What's the problem with railroading?

[ExploderWizard]

I think it is far more difficult to convey a real sandbox in a published adventure, and this skews the way people think about it, until they have some varied experience under their belt.

I am not quite convinced of this. I have some products on my shelf that are great published sandbox modules.

B1, B2, B4, B5 are all setting based adventures with no actual storyline. They are all full of people, places, and things to interact with. The DM can create dozens of adventure hooks for these areas.

A more modern product of this type would be Frandor's Keep for Hackmaster basic. That book is chock full of adventure hooks, locations, interesting NPC's and other tidbits.

Writing products for sandbox style isn't a big problem. Learning how to use them requires more effort, trial, and error, especially by someone who has only had experience running more structured adventures.

 

[Beginning of the End]

Anyone that has ever run anything approaching a pure sandbox will likely tell you that their notes are not something that could be easily communicated in a published module.

This is not my experience.

In fact, the quickest way to get a functional sandbox up and running is to rely on published material:

(1) Grab some hex-paper.

(2) Put a base of operations (a village or small city) in the middle of the map.

(3) Pick you top 18 favorite low-level, location-based adventure modules.

(4) Place those modules one-to-a-hex in the 18 hexes around the base of operations.

(5) Put together a rumor table. (If your adventures all come with rumor tables and you can just glom 'em all together, that makes it even easier.) Give starting PCs 1d4 rolls on the rumor table.

Done.

Using those materials to best effect can be tricky. But IME it's much easier to create satisfied players in a sandbox than it is with something heavily pre-plotted. The only real trick to it is a simple lesson: Ask the players what they're planning to do next. Prep accordingly.

It's so much easier than the plotted approach of trying to guess what your players will enjoy doing.

 

[Crazy Jerome]

[MENTION=72717]Ex[/MENTION]ploder Wizard, I know what you mean. I think that it is fairly straight-forward to convey source material that will be useful to a sandbox DM. Some of those you listed are great examples of that. What I think is difficult is to convey how a sandbox DM will use this material, via the module.

 

[ExploderWizard]

@Exploder Wizard, I know what you mean. I think that it is fairly straight-forward to convey source material that will be useful to a sandbox DM. Some of those you listed are great examples of that. What I think is difficult is to convey how a sandbox DM will use this material, via the module.

There is no substitute for just doing it. Really. When I started playing we didn't have much in the way of instruction beyond advice found in the sparse rulebooks.

I really think that a generation of gamers has been so inundated with published material to cover so much ground that some of them are at a loss on the whole "just make something up" play dynamic that was so common. Brand new territory can be scary but once past a few learning experiences, can produce exhilarating play. As a DM I love those "uh oh what am I going to do now" moments. These times have generated some of the most memorable tales from the table ever.

I believe there are too many DMs who have convinced themselves that they can't do it perhaps because of one bad experiment, a bad group or whatever. Ultimately, not trying is the best way to not find out what games you are capable of running.