I run in a very improvisational style and yet ran Avernus which is railroady as all get out*. Improvisation meant weirdo NPCs and random encounters, but campaign stayed on the rails.
*I mean, the flowcharts in the modules are branchless lines!
D&D General Not Railroad, Not Sandbox ... What else is there?
*I mean, the flowcharts in the modules are branchless lines!
It's more about the lack of constraint on player decision making. The essence of sandbox play is to drop some characters into a setting and see what happens. Not plot, no GM direction force, blah blah. Some people get really worked up about that particular definition. I'm not that guy. I just count it as the other end of the spectrum from linear adventures.
They most definitely are not sandbox - a major identifier of a sandbox game is that the sandbox starts full of sand to play with. A sandbox is generally pre-populated with adventure material before play begins. The player is free to move about the world, and engage with the material, or not, as they wish.
In the games I'm talking about, there is little to no pre-population.
Laurefindel
Legend
The Guiding Star
Looks like a sandbox, especially at first, but with a focus point on the horizon. As the game progresses, the star becomes harder to ignore. Ultimately, the players will go toward the star, but the route is up to them.
The City Bus
The game is pretty linear, but the players can easily get off the bus at any time and board another one. Once the bus has passed however it’s almost impossible to catch up, and things happen. Things happen at the end of other bus lines too, and you can’t be on all the buses at once.
Looks like a sandbox, especially at first, but with a focus point on the horizon. As the game progresses, the star becomes harder to ignore. Ultimately, the players will go toward the star, but the route is up to them.
The City Bus
The game is pretty linear, but the players can easily get off the bus at any time and board another one. Once the bus has passed however it’s almost impossible to catch up, and things happen. Things happen at the end of other bus lines too, and you can’t be on all the buses at once.
I think a lot of people would consider an improvisational game a sandbox.
I can see the argument against it, in that it could be definitely be argued that if the GM is making stuff up then it's pretty hard not to be making up stuff appropriate to the characters, although some will swear blind that they are objectively playing the world.
There's a middle ground of course, where very little is populated but you mostly rely on randomisers with the occasional tweak to procedurally generate content.
Well, sure, if you remove a major part of the traditional definition.
Same. I really don't think that's a traditional definition.My understanding of the term doesn't put the emphasis on the pre-population of content.
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.
Similar Threads
