D&D 5E 9 words to help run a sandbox

[clearstream]

Wait...objections? To what? I'm pretty sure I have the same values you guys have, and play the same way you guys do. I just don't stick my nose in the air and call it "sandboxing". Where I come from it's called "gaming".

You said that "the illusion of a sandbox is as good as a real sandbox. E.g., no matter which road the players take, they encounter the same important traveling tinker NPC" which sounded like it was objecting to the kind of sandbox that I was describing. Or at least, saying that it has no value.

Ah, I see. I just don't "derive satisfaction from the act of imagination". Subtle.

I'm sorry you took it that way, which is the exact opposite of my meaning. From your comments it sounded like your gaming doesn't include the sort of sandbox that I have enjoyed. So I was trying to convey to you some of the satisfactions - because your comments made it seem like maybe you had not tried it. In doing that, I was attempting to give you a motive to try it. And in order to have any expectation that, that could motivate you, I was perforce assuming that you could derive satisfaction from acts of imagination.

You guys are so full of yourselves. Everybody that I know has been playing D&D for the past 35 years the way you are describing; we just never got all sanctimonious about the trade-off between set pieces and improvisation.

You entered the conversation with an aggressive assumption that I see DMing modes as dichotomous and that my positive arguments for the virtues of a sandbox are also negative arguments denigrating anything else. They're not.

You came in with -

Sometimes when I hear (or read) people wax eloquent about how they run a "sandbox" and not a dirty stinkin' "railroad" I sorta wish I could sit at their table just to demonstrate that it's still, to some extent, a railroad.

Where have I denigrated rail-roads? Your comment reads as an attack on both the value and the possibility of a sandbox. Any sanctimony is imagined: it exists only to the extent you've invented it. I'll restate it - just because I like sandboxes, and have ideas about how to play them, doesn't mean that I dislike railroads and have no ideas how to play those. It doesn't mean that I won't mix them together from time to time, using elements of one in the other. And it doesn't mean I think your group is doing it wrong if you lean more toward railroads than sandboxes. Those aren't even the only options.

 

[Guest 6801328]

Any sanctimony is imagined: it exists only to the extent you've invented it.

Possibly as it applies to you specifically; I don't recall which posters have said what over the...years. But there is a ton of sanctimony around this false dichotomy. So you'll have to excuse me if I read this:

I'm sorry you took it that way, which is the exact opposite of my meaning. From your comments it sounded like your gaming doesn't include the sort of sandbox that I have enjoyed. So I was trying to convey to you some of the satisfactions - because your comments made it seem like maybe you had not tried it. In doing that, I was attempting to give you a motive to try it. And in order to have any expectation that, that could motivate you, I was perforce assuming that you could derive satisfaction from acts of imagination.

...and can't help but wonder if there's just a little bit of disingenuousness going on here. (It reminds me of an old cartoon I saw with the caption "Oh, no, of course I didn't mean 'bimbo' in the pejorative sense.") Read it again yourself, and pretend that somebody else wrote it to you.

In any event, as I keep repeating, I and everybody I know play the way you describe. Just not all the time. We might, for example, put hours into designing a really great dungeon. If the players don't take the bait we don't just throw away all our work; we find other hooks to try to get them there. Isn't that the way everybody plays?

 

[Inchoroi]

In a non-sandbox approach, PCs are lead from "room" to "room". (I don't mean necessarily literal rooms here, but narrative ones.) Some people call these nodes, which really is just how you branch them. Everything is fairly pre-scripted and we have strong confidence that the PCs will go through it all in roughly the order it is laid out. The value of that approach is that we can include a lot of detail without wasting a lot of work, because almost all details will be seen by players. Look at the discussion of the unused nodes in SKT to understand reactions to loss of efficiency when their not! Think of this approach as a theatre play: it is very efficient at telling a story you want to tell.

A sand box, or living world, can't really work that way because we are open to our players going in whatever direction they find compelling. We'd need a vast number of "rooms" if we wanted to accommodate that! Hence a different approach is used. Instead, we focus on our personalities and what they want (motives) and can do (means). We prepare lightly, but for the same reason Tolkien gave we ensure we have a rough idea of the area and points of interest (places). Foreshadowing has a different connotation here, rather than predicting a pre-scripted event, it shares information about motives and events that players can't presently see but might (or might not) effect them. For example, if we have a monastic order that is trying to steal a unique magical item from the characters, we can foreshadow that threat with a symbolic dream. Will the dream come true? Who knows: that depends on the players. Or if an ancient red dragon is stirring, and about to devastate our kingdom, earthquakes are felt in the region. Will the dragon survive to achieve said devastation? Again, who knows: it depends on our heroes. It's possible even that one of our NPCs takes on the task and defeats it. All off screen. Our theatre is improv.

Recurrence is different and quite simple, it means that Kazook, the deep gnome trader that the player rescued from the gelatinous cubes, a year later when they are back in Blingdenstone is delighted to see them, offers warm hospitality, and now has a toddler. The world feels more real because Kazook didn't cease to exist the moment he went off stage. Recurrence means that the kin of the High Priestess that the players slew, are petitioning for her True Resurrection. And regardless of whether that petition succeeds of fails, the PCs are marked for retribution. Consequences, may be a better word to use. In fact, I believe I will add it!

To sum it up with my favorite quote: "The Setting drives the Characters which drives the Plot."

 

[FrogReaver]

I wish sandboxing would die a slow horrible painful death. There's my 2 cents. Now I'm goina duck and cover!

 

[clearstream]

I wish sandboxing would die a slow horrible painful death. There's my 2 cents. Now I'm goina duck and cover!

Fear not. I actually dislike the term sandbox, and prefer open or living world. I assume your experiences with it have been less the stellar. Maybe my 9 words can help

 

[Harzel]

I wish sandboxing would die a slow horrible painful death. There's my 2 cents. Now I'm goina duck and cover!

Hmm. You could instead choose just to not play in or run them. That would be easier. Having sandboxing die a slow horrible painful death cannot be accomplished by an 8th level or lower spell. So you are risking never being able to cast Wish again.

 

[FrogReaver]

Hmm. You could instead choose just to not play in or run them. That would be easier. Having sandboxing die a slow horrible painful death cannot be accomplished by an 8th level or lower spell. So you are risking never being able to cast Wish again.

If that's what it takes then I'm all in!

 

[clearstream]

If that's what it takes then I'm all in!

To get back on topic, can I ask that you make a different thread for criticising the sandbox mode of play? This thread is about how to enhance running a sandbox, not about whether you should want to play one or not.

 

[FrogReaver]

To get back on topic, can I ask that you make a different thread for criticising the sandbox mode of play? This thread is about how to enhance running a sandbox, not about whether you should want to play one or not.

Two semi humourus and fun comments that are tangential tot his thread doesn't make a new thread. It's not like im here making point after point about how sandboxes suck and going back and forth about that. So no. I'm not making a new thread about a topic I don't really care to discuss and the kinds of comments I made here are far from coming close to derailing this thread in the slightest.

 

[clearstream]

Two semi humourus and fun comments that are tangential tot his thread doesn't make a new thread. It's not like im here making point after point about how sandboxes suck and going back and forth about that. So no. I'm not making a new thread about a topic I don't really care to discuss and the kinds of comments I made here are far from coming close to derailing this thread in the slightest.

It wasn't really you, I could just see us being derailed into a debate about the value of sandboxes, whereas what I'd like here is a debate about the value of these nine words (or others like them) to sandboxes.