D&D 5E (2014) What separates a sandbox adventure from an AP?

[PnPgamer]

I have gotten the feeling that no true sandbox exists.

 

[Nemio]

This topic makes me think about some excellent advice from Chris Perkins in his column "The DM experience"

It talks about having multiple arcs in your campaign
http://archive.wizards.com/DnD/Article.aspx?x=dnd/4dmxp/20110929

The benefits of having multiple campaign arcs in a long-running or multitier campaign are many. First and foremost, it's like having slightly overlapping safety nets; no matter what the players do, their choices have a pretty good chance of landing them smack-dab in the middle of one of your campaign arcs eventually. The arcs are so encompassing and pervasive as to be nigh unavoidable, and if your players are clearly turned off by one arc, they have two others to choose from. Having multiple arcs gives players opportunities to decide which threat they care about the most, and I promise you, each player will have his or her own opinion on the matter, based on which arc ties in most closely with that player's character. Having three arcs also makes your campaign feel less like a "one-trick pony." Finally, there's the benefit of allowing you, the campaign's primary storyteller, to entangle plot threads and create opportunities or occasions when two or more arcs intersect.

 

[Li Shenron]

I'm adding only a few sentences here because the thread is already full of great advice!

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?

For me a sandbox is always like "a delimited area where nobody is telling you what you should do" (hence the name...).

That doesn't mean there are no possible "tracks" to follow, but rather that it's up to the players to trigger something and choose to follow it, instead of the adventure track being presented to them on a silver tray and then presuming they will follow.

Because of this, what I expect from a sandbox is an area to explore freely, where the DM has "dropped" a series of "points of interest", which might be anything from a one-time encounter to a whole adventure ready to be triggered, e.g. dropping the whole Temple of Elemental Evil into your sandbox is always a lovely idea...

The difference might be a little like:
- Adenture Path: someone tells you there's a Temple of Elemental Evil that must.be.stopped.now, otherwise the whole world will end!
- Sandbox: you stumble upon the Temple of Elemental Evil accidentally while exploring an unmarked area on the map OR you track its location down following legends and rumors OR it was there on the map since the start and you just wanted to check it out. Then you decide it's your quest to stop it.

With that in mind, there is no such thing as a sandbox adventure IMO.

The introduction: How railroady is too railroady? Is it ok to open with a framing story like "You guys are on your way to meet King Soandso who as a secret task for you. You were intrigued so here you are," or is that too contrived? I guess I'm asking, what is the best way to get the players moving in a direction, any direction? In previous sandboxes players have complained that they simply didn't know what to do next.

When not knowing what to do next, the players should just take another look at the map!

But since you can drop any adventure into a sandbox, nothing forbids you from dropping even a railroad... as long as you don't do it all the time, it can still be a sandbox. Eventually it might cease to be a sandbox if you give the PCs no choice but to accept the quest.

Player vs monster level: This is much less of a problem in 5E than in 4E, but how do you plan appropriately balanced encounters in a sandbox when you don't know when or how players will tackle them? Or is this a feature of the sandbox, that players will run into things that can TPK them? Or that they'll run into encounters they can steamroll? I don't like the Oblivion/Skyrim "monsters are always your level" play that 4E pretty much required (or you were forced to run linear adventures, which is what I want to step away from), but I don't have an answer for the level disparity problem (if, indeed, it even is a problem).

For me it's paramount for a sandbox game that the world does not conform to the PCs' level.

But that doesn't mean you should place CRs totally randomly... and actually I think a MORPG like World of Warcraft (don't know the ones you mention) is pretty much a huge sandbox, but with the added feature that it's divided into regions of similar CRs. You always start in a low-level region, but as you progress further in the world, you can travel to higher-level locations. Narratively, it does make some sense: civilized people tend to live in reasonably safe areas (there aren't many permanent settlements built on top of the Himalayas, in the middle of Sahara, or inside volcanoes), while other areas might see a proliferation of dangerous species only, driving the weaker ones away.

When you put very high level threats in the starting area, just make sure there is a kind of barrier that restricts interaction between it and the common people.

The conclusion: When is a sandbox adventure over? My players are a big fan of free agency, but they are equally big fans of story, including the climax, the denouement, and the eventual end. But in a sandbox it seems like the ending is a lot more ambiguous, and more so the number of open threads you have going on. One thought I had was having all extant story threads funnel into one overarching epic, with all the foes they have fought along the way being pawns of one BBEG, but perhaps that's been done to death? Contrived? I don't know.

