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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Beginning of the End" data-source="post: 5046730" data-attributes="member: 55271">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.)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.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.</blockquote>

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