What makes a Sandbox?

[Janx]

I think that this is the best answer to the "What is a sandbox?" question that I've seen in this thread.


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I would disagree. What BotE said sounds more like how not to railroad.

If you want to railroad somebody, do this:
"negate choices made by the players in order to enforce a preconceived path"

Pawsplay had a pretty good checklist of sandbox attributes. I'm more inclined to buy that as a rough approximation of a sandbox.

 

[rogueattorney]

Another sort of problem: Marvel Super-Heroes. Since characters are essentially static, is it possible to meaningfully categorize those encounters as status quo or tailored?

This is an issue of genre. In the classic super-heroes genre, the heroes are a force for the status quo. They are reactive to the super-villain of the month and his mad scheme to change the status quo in some way. A super-heroes campaign modeled on the classic Silver Age Marel or DC universe would necessarily involve the GM manufacturing diabolical plots and inflicting them on the campaign world as being the primary off-ramp to each session.

(And note: This isn't a bad thing at all. Rather, it'd be pretty well expected by any of us who started playing in a super-hero campaign.)

A sand-box-y superheroes campaign would have to involve a pro-active hero wanting to change the status quo. Think of the Punisher or more modern versions of Batman, where the city is portrayed as a cesspool and our hero is cleaning up the town one mob boss at a time. That could run in a fairly hands off-way by the GM, allowing the pc to explore the seedy underword and react towards what he finds accordingly.

This brings us to the heart of the epic fantasy problem for sand-box play: the stereotypical epic-quest hero is an unlikely/reluctant one. The general assumption is that there is some evil dark lord who would take over the world but for the exploits of the orphan farmboy. This isn't to say that epic quests can't involve pro-active, motivated central characters, but that those epic quests will look more like the Quest for the Holy Grail than they will Lord of the Rings, and necessarily be more episodic and picaresque.

Put the unlikely/reluctant hero in the sandbox, and he's going to just stay a farmer. Put the swords & sorcery hero into the sandbox, and he's going to attack it. The stereotypical swords & sorcery hero wants to shake up the stats quo - usually the the empty status of his or her money bag - and proactively works towards doing so. Generally, when the swords & sorcery hero makes a move against a "dark lord" type character it's because his direct interests clash with that of the "dark lord's," not because he must do so to save the world.

This also shows why O(A)D&D pcs were largely assumed to retire a bit past "name" level... Once you've won your kingdom, once you're able to lay waste to swarms of enemies, once you've become "the power," you will generally become a force for the status quo. In this case, the new status quo that the pcs have created. The lower level characters (henchmen, replacements for dead pcs, secondary pcs, etc.) can continue to be the rabble-rousers unless and until some major world changing force comes along to threaten the higher level pcs' blissful retirement.

To sum up... a sandbox campaign is probably going to look more like a Spaghetti Western than a Silver Age comic book. (I remain convinced that Keep on the Borderlands was inspired by A Fistful of Dollars.)

 

[Doug McCrae]

Very good points, rogueattorney, I agree with everything you've said.

Another way one might do superhero as a sandbox is to have a very super-infested world. One analogous (or identical) to the modern Marvel universe. That basically gives you your Monster Manual - a plethora of potential opposition.

The tricky thing then is to register with the players that they have a choice. Otherwise they are going to go after the first supervillain whose name you mention, and think the game is linear.

That's another point. GMs are more likely to see a particular game as a sandbox while players are more likely to see it as a railroad. Partly because the GM can see all the options and the players can't. Partly because sandbox is usually regarded as a positive and railroad as a negative and GMs are ofc going to view their creations more positively than the players.

 

[Doug McCrae]

As mentioned upthread, the crpg Oblivion is a good example of a sandbox where all the encounters are tailored.

I've played in a pnp rpg sandbox with a lot of tailored encounters too. It was a 3e pirate game where we had our own ship at several points so we had tons of freedom. The GM would often start each session with his prepared encounters then, once they'd run out, the game became a sandbox in the second half of each session. You could tell because the descriptions became less detailed/involved. Anyway, we certainly had enough freedom as to what adventures we undertook for it to count as a sandbox but they would invariably end up in a fairly close fight because the DM was determining the monster stats and their numbers pretty much just before we fought them.

I agree with this approach, incidentally. One of the great strengths of 3e is the tactically interesting combat. Cakewalks are dull, I see no benefit to them. Too many overpowering encounters could also be a problem but less so, imo.

