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I've certainly experienced players in a sandbox looking around for the quest rails with a slight air of puzzlement 😂 Conversely scene framing seems very easy for players to grasp, you get the occasional premise-rejector, but basically the kind of improv comedy and drama techniques you see on TV...

I think it may be more "works best for publishers" rather than "works best for players", but certainly it's what a lot of players have been trained to accept, and it's what Adventurers League etc offer. My own experience is that a lot of players like sandboxing, a lot like Pemertonian Scene...

I would rather call these Linear adventures, since Railroad comes from Railroading, the use of GM force to keep players on track, as advocated in eg Dragonlance and many 2e adventures. In a Railroad players can be acting in good faith to keep to the adventure and still find themselves subject to...

I ran Cyberpunk Red for several months earlier this year. That was a lot of fun!

After the Altani barbarian Varek Tigerclaw had finally fallen in his doomed last stand holding the bridge at Bisgen, and Crowfinger had taken his soul, Varek's player Jasper shook my hand and told me what an awesome campaign it had been. So satisfying for him, anyway. He even learned some things...

Yes, totally. Pacing is the most important GM skill. Don't frame a boring scene! Don't let players do it either! "OK after half an hour of gossip with the blacksmith, you buy your new armour and join the others at the inn, where..."

The whole point of a sandbox is to build things with the sand! Players & GM both. :)

That works ok. Passenger/Wallflower players provide useful ballast to a campaign. Ideal I find is probably 2-3 proactive but cooperative players and 2-3 wallflowers for ballast. One danger is the very active player who sees the campaign as "his" and seeks to exercise tight control of the other...

I've been running my Wilderlands setting since 2006, off and on but mostly on. What I tend to do is run a "campaign" for a few years, maybe 1, maybe 3 or 7, then there's a break and a new campaign with new PCs. Usually in an adjacent area to the previous campaign, so that the effects of the old...

Yes. But you only need one.

I think the best diagetic way to handle this is a trustworthy NPC who can give clear direction if the PCs want it. Eg the Clerics know they can go to the Temple for a mission. I think Skyrim is a good model for how to run this. If the player is stuck for choice, there's always someone to give...

Yes, IME it takes at least one proactive & engaged player in the group for a really cool campaign. Too many can actually be a problem as it encourages intra-party conflict and splintering. And the players need to be proactively engaged with the sandbox & form plans based on what they discover...

EzekielRaiden: Absolutely! Joss Whedon did this very effectively in Buffy etc. Players (unlike many scenario authors) absolutely love it when they occasionally get a kerbstomp victory over the BBEG. I remember with running Curse of the Crimson Throne in Pathfinder 1e, the players absolutely...

I think with this one there are potential long term threats from the undead of Tosasth to the west (Terror in Tosasth), from the wizard lord of the Forbidden City to the south (Dwellers of the Forbidden City), and possibly from the evil & Chaotic Amiondel Elves of Ludgates off screen to the...

Yes - sandboxes take GM work! Relying purely on random generation sucks. But most of the work can be done during play, as you develop the setting, which I find pretty easy and fun if the starting conditions are good (I have abandoned sandboxes that weren't working well). My epic 5e Ghinarian...

Not exactly. What I do usually is get a bunch of published adventures, use them to flesh out the sandbox, the players hear rumours and decide what to do. Those adventures often have active villains with plans in motion. Depending on how things develop, an epic plot may develop, but it's not one...

Well that was one cool thing. There have been many others. And there have been ignoble failures as well, of course. But I've seen very satisfying failures, indeed the catastrophic failure of Varek Tiger-Claw against the Necromancers of the Black Sun in 4e set the scene for the rise of Hakeem...

My experience has been the exact opposite. Running an Adventure Path never compares to the truly epic nature of an emergent story. Player agency is how you get to see Hubris & Nemesis in the dramatic tale of a warrior who becomes king by his own hand, welding together a disparate collection of...

This can happen with sandboxing if you (a) don't use guard rails (b) your players aren't very good/competent/suited or (c) You're not very competent and run a boring sandbox. I've seen all these. But I run OSR style games where very often we get fantastic moments and drama, so I know it's...