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

[LostSoul]

Definitely agnostic.

Nothing wrong with random encounters, or random weather (i have a nice one I use each morning for adventures).

But when a whole campaign is "duh I'm confused, roll a random encounter" thats not a sandbox. Its a random crap pile. And probably would have been no matter what sort of adventure was being intended.

Yeah. I think random encounters have a place in your typical sandbox, but I don't think they're a good stand-in for a lack of content.

When I play I make a wandering monster check every four hours in the wilderness (1 in 6 chance). The PC in the game set up a camp in a forest hex. She used the camp to spy on two nearby towns that had been taken over by two different (but allied) duergar lairs (using binoculars that she found on her rocket ship). She directed her followers to attack one town while she and some other followers took the other. In town she directed the villagers to head back to their camp on their own by following their footsteps (it was December in the north and the random weather rolls determined that it hadn't snowed for a while).

Anyway, she takes care of the duergar in town and heads back to the camp. She spends the night there but I roll a wandering monster - wolves. She wakes in the night hearing screams as the wolves have killed two adults and dragged off their children. She finds the wolves and kills the alpha and drives off the rest (failed morale check). Then she performs funeral rites on the dead to make sure they don't come back as undead.

Here we have a wandering monster but it interacts with the system in various ways (the town system, the monster lair system, the weather system, the morale system). I think these factors really help avoiding the fact that wandering monsters on their own are generally boring.

So I started this thread because I'm amazed at how many people voted for a "sandbox" adventure being the 2nd most important thing to writing an adventure. And frankly, I'm sick of the whole "sandbox" bandwagon since it comes off as elitist and basically is saying that I'm not doing something right when I run my adventures. By several of the replies, it seems like that is still the case.

So I want to disprove that myth. Not that I am trying to say a sandbox game is bad. I'm trying to say, a sandbox does not automatically make it good and a railroad does not automatically make it bad.

I like sandboxes these days because most of the D&D I've played hasn't been in a sandbox. It's been fun. I can see how that enthusiasm could look like elitism (or is elitism - people being people, that sort of thing happens). It took a long time to figure out how to play, run, and design a sandbox system and the threads and blog posts extolling the virtues of sandbox play really helped out. I think the elitism - this is how you do it, this is why it's better than this other way - is helpful for people who are/were in my situation.

Common themes I see a lot with sandbox games is that the DM does the following things:

1. The internet has made it seem like sandboxes = good and railroads = bad. That's BS, but it doesn't stop a ton of DMs from trying to appear holier than thou by labeling themselves as a sandbox DM and then badmouths a railroad game.

2. Many DMs use this as an excuse to be lazy. They think that by being a sandbox DM, it means that they'll automatically be welcomed with open arms since the internet says that sandboxes are better. And then it means that they don't have to prepare anything because, hey, it's a sandbox and we can't predict what the players will do. It's a perfect scapegoat for the lazy DM!

3. There is an awful lot of pointless dialogue and pointless activities that go on in a sandbox game. My PCs spent time gardening, talking to random old ladies in their front yards, I've had conversations about radishes, one of my PCs did some manual labor and helped the guards set up a blockade for a possible zombie attack (roleplayed out and then the invasion was too hard for my PC, probably because it wasn't planned ahead of time), and I once roamed aimlessly around town because I was expected to use in-game time to learn about the cites first hand rather than learn them through adventuring. The DM just waited for me to provide the hook and I had no idea what to do since it was the first session. After 4 hours of this, I realized that the DM was hinting that I might like to leave town and randomly explore the surrounding area. If he just ran a freaking published adventure, I could have been well into chapter 2 by then, met lots of interesting NPCs and venues, had a clear goal, already killed some bad guys, and had fun for 4 hours. But according to the internet, that's not fun since that adventure was thrust upon me and I didn't choose to do that myself via the sandbox.

1. "Railroad" means different things to different people; it's a confusing term. For me, it means that the players can't make meaningful choices. Using my definition, that means railroad = bad. However, I don't describe linear games or even heavily DM-plot led games as necessarily being railroads. I was playing in a d20 Modern game where the DM was leading us around pretty heavily; in that game, I knew the choices I made were about characterization, not about plot or goals or tactics & strategy, and that was okay. As long as there is a space in the game to make meaningful decisions, and the game doesn't try to trick or deceive you about what those decisions are, you can avoid a railroad.

