TJS
Legendary Pubber
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- May 5, 2018
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Not the same as railroading but it also means that a sandbox game doesn't necessarily avoid railroading.My point was more that once the party bites on a hook that story is necessarily constrained by the possible connections between the various NPCs and factions as well as by physical location. Not linear maybe, but also not what some people seem to be indexing when they say sandbox, which I think best describes the downtime, or in between jobs part of that kind of campaign. Mostly I'm trying to point out that sandbox play doesnt lack structure, and structure implies at least some restriction of useful ways to proceed.
Not the same as railroading at all of course but thats why I feel like some definitional work might be useful here
Just because the party have chosen to do X, doesn't mean that playing through X won't end up being a railroad.
(And often it's the smaller opportunities for decisions that crop up during the course of play that are the more important to the players)
A sandbox is more of a macro-structure and railroading usually is more of a problem on a level below that.