# It needs to be more of a sandbox than a railroad?



## Oryan77 (Sep 9, 2014)

This topic came from some thoughts I had based on the thread here.

I just didn't want to derail that thread, so I am ranting in my own thread. 

I don't mean to say that either is good or bad. But I've played in plenty of sandbox games to recognize that just because you DM a sandbox game does not automatically make your game better than a railroaded game. It also does not mean that just because you run a railroaded game, it is automatically worse than a sandbox game. I understand the extremes of what makes a railroaded game bad (notice I said "_extremes_") and I definitely notice what can make a sandbox game bad.

What people don't seem to realize is that a good adventure will have a bit of both aspects (sandbox and railroad). But being a railroad does *not* make it a bad adventure. It's impossible to run a pre-written adventure without it being a railroad. Otherwise, you'll never complete it. Or if you somehow do, it won't make any sense at all when you finish the last chapter. On the flip side, saying that an adventure should be a sandbox doesn't even make sense. The adventure itself *has* to be a railroad or there is no way to reach a conclusion (the end). Being a sandbox has nothing to do with the adventure. It's up to the DM as to how much he railroads them in the adventure. Even if you try to say that the players should have choices on how to accomplish tasks in the adventure, that's still up to the DM. You can't blame an adventure for that. Even if it's written that object X is the only item that can get PCs past room Y, you still can't put that on the adventure if the DM can't figure out how to handle that before the PCs end up in room Y without object X. Sure, that's the adventure railroading a bit, but what's wrong with that? It's part of the "puzzle" and if the PCs miss it, it's up to the DM to nudge them along until they finally get it or figure out an alternative if they missed a clue.

Some might even say, "Well I'd like to be able to skip around chapters of the adventure rather than be forced to go through them in order." Ok, but what does that matter? The only person that should even be aware of that is the DM. And as a DM, why do I care if the PCs are forced to do things in a particular order? The players shouldn't necessarily realize that they are going in some sort of order within the adventure. The illusion should be that there is no order at all. It shouldn't even be in the players minds. 

So I just don't see how a pre-written adventure can even be a sandbox adventure. The closest I can come up with is Dead Gods and Tales from the Infinite Staircase. I have run both, and all they do is provide chapters that can be run in any order and still allow the PCs to make it to the end. But it is recommended for them to at least go through all of the chapters so that when they make it to the end, the ending makes sense to them! But I never felt like that choice was a big benefit for the adventure. It certainly didn't make me enjoy DMing it any more than any other adventure (it's actually more of a hassle for me since I like to prep ahead of time and not knowing where they go first leaves me guessing which chapters to prep first). Players don't honestly care because they don't know that they are "going off track". As far as they are concerned, their actions took them on a linear path regardless of whether you can run the chapters in any order or not.

Rather than focus on if your game is considered sandbox or railroad, focus on how to use both aspects to your advantage and avoid the problems that make both of those "_extremes_" a bad gaming style. What makes a sandbox game bad is when it is so open-ended, that there are no hooks planned out to nudge players on. The DM just waits for the players to provide a hook rather than the players waiting for a hook to present itself. Then he tries to run with something without having any real thoughts about it. 

I've played in several sandbox games that did that and were absolutely boring. I mean, mind numbingly boring. Even when we gave the DM a hook to run with, the games were boring. I don't play D&D as a player so I can create adventures for the DM. My PC might provide a possible adventure for the DM to run with, but I don't want it so open-ended that nothing happens unless I initiate it. I can't imagine those are very long lasting campaigns. I'm sure even a good sandbox game has to have some kind of pre-planned prep going on so there is some kind of structure for an adventure? And once you are using those ideas in the game, you aren't exactly running a sandbox game either. You just hooked them in and set them on the railroad tracks.

Then I know what people mean when they say that railroading is bad. But they have a misconception about that. The extreme, which is what most are referring to I think, is when their PCs actions really have no impact, and their actions are even thwarted most of the time so that the DM doesn't have to deal with any left turns in his plot/adventure. I agree, that's bad. But that in no way makes "railroading" bad. The trick is, to railroad by giving the illusion that you are not railroading. Think of it like a movie. You might be in the middle of it, all on edge and filled with excitement while young Anakin is talking to Jar-Jar, and as soon as you see that boom mic dip into frame, you're pulled out because they just screwed it up and now you're reminded that you are watching a movie. Same thing with an adventure.

I like running pre-written adventures. I don't have time to write entire storylines, NPCs, locations, encounters, and treasures myself. I also find it fun running them. So when I buy one, and prepare it, I expect to be running it. So sure, I don't want the PCs to decide to go spelunking when the adventure requires them to get hooked into going down into the sewers of the city. So rather than dip the boom mic into frame by having a gargantuan red dragon blocking the only way to the cave, I'm going to figure out how to make something just as interesting happen that will get them wanting to go into the sewers and put that spelunking trip on hold (and then I can prep some quick dungeon crawl for the next session now that I know they want that). It's an illusion, I tricked you into changing your minds about spelunking and now yer all curious about these children that keep pickpocketing you and escaping down into the sewers (and those kids aren't even part of the sewer adventure, I just needed a different hook to get you there). There also needs to be some sort of gentleman's agreement with the DM. Yer being a pretty big douche if you realize the DM keeps trying to hook you into a scenario and you purposely keep avoiding it because you want to figure out how to go spelunking *that* bad at *that* moment.

At the same time, the DM still needs to be flexible and roll with the punches. I am constantly putting my pre-written adventures on hold because the PCs go off on a tangent. The thing is, I tell them that I will be making it up as we go since I didn't prepare for it. And if they are ok with it possibly being a tad underwhelming since I wasn't prepared, then we run with it. It may take me a few sessions, but I *always* get them back on track so we can get back to the adventure. Even if it means that I connivingly managed to divert their off-beat path right back onto my railroad tracks. The trick is to keep it from being obvious (don't dip the mic). A lot of the time, even diverting them back on track and making what they unexpectedly did relate to the adventure makes them more intrigued and surprised, and then they go full speed down the railroad tracks without me pushing them.

So, I'm just tired of the whole "railroad is bad, sandbox is good" bandwagon that so many people have been on for so long. I think people are more concerned with using words like "sandbox" to appear as if they are a better DM rather than simply being a better DM.


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## Morrus (Sep 9, 2014)

A bad sandbox is worse than a bad railroad. 

I agree, neither is a quality judgement. They're styles, they have their places, and something in between the two usually works better than either extreme.

A railroad can be *really* good with a certain amount of player buy-in. It can also chafe without that buy-in.


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## neonagash (Sep 9, 2014)

Meh, I think your wrong about sandboxes needing to be prepped too. 

I've pretty much exclusively ran sandbox games for years specifically because I dont have a lot of time to prep. 

I just make it up as I go. Its really not that hard. When the players are looking for something to do just make up a bunch of different rumors, some might be related, some might not. Doesnt matter, the only one you need to do any justification on is the one they actually think is interesting enough to investigate. The others.... meh, who cares? 

And while they are investigating that one rumor make sure they hear lots of others. Make sure some are totally bogus ( it lends a sense of reality, i mean really why is every tavern drunk with a fish story telling the truth in so much of D&D land? Doesnt make a lick of sense to me. ) My players have learned to take notes of the things they find interesting. 

For instance in my NWoD hunter game last time the players heard a bunch of rumors and decided to follow up on one from a crazy hunter/ survivalist type one guy knew (totally made up on the spot) about rumors of zombies in a South Dakota town. 

On the road trip there they stopped in a diner because they passed a "hunter spot" Which is something I made up. Basically loose organisations of hunters got together and developed a mobile app where they can mark a hot spot and leave notes. But being a bunch of crazed vigilantes some arent the best note takers. 

So because theres only so much interesting to describe on a road trip from Las Vegas to SD I have a spot buzz that just says to avoid the hospital at night in this tiny little town. Zero prep. 

Naturally players  being players they pull over to investigate and ask around a small diner and get some clues which lead them to conclude its a ghost. (it wasnt at first, but I figured if they have ghosts on the brain then thats bound to be an interesting encounter for them so lets roll with it). I'm all set for a ghost hunt now..... and they ask about the hunter who left the note. Uh oh. No prep, I'm doomed right? Nah. I just spun a story about a slightly bumbling but well meaning ghost hunter who had an encounter one day that showed him the real darkness of the world and thus was a hunter born. Oh and he's got a website with some youtube video's of his old and newer hunts. 

Now they wanna talk to him, (crap) but its okay because he's dead now. Naturally they want to know how. So instead of going with the obvious and him dying in the hospital.... (screw that cheese, i like mine weirder) he was actually on a treasure hunt for the lost Dutchman mine, and had cameras that amazingly recorded and uploaded video live from deep in a mine. (do they ask about how the heck he did that without a huge budget, crew and logistics? No, they would have I'm sure but instead they wanted to see the video, cool, cue the video) So i describe a video about bumbling but armed treasure hunters wading through waist deep water in an abandoned mine in an undisclosed location in the superstition mountains. Who are then attacked by a difficult to see well (darkness and water) octopus like creature who kills and eats them both, which they naturally heroically fight and lose to. 

Now the players are hooked. 20 minutes of knowledge checks and some general making stuff totally up on my part and we have a possible race of subterranean octopi, as first described by Jules Verne in a lost chronicle (he was a hunter too) and it probably got there because the earths surface is potentially riddled with caves below the water table, and hey the sea of cortez is not that far from Arizona so it could have come from there, or its relatives, who knows? (why an octopus? I dont know, first thing that came to mind and being trapped with a big ass octopus in a watery cave sounds scary to me.)   

They still went to finish the zombie quest (which went hilariously wrong despite/ because of all their seeming best efforts to ensure it would do so) but copious notes were taken by said players on the other two plots and they are already debating which one to follow after healing up. 

Now as I said I'm running a NWoD hunter game, but we just wrapped a PF game with an AP at its core and did the same thing. Lots of rumors, Lots of weird off quest mischief, including a kobald deliberating throwing an honor duel because he thought the viking wouldnt kill him if didnt fight back (oops, failed that WIS check) a half orc becoming a viking chief and three sessions getting taken up exploring an ancient ruin inhabited by a trapped evil fey, a witch that might or might not be evil but probably not from appearances, and huge, ancient underground levels half flooded (its on the coast and the tides eroded holes to the sea) all spurred by running one week as a side quest because half the party had their car die at the last minute and couldnt make it so I just made up some options for the rest of the party to investigate and this is the one they picked. The only reason they got back on the main story at all was one of the time elements triggered and some of the half orcs new followers got killed, which reminded them of the actual point of coming to that island in the first place 

So it works fine even with pre-written adventures too.


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## Oryan77 (Sep 9, 2014)

neonagash said:


> I just make it up as I go.




I don't mean to say it can't be done. Just like I'm saying that it's wrong to think that a railroaded game can't be perfectly good. My point is, people claim that anything referred to as railroaded is bad, and sandbox automatically means it's better (and can't be bad). Labeling either term as good or bad and either one as being the right way to do it and the other is the wrong way is what I find to be odd.

But the thing that got me to start this thread is when so many people answered a poll by voting that keeping a _pre-written adventure_ as a sandbox is the most important thing to do when writing an adventure. I just don't get it. You're entire example is based off of "making it up as you go". Which is what we think of as being a sandbox. We let the players do what they want and we make it up as we go. So how on earth is the sandbox concept one of the most important things in making a pre-written adventure a good adventure? I take the time to run a published adventure because I don't want to make it up as a go. I will make up the parts for when the PCs go off track. But I'm running the adventure so that I can railroad them into eventually completing the adventure. Like I said before, sandboxing seems more like it is up to the DM to do, not a published adventure. It completely seems like people just voted that because seeing the word "sandbox" must mean "better and most important", so they had a knee-jerk reaction to vote for that option. 

In keeping true to a sandbox mentality, I'd say that a blank sheet of paper would make for a fantastic published adventure.


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## Quickleaf (Sep 9, 2014)

Morrus said:


> A bad sandbox is worse than a bad railroad.
> 
> I agree, neither is a quality judgement. They're styles, they have their places, and something in between the two usually works better than either extreme.
> 
> A railroad can be *really* good with a certain amount of player buy-in. It can also chafe without that buy-in.



Morrus puts it perfectly. 



			
				Oryan77 said:
			
		

> Like I said before, sandboxing seems more like it is up to the DM to do, not a published adventure.



First, I want to emphasize that we agree we're talking about a spectrum and not the extremes. The douche DM who aggravatingly makes the players follow a hook they don't want to, and the douche player who refuses to follow a hook that everyone agreed to get on board with...well, neither of them have a place in this conversation. I believe most players/DMs are not douches, are actually pretty reasonable, and their games are in the grey area between Pure Sandbox & Pure Railroad.

Second, I want to say you're initiating a really good question: Can a published adventure be designed to help a DM to run a sandbox-ish game? If so, how?

I think that yes, an adventure can be easier or harder for a DM to (a) accomodate a greater bandwidth of player agency (meaningful choice), and (b) tweak, adapt, and otherwise kitbash. Here are some examples of HOW which I'm incorporating in my own adventure writing: 

*NPC/Power Group Timelines:* What are the steps of the villain's plan if the PCs don't intervene? How does the plan adapt to certain changing conditions likely to come up during the adventure? For example, I know from my timeline for the Queen of Air & Darkness that if the PCs take out or redeem theFalse Queen in time then the False Queen doesn't lead the Unseelie Court to Mnemosyne, making it much harder for the Queen of Air & Darkness to find Mnemosyne later. Without the timeline I'd had to parse or memorize more of the adventure text; the timeline puts the information I need at a quick glance.

*Rugged Adventures:* The more important an adventure hook is (the higher it's page count), the more critical it is that the adventure hook be resilient. By this I mean, a mystery shouldn't unravel if a single divination spell is cast, a conspiracy or cult shouldn't crumble entirely if the leader is killed, an NPC that needs to be somewhere at a certain time better have a foolproof and thematically appropriate way of being there even if it means cheating death. Generally this applies to the main overarching campaign hook, since smaller adventure hooks can be solved/bypassed without "losing out on" as many printed pages of material.

