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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Ariosto" data-source="post: 5127340" data-attributes="member: 80487">What part is so hard to understand? That Shadows of Yog-Sothoth ("A Global Campaign to Save Mankind") is not what people have meant by sandbox? Or that "mega" dungeons are?That much is accurate.In an RPGA "Living Forgotten Realms" scenario, the limitation on player choice does not depend on whether the scenes are all set in the environs of the sleepy town of Sawlogs, or range across the Planes to the Semidemiplane of Slush. It depends on the constant of the game being seen as consisting of already defined scenes.It's a "finite game" or "solvable puzzle". I know of people who are happy to go through the same scenario all over again with a different character, but it looks to me as if once through tends to leave very little of strategic interest to find. There may still be a lot of tactical interest in some of the scenes, and it may be sound "meta-game" strategy to run this character through and pick up that magic item along with so many XP.The purpose of the design is to restrict player options to a very few paths from an already defined beginning to an already defined end. The same is true in the run of the mill that I have seen of WotC and Goodman Games output. It is true of that classic gauntlet, The Tomb of Horrors. It is severely true, in my experience, of most event-structured scenarios.The purpose of an old-fashioned "campaign", or "mega", or "sandbox" dungeon is to give players at each point a number of clearly defined options -- but to make it nearly impossible to predict, just by looking at the map and key, which points an expedition will encounter even if one knows where it starts.Even if static, such a dungeon would probably take several expeditions to clear out and so "solve"; preferably, to my mind, one has at least so much scope (as opposed to something one could even reconnoiter completely in one go). As a dynamically reacting, reconfiguring, and even growing entity, it is meant not to be "solved".The growing part is especially key at first, as I think it usually better to start sooner rather than to wait until one has "at least half a dozen maps" (the original recommendation). Sketch some sort of "home base" for the players (Keep, Village, Free City), and note a few sites in the nearer reaches of the Wilderness.The "mega" dungeon is in itself a "sandbox", which can in turn be set in another level of "sandbox". Really, though, it is not in being vast in an architectural sense that its critical depth lies. What is critical is scope of possibilities. A small space with a few people complexly related to each other can also offer a lot of possibilities -- and relationships with other such sites and populations can multiply those."Dungeon map" on graph paper and "wilderness map" on hex grid are tools a referee can apply to other situations. Apply the dungeon technique to an event structure rather than a site structure, and you get a "flow chart". (I think it will be inherently shallower in possibilities than the site map, though.)There is a world in a drop of pond water. There is almost infinite coastline. Fantasy fans may recall the time Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser were afflicted with the Curse of the Stars and the Smalls.At any given moment in play, only a few elements are immediately relevant. A given player (including the DM) can keep only so many in mind! So, where to put one's focus depends on what is important at the time.The most critical distinction here is whether or not there is such a thing as "the plot" or "the story" apart from the players' decisions and their consequences. The "sandbox" story does not exist beforehand, but is created by and of  those decisions and consequences and so can be told only afterward.</blockquote>

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