That Old Sandbox Magic

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Ghost Whistler

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Was having a chat on a wfrp FB channel about campaign design with some dude who advocated sandbox play. This is nothing new obviously, though I've never really done it. He advocated coming up with a bunch of people places and problems etc to throw at the pc's, instead of rigorous plotting and prepping. Now as there are people here who play that way (I'm sure), I'd like to ask: just how much do you need to get going? After all the PC's can only focus on one or two problems at once, they can't meet everyone and they can't go everywhere. At least not initially. So presumably there are going to be limits, if not for your own sanity as you try writing up every planet in the Known Universe, or every city on the Fantasy Continent
 
Was having a chat on a wfrp FB channel about campaign design with some dude who advocated sandbox play. This is nothing new obviously, though I've never really done it. He advocated coming up with a bunch of people places and problems etc to throw at the pc's, instead of rigorous plotting and prepping. Now as there are people here who play that way (I'm sure), I'd like to ask: just how much do you need to get going? After all the PC's can only focus on one or two problems at once, they can't meet everyone and they can't go everywhere. At least not initially. So presumably there are going to be limits, if not for your own sanity as you try writing up every planet in the Known Universe, or every city on the Fantasy Continent

Just enough for your first session. Best inspiration for developing a sandbox is your own campaign notes.
 
I don't know what it is, but creating content in this way always leaves me feeling there isn't enough detail. Which makes no sense.

I present a situation to the players for them to check out and off they go, but it always feels as though what I have isn't enough and that it can be solved/defeated too quickly to be fun.

I had a campaign idea i posted in my wfrp 4e thread: evil cult wants to resurrect its leader by means of dark powers and magic sword shennanigans. Ok, so they get the sword and do that. Notsomuch to work with there!
 
I had a campaign idea i posted in my wfrp 4e thread: evil cult wants to resurrect its leader by means of dark powers and magic sword shennanigans. Ok, so they get the sword and do that. Notsomuch to work with there!

So, my immediate thought about using this as the basis for a sandbox game would be to have the sword shattered into pieces and spread far and wide across the land. Possibly because I love genre cliches :smile:

https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/GottaCatchThemAll

https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/DismantledMacGuffin
 
I don't know what it is, but creating content in this way always leaves me feeling there isn't enough detail. Which makes no sense.
I think it's a common feeling. I fight the instinct to over-describe.
I present a situation to the players for them to check out and off they go, but it always feels as though what I have isn't enough and that it can be solved/defeated too quickly to be fun.
You can still use published adventures in a sandbox campaign. Sandbox, to me, only means that the players are encouraged to interact with the game world in a very unbounded manner. But I still take the locations described in adventures and place them on my sandbox map. Eventually, players may hear rumors, find maps, or run across outright hooks.
 
The only thing that I would add is that I try to have strategic stopping points that are (or simulate) cliffhangers where we go almost to the point of what I have planned. Often, when we stop, I literally have no other material at that point. This is because its really challenging to predict what they will do or where they will go next, but is the beauty of this style of gaming to the players. To them it seems like they really can go anywhere at anytime (which is basically an illusion :hehe: ).

Anyway, I am a fan.
 
I think it's a common feeling. I fight the instinct to over-describe.

You can still use published adventures in a sandbox campaign. Sandbox, to me, only means that the players are encouraged to interact with the game world in a very unbounded manner. But I still take the locations described in adventures and place them on my sandbox map. Eventually, players may hear rumors, find maps, or run across outright hooks.
That instinct for me is about conveying a sufficient sense of place. Certainly we don't need t name every street, every material, every minute of every day on the xth of darktember in the year of the sky lord, moon festivus, 1899. But I really like to try and evoke a sense of place.

At least so we can feel somewhat detached from the annoying kids in the other room and the barking fucking dog the host saw fit to buy before Christmas.

I am easily distracted.:grin:

I don't get on with dogs
 
I don't know what it is, but creating content in this way always leaves me feeling there isn't enough detail. Which makes no sense.

I present a situation to the players for them to check out and off they go, but it always feels as though what I have isn't enough and that it can be solved/defeated too quickly to be fun.

I had a campaign idea i posted in my wfrp 4e thread: evil cult wants to resurrect its leader by means of dark powers and magic sword shennanigans. Ok, so they get the sword and do that. Notsomuch to work with there!
I have the same feeling often... However if you have prepared for the most likely outcomes of the setting then I find you can usually improv the rest. Its like someone up above mentioned, the best inspiration are your campaign notes and what the players have done during that particular game. Otherwise it becomes nearly impossible to prepare for because the players will nearly always come up with something you didn't prepare for.
 
I don't know what it is, but creating content in this way always leaves me feeling there isn't enough detail. Which makes no sense.

I present a situation to the players for them to check out and off they go, but it always feels as though what I have isn't enough and that it can be solved/defeated too quickly to be fun.

I had a campaign idea i posted in my wfrp 4e thread: evil cult wants to resurrect its leader by means of dark powers and magic sword shennanigans. Ok, so they get the sword and do that. Notsomuch to work with there!
Then add in some complications. Maybe the cult can't easily get the thing to do the thing, so they want a third party (hint, hint, the players) to get the the thing for them? There's no adventure if there's no friction or complications. In the above example I can think of about ten ways to screw with the players if they get duped into collecting the sword for the dark cult (not to mention some real consequences if the players just let it go and move on without dealing with the macguffin properly).
 
When I talk about this with my players during "session zero," I tend to distinguish between sandbox and open world.

For me, sandbox (as the metaphor suggests) means that there's a clearly delineated area, and that we're not going to stray outside it much, but they can do pretty much whatever they want inside the box. Video-games provide some good examples; there's Fallout 3, taking place around DC, and there's lots of freedom in there, and tons of detail, but you're going to hit the invisible wall at some point. I'm not super strict about this, and might allow the occasional trip out of the area (like the video-game expansion packs, if you will ... ), but I make it clear that my GMing prep will be overwhelmingly focused on our sandbox, and that they're agreeing to play there.

By open-world, I mean that the PCs can pretty much go anywhere that's available to them, practically speaking (in world that is; so, take a train to another area, that sort of thing). There might still be a home-base area, but the PCs are free to go anywhere they want. This means I'll be improvising a lot more, and a lot less detail in any particular area, but a lot more in-world freedom.

Either way, I tend to start with a fairly railroady adventure, just to get things rolling, and I let them know that. I'll sprinkle adventure seeds as we go, and then at the end of the session, I ask them what lead they want to follow. Then that's what I prep for the next session, and I expect them to honor their own choice there and follow that lead. Then it's pretty much rinse and repeat ...
 
I don't know what it is, but creating content in this way always leaves me feeling there isn't enough detail. Which makes no sense.

I present a situation to the players for them to check out and off they go, but it always feels as though what I have isn't enough and that it can be solved/defeated too quickly to be fun.

I had a campaign idea i posted in my wfrp 4e thread: evil cult wants to resurrect its leader by means of dark powers and magic sword shennanigans. Ok, so they get the sword and do that. Notsomuch to work with there!

That sounds like a quest based game not a sandbox. In a sandbox the campaign would not be structured around doing any one quest. The world would also not end if the PCs failed to interact with the quest.


When it's quest based of course there is work in spicing up the quest so it is not too easy. That's a danger with quest based campaign, or adventure path ones, you put all your eggs in that basket...it better be a nice basket. The other danger is the quest falls apart readily unless the PCs follow a fairly straight and narrow course of actions...and making that interesting is very hard and can seem contrived.

The number one problem with quest based campaigns (IMHO) is making the crazy non-linear choices of players possible and not nerfing them. You can do this by having many moving parts.

One idea I saw above is to have the sword in pieces. Very good idea. Here are some of the options, cool complexity that can emerge, form such a simple choice.

You provide player choice about which piece they go after first.

Players get some, evil cultists get some, both sides trying to get the other sides pieces, add in one or more third parties getting pieces (with their own agendas). Those third parties can be enemies and allies for both sides. They provide great side quest opportunities to get their cooperation. The key is not to have so few third parties that the players "must" go on a side quest. It is just one way they can solve the "problem" not the only way by far.

