The Good Sandbox Thread [+]

[pemerton]

Yes, you stated that, but you did not back it up. Not only that, but it assumes a degree of adversarial GM positioning that I am not sure is particularly common or likely.

In your example, there is a place that the players want their PCs to travel to - The Tomb of Wealth and Glory. And the PCs know the way to get there - travel north along the Lost Road until they hit the Winding Silver River and then turn west when they can see Deathspire Peak at dawn.

Yet you're saying that the players need to declare more actions before they can confidently have their PCs set out - "it is incumbent on them to do their best to discover facts and rumors about each of those zones/regions/etc."

I've found, in my sandbox-y GMing, that it is better to feed the players information so that they can act on it and make these choices; or to have a clear player-facing framework for obtaining information. Otherwise they are stuck in a GM-driven adventure about how to learn (for instance) the secrets of Deathspire Peak. Or else are blind as to what it means to head towards Deathspire Peak.

 

[Bedrockgames]

Guys let's not debate this stuff here, this is meant to be a positive thread for all type of sandbox. By my count there are two other threads already for holding these kinds of sandbox debates. This is meant to be a thread that welcomes all types of sandboxes and people don't debate points made in examples folks are offering. The whole point of this thread is to avoid those kinds of quagmires around the topic of sandbox

 

[Micah Sweet]

But research, in this context, is about learning more from the GM. And, as I posted, "extensive GM gating of information tends to push towards blind choices - or else not very sandbox-y play, as the players try to acquire the information that will make their choices non-blind."

I feel this is just an expression of your preference for games with less GM control. That's fine of course, but I would disagree that having setting info the GM knows and the players don't leads players to make blind choices. Assuming the GM is playing fair (and I think you have to), then the players have just as much choice through their PCs in the setting conceptually as the players themselves do in real life.

 

[Bedrockgames]

One tool I have used before is to roll a few times on the random encounter chart for the region and then adapt the results to information they might gather from sages, travelers, libraries or other places they might look (including stuff like legend lore). As with all things, you need to be ready to improv and present that information in a fiction appropriate manner. The retired trapper is going tio describe having encountered ogres on the Lost Road differently than a 300 year old Imperial Scout Report.

I like this technique. Are you basically using the random encounter roll as a kind of gather information roll as they are traveling or could they theoretically use it while staying in town and not venturing to where the encounters are but simply talking to local sages and such?

 

[Micah Sweet]

Guys let's not debate this stuff here, this is meant to be a positive thread for all type of sandbox. By my count there are two other threads already for holding these kinds of sandbox debates. This is meant to be a thread that welcomes all types of sandboxes and people don't debate points made in examples folks are offering. The whole point of this thread is to avoid those kinds of quagmires around the topic of sandbox

You're right. I apologize for my previous post not being in the right spirit.

 

[Bedrockgames]

You're right. I apologize for my previous post not being in the right spirit.

No worries. I am not blaming anyone. I understand the impulse lol

 

[Bedrockgames]

Here is an interesting one I found on my blog. I think I posted it in like 2018. It is not complete (I was working on it with my business partner, Bill, who passed away while were were writing the adventure). The map didn't get as fleshed out as a result. But it was intended to be a living adventure-sandbox style campaign inspired by a non-sandbox adventure he ran, set on a small island in a much bigger continental map. I wouldn't say it was a full sandbox, but it had sandbox elements to it (I might call it a focused sandbox). Again as sandboxes go I would say this one is rather limited. You can see it HERE ON MY BLOG

Found this in one of my old folders since PvP came up. I apparently put together an XP progression chart at one point for evil PCs in a PvP sandbox I was running:

XP REWARD FOR EVIL CHARACTERS

Defeating a Powerful Foe: 2 XP
Growing your standing and/or wealth: 1 XP
Eliminating an enemy: 1 XP
Evil Scheme*: 5 XP
Killing a PC and Adding A Better Sense of Direction: 4 XP
Killing a PC and derailing the Campaign by not adding a new sense of direction: -5 XP

An evil scheme is something truly impressive that all at the table agree meets the requirements (so it isn’t just a GM call, everyone has to sign off on this bonus XP). The requirements are, it must take more than a single session to perform (and likely 3 or more). It significantly boosts your standing at the expense of someone else’s, and impresses the villains of the martial world with your cunning.

 

[Thomas Shey]

For me, "sandbox" RPGing is about players taking the lead. Blind choices aren't very consistent with that. And extensive GM gating of information tends to push towards blind choices - or else not very sandbox-y play, as the players try to acquire the information that will make their choices non-blind.

I think to ask that every decision is made with maximum information without any effort on the players' part to acquire that is an unreasonable ask, though. It seems there needs to be some kind of balance there for the setting fiction to actually make sense.

