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

[neonagash]

I don't mean to say it can't be done. Just like I'm saying that it's wrong to think that a railroaded game can't be perfectly good. My point is, people claim that anything referred to as railroaded is bad, and sandbox automatically means it's better (and can't be bad). Labeling either term as good or bad and either one as being the right way to do it and the other is the wrong way is what I find to be odd.

But the thing that got me to start this thread is when so many people answered a poll by voting that keeping a pre-written adventure as a sandbox is the most important thing to do when writing an adventure. I just don't get it. You're entire example is based off of "making it up as you go". Which is what we think of as being a sandbox. We let the players do what they want and we make it up as we go. So how on earth is the sandbox concept one of the most important things in making a pre-written adventure a good adventure? I take the time to run a published adventure because I don't want to make it up as a go. I will make up the parts for when the PCs go off track. But I'm running the adventure so that I can railroad them into eventually completing the adventure. Like I said before, sandboxing seems more like it is up to the DM to do, not a published adventure. It completely seems like people just voted that because seeing the word "sandbox" must mean "better and most important", so they had a knee-jerk reaction to vote for that option.

In keeping true to a sandbox mentality, I'd say that a blank sheet of paper would make for a fantastic published adventure.

I think by sandbox concept they mean having lots of different ways to get to the end, and ideally several different possible endings. So the characters decisions actually have some say in determining the outcome, rather then with a lot of pre-written adventures, especially older ones, where theres really only one path and one possible outcome.

 

[mcbobbo]

Railroading, sandboxing, and illusionism are all tools in the GMs toolbox. Just as you wouldn't necessarily use a grinder to remove a nail, but sometimes it becomes your only choice.

 

[Desdichado]

Part of the problem is that the terms have been used way too indiscriminately. Sandbox and railroad should really only describe the endpoints at two ends of a fairly broad spectrum. Games aren't binary. They're not one or the other. It's usually somewhere on a spectrum.

 

[steenan]

I see no reason for a published adventure to necessarily be a railroad. Most of them are, due to authors' personal preference or laziness, but definitely don't have to.

While I rarely run published adventures, I did it yesterday and the adventure I used is a good example of the non-railroady kind.

The adventure contained information on:
- What is the situation when the adventure starts
- What is the background (what happened there before and created the problems that are currently present)
- What are the relations between various NPCs
- What would the NPCs do if PCs never arrived there
- What each NPC wants/hopes to get from the PCs

And that's all. No scene sequence, no pre-planned ending ("final boss" or something similar), no "gateway" scenes that must be played through to move forward. The adventure sets the stage and from there the GM just plays the NPCs, focusing scenes on players' choices.

That's the standard adventure format for Dogs in the Vineyard, but it can easily be used for most other games. It's not a typical sandbox, because it's very PC-centric, but it's also as far as possible from a railroad. The player freedom in choosing how to engage the situation and when to consider it "solved" is the basic assumption here.

And that's why I use such adventures, while I don't touch (even with a 10-ft pole) the ones that require railroading.

 

[Yora]

Sandbox is a game with no story. Railroad is a game with a story which the players can't influence.

I think both are pretty bad. A really good adventure is one that has a story with a clear goal and active villains, in which the outcome is determined by the players actions. Even video games are able to have at least a number of different paths, in which the player decides in which order the important locations will be visisted, and which NPCs live or die, so they may show up again later as either allies or enemies. It's no problem at all to publish RPG adventures that work that way.

 

[Mark CMG]

Sandbox is a game with no story. Railroad is a game with a story which the players can't influence.

I think both are pretty bad. A really good adventure is one that has a story with a clear goal and active villains, in which the outcome is determined by the players actions.

I would counter that a good adventure has no story, though most should have some backstory. I agree there should be at least one goal, but likely more, that the players, through their characters, can potentially make their own. If the players can devise their own goal, all the better. Villains and NPCs should have their goals as well. The story that comes from the running of that adventure is best as the outcome of the PCs pursuing their goal(s), and the resulting success or failure.

 

[Rune]

I wouldn't say that all linear adventures are inherently railroads any more than all sandboxes are entirely non-linear.

For me, it's a difference of how the story unfolds. Specifically, railroads are characterized by presenting a plot for players to (maybe) interact with.

A sandbox doesn't just not dictate the plot; a sandbox doesn't have a plot in the first place. Instead, it has NPCs with ambitions and motivations and lets PCs make the plot.

Can a pre-written adventure be an effective sandbox?

I think this is pretty sandboxy.

 

[Rod Staffwand]

Roller coasters are railroads and everyone seems to have fun with them.

 

[Grogg of the North]

I've been on some excellent rail roads in my time. I've also been in sandboxes that would be best described as a litter box.

Neither style is inherently better than the other. Each have their own pluses and minuses. As long as the players and the DM are having fun, then who cares!

 

[pemerton]

We would do well to not force everything into dichotomies.

"Sandbox," "railroad," (or, to take out some of the connotation - "linear") and "event-driven," are not really poles.

I always saw sandbox & railroad as extreme poles at the end of a spectrum

On this particular issue I'm with Umbran. One reason is that there is a fairly well-established approach to RPGing - indie-style play based around the scene/situation - which is neither sandbox nor railroad/linear.

In a Pure Sandbox, the players generate all the driving conflict, decide wherever they want to go, and whatever they want to do. The GM take a purely reactive role.

In a Pure Railroad, the GM generates all the driving conflict, where the players go and what quests they undertake is pre-scripted. The players take a purely reactive role.

In indie-style play the GM frames all the conflict, on the basis of cues/hooks provided by the players during PC-build and earlier episodes of actual play. And the resolution is not-prescripted (and is not simply win-or-die, which is the standard D&D approach to non-prescripted outcomes).

The players, for instance, will generally decide who the villains are (ie who their PCs are opposd to). But the GM decides when those villains come calling (GM authority over scene-framing).

This is not sandbox - eg the players don't frame the scenes, nor decide where their PCs go. The GM is not purely reactive, but rather is constantly putting pressure on the players via framing the PCs into circumstances of conflict. But where the players go and what quests they undertake is not pre-scripted, and hence it is not a railroad.

Nor is it somewhere on a notional spectrum between railroad and sandbox. It is its own thing.

While I rarely run published adventures, I did it yesterday and the adventure I used is a good example of the non-railroady kind.

The adventure contained information on:
- What is the situation when the adventure starts
- What is the background (what happened there before and created the problems that are currently present)
- What are the relations between various NPCs
- What would the NPCs do if PCs never arrived there
- What each NPC wants/hopes to get from the PCs

And that's all. No scene sequence, no pre-planned ending ("final boss" or something similar), no "gateway" scenes that must be played through to move forward. The adventure sets the stage and from there the GM just plays the NPCs, focusing scenes on players' choices.

That's the standard adventure format for Dogs in the Vineyard, but it can easily be used for most other games. It's not a typical sandbox, because it's very PC-centric, but it's also as far as possible from a railroad. The player freedom in choosing how to engage the situation and when to consider it "solved" is the basic assumption here.

The only D&D adventures I know of that approximate to this sort of presentation are some of the Penumbra d20 adventures (over 10 years old now).

Robin Laws presents similar sorts of adventures in the HeroWars Narrator Book. And this is how I use published D&D adventures, but in means that in most cases I have to disregard the author's own presentation of the adventure.