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General Tabletop Discussion
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The Sandbox and the Railroad
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<blockquote data-quote="Emerikol" data-source="post: 7471471" data-attributes="member: 6698278"><p>Your whole discussion on authoring fiction etc... is orthogonal to this discussion. I'm sure someone who wants those types of approaches in his game is likely not running a strict linear adventure path but some sort of open sandbox style, if the DM allows authoring of fiction by players in his campaign then it's entirely fitting. But the discussion is about railroad vs sandbox so for this discussion your digression is a red herring. </p><p></p><p>And I know what a red herring is and I also know what a strawman is despite some confusion in some quarters.</p><p></p><p> [MENTION=6667844]eve[/MENTION]ryone</p><p>I think there is a very negative concept of railroading which is commonly considered. The one where the DM basically forces a set outcome no matter what the players try to do. That would be bad. Now to me an adventure path gets close to that approach because it plots out the whole campaign one module after another. It probably depends on the adventure path how extreme it is but it is very structured at the minimum.</p><p></p><p>To me this form of railroading is at the far extreme of a continuum. On the opposite extreme would be the sandbox with no real development that is random encounters every week. Both extremes for me are bad. But there is room in between to discuss where you fall on that axis. Personally I'm on the sandbox side but I'm not extreme. To me, it's more a case of players engaging the parts of the sandbox they want to engage but those elements are not without some structure.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Emerikol, post: 7471471, member: 6698278"] Your whole discussion on authoring fiction etc... is orthogonal to this discussion. I'm sure someone who wants those types of approaches in his game is likely not running a strict linear adventure path but some sort of open sandbox style, if the DM allows authoring of fiction by players in his campaign then it's entirely fitting. But the discussion is about railroad vs sandbox so for this discussion your digression is a red herring. And I know what a red herring is and I also know what a strawman is despite some confusion in some quarters. [MENTION=6667844]eve[/MENTION]ryone I think there is a very negative concept of railroading which is commonly considered. The one where the DM basically forces a set outcome no matter what the players try to do. That would be bad. Now to me an adventure path gets close to that approach because it plots out the whole campaign one module after another. It probably depends on the adventure path how extreme it is but it is very structured at the minimum. To me this form of railroading is at the far extreme of a continuum. On the opposite extreme would be the sandbox with no real development that is random encounters every week. Both extremes for me are bad. But there is room in between to discuss where you fall on that axis. Personally I'm on the sandbox side but I'm not extreme. To me, it's more a case of players engaging the parts of the sandbox they want to engage but those elements are not without some structure. [/QUOTE]
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