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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Hussar" data-source="post: 3893671" data-attributes="member: 22779">A later thought occurs to me.The main difference, in my mind between an episodic campaign and a sandbox campaign is who is in the drivers seat.  In an episodic campaign, the DM remains pretty firmly in control.  Essentially, each session, the players show up and adventure through whichever scenario the DM has cooked up.  Yes, player choice remains important within the constraints of that given scenario, but, the option of simply pulling up stakes and moving on to a different scenario isn't really viable.  It's possible, if the DM is willing to wing it, but, in an episodic campaign, the assumption is that the players are going to at least meet the DM halfway.In a sandbox campaign, the players are in control.  The DM has plotted (to varying degrees of detail) all of the reasonable elements that the players could reach at any given time and the players essentially tell the DM what they want to do based on whatever goals the players come up with.  If the players decide to follow that rumour about trolls out into the hills, then decide to switch gears and head back to try to find that magic thingummy they heard about a while ago to help them with the trolls, that's not a problem.  The DM is less proactive, and more reactive.To be fair, I agree with RC about this being a very rewarding style of game.  I think it really does go a long way to being a barrel full of fun.  OTOH, it requires a LOT of prep work beforehand to do it right, and, it requires players that are willing to be proactive.  I've had this go sideways on me in the past when faced with a group that essentially just wants to go along with whatever adventure I had planned, rather than acting on their own initiative.Honestly, I think that sandbox style gaming is fairly rare.  To the point where a lot of players have never been faced with it before and don't know how to react when they are.  Later D&D hardly invented the railroad adventure after all.  IME, episodic campaigns were the norm - the DM had whatever adventure ready that week and you pretty much had to do that adventure or not game.  The unspoken understanding was that so long as the adventure didn't suck too badly, we'd go along with it.  And, by and large, the adventures didn't suck.Truly open ended campaigns, like Isle of Dread were a rarity IME.  I also wonder how well sandbox style campaigns fare in a large range of levels.  How do you make your sandbox big enough to handle 2nd level PC's and 17th level PC's?</blockquote>

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