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Message: <blockquote data-quote="chaochou" data-source="post: 5401296" data-attributes="member: 99817">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?’</blockquote>

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