There can even be factions within the evil cult. Can one exploit divisions within the evil cult?

Can you stop things by just destroying one piece,? which one?, how?

Put all of this on a time-line that allows for options to be pursued (research for example) and distances to be travelled, allies won or lost.

All of a sudden it's a lot more than a McGuffin fetch.

To sandbox it up a bit, just make this evil cult plans something going on in the world, the PCs can interact with it or not. I would not make this a save the world quest. Sure the evil leader rises again and things are real bad locally, but just one more big bad guy.

You can still use the evil cult paln even if the PCs ignore it. Have it be something that in the background changes the world around the PCs. And as it intersects with their day-to-day they may step in, or not.

That's the thing about the sandbox, you as GM cannot be invested in any particular outcome. You are invested in creating a fun, dynamic, living world that allows the players to create their own story, not follow one you are invested in.
 
Was having a chat on a wfrp FB channel about campaign design with some dude who advocated sandbox play. This is nothing new obviously, though I've never really done it. He advocated coming up with a bunch of people places and problems etc to throw at the pc's, instead of rigorous plotting and prepping. Now as there are people here who play that way (I'm sure), I'd like to ask: just how much do you need to get going?

For me, I use Story Lines rather than just throwing NPCs at the party. So, I sketch out a Story Line and maybe have a couple of NPCs who interact with the party, maybe as contacts, adversaries or friends. I use them sparingly. If I have several Story Lines, then each one might have a few NPCs who I can use.

So, in my current Dark Ages campaign, the PCs have met a couple of tinkers, who will reappear but haven't yet, some Angles, who they rescued in the Great Mire and who have joined them temporarily, some Saxons, who they have roundly defeated and ransomed back the warband leader, a Saxon Wizard, well they haven't met him as such, but have foiled some of his schemes, and, finally, an Abbess and her nun niece, neither of whom are Christian. I'll use them as and when it makes sense.

After all the PC's can only focus on one or two problems at once, they can't meet everyone and they can't go everywhere. At least not initially. So presumably there are going to be limits, if not for your own sanity as you try writing up every planet in the Known Universe, or every city on the Fantasy Continent

Of course. I don't tend to write places up, except as bullet points. So, each town in my Dark Ages campaign is a bullet point in the Country description. When the PCs go to one of them, I might flesh it out a bit, but not too much. What's the point if they are just passing through?

Similarly with NPCs. I might know the rulers of a country, but probably don't know the rulers of every town. If I need a name, I'll make it up and record it, so I don't forget about it later.

Most of the interactions happen pretty randomly, as the PCs do things and meet people. If I have a prepared scenario, then they'll meet people in the scenario, if not them I'll use pre-prepared people or make them up on the spot.

My biggest bugbear? Names. Why do players insist on every NPC they meet having a name. Why not just have Saxon 1 and Saxon 2?
 
When I talk about this with my players during "session zero," I tend to distinguish between sandbox and open world.

For me, sandbox (as the metaphor suggests) means that there's a clearly delineated area, and that we're not going to stray outside it much, but they can do pretty much whatever they want inside the box. Video-games provide some good examples; there's Fallout 3, taking place around DC, and there's lots of freedom in there, and tons of detail, but you're going to hit the invisible wall at some point. I'm not super strict about this, and might allow the occasional trip out of the area (like the video-game expansion packs, if you will ... ), but I make it clear that my GMing prep will be overwhelmingly focused on our sandbox, and that they're agreeing to play there.

By open-world, I mean that the PCs can pretty much go anywhere that's available to them, practically speaking (in world that is; so, take a train to another area, that sort of thing). There might still be a home-base area, but the PCs are free to go anywhere they want. This means I'll be improvising a lot more, and a lot less detail in any particular area, but a lot more in-world freedom.

Either way, I tend to start with a fairly railroady adventure, just to get things rolling, and I let them know that. I'll sprinkle adventure seeds as we go, and then at the end of the session, I ask them what lead they want to follow. Then that's what I prep for the next session, and I expect them to honor their own choice there and follow that lead. Then it's pretty much rinse and repeat ...
I wouldn't run a sandbox in the purest 'start here now what do you want to do...the world's your oyster' sense. Even open world video games have a narrative. They just don't bind you to a time limit and offer lots of 'side content' to make up for a short story. In the end it's functionally limited because it can't be otherwise.

I would look for a starting position, an opening gambit/adventure. Which is what I'm working on now, along with writing down ideas for things/places/people to tie into that, plus an overarching 'big bad'.

Ultiamtely what I want to do is evoke that sense of place I mentioned. Particularly in respect of WFRP which I hope to be running imminently because it is very thematic as a place. It has a particular atmosphere in terms of the medieval/european sensibility and the twisted grimdark setting. You can see it in the architecture of the Empire.
 
This is just as much a consideration in a non-sandbox. The real issue is how much you feel you need to build before the party even encounters it. And just like some of the people here are suggesting with other aspects, I don't think you need to plan all this out before session zero. And trust yourself to be able to improvise a lot of that on the spot.

I have a general rule when it comes to devising descriptions. I try to focus on one (or two, at most) detail that sticks out. Larding too many details into a description never works out for me. Players seem to lose focus if you make everything really florid. I've given up trying to reproduce the image that I have in the heads of the players.

The important thing is that they have some kind of picture in their heads, and those pictures are interesting and accurately describe the important aspects of the situation. I rely heavily on the imagination of my players to fill in the gaps of what I don't describe. My theory is that one or two strong details will activate their imaginations, and they'll do the rest of the work on their own. Ideally, they won't even realize that I didn't describe most of what they're imagining. Lazy GM magic tricks!
I agree. Unfortunately I don't know architectural styles and terminology (I didin't know what a gable was until thursday) so I'm going to have to research that because that medieval/middle ages slightly gothic aesthetic is central to the game, IMO. But obviously not overburdening the players with a lecture in it.

My only other issue, and i mentioned this before when i was running Star Wars, is that, when I sit down and think of adventure ideas/hooks, that I'm not coming up with enough content to make it interesting. So having the grave robber hired to rob a tomb of a mcguffin, maybe punch a skeleton or a town guardsman, then return it and get paid. Doesn't seem like much.
 
If you want to centre the game around a plot by an evil cult - I'd be asking who else besides the PCs and the Cult has a stake?

ie
- A local potentate who wants the cult to at least partially succeed so that he can claim the credit for stopping them and increase his own power by paying agitators to denounce the local authorities as weak for letting chaos get as far as it did.
- Who currently has the sword the cultists want - if it gets stolen (whether by PCs or someone else) what are they going to do about it? Would they hire the PCs to get it back. (potentially the PCs could be hired to both steal the sword and then to retrieve it again)
Perhaps another secretive chaos cult among the local authorities who actually don't want the first cult to succeed - because they are afraid too much visible chaos action will interfere with their own plans.
- A group of apparently incompetent fanatical witchhunters who arrive at some point to deal with chaos activity but start burning the wrong people (potentially fake witchhunters acting as part of someone else's poltical ploy.)
- If things slow down then assassinate the local Mayor - now there's a murder investigation and possibly an election. (Maybe PCs can make a power-play?)
- If events are getting out of control and it feels like there's no room to breathe have an outbreak of the plague force the plotters to cool their heels while everyone deals with mere survival.


I think of this more as a kind of temporal sandbox - rather than a true sandbox. It's usually how I approach urban based games. It has the disadvantage compared to the more traditional geographically oriented sandbox in that the PCs tend to be more reactive - but that's also an advantage as it's more fast paced. It roughly follows the kind of setup of the classic WFRP adventure - "Rough Night at the Four Feathers". It required very little prep other than the set initial set up - as, if you know what everyone wants, it's easy to improvise.
Those are good ideas, but there are a couple of issues. Just having a plague manifest does feel a bit contrived.

Also I'm wary of having too many cultists run around. I plan to seed some long term elements by having the witch and the graveribber meetup. She can unlock things and he will need to unlock the cemetery gate. As she does that she gets a vision of the sword because...magic.