Well as I said, I don't think there's a sandbox adventure, but the sandbox contains adventures. Each of them can work the same as any published adventure (although probably you don't want a series of end-of-the-world-threat types), so they can have an end. The sandbox itself never ends.

Player paralysis: With no big sign saying "go here, do this" my players are apt to scratch their heads and say, "I dunnow." And I by no means blame my players. I don't really think I'm that great of a DM, so I am either laying too subtle clues or I'm over-complicating my stories. I think it was Angry DM who once said to me on Twitter that even having a story (and I might be grossly oversimplifying or wildly misinterpreting what he meant) meant I was tacitly railroading my players. If that's the case, is player paralysis a function of their expectation that I have a trail for them to always follow? How do you instigate player action that more organically generates adventure?

Just bring the map back on the table, or keep a list of interesting locations/characters/events/kingdoms/organizations that the PC have encountered already, and might want to go back and see how things are going with them.

Setting material: In no event has a player ever read any material I have ever written for an adventure. So is it a waste of my time? Is it still any good for internal consistency? Is internal consistency even necessary for player immersion? When you read a published campaign setting or sandbox adventure, do you as a DM actually read things like calendars, historical timelines, and exhaustive breakdowns of churches and factions? Do such things enhance sandboxes and where is the line that you've written too much?

Yes I think those examples are all enhancements, but do not require the players to 'learn' that stuff...

About history, it's probably best to just sketch it. After all, even in the real world we don't know the details of our history. Roll back to the middle ages (as that is the typical era which inspires most D&D settings) and try to imagine how incomplete the knowledge of history was at that time... Fuzzy knowledge is totally fine, and you can always let the PCs find out more themselves.

Churches and factions are great for building PC motivations, long-term ally/foes relations, and of course new adventures. I would rather spend more time detailing those, than locales and past events.

Finally, remember a couple of more things:

- keeping everything in mind is an impossible task, so don't set this as your standard
- there is not that huge difference in results between generating ideas while playing and pre-designing everything in advance
- the fantasy world itself changes, thus DM forgetting something just equals that something happened in the world

 

[Sailor Moon]

I run sandbox style games a lot because they are my favourite.

What I do is I really put my player's in to the position where they use their skills, especially their knowledge skills. This is how I can hide level appropriate encounters. I have the players gather information and I tell them what's going on in the various areas. I could say something like the elves of Treehaven, which is an outpost, are experiencing raids from bandits and they have put a call out for adventurers to give them a hand. Now my worlds are also living so if you go off the beaten path you could run into something a lot more powerful.

 

[AxisofJedi]

You never eliminate railroading, EVER. You can only minimize it, keep whittling it down with experience. The key is to make sure your PC's have choices and options every step of the way. Be that during a combat encounter or roleplaying encounter, and if they make there own choice instead of using one of yours, even better.

Whether its a pre-written module or a "Sandbox" style campaign. There are still rails. To get from page 1 to the end of the book, gotta stay on the rails somehow to get to the end. If its a "Sandbox", well there is only so much sand, and the box is only so big.
None of this is a bad thing, it simply is what it is. You'll never eliminate railroading ever. But as a DM there are things you can do and techniques to use to ensure your PC's have as many options and choices as possible, and let the PC's feel that their actions help steer the world they are in in some fashion. IMO

 

[goatunit]

First, this series of articles is a great resource for anyone looking to run a sandbox, even if you don't want to dig into the mechanical bells and whistles of a hex crawl: http://thealexandrian.net/wordpress/17308/roleplaying-games/hexcrawl

Now, for answers to those specific questions:

Introduction - I recommend writing down three rumors per player on individual note cards, shuffling them, and passing them out before the game. Rumors can be about a local noble's infidelity, a tribe of kobolds in the sewers, a merchant trying to sell a torn treasure map, etc. Load them down with adventure hooks. Drown them in options, but make each option discreet and of a scope that is easy to gauge (ie. the cheating noble thing will be court intrigue; the kobolds in the sewers will be a quick hack-and-slash).

Player vs Monster Level - You're right about 4E not working for this. I'm not sure about 5E, as I haven't really tangled with anything outside of my pay grade yet. The idea, though, is that the world exists beyond the PCs. It doesn't adjust its difficulty to suit them. At early levels, be clear about the scope of the threat in a given area. Rumors aren't exclusively things to do--they're also valuable information about what to avoid. (There's a powerful red dragon in the hills nearby! There's a powerful lich in a crumbling tower in the bone swamp!) If they follow up on these rumors, then they should learn a quick and painful lesson in what sandbox games are about.

