The many types of Sandboxes and Open-World Campaigns

[overgeeked]

Yeah, sorry. I found the comparison exasperating. There’s a different dynamic between video games and tabletop RPGs. The latter isn’t dependent on an upstream developer to provide content or constrained to do just a prescribed list of things. It would be terrible to put the kind of grinding players tend to optimize around in MMOs into a tabletop RPG.

It's not just about grinding. But that's part of it. I think the comparison is nearly perfect. Gamers are gamers. It doesn't matter what game they play or what platform it's on. Tabletop RPGs or MMOs. Most gamers are still out to win, and almost laser focused on finding the shortest, most efficient path to win.

And grinding is in D&D. Look at XP for monsters and all the small, pointless, and barely resource draining fights packed into most dungeons and adventures. That's pure grinding. The CR system and the adventuring day and the balance of player resources. The devs designed the game around the assumption that parties would have between 6-8 medium combat encounters per day...and balanced PC resources for that. Actually hitting that mark is grinding.

And there's the thousand "little" ways players push for efficiency. The five-minute workday. Focusing fire...but screaming if they're targeted by focused fire. Focusing on the enemy leaders and casters...but screaming if their leaders or casters are focused on. The way combat almost always devolves into static, unmoving blocks of PCs and monsters. The way descriptions in combat almost always fade into a dry recitation of numbers. Players trying to just call out a skill and make a check instead of describing what they're doing in the fiction. If forced to take some kind of flaw, find the one that is least likely to ever come up. If it's a point-buy system, find the flaw with the biggest yield of points that will have the least impact on play. On and on. Some of these the tabletop RPG community recognizes as problematic, others are seen as simply smart. And DM's who push back labeled bad.

It's also why most actual play streams generally make terrible viewing and gamers generally make for terrible storytellers. Good stories are about emotion and drama, gamers tend to be laser-focused on winning and efficiency. All the things that make for good drama are dismissed out of hand as "stupid" by most gamers. Which is why the best and most popular actual play streams and podcasts are by professional storytellers who happen to be gamers. And there are no "gamer first" streams or podcasts that are widely popular.

You also see this in gamer analysis of other media. Like, "Why didn't they use the eagles to fly the ring to Mount Doom?" Because the point is the emotional and drama-filled story that results from them not using the eagles. The point isn't the quickest, most efficient path to victory. Like optimizers seemingly not grokking why someone wouldn't optimize.

Unless you’re doing open table or public play, surely you’re able to filter players over time until you end up with a group that aligns with what you want to do?

As one data point, I present my current 5E West Marches game. I've had 43 players in that game over its short life (almost nine months now). The current active roster is 16. Of those 43, 2 have not tried to game the system. Neither of which are currently active because life got in the way. Most of the rest who quit, the other 25, are no longer playing because of various problems such as egregious metagaming, rage quitting when caught cheating (where did that extra 500gp come from?), one rage quit because I wasn't giving them enough XP (at the time they had the most XP in the game), one rage quit over my mentioning the centaur climbing problem, another rage quit because the mold earth cantrip wasn't full-on earth bending, one rage quit because they took one damage (literally one point of damage), etc.

I’ve built and played optimized characters. It’s pretty fun. I would guess many of the people you decry are also having fun. That’s why I don’t care all that much about optimized characters. The players are still usually engaging with the rest of the game, especially since mine aren’t just about overcoming mechanical challenges, so it only becomes a problem in certain cases (e.g., when one specialist is way better than another at the same thing, which is highly system-dependent).

The problem is it puts the DM and the rest of the group in a bind. Either the DM lets the optimized characters just stomp everything, rendering the game non-challenging and no fun (literally optimizing the fun out of the game), or the DM ups the difficulty of the game to match the optimized characters...which will then slaughter the non-optimized characters. So the players who don't want to optimize are either forced to optimize, lose dozens of characters in a horror-show of a game, or quit. Or the DM has to some how have two sets of monsters running constantly, one set for the optimized and one set for the non-optimized...keep them straight and never let them cross over lest there be another slaughter. How about ask the players to not optimize? Sure. You're then labeled a bad DM because all playstyles and preferences are valid. Or so I've been told.

Games are about something. In mine, the players pick what they want to do for the campaign (“loot the fallen capital” in my current game), and then we play to find out what happens. That’s the premise. I expect players to engage with what the game is about and not be disruptive to that end.

