D&D General [rant]The conservatism of D&D fans is exhausting.

[Staffan]

Sandbox play is a lie. In the end the players always end up doing what the DM presents.

There….i said it.

A well-designed sandbox would present multiple avenues of exploration so the PCs aren't locked into one particular thing (e.g. "Do you want to go to the bandit camp, the goblin caves, or the wizard's tower?" — for the sake of the GM's sanity, it's probably best if the PCs decide that at the end of the season before going there.). But the word "well-designed" is doing a lot of heavy lifting there.

Many Savage Worlds campaigns are built using an interesting hybrid method, where the campaign has a few fixed points but with lots of opportunities for other stuff in between those points. For example, 50 Fathoms (a nautical fantasy setting/campaign) has a total of ten or so fixed points, but as you travel between those you will be anchoring in many other locations which have their own adventures.

 

[The Firebird]

Even if the encounters are engaged “out of order” aren’t some encounters not encountered until previous encounters are?
So sandbox games are just…less linear?

Correct; there is not one prescribed path to going through the game, and the players can engage with only the parts that they want to.

That seems like a pretty good example of a sandbox, and is much less of a sandbox than a tabletop game.

If your definition of sandbox doesn't include Skyrim, I'm not sure that it is very meaningful.

 

[KYRON45]

A well-designed sandbox would present multiple avenues of exploration so the PCs aren't locked into one particular thing (e.g. "Do you want to go to the bandit camp, the goblin caves, or the wizard's tower?" — for the sake of the GM's sanity, it's probably best if the PCs decide that at the end of the season before going there.). But the word "well-designed" is doing a lot of heavy lifting there.

Many Savage Worlds campaigns are built using an interesting hybrid method, where the campaign has a few fixed points but with lots of opportunities for other stuff in between those points. For example, 50 Fathoms (a nautical fantasy setting/campaign) has a total of ten or so fixed points, but as you travel between those you will be anchoring in many other locations which have their own adventures.

I get that the players have options.
My “argument” is that regardless of the order of encounters, the DM still has to prepare those encounters right?

So a sandbox is just an expression?
I don’t force players to do anything in any order; but I still have encounters prepared so we can…encounter them.

I’m just asking questions about the nature of the expression sandbox. I’m not in any way saying that style is less than. I’m just saying, it’s a myth. Eventually regardless of what the players decide to do….the end up doing something and the DM has to….DM….right?

 

[Micah Sweet]

In the end; the DM still has to prepare and run encounters though right? Encounters that have something to do with the greater game at large I suppose. So I stand by my statement.
Are sandbox style games really just 100% randomly improvised encounters shoe horned together?

What the DM presents in a sandbox campaign from session to session is based on what the players have their PCs do and express interest in. The game's events are driven by the player's choices within the framework of the (largely or entirely) DM-built setting. This is in contrast to a larger overarching story created by the DM for the players to experience and navigate through their PCs (ie, the adventure path approach). That is what I mean by a "sandbox campaign".

 

[AlViking]

I don’t play video games.

Even if the encounters are engaged “out of order” aren’t some encounters not encountered until previous encounters are?
So sandbox games are just…less linear?

Not sure what you're getting at. Let's say we have 2 possible scenarios they're presented with. For A, they can rescue the son of an important merchant from a hag for a reward. B scenario is that there is a call for help because a village is about to be invaded by the Masters of Muck.

If the players decide to do A and rescue the son we go from there. In all likelihood because they ignored B, the village gets overrun. They may at some point decide to retake the village and it may or may not include some of the monsters I was going to use but it's a completely different situation and encounters. If instead they chose path B, they may have made an enemy of an important NPC as the son becomes hag stew but they prevented an invasion which may increase their reputation in the region.

They can also ignore both A and B while deciding to pursue C which was just a random thing I had thrown in during a conversation about how someone is running around stealing people's hats. No matter which direction they choose I don't create encounters I don't need, for both option A and B I likely only had a brief idea of what it was going to be ahead of time.

 

[Micah Sweet]

I get that the players have options.
My “argument” is that regardless of the order of encounters, the DM still has to prepare those encounters right?

