I'm doing some research for an upcoming blog. Tell me about your experience and expectations with sandbox campaigns, please.
Are you a player or GM?
What have you experienced of sandbox campaigns?
How do you define sandbox?
What do you want a great sandbox experience to be?
I'm doing some research for an upcoming blog. Tell me about your experience and expectations with sandbox campaigns, please.
Are you a player or GM?
What have you experienced of sandbox campaigns?
How do you define sandbox?
What do you want a great sandbox experience to be?
A sandbox campaign to me means an open play space. There are dungeons and monsters but the GM doesn't force the players to go into a particular dungeon and the story doesn't strictly demand that the players confront particular monsters. A sandbox campaign means, to me, that the story doesn't railroad the players into a single course of action and is more open-ended.
I'm trying to put together a sandbox game right now as a GM. What that means for me is trying to put lots of things in the sandbox region for the players to deal with and discover. While I do have certain villains that I hope they'll choose to oppose, I'm not planning on using plot hooks that force the characters into a course of immediate action.
The last game I DMed (a D&D 3.5e game) was a major railroad. I ran the story as written, which involved a number of kidnapped arcanists being sacrificed in an evil ritual to allow an evil deity to get a better foothold in the world. The players were trying to rescue the arcanists that were kidnapped and if they deviated from the quest, more people would die as a direct result of their inaction or procrastination. It basically amounted to a huge dungeon crawl (even though it wasn't technically in a dungeon but on another plane) because the party had no option but to press-on and keep going forward.
So basically I define a sandbox campaign as flexible, the opposite of a railroad campaign. It's a free-roaming play space, more or less, possibly of a defined size that might increase as the characters increase in level (and gain all kinds of travel powers).
Thank you Wolf Munroe.
Keep 'em coming. I'm looking for lots of definitions and expectations.
As a GM, a sandbox campaign allows me to develop my own world at the pace the players set for me. I can design a number of hooks and see which one attracts the group first. If the mountain pass to the north is suffering bandit attacks, a local nobleman has been kidnapped while hunting in the forest to the east, and in town there have been mysterious disappearances of children, that puts a lot out there for the group to consider. Perhaps they don't care about the nobleman and the pass is too far away. The paladin and the cleric convince the group to see about the children.
So I design my first adventure around that idea, using things I've noted down and flesh it out for a group of beginners. They go about their business and save the day. Meanwhile, I can take my other hooks and make them progress as I want, developing other things for the group to handle. Perhaps the bandits are able to close the pass entirely, making their job easier by extracting high tolls on passing merchants. This is because the local soldiers are instead hunting for the lost nobleman, who happens to be cousin to the queen. And again, perhaps these don't sway my PCs to act, so I give them something else to do and meanwhile these things continue to grow on their own, shaping the world and eventually becoming something that either forces the players to pay attention, or at least has a significant impact on what goes on in the world, directly or indirectly affecting the PCs and the choices they make. The wizard may find that he can't craft the potions he wants as readily because rare reagents from the north aren't making their way to the markets, causing the price to go up. This might entice the group to make their way north.
It's a more flexible way to play and not every GM is up for it, but I find it highly rewarding.
Thank you Paizoians, this is helpful. The more info, and the differing versions all help me. Keep 'em coming.
I sort of agree with everyone? Like Jerry Wright I think a sandbox world is a well-developed one--basically, if the PCs decide to go somewhere, the GM has an idea of what will happen when they get there.
You can have stories and plots in a sandbox game, but no outline where the PCs must do A, B, and C in that order to follow the plot. Rather, there is a situation the PCs are drawn to, and they could get into it a number of ways using the world design as a basis for the possibilities.
For example, the PCs are in a town where the mayor is actually a shapechanged demon, and she is slowly corrupting the town's officials and charismatic individuals, hoping to push them into a rebellion which will then result in a civil war that will devastate the countryside.
