D&D 5E (2024) DMG 2024: Is The Sandbox Campaign Dead?

[Remathilis]

Random encounter tables.
Faction relationship maps.
Tools for other random/procedural generation.
Sandboxes require all of these things.

Encounter tables are world specific. I mean, maybe you can make some generic low/high level forest, hill, mountain, etc ones. Similarly, factions are also world specific. The DMG does have generators for settlements, weather, stuff like that (although more is always appreciated). The issue I see is that things you're asking for are setting specific rather than generic for the DMG.

 

[TiQuinn]

Semantic aside.

There is one in the DMG.

Doesn’t appear to be what we’re really talking about in a hypothetical section on sandbox campaigns.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

This.

The DMG has not really taught people how to sandbox in the past. Why is not doing it now a major issue?

Well, I know at least one past DMG has specifically included advice and support for player-DM collaboration to develop personal quests, and actual mechanical rewards for completion of said player-authored quests, so it's not strictly true that absolutely no support has existed before.

I do agree that providing direct, explicit support specifically for sandbox-and-only-sandbox has never really been much of a thing in D&D. But that's not what the OP spoke of, e.g.: "Similarly, it mentions player goals in passing, but otherwise does not spend any time of establishing what this looks like as a way to play the game."

Some DMGs in the past have done this. 5e's DMGs--both 5.0 and 5.5--have not. Of course, a big part of that is the criticism I've levelled at the 5.0 DMG for ages now, but I doubt it is productive to simply beat that drum yet again.

 

[Shardstone]

Let's reference some things that WotC officials have talked about.

Crawford has mentioned in previous interviews that games tend to last 3-4 months, and that they are generally bound between Levels 1-10. There are enough games outside this paradigm happening to make Levels 11-20 worth keeping around, and clearly people have longer and shorter games (I have two campaigns I'm running now that are a year+ anecdotally). However, the average being 3-4 months and about 10 levels makes sense to me.

Running a Sandbox in 3-4 months is certainly doable. I think a lot of people have run games like this, especially people who grew up with older editions. But I'm not sure if it's more satisfying then having complete an adventure in 3-4 months. I've run and played in lots of sandboxes (homebrew or otherwise), and games that have a story that actually finishes feels like a white whale. And that's because for a long time, I didn't focus hard enough on keeping my campaign constrained given the realities of the people I was playing with. Especially when most of my games are online, people just don't carry the same investment + it's a lot easier to have a messed up schedule. As a result, I've turned to doing more "story arcs" for groups so that campaigns can end, everyone gets to experience that sweet dopamine release for completing something, and then I can build on that in the future if the group can continue.

Let's just ASSUME my experience is a common experience. Or that I'm one of many similar-but-different experiences that regardless still contributes to this average of "3-4 months." If that's the case, and I'm WotC, and I want people to feel satisfied from my adventures (because we turn to stories for emotional experiences of various kinds), I'm going to focus primarily on short form adventure style. And by shortform I mean anything from a single adventure in an anthology to a full book going from levels 1-10 (because things are on a spectrum, not black/white).

My favorite adventure book, despite being one of my most loathed adventures, is Descent Into Avernus. I love this book because it equips me with the tools via the Baldur's Gate Setting Guide to create my own 1-10 adventure, and enough "models" in the pretty mid core adventure that I can create my own "Go to Avernus Hell story." More and more, we are seeing this focus on setting material and treating the book as a model being used in addition to the arthrology models that are pretty much the same thing but better executed. Now that the DMG24 encourages style of play, we can safely reason that WotC has decided that chasing that average is better for its game and for the company's financial health.

I like it too because now D&D is taking a more concrete shape. This is an action-adventure story game with a moderate amount of mechanical heft. Classes are developed with story in mind. Stat blocks are developed with story in mind. Adventures are developed with story in mind. The designers repeat this so often in interviews. D&D is a game about telling stories that combine action, humor, sentimental emotion, and a rain check for anything else you want to bring in (post-apocalyptic Dark Sun, horror-based Ravenloft, Great War Dragonlance, Indiana Jones Pulp Eberron).