So a sandbox is just an expression?
I don’t force players to do anything in any order; but I still have encounters prepared so we can…encounter them.

I’m just asking questions about the nature of the expression sandbox. I’m not in any way saying that style is less than. I’m just saying, it’s a myth. Eventually regardless of what the players decide to do….the end up doing something and the DM has to….DM….right?

How exactly do you thread the needle of claiming that sandbox play isn't less than but also is a myth? Telling someone their preference isn't real is IMO pretty insulting.

 

[AlViking]

What the DM presents in a sandbox campaign from session to session is based on what the players have their PCs do and express interest in. The game's events are driven by the player's choices within the framework of the (largely or entirely) DM-built setting. This is in contrast to a larger overarching story created by the DM for the players to experience and navigate through their PCs (ie, the adventure path approach). That is what I mean by a "sandbox campaign".

Right, a lot of things are going on in my campaign most of which will never be directly impacted by the characters. If an option is ignored I decide if it matters or not, most of the time it just fades into the background of world events. I never have a specific adventure path predetermined even if I have a general idea of interesting things that are going on in the world.

 

[ezo]

A "true" sandbox, IMO, will have a LOT of improv by the DM because the players will often go off to places, etc. which the DM has not prepped beforehand.

Yes, the DM can present multiple hooks, each one prepared ahead of time to one degree or another, but if they players decide not to follow any of them, and are free to go do something else (which the DM has not prepared at all), then it becomes improv on the DM's part.

That isn't to say that once the PCs have decided on a path, the DM can prepare for that next session, but in the meanwhile it is improv.

Another is the "fake" sandbox. The DM has a planned adventure (say a dungeon) but the players do something else. Later on, the DM "recycles" the un-used dungeon/adventure elsewhere. The players never (or not often) realize that it was already made and just needed a bit of tweaking to get up to speed later on. Frankly, I do this often. After all, I put a lot of time and effort into the adventure, and to "not play it at all" seems a colossal waste of time and I find it frustrating.

To be clear, this is not the same as presenting two or three hooks and the players returning to an unexplored hook later on.

 

[Staffan]

I get that the players have options.
My “argument” is that regardless of the order of encounters, the DM still has to prepare those encounters right?

So a sandbox is just an expression?
I don’t force players to do anything in any order; but I still have encounters prepared so we can…encounter them.

I’m just asking questions about the nature of the expression sandbox. I’m not in any way saying that style is less than. I’m just saying, it’s a myth. Eventually regardless of what the players decide to do….the end up doing something and the DM has to….DM….right?

"Sandbox" is generally applied on a "strategic" level. Players can go wherever they want and explore what's there, without an overall narrative forcing them to go to location A, then location B, and then location C, and so on. At the extreme end it either leads to hyperpreparation on the part of the GM (who prepares many locations more than what are actually encountered) or a campaign highly based on random events/encounters. IME, a full sandbox is generally not highly satisfying, but it's possible I've just never run into a good one.

You can also have more limited sandboxes, usually with some sort of impetus for the PCs to explore it. For example, Pathfinder 2 has an adventure path named Age of Ashes, which as PF APs tend to be is split into 6 parts. The overall structure is pretty linear – you're going to different regions of the world to deal with different threats (or different aspects of the same threat). But one of the sections is a partial sandbox/hexcrawl where you need to explore a particular region of jungle in order to find a bunch of locations before attacking the baddies' main HQ. And of course there were a whole bunch of locations/encounters there that weren't directly linked to the main plot. This was fun, because it allowed us to feel a sense of freedom while still having an over-arching goal.

 

[KYRON45]

How exactly do you thread the needle of claiming that sandbox play isn't less than but also is a myth? Telling someone their preference isn't real is IMO pretty insulting.

I can say anything about anything and it might insult someone. You’d have to ask yourself why my opinion means anything to you at all.

I’m just trying to discover if “sandbox” is just what we call more option. At what point does not sandbox become sandbox? And if there is no line of demarcation does the term mean anything or is just an expression people use to differentiate you’re thing from the other thing?

What is the cut off?