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Message: <blockquote data-quote="MNblockhead" data-source="post: 9362596" data-attributes="member: 6796661">After five years of running a sandbox campaign, I now find myself running a large adventure path. I'm finding that I'm having a bit of trouble adjusting to this--mostly in the form of some anxiety over committing the "sin" of railroading the players. First: I have never run a long campaign that was truly an open-world, mostly improvisational game. I love this style of play for one shots and mini-campaigns, mostly with rules-light systems that better support this style of play.  I use the word "sandbox" to mean that players can pretty much direct how things will go, but the play has some boundaries. My last campaign, for example, took place in a megadungeon ("Rappan Athuk" but Frog God Games). There really wasn't a plot. It was not an adventure path. Most of the plot arose through the exploration and actions of the players, their motivations, and how the "world" reacted to their actions. If they would have tired of this setting, it was part of a much, much larger setting ("The Lost Lands" by Frog God Games), for which I have shelves groaning under multiple massive setting and adventure tomes, plus many PDFs. I have thousands of pages of content for The Lost Lands. So the players could have noped out of Rappan Athuk and gone off to explore other areas of the world. But I would require some advance warning of their intentions, desires, and/or plans to prep for the next session.  I don't want to get into a debate of what a real "sandbox" is. Just suffice it to say that for about five years I ran a campaign the leaned far more to the sandbox style of play than the railroaded style. I've decided to take a break from D&D after 10 years of running D&D campaigns and am not running "The Enemy Within" campaign in Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay 4e (WFRP). It is a large, complex, classic Warhammer Fantasy campaign updated to 4e by Cubicle Games. It is heavy on political intrique. It also take the PCs across the Empire. I am really enjoying prepping for and running an Empire-spanning WFRP campaign heavy on political intrigue.  It swings between being very linear to points in the campaign where players can take a variety of different paths. But it does require you to ensure that the players get to certain places at certain times. It requires the the players buy into this, otherwise it just doesn't work. Well, at least without the DM taking a lot of effort to rewrite much of it. I'm weaving in some additional plotlines and side quests, because I can't help myself. But I'm finding that besides the potential for greatly increasing the length of the campaign, it risks creating other issues. For example, the PCs leveling up to fast for encounters in the main campaign. It also adds even further complexity to an already complex campaign. I realize that as GM, I have a lot of tools at my disposal. E.g.,1. Give out less XP, less often.  That may not be satisfying to players. WFRP character advancement is much more granular than D&D.  Players like and expect a regular trickle of XP to incrementally increase attribute, buy new skills and talents, and advance in their careers. I can slow it down, but to go entire sessions without XP would detract a bit from the fun of the game. 2. Simplify. Adding complexity is really just obfuscating the railroad. I've already pared down a lot of the extra stuff I was considering throwing in, so that they get into and progress in the main storyline sooner. If you are going to get someone on the rails, at least put them on the express line, I guess. 3. Distract and subtly direct the PCs.  Some folks here, based on other posts, probably find this anathema. But I like this and find it necessary. Just because there's a plot and goals and places you need to be at certain times, doesn't mean that it has to feel like you are being led by the nose. 4. Limited adjustments and rewriting. No adventure as written survives contact with the players. I don't want to have to do major rewrites and would rather not just abandon the adventure. But I certainly expect that I will have to adjust things based on what the players do to make it work. This is where I feel weakest. I feel that this skill has atrophied after 5 years. It seems strange to write that, given that in my last campaign I was constantly coming up with new plots and twists and encounters based on what the players did. But that was just applying new things to a setting. Not an adventure path with detailed written plots. Also, because the adventure is so large (three books) and complicated, I worry about how changes will effect or complicate thing later on, requiring more reworking of the adventure than I counted on, or worse, "ruining" the adventure. I'd be interested in tips and lessons learned from others, especially those who have run more open-ended games or homebrew and then ran a large pre-written adventures successfully.</blockquote>

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