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<blockquote data-quote="AbdulAlhazred" data-source="post: 8656764" data-attributes="member: 82106"><p>Well... there's never going to be a way to prove it, but I didn't participate in ANY online RPG forums at all before the release of 4e, but I definitely recall 'sandbox' being THE traditional term, going all the way back to the '80s, for that type of game. It may not have been a very prevalent term, but one thing that may explain why it was not used much is that, frankly, the term 'campaign' itself, in the RPG context, mostly referred to a sandbox! I mean, that was the understood default form of construction of a campaign. The GM established a geography and encounter locations, as well as potentially some sort of meta-plot that would take place, and the the players simply 'went places and did stuff'. The stuff they could do was obviously limited to what the GM put into the sandbox, but that was about it. Now, in reality most people played a more informal type of 'campaign' that basically consisted of 'serial dungeons' (usually purchased modules, but not always). I'd say sometime in the mid '80s the old type of campaign kind of withered away, at least it became a rarity.</p></blockquote><p></p>

[QUOTE="AbdulAlhazred, post: 8656764, member: 82106"] Well... there's never going to be a way to prove it, but I didn't participate in ANY online RPG forums at all before the release of 4e, but I definitely recall 'sandbox' being THE traditional term, going all the way back to the '80s, for that type of game. It may not have been a very prevalent term, but one thing that may explain why it was not used much is that, frankly, the term 'campaign' itself, in the RPG context, mostly referred to a sandbox! I mean, that was the understood default form of construction of a campaign. The GM established a geography and encounter locations, as well as potentially some sort of meta-plot that would take place, and the the players simply 'went places and did stuff'. The stuff they could do was obviously limited to what the GM put into the sandbox, but that was about it. Now, in reality most people played a more informal type of 'campaign' that basically consisted of 'serial dungeons' (usually purchased modules, but not always). I'd say sometime in the mid '80s the old type of campaign kind of withered away, at least it became a rarity. [/QUOTE]

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