2. That you get the impression that sandbox DMs are lazy surprises me. There's a lot of work that goes into preparing a sandbox for play; it just generally happens before play begins. Between sessions or during play most of the work is determining how the setting has changed in response to the player's actions, and that's generally pretty easy.

3. The thing about sandbox play that interests me is that the players get to determine what they want to do. If they want to engage in pointless dialogue, then they can. The last session I played revolved around two reasonably pointless events: the PC meeting and talking to a randomly-generated "rootless wanderer" (someone who is designed to become a henchman, if the player wants) and reuniting with an NPC she hadn't seen for a long time, making dinner for her, and having a feast. These were both reasonably pointless, though the system I use limits that somewhat (the PC gained a henchman and gained XP for that, and she increased her "reaction" in town - which is important because it determines how NPCs react to you, since I use random reaction rolls - and got more XP).

One of the procedures I use for sandbox play is to drop a lot of "rumours" on the PCs - I tell them what's of interest nearby (that is, the hexes I've prepped) and, since the level of those hexes is based on terrain, they can get a pretty good idea of the level of risk & reward. I tie this to the reward system: players choose a Quest based on those rumours and a Goal for their PCs, which nets them about 90% of the XP they are going to get. Quests are limited to certain broad categories, like "explore a hex feature" and "defeat a specific named NPC". (The others are "increase reaction or influence in a settlement", "discover a new power or ritual", and "harass a monster lair". Dungeons have a whole bunch of specific Quests based on the dungeon, like "Reach level 2" or "Kill the gibbering mouther" or "Find the bio-lab" or "Take the treasure from the vault".) Goals are longer-term, like "Build a keep". Quests are what you are doing today, Goals are what you eventually want to accomplish.

Without procedures like those, I can see how it would be difficult to know what to do. The Quests give the players something to do right away and since they're tied to the reward system, completing them gives them more power and more ability to explore and change the setting in accordance with their Goal.

It's usually pretty easy: "So here are the rumours; which one sounds interesting?" "The standing stone where it's always winter seems pretty cool." "Okay, make it your Quest to check it out. So what are you doing now?" "Well if it's winter there we'll need cold-weather gear, so we buy that, and then head out." "Okay."

And since the hex generation system ties each hex to at least one other, whatever they do there will have an impact somewhere else. As DM I make a note of the player's actions and how it will affect other hexes, and the system promotes a lot of downtime (getting HP and powers back), so there's time for that change to make its way through the setting.

The key is, not to jump the gun. If the timing is not right, I will put it off until I can somehow weave it into what the PCs are currently doing. Even now, I'm itching to start my epic adventure and the PCs keep going off on a tangent and we haven't started it yet. It's been two months, with another month to go it seems, and I haven't started it. Right now I'm just rolling with the punches and making things up as we go until they are finished doing what they are doing. But we will start this adventure. I've never once had a player complain about how I run adventures because they are having fun and it isn't obvious that I do railroad them into doing what the adventure expects of them. Or maybe they do notice sometimes and they just don't care cause they are having fun. At the same time, I'm not railroading a single outcome. If they fail, they fail. And boy did they fail when I ran Dead Gods. Orcus came back in full force thanks to the PCs failing. But I managed to railroad them into completely every single chapter in that adventure. The thing is, they felt like they made those choices themselves.

I personally wouldn't classify that as a "railroad". I don't know what I'd call it, since you're building your adventures based on what the players want to see and incorporating the player's choices into future adventures. It actually seems close to the "indie" style, though on a larger scale (where "indie" seems to imply that the next scene will be built from the player's choices in the previous scene, you're building the next adventure from the player's choices in the previous one). Which just goes to show you that different people (well, me, at least) have different understandings of the term "railroad".

Is that a fair assessment?

How do you use published adventures in this way? Is it something like, "Oh, this adventure would be a perfect follow-up for what has just happened?" Or in some other way?

