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Message: <blockquote data-quote="wingsandsword" data-source="post: 5732040" data-attributes="member: 14159">You just described a textbook railroad, not a sandbox."The adventure was botched and it was worth just hitting the restart button" meant you had a specific adventure that the PC's were supposed to follow, and didn't intend to have them do anything else.  If the PC's in that game were sprung from jail, on the run, and had that clue about meeting a caravan. . .but could go any which way and then went in a different direction and found something else to get involved with, that would have been a sandbox.  Instead of just saying "you're doing it wrong" and pressing the reset button, a sandbox method would have been to let the PC's encounter those gnolls.  Maybe after some fights with them the PC's would have had some treasure and XP and equipment and be more able to travel on their own, or meet up with another caravan going in a different direction, or maybe if you still wanted to salvage much of your original plotline the caravan would be part of a long merchant route that was going in the same direction you intended the PC's to go in at first.Remember, a sandbox is when the world is wide open to play in.  The PC's can go anywhere, try anything (at least within the limits/rules of the game setting/system).  The Grand Theft Auto video games are textbook sandboxes, because while there is a plot you can follow, if you don't want to follow the leads (or just ignore them for now) you can do many side quests, or just go exploring, or just go out and fight antagonists.A railroad is where the GM has a single, set plotline for the PC's to follow and intends for them to follow it.  Railroads turn bad when the GM uses obvious means to prevent the PC's from doing anything that's off the pathway.  Think like those computer RPG's that make it crystal clear where you need to go next and make it very hard/impossible to deviate from that path.Now for my Litterbox story:It was a galactic-scale litterbox, a Star Wars game with a novice GM.  He had only seen the movies and played a few video games, maybe read a comic book or two.  He was not well steeped in the Expanded Universe of the Star Wars setting.So, he starts us with a YT-1300 Freighter at the Mos Eisley Spaceport on Tatooine, shortly after the events of Episode IV, and just turns us loose. . .We decide to go to Corellia. . .he's vaguely heard of it but doesn't know anything about it so he won't allow it.  Okay, we'll go to Dac. . .and he's never heard of that one either.  Ryloth?  Never heard of that one either.  Fondor?  Nope.  Basically, we could go to Coruscant, Naboo, Tatooine, Geonosis, Kamino, Kashyyyk, Utapau, Mustafar, Dagobah, Yavin, Bespin, Hoth, and Endor, because those were the only planets he knew. . .never mind that at this point in the timeline that several of those planets are incredibly obscure and a random group of smugglers would have no reason to go there.If we went to planets, all we could really do is visit the places from the movies.  Go to Hoth?  Well, Echo Base hasn't been built yet, so you can wander around in the snow and get attacked by Wampa.  Go to Endor and wander around the forest and meet Ewoks.  Go to Yavin and find a recently abandoned Rebel base.  Go to Dagobah and find a big empty swamp (he wouldn't let us meet Yoda).  Go to Mustafar and it's a big automated mining facility on a lava world that was uninhabited.  Go to Kamino and there were boring cloners that really had no business for smugglers/traders.  Stay on Tatooine and sit around the cantina and drink, but we got nobody looking to hire a ship, just a band in the background and spacers coming and going.  Nobody was crazy enough to try to fly a smuggler ship to the Core Worlds to we figured Coruscant was right out.Basically we could go on a tour of the places from the movies, but no plot or story.  At the end of the first session he was kind of befuddled that we didn't like it, he thought it was so cool to describe to us what it was like to really be standing on Endor, but he was surprised we weren't "doing more", and I don't know what he meant by that.It didn't make it to a second session.</blockquote>

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