What makes a Sandbox?

[Snoweel]

I would argue that there is a continuum between sandbox campaigns and linear campaigns. A sandbox campaign doesn't become a linear campaign because it occasionally features the predetermined; and a linear campaign doesn't become a sandbox because occasionally the PCs get to make a meaningful decision.

I agree.

But the purpose of this thread is to determine where the line is drawn (and as importantly, who draws that line).

With that being said, a "set piece encounter that just happens" regardless of what the PCs do or where they go is clearly a linear technique, not a sandbox technique.

I totally agree.

Using such a technique is "compatible" with a sandbox campaign insofar as the sandbox campaign doesn't suddenly stop being a sandbox because you used it. But that doesn't mean that the technique isn't straight-up railroading.

But here's where the distinction breaks down.

If the DM decides something happens in the game world, and he decides that event could come to the attention of the PCs, then he necessarily decides the probability of that event coming to the PCs' attention.

Then if (when) it comes to their attention it is happening to the PCs; even finding new information will influence their decision-making cycle, even if the reaction is to ignore the new information.

The PCs are actively choosing to ignore the new information. It is forcing them to act.

So whatever the DM decides to have occur in the game world (that could possibly come to the PCs attention) is a form of railroading, because if (when) it does pop up above their Intelligence-Surveillance-Reconnaissance threshold (whether they actively or passively find it), it forces them to reassess their situation, even if they decide the event has no bearing on them.

So any instance of new NPC motivation appearing in the game world (ie. not stemming from the existing/status quo situation) makes the existence of the sandbox an illusion. The DM has made an ultimately arbitrary decision (even one conforming to the rules of the setting) that will affect the PCs.

 

[pawsplay]

Argumentum ad populum.

No true Scotsman. One, two, three, jinx! Not it.

 

[pawsplay]

While I certainly appreciate your nostalgia for the golden age, I'd say for most of us the game has seriously moved on from the style of play you describe.

Well, I guess you are free to speak for the segment of the population that agrees with you. I'm glad most of "you" have found a style that you enjoy.

 

[Snoweel]

Well, I guess you are free to speak for the segment of the population that agrees with you. I'm glad most of "you" have found a style that you enjoy.

Yeah well, now we all have.

 

[Beginning of the End]

But the purpose of this thread is to determine where the line is drawn (and as importantly, who draws that line).

Actually, that wasn't what the OP said.

But here's where the distinction breaks down.

If the DM decides something happens in the game world, and he decides that event could come to the attention of the PCs, then he necessarily decides the probability of that event coming to the PCs' attention.

I find that when you hop on a sled and travel so far down a slippery slope of generalization that you've rendered a term meaningless that it's a pretty good sign that you're Doing It Wrong(TM).

I'm going to repeat myself from another thread: There seems to be a strawman out there that holds that the creativity of the GM isn't allowed to impact a sandbox setting. That's self-evident nonsense. The difference between a sandbox and a railroad is not whether or not the players are responding to the environment provided by the GM (they are ALWAYS responding to the environment provided by the GM); the difference is in how their input to the game is parsed.

 

[Snoweel]

Actually, that wasn't what the OP said.

Actually that's exactly what the OP was asking. The original post is branched from another thread where I asked the question myself and another poster answered that he didn't know either. Here:

I'm compelled to find out where the line is drawn between 'sandbox' and 'not sandbox'

That is just what I was wondering, because different people seemed to mean quite different, and even vigorously opposed, things.

Perhaps it can be nailed down.

What factors must be present in a game to make it a sandbox campaign?

I find that when you hop on a sled and travel so far down a slippery slope of generalization that you've rendered a term meaningless that it's a pretty good sign that you're Doing It Wrong(TM).

Hence the question of where the line is drawn. Where exactly do we stop generalising and start specifically telling those poor bastards that their sandbox is not a sandbox, while allowing other posters to keep throwing the term around to describe their own game?

I'm going to repeat myself from another thread: There seems to be a strawman out there that holds that the creativity of the GM isn't allowed to impact a sandbox setting. That's self-evident nonsense. The difference between a sandbox and a railroad is not whether or not the players are responding to the environment provided by the GM (they are ALWAYS responding to the environment provided by the GM); the difference is in how their input to the game is parsed.

To which I have to assert that there are no true railroads other than in theory.

Which brings us back to whether or not 'sandbox' is a legitimate classification, or whether it is quality of all games to varying degrees.

Which begs the question; what exactly is not-a-sandbox?

 

[pawsplay]

I think the differences in viewpoint of the different players render any really hard standard of sandboxiness moot. Also, I don't think there is a categorical difference. Sandbox vs. programmatic is more like a continuum. Trying to find the cutoff is likely to be fruitless, IMO.

 

[firesnakearies]

I love the idea of trying to run a classic sandbox campaign, but I don't see how to do it without either:


1. Doing utterly insane amounts of prep work before the campaign and between sessions.

or

2. Being some kind of super-genius at improvisation.



By "how to do it" I mean how to run a game that both fits a strict definition of a sandbox* and also has a high level of "quality" in terms of the depth/complexity/interestingness/coolness of whatever "content" the players encounter and interact with.



* (Perhaps something like: A living, "realistic" world that already exists on its own terms before the PCs discover it, in which events proceed according to their own logical causes within that pre-existing framework, independent of any metagame factors involving the existence or needs of "player characters", and that affects and is affected by the PCs wholly according to the players' choices and the already-established status quo nature and "rules" of the world itself.)



$

 

[Chainsaw]

Which begs the question; what exactly is not-a-sandbox?

Remember that "begs the question" does not mean "to bring up or raise the question," it means to assume the conclusion as one of the premises..

 

[Snoweel]

Remember that "begs the question" does not mean "to bring up or raise the question," it means to assume the conclusion as one of the premises..

Next you'll be telling the Americans it's "couldn't care less"...