Sure. I expect much the same. I'm perpetually disappointed though. When starting my West Marches game I was very upfront that it was going to be old-school with food and water tracking, light sources, variant encumbrance, wilderness survival, exploration focused, etc. Really wanted to play up the old-school feel and make it grounded in the world and make resource management an important part of the game. So...of course...about 75% of the initial character concepts were Outlanders for the free food and water, druids with goodberry, rangers who never get lost, every caster with light, most picked races with darkvision and/or powerful build...completely obviating the entire stated focus of the game. I said "I want these things to matter" to which the players collectively said "nah." But importantly, they didn't opt not to play...they opted to play, but opted to render the focus of the game moot. So I had to ban things and house rule stuff to reiterate that no, really, this stuff is going to matter. And the players that stuck around complain about that to this day.

I played in a group that had a player who was notorious for being disruptive. After he got his character exiled in the first hour of play in L5R, they told a story of how he got the party TPK’d after offending a bunch of NPCs. Why would you invite back a player who disrupts and destroys games habitually?

I’ve been playing only a couple of decades, but my experience has been that the number of really problematic players has been in the low single digits. Not questioning your experience, just saying how mine differs.

Sure. I think there's a level of disruption that's missed here. There's a spectrum between shows up five-minutes late and knifes the DM. I have no patience for people who are properly disruptive or destroy games. I'd rather not play than babysit adults. But players can still be disruptive without destroying games. Going against the premise of the game, insisting on playing the odd-man-out, loner edgelords, passive characters, roleplay terrorists, on and on. I deal with the minorly disruptive players because, in my experience, that's just gamers being gamers. Exhausting though it is. Which is not helped at all by the broader community having this toxic positivity of everything's okay and DMs who don't put up with disruptive behavior are bad. If I only got to play with people who weren't disruptive at all, I'd never get to play.

That sucks.

Pretty much.

 

[kenada]

It's not just about grinding. But that's part of it. I think the comparison is nearly perfect. Gamers are gamers. It doesn't matter what game they play or what platform it's on. Tabletop RPGs or MMOs. Most gamers are still out to win, and almost laser focused on finding the shortest, most efficient path to win.

Well, yeah. Winning is fun. I just don’t see the same dynamic. His two big examples were the PvP honor grind, which was terrible regardless, and the raiding scene. The thing I remember from raiding in WoW is a lot of people were really into “the meta”, but they sucked at the game. It was a shibboleth. They would have been much better off learning not to be bad. I swear, our MT gemmed avoidance in early Mists of Pandaria because that was the meta at the time, but he died all the freaking time. If he had used hybrid gems (health/avoidance), he wouldn’t have died, and we would have made better progress, but that wasn’t optimal. (╯°□°)╯︵ ┻━┻ But I digress.

The closest analogue I see in the tabletop RPG space is 3e optimization culture. I had a player like that once. He was very concerned about whether things were optimal or how people were being “punished” because of some tortured logic. I think he was trying to go for a telekinesis build where he got to launch a bunch of large objects. I doubt it would have really mattered if he hadn’t rage quit towards the end of book 1 of Kingmaker. It seems 5e has a similar culture, but I think there’s also a lot of people into customization for OC purposes (and why it seems like the anniversary edition is getting feat chains and background feats to help people give mechanical teeth to their concepts). I’m less familiar with 5e optimization culture, but my impression from running the game is the tools it gives you are nearly useless regardless.

And grinding is in D&D. Look at XP for monsters and all the small, pointless, and barely resource draining fights packed into most dungeons and adventures. That's pure grinding. The CR system and the adventuring day and the balance of player resources. The devs designed the game around the assumption that parties would have between 6-8 medium combat encounters per day...and balanced PC resources for that. Actually hitting that mark is grinding.

Isn’t one solution not to worry? It’s a sandbox, so it should make sense that things aren’t necessarily balanced against the PCs’ capabilities. It doesn’t matter how optimized a character is if they’re faced a problem that can’t be killed to death.

