The Sandbox and the Railroad

howandwhy99 said:

I don't think there is spectrum between a "sandbox" and a "railroad". One is a game and the other is a story.

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I think this is a slighlty tendentious way of putting it!, but I tend to agree with the underlying claim

Lanefan said:

I call this the players railroading themselves - the GM, knowing the characters and what motivates them, can put down fifty adventure hooks and know exactly which one will be chosen.

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Why use the phrase railroading themselves? Isn't it just clearer to say choosing?

Tony Vargas said:

specifying where the authorship comes from is superfluous

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Maybe I missed the broader context in which this comment was embedded - but given that the principal activity of a RPG is narrating events that involve fictional elements, I don't see how it can be superfluous to talk about how authors those elements and those events!

If the GM authors everything that matters, what is the funtion of the players? Pure audience?

innerdude said:

One thing I've noticed too is that the player's perspective on the level of freedom available to them can change if a player determines that a character is "bought in" to whatever stakes are at hand. When this happens, then the player and character are "invested," and plot linearity (if any) fades to the background. The character is doing what the GM "wants" because the character's fictional positioning would indicate that they would act in that manner.

This is, I think, the rationale for long-term "adventure path" play --- sooner or later, the players/characters will be invested in the stakes at hand, so even if events are linear, it "feels" organic to what the character would be doing in the fiction.

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Is it posssible to give a dispassionate and non-metaphorical of what the player actually contributes to play in these circumstances?

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When we talk about the player choosing the GM's hook, there are (at least) two forms this might take.

In rough terms, one is the player declares an action which triggers further narration of established elements from the GM; the other is the player declares an action the outcome of which may be changing the shared fiction in some significant and not-yet-established way.

The first sort of action is conssitent with a "linear adventure"/railroad - if the players don't declare such actions, the GM feeds in the narration some other way, or uses some other device to activate pre-planned events (eg the players choose not to investigate the warehouse, and so instead the GM has them attacked by assassins who have a note on them that provides much the same information as would have been found at the warehouse).

The second sort of action is non-consistent with a "linear adventure"/railroad if it happens very often, because it makes it impossible to use pre-planned events.

I guess I do look at it like a number line or "spectrum"; sort of like the reverb dial on an amp: crank it up and you get too much distortion, too low and it's flat. Sandbox vs Railroad is easily explained as player agency, or do the players have the ability to make meaningful choices about their character's destiny.

pemerton said:

Why use the phrase railroading themselves? Isn't it just clearer to say choosing?

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Not in this case, because their choice is predetermined by their own characters and what makes them tick. If the DM can lay down 50 hooks while already knowing which one the players will go for, it's not the DM doing the railroading but that party is still on rails.

Maybe I missed the broader context in which this comment was embedded - but given that the principal activity of a RPG is narrating events that involve fictional elements, I don't see how it can be superfluous to talk about how authors those elements and those events!

If the GM authors everything that matters, what is the funtion of the players? Pure audience?

Is it posssible to give a dispassionate and non-metaphorical of what the player actually contributes to play in these circumstances?

********************************

When we talk about the player choosing the GM's hook, there are (at least) two forms this might take.

In rough terms, one is the player declares an action which triggers further narration of established elements from the GM; the other is the player declares an action the outcome of which may be changing the shared fiction in some significant and not-yet-established way.

The first sort of action is conssitent with a "linear adventure"/railroad - if the players don't declare such actions, the GM feeds in the narration some other way, or uses some other device to activate pre-planned events (eg the players choose not to investigate the warehouse, and so instead the GM has them attacked by assassins who have a note on them that provides much the same information as would have been found at the warehouse).

The second sort of action is non-consistent with a "linear adventure"/railroad if it happens very often, because it makes it impossible to use pre-planned events.

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And here we go with the story-now mantra again.

Your analysis of "the first sort of action" is lacking - if the players don't declare such actions (i.e. they don't bite the hook) then the DM might have to abandon that adventure idea and go on to plan B. Sooner or later either they players will take a hook, or they'll come up with their own hook and take that (thus putting the DM in react mode), because if they do neither of these then the game will grind to a halt.

