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<blockquote data-quote="Doug McCrae" data-source="post: 5015066" data-attributes="member: 21169">Here's a question: Can a game be a sandbox if the PCs are required to be of good alignment?Being a good guy - altruistic, constrained by morality - greatly limits one's choice of action and makes it a lot easier for the GM to predict what the PCs will do. My last campaign, which I mentioned upthread, was not what I would call a sandbox and I'd say the main reason it wasn't is because it was a superhero game. Because the PCs were superheroes, whenever I presented a Bad Thing Happening, they pretty much had to try to stop it happening. That's what superheroes do. Sometimes they surprised me, when I started an adventure with a mystery (the disappearance of a killer vigilante for example) as opposed to a clearly bad thing like the murder of an innocent, they might not investigate. And they surprised me greatly when they decided to negotiate with a murdering anti-vivisectionist rather than just arrest her. But in general they were predictable.In the classic D&amp;D sandbox the PCs are neutral greedy. They want to go up levels. They want gold. They want magic items. The GM can present the players with a variety of holes in the ground (or one very big hole) containing a variety of treasure and monsters and the players are free to make a decision at their leisure as to which monsters they bash.The greed and power motivation seems to permit more freedom than altruism does. A good guy, when he hears a maiden screaming for help, has to go save her. This being D&amp;D, obviously it's going to be a medusa, or a doppelganger, or a succubus, or an assassin or a woman who turns into a snake. But that doesn't matter, the good PC doesn't know he's playing D&amp;D.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Doug McCrae, post: 5015066, member: 21169"] Here's a question: Can a game be a sandbox if the PCs are required to be of good alignment? Being a good guy - altruistic, constrained by morality - greatly limits one's choice of action and makes it a lot easier for the GM to predict what the PCs will do. My last campaign, which I mentioned upthread, was not what I would call a sandbox and I'd say the main reason it wasn't is because it was a superhero game. Because the PCs were superheroes, whenever I presented a Bad Thing Happening, they pretty much had to try to stop it happening. That's what superheroes do. Sometimes they surprised me, when I started an adventure with a mystery (the disappearance of a killer vigilante for example) as opposed to a clearly bad thing like the murder of an innocent, they might not investigate. And they surprised me greatly when they decided to negotiate with a murdering anti-vivisectionist rather than just arrest her. But in general they were predictable. In the classic D&D sandbox the PCs are neutral greedy. They want to go up levels. They want gold. They want magic items. The GM can present the players with a variety of holes in the ground (or one very big hole) containing a variety of treasure and monsters and the players are free to make a decision at their leisure as to which monsters they bash. The greed and power motivation seems to permit more freedom than altruism does. A good guy, when he hears a maiden screaming for help, has to go save her. This being D&D, obviously it's going to be a medusa, or a doppelganger, or a succubus, or an assassin or a woman who turns into a snake. But that doesn't matter, the good PC doesn't know he's playing D&D. [/QUOTE]

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