NPCs. At the same time you don't have to think it through, and I never do since that is a waste of time. So your point is really moot for me.

Anyway, even if I did I doubt I would be so enamored with the results that I would somehow force the players to such conclusions.

 

[nedjer]

I'm increaingly baffled by all this plots stuff. A plot is a decorative signpost of limited substance in itself. E.g Romeo loves Juliet and falls out with Juliet's family as a result doesn't in itself contribute a lot to an adventure. It's the challenges or 'journey' underlying the plot which makes up the substance of the gameplay; the (individually) optional, but essential 'jam in the sandwich'.

E.g. stopping the city degenerating into gang warfare, arranging clandestine meetings to let the couple meet, dealing with the aftermath of a duel or running off with Juliet are challenges that seed open narratives and dynamic problem-solving.

Clearly I'm not referring to skill challenges, but rather what the plot hook, ideally, hooks you into.

 

[Ariosto]

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

YOU made the claim that it is "often" a problem. How confusing!

I am sure there are plenty of such, but you are of course exxagerating.

No; I am stating the fact of the matter.

If you just make up things as you go ...

That is hardly the only alternative to the dysfunction ("megalomania") you described!

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!

Also, you can detail very LITTLE, and that is why you "railroad" when people reach the border of the adventure. "You can't do that" means the GM doesn't have to consider the consequences.

It is not in dispute that one CAN itemize the hairs on each flea on a rat and map the veins of mold in a crumb of cheese, if that is how one chooses to spend one's energies. There are diminishing returns, though, in such fastidiousness.

The degree of detail in published works that I have found most useful is to my mind quite adequate. Writing for myself, I will write less because the writing is merely a reminder of information that came in the first place from my own brain!

The players have "only so much time and invention" in a game session as well. It is in the unscripted nature of the game that a great deal -- in my experience, the majority -- of time and attention goes to unanticipated matters.

If the players and the dice were not continually producing surprises, I would hardly see a point in the affair!

So, it is in general not really a matter of either producing a very straitened scenario in great detail or a more expansive one in little detail. It is really a linear matter of taking T times as long to sketch T times as many elements.

The exceptions come in terms of things that absolutely require preparation ahead of time, and these things are chiefly media. For a grand example, a scale model of the Steading of the Hill Giant Chief and a complete collection of appropriately painted figurines is not something one can whip up on the spur of the moment!

As I mentioned earlier, in a free campaign one ought to invest in reusable elements. In the course of more interaction, they naturally acquire richer -- and more personal -- detail. The quirks of imaginary people and places can become almost as well explored as those in the real world.

Simply put, one cannot "often" be a GM without taking the step of actually running a game that first time. Nor is one likely long to remain a GM by offering a boring game. These selection pressures help explain why the state of affairs I have encountered is what it is.

If your experience is really so different, then of course there must be a different mix of factors at work in it. The "game culture" long familiar to me is rather obviously different from the fashion of the day, so that is not too hard to contemplate.

 

[Raikun]

There are no railroads in a sandbox.

This is probably certainly a comment on semantics, because the overall post I agree with, so I'm not really disagreeing here...just phrasing something a different way that might open up some minds hehe.

But...I think there can be a lot of railroads in a sandbox...what makes it a sandbox is that the players can choose whether or not they want to ride the rails or do something else.

 

[Mark CMG]

This is probably certainly a comment on semantics, because the overall post I agree with, so I'm not really disagreeing here...just phrasing something a different way that might open up some minds hehe.

But...I think there can be a lot of railroads in a sandbox...what makes it a sandbox is that the players can choose whether or not they want to ride the rails or do something else.

I think you are right that this is a matter of definitions in that a "railroad" as it pertains to RPGs doesn't give you the choice as to whether or not to ride nor when to get on or off. "Railroading" in RPGs is when the DM/GM/Referee/Facilitator decides what adventure the PCs are on and no matter what the PCs do, they are forced to remain on that adventure, most often with but a single linear path and no meaningful choices to make along the way.

 

[Mark CMG]

I think it is also worth mentioning that a true sandbox campaign/setting is just an ideal on a wide spectrum opposite truly linear campaign/setting. No campaign exists entirely at one end or the other. Toward the sandbox end you have the campaigns and setting that are more freeform while very close on the linear end are those that are railroading. If someone turned on the meter during any game one would probably find that it swings back and forth around where on that spectrum the DM/GM/Referee/Facilitator hopes it would be. Adventure Paths fall closer to the linear side of the spectrum and many homebrew settings where the progenitor doesn't predesign adventures fall closer to the sandbox ideal. Both can be fun, depending on how they are presented and run.

 

[rounser]

But...I think there can be a lot of railroads in a sandbox...what makes it a sandbox is that the players can choose whether or not they want to ride the rails or do something else.

Yuppers. By definition, unless the PCs have burrowing equipment, any dungeon with walls is going to involve railroading. My definition of sandboxes definitely includes dungeons, so...

...as you say, the meaningful player choice that a sandbox must include in order to be considered a sandbox can be as simple as which adventure hook to follow, nevermind if that hook leads to railroading (e.g. dungeon walls routing them, or a prerequisite of finding the macguffin before X can occur) if the PCs follow it.

 

[pemerton]

On the other end when you ask them to create a rich backstory with factions and npcs and relationships. It becomes complicated because you either ignore that or you now have to build things into your world you didn't envision(sometimes this is simple most times now). Then they ignore any work you may have done to spur hooks/quests/adventures/adventure pats ect.