 

[neonagash]

So I started this thread because I'm amazed at how many people voted for a "sandbox" adventure being the 2nd most important thing to writing an adventure. And frankly, I'm sick of the whole "sandbox" bandwagon since it comes off as elitist and basically is saying that I'm not doing something right when I run my adventures. By several of the replies, it seems like that is still the case.

Sounds like you have an inferiority complex. Thats usually the case when a person feels like someone else is being "elitist" about something that has absolutely no effect on their life, but decides to be offended by it anyway.

So I want to disprove that myth. Not that I am trying to say a sandbox game is bad. I'm trying to say, a sandbox does not automatically make it good and a railroad does not automatically make it bad.

Well I am willing say it. Railroad games are bad. They are boring, rely on trivial, cliched hooks that cant be tailored to the players in the game and the PC's actions are irrelevant to the outcome. Its a railroad, whats gonna happen if they are great is the same as what would happen if they sucked. So who the hell cares?


Common themes I see a lot with sandbox games is that the DM does the following things:

2. Many DMs use this as an excuse to be lazy. They think that by being a sandbox DM, it means that they'll automatically be welcomed with open arms since the internet says that sandboxes are better. And then it means that they don't have to prepare anything because, hey, it's a sandbox and we can't predict what the players will do. It's a perfect scapegoat for the lazy DM!

Actually sandbox games are a lot HARDER to GM. You have to do a lot of thinking on your feat. Any half arsed rookie can run a sandbox.

3. There is an awful lot of pointless dialogue and pointless activities that go on in a sandbox game. My PCs spent time gardening, talking to random old ladies in their front yards, I've had conversations about radishes, one of my PCs did some manual labor and helped the guards set up a blockade for a possible zombie attack (roleplayed out and then the invasion was too hard for my PC, probably because it wasn't planned ahead of time), and I once roamed aimlessly around town because I was expected to use in-game time to learn about the cites first hand rather than learn them through adventuring.

Actually no. None of those things are pointless. You as a player chose to do them. If you didnt want to do them you shouldnt have. Thats part of a sandbox, you tell the GM what you want to do, the other players tell the GM what they want to do, and a story ensues based on what the players wanted to do.

Side note, why do so many of these stores sound like 1 on 1 games? No other players or characters are ever mentioned. Its like its just totally made up as a way to support a presupposed conclusion that railroads are better because.... hmm, no one ever actually says why they are better. The railroad GM's just attack the opposition without offering anything positive about their own side as a comparison point. But I digress.

They wouldn't keep making them if people didn't think they were good. You're just being an elitist cause you're obviously more talented at DMing than I am.

Actually they would. As GM's we buy lots of stuff to rape for ideas rather then running word for word. Everything from player supplement books to adventures. Hell I've bought published adventures just because i dont like drawing out maps and its worth a few bucks to have a big stack of pre made maps for me to dig out whenever the characters wind up underground. I doubt I'm alone in that.

I've also very rarely been bored in an adventure that would be classified as a railroad. My PC has a clear goal, it's interesting, I'm making progress, I'm killing stuff and taking loot, and most importantly, I'm not bored and I'm having fun. So tell me again why an adventure with a linear path (aka railroad) is bad? Cause I thought I was playing D&D to have fun? Which I am.

And in 20 years of playing and GMing I've never once found a railroaded adventure interesting or fun.

I dont play RPG's to walk through some other guys fan wank wannabe adventure story.

When I'm a player I want to play MY characters story.
I want to follow MY goals, not some writer or GM's idea of what my goals should be.
I dont care about loot, or random killings. I want to help drive the story of MY character and his allies going through a dangerous and difficult life of adventures. Doing what WE think is interesting. Not whatever some guy wrote down.

IBefore anyone starts getting defensive, relax. Pay attention to what I'm saying rather than skimming over it so you can reply back to tell me I'm wrong. Yes, I understand a railroad can be bad when done by a bad DM. That in no way makes a railroad game bad though. I also understand that plenty of sandbox DMs are not lazy, they do prepare things, and they are good at running a sandbox game. I have just never had the pleasure to play in ones game.

