Sandbox gaming

[chaochou]

Reading through, and contributing, to the railroading thread there’s been a lot of talk of sandbox gaming. Talk, which in my view, presents a misleading picture of what a sandbox game is.

So I thought I’d try and write something to illustrate one way for a group to set up a sandbox game and to cut through some possible misconceptions.

Let’s start with the GM and players sitting down with a blank bit of paper and tossing ideas around about the world. What are the themes or ideas they want? The players say what they want in terms of setting, problems, factions, the importance of religion, politics, external threats, villains, goals, romance.

We get a bit of paper and some pencils and players start drawing. Cities, villages, swamps, mountains, rivers, trade routes, caves. A mile high mountain with a huge stone dragon carved on the peak. A natural honeycomb labyrinth. Whatever the players like.

Then they start tagging it with ideas. Orcus cult here. Vecna Cult there. My sister lives in this village. The guy that runs this town is up to no good, but no-one knows what exactly. People disappear on this road. Goblin raiders there. No-one’s explored that bit. And so on.

With a world that they’ve created, the PCs can now create characters that want to interact with it. That want to play it, explore it. That have goals directly related to the world they’ve created, that they care about.

So player 1. He creates a level 1 Bard, Kobain. He scrapes a living playing to locals in the inn in our frontier village. He has a beautiful, but blind sister in the next village. He sends most of his money to her to support her. He’s crazy about a girl called Enara, but her father Dougal – a wealthy burgher – won’t dream of his daughter having anything to do with a penniless musician. He has strange dreams of founding the Stone Dragon Quartet. He’s friends with Ralson. He thinks Jenna, Enara’s best friend, is a bad influence.

His first scene: Jenna comes to see him. Tells him that Enara is engaged to some odious toff called Prentice and really unhappy. The engagement party is tonight. She says ‘If he loves Enara he has to do something.’

Player 2 creates Ralson, a petty thief (Rogue 1). He fled the nearest city a few years back after being caught breaking into the Farriers’ Guild. But he’s managed to create an almost legitimate career on the frontier as the local locksmith. He likes Jenna, but has never said anything. She’s always said how sacrosanct the law is. So he’s kept the legitimate business, but misses the notoriety and reputation that comes from less legal work. He’s got itchy fingers. He’s friends with Kobain.

His first scene: A street urchin says word is that there’s a big party in the village hall tonight. Something about an engagement. Some rich guy’s house is going to be empty, easy pickings. Just need a trustworthy lookout man…

And so on for players 3, 4, 5.

This is not to provide ‘a scenario’ to anyone. It’s to show a world being built collaboratively. The PCs invented the town, the blind sister, the tangled love lives, the disapproving burgher, the thief on the run, the locksmith job, the stone dragon. Then the GM stitches those ideas and goals and beliefs together and sets up play which creates tension. Vitally, the GM does not try to pre-judge the outcome or possible outcomes. Just create the tension.

Attempting to resolve the tension does two things: it shows the table something new about the characters and it creates a new situation. There’s no absolute success or failure here – just a new situation to deal with which will be a result of what the players did or didn't do or messed up.

When things begin to flag a little the GM makes some suggestions to the players. Maybe Jenna is snatched in a kobold raid, or goblins capture Kobain’s sister on the day he’s supposed to be meeting Enara to talk her out of the wedding, or the head of the Farrier’s Guild from the city arrives to discuss trade and bumps into Ralson, who doesn’t know if he’s been recognised. We go with what the players think is cool.

This is my idea of a sandbox game – there’s no scenario, no story arc, no exploring ‘my world and my plot’. But there is always content which is forcing players to make difficult decisions and act on them. It’s just we don’t have any idea what that action will be, what the outcome will be, what the new situation is going to look like after the big party tonight. And we play to find out.

Sandbox gaming doesn’t have to be rolling up five characters, sticking them in a pub and saying ‘What do you do?’

 

[kitsune9]

Reading through, and contributing, to the railroading thread there’s been a lot of talk of sandbox gaming. Talk, which in my view, presents a misleading picture of what a sandbox game is.

Hi Chaochou, good definition of sandbox. I tend to hold to a more broader view of players who decide what to do, where to go, and what goals to accomplish. How the GM accomplishes this is up to the level of effort between him and his players.

For me, since I'm looking at running a sandbox mini-campaign after I wrap up my current campaign, this will be my approach:

1. The players will share in a common event in which they can adopt one broad overall goal to deal with it or they can just go with the flow and not care about it.
2. I will have a set region of places / dungeons for the PC's to explore. To ensure that it isn't overwhelming to the players, I will only detail two or three places up front, because their character knowledge will only have that amount of knowledge. As they explore one place, it grants access to knowledge of more places and more options within the game.
3. Toward the level cap of the mini-campaign, the players will either have accomplished the overall campaign goal or they will have abandoned it in favor of some other pursuit.

Happy Gaming!

 

[Umbran]

Reading through, and contributing, to the railroading thread there’s been a lot of talk of sandbox gaming. Talk, which in my view, presents a misleading picture of what a sandbox game is.

The World-Wide-Web seems to be built on the fundamental unit called the "dichotomy". Most things seem to be discussed by comparing the worst of all possible scenarios of one side with the best of all possible scenarios of the other, with proponents and detractors then trying to describe how none of what the other side says is true, and that their side is the bestofthebestofthebest!

