If
@Reynard believes my game is a sandbox then I'm confused. I went back and reread the campaign building guidelines and I don't see anything in the DMG that dissuades DMs people from running sandboxes, quite the opposite. The encounter design is pretty straightforward and doesn't really affect style of campaign. The campaign development guide doesn't really talk in terms of linear or sandbox one way or another. What they
do discuss is keeping an ongoing journal, keeping track of adventure ideas, keeping the campaign premise flexible and based on character actions and player feedback. I just read through it again and it seems pretty neutral as to actual campaign style while focusing on mechanics of running and tracking a campaign, along with a bit of advice on how to keep the campaign interesting. Basically if it's pushing any style of campaign, it's the type of game I run.
They don't include things like specific random encounter tables, but I've never wanted to use them anyway. If you want them I'm sure you can find them online which makes more sense to me anyway because of the lag time from the DMG to MM and an online version can be updated as new monsters are added. A random monster generator becomes outdated the moment you any book not included when the generator was created. I guess I just don't see much correlation between using random tables to help build encounters and sandboxes.
Looking at the intro to the Campaign Design section
Campaign Premise
Everything outlined about the story of an adventure in chapter 4 is true of a campaign’s story as well: a campaign is like a series of comics or TV shows, where each adventure (like an issue of a comic or a TV episode) tells a self-contained story that contributes to the larger story. Just like with an adventure, a campaign’s story isn’t predetermined, because the actions of the players’ characters will influence how the story plays out. [bold added]
So nothing is predetermined and then go into talking about a campaign that is based on episodes.
Episodes
An episodic campaign is a campaign in which the component adventures don’t combine to form an overarching story. Episodic adventures are stand-alone quests, and the villains who appear in one adventure rarely resurface to trouble the characters again. If your game group plays infrequently, an episodic campaign might be ideal because the players can enjoy the current adventure even if they’ve forgotten the details of earlier adventures.
Starting a New Episode. In an episodic campaign, the start of a new adventure doesn’t necessarily have any connection to the end of the last one. The action might pick up immediately after the end of the previous adventure, but it might instead begin weeks, months, or years after the last adventure, allowing interim events to unfold while the characters take a break from adventuring.
They refer to "adventures" when I've typically called them chapters or story arcs but it's the same basic idea. I have to plan for something that is going to keep the players busy and engaged for at least the next session. So if my campaign is a sandbox, then they explain how to run a sandbox. They just don't use that exact term.
Am I missing something? Because I see them talking about
Serials and
Episodes, where I would say that serials are more typical linear campaigns like we find in most WotC modules while episodes describe my home campaign which I've been told is a sandbox.