And there's the thousand "little" ways players push for efficiency. The five-minute workday. Focusing fire...but screaming if they're targeted by focused fire. Focusing on the enemy leaders and casters...but screaming if their leaders or casters are focused on. The way combat almost always devolves into static, unmoving blocks of PCs and monsters. The way descriptions in combat almost always fade into a dry recitation of numbers. Players trying to just call out a skill and make a check instead of describing what they're doing in the fiction. If forced to take some kind of flaw, find the one that is least likely to ever come up. If it's a point-buy system, find the flaw with the biggest yield of points that will have the least impact on play. On and on. Some of these the tabletop RPG community recognizes as problematic, others are seen as simply smart. And DM's who push back labeled bad.

This sounds like having wildly divergent priorities and expectations clashing at the table. The audience for 5e is so incredibly broad and with so many different priorities. I don’t know what would be a good approach for filtering for those with a compatible subset of priorities. (I also expect a lot of people who would be more inclined to what you are doing are looking for OSR games rather than trying to do it in 5e, so they select themselves out of the pool.)

It's also why most actual play streams generally make terrible viewing and gamers generally make for terrible storytellers. Good stories are about emotion and drama, gamers tend to be laser-focused on winning and efficiency. All the things that make for good drama are dismissed out of hand as "stupid" by most gamers. Which is why the best and most popular actual play streams and podcasts are by professional storytellers who happen to be gamers. And there are no "gamer first" streams or podcasts that are widely popular.

To be fair, D&D doesn’t do much to enable dramatic games. It requires a concerned effort by the entire group to make it happen. There are other games that do a better job of that (though maybe not so much if one wants to play through a curated story rather than to discover it through play).

You also see this in gamer analysis of other media. Like, "Why didn't they use the eagles to fly the ring to Mount Doom?" Because the point is the emotional and drama-filled story that results from them not using the eagles. The point isn't the quickest, most efficient path to victory. Like optimizers seemingly not grokking why someone wouldn't optimize.

Is that gamer analysis or geek analysis? Seems like more of the latter to me.

As one data point, I present my current 5E West Marches game. I've had 43 players in that game over its short life (almost nine months now). The current active roster is 16. Of those 43, 2 have not tried to game the system. Neither of which are currently active because life got in the way. Most of the rest who quit, the other 25, are no longer playing because of various problems such as egregious metagaming, rage quitting when caught cheating (where did that extra 500gp come from?), one rage quit because I wasn't giving them enough XP (at the time they had the most XP in the game), one rage quit over my mentioning the centaur climbing problem, another rage quit because the mold earth cantrip wasn't full-on earth bending, one rage quit because they took one damage (literally one point of damage), etc.

Yeah, that sucks. I don’t think those are all optimizers causing problems (I would bet some are OC players who don’t like constraints on their concepts), but there are also some pretty bad players. I would consider the last three examples as the kind of players I wouldn’t want.

The problem is it puts the DM and the rest of the group in a bind. Either the DM lets the optimized characters just stomp everything, rendering the game non-challenging and no fun (literally optimizing the fun out of the game), or the DM ups the difficulty of the game to match the optimized characters...which will then slaughter the non-optimized characters. So the players who don't want to optimize are either forced to optimize, lose dozens of characters in a horror-show of a game, or quit. Or the DM has to some how have two sets of monsters running constantly, one set for the optimized and one set for the non-optimized...keep them straight and never let them cross over lest there be another slaughter. How about ask the players to not optimize?

Sure, it can reach a point where it’s disruptive. My threshold for that is pretty high, but I also don’t put a lot of focus on combat.

Sure. You're then labeled a bad DM because all playstyles and preferences are valid. Or so I've been told.

I think that can be true, but it is also true that they don’t all mix at the same table. There are a number of playstyles that will not have fun at my table, and I am unapologetic about that.

Sure. I expect much the same. I'm perpetually disappointed though. When starting my West Marches game I was very upfront that it was going to be old-school with food and water tracking, light sources, variant encumbrance, wilderness survival, exploration focused, etc. Really wanted to play up the old-school feel and make it grounded in the world and make resource management an important part of the game. So...of course...about 75% of the initial character concepts were Outlanders for the free food and water, druids with goodberry, rangers who never get lost, every caster with light, most picked races with darkvision and/or powerful build...completely obviating the entire stated focus of the game. I said "I want these things to matter" to which the players collectively said "nah." But importantly, they didn't opt not to play...they opted to play, but opted to render the focus of the game moot. So I had to ban things and house rule stuff to reiterate that no, really, this stuff is going to matter. And the players that stuck around complain about that to this day.