So instead of asking about good sandbox games, or looking for advice on how to make one, or run one yourself you decide to crap on the entire idea over and over and tell the rest of us that while our entire way of gaming sucks hairy balls and we're wrong, we shouldnt get defensive over it. Or point out any issues in your style of gaming.

Ahh okay i get it. This whole thread was about you crapping on us and us " thank you sir, may I have another" ?

I dont think so.

ISo we get some random fight so we're not bored, but this is all unplanned since it's a "sandbox" game. Which means, the DM didn't give the challenge rating system any thought, and now his "random" encounters are too tough for our level. Not that I think he is making them too tough on purpose. It's just that since he didn't actually prepare it beforehand, he's unable to gauge how hard it actually will be for us. Is that what you are actually referring to?

Crap on the challenge rating system. Its not good to start with and even in the best of times is way to dependent on certain assumptions of gear, magic and party composition.

But yes part of the point of a sandbox is its a living world. So if at first level you hear rumours about the ogres blocking such and such trade route and causing trouble and decide to wander up there because "hey the DM wouldnt put a group of ogres in front of a 1st level party" well yeah, your getting smushed to paste by ogres. You were told they were there, and the ogres dont ask your party CR first and then wander off if its too low.

Thats part of building a realistic world. It doesnt scale with the PC's. Its a world with stuff in it. That stuff is there doing what it wants to do whether any PC ever looks at it or not.

"If i tree falls in the woods without a PC there to hear it does it make a sound......




Look, based on how you are replying to people, I'm sure I know what I'm about to get myself in to. But I'm going to take a stab at this and see if we can discuss it maturely.

You seem to be very pro sandbox, to the point that you're willing to even tell a guy that his sandbox game is a railroad game just so there isn't a blemish on your preferred style. But the guy has very valid points, because I've experienced the same thing. And I know what the difference between the two styles of games are since I've been at this long enough.

I am noticing one thing here though. You are focusing more on the campaign being a sandbox rather than the adventures like the OP (oh that's me) was focusing on at the start. There is a difference. Here is what I mean:

I run lots of railroaded adventures. But I like to think that I try to keep my campaign world as sandboxy as possible. The PCs are free to do as they wish (within reason). They help build the story around the adventures that I provide for them. I even encourage them to be pro-active and do their own thing so that I am not spoon feeding them content. What I do though, is railroad my adventures so that they integrate with what it is the PCs are doing. I've said it before, it's the illusion that I am not railroading. I want to run an adventure because it sounds exciting for me as a DM to DM, I paid for it, and I've prepared it. It will not go to waste, and it will be fun (well, I hope...we've all had a few stinkers whether self-written or not).

The key is, not to jump the gun. If the timing is not right, I will put it off until I can somehow weave it into what the PCs are currently doing. Even now, I'm itching to start my epic adventure and the PCs keep going off on a tangent and we haven't started it yet. It's been two months, with another month to go it seems, and I haven't started it. Right now I'm just rolling with the punches and making things up as we go until they are finished doing what they are doing. But we will start this adventure. I've never once had a player complain about how I run adventures because they are having fun and it isn't obvious that I do railroad them into doing what the adventure expects of them. Or maybe they do notice sometimes and they just don't care cause they are having fun. At the same time, I'm not railroading a single outcome. If they fail, they fail. And boy did they fail when I ran Dead Gods. Orcus came back in full force thanks to the PCs failing. But I managed to railroad them into completely every single chapter in that adventure. The thing is, they felt like they made those choices themselves.[/QUOTE]

 

[Grogg of the North]

For me, as a player and as a DM, I like to see a blend between structure and choice. So that at the end of a dungeon or story arc the player's have a few options to choose from. Their choice(s) defines the next step in the adventure.

As an example:
After escaping the dungeon of Baron von Evilguy the party finds itself battered, but alive, in the forests outside town. What is your next step? You have some friendly contacts in the underground that may be able to help you with stopping the Baron's ritual. You could petition the cleric's church and the knight's lord for help. Mr Wizard-ington, you recall reading about something similar to what's going on in the arcane library's tomes. What's your next step?

