The Sandbox and the Railroad

[pemerton]

You want structure and your want meaningful choice in EVERY game. The proportions are a matter of taste, but I think that you need both.

I don't think these things - structure and meaningful choice - have to be traded of against one another.

 

[DCRWrites]

As a DM, I prefer to err on the side of a sandbox.

When I run a game, I'm not trying to tell a story; if I want to tell a story I'll write another novel. I want to put sufficient elements in front of the players so that they can create their own story from their actions and choices.

 

[Imaculata]

As a DM, I prefer to err on the side of a sandbox.

When I run a game, I'm not trying to tell a story; if I want to tell a story I'll write another novel. I want to put sufficient elements in front of the players so that they can create their own story from their actions and choices.

When I run a sandbox campaign, I scatter many little stories around that the players can choose to be a part of, and that are designed to be interacted with by the players. These little stories together form an overarching narrative, that is changed at every turn by the player's choices. Because I don't want my players to wander around without aim or purpose. I personally think even a sandbox needs some what of a story in order to give the players reasons to seek out certain locations.

 

[pemerton]

When I run a sandbox campaign, I scatter many little stories around that the players can choose to be a part of, and that are designed to be interacted with by the players. These little stories together form an overarching narrative, that is changed at every turn by the player's choices. Because I don't want my players to wander around without aim or purpose. I personally think even a sandbox needs some what of a story in order to give the players reasons to seek out certain locations.

Reading this took me back to my posts upthread. You are describing a version of what I would think of as a conventional sandbox - the GM establishes elements, and (in your case) makes sure they have "story" attached that the players will engage via their PCs.

Another way to get those elements with attached "story" that players hook onto is for the players to introudce them. Like your approach, it avoids railroad. But it's different from your approach.

THat's why I think it's unhelpful to put sandbox and railroad on a continuum. There are a whole lot of ways to get "story" in RPGing - railroading, the sort of sandbox you describe, the other approach I just mentioned - which are distinguished by who authors what bits of the shared fiction, and the mode in which they do so (eg when, relative to play; what constraints the author must conform to; etc).

 

[Imaro]

I tend to run sand box games where a premise is decided upon by the group (though in some instances it has been me suggesting something I want to run and the players agreeing they want to play with the suggested premise). Once decided upon I as DM populate the sandbox with initial hooks, situations and encounters that revolve around the premise. That said once play of the game begins it tends to have a life and will of it's own shaped not only by the things I will/have generate(d) but also with things generated by the personal desires, goals and actions of the players through their characters. In other words, if you want an oasis that acts as a magical sanctuary for the last of the dessert elves, and I haven't created one in my sandbox... well then get out there, claim an oasis and find a way to magically ward it... Bam! you've "authored" content and added to the sandbox just as much as I have but in a fundamentally different way.

 

[amethal]

Given that I have family who worked for a railroad, I don't find either description negative.

Funnily enough, "Railroad" is a term I use exclusively in the context of role-playing games.

That thing with the tracks, the trains etc. - that's a railway .

 

[MNblockhead]

Funnily enough, "Railroad" is a term I use exclusively in the context of role-playing games.

That thing with the tracks, the trains etc. - that's a railway .

Yeah, and being railed by the DM is orders or magnitude worse than being railroaded...

 

[Lanefan]

When I run a sandbox campaign, I scatter many little stories around that the players can choose to be a part of, and that are designed to be interacted with by the players. These little stories together form an overarching narrative, that is changed at every turn by the player's choices. Because I don't want my players to wander around without aim or purpose. I personally think even a sandbox needs some what of a story in order to give the players reasons to seek out certain locations.

To a point, yes.

Ideally - and of course ideals never survive first contact with anything - it would work like this: the starting-out PCs learn of a bunch of possible adventures or things to do and then go out and do a few of them. During these some common elements or threads might appear, which I-as-DM can then jump on and expand into behind-the-scenes stories. These stories may or may not ever become relevant, based on what the PCs end up doing and-or what piques the players' interests.