She is present because she thinks, correctly, she's being followed. A pair of otherwise inconsequential cultists happen to be following her to try and identify her. They will make contact with her, grab her arm, and leave a purple mark. They then vanish leaving a mystery. But their purpose is to verify her identity as the descendant of the sword's wielder. That's something I plan to throw at the player, hopefully it won't be an issue.

So if I have a second group of cultists active it risks muddying the waters. She thinks they are the same as attacked her, naturally, but in truth that's a red herring and i'm not ok with that.
 
Was having a chat on a wfrp FB channel about campaign design with some dude who advocated sandbox play. This is nothing new obviously, though I've never really done it. He advocated coming up with a bunch of people places and problems etc to throw at the pc's, instead of rigorous plotting and prepping. Now as there are people here who play that way (I'm sure), I'd like to ask: just how much do you need to get going? After all the PC's can only focus on one or two problems at once, they can't meet everyone and they can't go everywhere. At least not initially. So presumably there are going to be limits, if not for your own sanity as you try writing up every planet in the Known Universe, or every city on the Fantasy Continent
I'm one of those people.
I just use a pre-made setting, and when you come to a new place, If I haven't thought about it during the week, I'd present you with some typical situation, but probably one that doesn't happen much elsewhere (like a drug deal in the middle of a side street that went wrong because the seller and buyer tried the stuff one too many times and fell asleep - happens a lot in Great Forks, I'd imagine:evil:!)
Then, while the PCs react, I'm going to scrawl notes of people and fractions. (The golden rule: everything the PCs encounter still has to be something the GM has thought of in advance - even if it was 5 seconds ago - and not stuff they wished to meet).
So, to answer your question: to start a campaign, I need a list of name, the rulebooks and setting books, dice, snacks, and people I want to play with. I call it "Lazy GMing" for a reason:devil:!
That's, of course, the minimum. I can also use quite a bit more preparation, and some sandbox GMs do:smile:. I just don't need it!
 
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Well if you can do that on the fly, more power to you
I contend that anyone that doesn't find multitasking an incredible chore, can do likewise:smile:. But my point is that asking how much material we need for any kind of campaign depends on how much we're comfortable inventing on the fly.

robertsconley robertsconley offers a good middle ground, though I've read descriptions by sandbox GMs who prepare a lot more.
 
There is no way to prepare for a sandbox game if your players don't understand they are expected to pull their thumbs out of their butts and actually come up with some of their own ideas. And if your players do get that, you don't really have to have much of anything prepared - just understand what and who can be found in their immediate surroundings.
 
There is no way to prepare for a sandbox game if your players don't understand they are expected to pull their thumbs out of their butts and actually come up with some of their own ideas. And if your players do get that, you don't really have to have much of anything prepared - just understand what and who can be found in their immediate surroundings.
Yes. Though I'd add "why" to the list of things you have to understand.
But that's nitpicking.
 
I think there’s a conception that a sandbox world means the players have to make their own adventure. That’s possible but not necessary.

I always have a couple adventure “paths” ready for my players. They almost invariably start and tend to follow them. The difference is they don’t have to and nothing misses a beat.

Lack of motivation and direction? There is always an NOC willing to use, I mean advise, the PCs on where to go and what to do next :smile:
 
I'm just going to come out and say it.

I don't like sandboxes.

The thing is, I'm a firm believer in the principle that time spent creating stuff that isn't necessarily going to be used in play is time that could have been spent creating stuff that will be used at the table. Sandboxes require a lot of up front effort and I'd sooner use that effort making sure the players get the benefit of it.

Also, analysis paralysis is a thing. Too many options, too much input, you get no output. Here's three hooks, pick which one you want to follow up on. Only some of the group want A, somebody wants to follow up on C and nobody cares about B. Plus, people can end up second guessing themselves into doing nothing.

This is no small part of why Adventure Paths are so popular.

That's not to say I'm all about the railroad, either. I don't think it's an either/or situation. But I'd prefer to present a situation to players, let them decide how to interact with that situation. And then respond to what the players did. And so on in a feedback loop.

And while it's all well and good saying, "Be proactive!" or "Go out there and make it happen!" As a GM, I can't be bothered with the amount of prep work it takes and as a player I have a limited amount of time to game in. I don't want to spend the first couple of sessions stumbling round in the dark and being presented with situations that I don't know for sure will go anywhere.

But that's me. Other people seem to really like the sandbox approach.
 
I would only add that they don't need to desert, and the game is going to be no less sandboxy. I/QUOTE]

Sure, I used the example of desertion because in the past when I brought this up one counter argument was but you are still railroading by giving orders to the PC!

So I use the example of desertion to radically illustrate that yes players still have a choice. That the "orders' I give are coming from a NPC character in-game and the players are as free in their choice to follow those order or not as a freebooters are in deciding whether to follow what a Duke they are dealing with tells them to do or not.

Furthermore I point out that it is player's choice at the beginning of the campaign (and sometimes during) to place themselves in the position of receiving orders. Often this starts out as something like "Hey wouldn't it be neat to play as X" with X in this case being City Guards.

I like your example because it illustrate some of the possible things that could occur within a campaign of this type.
 
A sandbox campaign is mostly an attitude and technique adopted by the referee. It works whether you follow all the steps of my How to make a Fantasy Sandbox or you have a town and dungeon setup both on one page.



For individual hobbyist is hard to create analysis paralysis if you deliberately limit yourself to a half page of background info of 10 point font.

As for the group, it always been a issue with any type of RPG campaign that in large part what makes it work is the players willing to go along with a common activity in-game whatever form it takes. Unlike a MMORPG there is a limit to how many character can be physically apart because of the human referee.

I will say it is not as difficult as what people think it is. For me, I have no trouble with handle groups of 4 to 5 players each doing their own thing. Doing it a way that nobody is sitting doing nothing for too long. But beyond that I start running into issues and it is far easier with 2 to 3 players in the group.

Finally you are not just a referee but a coach as well. If a players struggles then coach them.

There is nothing wrong with a good Adventure Path. They can be a fun ride for all concerned. However they suffer from the issue that in order to work you have to do the RPG equivalent of writing a good novel, film, or play. While somewhat more active than the forementioned, adventure path rely on the appeal of the situation they depict and their plot. If their plot sucks then the whole campaign will suck irregardless of the skill of the referee running it.

In contrast all that a sandbox campaign requires is interesting people and places to explore. Just as all interesting trip requires is a good company and an interesting destination.

That how the world in motion works. Except there is no expectation that the players will go in a direction determined by the referee.



Hence the importance of the initial context. It may be that a particular group of players are not a bunch of go-getters. The campaign may center on them being royal agents getting missions for her majesty from the Lord High Chamberlain. The different between that in and an adventure path is that the players being free to choose when and where to go is always there in the background. Like in AsenRG example of what PC Guards could be doing, likewise our erstwhile "Royal Agents" will have similair scale stuff going on while the broader picture is focused on dealing with the missions they are given.

Eventually what I found is that after few sessions that players develop their individual and collective agendas that prep becomes very straight forward. Especially if one goes to each players and the group and ask what are you thinking of doing next in regards to X, Y, Z. Where and X and Y are related to various party and individual goals, and Z is something part of what they are dealing in larger world.

In the end the idea of sandbox campaign is about the answer to the following.

You put out clues for the Labyrinth of Leng and the players get a map to the Labyrinth of Leng. And you prepared the Labyrinth of Leng with maps, keys, and notes. However at the beginning of the session they annouce they don't want to explore the Labyrinth and instead head off to the city of Eastgate because an off-hand remark you made last session made it seem more interesting them than the dungeon.

Initial Context, Bag of Stuff, World in Motion in essence all the advice I give about Sandbox Campaign is my answer. Which boils down to "I will roll with it and see where it leads". The consequences of which depends if I have anything detailed on Eastgate or not. If I don't then I have to wing it.