*****

But just because those few choices are thrown out there doesn't preclude any other choice from being made. Such as allying with the Baron, allying with the Baron and then betraying him, saying "screw this! we go hunt pirates instead!" and so forth.

Any choice made has it's own set of adventures that come with it, moves the plot forward and, hopefully, lets the players feel empowered.

 

[the Jester]

1. The internet has made it seem like sandboxes = good and railroads = bad. That's BS, but it doesn't stop a ton of DMs from trying to appear holier than thou by labeling themselves as a sandbox DM and then badmouths a railroad game.

That's some specific Internet you're looking at, then. There is plenty of support for story-oriented gaming online. As for DMs "trying to appear holier than thou" by badmouthing railroads, are you sure that you aren't just seeing lots of examples of DMs stating their tastes?

I'll grant you that some people are very aggressive about their playstyle preferences online, but there's a big difference between "I dm sandboxes and dislike railroads" and "I dm sanboxes and railroads suck in other peoples' games."

2. Many DMs use this as an excuse to be lazy. They think that by being a sandbox DM, it means that they'll automatically be welcomed with open arms since the internet says that sandboxes are better.

First of all, I am pretty far from convinced that "the Internet says that sandboxes are better", much less that ANY DM runs a type of game simply to be "welcomed with open arms" by some unstated crowd of game-approvers or -disapprovers.

Moreover, sandbox DMing is a lot more work than story-oriented/railroad DMing. A LOT MORE. Not a little bit, but tons and tons more work. So I suspect that your observation here comes from dealing with specific people who fall into the mold you describe, not from the general gamer population. I could be wrong, of course.

3. There is an awful lot of pointless dialogue and pointless activities that go on in a sandbox game.

Because there is no point to the game until the pcs make it have one. What you call "pointless" is all roleplaying. That stuff is fun for many of us. Calling it "pointless" implies that there is a point, a plot, a direction, a "you're supposed to do that". The whole point of a sandbox is that it avoids all that. If you don't enjoy that playstyle- and it seems clear that you really don't- then avoid tables that run sandbox games. Simple answer, problem solved. I don't get why you seem so affronted that many of us do like sandboxes. I do get that you perceive a pro-sandbox bias online, but all I can say about that is to keep looking around and you'll find plenty of story support.

 

[Oryan77]

First of all, I am pretty far from convinced that "the Internet says that sandboxes are better", much less that ANY DM runs a type of game simply to be "welcomed with open arms" by some unstated crowd of game-approvers or -disapprovers.

The original thread that I linked in the OP here gives a perfect example of why I would have this impression. The 2nd most important thing to most gamers voting for a Planescape adventure is to make sure that it is a sandbox adventure. Of course, that isn't solid evidence that people say sandboxes are better. But it's a pretty good basis.

But I'm just flabbergasted that that is the 2nd most important thing to people in regards to making a Planescape adventure, and must be the most important thing to people in adventure writing in general. For real? I have run dozens of published adventures and almost all of them were fun to run. Most of them are older modules that I converted. Most of them were linear and would be considered as a railroad. So I just can't see how making them into a sandbox adventure is the single most important thing as to whether it will be good or not. I've never once picked up an adventure and hoped that it would be a sandbox style adventure. It never occurs to me. I would think that there are plenty of other factors that would be much more important in adventure writing than that. Which is why I'm convinced that the internet has told so many people that railroads are bad and sandboxes are good, that when they see that in a poll option, they choose it cause they'd like to think that they know better and want to feel like better DMs.

It might be silly, but that's just how it comes across to me.

Moreover, sandbox DMing is a lot more work than story-oriented/railroad DMing. A LOT MORE. Not a little bit, but tons and tons more work. So I suspect that your observation here comes from dealing with specific people who fall into the mold you describe, not from the general gamer population. I could be wrong, of course.

