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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Crazy Jerome" data-source="post: 4789861" data-attributes="member: 54877">It appears that you think highly enough of the possibility of fun sandbox play to want to give it a very fair shake. Which is great--never hurts to expand your experiences, even if you decide you don't like it in the end.  However, nothing says that you must commit 100% in order to give it a fair shake. As others have said, it requires skill (GM and players) to play this way, and not all of those skills are developed in other modes of play. (It requires skil to run scripted well, too, but for some reason everyone assumes that these skills come easily or are worth the wait, without the wailing and gnashing of teeth that accompany sandbox discussions.) So my suggestion is to explicitly have a period where you play sandbox with the training wheels on. It needs to be explicit, so that you and the players don't fall into the kind of habits that will give you the worst of some awful sandbox/scripted nightmare. For example: 1. If the players are about to make a really bad choice of hook (as in the first session, picking the too difficult adventure without scouting it), then stop the session for a few minutes, tell them the problem, and what they should do about it. They won't get the superb learning experience of a TPK (or of running away from one), but you might not have a completely wasted session, either. If the players keep running blindly into things, then after the 2nd or 3rd warning, let them. The lesson will be that much more useful now. Do not save their characters with any form of illusionism or GM fiat here. There are times and places for that in some groups, but this is not one of them. Through explicit out-of-game discussion warn them away, or let them go ahead. 2. Merely because you are running a sandbox, it does not follow that it needs to be a big sandbox. This should also be explicitly discussed. A single town is probably too small. A cramped sandbox is almost as hard to run well as a huge one. A single town surrounded by a few villages, ruins, caves, etc.--all within a day or two of the town--is not too small for a GM learning to sandbox, but roomy enough for the players to not brush up against the walls every time they try something. 3. In any kind of game, when learning new skills, it never hurts to drop out of the game for a few minutes when things are getting boring (or you suspect they are), and talk about it. "Hey, we've been roleplaying in town for 2 hours. You guys happy with that, or you want to get to some action.?" If they want action, and you need to script them into the action for a couple of minutes, make it overt metagaming--and tell them why and how. In effect, guide them through a script that is analogous to what would happen if they chased the hook themselves. Next time, give them a shot at chasing the hook. As long as the training wheels are obvious, they won't cause any harm, and won't be needed very long. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /></blockquote>

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