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

77IM said:

For years I have relied on an adventure-design framework I call clear goals, fluid obstacles.

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dd.stevenson said:

The key difference between a railroad and a sandbox takes place outside of the game, on the social level.

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I tend to agree with dd.stevenson, although I don't think it has to be a strictly social thing - it is part of the metagame understanding about who gets to decide what aspects of the shared fiction.

In the "clear goals, fluid obstacles" model who chooses the goals? If it's the GM, the game may or may not be a railroad in the strictest sense, but it's not ultimately a player-driven game.

Mark CMG said:

Railroads can have more than one track and hiding the tracks doesn't take people off of them. If all rails lead to DC, that still precludes the underlying assumptions of a sandbox which allows for meaningful choices and multiple endpoints for a sandbox campaign.

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I agree that if all roads lead to a Rome chosen by the GM, then there is some sort of railroading going on.

Reynard said:

"Railroad" and "sandbox" are not two ends of the same continuum.

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While you can't have a sandbox that is a railroad, not all games that aren't sandboxes are railroads.

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I agree with this too. (And therefore disagree with [MENTION=10479]Mark CMG[/MENTION]'s spectrum claim.)

A key part of a sandbox is world exploration. You can see this, for instance, in [MENTION=463]S'mon[/MENTION]'s advice about rumours and how they relate to map setups. And also in the multiple posts upthread relating sandbox adventures to location-based modules.

But there are ways to do non-railroads that aren't exploration-focused. Roughly, the players set out clear goals for the play of their PCs; the GM frames the PCs into situations where those goals come into some sort of conflict (with one another, or with NPCs/monsters, or both); and then the game's action resolution system is used to work out what happens. Rinse and repeat (keeping in mind that the players and PCs are likely to evolve over time).

The standard term for this sort of game is "scene-framing". It is non-sandbox but player-driven. It requires different GM prep from the sort of stuff described by [MENTION=463]S'mon[/MENTION].

Halivar said:

What would you expect from a sandbox that is not delivered by an AP, and how would you expect a published sandbox adventure to be laid out? Are there any examples of published sandboxes?

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The best examples I know are many of the old ICE modules and campaign supplements for MERP and Rolemaster. They would typically map a small(-ish) region - including key fortresses, cities etc - and describe and stat out their key inhabitants. Those inhabitants would be given motivations, plans underway, etc that were apt to draw the PCs into adventure (assuming a fairly typical set of motivations for the PCs).

A good example for D&D is the 1989 City of Greyhawk boxed set.

pemerton said:

In the "clear goals, fluid obstacles" model who chooses the goals? If it's the GM, the game may or may not be a railroad in the strictest sense, but it's not ultimately a player-driven game.

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The players can choose the goals, but that requires more advanced prep by the DM, and is all but impossible in a published adventure.

A good middle ground, I think, is to have the DM present the goal, and ask the players to come up with reasons why this is important to their PCs. This gets player buy-in early on, and can lead to some interesting roleplaying hooks.

77IM said:

The players can choose the goals, but that requires more advanced prep by the DM, and is all but impossible in a published adventure.

A good middle ground, I think, is to have the DM present the goal, and ask the players to come up with reasons why this is important to their PCs. This gets player buy-in early on, and can lead to some interesting roleplaying hooks.

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I think an interesting alternative is: A Clear And Terrible Consequence if x is not stopped from happening, rather than a goal.

It's allllllmost the same thing, but frames the question in a way that allows the players the most agency.

And it even allows for the Terrible Consequence to take place, and the players now adventure in a changed world--with perhaps the new goal of restoring what was lost.

Zak S said:

I think an interesting alternative is: A Clear And Terrible Consequence if x is not stopped from happening, rather than a goal.

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This raises the same question: who gets to decide what counts as terrible? (More generally: who gets to impose values on the gameworld?) The players or the GM?

77IM said:

The players can choose the goals, but that requires more advanced prep by the DM, and is all but impossible in a published adventure.

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I don't agree that it is all but impossible in a published adventure.

A published adventure will (of course) narrow the possible range of choices, but can still permit the players to choose what counts as success.

In the D&D adventure Heathen (which is free on the WotC website), the players can choose whether to fight or redeem the fallen paladin at the end of the module. Now this is not a perfect example - it has a lot of pointless padding in the build-up, and it squibs at the end when the paladin kills himself even if redeemed - but it shows the sort of thing that can be done. (And it's easy enough to change that squibbing ending.)