The Conclusion - Sandbox games are well-served by hex-based exploration (see the link above) with discreet adventure locales and organic plots. An organic plot is one that arises naturally from the setting and the players' interaction with it. For example, players who spend time in a particular six-hex area might quickly discover that the random encounter table for that region is heavy with a particular clan of raiding barbarians. Combined with some info from their rumors, just a touch of curiosity can lead them to wonder where the clan is based and possibly seek them out. If they discover which hex the barbarian camp is in, then they can attack or report it to the king, or go through the clan's mysterious rituals (which require a trip to the Cave of Destiny eight hexes away, which is within the borders of the expanding goblin kingdom! Oh, and they'll be passing through a space where trainable hippogriffs are on the random encounter chart! And who knows what ruins or other sites of interest hide in each of the hexes along the way?).

You can build traditional adventures, same as ever. You can build adventure paths and install themes and all the rest of it. The idea is just that you have a lot of it ready to go, and the players get to decide which threads to pull--sometimes changing their minds about what paths to go down as they encounter more unexpected twists and opportunities.

Player Paralysis - Start each session with new rumors. Give them a task that gets them out into the world (deliver a letter, find a thing) so they can run into random encounters and stumble onto adventure locations. Once you get them going, a well-built campaign will keep them almost too full of plans for future exploits.

Setting Material - Do it if you enjoy it, sure. I enjoy it myself. But if you want your players to interact with it, then you have to make it the problem rather than the solution. In other words, don't make a riddle puzzle that asks who the fifth king of your kingdom was, expecting the players to have cared enough to remember that. Instead, take a riddle they can figure out, and color it in with details from your setting.

Also, you should teach them that the world is alive. It will take them awhile to really grok it, but be consistent and they will eventually catch on. If the evil necromancer is using orc skeletons to terrorize local caravans, then there should be a half-empty orc burial mound in a hex adjacent to his tower. There should be a pissed off orc tribe that the PCs can put on his trail.

 

[Reynard]

You never eliminate railroading, EVER. You can only minimize it, keep whittling it down with experience. The key is to make sure your PC's have choices and options every step of the way. Be that during a combat encounter or roleplaying encounter, and if they make there own choice instead of using one of yours, even better.

Whether its a pre-written module or a "Sandbox" style campaign. There are still rails. To get from page 1 to the end of the book, gotta stay on the rails somehow to get to the end. If its a "Sandbox", well there is only so much sand, and the box is only so big.
None of this is a bad thing, it simply is what it is. You'll never eliminate railroading ever. But as a DM there are things you can do and techniques to use to ensure your PC's have as many options and choices as possible, and let the PC's feel that their actions help steer the world they are in in some fashion. IMO

That misses the point of the term "railroad " entirely and broadens it to the point of being meaningless. It's a metaphor. A railroad is a singular linear path. A sandbox by definition can't be a railroad and even an AP isn't necessarily a railroad. A good AP is closer to a highway system: you always start in Boston and you always end up in Washington DC, but there are lots of different routs with different scenery to get there.

 

[Mark CMG]

That misses the point of the term "railroad " entirely and broadens it to the point of being meaningless. It's a metaphor. A railroad is a singular linear path. A sandbox by definition can't be a railroad and even an AP isn't necessarily a railroad. A good AP is closer to a highway system: you always start in Boston and you always end up in Washington DC, but there are lots of different routs with different scenery to get there.

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.

 

[dd.stevenson]

The key difference between a railroad and a sandbox takes place outside of the game, on the social level. If it's a sandbox, you (the players) can decline to go to the temple of elemental evil and go do something else instead, and no one will call you out for being derailing jerks. On the other hand if it's a railroad and you decide not to cooperate with the GMs plans, you WILL get called out for being a jerk, kicked out of the group, etc.

 

[Reynard]

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.

"Railroad" and "sandbox" are not two ends of the same continuum. "Story" and "sandbox" are. "Railroad" is a mechanism of play, a kind of writing and/or DMing that precludes deviation from the track. While you can't have a sandbox that is a railroad, not all games that aren't sandboxes are railroads. Again, it is a metaphor that has actual meaning. If you strip it of that meaning, it becomes (wait for it) meaningless.