No, you are correct about that. I was clear to say that my opinion is based on my own observations and experiences. One of the posters in this thread admitted to do zero prep work and he gave a clear example of how he wings his entire sessions. Each DM that I played under in their sandbox games seemed to be doing the exact same thing, only worse. They may have had an idea in mind to get the ball rolling, but I guarantee they didn't do any prep work to the extent you are talking about. I also guarantee I do a hell of a lot more prep work than my sandbox DMs and my adventures would be classified as a railroad adventure. My campaign on the other hand is more of a mix of both sandbox and railroad.

Because there is no point to the game until the pcs make it have one. What you call "pointless" is all roleplaying. That stuff is fun for many of us.

For one, that's the exact problem I have had right there. That's why on more than one occasion, I've spent 4 or more hours at a table bored off my butt. Which was strange because I never thought I could ever be bored in a D&D game. I'm very pro-active as a player.

The DMs had that same line of logic though. He's waiting for us to make things happen rather than provide us with an interesting hook and an adventure in mind. So we end up not making things happen because situations are not presented to us. We're expected to present situations to the DM. I'm sure there is no problem with the right group of pro-active players. But for me, when I'm plopped down into the middle of a new town in a new campaign with a new PC...I don't want to find something to do and make something happen. That's boring. I want to be unexpectedly surprised with something. Once I have gotten to know my PC and I have started establishing a life with him, then I can take charge and do things that my PC would take an initiative to do.

 

[Oryan77]

One of the procedures I use for sandbox play is to drop a lot of "rumours" on the PCs - I tell them what's of interest nearby

That would work just fine for me. The sandbox games that I played didn't even give that kind of option. Even then, I would hope that the DM has a good idea about what each of those adventures entail. Or be really good at making them fun. Cause you can usually tell when a DM is making up his adventure when he goes. It's usually pretty bland, mostly just "random" encounters, and there is no real twists or suspenseful scenarios and NPCs.

Which just goes to show you that different people (well, me, at least) have different understandings of the term "railroad".

Is that a fair assessment?

Definitely. We've always had a hard time pinpointing on a broad scale as to what exactly makes something a sandbox and a railroad. I'm pretty sure though that when it comes to talking about specific adventures, we're all on the same page for the most part. People are calling a published adventure with a linear storyline (path) a railroad. And adventures that give lots of location fluff, timelines, and behind the scenes actions that allow PCs to skip around chapters and even avoid chapters all together as a sandbox. So my beef is with saying that one so much more important than the other, as if the other (the linear railroad adventures) are a huge mistake. I personally find the more flexible adventures way harder to prepare as a DM and they are overwhelming to me since I have a poor memory and need to make charts just to keep up with their details. I've never ran a railroad adventure and thought anything negative about it, unless there is a scene that requires PCs to bypass a puzzle (or similar) in order to move on. Even then, I've never found it to be a negative on the adventure style itself and things like that can always be worked out.

How do you use published adventures in this way? Is it something like, "Oh, this adventure would be a perfect follow-up for what has just happened?" Or in some other way?

It starts out with me wanting to run a certain type of adventure, or I ask the players what kind of adventure or locations they'd like to play in. Lately I've had an itching to run another arabian or egyptian type adventure in my Planescape game. So I'll find a published adventure that looks good or has had good reviews. Maybe it's a pyramid dungeon crawl. I buy it, read it, and prepare it. I put a ton of prep work into it. I probably spend twice as long prepping it as I do running it. Maybe even more. That's part of the fun for me though.

So when I do this, there is no way it will go to waste. Even if the players are talking about traveling to the nearby snow covered mountains, they'll be playing in this egyptian pyramid adventure. That's the part where I railroad them. It depends on the current situation, but I would never be blatantly obvious that I'm railroading them. I might let them go to the mountain, and then something happens that causes them to end up in the desert (the benefits of Planescape). Or maybe something happens in town that convinces them to put the mountain journey on hold and travel to the desert instead (their decision, not mine...I just tricked them into wanting to make that decision). Any way I do it, it is done in a way that they want to do it or enjoy the change in direction. Also, now that I know they want to go to the mountain, I can prepare a mountain adventure while we are running the pyramid adventure. So I repeat the process.