Other referee including yourself may have other answer with their own consequences.
I've been in this hobby for nearly 40 years. Don't try to teach your grandmother to suck eggs. Don't try to tell me I'm wrong on a matter of taste, that's a ridiculous stance to take. I've read literally ten of thousands if pages of GM advice and been in the GM chair for similar numbers of hours.

On my informed opinion, I find a method more like a Golden or Silver Age comic writer works best. But that's my style and not me saying anyone is wrong.

Because that would be insulting.
 
I've been in this hobby for nearly 40 years. Don't try to teach your grandmother to suck eggs. Don't try to tell me I'm wrong on a matter of taste, that's a ridiculous stance to take. I've read literally ten of thousands if pages of GM advice and been in the GM chair for similar numbers of hours.

On my informed opinion, I find a method more like a Golden or Silver Age comic writer works best. But that's my style and not me saying anyone is wrong.

Because that would be insulting.

You stated several issues you found with sandbox campaigns. I replied with counterpoints. The only thing that I found "wrong" was the assertion sandbox campaign can't be run with limited time for prep and limited time to play. Along with various points about players being indecisive.

I don't have any opinion on how you run your campaign. Only with the various points you raised on sandbox campaigns. What you do with that is up to you which may be nothing. Which is fine. The goal is to leave everybody with better information.
 
I've been in this hobby for nearly 40 years. Don't try to teach your grandmother to suck eggs. Don't try to tell me I'm wrong on a matter of taste, that's a ridiculous stance to take. I've read literally ten of thousands if pages of GM advice and been in the GM chair for similar numbers of hours.

On my informed opinion, I find a method more like a Golden or Silver Age comic writer works best. But that's my style and not me saying anyone is wrong.

Because that would be insulting.

I don't think he's telling you you're BAD... he's just speaking to your points. There is something you said specifically that jumped out at me that I thought he answered brilliantly.

Stevethulhu said:
But I'd prefer to present a situation to players, let them decide how to interact with that situation. And then respond to what the players did. And so on in a feedback loop.

*This* is the germ of a sandbox. The degree to which you can extend that feedback loop is the thing that moves The World In Motion(tm). To the degree that you don't like to prep only means that your sandbox might be smaller in scale - that's not an inherent problem, nor does it go against your own conceits of what you like. It means you just focus your sandbox smaller but it still surrounds whatever your "adventure" might be.

I see nothing wrong with running bog-standard adventures within a Sandbox. In fact I think doing so creates a deeper context for those adventures assuming you tweak it to fit your Sandbox. Do you only run adventure modules? or use published settings and not tweak them for your own uses?

It feels like you're saying the BIG OVERKILL Sandbox campaigns are not your jam - but I'm saying (as someone the runs BIG OVERKILL Sandbox games) that not all Sandboxes are the same. Nor do they require or even demand the level of prep and detail you kind of insinuated. There *is* a happy medium to this. A good Sandbox scales and can contain virtually all other forms of gaming - themepark, modules, even heavily narrated setpiece-storygames pretending to be other things. It's not just some big murky ocean of possibilities that causes people vaporlock unless you run them that way at that scale (which I do regularly - but that is an entirely different issue. At that point we're talking about GMing techniques to engage players to fit the context of your game.)

TL/DR Not all Sandboxes are the same. They're a sophisticated style of play. GMing them (well) requires work commensurate to the scale of the Sandbox.
 
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But I'd prefer to present a situation to players, let them decide how to interact with that situation. And then respond to what the players did. And so on in a feedback loop.

That’s no different to how I run a Sandbox, I just try to have a few situations they are likely to interface in the beginning, and give them a few hooks right off the bat, ideally based on PC history or things that came up during Lifepath Chargen.

So I guess the difference is, I prefer to give them more than one at the beginning.
 
In fact... I would like to chime in here about Sandboxes.

I think there has been a lot of excellent advice in this thread. But what Stevethulu pointed out is something that comes at me pretty frequently in an inverted way. Sandboxes are a *style* of play. I will go on the record as saying they are the most sophisticated style of play and that comes with a lot of risks that people tend not to be honest about (especially myself).
Here's what a sandbox is: A sandbox is a wide, shallow playground construction to hold sand, often made of wood or plastic. In RPG terms, it's become so vague and all encompassing as to mean nothing. But in it's simplest term, the first module many people of my generation's early play experiences met is a sandbox. The Keep on the Borderlands is more than just a castle and a collection of caves. It's an entire region. Also The Village of Hommlet and The Isle of Dread. Defined areas with locations detailed, NPCs written up and given motivations. And other encounters, both fixed and random.

The platonic ideal of a sandbox, if you will.

It's not some high art. It's a region with a few locations in and no solid reason for the characters to go anywhere. But a ton of things that might pique their interest and make them want to have a wander anyway.

Sandboxes are like symphonies. Compared to running straight up Adventure-modules, or scenarios and one-shot dungeoncrawls, there are a lot more moving parts that require techniques that you can pick up and learn, running those aforementioned types of games. But nothing is quite like running a Sandbox.
This is where I start to have issues. Talk about looking down on other styles of play. This is exactly the kind of thing that was going on back in the days when GNS was relevant, or when it was extreme charop or be eaten.

Try running a Dialectic style game some time. Where the GM gives a thesis, the players respond with an anithesis and the whole becomes a synthesis. Then you'll see a true symphony. Or not. Because the analogy falls flat when you realise that a symphony has no place for improvisation, where a sandbox demands, even requires, huge amounts of just that. Just as most RPGs do. Even ones that are using pre packaged material. Either in the form of setting or directed play.

A more apt analogy would by blues or jazz. Where you take a loose framework and what happens between the musicians in the moment is something ephemeral. Rather than the composed majesty of symphony, you have the sublime moment that you either were there for or were not.

But then, a composer would naturally look down on organic music produced in the moment and never to be reproduced.

What a lot of the advice here, I see in this thread, is speaking to the *other half* of the issue of running a Sandbox: The GM skills and methods of making the Sandbox work. We've euphemistically call "The World In Motion". For a lot of GM's that don't like Sandbox style play, it's not necessary. For those that want more expansiveness, beyond what most players will likely even conceive of - Sandbox is the way to go. But it does require more skill, and a bit more work depending on the scale of the game.
Why is having an entire world better than just having the bit that the characters are interacting with? Either directly or indirectly. I don't need a whole sandbox for players to have fun. I don't need to create anything I'm not going to use in order to have fun myself. I'm not saying you shouldn't have things prepped in advance, but I am saying that I tend to the Stephen R Donaldson approach, where coming up with something I'm not going to use directly is time spent doing something irrelevant to what I'm actually doing.

The benefits are *extreme* immersion. And hopefully extreme epic fun and longevity. Plus I believe it makes you a better GM. A good Sandbox GM can run any other style of play *better* because all those other styles can fit in a sandbox which taxonomically requires more work. Those other styles are easier to run if you're used to running sandbox-style as your primary method. Sandboxes have this magical ability to transcend the normal Adventure-mode of play.
There are more things in Heaven and Earth than are dreamt of in your philosophy, tenbones. It's not as simple as Sandbox or Script. There's no automatic being 'better' because a GM runs a particular style or other.

What makes you a better GM is being honest with yourself, admitting to your mistakes, trying to learn form your mistakes and finding out how to play to your strengths while minimising the problems your weaknesses cause. And above all, listening to what little feedback you get from players.

Just like you get better at anything, really.

I would actually say that many a good sandbox GM would really struggle with path style adventures, due to not being able to adapt, interpret or go off on a tangent without it effectively negating the rest of the campaign as purchased.

This is also a problem I have, but for different reasons.

The downsides are - they're prone to dismal disaster. You can overprep. You can cause your players to glaze over with the minutiae of detail that would make a cultural anthropologist shit in their pants. You can scale your game incorrectly for your players. You can overscale your game beyond your GMing skills. Sandboxes are like conducting an orchestra. They run the highest risk of game-implosion but they also aim for the highest transcendent moments you can have at a table.
Or you can concentrate on the bits of your game that face the players, know what your NPC goals, methods and resources are. And forget transcendence in order to play the game in front of you. Not the one you are dreaming of after smoking a bowl of something that's still illegal in much of the world.

