It needs to be more of a sandbox than a railroad?

[the Jester]

Sandbox is a game with no story.

I would say rather that a sandbox is a game whose story emerges after play, from the actions and choices of the players.

How to design D&D adventures accommodating both tighter (railroad-ish) and looser (sandbox, scene framing, etc) frameworks is of great interest to me.

I submit Red Hand of Doom as perhaps the best example of an adventure that could be run as either a linear railroad or a fairly total sandbox. Lots is going on and there are timelines, but the pcs could be left free to run around the vale doing as they wish.

 

[Sunseeker]

A bad sandbox is worse than a bad railroad.

I generally agree, but it's not a big gap.

Being told to do something so transparently railroady and so poorly written is still at least​ something to do as opposed to "here's the world, go do stuff."

 

[neonagash]

I generally agree, but it's not a big gap.

Being told to do something so transparently railroady and so poorly written is still at least​ something to do as opposed to "here's the world, go do stuff."

Yes but as a player you can make a bad sandbox better by being pro-active and looking for things to do.

With a bad railroad your just spending a few hours sitting there bored and wondering why you didnt stay home and watch TV instead. You have no say or ability to improve things.

 

[Grogg of the North]

With a bad railroad your just spending a few hours sitting there bored and wondering why you didnt stay home and watch TV instead. You have no say or ability to improve things.

Oddly, I've been in sandbox games like that.

We go to the forest and get pounded into the dirt.
We go to the mountains and get pounded into the dirt.
We go to the desert, get diseased, cursed and then pounded into the dirt.
We stay in the city and the unstoppable super mage army burns down the town and pounds us into the dirt.

A sandbox can become a litter box very quickly.

 

[neonagash]

Oddly, I've been in sandbox games like that.

We go to the forest and get pounded into the dirt.
We go to the mountains and get pounded into the dirt.
We go to the desert, get diseased, cursed and then pounded into the dirt.
We stay in the city and the unstoppable super mage army burns down the town and pounds us into the dirt.

A sandbox can become a litter box very quickly.

Thats not a sandbox.

If you dont actually have a say in the outcome and a chance to succeed its a railroad. There was after all only one possible outcome no matter what you do. Thats pretty close to the definition of railroad.

 

[Grogg of the North]

Thats not a sandbox.

If you dont actually have a say in the outcome and a chance to succeed its a railroad. There was after all only one possible outcome no matter what you do. Thats pretty close to the definition of railroad.

In that campaign, all the action was driven by the players. We were plopped into a town, given some tidbits on what was happening in the world and set loose. Many, in this very thread, have asserted that to be the definition of a sandbox.

The point I'm trying to make is that a bad sandbox can be just as bad as a bad railroad.

 

[Sunseeker]

Yes but as a player you can make a bad sandbox better by being pro-active and looking for things to do.

I'm sorry, but I'm going to be blunt: that's garbage.

That's the sort of "my world is great you players just aren't good enough for it!" garbage that sandbox DMs have tried to throw in my face before. It's blame blame blame blame on everyone else at the table besides themselves. They "remove" themselves from the setting they so painstakingly created through random tables which cover anything from fair fights to undead armies and random elder dragons. Then it's all the player's fault for missing this or not doing that or whatever it is the DM really wanted us to go after.

If there aren't things to do, then looking for those things doesn't help. They're NOT THERE. It's all random tables and absolutely nothing more than "I wander into the forest" *DM rolls die* "you find nothing." "I keep going" *DM rolls die* "still nothing. "okay I go to the mountains" *dm rolls die* "You encounter an elder dragon, roll init." >.>

There's an MMO coming out called ArchAge. The basic premise is it being an open-world, randomly generated, sandbox MMO. Guess what? It's boring. Once you've run around on your horse for 10 hours, chopped down a dozen trees and built a little cabin....there's not much else to do.

You start saying there's a Lich attacking the city of Mountainvale, well now you're getting a story going and moving away from sandbox land.

With a bad railroad your just spending a few hours sitting there bored and wondering why you didnt stay home and watch TV instead. You have no say or ability to improve things.

I have no say or ability to improve a bad sandbox either. The only difference is that a bad sandbox is a lake where all I can do is swim around. A bad railroad is a river where while I'm swimming, I'm also being taken places against my will.

With the latter at least the scenery changes, which means potentially the bad will end and good stuff will start. With a bad sandbox, there is no good or bad. It's all the same.

 

[Quickleaf]

I submit Red Hand of Doom as perhaps the best example of an adventure that could be run as either a linear railroad or a fairly total sandbox. Lots is going on and there are timelines, but the pcs could be left free to run around the vale doing as they wish.