While I'm running the pyramid adventure, I railroad them to stay on track by using the same methods. I will adjust things accordingly so their choices feel meaningful. I don't put up an obvious wall so they can't veer off, but we'll end up doing a full circle to get back on track because I want to run the adventure and have my fun too. If I need them to do something because the adventure calls for it, and they just aren't going in that direction, I'll guide them down the tracks so we move on with the adventure. I just don't make it obvious.

Among all of that, I incorporate backstory and write my own adventures (or run published ones) geared towards particular PCs. They can even tell me where they want to go and I'll run an adventure (most likely published) based on that. But I will railroad them through the adventure so we finish it. And if I don't want to deal with what they are trying to do, I'll railroad them off those tracks until I can figure out what to do. Again, just don't make that obvious.

This is why I was saying there is a difference in a railroad adventure, and a railroad campaign. I have no problem with a railroad adventure. I don't see why anyone would if it is fun. I do understand how a railroad campaign might be more boring to play in though if you never feel like your PC is yours and not just a character that the DM wrote into his story.

 

[Oryan77]

Sounds like you have an inferiority complex. Thats usually the case when a person feels like someone else is being "elitist" about something that has absolutely no effect on their life, but decides to be offended by it anyway.

Yep, you called it. I have an inferiority complex.
Please, that's not the first or second time you've responded in this thread by trying to flip the table and turn it around on the person you are replying to in order to come out on top. Let's not play these games if you want to actually discuss the topic. Otherwise, yer wasting your time and being childish. I simply won't reply to you any further if that continues.

Actually sandbox games are a lot HARDER to GM. You have to do a lot of thinking on your feat. Any half arsed rookie can run a sandbox.

Well which is it man? Is it harder to gm or can any half arsed rookie run them?

Actually no. None of those things are pointless. You as a player chose to do them. If you didnt want to do them you shouldnt have. Thats part of a sandbox, you tell the GM what you want to do, the other players tell the GM what they want to do, and a story ensues based on what the players wanted to do.

Granted, that particular experience may have been my first introduction to a sandbox game. I did not realize that, I, as a player, was supposed to tell the DM, as the creator of his world and his adventures, that this is the adventure I want to play in that session. I have no interest in doing that as a player unless I've been playing my PC enough to have goals, and I've gotten familiar with his world and met his NPCs. It goes both ways. A good DM should know when to pick up the reigns and ya know, DM. He kept asking us what we wanted to do, so we just explored his town since we had no clue what to do. That involved me talking to to random NPCs about random "pointless" things.

Yes, I find it pointless to talk about things as irrelevant to the game as radishes. I've played with guys that loved going off on a tangent like that in their roleplaying. It's not my place to judge how they like to roleplay. I love roleplaying too. But I'm not interested in having meaningless dialogue with NPCs on a Friday night. I want to roleplay, or listen to others roleplay about content that is beneficial to the game. Just like I don't want to watch an Avengers movie so that I can listen to them for 30 minutes talking about shawarma. Five minutes and it gave me a laugh? Sure. Otherwise, lets move on with the game.

Side note, why do so many of these stores sound like 1 on 1 games? No other players or characters are ever mentioned. Its like its just totally made up as a way to support a presupposed conclusion that railroads are better because.... hmm, no one ever actually says why they are better.

Am I reading that right? You're actually accusing me of making stuff up? Oh hell that's gotta be the funniest thing I've read on here in a long time. You truly live in your own world don't ya? It's like you distort reality so you'll feel better about your own viewpoints. That's great man.

I really don't mind giving you the details if you really wanna hear them. If you haven't noticed, I like to type! Heck, it may even be an entertaining story since one of the sandbox games I am referring to involved me playing with another player that we just met for the first time that day, and turned out he just got out of San Quinton after spending 3 years there for burglary.

And I'll say it again, pay attention to what I'm saying instead of hitting the reply button so quickly to have at me. Quote me when I said "railroads are better" or let me know why I should give reasons for why railroads are better since I never claimed they were better.

