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

[robconley]

The term railroad is overloaded in this context. What makes a railroad a railroad is the unwillingness to allow players to make other choices even when it is plausible to do so. Whether this is a "bad" thing or not depends on what the group wants to do. Traditionally it has been viewed as negative as a result of a referee's whims. However, there are positive circumstances where it is fine because of what the group wants out of the campaign. For example, a campaign where the players are the crew of a Starfleet vessel. They could desert, resign and do something else in the Star Trek Universe but out of the game, the group agrees that the focus is on being a crew of a Starfleet vessel.

A situation where the only plausible approach is to play it out as a linear series of events is not a railroad. It is just how things work out for that situation. Groups involved with undertaking missions for an organization or a patron will often be involved in situations like this.

 

[robconley]

Have we actually gotten anywhere since my first post on page 3, here? Because it doesn't seem like it. We all agree that "sandbox" and "railroad" are terms with meaning (whenever those terms came into being). A

I think the issue is folks not stating clearly what they want out of a running tabletop campaign and explaining how their points tie back to that idea.

For example for me, I find it fun to see players how "trash' my setting regardless of genre and specifics. Everything I share about running a sandbox campaign stems from my experience of trying to make that fun and interesting over the decades. Not just for the players but for me as well.

Everything specific I do or share about roleplaying ties back to that central idea.

 

[Maxperson]

The term railroad is overloaded in this context. What makes a railroad a railroad is the unwillingness to allow players to make other choices even when it is plausible to do so. Whether this is a "bad" thing or not depends on what the group wants to do. Traditionally it has been viewed as negative as a result of a referee's whims. However, there are positive circumstances where it is fine because of what the group wants out of the campaign. For example, a campaign where the players are the crew of a Starfleet vessel. They could desert, resign and do something else in the Star Trek Universe but out of the game, the group agrees that the focus is on being a crew of a Starfleet vessel.

A situation where the only plausible approach is to play it out as a linear series of events is not a railroad. It is just how things work out for that situation. Groups involved with undertaking missions for an organization or a patron will often be involved in situations like this.

Yeah. This thread conflates linear with railroad. What is really being discussed here are linear games, not railroads.

 

[Torranocca]

So I'm having trouble following your stance based on the following:



How do these two sentences work together? It would appear that you consider too much freedom to be problematic due to the paladin/holy avenger example you shared. But you also seem to think that it's not the DM's place to help guide the players in some way.

How do you reconcile these two ideas? I would think that you could take away some player freedom to kind of limit the risk of one player going far afield of where you want things to go, but wouldn't that be the DM exerting control?

The sentences are easily rectifiable when you notice, at no time did I say it was problematic. This is what free play means. Was I happy about the player losing his character to terrible choices? Of course not. The players “job” is to make their own decisions and figure out how to navigate the consequences for good or ill. The DMs “ job” is the create an internally consistent game settings and make it fun and exciting. ( hopefully)
I present it the way I do because I have experienced many DMs who will distort game world reality and logic to save players from themselves. Not a problem either but a DM doing that tends to destroy suspension of disbelief and ruins the challenges the game is presenting.

Sandbox as a type of RPG campaign wasn't in use in the hobby or industry prior to the early 2000s. It was used as a synonym for settings or campaigns. For example, in Dragon magazine, the author would say "I welcome all players to my sandbox." And from the context of the article, it was clear you could easily substitute in " I welcome all players to my campaign." and the article would have read the same.

I say this with all seriousness, go ahead and try to find quotes from back in the day that uses sandbox. The best source I found to date is the Dragon Magazine Archive. But with the increase in scholarly research, there may be more resources now than ten years ago which was the last time I took a deep dive to document this stuff. If you do this then you will see what I saw, people used sandbox but as a synonym not a type of campaign.


I wrote about this on my blog.

Musing on Sandbox Campaigns

Which references this Enworld Thread

Sandbox Forked

The Enworld forums are a good place to see the evolution and the use of the term as its history extends before sandbox as a type of campaign was in use.