You know, I never owned this adventure because I never played 3e for any extended period of time, but from what I remember thumbing thru it, I would agree that it has the sort of structure which can work for either style of game. I may have to dig up a copy just to see the framework Rich Baker and James Jacobs used.

 

[neonagash]

I'm sorry, but I'm going to be blunt: that's garbage.

More stuff.
.

The only thing wrong with that, is everything.

With a sandbox it IS the players jobs to be an active part of the universe and ask questions and look for interesting things to do rather then sitting there and being spoon fed cliched hooks.

If the GM is beating you over the head with "this way lies the adventure" its NOT a sandbox.

In a sandbox you might hear about various crimes you can try to stop, but also decide you want to steal that stuff too and go do that.

You might not care one way or another about the rumours of crimes and instead be interested in the bounty board outside the sheriffs office because you want to make some quick cash.

Or you might not care about justice that much, or be chaotic and actively think that theres a chance the government is overbearing and those people are likely undeserving of punishment and work to undermine the sheriffs efforts.

Or you might not care about any of that and instead think the stuff you heard about the constant wars between the dwarf clans and orcs is where your future lies.

The whole point is that there are LOTS of things to do. And the players decide what has real emotional investment for them, rather then the DM force feeding false emotional investments based on his own (or an adventure writers) ideas of what should be emotionally motivating down their throats and hoping they buy in.

Also sandboxes have nothing to do with random tables, assuming you ever actually experienced that it wasnt a sandbox. It was a DM's first game, he was probably running a railroad and you somehow got off the rails so he had no idea what to do..... Thats usually when the random tables pop out, when a railroad goes off the tracks.

Your lich anology is also pointless. A sandbox would have that same lich in the mountains of lichiness. However the players are free to say " so what?" and go find something else to do without the entire session hitting the skids and the DM's head imploding.

Because yes, theres the lich. But its also a living world with a whole bunch of other stuff going on that the players may care more about and decide are much more interesting then the lich.

With a rail road its "my lich or the highway".... and now I'm not playing a game. I'm watching a movie and rolling dice.

 

[Sunseeker]

The only thing wrong with that, is everything.

With a sandbox it IS the players jobs to be an active part of the universe and ask questions and look for interesting things to do rather then sitting there and being spoon fed cliched hooks.

If the GM is beating you over the head with "this way lies the adventure" its NOT a sandbox.

In a sandbox you might hear about various crimes you can try to stop, but also decide you want to steal that stuff too and go do that.

You might not care one way or another about the rumours of crimes and instead be interested in the bounty board outside the sheriffs office because you want to make some quick cash.

Or you might not care about justice that much, or be chaotic and actively think that theres a chance the government is overbearing and those people are likely undeserving of punishment and work to undermine the sheriffs efforts.

Or you might not care about any of that and instead think the stuff you heard about the constant wars between the dwarf clans and orcs is where your future lies.

The whole point is that there are LOTS of things to do. And the players decide what has real emotional investment for them, rather then the DM force feeding false emotional investments based on his own (or an adventure writers) ideas of what should be emotionally motivating down their throats and hoping they buy in.

Also sandboxes have nothing to do with random tables, assuming you ever actually experienced that it wasnt a sandbox. It was a DM's first game, he was probably running a railroad and you somehow got off the rails so he had no idea what to do..... Thats usually when the random tables pop out, when a railroad goes off the tracks.

Your lich anology is also pointless. A sandbox would have that same lich in the mountains of lichiness. However the players are free to say " so what?" and go find something else to do without the entire session hitting the skids and the DM's head imploding.

Because yes, theres the lich. But its also a living world with a whole bunch of other stuff going on that the players may care more about and decide are much more interesting then the lich.

With a rail road its "my lich or the highway".... and now I'm not playing a game. I'm watching a movie and rolling dice.

Weren't we talking about BAD sandboxes and BAD railroads? Don't construe my posts to apply to all sandboxes. There are creative DMs who put a lot of little things into their worlds and then let players find them, like an easter egg hunt. A good sandbox is something like that. There are things to find, and you just need to go out and find them. A bad sandbox is like that parent who just wants to keep their kid busy for a couple hours and so they hide one or two eggs in the entire yard, and then claim that the kid must have misbehaved or something so the easter bunny didn't leave them more.

I'm pretty sure we're talking about BAD executions of sandboxes. And I'm sorry, no matter how many times a DM tells me "it's out there, keep looking!" If I wander around for 3-4 hours during our session and don't turn up anything, I'm gonna start thinking that no, it really isn't out there.