*Prepping to Improvise:* Normally a prepared DM has lists of names, random encounter tables, and other resources to make their life easier when things don't go according to plan. An adventurer can make the DM's life easier by including such things tailored to the adventure's themes. Also, when listing NPCs in an appendix or cast of characters section, pointing out what other adventures/episodes that NPC plays an important role can be a great help to a DM if something happens to that NPC. Likewise, relationship matrix maps can be a big help in this regard too.

*Breaker Walls:* Having logical getting on / getting off points for the adventure really helps DMs customizing things for their group. For example, I've conveniently used 5th edition's tiers as a way to divide the different "chapters" of my adventure, providing story arcs with convenient spots to jump off of and do your own thing for a while. Or you can keep on going, the choice is yours.

*Adventure Hooks:* Providing multiple reasons to get involved in the adventures, along with multiple entry points can be helpful for DMs adapting the adventure to a more sandbox style of play.

*Quest Connections:* In a campaign the PCs' actions in one adventure can influence how events play out in another adventure. Marking that for DMs can be a great help when a DM sits down with his or her 30 minutes before the next game to figure out how to adjust the published adventure given what happened last game. A graphical "map" can help too, though such models tend to be more branching decision trees than a real sandbox. Still very useful no matter if your game leans more sandbox or more railroad.

*Site-Based Adventure Design:* This is the traditional hallmark of a sandbox style. Even if you strip out the story connecting everything you can still use the places. I listed it last because classic D&D tends to overdo this point at the expense of the others I've made.

Anyhow, those are a few of the ideas I'm playing with.  Curious to hear other's thoughts.


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## pemerton (Sep 9, 2014)

Oryan77 said:


> It's impossible to run a pre-written adventure without it being a railroad. Otherwise, you'll never complete it.



This depends a bit on the pre-written adventure.

For instance, it's possible to run G2 without it being a railroad - the players have their PCs kill giants until they die, kill them all, or get sick of it.

But I agree you can't start with G1 and be guaranteed, in advance, to make it all the way through to Q1 without it being a railroad.

For my part, because I don't like railroading, I don't run pre-written adventures as they are written. I use them as sources of backstory (history, NPC, maps), and for particular situations that I can drop into my game. (And G2 is, arguaby, one big giant-infested situation.)

Some people regard GM-authored situations as railroading, but personally I don't as long as the players are free to choose how their PCs engage the situation.

Some people regard GM-authored backstory as railroading (though probably not many ENworlders). I'm sympathetic to that view, and that affects both my choice of pre-written adventures, and the way in which I incorporate them into my game.


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## am181d (Sep 9, 2014)

The opposite of "sandbox" isn't "railroad," it's "event-driven."

A properly run event-driven adventure hinges on specific events beyond the players' control and then adapts to their choices and actions.


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## Umbran (Sep 9, 2014)

Morrus said:


> I agree, neither is a quality judgement. They're styles, they have their places, and something in between the two usually works better than either extreme.




Agreed.  



am181d said:


> The opposite of "sandbox" isn't "railroad," it's "event-driven."




No.  We have a strong tendency to structure our discussions as if everything were at one end or another of a spectrum, but this often gives us an inaccurate view of the situation.  We would do well to not force everything into dichotomies.

"Sandbox," "railroad," (or, to take out some of the connotation - "linear") and "event-driven," are not really poles.  To say one is the opposite of another is kind of like saying that Italian cuisine is the opposite of French cuisine.  They use similar ingredients, but differ in applications and techniques.


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## Quickleaf (Sep 9, 2014)

Umbran said:


> "Sandbox," "railroad," (or, to take out some of the connotation - "linear") and "event-driven," are not really poles.  To say one is the opposite of another is kind of like saying that Italian cuisine is the opposite of French cuisine.  They use similar ingredients, but differ in applications and techniques.




That's an interesting perspective. I always saw sandbox & railroad as extreme poles at the end of a spectrum, useful as theoretical definitions to establish common language but hardly ever practiced in reality at game tables.

In a Pure Sandbox, the players generate all the driving conflict, decide wherever they want to go, and whatever they want to do. The GM take a purely reactive role.

In a Pure Railroad, the GM generates all the driving conflict, where the players go and what quests they undertake is pre-scripted. The players take a purely reactive role.


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## Mark CMG (Sep 9, 2014)

Railroad or Sandbox, whatever is run, it's a more immersive and satisfying experience, IMO, if it at least feels like a sandbox. 


That said, most adventures tend to be on a sliding scale somewhere between those two extremes.


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## neonagash (Sep 10, 2014)

Oryan77 said:


> I don't mean to say it can't be done. Just like I'm saying that it's wrong to think that a railroaded game can't be perfectly good. My point is, people claim that anything referred to as railroaded is bad, and sandbox automatically means it's better (and can't be bad). Labeling either term as good or bad and either one as being the right way to do it and the other is the wrong way is what I find to be odd.
> 
> But the thing that got me to start this thread is when so many people answered a poll by voting that keeping a _pre-written adventure_ as a sandbox is the most important thing to do when writing an adventure. I just don't get it. You're entire example is based off of "making it up as you go". Which is what we think of as being a sandbox. We let the players do what they want and we make it up as we go. So how on earth is the sandbox concept one of the most important things in making a pre-written adventure a good adventure? I take the time to run a published adventure because I don't want to make it up as a go. I will make up the parts for when the PCs go off track. But I'm running the adventure so that I can railroad them into eventually completing the adventure. Like I said before, sandboxing seems more like it is up to the DM to do, not a published adventure. It completely seems like people just voted that because seeing the word "sandbox" must mean "better and most important", so they had a knee-jerk reaction to vote for that option.
> 
> In keeping true to a sandbox mentality, I'd say that a blank sheet of paper would make for a fantastic published adventure.




I think by sandbox concept they mean having lots of different ways to get to the end, and ideally several different possible endings. So the characters decisions actually have some say in determining the outcome, rather then with a lot of pre-written adventures, especially older ones, where theres really only one path and one possible outcome.


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## mcbobbo (Sep 10, 2014)

Railroading, sandboxing, and illusionism are all tools in the GMs toolbox.  Just as you wouldn't necessarily use a grinder to remove a nail, but sometimes it becomes your only choice.


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## Desdichado (Sep 10, 2014)

Part of the problem is that the terms have been used way too indiscriminately.  Sandbox and railroad should really only describe the endpoints at two ends of a fairly broad spectrum.  Games aren't binary.  They're not one or the other.  It's usually somewhere on a spectrum.


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## steenan (Sep 10, 2014)

I see no reason for a published adventure to necessarily be a railroad. Most of them are, due to authors' personal preference or laziness, but definitely don't have to.

While I rarely run published adventures, I did it yesterday and the adventure I used is a good example of the non-railroady kind.

The adventure contained information on:
- What is the situation when the adventure starts
- What is the background (what happened there before and created the problems that are currently present)
- What are the relations between various NPCs
- What would the NPCs do if PCs never arrived there
- What each NPC wants/hopes to get from the PCs

And that's all. No scene sequence, no pre-planned ending ("final boss" or something similar), no "gateway" scenes that must be played through to move forward. The adventure sets the stage and from there the GM just plays the NPCs, focusing scenes on players' choices.

That's the standard adventure format for Dogs in the Vineyard, but it can easily be used for most other games. It's not a typical sandbox, because it's very PC-centric, but it's also as far as possible from a railroad. The player freedom in choosing how to engage the situation and when to consider it "solved" is the basic assumption here.

And that's why I use such adventures, while I don't touch (even with a 10-ft pole) the ones that require railroading.


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## Yora (Sep 10, 2014)

Sandbox is a game with no story. Railroad is a game with a story which the players can't influence.

I think both are pretty bad. A really good adventure is one that has a story with a clear goal and active villains, in which the outcome is determined by the players actions. Even video games are able to have at least a number of different paths, in which the player decides in which order the important locations will be visisted, and which NPCs live or die, so they may show up again later as either allies or enemies. It's no problem at all to publish RPG adventures that work that way.


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## Mark CMG (Sep 10, 2014)

Yora said:


> Sandbox is a game with no story. Railroad is a game with a story which the players can't influence.
> 
> I think both are pretty bad. A really good adventure is one that has a story with a clear goal and active villains, in which the outcome is determined by the players actions.





I would counter that a good adventure has no story, though most should have some backstory.  I agree there should be at least one goal, but likely more, that the players, through their characters, can potentially make their own.  If the players can devise their own goal, all the better.  Villains and NPCs should have their goals as well.  The story that comes from the running of that adventure is best as the outcome of the PCs pursuing their goal(s), and the resulting success or failure.


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## Rune (Sep 10, 2014)

I wouldn't say that all linear adventures are inherently railroads any more than all sandboxes are entirely non-linear. 

For me, it's a difference of how the story unfolds. Specifically, railroads are characterized by presenting a plot for players to (maybe) interact with. 

A sandbox doesn't just not dictate the plot; a sandbox doesn't have a plot in the first place. Instead, it has NPCs with ambitions and motivations and lets PCs make the plot. 

Can a pre-written adventure be an effective sandbox?

I think this is pretty sandboxy.


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## Rod Staffwand (Sep 10, 2014)

Roller coasters are railroads and everyone seems to have fun with them.


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## Grogg of the North (Sep 11, 2014)

I've been on some excellent rail roads in my time.  I've also been in sandboxes that would be best described as a litter box.   

Neither style is inherently better than the other.  Each have their own pluses and minuses.  As long as the players and the DM are having fun, then who cares!


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## pemerton (Sep 11, 2014)

Umbran said:


> We would do well to not force everything into dichotomies.
> 
> "Sandbox," "railroad," (or, to take out some of the connotation - "linear") and "event-driven," are not really poles.





Quickleaf said:


> I always saw sandbox & railroad as extreme poles at the end of a spectrum



On this particular issue I'm with Umbran. One reason is that there is a fairly well-established approach to RPGing - indie-style play based around the scene/situation - which is neither sandbox nor railroad/linear.



Quickleaf said:


> In a Pure Sandbox, the players generate all the driving conflict, decide wherever they want to go, and whatever they want to do. The GM take a purely reactive role.
> 
> In a Pure Railroad, the GM generates all the driving conflict, where the players go and what quests they undertake is pre-scripted. The players take a purely reactive role.



In indie-style play the GM frames all the conflict, on the basis of cues/hooks provided by the players during PC-build and earlier episodes of actual play. And the resolution is not-prescripted (and is not simply win-or-die, which is the standard D&D approach to non-prescripted outcomes).

The players, for instance, will generally decide who the villains are (ie who their PCs are opposd to). But the GM decides when those villains come calling (GM authority over scene-framing).

This is not sandbox - eg the players don't frame the scenes, nor decide where their PCs go. The GM is not purely reactive, but rather is constantly putting pressure on the players via framing the PCs into circumstances of conflict. But where the players go and what quests they undertake is not pre-scripted, and hence it is not a railroad.

Nor is it somewhere on a notional spectrum between railroad and sandbox. It is its own thing.



steenan said:


> While I rarely run published adventures, I did it yesterday and the adventure I used is a good example of the non-railroady kind.
> 
> The adventure contained information on:
> - What is the situation when the adventure starts
> ...



The only D&D adventures I know of that approximate to this sort of presentation are some of the Penumbra d20 adventures (over 10 years old now).

Robin Laws presents similar sorts of adventures in the HeroWars Narrator Book. And this is how I use published D&D adventures, but in means that in most cases I have to disregard the author's own presentation of the adventure.


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## Quickleaf (Sep 11, 2014)

pemerton said:
			
		

> Nor is it somewhere on a notional spectrum between railroad and sandbox. It is its own thing.



Agreed, indie RPG style scene framing is its own thing. I didn't mean to imply otherwise.



> Robin Laws presents similar sorts of adventures in the HeroWars Narrator Book. And this is how I use published D&D adventures, but in means that in most cases I have to disregard the author's own presentation of the adventure.



How to design D&D adventures accommodating both tighter (railroad-ish) and looser (sandbox, scene framing, etc) frameworks is of great interest to me. Because of D&D's focus on overcoming challenges (the game), this is a bit of a tricky balance given practical limits of adventure page count.

What I've found is there is a bit of sandbox/railroad/scene framing overlap that can happen, but once I start seriously designing for one of these styles play, it becomes harder (if not impossible) to design for the other two style. Which is why I tend to think of Pure Railroad and Pure Sandbox as extremes of a spectrum; at a certain point, if I'm making a strongly sandbox-leaning adventure, the design doesn't facilitate a more linear/railroad style.

That's my observation so far, though it's certainly one I'm challenging every time I sit down to work on my current mega-adventure. Perhaps I just haven't found the magic formula yet.


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## pemerton (Sep 11, 2014)

Quickleaf said:


> How to design D&D adventures accommodating both tighter (railroad-ish) and looser (sandbox, scene framing, etc) frameworks is of great interest to me.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> once I start seriously designing for one of these styles play, it becomes harder (if not impossible) to design for the other two style. Which is why I tend to think of Pure Railroad and Pure Sandbox as extremes of a spectrum



I certainly agree with you that they are generally mutually exclusive, in that an adventure designed to be a railroad probably isn't going to serve as a sandbox, and vice versa.

I'm only disagreeing on the (relatively narrow) spectrum issue.

As to how to solve the design issue, my own view - based on intuition more than robust investigation and evidence - is that it can't be totally solved. Certainly, when I look at some well-regarded adventures from the 2nd ed era (eg Dead Gods, various Ravenloft offerings, etc) I can't see anything but hopeless railroads that I couldn't even think of running (because most of their scenes have no real hook outside the context of the railroad, and so don't lend themselves to adaptation to my preferred style).