A hypothetical example:
- PCs start out, and end up in Keep on the Borderlands. Here they meet and defeat some cultists, among many other things; and encounter Hobgoblins. The PCs get paranoid about the cultists.
- their next adventure takes them into the hills after an old ruined temple that's showing signs of life again, as they (correctly, as it turns out) fear it might be another branch of the same cultists getting started. While here they stumble on to some odd hints and clues regarding something they can't figure out - yet.
- they then decide to change tack before the cultists can find them and retaliate, and head down the coast to deal with some troglodytes attacking a village: you get to run U1 or something similar. While here they notice something odd about the village but the trogs keep 'em too busy to do anything about it, and then the PCs/players forget about it and leave once the trogs are done.
- now their attention turns to an island just offshore; they head that way and soon find themselves in Secret of Bone Hill. Here they trip over some information on what's behind the cultists via questioning the skeleton chained to the post, and also get some more strange hints that might relate to what they found in the temple a few adventures back........ etc., etc.

So after only four adventures you've already got the cultist angle, the strange village, and the obscure hints as potential larger stories. None of these are necessarily related behind the scenes: the cultists are part of a growing underground movement of fanatics that if not curtailed will in the long run become a problem for all decent realms; the strange village is a gateway to a whole bunch of Lovecraftian stuff (which the trogs oppose, that's why they were attacking the village!); and the obscure hints are pointing toward a long-term story involving ancient Hobgoblins (modern ones of which were met in adventure 1) and their possible return to power.

It's all a matter of taking what the adventures collectively give you and running with it.

Lanefan

 

[Imaculata]

It's all a matter of taking what the adventures collectively give you and running with it.

My sandbox campaign is structured pretty similar to your excellent example. I think this is best illustrated by our last session just this Sunday:

The players were asked by an npc to investigate a local pirate captain, who had been acting 'strange' as of late. They also learned that this pirate captain had recently sank a diplomatic ship that was sent by an evil emperor. An emperor I should add, who is notorious for his cursed peace offerings.

The players located the wreck of the ship and searched it, only to find that its cargo was missing. Of course the players now suspected the suspicious captain of taking the cursed cargo (a deliberate bit of misdirection on my part).

But upon visiting a local museum (where all pirate captains displayed their glorious finds), they learned that the curator of the museum had suddenly fallen quite ill. Had the captain sold the cargo to this curator perhaps? They also learned that the captain had banned anyone from visiting the site of the shipwreck, thus further raising suspicions on the captain.

They visited the house of healing to have a word with the curator, and to undo the curse. While they were able to remove the curse, they were unable to undo its aging effect, which had reduced the curator to a dying old man. But the curator then confessed to the players that he had defied the captain's orders, and taken the cursed cargo himself, in order to become immortalized in the halls of the museum. This meant that the captain they were suspicious of, had sank the ship before knowing its cargo was cursed, and rightly so. Which painted the suspicious captain in a more positive light.

The players debated amongst each other whether the suspicious pirate captain was really a bad guy, which was exactly the sort of confusion and chaos I meant to instill in them. They also asked the curator for permission to place one of the museum's artifacts in the moonlight, believing (rightly so) that the moonlight may unveil a hidden message.

But unbeknownst to them, all of these details tie back into the main plot involving the suspicious captain. I closed the session with an intimidating confrontation between the pirate captain and one of the pc's, thus once again igniting their suspicions of him.

It's all a big manipulative game, where I try to constantly throw out red herrings, and keep them guessing. But I think the most important element in this, is that the players chase down various sides of the plot themselves. I do not tell them where to go. But I make sure to include lots of interesting things for them to chase, and I make sure there are enough hooks to tie it all back to the main plot, so that in the end it will all make sense.

 

[Guest 85555]

The way I run sandboxes is to make an area with lots of locations, communities, groups, NPCs, etc. I manage player character background material differently depending on the particular campaign (sometimes I just drop PCs in without concern for the background details, sometimes I have the party start out more as a cohesive unit). But most of the action over the course of the campaign emerges from the players trying to do things and pursuing their personal goals, and that interacting with the goals and actions of NPCs and groups. At the end of the day the thing that sustains the sandbox are the characters (both the PCs and the NPCs). If the players try something and I don't have prepared material (for example if they go to a town that is off the map, or ask about a specific kind of location in a town, and I haven't thought about that location, I just try to reasonably conclude what would be there based on what I know, while also trying to make it interesting or have potential for conflict. For me the important thing with the ad libbing side is to try to be consistent in how I form my judgements so the world feels consistent. That may include taking genre elements into consideration. I sometimes call my approach Drama and Sandbox.