These are all reasons why I would not use 5e for that kind of game. There’s a lot of stuff built into the system that negates exploration-based gameplay. One can try to fix it, but then you have to convince people looking for a 5e game to play 5e-but-different.

Sure. I think there's a level of disruption that's missed here. There's a spectrum between shows up five-minutes late and knifes the DM. I have no patience for people who are properly disruptive or destroy games. I'd rather not play than babysit adults. But players can still be disruptive without destroying games. Going against the premise of the game, insisting on playing the odd-man-out, loner edgelords, passive characters, roleplay terrorists, on and on. I deal with the minorly disruptive players because, in my experience, that's just gamers being gamers. Exhausting though it is. Which is not helped at all by the broader community having this toxic positivity of everything's okay and DMs who don't put up with disruptive behavior are bad. If I only got to play with people who weren't disruptive at all, I'd never get to play.

I think people are entitled to run the games they want to run, but why run a game where a lot of people you’re going to be running for will want something different from it than what you’re offering?

 

[overgeeked]

Well, yeah. Winning is fun.

But that's the thing. The players can't "win" D&D. So trying to is a waste of time. The characters can succeed or fail at given tasks. But the closest thing to a "win" condition D&D has is playing the game. But that's a whole other can of worms we don't need to get into.

I just don’t see the same dynamic. His two big examples were the PvP honor grind, which was terrible regardless, and the raiding scene. The thing I remember from raiding in WoW is a lot of people were really into “the meta”, but they sucked at the game. It was a shibboleth. They would have been much better off learning not to be bad. I swear, our MT gemmed avoidance in early Mists of Pandaria because that was the meta at the time, but he died all the freaking time. If he had used hybrid gems (health/avoidance), he wouldn’t have died, and we would have made better progress, but that wasn’t optimal. (╯°□°)╯︵ ┻━┻ But I digress.

Sometimes the number crunchers are wrong. There's also a difference between what a spreadsheet spits out and how things actually work in practice. This is also the danger of D&D players simply copying & pasting someone else's build. The person who built it understands the whys and hows of it working...the person copying it...not so much.

The closest analogue I see in the tabletop RPG space is 3e optimization culture. I had a player like that once. He was very concerned about whether things were optimal or how people were being “punished” because of some tortured logic. I think he was trying to go for a telekinesis build where he got to launch a bunch of large objects. I doubt it would have really mattered if he hadn’t rage quit towards the end of book 1 of Kingmaker. It seems 5e has a similar culture, but I think there’s also a lot of people into customization for OC purposes (and why it seems like the anniversary edition is getting feat chains and background feats to help people give mechanical teeth to their concepts). I’m less familiar with 5e optimization culture, but my impression from running the game is the tools it gives you are nearly useless regardless.

Mostly because everything that even resembled a challenge, hindrance, or inconvenience was removed or obviated. The default monster vs player set up with CR is laughable. Optimization in 5E is basically a waste of time. The default is so far below easy mode that there's no reason to bother. But they still do.

Isn’t one solution not to worry? It’s a sandbox, so it should make sense that things aren’t necessarily balanced against the PCs’ capabilities. It doesn’t matter how optimized a character is if they’re faced a problem that can’t be killed to death.

To me there's no point to playing the game unless it's challenging. I push for things to be unbalanced and challenging. Which leads back into what I posted that you quoted. Things will be wildly above their pay grade, wildly below their pay grade, and everything in between. But, importantly, if some PCs are optimized and some aren't...the non-optimizing players will lose PCs at a much greater rate, forcing them to 1) optimize, 2) put up with constantly resetting PCs, or; 3) quit. It also leads to the optimized characters lasting longer, gathering lots more XP and loot and being wildly ahead of the curve in the long run. I'd rather not have that problem. The easiest solution is not not allow optimization. And to be clear, optimization to me is not about wanting a high stat in your main class ability score. Optimization is things like the coffee-lock or infinite damage builds or other nonsense. You want great weapon master and sentinel, sure. You want to be good with a bow, sure. You want infinite spells, nah.