When I think of some non-classic D&D modules that I've used - Bastion of Broken Souls, Test of the Samurai - I didn't use all of them, but they had enough scenes that were compelling in and of themselves that large chunks could be used while ignoring the authors intended railroads. For instance, in a Japanese-themed campaign the Peachling Girl and a ninja snake cult (two episodes from Test of the Samurai) should be compelling situations regardless of the particular hooks/transitions the author had in mind.


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## Yora (Sep 11, 2014)

This is why I generally consider D&D adventures to be not very good. Either you have to go down a predetermined path with predetermined outcome, or in the case of older ones, you are dropped into a place and supposed to get the treasure, simply because.

The exception is the Against the Giants series. "Giants raid the surrounding area from their fortress. Stop them."
It's entirely up to the players to decide how they get in, or even get some of the giants to come out and pick them off in small groups, and then it's up to them if they feel like killing every living being inside by either stealth or frontal assault, or if they can come up with a way to use trickery to take out the giant chief, convince some of his followers to betray him someway, or whatever the players can think of.


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## Sadras (Sep 11, 2014)

Yora said:


> This is why I generally consider D&D adventures to be not very good.




Not objecting here, but...



> The exception is the Against the Giants series. "Giants raid the surrounding area from their fortress. Stop them." It's entirely up to the players to decide how they get in, or even get some of the giants to come out and pick them off in small groups, and then it's up to them if they feel like killing every living being inside by either stealth or frontal assault, or if they can come up with a way to use trickery to take out the giant chief, convince some of his followers to betray him someway, or whatever the players can think of.




...how is that different to Homlett & Temple of Elemental Evil? 

It is entirely the players decision who to assist in Homlett and how to get into the Moathouse/Temple of Evil (my players entered through the roof)? whether to investigate for a week, the comings and goings of the Moathouse's/Temple's occupants? bribe the mercenaries/humanoids within to fight for them? pick them off in small groups? deciding to kill every living being inside by either stealth (undercover or otherwise) or frontal assault? or if they can come up with a way to use trickery to take out the head clerics by making side deals with the under-priests by convincing them to betray them some way or whatever the players can think of?


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## Yora (Sep 11, 2014)

Perhaps. I never read that one.


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## Emerikol (Sep 11, 2014)

I believe for an extensive drawn out campaign that runs for a long time the sandbox approach is best for me.   I don't mind the players railroading themselves but I as DM do not want to railroad them.

Keep on the Borderland is a sandbox so adventures can be written that are sandboxes.  

Any linear adventure can be dropped into a sandbox setting and if the players choose to follow along the linear path it's still a sandbox setting.  To me the key to sandbox is that players are never forced or even strongly encouraged to choose path A.   The DM creates enough adventure in the sandbox area that people can choose to follow any railroad they want or just wander around.

I would never enjoy playing in a game where the DM was just making it up as we go.  Unless he had a godlike intellect and memory so he could fool me.  No one has ever fooled me even one session yet.

here is how I go about creating a sandbox...
1.  I craft a region of my world and I figure out the place this region has to the big picture.
2.  I develop the locales and the basic npcs of the area.
3.  Then I figure out the major players of the region.  You could think of them as mini-icons from 13th Age.  Icons for just the region.  
4.  I develop the plans and plots for these individuals.   Both good and evil.   If adventure locations need detailing I detail them.  
5.  I also craft the ancient history of the region.  What was here before?  I then place additional adventures based on that knowledge.
6.  I figure out the relationship of the PCs to the region.  Often it's fun to make them strangers but other approaches work too.
7.  As a result of all this design, I create a calendar of events that will flow over a time period.  These events will happen UNLESS the PCs interfere which hopefully in at least a few instances they will.   I just keep careful track of game time and I have the events keep happening.  It's great for verisimilitude because the party feels like the world is moving along with them and not a static place.

Usually a region will work for a range of levels.  Sometimes after that I either have to inject new things into the region or the PCs move to another region more appropriate to their level.  So at higher levels they might migrate to an area where low level characters wouldn't survive long.

yes I love world building.  It is why I also like simple rules.  It makes crafting things far easier.


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## mcbobbo (Sep 11, 2014)

Both those examples cannot be "true" sanboxes, though, because you can't (typically) say "giants are dumb, let's go somewhere else". Or "that temple has been there forever, we can come back later".

There ARE "rails" in any prepublished or even any prepared-in-advance setup.  On some level you either follow what was set or you force the GM to vamp.

Then comes the illusionist techniques where you think you have decided to go somewhere else, but what you are facing is the same material reskinned.

TL;DR: Implicit assumption is GM provides something interactive for the players


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## Sadras (Sep 11, 2014)

mcbobbo said:


> Both those examples cannot be "true" sanboxes, though, because you can't (typically) say "giants are dumb, let's go somewhere else". Or "that temple has been there forever, we can come back later".




Goal posts shifted methinks. We were discussing, predominantly, the sandboxing and railroading of adventures, not campaigns.    

Either your DM allows for you to leave the area and ignore Giants/Temple (playing a sandbox campaign) or forces the issue (railroads the campaign) 
It depends on your PoV. If the party decides to perform a side quest within TToEE, are they choosing to be railroaded? I would say no. Then consider, if the party decided to do TToEE within a campaign are they being railroaded? Again, I would say no.


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## mcbobbo (Sep 11, 2014)

Shifting goalposts implies someone is keeping score.  I'm not keeping score, are you keeping score?

The third option you overlooked is where the GM says "this is what I had planned tonight, so it's either this or we play Munchkin".  Because, again, social contract.


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## Emerikol (Sep 11, 2014)

I believe for an extensive drawn out campaign that runs for a long time the sandbox approach is best for me.   I don't mind the players railroading themselves but I as DM do not want to railroad them.


Keep on the Borderland is a sandbox so adventures can be written that are sandboxes.


Any linear adventure can be dropped into a sandbox setting and if the players choose to follow along the linear path it's still a sandbox setting.  To me the key to sandbox is that players are never forced or even strongly encouraged to choose path A.  The DM creates enough adventure in the sandbox area that people can choose to follow any railroad they want or just wander around.


I would never enjoy playing in a game where the DM was just making it up as we go.  Unless he had a godlike intellect and memory so he could fool me.  No one has ever fooled me even one session yet.


here is how I go about creating a sandbox...
1.  I craft a region of my world and I figure out the place this region has to the big picture.
2.  I develop the locales and the basic npcs of the area.
3.  Then I figure out the major players of the region.  You could think of them as mini-icons from 13th Age.  Icons for just the region.  
4.  I develop the plans and plots for these individuals.   Both good and evil.   If adventure locations need detailing I detail them.  
5.  I also craft the ancient history of the region.  What was here before?  I then place additional adventures based on that knowledge.
6.  I figure out the relationship of the PCs to the region.  Often it's fun to make them strangers but other approaches work too.
7.  As a result of all this design, I create a calendar of events that will flow over a time period.  These events will happen UNLESS the PCs interfere which hopefully in at least a few instances they will.   I just keep careful track of game time and I have the events keep happening.  It's great for verisimilitude because the party feels like the world is moving along with them and not a static place.


Usually a region will work for a range of levels.  Sometimes after that I either have to inject new things into the region or the PCs move to another region more appropriate to their level.  So at higher levels they might migrate to an area where low level characters wouldn't survive long.


yes I love world building.  It is why I also like simple rules.  It makes crafting things far easier.


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## Sadras (Sep 11, 2014)

mcbobbo said:


> Shifting goalposts implies someone is keeping score.  I'm not keeping score, are you keeping score?




No score is being kept, I assure you, the phrase was more utilised in the manner that you have taken the discussion on a tangent given the discussion that was preceding as explained in my post.  



> The third option you overlooked is where the GM says "this is what I had planned tonight, so it's either this or we play Munchkin".  Because, again, social contract.




I would classify this as railroading. In/out game, its still railroading.


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## mcbobbo (Sep 11, 2014)

Sadras said:


> I would classify this as railroading. In/out game, its still railroading.




This definition of railroading is far too broad to have a meaningful discussion about RPGs.  If you define out of game things as railroading then we are discussing different things entirely.


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## Grogg of the North (Sep 11, 2014)

For a really good railroading example, go here:

http://www.shamusyoung.com/twentysidedtale/?p=615

As for sandboxes, there are other traps as well.  I've been in a sandboxy campaign that went like this:

PCs:  We go north to the forest to see if we can gather food to feed the townsfolk.
DM:  Okay, you're ambushed by gnolls [five levels above you].  You get captured and sold as slaves.

It felt like we accidentally wandered out of the starting area only to realize, too late, that we needed to be killing 10 rats in the sewers.


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## Quickleaf (Sep 11, 2014)

pemerton said:


> I certainly agree with you that they are generally mutually exclusive, in that an adventure designed to be a railroad probably isn't going to serve as a sandbox, and vice versa.
> 
> I'm only disagreeing on the (relatively narrow) spectrum issue.



Ah, fair enough. I usually assume a coordinate system of multiple spectrums (weak-strong framing, sandbox-railroad, dungeon crawl-event based, etc) when describing adventures.



> As to how to solve the design issue, my own view - based on intuition more than robust investigation and evidence - is that it can't be totally solved. Certainly, when I look at some well-regarded adventures from the 2nd ed era (eg Dead Gods, various Ravenloft offerings, etc) I can't see anything but hopeless railroads that I couldn't even think of running (because most of their scenes have no real hook outside the context of the railroad, and so don't lend themselves to adaptation to my preferred style).



My current thinking, and how I've been experimenting with adventure design, is about *total adventure design *that takes the best features of sandbox and railroad, and adds a touch of indie inspired design.

A sandbox gives the players agency (meaningful choices and consequences), but rarely has the same emotional impact as a traditional story. With more passive players it can lead to moments without a strong sense of direction or motivation and a sort of "Uh, what do I do, DM?" attitude.

A railroad gives that emotional narrative and provides a strong direction, but sacrifices player agency. With more active or critical players it can lead to moments without a strong sense of motivation and a sort of "why do I care?" attitude.

My goal with *total adventure design* is to have an adventure that:

Ensures the players have agency throughout. (sandbox)
Provides an emotionally gripping experience and strong direction. (railroad)
Creates/encourages strong motivations, i.e. for the players to know what they're after and to have a reason to care about it. (indie)

Currently I'm approaching #1 by...

Building open ended encounters that can be solved in multiple ways.
Providing indexes to the various sites & scenarios encountered in the adventure, for a DM to use in a plug-and-play manner.
Giving multiple hooks for each adventure.
Tying encounters to each other, noting how the outcome of one can affect how others play out. 
Writing multiple endgame states to each conflict, and how the players' decisions/actions might lead to each.
Trusting that boundary conditions to the adventure don't diminish agency.

I'm approaching #2 by...

Making the main story arcs rugged enough to adapt to player abuse.
Presenting the adventure in discrete chunks that are thematically connected, then choosing a default presentation of those chunks according to recommended experience level.
Framing opening scenes to provide strong direction.
Spending more time developing compelling NPCs and how their plots would unfold without player intervention, as well as notes on how they adapt to changes.

I'm approaching #3 by...

Creating a choice at character creation (and beyond) for how individual PCs connect to the various story arcs and themes. Likewise, if there are types of characters (not) suited to the adventure, listing those up front.
Referencing those choices at different points in the adventure, particularly when framing the scene for new conflicts.
Giving players opportunity to see firsthand the unique outcomes/consequences of their decisions and actions.


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## Sadras (Sep 11, 2014)

Quickleaf said:


> My goal with *total adventure design* is to have an adventure that...




Nicely analysed.


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## pemerton (Sep 12, 2014)

Emerikol said:


> Keep on the Borderland is a sandbox so adventures can be written that are sandboxes.





mcbobbo said:


> Both those examples cannot be "true" sanboxes, though, because you can't (typically) say "giants are dumb, let's go somewhere else". Or "that temple has been there forever, we can come back later".
> 
> <snip>
> 
> Implicit assumption is GM provides something interactive for the players



The last time I GMed KotB it was more like what mcbobbo describes in the final quoted sentence than what Emerikol describes in the first quoted sentence.

The players had both built (multi-class) thief PCs. Of all the classic D&D classes, in my view the thief actually provides the clearest hooks for the GM: players who build thieves want to engage in skull-duggery.

So, I narrated them as being in the Keep, and then framed them into conflict with the evil priest (it was a long time ago, so I've forgotten the details). The campaign ended up being about the cult (which I ran as a necromantic death cult), and in due course the focus of adventure moved from the Keep to a nearby town which had also been infiltrated by the cult. The PCs never went to the caves (I can't remember if they ever explored the "wilderness").

So I did provide something interactive for the players, drawing on the material provided by the module. But, contrary to the paragraph from mcbobbo in the middle of the quotes, the players didn't have to take their PCs into the caves. All of us (players and GM) followed the adventure where it led.



Sadras said:


> Either your DM allows for you to leave the area and ignore Giants/Temple (playing a sandbox campaign) or forces the issue (railroads the campaign)



Similar to my discussion with  [MENTION=20323]Quickleaf[/MENTION], I think it misdescribes the range of options to treat sandbox and railroad as two extremes on a spectrum. There are other approaches. For instance, if the GM describes the Keep being under attack by hobgoblins from the Caves, then that is "forcing the issue", but - provided the GM is actually framing the PCs into a situation of interest to the players - then they are not just going to have their PCs leave the area.

But this goes back to the issue of D&D adventure design, raised upthread by  [MENTION=6670763]Yora[/MENTION] and  [MENTION=23240]steenan[/MENTION]. D&D modules have a tendency to be very weak when it comes to the situation. So instead of suggestions for forcing the issue by dropping the players into the action ("You are in the Keep when hobgoblins assault it - how do you react?"), they tend to either set out a rather static situation (static, at least, as far as the PCs are concerned - eg KotB, GDQ, etc) or else set up a "hook" which the PCs have to follow if the adventure is to go anywhere at all (countless examples could be given, but Dead Gods and Expedition to the Demonweb Pits are two that come straight to mind).

That's one reason why I'm fairly choosy with the modules that I use.



