D&D General Not Railroad, Not Sandbox ... What else is there?

[steeldragons]

Sandroad? Railbox?

Seems pretty self-explanatory that some merging, meshing, using bits of both, back n' forth, to keep the party on their toes is the best way to go.

 

[Fanaelialae]

Well, sure, if you remove a major part of the traditional definition.

Based on the way the OP defined the terms, it seems probable that they are using the terms sandbox and railroad in lieu of non-linear vs linear terminology. Certainly, a traditional form of sandbox is pre-populated, but there's no such stipulation for a non-linear campaign.

I've conversed with purists who would likely argue that in an improvised game consequences don't matter (since hypothetically anything can happen) but I don't agree with that viewpoint. Ultimately, even in a detailed sandbox, the GM will have to improvise something (and more than likely, many things) so I don't think that the argument that improvisation invalidates choice is accurate. There is some correlation between the two, but it isn't one of explicit causation. Certainly, a GM can invalidate choice through improvisation, but that doesn't have to be the case. As long as the GM is at least one step ahead of the players, and improvises scenarios where they can make informed choices with logical outcomes that aren't unreasonably limited, validity of choice is preserved. Whether the GM came up with the details 30 years ago or 30 seconds ago is irrelevant, IMO.

 

[Reynard]

Even detailed sandboxes have random encounter charts, so at least some level of improvisation is necessary above and beyond the fact that you can't have player agency without GM improvisation.

 

[Benjamin Olson]

Branching Path: Cousin of the railroad (possibly actually what some people are calling a railroad), except that there are a number of key points at which the players do have actual meaningful control to choose which of several set paths they go down.

I consider this mainly worth mentioning because it is the structure of a "Choose Your Own Adventure" book, as well as some aspects of computer games (ie: dialogue trees) and because of both those influences and the fact that it lends itself to a diagram, it is a natural approach for a DM who wants to plan out the whole campaign, understands players are supposed to have choices, but doesn't really get what that should mean.

While I imagine DMs actually planning out a whole branching path narrative is pretty rare, I think it's the norm to anticipate several options (or dice results) at major decision points and plan possible paths forward from those, and a DM who one way or another forces players to accept one of the menu they prepared when the players (invariably) think of some other thing to do is basically forcing everyone to play the "Choose Your Own Adventure" story they're writing. I don't consider that an intrinsically terrible experience, but if choice is going to be limited like that then a computer game can give you comparable agency, and you've missed out on one of the things that makes all the overhead of tabletop worthwhile, having a game bound by the players' imaginations rather than the designer's.

 

[Fenris-77]

The Alexandrian has a whole series of interesting blog posts on something he calls Node-Based scenario design. Worth a look.

 

[Yora]

An important distinction that I often make is between scripted and unscripted adventures.
In a scripted adventure, the GM already knows pretty well what scenes will happen and what the outcomes will be before the game even starts. This is typically the source of railroading, as any decision the players make, or any random die roll needs to be bend to make the next scene happen as planned.
How many campaigns are being played that way is impossible to say. But pretty much all adventures in the last 30 years are written that way.

 

[S'mon]

Well, it's certainly a common feature of some sandboxes, especially the hex crawls that were really the first kind of map associated with the term (Majestic Wilderlands in about 2006 if memory serves). The term didn't refer to the map though, but to the lack of linear elements. The players were free to do what they liked and go where they liked. To paraphrase the words of the of an original user of the term for TTRPGs (Rob Conley) you set the players loose and let them trash the setting.

Traditional sandboxes tend to have a mix of pre-populated material, procedural content generation tools, and some expectation the GM can extrapolate as necessary. They certainly seem to work best that way IME. I don't think pure improv will usually feel much like a sandbox. But a GM who refuses to engage in any improv lest it taint the purity of their sandbox probably won't run a very good game IMO.

 

[THEMNGMNT]

The first thing I would do is differentiate between adventures and campaigns.

It's possible to have non-linear adventures within a linear campaign. Wild Beyond the Witchlight is a good example of this -- players progress from Chapter 1, to Chapter 2, to Chapter 3. In linear order. But within each chapter there's a lot of freedom and latitude characteristic of non-linear adventures. Put otherwise, each chapter is basically a sandbox, but the campaign itself is not a sandbox.

And of course the opposite is possible. Dragon of Icespire Peak is almost (but not quite) an example of this. The adventures are so short and simple that they are nearly linear. But the campaign itself allows players to decide which adventures to play through and in what order.

I would also consider the significance of story. Most published campaigns have a clear premise and plot. When the plot is resolved, the campaign is over. Contrast that with more episodic or sandboxy campaigns.

Finally, what about the dice? In my experience, the dice have a way of ruining the plans of both players and DMs. Dice are almost always responsible for knocking my campaign off the rails -- in a good way.

 

[Scruffy nerf herder]

Of course you can always just use varying degrees of either primary style and switch it up from session to session. That way you and the players get the best of both worlds, sessions with more focused content and then plenty of free form flying by the seat of your pants you don't even know yourself what you're going to do next kind of DMing.

Normally I'm in the latter camp though. It's hard to beat the fun of making super memorable and comedic or intense content in an improvisational manner. For those sessions I only provide myself with choose your adventure book type options and only basic outlines for what I think could happen in a scenario. E.g. I'll know that I want to capture the players and drop them down into some unknown tunnels but I have no clue how I'll make that happen. Whatever is a cool idea when the opportunity presents itself.

 

[jmartkdr2]

My understanding of the term doesn't put the emphasis on the pre-population of content.

Not as a defining element, but "empty sandboxes" is by far the simplest way to make it boring.