I think the key here is not to ignore what the players build into their PCs. Instead of the players being obliged to bite the GM's plot hooks, even at the expense of backstory/characterisation, the GM can "bite" the hooks that the players have offered, by offering up encounters and adventures that engage those hooks. Like in the example offered in the OP.

D&D was built for adventures. The pc are supposed to be adventurers. And the players have to work together also

I agree that the players in a D&D game should build their backstories keeping in mind (i) the need for party play and (ii) the fact that adventuring will be the focus of play.

some players inevitably decides their fighter wants to be a beet farmer...

In my experience this is fine, provided that the player puts some other elements into their fighter also. One of my players had a fighter who just wanted to settle down and be a weaponsmith - but he was also the younger cousin in a fallen family in the process of reestablishing itself, and thus was obliged to follow his more senior cousin into adventure. At the end of the campaign, he was finally able to settle down (as a 27th level fighter/blacksmith). His desire for stability and a quiet family life ended up being a crucial character trait in the resolution of the campaign. The same player now has a wizard who used to be a pastry chef. But he is also a devotee of the Raven Queen seeking vengeance for his town that was sacked by goblins. So again, it is not hard to create adventures that he has a motivation for going into, even though they take him away from his kitchen work.

In my experience party play is also viable even when there are deep tensions or conflicts between the PCs, provided that the situations the GM is throwing at the players at least make it feasible for the rival/enemy PCs to keep working together. Organisational loyalties or other in-character reasons for cooperating despite hostility can also work for this.

 

[pemerton]

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.

Two examples from a 4e game, both using H2 Thunderspire Labyrinth.

One involves duergar slavers. As written in the module (i) they have bought some prisoners from the goblins and hobgoblins, who captured them by raiding human villages, and (ii) they are assumed to be a combat encounter, fighting alongside the hobgoblins when the PCs raid the hobgoblin fortress.

As I ran it, I kept the backstory for the duergar and their slaves, and added two clear motivations: protect their investment and protect their own lives. Given the second motivation, I decided not to have them enter combat alongside the hobgoblins unless the PCs attacked them, or the hobgoblins were being overwhelmingly successful. In fact the PCs were overwhelmingly successful against the hobgoblins, and when they encountered the duergar opened up negotiations. I then resolved this as a skill challenge. Given that there were 2 duergar, I resolved it as a complexity 2 challenge of their level, so as to not muck up the overall XP budget I had in mind.

The actual negotiations ended up involving a combination of intimidation and diplomacy on the part of the PCs, and were far more conciliatory on their part than I had anticipated. The duergar emphasised the sanctity of contract and of property, with frequent references to Erathis (the god of law and civilisation). One of the PCs is somewhat of a devotee of Erathis, and another is a dwarf, and so this carried some weight. It also gave credibility to the duergar's promise to keep whatever bargain was arrived at. The upshot was a signed contractual agreement between duergar and PCs, to redeem the slaves in a month's time at a nominated neutral town, for a share of the loot taken from the hobgoblins to be paid to the duergar - some in advance, the rest upon redemption.

Within the 4e action resolution framework, I think it is incumbent on the GM to stick to the resolution of a skill challenge. In the same way that a monster killed by the PCs in a combat encounter is dead - and it would be a type of "cheating" by the GM to ignore this - so the outcome of a skill challenge is also something that the players have "earned" by playing their PCs in a certain way, and it is also binding on everyone at the table. So assuming that the PCs keep their end of the bargain, so will the duergar.

The second example involves some tiefling devil worshippers spying on the demonic activities of some gnolls. Here I amplified the background given in the module a bit - fleshing out exactly which devil they worked for (Levistus, "the Master Trapped in Ice") and how they had entered the temple complex. I kept their motivation the same as in the module - that is, trying to identify the causes of increased demonic activity, and if possible trying to stop it. I also kept the module's suggestion that, when encountering the PCs, they would at first try to pass themselves off as simple montebanks hoping to cheat and rob the gnolls.

The PCs met these tieflings after dispatching said gnolls. Another skill challenge was used to resolve this interaction, with the PCs trying to find out what the tieflings were doing there. Using more intimidation and less conciliation than with the duergar, they eventually learned the truth. Having successfullly cowed the tieflings, I (as GM) took the view that betrayal by the tieflingswas off the table, at least while the balance of power remained more-or-less unchanged.

What was interesting was that getting information from the tieflings about their purposes and their devilish master gave rise to some interesting tension within the party, as one of the PCs canvassed doing a deal with the tieflings' master to get extra magical help ti fight the demons in the temple, while another PC very strongly opposed this idea. That second PC in fact ended up summarily executing a tiefling (another had died earlier of rot grub poisoning) as the party fled the collapsing temple after ending a demonic ritual, in part in order to preempt any subsequent diabolic dealings between the tiefling and the first PC.

Anyway, two examples of how NPCs with fairly simple backstories and motivations - but motivations that make them likely to engage with various elements and commitments dear to the PCs and the players - led to unforseen outcomes in the course of play, using skill challenge mechanics as the vehicle for reaching those outcomes.

 

[Ariosto]

By definition, unless the PCs have burrowing equipment, any dungeon with walls is going to involve railroading.

By your peculiar definition, maybe. It looks to encompass everything not taking place in a vacuum!

That is not the definition that I have observed in use over decades of playing Dungeons & Dragons.