Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="humble minion" data-source="post: 5376358" data-attributes="member: 5948">If I was going to vote, I'd vote #3, trending towards 4.  But it's not quite as simple as that.The more 'sandboxy' a game gets, the more it demands from its players and the GM, when it comes to preparation, research, setting design from the GM and setting knowledge from the players, etc, etc, etc.  This is not an easy thing to achieve, especially with a group in their 30s or later, when jobs, kids, etc, etc, etc all mean that we have less time (especially out-of-session time) to spend on learning the intricacies of a campaign world, or, for the GM, designing absolutely every single NPC, location, custom, item, historical fact, or political issue that might possibly affect or be leveraged by the PCs to affect the current plot.  If you're playing in a pure sandbox game without the GM having given thought to all this stuff, then it's not going to go well or smoothly at all.I'd rather have a sit-down chat to the other players before the campaign starts, and work out what is the upper limit of time and dedication we can all devote to the game.  If we're going to have too many other competing issues happening at the same time, then we're probably better off having a more story- and GM-driven game, where things are more controllable at the expense of flexibility.  I prefer sandboxes in general, but I'd rather have a good, slightly railroaded game over a disorganised, unprepared, crumbling sandbox game.</blockquote>

Verification