And sometimes this happens - there's in-game information out there that would be really useful to the PCs but for whatever reason they just don't find it (or better yet: they find it, don't realize its significance, and either ignore it or immediately forget it!), and so they have to proceed without it. A DM who tries to force-feed info e.g. the assassin idea would be better served to just stand back and see what develops, even if it means the party don't have what they need.

Lanefan

dragoner said:

I guess I do look at it like a number line or "spectrum"; sort of like the reverb dial on an amp: crank it up and you get too much distortion, too low and it's flat. Sandbox vs Railroad is easily explained as player agency, or do the players have the ability to make meaningful choices about their character's destiny.

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Another way to look at it, then, is - who decides what is on the menu for character destinies? In a game normally described as a sandbox, that would be the GM.

pemerton said:

Another way to look at it, then, is - who decides what is on the menu for character destinies? In a game normally described as a sandbox, that would be the GM.

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Ultimately any game, because the GM just walks rather than run a game they don't want to; so there has to be something more, a more precise way of seeing it. However, the players can affect what is on the menu for the characters before the game even starts, by discussing what they want out of the game before starting to play. If they are joining a game that is already in progress, they are still making a choice to do that.

pemerton said:

Another way to look at it, then, is - who decides what is on the menu for character destinies? In a game normally described as a sandbox, that would be the GM.

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How many sandbox campaigns have you played in?

Bedrockgames said:

How many sandbox campaigns have you played in?

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In the ones I've run, the GM has established the menu by estabishing game elements. Part of the transition of those games - which have mostly been 8 to 10 year campaigns - from sandbox to "scene framing" has been in the shfiting of authorial control over salient elements of the fiction from GMto player.

pemerton said:

In the ones I've run, the GM has established the menu by estabishing game elements. Part of the transition of those games - which have mostly been 8 to 10 year campaigns - from sandbox to "scene framing" has been in the shfiting of authorial control over salient elements of the fiction from GMto player.

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Your whole discussion on authoring fiction etc... is orthogonal to this discussion. I'm sure someone who wants those types of approaches in his game is likely not running a strict linear adventure path but some sort of open sandbox style, if the DM allows authoring of fiction by players in his campaign then it's entirely fitting. But the discussion is about railroad vs sandbox so for this discussion your digression is a red herring.

And I know what a red herring is and I also know what a strawman is despite some confusion in some quarters.
[MENTION=6667844]eve[/MENTION]ryone
I think there is a very negative concept of railroading which is commonly considered. The one where the DM basically forces a set outcome no matter what the players try to do. That would be bad. Now to me an adventure path gets close to that approach because it plots out the whole campaign one module after another. It probably depends on the adventure path how extreme it is but it is very structured at the minimum.

To me this form of railroading is at the far extreme of a continuum. On the opposite extreme would be the sandbox with no real development that is random encounters every week. Both extremes for me are bad. But there is room in between to discuss where you fall on that axis. Personally I'm on the sandbox side but I'm not extreme. To me, it's more a case of players engaging the parts of the sandbox they want to engage but those elements are not without some structure.

If you put your quarter in Pac-Man, don't expect to get the high score on Dig-Dug.

I have a good (for me anyway) system which is a cross between the two schools. The characters decide what they want to do. I have material for this week's session they cannot change. Say an initial adventure with choices as to which of three potential problems to solve. They can only solve one or two tops, and that means there is something they didn't solve that I can turn into an adventure next week. Then next week they will decide to do things outside of the adventure (for instance visit the thieve's guild of there is a rogue, or meet the head of the church if the cleric is so inclined. Then those new NPCs I will figure out a story for them the following week based on the actions the PC took originally. It's a give and take, almost co-writing the campaign with my players (although they don't realize that). After a five or six sessions enough NPCs have been introduced that I can start creating recurring sub plots so the adventures keep on coming. If the rogue decides to take the new 1st level rogue under his wing because the head of the guild asked, then depending how he treats the kid he can be either a best friend or an assassin in disguise. The player will sort of guide me as to which direction to take with regard to his story. If the assassin player decides it is time for a job, I might tie the world together and have him be assigned to kill some NPC we met previously. Then if he does or doesn't would inform future sessions.

It's a soap opera basically, but it works for me and keeps the PCs having agency and the ability to affect the campaign. Not having any agency as a player drives me nuts and I tend to reach for my cell phone.