Raven Crowking
First Post
What you cannot do in a sandbox is a railroad. Otherwise, it is pretty open ended.
D&D characters, from what I've seen, are reactive. Bad guys make evil plot/old creepy castle is full of stuff. Players find out about it through story hooks, players foil evil plot/explore old creepy castle.
Obviously, not good sandbox material.
Barring, of course, the clerics with thier temples, the monks, the druids, etc., etc. Are you actually making the claim that, in a sandbox campaign, the PCs cannot become part of, or command a, chain of command?
Why, then, did 3e explicitly remove the implicit chain-of-command materials from the game?
Without the ability to snuff out the sun with a thought, the PCs are no longer free. No freedom means no sandbox.
Really?
Would you argue that the real world is not (effectively) a sandbox? Must you be free of any chain of command to be in the real world? Must you be free to sack Macy's or Gimble's without any consequences, or you are not free?
I agree that the sandbox does not do railroads.
The sandbox says, largely, "Here are the starting conditions. What do you do now?" That allows for any campaign type that the players want to do. It does not allow for the DM to railroad the players.
If you wish to choose what the players do, the sandbox will fail you.
If you wish to choose what setting the players do it in, the general tone of the setting, the mood of the setting, the themes, and what sorts of options are easily accessible, the sandbox is admirable.
But it sucks at railroads.
Within any setting, there must be restrictions on choice to deal with or to overcome, and consequences for choices made to deal with, or choices are meaningless.
Then why do you doubt that the campaigns which last "years at a time" have depth?
That "the campaign does not change in any way to fit the characters" is a false premise. Until you get rid of this false premise, you are doomed to misunderstanding.
Look at Charles Ryan. With some potential caveats, I agreed that his game would qualify as a sandbox. You say "He gained depth by adapting the campaign world to fit a character in order to gain a more interesting story." I say "He extrapolated from what he knew about the campaign world to determine what the NPCs would do."
He didn't change the cult to match the character. He recognized that the cultists, being cultists, would place a higher value of coincidence than you or I would. If he had, say, a Cult of X, but changed it to a Cult of Y, because Character Z was named Nearly-Y, then it wouldn't be a sandbox. It would be far more in keeping with what you propose -- changing the world to match the characters.
The GM asking himself "What makes sense for these NPCs to do?" isn't a violation of the sandbox game. It is a requirement for a sandbox game. Letting the NPCs do something that makes no sense because it would seem to make a "good story" from the GM's POV, OTOH, is not.
CharlesRyan did the first, not the second.
Upthread, I described a character who included, in his background, that his parents worked with Amoreth the Arcane. He fit his character into the world, and, because of what I knew about Amoreth the Arcane (which he did not at the time the character background was written), his character's connection with the world became enriched.
Consider the PC whose background includes seven brothers, a sister, a mother, and a father who died delving into the Dungeon of Tears. The PC, with a single character, adds nine NPCs to the campaign world, one of whom is (presumably) deceased. This doesn't make the campaign somehow "not a sandbox".
A sandbox world is not fixed, irresolute and untouchable for all time, like some great jewel that the players cannot touch. That would be, perhaps, a "stonebox". Sandboxes change and evolve in whatever way seems natural to the participants. The sandbox seeks to emulate a real world, with real world consistency. And, to be consistent with the real world, this requires actual change.
Go back to the drain example. If the GM knows what is there, the GM should not change it because of PC choices. Indeed, to do so would invalidate the agency of PC choice. But that doesn't mean that the GM should stretch the drain out into 20 encounter areas, either, and thus consume the play session with it.
OTOH, if the GM does not know what is down the drain, he should be ready to go with (in order of importance) whatever seems, first, most consistent with the world, and, secondly, most fun. Again, this is already covered upthread.
The same with "combat plans". It is perfectly valid for the GM to devise plans for what creatures normally do in combat, or are likely to do. If the PCs do something very unlikely, though, those plans become guidelines at best. Indeed, if monsters have a plan of attack, and the PCs throw that plan of attack into disarray, the first thought through my mind is "Morale Check with a healthy penalty!"
If the players desire to go on that quest, then a sandbox can do it just fine. If the players do not, then not so much.
As I said, the sandbox is probably the worst vehicle possible for a railroad. They are pretty well mutually exclusive.
Really? I guess that depends upon what you mean by "a rough line similar to the books".
* Characters begin indecisive, not knowing what to do? Check.
* Characters have different ideas about how they should proceed, where they should go, and what their actual quest should be? Check.
* Character death? Check.
* False starts, random encounters, and monsters unrelated to the primary quest? Check.
* Opportunities to veer from the straight course and seek other solutions to the problem? Check.
* Ability for party to split and explore different objectives? Check.
* Follow the book slavishly, making the same choices the literary characters made? Nope. Sandbox does not do railroads.
I can (and have) played both Gamma World and D&D as games where the players have very little in terms of resources, where survival was the order of the day, and where horrific elements abound. As a player. And, believe me, my choices mattered. I died a gruesome and horrible death in both (very fun) campaigns, more than once, but my choices mattered. And both games were sandboxes. Actually, both games were run by the same GM, who was very competent at that sort of game.
Actually, the original Gamma World was a great ruleset for this sort of game. Your PC could be hampered with all sorts of nasty mutations.
I have also run scenarios that, through player action, have turned into survival horror, in normal D&D. Although this isn't the entire world being one of survival horror, there can certainly be places in the world where angels fear to tread (and PCs discover that they are less powerful than they thought they were).
Turn the shoe a moment, though. Upthread, you were certainly vocal about how choices matter despite the outcome being known. I agreed that, so long as the outcome is largely framework, and that there are meaningful choices to be made related to the goal of the game itself (in the above cases, the goal was to survive as long as you could). Why are you suddenly now suggesting that choices don't matter if the odds are good that, sooner or later, you will die?
No. See above.
What you are describing is a way to do a sandbox, theoretically, but not particularly the best way. Possibly not even a possible way, except for a very limited setting.
Again, I disagree.
The GM can design with a particular goal in mind, so long as the goal is a situation the PCs must deal with rather than something the PCs do.
Easy example: After three years, campaign time, the Fimbrulwinter starts. Everything gets cold, and, unless something is done about it, everything dies.
Let us know how it goes. Perhaps it will clear up some of your misconceptions.
RC
