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I would add any strictly linear style campaigns would likely not be considered a sandbox. My Candlekeep Mysteries campaign, where it was episodic, with each episode being a new adventure, would certainly never be considered a sandbox. Something like Horde of the Dragon Queen as well isn't a...

Actually, there are a number of ways for the party to know this. There are a number of random encounters with various factions that can tell you how far behind the pursuit is. For example, my group met a small group of drow in the Silken Path (one of the random encounters). The warlock plus...

The problem is, it's irrelevant when any of this was decided. The entire point of describing the floor as rickety-looking was to slow the party down. That's the whole point. It doesn't matter if the DM did this on the fly or was reading from notes. The decision to make the floor unsafe...

Oh, no. I totally agree. You've been pretty even handed. Fair enough. It's unusual enough that we agree on something. :D But, there are a number of others who have been pretty insistent on characterizing sandbox play as a very specific, narrow thing. My Ironsworn play apparently doesn't...

None of that is actually true. Well, almost. The "caught by fiat" encounter at the very end is possible, although, it certainly doesn't have to be run. It is suggested. But, again, I thought in a sandbox, that the DM was entitled to add in encounters that fit with their desires for realism...

True. But, does that mean that in a sandbox, the DM is constrained from ever introducing encounters that might be too difficult if the party does not play smart? I would have thought that this was pretty much one of the basic tenets of sandbox play. That smart play is rewarded and poor play...

Oh, and let's not forget that I5 was the first time a monster had character class levels. Another important innovation.

Sure, you can change the example again to suit your purposes just like you rewrote Keep on the Borderlands to suit your argument. But, that's expressly NOT what @Lanefan said. The floor was rickety in order to slow the party down. He straight up said this. The floor is actually NOT old or...

Have you actually read the adventure recently? This is not true. The party is pursued. Yes. But they can be caught up at any time. Being caught up in now way means failure or success. It’s just an event.

How is that impartial at all? You, the dm, declared without any reason other than to force specific actions from the players, that the floor was sound. This is EXACTLY what we’ve meant by dm determination being railroading. The only reason you described the situation that way was to...

Well no. You know if it’s possible or not. Otherwise you wouldn’t call for a roll. The roll is almost never to determine if the guard is bribable in the first place.

Yet I’ve repeatedly been told that my sandbox campaigns are not sandboxes and then I get accused of bullying and being argumentative for insisting that they are.

Funny how these statements aren’t “ought to” yet I’ve now been told a few times that the sandbox campaigns I’ve run aren’t actually sandboxes. Seems pretty normative to me.

Just to clarify. There is no time pressure in Out of the Abyss.

A hunter gatherer settlement of 100 people - virtually all of which are adults, is HUGE. That's 100 gallons of water plus about 300 pounds of food per day. There's absolutely no way that this area could support a population that large. Look, I get that people hold KotB as this fantastic...

Never minding economy, they have no ecology either. What do they eat? What do they drink? There's what, about a hundred or more humanoids in the Caves - making it a fairly large town by D&D standards. With zero farming or means of gathering food. Unless the surrounding forest is absolutely...

To be honest, I'm not all that familiar with the specifics of Blades. But, in Ironsworn (sorry to go back to this chestnut), you could make a Secure Advantage move before you attempted to get past the guards which could very much be narrated as trying to be more cautious. Does Blades not also...

How is this a mischaracterization. You have repeatedly stated that virtually all information comes from the DM. The players cannot know anything without it being created and passed to them from the DM. The only way to "hear things" is for the DM to tell the players. And everything they hear...

Yes, because only one person has said about how much work they do to get their sandbox off the ground. No one else has ever talked about how the DM/GM is the sole source of information about the setting. 🤷 That I didn't have to do any of this was 100% because I didn't use D&D as the system...

But... what's the point? And, I don't mean this antagonistically. It's an honest question. Why would the players care if the Dungeon of Nasty Badness is in Hex 1204 or Hex 1207? The point is to get to the Dungeon of Nasty Badness. Or, to put it another way. I'm running Out of the Abyss...