There was a case, in the 'sandbox portion' of a session, when the GM thought that a sea monster we'd decided to take on was way too tough for us. He pretty much just came out and told us we needed help. So we took along a half-dozen mercenary henchmen, old school style.

I don't really see how the PCs are supposed to accurately evaluate the fighting strength of a monster anyway. It's a very rules-based value, grounded in stuff like hit dice, armour class, etc, that have little to no existence in the game world. Sure, maybe the PCs can find out that the tarrasque ate Sir Boris. But how can you know Sir Boris's level? That's also almost entirely a rules concept. This style of play seems to me to be dependent upon the players memorising the Monster Manual, which is not a good thing, imo.

 

[rogueattorney]

To complete my thought from the last post...

I don't feel that one type of campaign is better or worse. One won't serve a genre as well as the other. But then, it's hard to play a supers campaign using Call of Cthulhu, too. Different tools for different projects, and all that.

The problem comes in when players think that campaign style A is being run, when the GM is running campaign style B.

If the pcs won't leave Avengers Mansion until some Dr. Doom-type starts stirring up trouble, the GM who's constructed an intricate city for them to explore is going to get frustrated.

If the GM continues to hurl the forces of the evil dark lord at the pcs when the pcs are more interested in fulfilling their own personal ambitions, the players are going to get frustrated.

The key is, of course, talking to one another.

 

[Beginning of the End]

I would disagree. What BotE said sounds more like how not to railroad.

And, IMO, not railroading at the campaign level is the definition of a sandbox.

Doug McCrae actually put it more succinctly: "Player choice at the adventure level is what makes a sandbox." (Assuming that, when we say "player choice", we mean "player choices which are not negated in order to enforce a preconceived path"; or, in other words, meaningful player choice.)

This is an issue of genre. In the classic super-heroes genre, the heroes are a force for the status quo. They are reactive to the super-villain of the month and his mad scheme to change the status quo in some way. A super-heroes campaign modeled on the classic Silver Age Marel or DC universe would necessarily involve the GM manufacturing diabolical plots and inflicting them on the campaign world as being the primary off-ramp to each session.

I would disagree.

When you prep a hex in a hexcrawl game, you seed it with content that the PCs can encounter if they decide to explore that hex. I think you'd be pretty hard-pressed to convince anyone that a hexcrawl can't be a sandbox.

Similarly, if you prep a city (or world) with a bunch of criminal activity and then the superhero PCs go out to patrol the city, I don't see anything in that structure that's incompatible with running a sandbox.

I don't think it's true that the world needs to be passive or that it needs to ignore the PCs in a sandbox campaign. In fact, my sandboxes tend towards exactly the opposite: The world is extremely active, and that includes being reactive towards the PCs.

This brings us to the heart of the epic fantasy problem for sand-box play: the stereotypical epic-quest hero is an unlikely/reluctant one.

I've actually long thought it would be interesting to run LOTR as a sandbox campaign. And I don't mean Middle Earth, I mean literally LOTR: You've inherited the One Ring and Gandalf is telling you it's history. Now, whaddya do? Run away? Use its power? Get it to Rivendell and wash your hands of it? Head north and look for one of those ancient dragons that might be able to break its power? Get on a ship and sail south instead of walking east? Give it back to Bilbo?

Every character has a reason for leaving the farm. I don't think a sandbox requires that their impetus be vanilla.

 

[pawsplay]

This is an issue of genre. In the classic super-heroes genre, the heroes are a force for the status quo. They are reactive to the super-villain of the month and his mad scheme to change the status quo in some way. A super-heroes campaign modeled on the classic Silver Age Marel or DC universe would necessarily involve the GM manufacturing diabolical plots and inflicting them on the campaign world as being the primary off-ramp to each session.

That's a classic Superman plot. But it's not necessarily true of classic Batman (Batman decides to take on Gotham's gangs, Batman takes on police corruption, Batman builds a new device to use against crminals, etc.) or Legion of Super Heroes (let's go time travel, let's take on X alien menace, let's mock Superboy, etc) or the Fantastic Four (Reed Richards is in the lab again, the Thing hits upon a new idea for becoming human again, Sue decides to quit the team, etc). Ultimately, Ultron is the result of scientific experimentation by one of the Avengers.

 

[Doug McCrae]

As explorers, the Fantastic Four are probably the most proactive of the superheroes mentioned, and closest to the traditional D&D party. D&D party explores a hex, FF explore the Negative Zone. It's the same approach, just on a different scale.