Here's an anecdote from my experience.

The most transcendent moments of my gaming history, and there have only been four or five of them, have all been because the GM posed a situation and a player responded to it in a way that is really hard to describe. But that suddenly took that single session of play in a new direction. One that was utterly unplanned, but absolutely driven by character.

And none of them had anything to do with the GM conducting an orchestra. That leaves so little room for player choice to matter that it's actually a really bad analogy.

The GM is that conductor with the toolset to make those parts sing with the players in the lead. Those skills required are part of what needs to be illuminated alongside the ideas of what makes a Sandbox work. They go hand-in-hand.
I've ran multi year campaign in Night City and Ryoko Owari, two radically different but fundamentally similar sandbox settings. One is filled with endless random encounters and background detail, the other populated with a glorious array of NPCs and their secrets. I've ran campaign in settings that I made up as I went along and that were cobbled together from stacks of modules and magazine articles.

At no point did I feel like a conductor. Either a bus or orchestra conductor. Though I guess once or twice I felt like lightning was being conducted.

But I think what I'm really trying to say is, I was too damn busy running games for between three and fourteen people, depending on time and the game being played, to worry about anything other than what worked to keep people coming back next week to do it all again.

But in every case, the ones that worked, that succeeded, were the ones where I paid attention to the player and the characters over everything else.
 
I don't understand why people think GM preparation and guidance are key issues with a sandbox game. I feel like a well played sandbox takes a lot of pressure off the GM because everyone at the table is equally responsible for where people go and what's going on; the GM just has to understand (or be able to improvise) the setting well enough to react in real time to things that are happening. Naturally a GM has to feed the players a little information about NPCs, current events, etc. so they feel like there is actually a game world there for them to interact with. But really the progress of the campaign is on them.
 
Here's what a sandbox is: A sandbox is a wide, shallow playground construction to hold sand, often made of wood or plastic. In RPG terms, it's become so vague and all encompassing as to mean nothing.

You have an incorrect understanding of what sandbox campaigns.

In RPG terms, it's become so vague and all encompassing as to mean nothing.

You are ignoring many including myself who been writing about sandbox campaign since the term was coined to describe what myself and others were doing with Judges Guild's Wilderlands of High Fantasy in the mid 2000s.
 
This is where I start to have issues. Talk about looking down on other styles of play. This is exactly the kind of thing that was going on back in the days when GNS was relevant, or when it was extreme charop or be eaten.

It not putting down your style of play to debate the accuracy of your statements about my style of play.


Try running a Dialectic style game some time. Where the GM gives a thesis, the players respond with an anithesis and the whole becomes a synthesis.

This is how World in Motion works. The things are in a particular way at the start (campaign or session), the player do or don't do things as their characters, things changes, and the cycle repeats throughout the campaign.

Why is having an entire world better than just having the bit that the characters are interacting with? Either directly or indirectly. I don't need a whole sandbox for players to have fun.

Again if you have written what myself and other have written about sandbox campaign you will see that it riddled with advice on how to narrow things to the perspective of the player characters.

In my own How to make a Fantasy Sandbox Everything from Step 4 onwards is about defining what local to the players and their characters. I used 200 by 150 mile region as a basis because often in D&D style fantasy campaign players like to travel some amount of distance. But step 4 onward can be done for a much smaller region which I do with the Isle of Piall in my examples.


where coming up with something I'm not going to use directly is time spent doing something irrelevant to what I'm actually doing.

Again the exact advice that myself and other give. For example The details I wrote on religion and culture largely focus on the behavior of their adherents and members not the stats of Set and his sons as many other fantasy supplement are prone to. Why? Because behavior i.e. how you roleplay is the only thing players experience while interacting with NPCs.

There are more things in Heaven and Earth than are dreamt of in your philosophy, tenbones. It's not as simple as Sandbox or Script. There's no automatic being 'better' because a GM runs a particular style or other.

That not what he saying. He has a goal of immersion while playing. He described to you how he achieved it. So for him it is indeed a "better' way. What he doesn't say or give an opinion on is whether it is a better way for you.


I would actually say that many a good sandbox GM would really struggle with path style adventures, due to not being able to adapt, interpret or go off on a tangent without it effectively negating the rest of the campaign as purchased

That would be incorrect. Like you said it only requires experience and you assume wrongly that many of use have no experience with other forms of campaign. I myself have run numerous convention games, refereed organized play events using prepared adventure paths, ran LARP Events and owned a Live Action Roleplaying business, founded and ran gaming clubs which included shared campaigns.

I started wargames in 1976, and tabletop roleplaying 1978. The main reason why sandbox campaigns are my main style because I was the referee in my town who let players "trash" his campaigns and gave a fair challenge while doing it. Something I was able to do because I had experience playing wargames and was well read in history compared to my peers.

I and other responding to you are not only aware of the alternatives but have direct experience with them.

But I think what I'm really trying to say is, I was too damn busy running games for between three and fourteen people, depending on time and the game being played, to worry about anything other than what worked to keep people coming back next week to do it all again.

See we are not so far apart after all.
 
That not what he saying. He has a goal of immersion while playing. He described to you how he achieved it. So for him it is indeed a "better' way. What he doesn't say or give an opinion on is whether it is a better way for you.
With a heavy implication that other styles are lesser. Hence the use of loaded and leading phrases. Remember, words have meanings. Combinations of words express thoughts in precise ways.redefining words to mean other than they mean to the world at large is in no small part one of the things that puts a barrier in the way of new people joining our hobby.



That would be incorrect. Like you said it only requires experience and you assume wrongly that many of use have no experience with other forms of campaign. I myself have run numerous convention games, refereed organized play events using prepared adventure paths, ran LARP Events and owned a Live Action Roleplaying business, founded and ran gaming clubs which included shared campaigns.

I started wargames in 1976, and tabletop roleplaying 1978. The main reason why sandbox campaigns are my main style because I was the referee in my town who let players "trash" his campaigns and gave a fair challenge while doing it. Something I was able to do because I had experience playing wargames and was well read in history compared to my peers.

I and other responding to you are not only aware of the alternatives but have direct experience with them.
You keep on appealing to that authority of experience. Experience which I also have.

I've run games in various styles, following the trends of the 80s, 90s and 2000s as I encountered and experimented with them. I first ran into the term sandbox as a name for what most of us had been doing anyway in magazines such as Valkyrie and Arcane in the mid to late 90s. The idea is nothing new. In fact, it's one of the older styles of play.

So yes, I've got direct, hands on experience with many of the alternatives to sandboxes. And my own experience teaches me that sandboxes are a lot of hassle, have far too many moving parts and are far to open to players crashing the game.

I prefer to have a much more vaguely defined location, with just the broadest strokes to set the scene. A major NPC with a plan that will go off without a hitch if the PCs don't get involved, and a selection of minions, henchmen and a couple of unrelated things for the sake of my own personal whimsy at the time.

I call it gaming in watercolours and sometimes writing in crayon.

I've found that when resented with too many choices, many players talk themselves into a standstill. And when presented with the freedom to pick from too many hooks, they often go tharn.

Bear in mind, this isn't convention play. This is real people in my experience. It's like going to a restaurant where there's too many options on the menu. too much choice, can't make a decision, feeling pressured to decide. All combines to make for a bad experience.

See we are not so far apart after all.
We're at opposite sides of the circle.
 
That would be incorrect. Like you said it only requires experience and you assume wrongly that many of use have no experience with other forms of campaign. I myself have run numerous convention games, refereed organized play events using prepared adventure paths, ran LARP Events and owned a Live Action Roleplaying business, founded and ran gaming clubs which included shared campaigns.

I started wargames in 1976, and tabletop roleplaying 1978. The main reason why sandbox campaigns are my main style because I was the referee in my town who let players "trash" his campaigns and gave a fair challenge while doing it. Something I was able to do because I had experience playing wargames and was well read in history compared to my peers.

