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

[Remathilis]

However, it is also something I’ve never personally seen « in the wild ». The worst I’ve seen with disaffected players is:
1. Trying to get themselves killed;
2. Just sort of tuning out; or
3. Cracking jokes and getting somewhat silly.

I saw it in my younger and more vulnerable years. It was a passive aggressive way to derail a game the way "that's what my character would do" does, but usually with a majority of the group either in on it or powerless to stop it. Once people got older and grew a brain, people realized the Wheaton Rule and stopped. Some people never grow up though. Those toxic people get kicked.

 

[Micah Sweet]

If a prisoner never makes an effort to leave the prison before their sentence is finished, are they still imprisoned? Or are they free, and just (somehow) prefer to stay inside the prison walls?

If the President never elects to order military officers, are they still Commander-in-Chief? Or have they given up that authority through disuse?

Just because someone does not elect to use a power at their disposal does not mean that power is irrelevant. In fact, the effort put into ensuring that they do have that power is, itself, extremely important.

By the logic of this question, every invisible railroad is actually a sandbox, because a player who doesn't know they're on rails cannot desire to get off of them, and thus they are precisely as free as someone who correctly knows they aren't on a railroad.

So a sandbox (and any game with less agency than that) is a prison? Come on.

I know that I would do my best to accommodate my players if they wanted to leave the region altogether (yet somehow still wanted to play in my campaign), but until the situation becomes acute, why should I devote energy to worrying about it? Heck, if I came up with something in that contingency, wouldn't I be trapping my players in another of my "menu options" at that point?

 

[Micah Sweet]

Invisible rails. I know you already know of this "technique." We had a thread about it a while back and I'm 99% sure you posted in it.

There are also things that claim to be sandboxes but are actually, as noted above, CYOAs or menus. Yes, you have choice, but it's between or among proffered options, rather than actually being player-driven. Which was the whole point of Hussar's claim that D&D works against the most complete form of sandbox play (my phrasing, not his.)

I don't even know what @Hussar wrote, he isn't interested in hearing from me at the moment. What I want to know is how free of GM involvement does player action have to be in order to pass your test and be allowed to be called a sandbox?

 

[Micah Sweet]

This.

My experience is that most players want the DM is have some direction or something planned.

For me, I just detail the events happening in the setting and if they choose not to engage, then those events play out without them such a the recent Darakhul plague. They had a chance to stop it but chose to explore elsewhere.

For prep, I usually have something planned out for most areas even if everything is not mapped out. I wait for the players to make a choice and then flesh out more as they move down that path.

Me too. And I call my game a sandbox. Hope that's ok with everyone.

 

[Micah Sweet]

With very few justifications*, I find this attitude to be the worst insult you can give me as a DM. For all the talk of player entitlement, THIS is the truest expression of it. As the DM, I put time into creating the play experience from setting to adventures and the encounters within. It's an insult to have the players say "no, I don't want to stop the mad king from sacking the town. Let's buy a boat and go be pirates instead." These days, I'd be like "fine. Go be pirates. But find another DM or retire your characters, because I'm not running that."

* Obviously, sometimes things don't work out. Either the premise isn't working or the story goes in a direction you didn't anticipate. In the former case, talking with the DM could find ways to correct the issues. In the latter, the DM might have to retool their idea or get things back on track. I'm speaking of the idea that the players sign up for a campaign set in Neverwinter and the first thing they do is hop on a boat to Chult because hunting dinosaurs sounds cooler than whatever the DM has planned.

I had that happen recently, and it was my fault; I was enjoying the slow survival game, but at least one player very much wanted me to give them a path and was getting increasingly frustrated with choosing/making one themselves. So ultimately I compromised and dropped a bigger hook for them to catch.

 

[Bedrockgames]

Invisible rails. I know you already know of this "technique." We had a thread about it a while back and I'm 99% sure you posted in it.

There are also things that claim to be sandboxes but are actually, as noted above, CYOAs or menus. Yes, you have choice, but it's between or among proffered options, rather than actually being player-driven. Which was the whole point of Hussar's claim that D&D works against the most complete form of sandbox play (my phrasing, not his.)

