The many types of Sandboxes and Open-World Campaigns

[Thomas Shey]

It's called a Usage Dice and it's been around a while.
I find them really good and use them in all my Black Hack derived games. ( Very cool for a Ring of Wishes!)

The complaints I've seen about that is its too dicey and can create a situation that doesn't feel like it makes sense. This is primarily in terms of "we get a gust of successive rolls of exhausting a resource in a row." Alternity 2e started out trying to do that and the playtesters hated it.

 

[Yora]

Its possible to make that a non-issue though; while there are other elements where player choices make improvements easier or harder, in Fragged Empire, they level every three adventures/sessions no matter what they're doing. It disconnects their advancement from their choices in a way that makes the latter (at least in this area) more free.

My position is that rewards and mechanical incentives are a very useful tool to give any campaign focus and provide structure for players. Narrowing down infinite options to a smaller space of practical choices can be a very good thing.
But GMs need to understand what the rules they are using are actually incentivizing, and this has to line up with what the GM expects the campaign to play out like. When the mechanical incentives are directly counter to the desired behavior, it creates considerable friction.

 

[payn]

I've seen repeatedly XP and treasure rewards lead to undesired gaming behaviors. Players will osmosis their way to the fastest goal post, leaving the game borderline parody. I've gone milestone and not looked back. Essentially, I give an ability/level/treasure boost at the end of an adventure. Pretty easy to do in a sandbox game I have found.

 

[John R Davis]

The complaints I've seen about that is its too dicey and can create a situation that doesn't feel like it makes sense. This is primarily in terms of "we get a gust of successive rolls of exhausting a resource in a row." Alternity 2e started out trying to do that and the playtesters hated it.

It's a game with dice. Sometimes they love you, mostly they let you down!

 

[Yora]

It does add a level of uncertainty, which makes planning and preparation more difficult. It's hard enough to judge rations and torches when you're not certain how much time you'll be having need of them. If you also don't know how much use you'll get out of a unit, the only calculation you can make is worst case*, and then you end up most of the time hauling way more stuff around than you can actually use.
Another effect is that bad results can easily be attributed to bad luck, instead of the players having planned poorly. In most cases, you want players to figure out what mistakes they made and learn to improve their planning. I also believe that it's actually less frustrating to fail when you can see that the situation could have been overcome with a different course of action, rather than suffering consequences that are no fault of your own.

(*Yes, you could do a statistical analysis to prepare for a secured supply within two Standard Deviations, but that's not the kind of play almost anyone wants to play.)

 

[Reynard]

I've seen repeatedly XP and treasure rewards lead to undesired gaming behaviors. Players will osmosis their way to the fastest goal post, leaving the game borderline parody. I've gone milestone and not looked back. Essentially, I give an ability/level/treasure boost at the end of an adventure. Pretty easy to do in a sandbox game I have found.

I don't think milestone XP works in a sandbox high on player agency because, well, there aren't any. I mean, "milestone" is literally a term for roads...

 

[payn]

I don't think milestone XP works in a sandbox high on player agency because, well, there aren't any. I mean, "milestone" is literally a term for roads...

Of course there are roads, I mean, West Marches is basically a series of episodic adventures. When one completes, you move onto the next. You just toss out level ups in between. No muss no fuss over XP.

 

[Malmuria]

Of course there are roads, I mean, West Marches is basically a series of episodic adventures. When one completes, you move onto the next. You just toss out level ups in between. No muss no fuss over XP.

In The Black Hack basically you need to carouse or engage in downtime activities between adventures, and IIRC you need to go on adventures = current level in order to level up. But depending on how your "sandbox" is set up that might result in the problem of low or confused motivation

 

[Reynard]

Of course there are roads, I mean, West Marches is basically a series of episodic adventures. When one completes, you move onto the next. You just toss out level ups in between. No muss no fuss over XP.

XP for actually doing things drives sandbox players. Milestone XP sets up required activities.

 

[Thomas Shey]

It's a game with dice. Sometimes they love you, mostly they let you down!

But it starts to look pretty odd when you apparently can't keep supplies in use for no obvious in-world reason, but just because the dice keep coming up exhaustion. It becomes hard to picture what's going on.