Reading comprehension is key when having discussions. I posted this thread because of guys like you that are saying sandbox games are better and railroad games are crap. You, are proving my point perfectly. I don't think railroad games are any better than sandbox games. What I do think though, is that railroad games are not bad and can be just as good or bad as any sandbox game. It depends on the ability of the DM to make either of them good or bad. So for people to think that making a published adventure a sandbox will make its success hit or miss is nuts as far as I see it (as an experienced DM). I just don't get that logic. So I'm hear to defend the railroad adventure. I'm not telling anyone that it's a better style. I'd like to see the myth of "sandbox is better" eventually go away since that opinion seems like nothing more than a bunch of people jumping on the internet bandwagon. It's as if they want to feel like an elitist who think of themselves to be better writers than published authors and better DMs than guys like me.

The railroad GM's just attack the opposition without offering anything positive about their own side as a comparison point. But I digress.

Followed by:

Well I am willing say it. Railroad games are bad. They are boring, rely on trivial, cliched hooks that cant be tailored to the players in the game and the PC's actions are irrelevant to the outcome. Its a railroad, whats gonna happen if they are great is the same as what would happen if they sucked. So who the hell cares?And in 20 years of playing and GMing I've never once found a railroaded adventure interesting or fun. I dont play RPG's to walk through some other guys fan wank wannabe adventure story.
When I'm a player I want to play MY characters story.
I want to follow MY goals, not some writer or GM's idea of what my goals should be.
I dont care about loot, or random killings. I want to help drive the story of MY character and his allies going through a dangerous and difficult life of adventures. Doing what WE think is interesting. Not whatever some guy wrote down.

Heh....ok man....practice what you preach is all I'm gonna say.

 

[pemerton]

There is an awful lot of pointless dialogue and pointless activities that go on in a sandbox game. My PCs spent time gardening, talking to random old ladies in their front yards, I've had conversations about radishes, one of my PCs did some manual labor and helped the guards set up a blockade for a possible zombie attack (roleplayed out and then the invasion was too hard for my PC, probably because it wasn't planned ahead of time), and I once roamed aimlessly around town because I was expected to use in-game time to learn about the cites first hand rather than learn them through adventuring. The DM just waited for me to provide the hook and I had no idea what to do since it was the first session.

As I've postd upthread, I'm not really into sandboxing. But what you've posted here really makes me appreciate the strengths of my own preferred "indie"-style.

Upthread I linked to a Burning Wheel session report. Here is what one of my players emailed the rest of our group about that session:

[P]retty cool how the world gets shaped by the character’s beliefs and instincts and the dice rolls! Just thinking through Jobe’s B’s and I’s and rolls … The feather existed because of its trait and hence X sold it. It was cursed because the aura reading failed. Jabal existed because we sought out a member of the cabal (affiliation). Athog gave us trouble because that circles test failed. Jabal lived in a tower because of an instinct about casting falcon skin if falling. I didn’t understand how those things worked until we did the session. If we had turned up with different characters, then I think the world would have been quite different too.​

From my point of view, the problem with the GMing in the experience you describe is that the GM seems not to know what you are looking for from the game, nor have any techniques for ascertaining that during play, and so does not frame your PC into any compelling scene.

The first RPG I ran which did have such techniques was original Oriental Adventures - part of the PC build rules gives PCs hooks like family and honour that I as GM could then use to frame scenes that would grab them. A system like Burning Wheel takes this to a further level, but the basic techniques are easily adapatable to many systems, including D&D. It seems as if the GM who gave you that bad session could benefit from learning some of them!

 

[Sunseeker]

From my point of view, the problem with the GMing in the experience you describe is that the GM seems not to know what you are looking for from the game, nor have any techniques for ascertaining that during play, and so does not frame your PC into any compelling scene.

This is why I always ask/require my players to provide me some information about their characters and themselves as a player (if I don't know the person behind the PC yet). Then I integrate those things into the game. If they choose not to do give me that, well they'll have to roll along with everyone else. If their desires change or grow, I advise them to keep me informed. This is also why I sit everyone down to talk about the game I plan to run before we decide to go with it.

 

[mcbobbo]

I would railroad the hell out of a player who was spending valuable table time discussing radishes. "Okay Tom, you have a long and fulfilling discussion about radishes. While Max is talking to this farmer for the next few hours, what are the rest of you doing? And by the way, you see someone observing you from the shadows."