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<blockquote data-quote="Beginning of the End" data-source="post: 5414683" data-attributes="member: 55271">I've posted this before, but it bears repeating: &quot;Sandbox&quot; and &quot;Railroading&quot; are not antonyms. Treating them as such tends to severely distort the meaning/understanding of one or both terms.&quot;Railroading&quot; is when the GM&nbsp; negates the choice made by a player in&nbsp;&nbsp; order to enforce a pre-conceived&nbsp; path through the adventure.&quot;Sandbox&quot;, in the most useful definition I've heard, is a campaign structure where the PCs choose the scenario.The opposite of a &quot;sandbox&quot; is a campaign where the GM tells the players what they'll be playing tonight. While that's certainly railroading, it's pretty much universally acknowledged as the lightest form of railroading possible. And once you've said, &quot;We'll be investigating the Green Hag murders tonight.&quot; Nothing stops you from designing that investigation in a completely non-linear fashion.Similarly, the opposite of &quot;railroading&quot; is &quot;non-linear design&quot;. And while sandboxing is inherently non-linear in its scenario design, it's quite possible for the individual scenarios to be heavily railroaded in their design. (This is probably less common, since people who prefer non-linear scenario selection will probably prefer non-linear scenario design for the same reasons. But it's certainly possible. Once you've chosen to investigate the Green Hag murders, there's only one way to solve 'em.)So while the two terms are certainly related to each other, their relationship is tangential rather than antonymic.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Beginning of the End, post: 5414683, member: 55271"] I've posted this before, but it bears repeating: "Sandbox" and "Railroading" are not antonyms. Treating them as such tends to severely distort the meaning/understanding of one or both terms. "Railroading" is when the GM negates the choice made by a player in order to enforce a pre-conceived path through the adventure. "Sandbox", in the most useful definition I've heard, is a campaign structure where the PCs choose the scenario. The opposite of a "sandbox" is a campaign where the GM tells the players what they'll be playing tonight. While that's certainly railroading, it's pretty much universally acknowledged as the lightest form of railroading possible. And once you've said, "We'll be investigating the Green Hag murders tonight." Nothing stops you from designing that investigation in a completely non-linear fashion. Similarly, the opposite of "railroading" is "non-linear design". And while sandboxing is inherently non-linear in its scenario design, it's quite possible for the individual scenarios to be heavily railroaded in their design. (This is probably less common, since people who prefer non-linear scenario selection will probably prefer non-linear scenario design for the same reasons. But it's certainly possible. Once you've chosen to investigate the Green Hag murders, there's only one way to solve 'em.) So while the two terms are certainly related to each other, their relationship is tangential rather than antonymic. [/QUOTE]

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