This sounds like having wildly divergent priorities and expectations clashing at the table. The audience for 5e is so incredibly broad and with so many different priorities. I don’t know what would be a good approach for filtering for those with a compatible subset of priorities. (I also expect a lot of people who would be more inclined to what you are doing are looking for OSR games rather than trying to do it in 5e, so they select themselves out of the pool.)

Generally when you announce you're going to run a game in a certain style, only those actually interested in that game played in that style voice interest. For some reason, the 5E players I've dealt with are more interested in getting to play something...anything...5E than whatever the specifics of the game I want to run. It's bizarre and maddening, but I see no way to avoid it. Besides not running games.

To be fair, D&D doesn’t do much to enable dramatic games. It requires a concerned effort by the entire group to make it happen. There are other games that do a better job of that (though maybe not so much if one wants to play through a curated story rather than to discover it through play).

Absolutely agreed. Anyone wanting to play an RPG that more emulates story and drama would be far better suited playing something like Fate. But, D&D is the RPG...so here we are.

Is that gamer analysis or geek analysis? Seems like more of the latter to me.

Six of one, half a dozen of the other. Apparently Tolkien's response to either was: "Shut up."

I think that can be true, but it is also true that they don’t all mix at the same table. There are a number of playstyles that will not have fun at my table, and I am unapologetic about that.

I'm the same. But instead of players listening when I say "this is the style of game I'm going to run" I get dozens of players who are somehow shocked and surprised by that fact, you know, despite me being upfront about it, then they complain that I'm running that style of game.

These are all reasons why I would not use 5e for that kind of game. There’s a lot of stuff built into the system that negates exploration-based gameplay. One can try to fix it, but then you have to convince people looking for a 5e game to play 5e-but-different.

It's a numbers game. There are so many 5E players that the subset willing to put up with "5E-but-different" is still far greater than the entire player base of most other games.

I think people are entitled to run the games they want to run, but why run a game where a lot of people you’re going to be running for will want something different from it than what you’re offering?

Why join a game as a player when the DM has said explicitly that the game is going to be run in a style you don't enjoy...only to complain about it once the game actually starts? I mean, sure. If you're desperate to play, then play...but importantly don't then complain about it.

 

[kenada]

But that's the thing. The players can't "win" D&D. So trying to is a waste of time. The characters can succeed or fail at given tasks. But the closest thing to a "win" condition D&D has is playing the game. But that's a whole other can of worms we don't need to get into.

Sometimes the number crunchers are wrong. There's also a difference between what a spreadsheet spits out and how things actually work in practice. This is also the danger of D&D players simply copying & pasting someone else's build. The person who built it understands the whys and hows of it working...the person copying it...not so much.

Mostly because everything that even resembled a challenge, hindrance, or inconvenience was removed or obviated. The default monster vs player set up with CR is laughable. Optimization in 5E is basically a waste of time. The default is so far below easy mode that there's no reason to bother. But they still do.

To me there's no point to playing the game unless it's challenging. I push for things to be unbalanced and challenging. Which leads back into what I posted that you quoted. Things will be wildly above their pay grade, wildly below their pay grade, and everything in between. But, importantly, if some PCs are optimized and some aren't...the non-optimizing players will lose PCs at a much greater rate, forcing them to 1) optimize, 2) put up with constantly resetting PCs, or; 3) quit. It also leads to the optimized characters lasting longer, gathering lots more XP and loot and being wildly ahead of the curve in the long run. I'd rather not have that problem. The easiest solution is not not allow optimization. And to be clear, optimization to me is not about wanting a high stat in your main class ability score. Optimization is things like the coffee-lock or infinite damage builds or other nonsense. You want great weapon master and sentinel, sure. You want to be good with a bow, sure. You want infinite spells, nah.

Generally when you announce you're going to run a game in a certain style, only those actually interested in that game played in that style voice interest. For some reason, the 5E players I've dealt with are more interested in getting to play something...anything...5E than whatever the specifics of the game I want to run. It's bizarre and maddening, but I see no way to avoid it. Besides not running games.

Absolutely agreed. Anyone wanting to play an RPG that more emulates story and drama would be far better suited playing something like Fate. But, D&D is the RPG...so here we are.

Six of one, half a dozen of the other. Apparently Tolkien's response to either was: "Shut up."

