Pathfinder 1E Sandboxes? Forked from Paizo reinvents hexcrawling

[Greg K]

I love sandbox, but when I started around 1978 or 1979, every DM I knew simply drew up the dungeon or sent us through printed modules (e.g, T1, G1-G3, D1-3, Q1 ). There was nothing outside the dungeon or module among the groups I played with until Katherine Kerr's "Beyond the Dungeon" articles in Dragon.

 

[ExploderWizard]

Any style of play that sees little support in published products for almost an entire generation is bound to generate interest in discussion if for no other reason than because it is "new" to a group of people who are curious about it.

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

Edit. My own theory, which I just remembered by re-reading the Paizo discussion is this: Hex-crawling brings wilderness adventures to the game table. 4E has been extremely poor at implementing this aspect. The wilderness skill challenge is fun maybe once or twice, but gets old soon - even when we factor in other exciting wilderness skill challenges (like the boat raft skill challenge in 'Journey through the the Silver Caves' which made it into DMG 2 - that's just brilliant all round).

If I am not mistaken, it is possible to have "dungeon sandboxes", too. But I still agree that more stuff in the wilderness would be cool.

In fact, in my online campaign, I think I've had not a single dungeon so far. It just never came up, and the story felt much more natural going on under free air. ("Offline" I am running the Hx/Px/Ex series, and those are dungeon heavy).

Not that I would want to describe my campaign as sandbox, but I think generally more city and more wilderness adventures would be my preference.

Not to start an SNG food fight, but I think that sandboxes really appeal to Simulationist gamers. The idea of the world running on its own, not waiting on the PCs.

But I don't see how that works; when folks here talk abotu sandboxes, it seems all the little things in the sandbox are just in a time stasis, their motives and goals just frozen until the PCs stumble across them. If it were a real world, all the things that happen would happen whether the PCs get involved or not, rather than just waiting for the PCs to walk up to them.

I would try to avoid "simulationism" and similar GNS terms for sandboxes. I think they are misleading and it seems to set up false conflicts. You end up trying to define a term with another term and then conclude that this doesn't work out. Maybe your initial assumptions is simply wrong. It's not about "simulationism".

There is one aspect of "immersion" - you can see and explore all the facets of the world - within the expected limitations. (Like not flying to locations that require a helicopter before you have a helicopter). You don't follow a specific plot line that is handed to you - you can choose any thread you find, or create your own. Of course there are other, practical metagame considerations (like the DM can't prepare a real, fully defined world for you, so some stuff will not be predefined and might not be "ready" for exploration).

Whether a sandbox is "static" in that only the PCs intervention can change things, or not, might be dependent on the DM. It might even be something "natural" for the situation, depending on how it is designed. Either way, it doesn't have to be a problem for the group itself, and it is still clearly distinct from an adventure path that the players have to follow.

 

[Umbran]

That's a fundamental misunderstanding on how a sandbox is supposed to work.

It is, however, apparently how it often does work. There's a time when one must step away from the theory of how it is supposed to work, and look at how it is implemented in a practical sense in the field, and why.

The why here seems pretty obvious - tracking an entire world population (millions or billions of individuals) and having them act on their own is simply not feasible. So, only some of the elements are going to act independently. Some things are likely to be kept in effective stasis (or 'status quo' - I think it is important to note that for a long time we called the style this, rather than 'sandbox', indicating that this stasis state is a pretty common thing), simply due to lack of GM time to pay attention and put thought to them.

You may argue over how many non-static elements are necessary to have a "true" sandbox, but I think calling it a "fundamental misunderstanding" is rather missing the practical reality that the GM probably has other things to do with his life than figure out what all the pieces in his world do when nobody's looking at them.

 

[Umbran]

I would try to avoid "simulationism" and similar GNS terms for sandboxes.

I wouldn't. While GNS theory has its flaws, it is still often a useful framework for looking at games. It isn't like sandbox play is so special or precious or fragile that it cannot be looked at in this light without dissolving into smoke, or something.

Because, let's face it, a sandbox is an excellent venue for a world simulation. When you start talking about setting up a world, and having it run whether or not the PCs interact with it - that is a good description of a simulation. You don't have to use a sandbox for filling simulationist goals, but it is useful for that, and we should not shun the idea. We should expect simulationist GMs to like sandboxes.

 

[meomwt]

Any style of play that sees little support in published products for almost an entire generation is bound to generate interest in discussion if for no other reason than because it is "new" to a group of people who are curious about it.

TheNecromancer Games module The Lost City of Barakus is a great sandbox module for levels 1-5. There are lots of plot hooks which you can grab, then find out you have bitten off more than you can chew! For example,

Spoiler

there's a CR5 Black Dragon lurking in the first level of the Caves of Barakus, generally designed for L1 PC's.

In fact, a number of the Necromancer modules for 3.0E and 3.5E include additional adventure locales around the main dungeon, encouraging making the setting more dynamic and sandboxy than might otherwise be supposed.

 

[Desdichado]

I don't personally see that many more advocates for a "sandbox".

I see it all the time, at least for the last year or two, if not a little bit longer than that.

Hmm, well for me it's linked to the strong feelings of disgust elicted by railroad storyines, the type prevalent in the '90s. The worst offender for me was the Stormbringer adventure Rogue Mistress - the guy should have gone wrote a novel.

Even in the 90s, railroads were pretty universally reviled. If the recent fascination with sandboxes is supposed to be some kind of Thermidor reaction to railroading of the 90s, it sure is late in coming.

