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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Haltherrion" data-source="post: 5101953" data-attributes="member: 18253">I have to agree. It takes a very talented ref and a very engaged group of players to really pull off a sandbox well. The ref needs to provide a rich enough, well enough described world for the players to find interesting things to do and then be very good at ad lib. The players need to engage enough to make informed decisions. In my best days, I had a group that played frequently enough (weekly in college) and enough engaged players that this worked. After college, playing biweekly or less with players with real lives, lots of distractions and other ways to entertain themselves on a weekend night, it didn't work so well. I finally had a player who kindly told me it was kind of boring at times. That forced me to rethink how I ran games and to become much more actively engaged in providing a story. It also forced me to recognize that while I could ad lib, my memorable sessions were not ad libed. So now, my typical campaign will provide players clear decision points, minor ones within a session, major ones at the end of a session so that I can prepare the next session. At major decision points they can in theory choose to do anything they want but in practice, they are engaged enough in the story arc to stay with the arc but have freedom to determine how and when they act. And, of course, I prepare seeds I can use for unexpected paths the players may take. Having now run both sandbox and story-arc campaigns, I find the latter far superior. It suits my style and provides a much more entertaining experience for my players. Some refs may be able to provide a true sandbox with a similar level of entertainment-delivery but I am not one of them, nor have I ever personally experienced such a ref. I have no regrets nor make apologies for abandoning a sandbox approach <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f609.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=";)" title="Wink    ;)"  data-smilie="2"data-shortname=";)" /> I think for most refs it is only practical to offer a hierarchy of choices not complete free reign. You might give them a choice of campaign setting. Once they select that, they may have a choice of major story arc every 3-4 sessions. Within an arc, they may have various "plot" decisions to make (do they make friends with someone or just attack? set a trap? plant false vidence? etc.) Within a battle, they should have some flexibility on how to handle it (avoid it, exploit terrain, etc.) Most players are perfectly fine with that. It's the illusion of control without having full control at all times. Controlisimilitude.</blockquote>

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