Quickleaf said:


> A railroad gives that emotional narrative and provides a strong direction, but sacrifices player agency. With more active or critical players it can lead to moments without a strong sense of motivation and a sort of "why do I care?" attitude.



I think the tension in this paragraph brings out my own objections to railroading - they purport to give dramatic narrative but in fact frequently fail to do so, precisely because of that "why should I care?" problem. The player is, in effect, being prescribed a pre-given emotional response by the GM.

This can work in certain media - cinema is particularly good at it - but in my experience RPGing typically isn't such a medium. And the quality of the stories (plot, theme and especially actual, real-life pacing) is such that they don't work just as stories on their own terms. They work by way of buy-in. And the safest pathway to buy-in is co-creation.

Which rules out railroading.



Quickleaf said:


> Ensures the players have agency throughout. (sandbox)
> Provides an emotionally gripping experience and strong direction. (railroad)
> Creates/encourages strong motivations, i.e. for the players to know what they're after and to have a reason to care about it. (indie)
> 
> ...



I'm not sure what audience you are writing adventures for. Are you talking about commercial publication? I think that certainly imposes some fairly stringent additional constraints on adventure design.

When I am preparing adventures for my own game, I focus on open-ended encounters, and strong framing based upon PC build and subsequent PC play. Well-conceived situations that hook onto the players' preferences (as expressed via build and play of their PCs) means that I don't really need a "main story arc". Good situations lead to engaged play, and with engaged play the story arc will take care of itself.

Here's a link to the Burning Wheel session I ran last weekend. To run that session I needed the players to build PCs with some clear motivations, plus my map of Greyhawk with its geography around the Wooly Bay. The rest "wrote" itself.

I'm not sure how I would present that as a module: maybe maps and some basic geography; NPCs with motivations and connections; some ideas for possible conflicts/developments; and advice on what sorts of PCs the players might build to hook into all this.

I think the 4e Neverwinter Campaign Guide is a possible model for this sort of thing. So is the Penumbra d20 module Three Days to Kill (though at a smaller scale).


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## mcbobbo (Sep 12, 2014)

Is it not fair to say that since they didn't go to the caves, you brought the cult to them?

Unless maybe that nearby town was always there and not made up to facilitate the adventure?


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## Sadras (Sep 12, 2014)

pemerton said:


> Similar to my discussion with  @_*Quickleaf*_, I think it misdescribes the range of options to treat sandbox and railroad as two extremes on a spectrum.




Either the door is open or the door is closed. You can certainly close and open the door as many times as you want, but the door will either be open or closed at a specific point in time.    



> There are other approaches.




I disagree, based on your example below. It is a railroad.



> For instance, if the GM describes the Keep being under attack by hobgoblins from the Caves, then that is "forcing the issue", but - provided the GM is actually framing the PCs into a situation *of interest to the players *- then they are not just going to have their PCs leave the area.




I'm unsure the bolded text (emphasis mine) is even needed given that the DM is always going to frame things of interest to the players. If not for the players then for whom? Background? In some instances 'the interest' might be easily identifiable, other times it might be veiled. 
In any event, just because it is in the interest of the PCs doesn't make it any more or less of a railroad. Your example implies that your perception of railroad means that the PCs interests are unaligned when railroading generally. 



> But this goes back to the issue of D&D adventure design, raised upthread by  @_*Yora*_ and  @_*steenan*_. D&D modules have a tendency to be very weak when it comes to the situation. So instead of suggestions for forcing the issue by dropping the players into the action ("You are in the Keep when hobgoblins assault it - how do you react?"), they tend to either set out a rather static situation (static, at least, as far as the PCs are concerned - eg KotB, GDQ, etc) or else set up a "hook" which the PCs have to follow if the adventure is to go anywhere at all (countless examples could be given, but Dead Gods and Expedition to the Demonweb Pits are two that come straight to mind).




I'm of the similar opinion. I find one technique to encourage players to follow a course of action (progress the story), instead of forcing-the-issue in one or another way, is to "roleplay" more. Have the NPCs be more engaging with the PCs, and somehow implant an emotion/opinion that shatters the intial indifference of the players. 

And when I mean "roleplay more" and "engaging" - I mean through the use of voices, gestures, being chatty, displaying NPC peculiarities, description...etc. Displaying an illusion of sandbox, but using _suggestive_ techniques.


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## Yora (Sep 12, 2014)

Quickleaf said:


> My current thinking, and how I've been experimenting with adventure design, is about *total adventure design *that takes the best features of sandbox and railroad, and adds a touch of indie inspired design.
> 
> A sandbox gives the players agency (meaningful choices and consequences), but rarely has the same emotional impact as a traditional story. With more passive players it can lead to moments without a strong sense of direction or motivation and a sort of "Uh, what do I do, DM?" attitude.
> 
> A railroad gives that emotional narrative and provides a strong direction, but sacrifices player agency. With more active or critical players it can lead to moments without a strong sense of motivation and a sort of "why do I care?" attitude.



The One Ring has a couple of pretty neat adventures that have a clear story, villain, and other NPCs, but leave very much room for the players to decide how the story will play out and end.

For example, one adventure has the players searching for a criminal who escaped on his way to trial when his two guards were killed in an orc ambush. He decided to leave his life behind and start somewhere else, but got captured by a large band of outlaws, whose leader wants him to become their friend and tell them about the local defenses. And he was never popular among his people and going to be exiled or hanged for his crime anyway.
It's up to the players to decide if they consider him a murderer who needs to be recaptured dead or alive, or if they want him to come back and confess the truth so he can plead for mercy. They may treat him as a captive of the outlaws, a traitor to his people, or a stupid kid who has no idea what kind of person his new friend is. They may want to kill him before he can tell the outlaws too much, drag him back to be interrogated and executed, or try to convince him to tell his people everything he knows about the outlaws or even lead them into an ambush to make up for his original crime.
There are so many possible ways things can go, which entirely depend on how the players interpret things and what they consider the right thing to do. The adventure shows no preference either way and is structured in a way that you still have pretty much the same encounters. What varies is how many opponents the players might face and who might be fighting on whose side. And the amount of opponents they are facing might in turn have quite some impact on the players descision to fight, flee, or negotiate. The adventure does not need any alternative branches to follow, it still uses all the material and visits all the locations. It's not that the writers had to write different paths and only one of them would be used.
That particular adventure is only 22 pages, but the same principle is used for the 140 page Darkening of Mirkwood campaign.

There's no reason to not make adventures like this for D&D, but WotC and Paizo *want* to do their linear dungeon crawls with balanced encounters. It's their choice, no necessity in any way.


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## Umbran (Sep 12, 2014)

pemerton said:


> The last time I GMed KotB it was more like what mcbobbo describes in the final quoted sentence than what Emerikol describes in the first quoted sentence.




There is something that people forget.  Sandboxes are *boxes*.  Boxes have sides.  There is (implicilty or explicitly) an agreed upon play area, and your'e expected to stay within it.  If you step out and go over to the basketball court, well, that's your wish, but you are clearly outside the sandbox. 

An adventure is a sandbox if, within the context of the adventure, the players are free to do what they wish.

A campaign is a sandbox if, within the bounds of the campaign, the players are free to do what they wish.

So, the adventure can be a sandbox.  If, however, they players can't say, "giants are dumb, let's go do something else", then the _campaign_ is not a pure sandbox, even thought the adventure still is one.


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## the Jester (Sep 12, 2014)

Yora said:


> Sandbox is a game with no story.




I would say rather that a sandbox is a game whose story emerges after play, from the actions and choices of the players.



Quickleaf said:


> How to design D&D adventures accommodating both tighter (railroad-ish) and looser (sandbox, scene framing, etc) frameworks is of great interest to me.




I submit Red Hand of Doom as perhaps the best example of an adventure that could be run as either a linear railroad or a fairly total sandbox. Lots is going on and there are timelines, but the pcs could be left free to run around the vale doing as they wish.


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## Sunseeker (Sep 12, 2014)

Morrus said:


> A bad sandbox is worse than a bad railroad.




I generally agree, but it's not a big gap.  

Being told to do something so transparently railroady and so poorly written is still _at least_​ something to do as opposed to "here's the world, go do stuff."


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## neonagash (Sep 13, 2014)

shidaku said:


> I generally agree, but it's not a big gap.
> 
> Being told to do something so transparently railroady and so poorly written is still _at least_​ something to do as opposed to "here's the world, go do stuff."





Yes but as a player you can make a bad sandbox better by being pro-active and looking for things to do. 

With a bad railroad your just spending a few hours sitting there bored and wondering why you didnt stay home and watch TV instead. You have no say or ability to improve things.


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## Grogg of the North (Sep 13, 2014)

neonagash said:


> With a bad railroad your just spending a few hours sitting there bored and wondering why you didnt stay home and watch TV instead. You have no say or ability to improve things.




Oddly, I've been in sandbox games like that.  

We go to the forest and get pounded into the dirt.
We go to the mountains and get pounded into the dirt.
We go to the desert, get diseased, cursed and then pounded into the dirt.
We stay in the city and the unstoppable super mage army burns down the town and pounds us into the dirt.  

A sandbox can become a litter box very quickly.


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## neonagash (Sep 13, 2014)

Grogg of the North said:


> Oddly, I've been in sandbox games like that.
> 
> We go to the forest and get pounded into the dirt.
> We go to the mountains and get pounded into the dirt.
> ...




Thats not a sandbox. 

If you dont actually have a say in the outcome and a chance to succeed its a railroad. There was after all only one possible outcome no matter what you do. Thats pretty close to the definition of railroad.


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## Grogg of the North (Sep 13, 2014)

neonagash said:


> Thats not a sandbox.
> 
> If you dont actually have a say in the outcome and a chance to succeed its a railroad. There was after all only one possible outcome no matter what you do. Thats pretty close to the definition of railroad.




In that campaign, all the action was driven by the players.  We were plopped into a town, given some tidbits on what was happening in the world and set loose.  Many, in this very thread, have asserted that to be the definition of a sandbox.  

The point I'm trying to make is that a bad sandbox can be just as bad as a bad railroad.


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## Sunseeker (Sep 13, 2014)

neonagash said:


> Yes but as a player you can make a bad sandbox better by being pro-active and looking for things to do.



I'm sorry, but I'm going to be blunt: that's garbage.

That's the sort of "my world is great you players just aren't good enough for it!" garbage that sandbox DMs have tried to throw in my face before.  It's blame blame blame blame on everyone else at the table besides themselves.  They "remove" themselves from the setting they so painstakingly created through random tables which cover anything from fair fights to undead armies and random elder dragons.  Then it's all the player's fault for missing this or not doing that or whatever it is the DM _really_ wanted us to go after.

If there aren't things to do, then looking for those things doesn't help.  They're NOT THERE.  It's all random tables and absolutely nothing more than "I wander into the forest" *DM rolls die* "you find nothing."  "I keep going" *DM rolls die* "still nothing.  "okay I go to the mountains"  *dm rolls die* "You encounter an elder dragon, roll init."  >.>

There's an MMO coming out called ArchAge.  The basic premise is it being an open-world, randomly generated, sandbox MMO.  Guess what?  It's boring.  Once you've run around on your horse for 10 hours, chopped down a dozen trees and built a little cabin....there's not much else to do.

You start saying there's a Lich attacking the city of Mountainvale, well now you're getting a story going and moving away from sandbox land.



> With a bad railroad your just spending a few hours sitting there bored and wondering why you didnt stay home and watch TV instead. You have no say or ability to improve things.



I have no say or ability to improve a bad sandbox either.  The only difference is that a bad sandbox is a lake where all I can do is swim around.  A bad railroad is a river where while I'm swimming, I'm also being taken places against my will.

With the latter at least the scenery changes, which means _potentially_ the bad will end and good stuff will start.  With a bad sandbox, there is no good or bad.  It's all the same.


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## Quickleaf (Sep 13, 2014)

the Jester said:


> I submit Red Hand of Doom as perhaps the best example of an adventure that could be run as either a linear railroad or a fairly total sandbox. Lots is going on and there are timelines, but the pcs could be left free to run around the vale doing as they wish.




You know, I never owned this adventure because I never played 3e for any extended period of time, but from what I remember thumbing thru it, I would agree that it has the sort of structure which can work for either style of game. I may have to dig up a copy just to see the framework Rich Baker and James Jacobs used.


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## neonagash (Sep 13, 2014)

shidaku said:


> I'm sorry, but I'm going to be blunt: that's garbage.
> 
> More stuff.
> .




The only thing wrong with that, is everything. 

With a sandbox it IS the players jobs to be an active part of the universe and ask questions and look for interesting things to do rather then sitting there and being spoon fed cliched hooks. 

If the GM is beating you over the head with "this way lies the adventure" its NOT a sandbox. 

In a sandbox you might hear about various crimes you can try to stop, but also decide you want to steal that stuff too and go do that. 

You might not care one way or another about the rumours of crimes and instead be interested in the bounty board outside the sheriffs office because you want to make some quick cash. 

Or you might not care about justice that much, or be chaotic and actively think that theres a chance the government is overbearing and those people are likely undeserving of punishment and work to undermine the sheriffs efforts. 

Or you might not care about any of that and instead think the stuff you heard about the constant wars between the dwarf clans and orcs is where your future lies. 

The whole point is that there are LOTS of things to do. And the players decide what has real emotional investment for them, rather then the DM force feeding false emotional investments based on his own (or an adventure writers) ideas of what should be emotionally motivating down their throats and hoping they buy in. 

Also sandboxes have nothing to do with random tables, assuming you ever actually experienced that it wasnt a sandbox. It was a DM's first game, he was probably running a railroad and you somehow got off the rails so he had no idea what to do..... Thats usually when the random tables pop out, when a railroad goes off the tracks. 

Your lich anology is also pointless. A sandbox would have that same lich in the mountains of lichiness. However the players are free to say " so what?" and go find something else to do without the entire session hitting the skids and the DM's head imploding.

Because yes, theres the lich. But its also a living world with a whole bunch of other stuff going on that the players may care more about and decide are much more interesting then the lich. 