Finally, keep in mind I am talking about the name of the term itself, people were running sandbox campaigns since the beginning of the hobby. There just wasn't a formal name for it. In contrast railroading along with other terms like Monty Haul were in widespread use early on.

It was just with the Wilderlands boxed set project there was a critical mass of folks, including myself, that there were a lot of common elements to how we ran Wilderland campaigns. Then after we started discussing it we borrowed the use of sandbox from computer games (like Civilization) as a shorthand. Then finally we got other folks talking about how they did similar things with their campaigns and that this style was part of the hobby for a long time.

Not trying to be argumentative but the entire post above appears to lack relevance. I and the people I played with, folks at game cons and TSR sponsored events were, all of us, already using those terms in the 1980s. Finding them in “ official” publications after 2000 gives zero credence to anyone trying to claim they invented or contributed to the ideas and their usage, 20 or so years after the fact. Perhaps that is simply when some folks first heard of the terms. It does not take a traceable publication to give these terms legitimacy. They were already in the common lexicon.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Yeah. This thread conflates linear with railroad. What is really being discussed here are linear games, not railroads.

Okay...so what's the difference?

Because I'm not seeing one. A linear campaign offers no choices. A railroad offers no choices. If the only difference is "railroaded players aren't happy about it," then it has nothing to do with the style of the campaign, and everything to do with whether the players like it.

It shouldn't be a different style simply because players are happy about it.

 

[Maxperson]

Okay...so what's the difference?

Because I'm not seeing one. A linear campaign offers no choices. A railroad offers no choices. If the only difference is "railroaded players aren't happy about it," then it has nothing to do with the style of the campaign, and everything to do with whether the players like it.

It shouldn't be a different style simply because players are happy about it.

Linear campaigns do offer choices. Choice #1: Do we engage the line at all. In a railroad you are forced to engage. Choice #2: We've Gone from A to B to C to D to E, but no longer want to continue on to F-N. We can do that. We can leave the line. The line only exists as steps for the adventure. In a railroad, you are forced down the line no matter what you want.

Linear = adventure with a line.
Railroad = forced down the line no matter what the players decide.

 

[Mordhau]

Okay...so what's the difference?

Because I'm not seeing one. A linear campaign offers no choices. A railroad offers no choices. If the only difference is "railroaded players aren't happy about it," then it has nothing to do with the style of the campaign, and everything to do with whether the players like it.

It shouldn't be a different style simply because players are happy about it.

Yeah that sounds about right.

I generally maintain that being raildroaded is a subjective experience and that's the core at it.

I mean that doesn't make it wrong to look at a published adventure and say "this is basically a railroad", but I think that's mostly because, at its core, that's a judgement that a group of players in the adventure are likely to experience the feeling of being railroaded.

I've never seen any other way to define it that was particularly meaningful.

 

[Ovinomancer]

The sentences are easily rectifiable when you notice, at no time did I say it was problematic. This is what free play means. Was I happy about the player losing his character to terrible choices? Of course not. The players “job” is to make their own decisions and figure out how to navigate the consequences for good or ill. The DMs “ job” is the create an internally consistent game settings and make it fun and exciting. ( hopefully)
I present it the way I do because I have experienced many DMs who will distort game world reality and logic to save players from themselves. Not a problem either but a DM doing that tends to destroy suspension of disbelief and ruins the challenges the game is presenting.

Not trying to be argumentative but the entire post above appears to lack relevance. I and the people I played with, folks at game cons and TSR sponsored events were, all of us, already using those terms in the 1980s. Finding them in “ official” publications after 2000 gives zero credence to anyone trying to claim they invented or contributed to the ideas and their usage, 20 or so years after the fact. Perhaps that is simply when some folks first heard of the terms. It does not take a traceable publication to give these terms legitimacy. They were already in the common lexicon.

Looking for a word usage in literature is the usual means of determining its contemporary usage. Lots of real ink spilled about play in the '80s, but not textual evidence of "sandbox" being used. Let's say your claim is correct -- ypu experienced widespread use of the term in the '80s. Trouble is, you have no evidence other than your say. @estar at least has contemporary evidence for their claim.