@payn upthread posted about the Traveller scenario/campaign Pirates of Drinax. This blog by one of the authors of that campaign talks about how Traveller addresses this issue:

The Traveller hex-map lets the characters plan their routes and make meaningful choices; the available of Universal World Profiles and Library Data lets them do their own research, and the nature of jump travel in Traveller (hit go and you drop out of the universe for a week) means that there can’t be interruptions or random obstacles en route. If the players decide they’re going to jump from Exe to Cordan, then they can do that with a high degree of confidence that it’ll happen. It allows more long-term planning and more self-directed action from the players.​

That is, however, partly an artifact of the fact that modern and post-modern settings are generally very high information than you'll get in most fantasy or post-apocalypse settings. In Eclipse Phase the universal Mesh access makes almost all information not actively concealed easily accessible. In Gloranthan RQ there is all kinds of information that is either not available to anyone at any distance from the location worth mentioning, or is actively wrong and misinforming because of biases of those conveying the information; finding out what's going on in some parts of Prax in a reliable way adds up to "get fairly close and try and try to sort out the wheat from the chaff."

 

[Manbearcat]

I can't imagine (i) even being considered a "sandbox" game in the way that I think about it. The football analogy suggests to me that it is not a sandbox game, it is an entirely prescribed narrative - basically, a tightly scripted adventure path. There is one way to win, and the only questions to be answered are the specific tactics the players will choose.

For me, "sandbox game" means that the narrative is determined by player choices, and random events are a good way of instigating player choices, many of which will be inconsequential, but a few of which will turn out to have long-term ramifications. That's how I use them, anyway.

@Bedrockgames , I'm going to respond to this for clarification. You can respond (or not) if you'd like. I'm looking for clarification on what conceptual work random encounters are doing in your game and how you feel you are achieving that. If someone wants to understand and/or replicate what you're doing, they need to know why you're doing what you're doing and then understand how your execution facilitates that.

Clint_L , you'll have to unpack what you're thinking about here, because we don't seem to be speaking the same language. I'm not thinking about narratives here, prescribed or otherwise, so your framing of what is being discussed in terms of narrative is a head-scratcher. I'm strictly talking about gameplay or, "what gameplay these features of play tend to produce."

I bring up the American Football down & distance analogy, because the intentionality of design creates particular pressures upon play that (while not being an exact match for sure) has some similar characteristics to Time/Turn, Movement, Wandering Monsters in B/X and RC D&D and then B/X also includes mandatory Rest. All of those work in concert to create particular pressures upon play which generates particularized decision-trees for players:

So what I'm pointing at is that intentional design of WMs/REs and all the supporting game tech does a particular thing for play. I see that "sandbox play" is seen by some in this thread as different from "hex or dungeoncrawl play." I'm not convinced of that (but I could be if it was adequately demonstrated as being sufficiently separate), but that might be an interesting conversation. However, beyond that potential difference in concept-space (sandbox contrasted with x-crawl), I'm curious what work changing these default parameters does for your play?

What do you intend for it to do for your play because it certainly changes the gameplay dynamics of player decision-space (in a way that isn't tremendously afield from if a referee or an outside mediator decided to suddenly change the dynamics of American Football down & distance).

 

[Bedrockgames]

@Bedrockgames , I'm going to respond to this for clarification. You can respond (or not) if you'd like. I'm looking for clarification on what conceptual work random encounters are doing in your game and how you feel you are achieving that. If someone wants to understand and/or replicate what you're doing, they need to know why you're doing what you're doing and then understand how your execution facilitates that.

I think this is getting at a difference where I am not sure I am going to be able to bridge it for you. If you read the sections I posted, you will certainly get a sense of how I run things. But my aim isn't to have people replicate the same experience I am offering at my table. I made the system so it could run the kind of wuxia sandbox I run, but it doesn't have to. Again, I think we are getting a little into territory that is outside the original post, which was more about a positive take on sandboxes of all stripes. If you are genuinely struggling to understand my points, I would point you to my blog and to the rest of the Wandering Heroes of Ogre Gate rulebook (it is PWYW so you can get it free). But I think we are too close to stylistic debates here so I want to keep my response limited.

For clarity, as I said above, I don't seek to make a system that needs to be run so that it is always replicating my table experience. I provide advice on how I achieve it, but even my style and approach can shift from campaign to campaign. For example usually when I start a new sandbox, there is something different from the last one I wish to emphasize and I often tell the players in that campaign I will be treating a key aspect or aspects of the system differently (could be leveling, encounters, etc). But most of what I am doing is trying to bring a sandbox to life for the players to explore and participate in. Encounters are part of keeping that system dynamic. And I like having a reliable system for handling it (so I always use the A) Survival skill rolls based on 2) travel increments and 2) level of danger/traffic or challenge posed by area. This is in my experience a pretty reliable and consistent system.

You seem very focused on system producing an experience and leading to decisions. But for me these things largely come from the world, and the system is a tool. I Use many techniques and tools like the ones described in the D&D sections you quoted (this is why I often use 10 minute increments for example in very local locations like dungeons). I don't break things up into stuff like game day. I am not that interested in that type of granularity on that aspect of play (I want it to be more open and organic)

I just think you and I have a very different relationship to rules and procedures