There are a number of ways the PCs can get clues that something's wrong--from an NPC friend, overhearing something, meeting with a concerned government official (instead of, say, "The PCs must go to the tavern and hear rumor B to go to the next step). They could even wander around and do something different but it still might lead them to a clue that something's wrong in the town -- they decide to ignore town politics for example, but when they go clear an abandoned temple, they discover some imps talking about their "Mistress" nearby.
How they determine what's going in, and how they confront the villain (or IF they confront the villain) has a lot of fluidity (full force raid, careful investigation, designing a dimensional trap, etc.) and is largely up to them. If they think the rebellion is a good idea, they might even try to help her.
Basically it's a set up where the GM designs situations, but the players have utmost agency in what they decide to do about them.
The thing about sandbox design is it takes a lot of work up front--you have to detail out a lot of the world--but once you start playing, you don't necessarily have to prep a lot because you just use your world knowledge to create appropriate reactions rather than trying to stick to a script (and fret when the players go off it). It's a hard method to master (I like the idea of sandbox but still tend to go linear at times) but has a lot of potential.
One thing is sandbox games requires very invested, very self-actuated players. I have encountered players who really do wait for the plot to happen to them--they refuse to explore or interact or engage with NPCs. Sandbox games don't work for those kind of players because they are waiting for the GM to hold their hand and take them down the storyline. You need players who are willing to stir up some trouble for themselves, and those who pay attention to details and play on them.
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To me as a GM, a sandbox game is a game driven by what the players want to do, not what story arc the GM has in mind for the game.
If your players want to sit in the tavern all day, every day, and waste their 50 silver left over from character creation, and you as a GM provide involving story pieces for them to interact with, it is sandbox. Yes you might have the occasional goblin attack on the town, or traveling pyromaniac that the party must oppose to keep their sacred meeting place alive, but you as GM aren't steering them away from their 'lets stay at the tavern' experience.
Sometimes it is really hard to have players with enough motivation to want to push the game forward and shape the sandbox. That is why there are things like 100 story hooks in the GMG, so that you can pull in something simple and one-off without taking over the power the players have in their sandbox game. There have been numerous games I've played in advertised as 'sandbox' to fizzle out because one or two players were the only ones investing enough effort on their side to keep the game a player driven sandbox.
Oftentimes, the advertised 'sandbox' games are really planned arcs with sandboxy rest stops. One example of this was in a game I ran in 2006, the party had a year of downtime and 50K gp each to invest or build something with (no getting items or anything). A couple of the players built a tavern, another started a pearl harvesting operation, the forth built a wall around a dungeon that he had claimed in the name of his evil cult. It was a sandboxy event in an otherwise pretty linear campaign.
I have encountered players who really do wait for the plot to happen to them--they refuse to explore or interact or engage with NPCs.I, too, find this to be frustrating. I have always run my world as a sandbox (although I'm not quite as organized as my description implies, unfortunately), and I have tried to let the players decide how the game begins. This is how it used to go:
No decision from the players about where they want to start for half an hour or more of game time, so they get plopped down in a frontier sort of town with wide open opportunites.
The role-players monopolize the game, staying in town no matter how many times an NPC mentions "the ruins in the woods" or the "mysterious happenings" in the barrow downs, or the "bandits along the king's road", and the hack-and-slashers continue to sit in the tavern and drink: "I'm in the tavern when you want to do something."
This goes on for hours.
My solution:
Right after character creation, I tell the players that their party has already met each other, that for one reason or another they've decided to adventure together, and are en route to one of the low-level adventure areas in the world, usually some woods or a dungeon.
My current reboot of my campaign started off this way, with the PCs on their way to a ruined keep at the edge of some nasty woodlands. They encountered some orc bandits, fought a troll under a bridge, got attacked by undead in the burial mounds along the route, are currently exploring a different dungeon beneath a princess's tomb, and have ventured back to town a couple of times for this or that reason.
So they haven't even started the original adventure I sent them out on.
And this past week one of the hack-n-slashers accused me of railroading the party.
You can't win. :P
I recall one time my PCs being stuck in an endless shopping loop. So I had one character's pocket picked which led her to chase the thief--and the others saw her chasing the culprit, joined in, and a little story followed.