With a rail road its "my lich or the highway".... and now I'm not playing a game. I'm watching a movie and rolling dice.


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## Sunseeker (Sep 13, 2014)

neonagash said:


> The only thing wrong with that, is everything.
> 
> With a sandbox it IS the players jobs to be an active part of the universe and ask questions and look for interesting things to do rather then sitting there and being spoon fed cliched hooks.
> 
> ...




Weren't we talking about BAD sandboxes and BAD railroads?  Don't construe my posts to apply to all sandboxes.  There are creative DMs who put a lot of little things into their worlds and then let players find them, like an easter egg hunt.  A good sandbox is something like that.  There are things to find, and you just need to go out and find them.  A bad sandbox is like that parent who just wants to keep their kid busy for a couple hours and so they hide one or two eggs in the entire yard, and then claim that the kid must have misbehaved or something so the easter bunny didn't leave them more.

I'm pretty sure we're talking about BAD executions of sandboxes.  And I'm sorry, no matter how many times a DM tells me "it's out there, keep looking!" If I wander around for 3-4 hours during our session and don't turn up anything, I'm gonna start thinking that no, it really *isn't* out there.


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## LostSoul (Sep 13, 2014)

Grogg of the North said:


> Oddly, I've been in sandbox games like that.
> 
> We go to the forest and get pounded into the dirt.
> We go to the mountains and get pounded into the dirt.
> ...




I think one of the keys to running a good sandbox is that the players need to have a lot of information.  They need to be able to make decisions.  If the forest, mountains, desert, and cities are dangerous, the DM needs to inform the players of the situation.  Then, perhaps, they will take to the plains.  (Not that I think it would have done anything for you, Grogg.)



neonagash said:


> Also sandboxes have nothing to do with random tables, assuming you ever actually experienced that it wasnt a sandbox.




I'm not sure if you're saying that random tables have no place in a sandbox, or if random tables are "sandbox agnostic".  I try to run a sandbox game (that has plenty of emotional instances!) and I use random tables all the time.


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## pemerton (Sep 13, 2014)

mcbobbo said:


> Is it not fair to say that since they didn't go to the caves, you brought the cult to them?
> 
> Unless maybe that nearby town was always there and not made up to facilitate the adventure?



I'm not sure what exactly you're getting at.

The players had built thief PCs. It was clear that they wanted to play a game of thiefly hijinks - partly because that's the reason for building thieves, partly because of the actions they declared for their PCs, which involved sneaking through the Keep doing sneaky stuff.

I can't remember the details because it's around 25 years ago, but the most interesting element in the Keep itself is the evil priest. So I drew on that. As they explored the cult, I elaborated the details.

The nearby town was Critwall on the World of Greyhawk maps - I had placed the Keep in the Shield Lands, which seemed (and still seems) sensible enough. The cult elements in the town I made up as the players followed leads and further explored the nature of the cult. (Again, details are hazy but I think the wife of the mayor of Critwall was one of the more significant cult members.)

Anyway, that's a bit more detail - but where are you asking me to go with it?



Sadras said:


> Either the door is open or the door is closed. You can certainly close and open the door as many times as you want, but the door will either be open or closed at a specific point in time.



This is a metaphor. I don't really understand it.

If "the door" is "the ability to choose how to respond to the situations they confront" then the door is open.

If "the door" is "the ability to frame their own contests" then the door is shut - GM authority over scene-framing is pretty central to indie-style play, which is why it is not the same as sandbox play.

But it is also important to distinguish authority and more general issues of authorship. Another central feature of indie-style play is that the GM frames scenes that deploy material that the players have authored, either directly via PC backstory, or indirectly and collaboratively via past action resolution.

So, for instance, the reason for framing further scenes involving the cult is because the players indicate that their PCs are going hunting for cult members.



Sadras said:


> I'm unsure the bolded text (emphasis mine) is even needed given that the DM is always going to frame things of interest to the players.



In fact, in the traditional D&D adventure, the GM writes the adventure before the players have even designed their PCs.

And in an adventure path the _whole thing_ is authored in advance of PC-creation and play.

When I talk about framing in response to hooks provided by the players, I'm talking about the GM following the players' lead in framing scenes and providing opposition.

Here is one simple way to tell the difference: if your campaign has "sidequests" then it is not player-driven in the sense I am describing, because the existence of "sidequests" presupposes the existence of a main, GM-driven, quest.

In a game run indie-style there is no conceptual scope for sidequests because the whole game is nothing but player-driven "sidequests".



Sadras said:


> I disagree, based on your example below. It is a railroad.



Where is the railroad? How can a game be a railroad if there is no pre-authorship of the backstory, the opponents, the situations, the conflicts, the outcomes?



Sadras said:


> I find one technique to encourage players to follow a course of action (progress the story), instead of forcing-the-issue in one or another way, is to "roleplay" more. Have the NPCs be more engaging with the PCs, and somehow implant an emotion/opinion that shatters the intial indifference of the players.
> 
> And when I mean "roleplay more" and "engaging" - I mean through the use of voices, gestures, being chatty, displaying NPC peculiarities, description...etc. Displaying an illusion of sandbox, but using _suggestive_ techniques.



Perhaps I've misunderstood, but you seem to be describing, here, techniques for railroading the players, by encouraging them to go along with the GM's desired course of action.

I don't want to encourage players to "progress the story". Or rather, I don't need to: if the players have well-built PCs, and I frame situations that speak to those PCs (and thereby to the players), then the players will declare actions for their PCs and "story" will follow. That story will shape and reshape the PCs, suggesting new situations, etc etc, in a virtuous circle from which the campaign emerges.

 [MENTION=386]LostSoul[/MENTION] first pointed me to this blog post which states the basic technique (but I discovered the technique, haltingly and via my own trial and error, twenty-something years before the blog was written):

One of the players is a gamemaster whose job it is to keep track of the backstory, frame scenes according to dramatic needs (that is, go where the action is) and provoke thematic moments . . . by introducing complications . . .

The rest of the players each have their own characters to play. . . . [T]hey naturally allow the character’s interests to come through based on what they imagine of the character’s nature and background. Then they let the other players know . . . what the character thinks and wants. . .

[O]nce the players have established concrete characters, situations and backstory in whatever manner a given game ascribes, the GM starts framing scenes for the player characters. Each scene is an interesting situation . . . that provokes choices on the part of the character. The player is ready for this, as he knows his character and the character’s needs, so he makes choices on the part of the character. This in turn leads to consequences as determined by the game’s rules. Story is an outcome of the process as choices lead to consequences which lead to further choices . . .​
If the game slows down then either the players haven't been clear enough on what their PCs think and want, or (more likely) I haven't framed an interesting enough situation. Luckily these problems are easily dealt with in the course of actual play - the players can bring out (either via table talk or via roleplay) what it is their PCs think and want, and/or I can inject more material into the situation (eg cultist assassins turn up and confront the PCs!).


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## neonagash (Sep 13, 2014)

shidaku said:


> Weren't we talking about BAD sandboxes and BAD railroads?  Don't construe my posts to apply to all sandboxes.  There are creative DMs who put a lot of little things into their worlds and then let players find them, like an easter egg hunt.  A good sandbox is something like that.  There are things to find, and you just need to go out and find them.  A bad sandbox is like that parent who just wants to keep their kid busy for a couple hours and so they hide one or two eggs in the entire yard, and then claim that the kid must have misbehaved or something so the easter bunny didn't leave them more.
> 
> I'm pretty sure we're talking about BAD executions of sandboxes.  And I'm sorry, no matter how many times a DM tells me "it's out there, keep looking!" If I wander around for 3-4 hours during our session and don't turn up anything, I'm gonna start thinking that no, it really *isn't* out there.




Yes but you didnt describe a bad sandbox. You described a bad railroad that went off the rails and what seemed to be a deeply confused DM rolling dice to deal with it rather then improvising on the fly. 

So yeah, when you say "pizza sucks because my last hamburger was awful" I'm gonna point out the dysfunction in the argument.


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## neonagash (Sep 13, 2014)

LostSoul;6382093
I'm not sure if you're saying that random tables have no place in a sandbox said:
			
		

> Definitely agnostic.
> 
> Nothing wrong with random encounters, or random weather (i have a nice one I use each morning for adventures).
> 
> But when a whole campaign is "duh I'm confused, roll a random encounter" thats not a sandbox. Its a random crap pile. And probably would have been no matter what sort of adventure was being intended.


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## mcbobbo (Sep 13, 2014)

neonagash said:


> But when a whole campaign is "duh I'm confused, roll a random encounter" thats not a sandbox. Its a random crap pile. And probably would have been no matter what sort of adventure was being intended.




The biggest problem with railroad vs sandbox discussions is definitely always the people who get religious about it.  When every argument is buttressed by opinion alone, you can tell the discussion is going to have less and less value as it moves forward.  Well, possibly more entertainment value, but flame wars do get old eventually.

Not the 'duh' in the quote above, used to imply inferiority, as though no True Scottsman DM has ever used dice for input when at a loss of what to do next.  Then we get overt about the 'crap pile'.  Games is serious business, and this DM was found unworthy.

Blah.


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## Jacob Marley (Sep 13, 2014)

neonagash said:


> But when a whole campaign is "duh I'm confused, roll a random encounter" thats not a sandbox. Its a random crap pile. And probably would have been no matter what sort of adventure was being intended.




One of the best tools in my toolbox is Mythic: Game Master Emulator. The emulator is intended to be used for solo and GM-less gaming, however it can also be utilized by GMs to provide inspiration for, and context to, their encounters. 

I have run countless sessions using the random encounter tables in the 1983 Greyhawk boxed set and AD&D Dungeon Master's Guide, modified by rolls on the Mythic:GME tables, that produced interesting, dynamic, and emotionally impactful encounters.


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## Sunseeker (Sep 13, 2014)

neonagash said:


> Yes but you didnt describe a bad sandbox. You described a bad railroad that went off the rails and what seemed to be a deeply confused DM rolling dice to deal with it rather then improvising on the fly.



I would posit that since you were not part of my game, you're in a poor position to tell me what sort of game it was.

The "sandbox" v. "railroad" dichotomy is a false one (as are most comparisons in the gaming world).  The world does not exist of it's own accord, it functions only to the extent that it has been designed to.  A "true" sandbox is reality, since a TTRPG cannot fully simulate reality, it cannot be a true sandbox.

Once that's out of the way, all we are left with is varying degrees of choice and variability.  A heavy sandbox might provide a lot of opportunities to hunt wolves, kill kobolds or engage in world-shattering events, while a strong railroad might only give us the option to follow the chain of events leading to a single outcome.

A heavy sandbox is essentially a game wherein there are many potential adventures and campaigns.  But there are still only so many as the creator placed into them.


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## neonagash (Sep 13, 2014)

mcbobbo said:


> The biggest problem with railroad vs sandbox discussions is definitely always the people who get religious about it.  When every argument is buttressed by opinion alone, you can tell the discussion is going to have less and less value as it moves forward.  Well, possibly more entertainment value, but flame wars do get old eventually.
> 
> Not the 'duh' in the quote above, used to imply inferiority, as though no True Scottsman DM has ever used dice for input when at a loss of what to do next.  Then we get overt about the 'crap pile'.  Games is serious business, and this DM was found unworthy.
> 
> Blah.




Are you honestly pretending you dont see a difference between the occasional random encounter or treasure table and having THE WHOLE GAME be nothing but random encounters? 

Sorry but yeah, that would be a sign of inferiority.  Of course we both know its actually a lame strawman but hey whatever.


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## neonagash (Sep 13, 2014)

shidaku said:


> A heavy sandbox is essentially a game wherein there are many potential adventures and campaigns.  But there are still only so many as the creator placed into them.




Kinda, your leaving out the possibility of player generated content of the world entirely though. Most sandboxes have lots of opportunity for player content to be injected into the world. So its really not just about what was placed into them by a GM.


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## Oryan77 (Sep 14, 2014)

So I started this thread because I'm amazed at how many people voted for a "sandbox" adventure being the 2nd most important thing to writing an adventure. And frankly, I'm sick of the whole "sandbox" bandwagon since it comes off as elitist and basically is saying that I'm not doing something right when I run my adventures. By several of the replies, it seems like that is still the case.

So I want to disprove that myth. Not that I am trying to say a sandbox game is bad. I'm trying to say, a sandbox does not automatically make it good and a railroad does not automatically make it bad.

Common themes I see a lot with sandbox games is that the DM does the following things:

1. The internet has made it seem like sandboxes = good and railroads = bad. That's BS, but it doesn't stop a ton of DMs from trying to appear holier than thou by labeling themselves as a sandbox DM and then badmouths a railroad game. 

2. Many DMs use this as an excuse to be lazy. They think that by being a sandbox DM, it means that they'll automatically be welcomed with open arms since the internet says that sandboxes are better. And then it means that they don't have to prepare anything because, hey, it's a sandbox and we can't predict what the players will do. It's a perfect scapegoat for the lazy DM!

3. There is an awful lot of pointless dialogue and pointless activities that go on in a sandbox game. My PCs spent time gardening, talking to random old ladies in their front yards, I've had conversations about radishes, one of my PCs did some manual labor and helped the guards set up a blockade for a possible zombie attack (roleplayed out and then the invasion was too hard for my PC, probably because it wasn't planned ahead of time), and I once roamed aimlessly around town because I was expected to use in-game time to learn about the cites first hand rather than learn them through adventuring. The DM just waited for *me* to provide the hook and I had no idea what to do since it was the first session. After 4 hours of this, I realized that the DM was hinting that I might like to leave town and randomly explore the surrounding area. If he just ran a freaking published adventure, I could have been well into chapter 2 by then, met lots of interesting NPCs and venues, had a clear goal, already killed some bad guys, and had fun for 4 hours. But according to the internet, that's not fun since that adventure was thrust upon me and I didn't choose to do that myself via the sandbox.