This just seems to take things to an extreme. I mean I do strive to make my sandboxes player driven (probably not in the way you or Hussar would, because I value the unconstrained GM approach). But that is generally my priority of play. This is why I said for example, while I do run mysteries, in my sandboxes, I find them to be feel artificial (they kind of impose an adventure structure I don't want; I want a character campaign where the people and their choices are what drives things). But I don't believe that means my players have more agency and someone running a sandbox with a bunch of adventures to choose from has less agency. Especially if what that person's players want are crafted adventures within the sandbox. And once they get to those adventures, I am sure they have lots of agency there too. Also the CYOA thing completely breaks down here because in a choose your own adventure book really what you are choosing is chapters. You get long swaths of text telling you what happens (and granted some CYOA have been better at giving you incremental choices). But in an RPG you are constantly having a dialogue with the GM about what is going on. You are not just picking from a menu and going on 1 of 8 rides. You have agency every step of the way

Also I mentioned boundless play before. That can mean boundless in the sense that the players can venture off to the horizon and do whatever. But for a lot of players that can feel aimless or miss critical elements of what they expect from an adventure. And I think boundless really refers to this major difference between say watching a film and playing an RPG which is: when I watch a movie like The Raid. I am completely limited by what the camera decides to do, what the script says what the characters do. Being in an RPG the boundless experience comes from suddenly being in Rama's shoes and being able to "turn the camera" or go through that door, or try some clever way of scaling out the side of the wildling or negotiating with Tama. The raid as scenarios go, isnt a sandbox, it is a more standard structured adventure (the players here have a clear mission). But within the context of an RPG that mission can still be boundless with the GM not being rigidly constrained. So there is agency there.

 

[Bedrockgames]

Me too. And I call my game a sandbox. Hope that's ok with everyone.

I think the safest thing to do is a form committee that reviews all claims of sandbox and simply call your campaigns "presumed sandbox" until they have had time to review your case and deliberate

 

[CleverNickName]

This thread inspired me to run an experiment.

We recently finished a 2-1/2 year long adventure campaign, that took the heroes all the way from 1st level to 20th level. So I emailed my players (all five of them) and asked them if they thought the last campaign was a "sandbox" or a "railroad."

The question I texted them: "So there are two styles of play: Sandbox, where everything is an open and unrestricted world, and Railroad, where everything is mapped out in linear format. Would you say that I ran a Railroad-style game, or a Sandbox-style game?"

I got the following answers:

Player 1: I think it was both, depending on which adventure you were running at the time.
Player 2: Who said there are only TWO styles of play?*
Player 3: Both actually (goes on to list a few examples)*
Player 4: I think more sandbox than railroad? Not sure I understand the difference but railroad sounds bad.
Player 5: (didn't respond)*

*this person is also a DM in our gaming group (we take turns).

So,

 

[payn]

This thread inspired me to run an experiment.

We recently finished a 2-1/2 year long adventure campaign, that took the heroes all the way from 1st level to 20th level. So I emailed my players (all five of them) and asked them if they thought the last campaign was a "sandbox" or a "railroad."

The question I texted them: "So there are two styles of play: Sandbox, where everything is an open and unrestricted world, and Railroad, where everything is mapped out in linear format. Would you say that I ran a Railroad-style game, or a Sandbox-style game?"

I got the following answers:

Player 1: I think it was both, depending on which adventure you were running at the time.
Player 2: Who said there are only TWO styles of play?*
Player 3: Both actually (goes on to list a few examples)*
Player 4: I think more sandbox than railroad? Not sure I understand the difference but railroad sounds bad.
Player 5: (didn't responded)*

*this person is also a DM in our gaming group (we take turns).

So,

I dont think id expect any less from my players at the end of a campaign.

 

[Faolyn]

But this too involves DM permission, no? This is where that aforementioned "strict" definition of "sandbox" comes into play.

By that logic, it's impossible to have a sandbox game if that game involves a GM. You'd have to invent a GM-less game that uses a ton of random generators or event decks for there to be a true sandbox.