Now, this doesn't mean a sandbox can't be used to convey a story. Tomb of Annihilation is something I have actually played through beginning to end and yes, it's a true-blue sandbox. You have to fill in MOST of the hexes yourself with the materials given or whatever else you want to add. And the pieces that are given are specifically designed to tell a story if a DM doesn't have the time, energy, skill, or resources necessary to do the full sandbox.

This focus on story combined with adding a special factor dependent on setting or adventure IMO is a winning formula for 5E in terms of quality game support. They are appealing to what their customer base LARGELY wants, and giving peaks into other styles of gameplay by figuring out how to mold story with the accessory genre. It's the same strategy the MCU used to become successful (spy movie Winter Soldier, horror movie Multiverse of Madness, Western Logan, but all still comic book action movies with a bit of humor and sentimental emotion).

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

Sandbox has fallen out of favor among publishers. I don't recall any major new sandboxes within the past ten years.

They're constantly being released in the OSR, along with books on how to run hex crawls.

Which publishers are you referring to here, beyond WotC and Paizo?

 

[Reynard]

Do they? I've never cared for random encounter tables, I choose enemies and monsters that fit the area the PCs are likely to encounter. I don't even know what faction relationship maps are, I just make notes on different factions and goals. Random/procedural generation? Nah. I'd rather use my imagination.

Or we just have a very different definition of sandbox.

Encounter tables are world specific. I mean, maybe you can make some generic low/high level forest, hill, mountain, etc ones. Similarly, factions are also world specific. The DMG does have generators for settlements, weather, stuff like that (although more is always appreciated). The issue I see is that things you're asking for are setting specific rather than generic for the DMG.

I am going to repeat myself: this is about teaching and supporting this playstyle. You are all ignoring that aspect to argue about what YOU need or don't.

 

[MerricB]

The 2024 DMG is impressively short on help for many adventure types. Investigations. Dungeons. Sandboxes. (Sandboxes are not alone in this).

In fact, I'm not entirely sure that it helps DMs particularly create any type of adventure. It is (moderately) good at helping DMs run elements of adventures. (Or actively bad, see the Chase rules). Sometimes it is very good in its advice, but I'm not sure it is consistent.

 

[Oofta]

I am going to repeat myself: this is about teaching and supporting this playstyle. You are all ignoring that aspect to argue about what YOU need or don't.

You stated "These things are required". I disagree. You can include them if you want but they are not necessary.

 

[pukunui]

In fact, I'm not entirely sure that it helps DMs particularly create any type of adventure. It is (moderately) good at helping DMs run elements of adventures. (Or actively bad, see the Chase rules). Sometimes it is very good in its advice, but I'm not sure it is consistent.

Have the designers ever used the chase rules in a streamed game or anything? I'd love to see how they use them because I can't get them to work in a satisfying way.

I say this every time, but the Season 2 AL adventure "Cloaks and Shadows" includes a much better set of chase rules that I really wish they'd make the default.

 

[TiQuinn]

Crawford has mentioned in previous interviews that games tend to last 3-4 months, and that they are generally bound between Levels 1-10. There are enough games outside this paradigm happening to make Levels 11-20 worth keeping around, and clearly people have longer and shorter games (I have two campaigns I'm running now that are a year+ anecdotally). However, the average being 3-4 months and about 10 levels makes sense to me.

Whenever I think of people's sandbox campaigns, I think of stories of players who've had campaigns that they've stated have run for years, if not several decades, wherein their players are something of a revolving door (not always), have had many, many characters, including children of characters, and so on. And I always think to myself, what does that REALLY look like? Is there an "arc" to these campaigns? Is it really just a series of game sessions consisting of "What do we do next week?". Then, I kind of just think about the old games I used to be a part of, and most of them simply ended with no resolution at all. We just stopped playing those characters in favor of something else, or because real-life intervened with our regular game.