I and other responding to you are not only aware of the alternatives but have direct experience with them.
I started out as a railroad Referee, because that was what I was told I should do:smile:.
It lasted maybe two sessions, but I think only one was enough. I didn't like doing it, so while travelling back, I discussed giving more freedom to the PCs with another GM from the group. His opinion was that the risks are too great:wink:.
But the more he argued, the more I was able to find out solutions. Maybe not the solutions I'd use today, but they worked at the time.
I tested a free-wheeling style next session. I had just NPCs trying to make some plans an execute them, It worked just great.

So, in an effort to improve on that, I went online and googled (or maybe Altavistaed, at this time) "giving players freedom of choice gm advice" or something. Those of you who know search engines better than I did back then - a low bar to clear - might have guessed what happened...
Namely, I found a very convincing piece of advice based on the White Wolf Storytelling advice. It was about "giving the players the illusion of freedom of choice".
I started reading...and since I wanted to be a better GM, I applied the advice. Got to be a GM for quite a few campaigns, because my group then liked it. (I'm still sorry for turning them into my lab rats...)
Then I was about to give up on GMing, because with time, I found I like that style even less, and was quickly approaching GMing burnout. I tried to run games that had actual choices...
The lab rats didn't like that. I'd trained them too well:sad::devil::sad:!
So I gave up on GMing for a while, and let one of them to run games for this group (playing in these games when I knew there was no actual choice felt pointless).
Meanwhile, I found my wife, and told her about my RPG hobby. She wanted to try, so I sent her to my former group.
On her first session, she went off-script, almost demolishing the whole adventure. I laughed so hard I almost teared up, because that's what I would have done...except I didn't want to make myself into a difficult player for my own style that the guy was trying to emulate back then (and I'd told him how it's done:evil:)!

So I started running games where nothing was pre-scripted for her. She loved them.
After over a year of running such games...I tried telling people on a forum about me experimenting with a very free style. I think it was Ravenswing who first replied "yeah, you're running a sandbox".
I'm running what? Until then, I'd only heard the term when it was mentioned in the GMing advice of some games and some articles who argued for different styles. As you can guess, the descriptions had been slightly less charitable than a zealot's description of militant atheists:shade:!
So I found all the advice on that "new style" that I could...realized with surprise that it's arguably the original style of Refereeing...and have been using it ever since. This sparked a short infatuation with OSR-style games if not with the OSR-style mechanics (which I've always considered clunky, though less clunky than D&D 3 to 5, including the last number).
Sometimes, people tried to tell me about having found some better style. So far, all such arguments have been for techniques I'd tried already before discovering sandboxes, and I'd found those technics wanting.
And sometimes, people tell me about ways to make sandboxes better. Gronan of Simmerya Gronan of Simmerya told me about Frei Kriegspiegel, for example...and while it wasn't hard to understand, it wasn't until I read Chris Kubasik's Traveller By The Book series that I really understood how the various elements could all fit together to bring more of those "emergent moments" that are, after all, the goal of sandbox groups.
And maybe some day, I'd find something that would work even better! Who knows? I've only been running games for less than 20 years now... though probably much more, if you account for the fact that I've had months where I was running a session non-stop (mostly while recovering from an accident).

It's not some high art. It's a region with a few locations in and no solid reason for the characters to go anywhere. But a ton of things that might pique their interest and make them want to have a wander anyway.
I'd prefer to say it's giving possibilities and not interfering or losing your cool, regardless of whether the action goes one way or another, achieving by not striving:tongue:.

Try running a Dialectic style game some time. Where the GM gives a thesis, the players respond with an anithesis and the whole becomes a synthesis. Then you'll see a true symphony. Or not. Because the analogy falls flat when you realise that a symphony has no place for improvisation, where a sandbox demands, even requires, huge amounts of just that. Just as most RPGs do. Even ones that are using pre packaged material. Either in the form of setting or directed play.
OK, I admit I'm confused. Is that a description of a sandbox, a description of your style of running games, or something else entirely, like a different sandbox style that you're advocating?
Serious question, because "the GM says what is the situation, the players decide what they do, and we see what happens" is how I describe sandbox games. And that's exactly "thesis, antithesis, synthesis". Rinse and repeat.
To make a sandbox out of it, you just add a setting - which is itself a very useful tool, IME.

Why is having an entire world better than just having the bit that the characters are interacting with? Either directly or indirectly. I don't need a whole sandbox for players to have fun. I don't need to create anything I'm not going to use in order to have fun myself. I'm not saying you shouldn't have things prepped in advance, but I am saying that I tend to the Stephen R Donaldson approach, where coming up with something I'm not going to use directly is time spent doing something irrelevant to what I'm actually doing.
Because of the spillover effect. Which applies both to the actions of the players, and the actions of NPCs. Sometimes, you can run a campaign where the players are just experiencing the spillover effects of a decision...
Here's the premise of my sandbox campaign of Fates Worse Than Death: "In 2080 Manhattan, someone is bringing down the prices of the armour that prospective Skin Borgs need".
That's it. I mean, that's really the full amount of my preparation for the campaign, apart from reading the setting (and noticing that the aggressive expansionist gang of the Skin Borgs is held in check by a coalition of three gangs, because many prospective candidates can't join due to the prohibitive prices of armour).
...yes, in a way, I don't have a sandbox. I have a spiderwebsbox. Which threads are you going to bump into:evil:?

But in every case, the ones that worked, that succeeded, were the ones where I paid attention to the player and the characters over everything else.
Sounds like good advice for all kinds of games, IMO.

A more apt analogy would by blues or jazz. Where you take a loose framework and what happens between the musicians in the moment is something ephemeral. Rather than the composed majesty of symphony, you have the sublime moment that you either were there for or were not.

But then, a composer would naturally look down on organic music produced in the moment and never to be reproduced.

...

The most transcendent moments of my gaming history, and there have only been four or five of them, have all been because the GM posed a situation and a player responded to it in a way that is really hard to describe. But that suddenly took that single session of play in a new direction. One that was utterly unplanned, but absolutely driven by character.

And none of them had anything to do with the GM conducting an orchestra. That leaves so little room for player choice to matter that it's actually a really bad analogy.
BTW, music-wise, I agree with you. (When you clarify your point, above, we'll see whether I agree on the rest, too:grin:!)

I don't understand why people think GM preparation and guidance are key issues with a sandbox game. I feel like a well played sandbox takes a lot of pressure off the GM because everyone at the table is equally responsible for where people go and what's going on; the GM just has to understand (or be able to improvise) the setting well enough to react in real time to things that are happening. Naturally a GM has to feed the players a little information about NPCs, current events, etc. so they feel like there is actually a game world there for them to interact with. But really the progress of the campaign is on them.
Hence why I call it "Lazy GMing" myself, when describing how I run games...:tongue:
(Usually shortly before someone comes along to tell me how much I'm missing by not doing more planning. Like I haven't tried that, too:gunslinger:!)
 
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With a heavy implication that other styles are lesser. Hence the use of loaded and leading phrases. Remember, words have meanings. Combinations of words express thoughts in precise ways.redefining words to mean other than they mean to the world at large is in no small part one of the things that puts a barrier in the way of new people joining our hobby.
And your language is no less (mis)leading. Can't we all just stop doing that:smile:?

I prefer to have a much more vaguely defined location, with just the broadest strokes to set the scene. A major NPC with a plan that will go off without a hitch if the PCs don't get involved, and a selection of minions, henchmen and a couple of unrelated things for the sake of my own personal whimsy at the time.

I call it gaming in watercolours and sometimes writing in crayon.
And that's different from a sandbox...how, exactly? Serious question, because I must be missing something.
What does it matter whether you only know the broad outline of the setting and make it up as you go? As long as you don't decide what the situation is after the players have taken their decisions how to act, I'd say that's just a more imrovisation-based style.

I've found that when resented with too many choices, many players talk themselves into a standstill. And when presented with the freedom to pick from too many hooks, they often go tharn.