With the people who like to sit in the tavern and drink, tavern brawls are always nice (or have them be poisoned or distracted by someone or whatever).
And no, you can't win. It comes down to someone feeling like they're being forced to do something they don't want--which may have nothing to do with you--but you get blamed because you're in charge. Just best to keep communication and clear up misunderstandings when they arise. If someone says they feel railroaded, ask them what they'd rather be doing and then ask them to bring that up with the players and see if the others would agree.
I'd say that when applied to tabletop RPGs, "sandbox" is an approach or a style of play whereas the story involving the player-characters is driven by the players choices and actions, as opposed to a structured adventure where the players react to the game master's prepared storyline, obstacles and antagonists.
This requires a great level of flexibility and adaptation from the GM, who need to able to react to the players' choices through the action of their characters. It generally requires the GM to be creative, good at improvisation and to a certain extent, posses an in-depth knowledge of the gaming world.
On the other hand, structured adventure can get more complex and detailed with less risk of getting swollen with superfluous materiel or incoherent information.
In practice, I rarely seen any DM run a purely sandbox game. Most sandbox games possess some kind of plot or main storyline that has been prepared to a certain extent, driving the characters in a certain direction or recurring leitmotiv throughout the game.
In my experience as a "sandbox" GM, the game master shouldn't be afraid to drop an unfinished arc altogether an develop new ones as new developments occur in the game.
'findel
Are you a player or GM?
What have you experienced of sandbox campaigns?
How do you define sandbox?
What do you want a great sandbox experience to be?
1)I am both a plasyer and a GM.
2)Every game I run tends to be sandboxey. The only problems I have with running a sand box style of game is when my players don't do anything.
As a player some of the funnest games I have been are sand box style. As I feel more involved and invested in the campaign.
3) It is a campaign where the players do the most of the plot driving. Sure the GM can have plots and over arching plot line might develope...but mostly it is in reaction to the players actions. Also another important part is the world continues to move on with out the PCs. An Example of this is if the PCs decide not to get involved in countries x revolution...it still happens.
4) Active players driving the story with a clever GM reacting to what they are doing.
I agree with a lot of what I read above. For me, a sandbox game is generally an open ended game where the players choices (and the consequences of those choices) drive the game. The setting is one with multiple locations, characters and organizations that relate to each other in various ways and there is a general course of events that will happen as time moves forward. There are almost always multiple stories in the background. Without the outside interference of the party, things will change in certain ways. But there are no major outside story pressures pushing the players to go to either A or B. The players pretty much decide what interests them and in some ways self limit their choices by choosing to follow certain leads or explore certain locales. When the caravan gets robbed the PCs can choose to chase the bandits, tend to the wounded, escort the survivors to safety or just ignore the situation at their own leisure. The game goes on regardless of what they decide to do. But what happens next can be influenced by that choice.
L
This can be a huge issue because it means differnt things to different people. For some people if the GM doesn't down a single non-branching plot line then it is a sandbox.
That is not what it is to me. To me a sandbox campaign is where it is a major plot that the GM has created for the environment, but there is not a detailed plot defining what will happen next.
For example: The PC's loyal citizens of the country of Subestan, which is currently losing a war with Obestan (for various reasons). The players might chose to: Make raids into Obestan. Stop the spies giving intel to Obestan. Create a defensive fortification within Subestan. Or. Take out one of the forces raiding into Subestan. Etc... So the PC's decide what they are going to try to do (or maybe try to get permission to do) and the GM then creates a 'module' for the next few sessions. Rinse and repeat.
Alot of people claim they want a REAL sandbox campaign with virtually complete freedom, but they often don't work out as well as desired.
It requires a pretty free wheeling improvising GM. (I personally am not good enough to do a REAL sandboxy campaign. Though I do try to give the players alot of freedom of choice.)
Often even the players who wanted it still don't know what to do next.
Often the characters created don't mesh well enough IC to want to do the same things in the same ways.
They can be alot of fun with the right group, but they often just kinda dribble off as aimless or disconnected.