That is how it comes off from my personal experience playing in sandbox games (every single one of them I've played in). And that's the impression I get when I hear a lot of DMs online claiming that sandboxes are the one-true-way and anything remotely as coming off as a railroad is garbage. I mean for crying out loud, how often do I see someone say, _"blah blah blah which is why I don't buy or run published adventures."_ I've DMed for almost 20 years and 90% of what I run is from published adventures. They wouldn't keep making them if people didn't think they were good. You're just being an elitist cause you're obviously more talented at DMing than I am. 

I've also very rarely been bored in an adventure that would be classified as a railroad. My PC has a clear goal, it's interesting, I'm making progress, I'm killing stuff and taking loot, and most importantly, I'm not bored and I'm having fun. So tell me again why an adventure with a linear path (aka railroad) is bad? Cause I thought I was playing D&D to have fun? Which I am.

Before anyone starts getting defensive, relax. Pay attention to what I'm saying rather than skimming over it so you can reply back to tell me I'm wrong. Yes, I understand a railroad can be bad when done by a bad DM. That in no way makes a railroad game bad though. I also understand that plenty of sandbox DMs are not lazy, they do prepare things, and they are good at running a sandbox game. I have just never had the pleasure to play in ones game. My point is that any DM worth a dang is going to recognize the good/bad of both sandbox and railroaded games and knows that both are equally as fun if run by the right DM. A good DM may even do a bit of both in his campaign. To completely disregard one or the other is insanity to me. The only logic I can get from that is that you are trying to be an elitist.



shidaku said:


> Then it's all the player's fault for missing this or not doing that or whatever it is the DM _really_ wanted us to go after.



I understand what you're saying since the sandbox games I've played in were pretty much just that. Not necessarily using random encounter tables, but the DMs definitely just pulled some random encounter out of thin air since we were getting bored due to not knowing WTF to do and not finding his "hooks" fast enough. 

So we get some random fight so we're not bored, but this is all unplanned since it's a "sandbox" game. Which means, the DM didn't give the challenge rating system any thought, and now his "random" encounters are too tough for our level. Not that I think he is making them too tough on purpose. It's just that since he didn't actually prepare it beforehand, he's unable to gauge how hard it actually will be for us. Is that what you are actually referring to?



neonagash said:


> The only thing wrong with that, is everything.
> 
> With a sandbox it IS the players jobs to be an active part of the universe and ask questions and look for interesting things to do rather then sitting there and being spoon fed cliched hooks.
> 
> If the GM is beating you over the head with "this way lies the adventure" its NOT a sandbox.



Look, based on how you are replying to people, I'm sure I know what I'm about to get myself in to. But I'm going to take a stab at this and see if we can discuss it maturely.

You seem to be very pro sandbox, to the point that you're willing to even tell a guy that his sandbox game is a railroad game just so there isn't a blemish on your preferred style. But the guy has very valid points, because I've experienced the same thing. And I know what the difference between the two styles of games are since I've been at this long enough.

I am noticing one thing here though. You are focusing more on the campaign being a sandbox rather than the adventures like the OP (oh that's me) was focusing on at the start. There is a difference. Here is what I mean:

I run lots of railroaded adventures. But I like to think that I try to keep my campaign world as sandboxy as possible. The PCs are free to do as they wish (within reason). They help build the story _around_ the adventures that I provide for them. I even encourage them to be pro-active and do their own thing so that I am not spoon feeding them content. What I do though, is railroad my adventures so that they integrate with what it is the PCs are doing. I've said it before, it's the illusion that I am *not* railroading. I want to run an adventure because it sounds exciting for me as a DM to DM, I paid for it, and I've prepared it. It will not go to waste, and it *will* be fun (well, I hope...we've all had a few stinkers whether self-written or not). 

The key  is, not to jump the gun. If the timing is not right, I will put it off until I can somehow weave it into what the PCs are currently doing. Even now, I'm itching to start my epic adventure and the PCs keep going off on a tangent and we haven't started it yet. It's been two months, with another month to go it seems, and I haven't started it. Right now I'm just rolling with the punches and making things up as we go until they are finished doing what they are doing. But we will start this adventure. I've never once had a player complain about how I run adventures because they are having fun and it isn't obvious that I do railroad them into doing what the adventure expects of them. Or maybe they do notice sometimes and they just don't care cause they are having fun. At the same time, I'm not railroading a single outcome. If they fail, they fail. And boy did they fail when I ran Dead Gods. Orcus came back in full force thanks to the PCs failing. But I managed to railroad them into completely every single chapter in that adventure. The thing is, they felt like they made those choices themselves.


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## LostSoul (Sep 14, 2014)

neonagash said:


> Definitely agnostic.
> 
> Nothing wrong with random encounters, or random weather (i have a nice one I use each morning for adventures).
> 
> But when a whole campaign is "duh I'm confused, roll a random encounter" thats not a sandbox. Its a random crap pile. And probably would have been no matter what sort of adventure was being intended.




Yeah.  I think random encounters have a place in your typical sandbox, but I don't think they're a good stand-in for a lack of content.

When I play I make a wandering monster check every four hours in the wilderness (1 in 6 chance).  The PC in the game set up a camp in a forest hex.  She used the camp to spy on two nearby towns that had been taken over by two different (but allied) duergar lairs (using binoculars that she found on her rocket ship).  She directed her followers to attack one town while she and some other followers took the other.  In town she directed the villagers to head back to their camp on their own by following their footsteps (it was December in the north and the random weather rolls determined that it hadn't snowed for a while).

Anyway, she takes care of the duergar in town and heads back to the camp.  She spends the night there but I roll a wandering monster - wolves.  She wakes in the night hearing screams as the wolves have killed two adults and dragged off their children.  She finds the wolves and kills the alpha and drives off the rest (failed morale check).  Then she performs funeral rites on the dead to make sure they don't come back as undead.

Here we have a wandering monster but it interacts with the system in various ways (the town system, the monster lair system, the weather system, the morale system).  I think these factors really help avoiding the fact that wandering monsters on their own are generally boring.



Oryan77 said:


> So I started this thread because I'm amazed at how many people voted for a "sandbox" adventure being the 2nd most important thing to writing an adventure. And frankly, I'm sick of the whole "sandbox" bandwagon since it comes off as elitist and basically is saying that I'm not doing something right when I run my adventures. By several of the replies, it seems like that is still the case.
> 
> So I want to disprove that myth. Not that I am trying to say a sandbox game is bad. I'm trying to say, a sandbox does not automatically make it good and a railroad does not automatically make it bad.




I like sandboxes these days because most of the D&D I've played hasn't been in a sandbox.  It's been fun.  I can see how that enthusiasm could look like elitism (or is elitism - people being people, that sort of thing happens).  It took a long time to figure out how to play, run, and design a sandbox system and the threads and blog posts extolling the virtues of sandbox play really helped out.  I think the elitism - this is how you do it, this is why it's better than this other way - is helpful for people who are/were in my situation.



Oryan77 said:


> Common themes I see a lot with sandbox games is that the DM does the following things:
> 
> 1. The internet has made it seem like sandboxes = good and railroads = bad. That's BS, but it doesn't stop a ton of DMs from trying to appear holier than thou by labeling themselves as a sandbox DM and then badmouths a railroad game.
> 
> ...




1. "Railroad" means different things to different people; it's a confusing term.  For me, it means that the players can't make meaningful choices.  Using my definition, that means railroad = bad.  However, I don't describe linear games or even heavily DM-plot led games as necessarily being railroads.  I was playing in a d20 Modern game where the DM was leading us around pretty heavily; in that game, I knew the choices I made were about characterization, not about plot or goals or tactics & strategy, and that was okay.  As long as there is a space in the game to make meaningful decisions, and the game doesn't try to trick or deceive you about what those decisions are, you can avoid a railroad.

2. That you get the impression that sandbox DMs are lazy surprises me.  There's a lot of work that goes into preparing a sandbox for play; it just generally happens before play begins.  Between sessions or during play most of the work is determining how the setting has changed in response to the player's actions, and that's generally pretty easy.

3. The thing about sandbox play that interests me is that the players get to determine what they want to do.  If they want to engage in pointless dialogue, then they can.  The last session I played revolved around two reasonably pointless events: the PC meeting and talking to a randomly-generated "rootless wanderer" (someone who is designed to become a henchman, if the player wants) and reuniting with an NPC she hadn't seen for a long time, making dinner for her, and having a feast.  These were both reasonably pointless, though the system I use limits that somewhat (the PC gained a henchman and gained XP for that, and she increased her "reaction" in town - which is important because it determines how NPCs react to you, since I use random reaction rolls - and got more XP).

One of the procedures I use for sandbox play is to drop a lot of "rumours" on the PCs - I tell them what's of interest nearby (that is, the hexes I've prepped) and, since the level of those hexes is based on terrain, they can get a pretty good idea of the level of risk & reward.  I tie this to the reward system: players choose a Quest based on those rumours and a Goal for their PCs, which nets them about 90% of the XP they are going to get.  Quests are limited to certain broad categories, like "explore a hex feature" and "defeat a specific named NPC".   (The others are "increase reaction or influence in a settlement", "discover a new power or ritual", and "harass a monster lair".  Dungeons have a whole bunch of specific Quests based on the dungeon, like "Reach level 2" or "Kill the gibbering mouther" or "Find the bio-lab" or "Take the treasure from the vault".)  Goals are longer-term, like "Build a keep".  Quests are what you are doing today, Goals are what you eventually want to accomplish.

Without procedures like those, I can see how it would be difficult to know what to do.  The Quests give the players something to do right away and since they're tied to the reward system, completing them gives them more power and more ability to explore and change the setting in accordance with their Goal.  

It's usually pretty easy: "So here are the rumours; which one sounds interesting?"  "The standing stone where it's always winter seems pretty cool."  "Okay, make it your Quest to check it out.  So what are you doing now?"  "Well if it's winter there we'll need cold-weather gear, so we buy that, and then head out."  "Okay."

And since the hex generation system ties each hex to at least one other, whatever they do there will have an impact somewhere else.  As DM I make a note of the player's actions and how it will affect other hexes, and the system promotes a lot of downtime (getting HP and powers back), so there's time for that change to make its way through the setting.



Oryan77 said:


> The key  is, not to jump the gun. If the timing is not right, I will put it off until I can somehow weave it into what the PCs are currently doing. Even now, I'm itching to start my epic adventure and the PCs keep going off on a tangent and we haven't started it yet. It's been two months, with another month to go it seems, and I haven't started it. Right now I'm just rolling with the punches and making things up as we go until they are finished doing what they are doing. But we will start this adventure. I've never once had a player complain about how I run adventures because they are having fun and it isn't obvious that I do railroad them into doing what the adventure expects of them. Or maybe they do notice sometimes and they just don't care cause they are having fun. At the same time, I'm not railroading a single outcome. If they fail, they fail. And boy did they fail when I ran Dead Gods. Orcus came back in full force thanks to the PCs failing. But I managed to railroad them into completely every single chapter in that adventure. The thing is, they felt like they made those choices themselves.




I personally wouldn't classify that as a "railroad".  I don't know what I'd call it, since you're building your adventures based on what the players want to see and incorporating the player's choices into future adventures.  It actually seems close to the "indie" style, though on a larger scale (where "indie" seems to imply that the next scene will be built from the player's choices in the previous scene, you're building the next adventure from the player's choices in the previous one).  Which just goes to show you that different people (well, me, at least) have different understandings of the term "railroad".

Is that a fair assessment?

How do you use published adventures in this way?  Is it something like, "Oh, this adventure would be a perfect follow-up for what has just happened?" Or in some other way?


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## neonagash (Sep 14, 2014)

Oryan77 said:


> So I started this thread because I'm amazed at how many people voted for a "sandbox" adventure being the 2nd most important thing to writing an adventure. And frankly, I'm sick of the whole "sandbox" bandwagon since it comes off as elitist and basically is saying that I'm not doing something right when I run my adventures. By several of the replies, it seems like that is still the case.




Sounds like you have an inferiority complex. Thats usually the case when a person feels like someone else is being "elitist" about something that has absolutely no effect on  their life, but decides to be offended by it anyway. 





Oryan77 said:


> So I want to disprove that myth. Not that I am trying to say a sandbox game is bad. I'm trying to say, a sandbox does not automatically make it good and a railroad does not automatically make it bad.




Well I am willing say it. Railroad games are bad. They are boring, rely on trivial, cliched hooks that cant be tailored to the players in the game and the PC's actions are irrelevant to the outcome. Its a railroad, whats gonna happen if they are great is the same as what would happen if they sucked. So who the hell cares?


Common themes I see a lot with sandbox games is that the DM does the following things:




Oryan77 said:


> 2. Many DMs use this as an excuse to be lazy. They think that by being a sandbox DM, it means that they'll automatically be welcomed with open arms since the internet says that sandboxes are better. And then it means that they don't have to prepare anything because, hey, it's a sandbox and we can't predict what the players will do. It's a perfect scapegoat for the lazy DM!




Actually sandbox games are a lot HARDER to GM. You have to do a lot of thinking on your feat. Any half arsed rookie can run a sandbox. 



Oryan77 said:


> 3. There is an awful lot of pointless dialogue and pointless activities that go on in a sandbox game. My PCs spent time gardening, talking to random old ladies in their front yards, I've had conversations about radishes, one of my PCs did some manual labor and helped the guards set up a blockade for a possible zombie attack (roleplayed out and then the invasion was too hard for my PC, probably because it wasn't planned ahead of time), and I once roamed aimlessly around town because I was expected to use in-game time to learn about the cites first hand rather than learn them through adventuring.




Actually no. None of those things are pointless. You as a player chose to do them. If you didnt want to do them you shouldnt have. Thats part of a sandbox, you tell the GM what you want to do, the other players tell the GM what they want to do, and a story ensues  based on what the players wanted to do. 

Side note, why do so many of these stores sound like 1 on 1 games? No other players or characters are ever mentioned. Its like its just totally made up as a way to support a presupposed conclusion that railroads are better because.... hmm, no one ever actually says why they are  better. The railroad GM's just attack the opposition without offering anything positive about their own side as a comparison point. But I digress. 