Bear in mind, this isn't convention play. This is real people in my experience. It's like going to a restaurant where there's too many options on the menu. too much choice, can't make a decision, feeling pressured to decide. All combines to make for a bad experience.
Overcoming analysis paralysis is a problem players have to learn to deal with.
 
Somebody quoting Marxist dialectic in a thread about silly-ass elfgames? Oh, how I am laughing.

I didn't think it was possible to be more pretentious than Ron Edwards. I was wrong.
 
Somebody quoting Marxist dialectic in a thread about silly-ass elfgames? Oh, how I am laughing.

I didn't think it was possible to be more pretentious than Ron Edwards. I was wrong.
Come on...if you needed this thread as an example of pretentiousness, you haven't visited the right places of the Internet. Though I remember you posting on a forum which was one of them:tongue:!

(Also, my quoting of daoist teachings went unnoticed? I am offended:grin:!)
 
Here's what a sandbox is: A sandbox is a wide, shallow playground construction to hold sand, often made of wood or plastic. In RPG terms, it's become so vague and all encompassing as to mean nothing. But in it's simplest term, the first module many people of my generation's early play experiences met is a sandbox. The Keep on the Borderlands is more than just a castle and a collection of caves. It's an entire region. Also The Village of Hommlet and The Isle of Dread. Defined areas with locations detailed, NPCs written up and given motivations. And other encounters, both fixed and random.

The platonic ideal of a sandbox, if you will.

You're ignoring the fact that a good sandbox *scales*. I can run an entire "sandbox-style" game in the living-area of a hut *inside* the village of Hommlet. I just have to create the conceits that demand that the entirety of the game takes place in that space. The sandbox is merely the scale of what you're willing to allow. The means of what transpires inside the sandbox is where the magic-happens. And this is where the "taxonomy" of skillset is required depending on how detailed you want to run things within the sandbox. This is also the other item you're ignoring which I'll address below.

It's not some high art. It's a region with a few locations in and no solid reason for the characters to go anywhere. But a ton of things that might pique their interest and make them want to have a wander anyway.

So... while I may wax poetic and hyperbolic about GMing. I do believe it is a discrete skill. Art? eh. I guess it depends if it moves you that much. But then I don't know of any of my players that would have much of a reaction just going through dot-to-dot GM/Computer reading off flavor text of an area as a pretext to have a combat. I'd liken that to my music analogy as "playing a kazoo". I don't know a lot of people that play with me that are into "kazoo music". We like a little more depth. Sandbox campaigns of large scope are the *only* kinds of campaigns that can meet those high expectations and gaming needs. Period.

This is the taxonomy of styles vs. substance. There *is* a hierarchy of scale and capacity in styles of play. I'm not sure why this isn't obvious.

This is where I start to have issues. Talk about looking down on other styles of play. This is exactly the kind of thing that was going on back in the days when GNS was relevant, or when it was extreme charop or be eaten.

And this is where I *clearly* stated in my previous post, which you either ignored by intent, or by not reading at all - that I CLEARLY SAID:

A good Sandbox scales and can contain virtually all other forms of gaming - themepark, modules, even heavily narrated setpiece-storygames pretending to be other things.

You're taking personal umbrage that I merely put these styles in some kind of order based on *complexity* and *requirements*. I said they *ALL*(<--- see that) have a place in a good sandbox. I'm not saying you SUCK if you don't run Sandbox. I'm not saying your the product of bad-parenting if you don't run Sandbox. I'm not talking down to you based on your preference to NOT run Sandbox. I'm saying the requirements and flexibilty afforded to running a Sandbox style game allows for *ALL* those others to exist in whatever degree you desire as a GM within that framework. The reverse of that *is NOT* true. Because at that point - you're not running those other forms - you're running... wait for it... a Sandbox.

By definition - the Sandbox is a more expansive way of running things. That's all I'm saying. It is a taxonomic reality. You can't run a Sandbox inside a One-shot Dungeon Crawl. You have more capacity (for success or failure) with a 72-crayon box than a 4-color crayon box. But let's not pretend all quality is equal.

Try running a Dialectic style game some time. Where the GM gives a thesis, the players respond with an anithesis and the whole becomes a synthesis. Then you'll see a true symphony. Or not. Because the analogy falls flat when you realise that a symphony has no place for improvisation, where a sandbox demands, even requires, huge amounts of just that. Just as most RPGs do. Even ones that are using pre packaged material. Either in the form of setting or directed play.

I read this and it makes me realize you either don't know how to run a Sandbox, whether it's by your clearly visceral reaction to the word, or you're purposely staring at the analogy as if I'm being literal. There is *no* dialectic in the way I run my sandbox campaigns. Because I want them to succeed. I create the sandbox. I set the conceits of the sandbox. I make a primer for the players for the sandbox. They understand the starting point of the sandbox. They make characters appropriate for the sandbox. We play in the sandbox. What they do in the sandbox is the game. Rinse/repeat. The Devil in the Details is the thing you seem to not understand?

A more apt analogy would by blues or jazz. Where you take a loose framework and what happens between the musicians in the moment is something ephemeral. Rather than the composed majesty of symphony, you have the sublime moment that you either were there for or were not.

Okay you got me. It's jazz. Does that make it better? LOL

But then, a composer would naturally look down on organic music produced in the moment and never to be reproduced.

This assumes no Jazz player *ever* used a traditional chord progression to get themselves to a certain place. This assumes that Jazz musicians don't actually attempt to adhere to any traditional form of music theory to extemporaneously do something original - including a sly wink of another song composed on the spot within a Jazz song. Happens all the time. Jazz can *cover* almost anything musically. That's the whole point. And it can do things Kazoo playing can't.

The music analogy was a bit facetious on my part - but if you want to continue on this point... I'm not sure it's proving useful.

Why is having an entire world better than just having the bit that the characters are interacting with? Either directly or indirectly. I don't need a whole sandbox for players to have fun. I don't need to create anything I'm not going to use in order to have fun myself. I'm not saying you shouldn't have things prepped in advance, but I am saying that I tend to the Stephen R Donaldson approach, where coming up with something I'm not going to use directly is time spent doing something irrelevant to what I'm actually doing.

Again - YOU the game GM set the parameters of your Sandbox. Answer your own question with that in mind. Clearly - for you, make your sandbox your little town, your region, your dungeon. Or not use one at all.

What you're *really* asking is "What is fun?" You're asking a qualitative question that is subjective to the experiences of the players and the GM that is facilitating the game. I'll use your example... "Why does it matter if you create something "irrelevant" - Why would you do that? In what way is that a *real* discussion point. If you create your sandbox - what ISN'T relevant? Seriously. What is not relevant? As a GM sure I've made setpiece locations that never saw use. I made them because in my sandbox it *was* relevant to the sandbox. Doesn't matter if the PC's never go there. The fidelity I give to my world, my setting, the towns, the city-blocks, the houses on those city-blocks, the sewers beneath the houses, the details that satisfy *my* desires for the construction of the sandbox *is* relevant.

I'll take your Stephen Donaldson and raise you a J.K. Rowlings who only used about 10% of the materials she created for various locations - like Diagon Alley. Where she knows every single shop, every single person working in the shop and their back histories and what they do and how they came to be there. I construct my sandboxes the same way - scaled (actually I do what I call Staged Scaling). IF my players wander around my Sandbox, that is what they experience based on their own inclinations and my capacity to convey the consistency of the world-in-motion.

So the qualitative "fun" is like you asking if people only play Checkers why play Chess? If you only play Chess, why would you have fun playing D&D? There is a taxonomy of engagement, with commensurate requirement of effort balanced by the skill of a GM to pull that off. There is a level of play *I* and my players want they can't *get* by playing less complex styles of gaming. Let's use a sports analogy - Running a basic module is like Pee-Wee Baseball. I liken BIG SANDBOX styles games to MLB. They're both baseball. But they operate very differently in scope. If you lose in a Pee-Wee Match, oh well. Let's get pizza afterward. If you're big Sandbox craters... people tend to be more invested and it sucks. Conversely if you win the Pee-Wee Championship and have a great time - sweet. It's not the same as winning the World Series.