I would think that major publishers would be the first ones to focus on this.

Apparently that's not the case at all, though. One of the few products that actively cultivated a sandbox style was the Wilderlands of High Fantasy. And while it certainly has its fans, it hasn't set the RPG sales world on fire, to the best of my knowledge.

Some people keep insisting on such an ideal of "purity" or "truth". From what I have seen, they are not the ones actually running campaigns in the old style.

(The "grand" old style, with dozens of participants engaged in high-level strategy as well as in role-playing, does indeed seem vanishingly rare.)

Old style and sandbox style are not the same thing. I referred to sandbox as being perhaps more prevalent before the so-called Hickman revolution, and therefore "old" in that sense, but I'm interested in talking about sandboxes, not old style D&D.

 

[S'mon]

TheNecromancer Games module The Lost City of Barakus is a great sandbox module for levels 1-5. There are lots of plot hooks which you can grab, then find out you have bitten off more than you can chew! For example,

Spoiler

there's a CR5 Black Dragon lurking in the first level of the Caves of Barakus, generally designed for L1 PC's.

In fact, a number of the Necromancer modules for 3.0E and 3.5E include additional adventure locales around the main dungeon, encouraging making the setting more dynamic and sandboxy than might otherwise be supposed.

It's notable that Barakus is a good sandbox that's almost entirely static as described, everything just reacts to the PCs. A partial exception is the city adventures which can involve some events that hook in the PCs.

Vault of Larin Karr by the same author is rather more sophisticated, with a sketched sequence of events the PCs need to deal with, as well as many static encounters.

Neither makes any attempt to simulate a world in the way Umbran talks of; neither do any other sandboxes I've seen (eg Rob Conley's Points of Light, or Wilderlands of High Fantasy). Such world-sim is very dangerous to the game IMO as it puts the world, not the players, centre-stage. For me the attraction of sandbox play is player empowerment - "Go anywhere, do anything", not player maerginalisation - "The world is chugging along just fine without you, thanks".

Edit: I guess Dave Arneson's old kriegspiel-derived approach with Blackmoor could be seen as a world-emulator, but it did that by giving players all the major roles, both hero and villain.

 

[Umbran]

What's amazing to me is how foreign the "sandbox" concept seemingly is to so many people. Then I recall that it's been literally 25 years since anyone in the mainstream of rpg publishing has promoted/supported sandbox play. The "story" has been the fundamental design goal in published materials for so long that many either never knew or have forgotten that the "sandbox" is what we used to just call our "D&D campaign."

I think part of your point is right there. It is what YOU used to just call your D&D campaign.

Do remember that hobbyists tend to congregate with similar hobbyists. The gaming circles you operate in are likely (not sure, but likely) to be subtly self-selected for people who share a similar style. So, it is not surprising if you and your group, and other groups you interacted with, looked at things similarly. It is then also not surprising if you came to the thought that everyone did it roughly the same way.

However, that is a flawed assumption. There's other ways folks did things. Lots of gamers played via the "series of dungeon crawls" style - the DM chose a module that was level-appropriate, and that was what you played that week. Folks who played this way haven't forgotten a darned thing.

I really think it's just the fact that some in the Internet community have called attention to the fact that one of the fundamental styles of rpg support (not necessarily the rules, but adventure/scenario design) has been completely forgotten over the years, and that it's time to re-examine it and play with it again.

It seems to me that the suggestion that it has been "completely forgotten" is a vast overstatement. Others have already pointed out that several other games have sandboxy world design.

Take a look at the White Wolf games for a moment. Nary a railroad module in sight, but huge amounts of setting information detailing groups in the game world - absolutely ripe for sandbox play! Never mind the reputation that "storytelling" is about forcing the players down a railroad - the most freedom of initiative I've had in games, the most sandboxy experience I've ever played through, has been in White Wolf, not D&D.

 

[Celebrim]

Players find sandbox play rewarding because:

1) It puts them in the driver's seat when it comes to plot, or at least gives that impression. They get to determine to a large extent what the story is about and how it will be resolved. They might only be choosing how to switch back and forth between various tracks in a railroad system, but even that can be a welcome degree of freedom.
2) A successfully run sandbox requires the DM to know more about his game world (or at least be very good at faking it) than running an adventure path or dungeon. This can be alot of fun.
3) Sandboxes, because they almost by necessity evolve organically, tend to become vastly more complicated than even the most complicated published supermodules. The big published supermodules like Castle Whiterock, Ptolus, Greyhawk Ruins, Undermountain, World's Largest Dungeon, Lost City of Barakis, City of Brass, etc. are really just attempts to emulate (with varying degrees of success) the typical results of a certain style of sandbox play.

Players get frustrated by sandbox play because:

1) If the DM isn't good at creating meta-plots and structured sidequests on the fly, then very quickly no event will seem connected to any other and the game degenerates into an endless sequence of tactical skirmishes.
2) It requires the DM be either very good at world building, or very good at winging-it, or both, and these talents aren't necessarily possessed by everyone.
3) Sandbox play which otherwise does bring the story and the detail can often slow down to the point that players never get to that awesome end game gauranteed to you on an adventure path. You find yourself in a 'Robert Jordan' trap, where you are pursuing so many different threads of plot, and dealing with so much PC-NPC dialogue and melodrama, that you are never getting anywhere. At which point, you start thinking, "Gee, wouldn't it be nice to have a straight forward 'old school' hack and slash adventure path."