TheSword
Legend
You have a very narrow definition of railroading if being awarded experience for your choice of three out of ten possible quests, completed in any order, in whatever manner and method you choose counts as such.I thought it was pretty clear that I was being snarky, but if you feel attacked I apologize.
However, we are under no obligation to say a published product is something we like when we don't, and we think they are design failures rather than just preference differences. I would know: I worked on Gamma World d20.
XP serves an actual purpose in play and I think it is a mistake for WotC to abandon its central role in supporting player agency. I personally think milestone leveling is a form of railroading and has its place in linear adventure paths but not in sandboxes -- and that's not me badwrongfunning you, that's me expressing my opinion.
The writers didn’t even put a hard cut off in place, they just suggest offering more tempting and immediate higher level locations.
Games tend to deal with sandbox in three ways...
- Force it with sectioned areas opening and closing. (Kingmaker, Slumbering Tsar)
- Level up the enemies so they are relevant (Dungeon Magazine adventures, CRPG like assassins creed)
- Diminishing returns (Games like Baldurs gate, and Core D&D when a DM isn’t providing the hooks and motivation for higher level play)
It seems to me either of these is a suitable alternative but simply doing nothing and allowing PCs to run around killing sheep feels deeply unsatisfying to me as a DM and a player.
As I said, most players if asked the question how hard do you want the game will say, challenging but not too difficult. It’s a DMs role to offer this, either by providing hooks to those kinds of challenges or by scaling up those ones they have.