D&D General Not Railroad, Not Sandbox ... What else is there?

Bill Zebub · Jan 17, 2022

You forgot the "play D&D and have fun without worrying about labels" category.

Oofta · Jan 17, 2022

Fanaelialae · Jan 17, 2022

Professor Murder said:
TBH, sandbox games are typically disingenuous, as they can not have unlimited, unrestricted choices in a game like DnD, where power gating is baked into the leveling system.

I don't recall anyone ever claiming that a sandbox game requires unlimited, unrestricted choices (maybe the Platonic ideal of a sandbox game, but even that's arguable).

Imagine a fantasy game without levels. In this game, a single giant is a tough, but not impossible, challenge for a party. Does the game cease to be a sandbox if the land is invaded by the giant king and his army of 1,000 giants?

That's an impossible challenge for a party to take on directly, but I disagree that it makes the game linear. The party must simply find alternative means to address the challenge. That might involve the use of guerilla tactics, or recruiting allies powerful enough to fight a giant army, or even relocating to a neighboring kingdom that isn't being threatened by giants.

Just because the characters aren't powerful enough to overcome every possible challenge with overwhelming force, doesn't make a game linear.

iserith · Jan 17, 2022

I would say (as the DMG does) that there are two types of adventures: Location-Based and Event-Based. Location-based adventures involve the characters exploring some forgotten ruin or wilderness location. An event-based adventure involves the interaction between the characters and the villains as the villains do their dastardly deeds - the location is secondary. A given campaign - which is just a series of adventures - may have a mix of both. All of them will take place in a world or setting.

The rest is really about how the DM structures the prep and what processes are used to present and resolve content. A DM might use a hex crawl or a point crawl design for location-based adventuring and as part of world-design and a detailed dungeon map for certain locations. An event-based adventure might just be a timeline of the villain's actions that will occur if the PCs don't intervene, plus relevant locations where some of the action takes place and NPCs that can help or hinder the PCs. As above, it may be a mix of these things.

Whether or not something is a "railroad" depends on the DM. Railroading isn't about the linearity of the structure of the adventure in my view, but rather whether the DM interferes with the players' ability to make reasonably informed choices that change the direction of the adventure and campaign. It's a subversion of what the players want to do. If, on the other hand, the DM and players all agree that they will play a particular adventure path ahead of time and will stick to it, then this is not railroading. There is no coercion or subversion happening here. The players have made an agreement and a choice to stick to the prepared material as best they can. If, however, the DM presents the option to engage in the adventure path or not and the players choose not only to find they're engaged in it anyway, then we probably have a case of railroading.

Professor Murder · Jan 17, 2022

Fanaelialae said:
I don't recall anyone ever claiming that a sandbox game requires unlimited, unrestricted choices (maybe the Platonic ideal of a sandbox game, but even that's arguable).

Imagine a fantasy game without levels. In this game, a single giant is a tough, but not impossible, challenge for a party. Does the game cease to be a sandbox if the land is invaded by the giant king and his army of 1,000 giants?

That's an impossible challenge for a party to take on directly, but I disagree that it makes the game linear. The party must simply find alternative means to address the challenge. That might involve the use of guerilla tactics, or recruiting allies powerful enough to fight a giant army, or even relocating to a neighboring kingdom that isn't being threatened by giants.

Just because the characters aren't powerful enough to overcome every possible challenge with overwhelming force, doesn't make a game linear.

From the OP, highlighted for emphasis.
SANDBOX: A player driven storytelling technique in which the DM presents options, but players drive the direction of the game towards whatever goals they wish. To be a sandbox under this definition, the DM can't redirect the party with barriers constructed with the intent to alter or limit their choices. The DM will drop options in front of the PCs, but the players are free to ignore the provided options and go in a very different direction if they so desire. The story is player driven.

Charlaquin · Jan 17, 2022

payn said:
I think linear and non-linear covers everything. Really, there is no need to make further distinctions.

I prefer to break it down a bit further, into linear, branching, and open. And, of course, it’s possible to use a combination of those structures within a single campaign.

the Jester · Jan 17, 2022

Professor Murder said:
TBH, sandbox games are typically disingenuous, as they can not have unlimited, unrestricted choices in a game like DnD, where power gating is baked into the leveling system.

I'm not sure what you mean. Why not? Not all choices need to be level-appropriate.

Umbran · Jan 17, 2022

jgsugden said:
Thoughts? Other ideas that do not fit neatly into the above, or are another (perhaps better) way of thinking of Bingo Card or Card Trick?

You seem to have completely missed improvisational styles, and those in which the material is developed in response to player action.

Fanaelialae · Jan 17, 2022

Professor Murder said:
From the OP, highlighted for emphasis.
SANDBOX: A player driven storytelling technique in which the DM presents options, but players drive the direction of the game towards whatever goals they wish. To be a sandbox under this definition, the DM can't redirect the party with barriers constructed with the intent to alter or limit their choices. The DM will drop options in front of the PCs, but the players are free to ignore the provided options and go in a very different direction if they so desire. The story is player driven.

Okay. I'll accept that definition for the sake of argument.

That means that unless the DM puts high level monsters in that area with the intent of altering or limiting their choices, it's still a sandbox.

One way a DM might do this is through organic world creation. Some areas have ecosystems that have a higher average CR than others. For example, a kingdom of the giants. No intent to limit the players is involved, but rather the DM considers what makes sense in a giant kingdom (giants, dire animals, etc). This may limit the players in effect, but not because the DM intended to do so, hence it does not violate the definition of sandbox that you quoted.

Personally, though, I think you can absolutely design a sandbox to be gated. That might involve making certain areas higher CR, or simply involving barriers that a low level party cannot overcome (exploring the sunken city of Atlantis is largely impossible until you have some means of water breathing). I don't think that intentional gating means that a game isn't a sandbox. IMO, it's only truly linear if the players come up with a clever solution to bypass the gate, but the DM heavy-handedly prevents them from passing the gate anyway.

One of my favorite styles of sandbox is what I think of as Linear Sandboxes. This consists of a number of relatively small sandboxes (perhaps around 100 square miles each). There's an overarching goal of progression, but otherwise the players are completely free to do as they desire.

In one example of this style of campaign, our world had died. The cycle of rebirth required heroes to undergo a trial which involved traveling through the memories of the planet and collect the souls of unborn gods. Collecting all of the souls in a memory would allow passage to the next memory. Ultimately, if the heroes were able to overcome the trial, the gods would be born and renew the world (and also grant each hero a boon). It's very linear in one sense (the arc of the campaign), yet each memory was completely non-linear. We even threw the DM for a loop when we caused a temporal paradox that he completely didn't expect (but he handled it with aplomb and didn't try to railroad us at all).