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Message: <blockquote data-quote="drjones" data-source="post: 6369469" data-attributes="member: 62944">Yeah I am old as heck and I still run my campaigns as hybrid sandbox/linear in a manner that is pretty similar to the way some CRPGs are designed, and for the same reasons.  Players want freedom to set out and explore and follow their characters whims and motivations to a certain extent.  But Players also want to have overarching goals to pursue and big plots to unravel.  They want to start their own guild/town/fortress but they also want to go on an adventure to rescue a princess now and then.And just as CRPGs cannot support truly open world design without massive budgets or simple systems or small scope a DM is hard pressed to create a truly sandbox campaign without placing limits on the scope to keep it manageable.  And players understand that if they decide to bugger off on a tangent that the DM will need time to re-purpose what they have written and write new material to support the new plan.When I was a teen trying to DM second edition I was completely paralyzed by the amount of work it seemed to require.  It sounded like I was supposed to have weather systems, continents full of realistic geography and an entire history of fantastic cultures that made logical sense with languages, currency, geo-politics.  I got the impression that the first step was to BE Tolkien and build your world.  Those early modules did not read as 'we left this dungeon without an overarching plot or reason to exist because we want you to be free to run sandbox campaigns' they read 'this is just a game where you kill monsters in a dungeon so there is no need to have more than a paragraph of justification or background as to why you are doing that'.  More scripted adventures from Dungeon and the like and later those darn viddie games were how I learned to put together my own stories that players enjoyed taking part in.  I think wizards are right to make the intro stuff hybrid sandbox/linear because it gives new DMs direction so they know where to start and what to do next while also giving them room to play and explore.  I mean the DMG is not even out yet, of course the adventures should not expect the DM to be expert or be adding a lot of new material to fill out what is presented in the books.</blockquote>

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