Conan, Sandboxes, and Plot

[exile]

Hey all, I've been playing a lot of the new Age of Conan MMORPG, and I'm fairly pleased with it. While I'm certain that it'll not unseat WoW, it does feature one innovation that I like a lot.
You can choose to adventure either at night or during the day. Night time adventuring is soloing and serves to advance the plot. Day time adventuring opens up the possibility of advneturing with others, but does less to advance the plot (you run a lot of unrelated errands).

In a D&D game, I don't think I'd so artificially separate sandbox play (daytime) from storyline play (daytime), but the game does do a good job of offering boith types of play and has made me stop and think about designing a campaign that does both sandbox and storyline play equally well.

Thoughts?

 

[weem]

...and has made me stop and think about designing a campaign that does both sandbox and storyline play equally well.

So should I assume by this statement that you don't feel your current game/style of gaming does these two things equally well right now? If not, I'm curious in what way they fail - It might help me understand the question a little better.

 

[Wik]

Check out Oblivion. It's pretty much the quintessential game for that mixture of open and plot-based play. You let the PCs explore the world, and give them a storyline that they can choose to follow if they so desire. And if not, well, let them explore... the plot will be waiting for them when they decide to pick it up.