Conversely - what it takes to run a Pee-Wee league is a lower bar. And that is FINE. We love baseball. There IS a higher-bar to certain types of play in RPG's as well. I want to play and run games at that level. Sandbox style is what gets you there. I cannot have that same level of play in an Adventure Path.

There are more things in Heaven and Earth than are dreamt of in your philosophy, tenbones. It's not as simple as Sandbox or Script. There's no automatic being 'better' because a GM runs a particular style or other.

No. I'm right. And I'm going to say this *again* - this is taxonomical NOT binary. (Actually its holonic - the Sandbox holon transcends and INCLUDES your Scripted play) - you CAN'T script the freedom of a Sandbox. They're mutually exclusive. You can have "scripted" <X> IN a Sandbox. And AGAIN - I'm going to say this YET AGAIN - there are GREATER RISKS in running a Sandbox. Which is why I said - "maybe Sandbox isn't your jam." WHICH IS FINE. But let's not pretend what your'e saying is what I'm saying. Because its not. And stop ignoring the hand of the GM in here. It takes more effort and more skill to run Sandbox than to run Adventure Modules. If you and I can't agree on that - then there is no point in this discussion because we simply disagree on the requirements of style.

What makes you a better GM is being honest with yourself, admitting to your mistakes, trying to learn form your mistakes and finding out how to play to your strengths while minimising the problems your weaknesses cause. And above all, listening to what little feedback you get from players.

So let me ask you... where are you prone to make risks in learning how to GM? A scripted adventure or a Sandbox? If you're a GM that runs exclusively Sandbox for DECADES which includes variations of scripted and free-balling PC-driven content to their black-hearts ill-conceived but GM-willing content vs. being a GM that runs predominately scripted Adventure Modules for Decades where everything is largely laid out like a dot-to-dot. Which GM do you think develops a better GMing skillset? Which GM *ACTUALLY* sees their weaknesses in play? Which GM actually learns new strengths and runs across more novel means of approaching problems not found in a Scripted scenario because it's beyond the scope of such things? Yeah...

Just like you get better at anything, really.

The MVP of Little League is not the same thing as the MVP of the World Series.

I would actually say that many a good sandbox GM would really struggle with path style adventures, due to not being able to adapt, interpret or go off on a tangent without it effectively negating the rest of the campaign as purchased.

I know of *no* "Good Sandbox GM" with this problem. "Good" is a qualitative claim. What I consider "Good" (D.O.N.G. Purple-Belt) has no problem running any module except poorly written ones (which are most of them), and even then, they're "Good" enough to extemporaneously fix them to their own needs. That's the whole *point* of running a Sandbox.

This is also a problem I have, but for different reasons.

Acknowledged. I seriously think this is an issue that can solved.

Or you can concentrate on the bits of your game that face the players, know what your NPC goals, methods and resources are. And forget transcendence in order to play the game in front of you. Not the one you are dreaming of after smoking a bowl of something that's still illegal in much of the world.

And again - what about anything I've said makes you think that *ALL* of this isn't assumed in the creation of what the D.O.N.G. demands of a "Basic Run-of-the-Mill Acceptable Sandbox"? The game in front of us IS the game. Transcendence is an emergent effect. And for the record - I can't smoke illegal anything while GMing. Because I have work to do in making my game awesome. Though I will drink some whisky.

The most transcendent moments of my gaming history, and there have only been four or five of them, have all been because the GM posed a situation and a player responded to it in a way that is really hard to describe. But that suddenly took that single session of play in a new direction. One that was utterly unplanned, but absolutely driven by character.

Great. This happens every single goddamn session in my games. What is your point? Our ideas of transcendence are *clearly* different. My idea of "Peak Moments" - are having grown men and women crying for joy or sadness due to circumstances playing out in the game between their characters and NPC's. Or out of their seat screaming in victory at a multi-year plot thread being resolved to their climatic conclusion. etc.

I run large scale sandbox campaigns. Every session is an adventure. Every moment is chance at something totally unexpected for *everyone*, myself included. My job as the GM of such constructions is to keep the consistency of that world flowing seamlessly.

I've ran multi year campaign in Night City and Ryoko Owari, two radically different but fundamentally similar sandbox settings. One is filled with endless random encounters and background detail, the other populated with a glorious array of NPCs and their secrets. I've ran campaign in settings that I made up as I went along and that were cobbled together from stacks of modules and magazine articles.

At no point did I feel like a conductor. Either a bus or orchestra conductor. Though I guess once or twice I felt like lightning was being conducted.

So yeah, as I said upthread and here - sounds like running Sandbox is not your "thing". Whats with the defensiveness? You somehow seem to conflate your style as being equal to the requirements of Sandbox-play *outside* your skill to run. That's not a stab at you - that's taking your own statement above for face value. The problem here is you seem to think that because you don't *like* it because its outside your comfort zone (and if you feel your game is uncomfortable to run in such a manner - so *clearly* you downshifted the complexity to where it IS comfortable, right?) that I'm somehow dumping on you? I'm not. But I'm putting things in order of taxonomic complexity.

And I've posted this elsewhere - and I think this last quote of yours PERFECTLY sums up the differences in our positions. I run design my Sandboxes to PUSH me into the uncomfortable zone. I'm *always* trying to grow as a GM. I've been GMing weekly since 1978, and if I don't feel uncomfortable with the scope and potential scale of my campaigns, I don't feel like I'm giving it "my all". And to ME I'm doing a disservice to my players (and to myself) because I want those Peak Moments(tm) that I can't get just running scripted stuff. I don't mind scripted stuff, I rarely use it, and when I do, I tear it apart to fit my needs in my sandbox. I never want to take my games for granted. Ever.

That is a standard for myself.

But I think what I'm really trying to say is, I was too damn busy running games for between three and fourteen people, depending on time and the game being played, to worry about anything other than what worked to keep people coming back next week to do it all again.

But in every case, the ones that worked, that succeeded, were the ones where I paid attention to the player and the characters over everything else.

See? And for me - I make no difference between the player, the setting, myself as the GM. It's all one thing. I don't run games for multiple groups (anymore - I used to run for 17 players in LA) - I have a waiting list to get into my campaigns as it is, I keep it focused on us as a whole, these are not discrete things. In many ways I liken my gaming group to a band. Our music is our game. Yeah I guess the one thing I agree with you on - it's Jazz. WE make it. It's not something handed to us to be played haphazardly.
 
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Oh great, pages of people arguing about sandboxes. Again.

Sandboxes mean different things to different people. Some love them, some hate them. Some people thing that Sandboxes mean a very specific thing and some people think they are quite general. Arguing about it doesn't help and won't convince anyone.

Some people think that a sandbox is a blank hex map and the party find out what is there, hex by hex.
Some people think a Sandbox is where the players decide where to go and the GM reacts to what they want.
Some people think a Sandbox is a map where the party can go to whatever is on the map and do whatever they want.
Some people think a Sandbox can have a Plot, or World in Motion, that the party can interact with or ignore
Some people think that a Sandbox should never have a Plot or World in Motion
Some people think that a GM can have pre-prepared scenarios for a Sandbox
Some people think that a GM can never have pre-prepared scenarios for a Sandbox
 
Oh great, pages of people arguing about sandboxes. Again.

Sandboxes mean different things to different people. Some love them, some hate them. Some people thing that Sandboxes mean a very specific thing and some people think they are quite general. Arguing about it doesn't help and won't convince anyone.

Some people think that a sandbox is a blank hex map and the party find out what is there, hex by hex.
Some people think a Sandbox is where the players decide where to go and the GM reacts to what they want.
Some people think a Sandbox is a map where the party can go to whatever is on the map and do whatever they want.
Some people think a Sandbox can have a Plot, or World in Motion, that the party can interact with or ignore
Some people think that a Sandbox should never have a Plot or World in Motion
Some people think that a GM can have pre-prepared scenarios for a Sandbox
Some people think that a GM can never have pre-prepared scenarios for a Sandbox
Some people are wrong.
 
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