Oryan77 said:


> They wouldn't keep making them if people didn't think they were good. You're just being an elitist cause you're obviously more talented at DMing than I am.




Actually they would. As GM's we buy lots of stuff to rape for ideas rather then running word for word. Everything from player supplement books to adventures. Hell I've bought published adventures just because i dont like drawing out maps and its worth a few bucks to have a big stack of pre made maps for me to dig out whenever the characters wind up underground. I doubt I'm alone in that. 





Oryan77 said:


> I've also very rarely been bored in an adventure that would be classified as a railroad. My PC has a clear goal, it's interesting, I'm making progress, I'm killing stuff and taking loot, and most importantly, I'm not bored and I'm having fun. So tell me again why an adventure with a linear path (aka railroad) is bad? Cause I thought I was playing D&D to have fun? Which I am.




And in 20 years of playing and GMing I've never once found a railroaded adventure interesting or fun. 

I dont play RPG's to walk through some other guys fan wank wannabe adventure story. 

When I'm a player I want to play MY characters story. 
I want to follow MY goals, not some writer or GM's idea of what my goals should be. 
I dont care about loot, or random killings. I want to help drive the story of MY character and his allies going through a dangerous and difficult life of adventures. Doing what WE think is interesting. Not whatever some guy wrote down. 




Oryan77 said:


> IBefore anyone starts getting defensive, relax. Pay attention to what I'm saying rather than skimming over it so you can reply back to tell me I'm wrong. Yes, I understand a railroad can be bad when done by a bad DM. That in no way makes a railroad game bad though. I also understand that plenty of sandbox DMs are not lazy, they do prepare things, and they are good at running a sandbox game. I have just never had the pleasure to play in ones game.




So instead of asking about good sandbox games, or looking for advice on how to make one, or run one yourself you decide to crap on the entire idea over and over and tell the rest of us that while our entire way of gaming sucks hairy balls and we're wrong, we shouldnt get defensive over it. Or point out any issues in your style of gaming. 

Ahh okay i get it. This whole thread was about you crapping on us and us " thank you sir, may I have another" ? 

I dont think so. 






Oryan77 said:


> ISo we get some random fight so we're not bored, but this is all unplanned since it's a "sandbox" game. Which means, the DM didn't give the challenge rating system any thought, and now his "random" encounters are too tough for our level. Not that I think he is making them too tough on purpose. It's just that since he didn't actually prepare it beforehand, he's unable to gauge how hard it actually will be for us. Is that what you are actually referring to?




Crap on the challenge rating system. Its not good to start with and even in the best of times is way to dependent on certain assumptions of gear, magic and party composition. 

But yes part of the point of a sandbox is its a living world. So if at first level you hear rumours about the ogres blocking such and such trade route and causing trouble and decide to wander up there because "hey the DM wouldnt put a group of ogres in front of a 1st level party" well yeah, your getting smushed to paste by ogres. You were told they were there, and the ogres dont ask your party CR first and then wander off if its too low. 

Thats part of building a realistic world. It doesnt scale with the PC's. Its a world with stuff in it. That stuff is there doing what it wants to do whether any PC ever looks at it or not. 

"If i tree falls in the woods without a PC there to hear it does it make a sound...... 




Look, based on how you are replying to people, I'm sure I know what I'm about to get myself in to. But I'm going to take a stab at this and see if we can discuss it maturely.

You seem to be very pro sandbox, to the point that you're willing to even tell a guy that his sandbox game is a railroad game just so there isn't a blemish on your preferred style. But the guy has very valid points, because I've experienced the same thing. And I know what the difference between the two styles of games are since I've been at this long enough.

I am noticing one thing here though. You are focusing more on the campaign being a sandbox rather than the adventures like the OP (oh that's me) was focusing on at the start. There is a difference. Here is what I mean:

I run lots of railroaded adventures. But I like to think that I try to keep my campaign world as sandboxy as possible. The PCs are free to do as they wish (within reason). They help build the story _around_ the adventures that I provide for them. I even encourage them to be pro-active and do their own thing so that I am not spoon feeding them content. What I do though, is railroad my adventures so that they integrate with what it is the PCs are doing. I've said it before, it's the illusion that I am *not* railroading. I want to run an adventure because it sounds exciting for me as a DM to DM, I paid for it, and I've prepared it. It will not go to waste, and it *will* be fun (well, I hope...we've all had a few stinkers whether self-written or not). 

The key  is, not to jump the gun. If the timing is not right, I will put it off until I can somehow weave it into what the PCs are currently doing. Even now, I'm itching to start my epic adventure and the PCs keep going off on a tangent and we haven't started it yet. It's been two months, with another month to go it seems, and I haven't started it. Right now I'm just rolling with the punches and making things up as we go until they are finished doing what they are doing. But we will start this adventure. I've never once had a player complain about how I run adventures because they are having fun and it isn't obvious that I do railroad them into doing what the adventure expects of them. Or maybe they do notice sometimes and they just don't care cause they are having fun. At the same time, I'm not railroading a single outcome. If they fail, they fail. And boy did they fail when I ran Dead Gods. Orcus came back in full force thanks to the PCs failing. But I managed to railroad them into completely every single chapter in that adventure. The thing is, they felt like they made those choices themselves.[/QUOTE]


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## Grogg of the North (Sep 14, 2014)

For me, as a player and as a DM, I like to see a blend between structure and choice.  So that at the end of a dungeon or story arc the player's have a few options to choose from.  Their choice(s) defines the next step in the adventure.

*As an example:*
After escaping the dungeon of Baron von Evilguy the party finds itself battered, but alive, in the forests outside town.  What is your next step?  You have some friendly contacts in the underground that may be able to help you with stopping the Baron's ritual.  You could petition the cleric's church and the knight's lord for help.  Mr Wizard-ington, you recall reading about something similar to what's going on in the arcane library's tomes.  What's your next step?

*****

But just because those few choices are thrown out there doesn't preclude any other choice from being made.  Such as allying with the Baron, allying with the Baron and then betraying him, saying "screw this!  we go hunt pirates instead!" and so forth.  

Any choice made has it's own set of adventures that come with it, moves the plot forward and, hopefully, lets the players feel empowered.


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## the Jester (Sep 14, 2014)

Oryan77 said:


> 1. The internet has made it seem like sandboxes = good and railroads = bad. That's BS, but it doesn't stop a ton of DMs from trying to appear holier than thou by labeling themselves as a sandbox DM and then badmouths a railroad game.




That's some specific Internet you're looking at, then. There is plenty of support for story-oriented gaming online. As for DMs "trying to appear holier than thou" by badmouthing railroads, are you sure that you aren't just seeing lots of examples of DMs stating their tastes?

I'll grant you that some people are very aggressive about their playstyle preferences online, but there's a big difference between "I dm sandboxes and dislike railroads" and "I dm sanboxes and railroads suck in other peoples' games."



Oryan77 said:


> 2. Many DMs use this as an excuse to be lazy. They think that by being a sandbox DM, it means that they'll automatically be welcomed with open arms since the internet says that sandboxes are better.




First of all, I am pretty far from convinced that "the Internet says that sandboxes are better", much less that ANY DM runs a type of game simply to be "welcomed with open arms" by some unstated crowd of game-approvers or -disapprovers.

Moreover, sandbox DMing is a lot more work than story-oriented/railroad DMing.  A LOT MORE. Not a little bit, but tons and tons more work. So I suspect that your observation here comes from dealing with specific people who fall into the mold you describe, not from the general gamer population. I could be wrong, of course.



Oryan77 said:


> 3. There is an awful lot of pointless dialogue and pointless activities that go on in a sandbox game.




Because *there is no point to the game until the pcs make it have one.* What you call "pointless" is all roleplaying. That stuff is fun for many of us. Calling it "pointless" implies that there is a point, a plot, a direction, a "you're supposed to do that". The whole point of a sandbox is that it avoids all that. If you don't enjoy that playstyle- and it seems clear that you really don't- then avoid tables that run sandbox games. Simple answer, problem solved. I don't get why you seem so affronted that many of us do like sandboxes. I do get that you perceive a pro-sandbox bias online, but all I can say about that is to keep looking around and you'll find plenty of story support.


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## Oryan77 (Sep 14, 2014)

the Jester said:


> First of all, I am pretty far from convinced that "the Internet says that sandboxes are better", much less that ANY DM runs a type of game simply to be "welcomed with open arms" by some unstated crowd of game-approvers or -disapprovers.



The original thread that I linked in the OP here gives a perfect example of why I would have this impression. The 2nd most important thing to most gamers voting for a Planescape adventure is to make sure that it is a sandbox adventure. Of course, that isn't solid evidence that people say sandboxes are better. But it's a pretty good basis.

But I'm just flabbergasted that that is the 2nd most important thing to people in regards to making a Planescape adventure, and must be *the* most important thing to people in adventure writing in general. For real? I have run dozens of published adventures and almost all of them were fun to run. Most of them are older modules that I converted. Most of them were linear and would be considered as a railroad. So I just can't see how making them into a sandbox adventure is the single most important thing as to whether it will be good or not. I've never once picked up an adventure and hoped that it would be a sandbox style adventure. It never occurs to me. I would think that there are plenty of other factors that would be much more important in adventure writing than that. Which is why I'm convinced that the internet has told so many people that railroads are bad and sandboxes are good, that when they see that in a poll option, they choose it cause they'd like to think that they know better and want to feel like better DMs.

It might be silly, but that's just how it comes across to me.



> Moreover, sandbox DMing is a lot more work than story-oriented/railroad DMing.  A LOT MORE. Not a little bit, but tons and tons more work. So I suspect that your observation here comes from dealing with specific people who fall into the mold you describe, not from the general gamer population. I could be wrong, of course.



No, you are correct about that. I was clear to say that my opinion is based on my own observations and experiences. One of the posters in this thread admitted to do zero prep work and he gave a clear example of how he wings his entire sessions. Each DM that I played under in their sandbox games seemed to be doing the exact same thing, only worse. They may have had an idea in mind to get the ball rolling, but I guarantee they didn't do any prep work to the extent you are talking about. I also guarantee I do a hell of a lot more prep work than my sandbox DMs and my adventures would be classified as a railroad adventure. My campaign on the other hand is more of a mix of both sandbox and railroad.



> Because *there is no point to the game until the pcs make it have one.* What you call "pointless" is all roleplaying. That stuff is fun for many of us.



For one, that's the exact problem I have had right there. That's why on more than one occasion, I've spent 4 or more hours at a table bored off my butt. Which was strange because I never thought I could ever be bored in a D&D game. I'm very pro-active as a player. 

The DMs had that same line of logic though. He's waiting for us to make things happen rather than provide us with an interesting hook and an adventure in mind. So we end up not making things happen because situations are not presented to us. We're expected to present situations to the DM. I'm sure there is no problem with the right group of pro-active players. But for me, when I'm plopped down into the middle of a new town in a new campaign with a new PC...I don't want to find something to do and make something happen. That's boring. I want to be unexpectedly surprised with something. Once I have gotten to know my PC and I have started establishing a life with him, then I can take charge and do things that my PC would take an initiative to do.


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## Oryan77 (Sep 14, 2014)

LostSoul said:


> One of the procedures I use for sandbox play is to drop a lot of "rumours" on the PCs - I tell them what's of interest nearby



That would work just fine for me. The sandbox games that I played didn't even give that kind of option. Even then, I would hope that the DM has a good idea about what each of those adventures entail. Or be really good at making them fun. Cause you can usually tell when a DM is making up his adventure when he goes. It's usually pretty bland, mostly just "random" encounters, and there is no real twists or suspenseful scenarios and NPCs.



> Which just goes to show you that different people (well, me, at least) have different understandings of the term "railroad".
> 
> Is that a fair assessment?



Definitely. We've always had a hard time pinpointing on a broad scale as to what exactly makes something a sandbox and a railroad. I'm pretty sure though that when it comes to talking about specific adventures, we're all on the same page for the most part. People are calling a published adventure with a linear storyline (path) a railroad. And adventures that give lots of location fluff, timelines, and behind the scenes actions that allow PCs to skip around chapters and even avoid chapters all together as a sandbox. So my beef is with saying that one so much more important than the other, as if the other (the linear railroad adventures) are a huge mistake. I personally find the more flexible adventures way harder to prepare as a DM and they are overwhelming to me since I have a poor memory and need to make charts just to keep up with their details. I've never ran a railroad adventure and thought anything negative about it, unless there is a scene that requires PCs to bypass a puzzle (or similar) in order to move on. Even then, I've never found it to be a negative on the adventure style itself and things like that can always be worked out.



> How do you use published adventures in this way?  Is it something like, "Oh, this adventure would be a perfect follow-up for what has just happened?" Or in some other way?



It starts out with me wanting to run a certain type of adventure, or I ask the players what kind of adventure or locations they'd like to play in. Lately I've had an itching to run another arabian or egyptian type adventure in my Planescape game. So I'll find a published adventure that looks good or has had good reviews. Maybe it's a pyramid dungeon crawl. I buy it, read it, and prepare it. I put a ton of prep work into it. I probably spend twice as long prepping it as I do running it. Maybe even more. That's part of the fun for me though.

So when I do this, there is no way it will go to waste. Even if the players are talking about traveling to the nearby snow covered mountains, they'll be playing in this egyptian pyramid adventure. That's the part where I railroad them. It depends on the current situation, but I would never be blatantly obvious that I'm railroading them. I might let them go to the mountain, and then something happens that causes them to end up in the desert (the benefits of Planescape). Or maybe something happens in town that convinces them to put the mountain journey on hold and travel to the desert instead (their decision, not mine...I just tricked them into wanting to make that decision). Any way I do it, it is done in a way that they want to do it or enjoy the change in direction. Also, now that I know they want to go to the mountain, I can prepare a mountain adventure while we are running the pyramid adventure. So I repeat the process.