Another example, but not D&D, is the Demon of the Red Grove scenario in Robin Laws's Narrator's Book for the original version of HeroWars. This allows the players (via their PCs) to choose whether to fight the demon, banish it, or bargain with it, and sketches out the likely consequences of these various choices.

77IM said:

A good middle ground, I think, is to have the DM present the goal, and ask the players to come up with reasons why this is important to their PCs. This gets player buy-in early on, and can lead to some interesting roleplaying hooks.

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I think this works better for the initial campaign framing - it is part of the mutual cooperation between players and GM to get the game going. (When I started my 4e campaign, I told the players that each PC had to have a reason to be ready to fight goblins.)

But once the campaign gets under way, I don't think it works so well, as it seems to impede the players' authorship of their own PCs.

pemerton said:

This raises the same question: who gets to decide what counts as terrible? (More generally: who gets to impose values on the gameworld?) The players or the GM?

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The players decide if it is terrible, but whether they regard it as terrible or not, it will alter the gameworld--so the PCs are essentially deciding if they want to play in the world they know and signed up for or a drastically altered one. They may plump for the latter--but it'll still be interesting. Players who feel they WANT a plot will plump for the former and it'll be as if you gave them a goal.

77IM said:

The players can choose the goals, but that requires more advanced prep by the DM, and is all but impossible in a published adventure.

A good middle ground, I think, is to have the DM present the goal, and ask the players to come up with reasons why this is important to their PCs. This gets player buy-in early on, and can lead to some interesting roleplaying hooks.

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A published adventure can actually more easily provide a sandbox than a railroad. All you need is a dungeon, and you have your sandbox. The difficulty, and why so many adventures are disliked, is finding a goal the players like. In home-written adventures, the DM has the immense advantage of knowing his players. But the game is never really player-driven even when it is a sandbox. The DM is free to play every monster or NPC, and develop the setting and the adventure how they wish.

A railroad can also be a lot of fun, even way more than a sandbox if the railroad connects well with the players and their tastes. So published adventures should actually aim to make good sandboxes, and at home DM's should aim (or free themselves) to make good railroads.

pemerton said:

I don't agree that it is all but impossible in a published adventure.

A published adventure will (of course) narrow the possible range of choices, but can still permit the players to choose what counts as success.

In the D&D adventure Heathen[/url (which is free on the WotC website), the players can choose whether to fight or redeem the fallen paladin at the end of the module. Now this is not a perfect example - it has a lot of pointless padding in the build-up, and it squibs at the end when the paladin kills himself even if redeemed - but it shows the sort of thing that can be done. (And it's easy enough to change that squibbing ending.)

Another example, but not D&D, is the Demon of the Red Grove scenario in Robin Laws's Narrator's Book for the original version of HeroWars. This allows the players (via their PCs) to choose whether to fight the demon, banish it, or bargain with it, and sketches out the likely consequences of these various choices.

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To me, those are decisions, not goals. The goal would be "stop the evil paladin" or "do something about this demon" or whatever, and then the players choose how to approach that (slaughter, redemption, alliance, etc.).

To clarify why this isn't a semantic distinction, if a published adventure features a fallen paladin antagonist, most of the material in it is going to be about dealing with that antagonist. If the players want to hew off in some totally different direction, it usually isn't covered so well. Hence the feeling that many published adventures are railroads.

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."

Zak S said:

I broke it down to every single thing from railroad to sandbox and everything between once.


http://dndwithpornstars.blogspot.com/2010/05/chokers-and-chandlers.html

TL;DR: a railroad is just an overuse of tools that appear once there is any kind of structure, but there are clear lines to cross.

It sounds like what your players in the OP might want is a sandbox with a calendar of timed events in the background that'll happen (accelerating toward chaos) if the players don't do something.

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I read most of the blog, and it's really amazing. I am surprised anyone would know so much about this subject.

SirAntoine said:

But the game is never really player-driven even when it is a sandbox.

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

[/quote]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.

SirAntoine said:

I read most of the blog, and it's really amazing. I am surprised anyone would know so much about this subject.

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Thanks---it ended up being reallllly long, but I was tired of having the same Railroad Vs Sandbox discussions over and over, so tried to break it down to all the variants you see out there.