You can say @estar's claim is wrong, but available evidence means it's just your say against actual evidence.

Not to be argumentative, or anything.

 

[Maxperson]

Yeah that sounds about right.

I generally maintain that being raildroaded is a subjective experience and that's the core at it.

I mean that doesn't make it wrong to look at a published adventure and say "this is basically a railroad", but I think that's mostly because, at its core, that's a judgement that a group of players in the adventure are likely to experience the feeling of being railroaded.

I've never seen any other way to define it that was particularly meaningful.

Railroading only occurs if the DM is removing player choice and forcing them down pathways, even if they are not aware of it through due to the illusion of choice being presented to them.

Looking at a published adventure and saying that "this is basically a railroad." is almost always going to be the wrong way to look it it, since next to none of them forbid the players from giving up and doing something else in the middle, or even saying no to doing it in the first place. If the PCs go on that adventure, it's because they chose to do it. That's linear, not railroad.

 

[robconley]

Not trying to be argumentative but the entire post above appears to lack relevance. I and the people I played with, folks at game cons and TSR sponsored events were, all of us, already using those terms in the 1980s. Finding them in “ official” publications after 2000 gives zero credence to anyone trying to claim they invented or contributed to the ideas and their usage, 20 or so years after the fact. Perhaps that is simply when some folks first heard of the terms. It does not take a traceable publication to give these terms legitimacy. They were already in the common lexicon.

I disagree that back in the 1980s sandbox was used to describe a distinct type of campaign or a synonym for free play. By the mid-80s I was in college and involved in organized gaming clubs and conventions. A lot of the terms used in this and earlier terms, I remember being used back in the day both in print and just talking with fellow gamers. However "a sandbox campaign" was not one of them. And while Dragon Magazine is one of the better sources, especially their letter pages. There are the early Usenet, Alaurms and Excursions, and other sources.

Again to be crystal clear, people used sandbox but as a synonym for setting not as a way to run a campaign. And people were running what we would now call sandbox campaign long before the marketing of the Wilderlands boxed set. There wasn't a name for it or an awareness that it was something distinct.

And you see this here in Enworld by just using the search function. The first substantive threads on Sandbox Campaigns as its own thing start to crop up in 2008 and not before. Most of the prior usage were things like

'course it sounds like d20 past. I'm one of those folks who's most creative when working in other people's sandboxes. Besides, you've got to love a setting that ditches the generic red dragon for sea monsters that can capsize boats and cause hurricanes.

Here this from a 2002 thread on Worlds and Campaigns. Note Desdichao using sandbox in a completely different way. Despite the thread being about topics that people would include in a present-day discussion about sandbox campaigns.

Another good trick is that you really don't have to plan for everything the PCs could think of to do. You can have three or four canned responses that will be appropriate no matter what they do, and that way you can control things without them feeling railroaded. You can also make sure things work out without railroading PCs. If they don't seem to want to go north and save the kingdom from the orc hordes (to use a bad example) make sure the invasion happens anyway. Give them consequences for not doing what they should. Sooner or later, they'll usually come back to the sandbox and play, but they get to do it on their terms.

Wrapping it up
Hey I get your skepticism. Aside from being involved the reason I remember how the term came about is that I started blogging a short time after it started gaining widespread use. My "How to make a Fantasy Sandbox" series is by far my most popular series of posts. Then starting around 2015 people started to forget how it came about. Like you, most thought that talking about sandbox campaigns was always a thing in the hobby. And I started getting skepticism about my account about how the term "sandbox campaign" came about.

It also doesn't help that the key discussions took place on an email list during the time I used Winmail and I lost the archive. And for the record, I didn't coin the term. Some else did and I was one of the early adopters. We liked it because sandbox computer games were a thing in the early 2000s and the idea fit perfectly what we all were doing with the Wilderlands.

This further supports the notion that the sandbox campaign to describe a type of RPG campaign was a relatively recent innovation. Because the use of sandbox as a term for a type of computer game is well documented and its use as a term for a type of RPG campaign came afterward.