So, yes, sandboxing isn't well represented. But neither is railroading. So, at least there's a balance of inaccuracy

I mean, really, over in the Railroading thread, they're on page 12, and folks apparently still don't agree on the definition of the term. How well-represented can things be under such circumstances?

 

[chaochou]

So, yes, sandboxing isn't well represented. But neither is railroading. So, at least there's a balance of inaccuracy

True enough.

I wanted to try and show a sandbox set-up process where there's player-authored stuff to be done, right now. That sandbox doesn't have to be vague and directionless.

The railroad thread has at least one post on how to railroad well (I must rep that dude). Personally, I think that deserves its own thread too.

 

[Raven Crowking]

I disagree. I think railroading is represented fairly accurately (at least in some quarters), but linear model games are not necessarily railroads. If the players choose to follow your route, IMHO, it is linear, but not a railroad. A railroad (again, IMHO) mandates that some level of control over player choices is denied the players.

I.e., I say "Let's play Savage Tide!" and people choose to do so: Not a railroad.

OTOH, I say "Let's play D&D!" and force people to follow the Savage Tide plotline: Railroad.

I.e., a "railroad" is to a linear model game what a "rowboat scenario" (ala Celebrim) is to a sandbox game.

RC

 

[Beginning of the End]

The best definition of a sandbox I've heard is:

A campaign in which the players choose the scenario.​

There are, in fact, lots of ways in which that scenario selection can be packaged.

For a completely non-traditional example, consider a police procedural RPG in which the players get a list of cases they can choose to investigate each week. Properly designed this could be very sandbox-y.

The most traditional example of a sandbox is probably the hexcrawl, in which exploration of the campaign world's geography leads to the discovery of different scenarios which can then be selected. This is often combined with a rumor table (which is not particularly dissimilar from the police procedural's list of available cases).

So here's the essential Tip List for running a sandbox campaign:

(1) Know the methods by which the PCs will become aware of the scenarios which are available to them. Janx referred to these as "opportunities and threats" in another thread, and that's a great way to think of them. (This is the reactive content of the sandbox campaign.)

(2) The setting should be complex and rich enough that the players will be able to set their own goals and agendas. In the hexcrawl this can be "become a duke"; in the police procedural it might be "set up a wire targeting Avon Barksdale". (This is the proactive content of the sandbox campaign.)

(3) Sandbox campaigns don't have to start as tabula rasa. In fact, they almost certainly shouldn't. Characters should be created with specific starting goals. These can be generic or specific.

For example, in a Western Marches campaign all the characters start with a generic goal: Explore the frontier. This generic goal immediately pushes them into the hexcrawl delivery of scenarios.

OTOH, if a player creates a character whose parents were murdered by cultists bearing the tattoo of a red claw on their foreheads all you need to do is give them a rumor that cultists with red claw tattoos have been seen in the Cave of the Grizzled Bear.

(4) Learn how to minimize wasted prep.

If you're used to running heavily plotted adventures, the first thing you'll need to jettison is the belief that you need to have everything the PCs could potentially interact with fully prepped. Once you've done that, you'll be in a position to start figuring out the best ways to correctly anticipate what needs prepping and when you need to prep it.

The most basic tool in this arsenal is a simple question: "What are you guys planning to do next session?"

After that it becomes a matter of using smart prep instead of exhaustive prep. Knowing how to properly prep a wandering monster table and then using it in creative and interesting ways, for example, is, IMO, an essential skill for high quality hexcrawl play.

 

[kitsune9]

A campaign in which the players choose the scenario.​

Best definition for me too.

 

[rogueattorney]

90% of the hypothetical problems people posit regarding sandbox play can be solved by the DM asking this simple question about 15 minutes before the end of every session: "What do you guys want to do next session?"

 

[Nagol]

90% of the hypothetical problems people posit regarding sandbox play can be solved by the DM asking this simple question about 15 minutes before the end of every session: "What do you guys want to do next session?"

Except with my group *shakes head sadly*. Individually, the characters are sane, but the group dynamic is schizoid. I doubt they know what they want 5 minutes ahead of time!

Still fun to run though.

 

[rounser]

This is my idea of a sandbox game – there’s no scenario, no story arc, no exploring ‘my world and my plot’.

I don't think that necessarily has to be the case.

For example, Baldurs Gate 2 sets up a scenario whereby you have to earn some huge amount of money in order to ransom a hostage of the thieves guild. How you earn that money is up to you, and is bouyed by a choice of many adventure hooks to select from and little restriction on when and where you go (i.e. a sandbox), but there is still an overall campaign arc that it ultimately supports. "Earn the money" is a hook that supports many other hooks.

Along the way, some of these other adventures provide clues to the main story arc. 50 adventures later (note: IMO this BG2 amount of sandbox depth is totally impractical in 3E and 4E because the combats take far too long at the tabletop), you have the money, it's time for the third act, choice begins to dial down, and the climax of the campaign begins, with the BBEG awaiting smackdown.

So that's the best of both worlds - campaign arc tying the threads together, and sandbox choice and exploration.

I think where people go wrong is that they assume that player choice means they no longer have to present adventure hooks and mini-scenarios, that players just go wandering around in a world of vacuum. This could not be further from the truth, IMO. Sandboxes IMO require a lot more work than railroads, not less, which is why they're so rarely done well (if at all).