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Message: <blockquote data-quote="(Psi)SeveredHead" data-source="post: 6062292" data-attributes="member: 1165">It's been my experience that most DMs don't know how to run a sandbox campaign (DMs in my group who prefer to run games that way run better plot-based games), but an even bigger issue are the players.Some players simply need direction. They're the ones who will play yak breeders or chemists if they're not handed a role. Said players often do perfectly fine when given a plot to work with.Players often have trouble working together. If you have seven players each writing the plot, you just get seven players competing for DM time, perhaps occasionally banding once they've realized they've wasted all but an hour of session time and finally gather to beat up a random bad guy... or occasionally PC-killing, for legitimate RP reasons too. (The only time I've seen a sandbox-like campaign work was when only one or two players were writing plot, and the others were along for the ride. It helped that there was some basic plot in the background, so at the least the players had something to fall back on.)(For my own games, which are never sandbox, I insist the PCs know each other beforehand, and at least know what people are playing first. I've seen campaigns - some run by me, some run by others - fall apart because the PCs don't trust each other. Sandboxing dissuades a DM from playing a role in building the party, which would have let them avoid some problems.)"Railroading" reduces prep time. Obviously you can take it too far (some DMs are very bad at reacting to unexpected PC actions, especially in the short term), but if you're going to sandbox you actually need to do loads more prep ahead of time.</blockquote>

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