I'm the same. But instead of players listening when I say "this is the style of game I'm going to run" I get dozens of players who are somehow shocked and surprised by that fact, you know, despite me being upfront about it, then they complain that I'm running that style of game.

It's a numbers game. There are so many 5E players that the subset willing to put up with "5E-but-different" is still far greater than the entire player base of most other games.

Why join a game as a player when the DM has said explicitly that the game is going to be run in a style you don't enjoy...only to complain about it once the game actually starts? I mean, sure. If you're desperate to play, then play...but importantly don't then complain about it.

Not going to go point by point because I don’t think we’re going to agree on some of the details or remedies. 5e was my first attempt at doing my exploration-driven campaign. It didn’t last long. I then tried Pathfinder 2e, which lasted about a year. I’m now on a homebrew system that is derived from Old-School Essentials. I’m just not willing to deal with a system that works against my purpose. However, I’m not doing an open table. My group is small but stable, and they’re willing to keep their GM happy. If I were doing an open table, I’d probably still want to do OSE even though it limits my audience. I wouldn’t want to deal the issues you describe or have to do the filtering it would take to get a group of players who were on board and enthusiastic about it.

I do agree it makes no sense that players would join a game advertising a particular experience and then expect something else. Maybe they think they might like it, but their habits are too ingrained. It could also be possible they’re used to mechanics lack teeth, so if you say you are going to do an open world game, they assume it will be more or less like the traditional adventures they’ve done with a slightly different theme. Or if reddit is to be believed, there are more OC players than games available, and they just want to play the character they created. Sucks if you want to do something else.

 

[overgeeked]

Not going to go point by point because I don’t think we’re going to agree on some of the details or remedies. 5e was my first attempt at doing my exploration-driven campaign. It didn’t last long. I then tried Pathfinder 2e, which lasted about a year. I’m now on a homebrew system that is derived from Old-School Essentials. I’m just not willing to deal with a system that works against my purpose. However, I’m not doing an open table. My group is small but stable, and they’re willing to keep their GM happy.

That's cool. Glad that's working out for you.

I do agree it makes no sense that players would join a game advertising a particular experience and then expect something else. Maybe they think they might like it, but their habits are too ingrained. It could also be possible they’re used to mechanics lack teeth, so if you say you are going to do an open world game, they assume it will be more or less like the traditional adventures they’ve done with a slightly different theme. Or if reddit is to be believed, there are more OC players than games available, and they just want to play the character they created. Sucks if you want to do something else.

I tried to account for that by having the players submit several character concepts and having rolled stats. Apparently that wasn't enough. Shrug

 

[Committed Hero]

But even then you aren't motivating interaction with the sandbox.

The GM shouldn't have to motivate players in a strict West Marches game. The players are supposed to be deciding when to meet and who goes where.

 

[Reynard]

The GM shouldn't have to motivate players in a strict West Marches game. The players are supposed to be deciding when to meet and who goes where.

I think the "strict West Marches game" is probably the least common style of game, even if lots of people kind of think they want to aspire to it (but probably don't in reality because it is A LOT of work). In a typical open world sandbox game, the way the system incentivizes action is going to matter.

 

[niklinna]

I'm not necessarily advocating for any particular source of XP -- fights, treasure, quest completion -- because the things you reward are going to depend on the things you want the game to be about. And I don't even inherently dislike milestone XP. I just don't think milestone XP works for sandbox games.

Ironsworn looks like it would handle that pretty well. The whole driving engine is PCs swearing vows and getting XP only when they fulfill them.

 

[Reynard]

Ironsworn looks like it would handle that pretty well. The whole driving engine is PCs swearing vows and getting XP only when they fulfill them.

That's interesting. Like if the adventure started off with a local begging the heroes for help because their brother was missing, and the PC says, "I swear I will bring him back safely," and goes through the whole adventure only to have the brother die on the way back to town, what happens?

 

[niklinna]

That's interesting. Like if the adventure started off with a local begging the heroes for help because their brother was missing, and the PC says, "I swear I will bring him back safely," and goes through the whole adventure only to have the brother die on the way back to town, what happens?

You fail to fulfill your vow and get no XP. It's a harsh world! Note that it's possible to bring him back alive and healthy and still fail the dice roll to finish your quest, in which case something new comes up that you have to deal with. (You as the player get to make that up, or you can ask the GM to do it.)