While I'm running the pyramid adventure, I railroad them to stay on track by using the same methods. I will adjust things accordingly so their choices feel meaningful. I don't put up an obvious wall so they can't veer off, but we'll end up doing a full circle to get back on track because I want to run the adventure and have my fun too. If I need them to do something because the adventure calls for it, and they just aren't going in that direction, I'll guide them down the tracks so we move on with the adventure. I just don't make it obvious.

Among all of that, I incorporate backstory and write my own adventures (or run published ones) geared towards particular PCs. They can even tell me where they want to go and I'll run an adventure (most likely published) based on that. But I will railroad them through the adventure so we finish it. And if I don't want to deal with what they are trying to do, I'll railroad them off those tracks until I can figure out what to do. Again, just don't make that obvious.

This is why I was saying there is a difference in a railroad adventure, and a railroad campaign. I have no problem with a railroad adventure. I don't see why anyone would if it is fun. I do understand how a railroad campaign might be more boring to play in though if you never feel like your PC is yours and not just a character that the DM wrote into his story.


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## Oryan77 (Sep 14, 2014)

neonagash said:


> Sounds like you have an inferiority complex. Thats usually the case when a person feels like someone else is being "elitist" about something that has absolutely no effect on  their life, but decides to be offended by it anyway.




Yep, you called it. I have an inferiority complex. 
Please, that's not the first or second time you've responded in this thread by trying to flip the table and turn it around on the person you are replying to in order to come out on top. Let's not play these games if you want to actually discuss the topic. Otherwise, yer wasting your time and being childish. I simply won't reply to you any further if that continues.



> Actually sandbox games are a lot HARDER to GM. You have to do a lot of thinking on your feat. Any half arsed rookie can run a sandbox.



Well which is it man? Is it harder to gm or can any half arsed rookie run them?



> Actually no. None of those things are pointless. You as a player chose to do them. If you didnt want to do them you shouldnt have. Thats part of a sandbox, you tell the GM what you want to do, the other players tell the GM what they want to do, and a story ensues  based on what the players wanted to do.



Granted, that particular experience may have been my first introduction to a sandbox game. I did not realize that, I, as a player, was supposed to tell the DM, as the creator of his world and his adventures, that this is the adventure I want to play in that session. I have no interest in doing that as a player unless I've been playing my PC enough to have goals, and I've gotten familiar with his world and met his NPCs. It goes both ways. A good DM should know when to pick up the reigns and ya know, DM. He kept asking us what we wanted to do, so we just explored his town since we had no clue what to do. That involved me talking to to random NPCs about random "pointless" things.

Yes, I find it pointless to talk about things as irrelevant to the game as radishes. I've played with guys that loved going off on a tangent like that in their roleplaying. It's not my place to judge how they like to roleplay. I love roleplaying too. But I'm not interested in having meaningless dialogue with NPCs on a Friday night. I want to roleplay, or listen to others roleplay about content that is beneficial to the game. Just like I don't want to watch an Avengers movie so that I can listen to them for 30 minutes talking about shawarma. Five minutes and it gave me a laugh? Sure. Otherwise, lets move on with the game.



> Side note, why do so many of these stores sound like 1 on 1 games? No other players or characters are ever mentioned. Its like its just totally made up as a way to support a presupposed conclusion that railroads are better because.... hmm, no one ever actually says why they are  better.



Am I reading that right? You're actually accusing me of making stuff up? Oh hell that's gotta be the funniest thing I've read on here in a long time. You truly live in your own world don't ya? It's like you distort reality so you'll feel better about your own viewpoints. That's great man.

I really don't mind giving you the details if you really wanna hear them. If you haven't noticed, I like to type! Heck, it may even be an entertaining story since one of the sandbox games I am referring to involved me playing with another player that we just met for the first time that day, and turned out he just got out of San Quinton after spending 3 years there for burglary.

And I'll say it again, pay attention to what I'm saying instead of hitting the reply button so quickly to _have at me_. Quote me when I said "railroads are better" or let me know why I should give reasons for why railroads are better since I never claimed they were better. 

Reading comprehension is key when having discussions. I posted this thread because of guys like *you* that are saying sandbox games are better and railroad games are crap. You, are proving my point perfectly.  I don't think railroad games are any better than sandbox games. What I do think though, is that railroad games are not bad and can be just as good or bad as any sandbox game. It depends on the ability of the DM to make either of them good or bad. So for people to think that making a published adventure a sandbox will make its success hit or miss is nuts as far as I see it (as an experienced DM). I just don't get that logic. So I'm hear to *defend* the railroad adventure. I'm not telling anyone that it's a better style. I'd like to see the myth of "sandbox is better" eventually go away since that opinion seems like nothing more than a bunch of people jumping on the internet bandwagon. It's as if they want to feel like an elitist who think of themselves to be better writers than _published authors_ and _better DMs_ than guys like me.



neonagash said:


> The railroad GM's just attack the opposition without offering anything positive about their own side as a comparison point. But I digress.



Followed by: 







neonagash said:


> Well I am willing say it. Railroad games are bad. They are boring, rely on trivial, cliched hooks that cant be tailored to the players in the game and the PC's actions are irrelevant to the outcome. Its a railroad, whats gonna happen if they are great is the same as what would happen if they sucked. So who the hell cares?And in 20 years of playing and GMing I've never once found a railroaded adventure interesting or fun. I dont play RPG's to walk through some other guys fan wank wannabe adventure story.
> When I'm a player I want to play MY characters story.
> I want to follow MY goals, not some writer or GM's idea of what my goals should be.
> I dont care about loot, or random killings. I want to help drive the story of MY character and his allies going through a dangerous and difficult life of adventures. Doing what WE think is interesting. Not whatever some guy wrote down.



 Heh....ok man....practice what you preach is all I'm gonna say.


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## pemerton (Sep 15, 2014)

Oryan77 said:


> There is an awful lot of pointless dialogue and pointless activities that go on in a sandbox game. My PCs spent time gardening, talking to random old ladies in their front yards, I've had conversations about radishes, one of my PCs did some manual labor and helped the guards set up a blockade for a possible zombie attack (roleplayed out and then the invasion was too hard for my PC, probably because it wasn't planned ahead of time), and I once roamed aimlessly around town because I was expected to use in-game time to learn about the cites first hand rather than learn them through adventuring. The DM just waited for *me* to provide the hook and I had no idea what to do since it was the first session.



As I've postd upthread, I'm not really into sandboxing. But what you've posted here really makes me appreciate the strengths of my own preferred "indie"-style.

Upthread I linked to a Burning Wheel session report. Here is what one of my players emailed the rest of our group about that session:

[P]retty cool how the world gets shaped by the character’s beliefs and instincts and the dice rolls! Just thinking through Jobe’s B’s and I’s and rolls … The feather existed because of its trait and hence X sold it. It was cursed because the aura reading failed. Jabal existed because we sought out a member of the cabal (affiliation). Athog gave us trouble because that circles test failed. Jabal lived in a tower because of an instinct about casting falcon skin if falling. I didn’t understand how those things worked until we did the session. If we had turned up with different characters, then I think the world would have been quite different too.​
From my point of view, the problem with the GMing in the experience you describe is that the GM seems not to know what you are looking for from the game, nor have any techniques for ascertaining that during play, and so does not frame your PC into any compelling scene.

The first RPG I ran which did have such techniques was original Oriental Adventures - part of the PC build rules gives PCs hooks like family and honour that I as GM could then use to frame scenes that would grab them. A system like Burning Wheel takes this to a further level, but the basic techniques are easily adapatable to many systems, including D&D. It seems as if the GM who gave you that bad session could benefit from learning some of them!


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## Sunseeker (Sep 15, 2014)

pemerton said:


> From my point of view, the problem with the GMing in the experience you describe is that the GM seems not to know what you are looking for from the game, nor have any techniques for ascertaining that during play, and so does not frame your PC into any compelling scene.




This is why I always ask/require my players to provide me some information about their characters and themselves as a player (if I don't know the person behind the PC yet).  Then I integrate those things into the game.  If they choose not to do give me that, well they'll have to roll along with everyone else.  If their desires change or grow, I advise them to keep me informed.  This is also why I sit everyone down to talk about the game I plan to run before we decide to go with it.


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## mcbobbo (Sep 15, 2014)

I would railroad the hell out of a player who was spending valuable table time discussing radishes.  "Okay Tom, you have a long and fulfilling discussion about radishes.  While Max is talking to this farmer for the next few hours, what are the rest of you doing?  And by the way, you see someone observing you from the shadows."


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## pemerton (Sep 16, 2014)

mcbobbo said:


> I would railroad the hell out of a player who was spending valuable table time discussing radishes.  "Okay Tom, you have a long and fulfilling discussion about radishes.  While Max is talking to this farmer for the next few hours, what are the rest of you doing?  And by the way, you see someone observing you from the shadows."



I'm not sure where you think the railroading is here.

Telling players that their PCs see an observer in the shadows doesn't look like railroading to me. Nor resolving a conversation with an NPC via a quick summary (in the absence of any conflict or disagreement between PC and NPC).


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## arjomanes (Sep 18, 2014)

I think it's good to think of a sandbox game as a map with terminals and a number of different railroads the players can get on. And they can choose to ride that rail as far as they want. If they get off at the next station, then great, but if they jump off in the middle, then you have to think on your feet.  

For my campaign, the PCs start the game on a tropical island. On this island exists a native village; lizardmen marshes; a destroyed, abandoned, and haunted colonist village; an old lighthouse with caves beneath that lead into an ancient temple (the excavation of these tunnels made the excavation team mad who went and killed the colonists); a haunted mansion of the former governor of the colony; a jungle with goblin monkeys, dinosaurs, etc; caves of crabmen with myconid slaves. 

There are very solid hooks for them to follow, and anytime they bite then they climb on the train to an adventure. My DM notebook has over a dozen full adventure modules in it. Some them are reskinned classics like the Saltmarsh adventures, or The Hidden Shrine of Tamoachan, while others are newer short DCC modules, and even a 4e adventure I liked, as well as my own homebrew adventure ideas and maps. 

My players have explored one half of a level of a dungeon, then left, explored part of a sunken ship, and then attacked the cultists under the lighthouse. They may never explore the lizard swamps or the jungle shrine or the ruined village or the haunted manor. They may fight against or join the pirates that are scheduled to arrive in a week, or they may not go to the area of the island those pirates are at. If they interact with the pirates, they may end up for a ride partway on the Pathfinder pirate Skull & Shackles adventure path, and if they veer off that, they may head down to the Isle of Dread, sail into Freeport, go undersea with the Sunken Empires underwater city, or maybe they'll run into the Razor Coast adventure setting, or sail all the way up to an Oriental Adventures setting.

I think trying to have a multi-directional dynamic campaign setting can be more work than running a one-direction game (which is why I stock my world with pre-made modules and just sketch out the basics of new home-brew adventures until they bite). You may have a lot of material they never see. But I personally think that players should be able to make real and meaningful change in the world. That even means they can disregard adventure hooks completely or they can join up with one of the factions in the world (which may or may not be considered villains). 

To help round out the spaces between adventure sites I use some random tables that represent encounters appropriate to the area. No, not all encounters are level appropriate, but that doesn't mean they automatically die. The level 1 PCs heard something big thrashing in the jungle and they hid, so the T-Rex didn't see them (they were downwind) and it wandered off. If it had seen them, then they could have run or climbed a tree, or tried something else. Regardless, they appreciate the options they have.


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## Desdichado (Sep 18, 2014)

shidaku said:


> The "sandbox" v. "railroad" dichotomy is a false one (as are most comparisons in the gaming world).  The world does not exist of it's own accord, it functions only to the extent that it has been designed to.  A "true" sandbox is reality, since a TTRPG cannot fully simulate reality, it cannot be a true sandbox.



I disagree.  There is a very real dichotomy, and both of them do exist at endpoints of a spectrum.  But both are extreme, radical approaches to the game.  There's no such thing as a good/bad dichotomy; because both are so extreme as to automatically be bad games to the vast majority of most players.  Luckily, few games really are "true" sandboxes or "true" railroads, since "true" examples of each are sort of like Platonic ideals, not something that you really see in real life.  As games approach too near to either endpoint, however, they start to exhibit the problems inherent in either approach.

I also think it's fallacious to refer to adventures as sandboxes or railroads.  Adventures can be written with a sort of assumption of a more sandboxy or more railroady approach, but in reality, the sandbox/railroad dichotomy really only makes sense when describing GM behavior at the table, not what's written in the adventure.  An adventure written with the assumption that the GM will railroad the players from point A to point E with points B, C, and D along the way can still play out as a sandbox if the GM fails to give enough meaningful feedback to the players that they can "find the game" and they end up wandering around either ignoring the adventure or doing something else entirely, or whatever.  And the most sandboxy game supplement in existence can be a railroad if the GM fails to allow the players do succeed at anything other than what he already had in mind for them to do.

For my money, I prefer to sketch an outline of what I expect a few sessions will look like.  I make plans for points A, B, C, and D.  I give my players plenty of plot hooks.  I often give them competing plot hooks, so they have meaningful decisions to make on what they think sounds most interesting.  And I'm more than happy to indulge them if they think of something else that they may want to check out, and if it leads to points X, Y and Z that I totally did not plan in advance, that's totally fine too.  To me, that's taking some advantages of both approaches without indulging in their weaknesses if you run the game at either extreme.

However, I also treat the setting somewhat like a character.  If--to use an obvious example--the PCs decide in the middle of a dungeon that they're tired of it and want to quit, they don't get a magical "teleport back to town" option.  They have to actually _leave_ the dungeon.  If they've been down their for a while causing trouble and making noise, then that might be easier said than done.  A lot of sandbox fanatics will call that railroading on my part.  In my opinion, this characterization is absurd.  Sandbox does not mean that logical consequences don't follow the actions of the PCs.  If the PCs make a powerful enemy _by their own actions and their own choices_, that enemy might well attempt to thwart them, have them assassinated, put out a bounty on their heads, etc.  This will in turn limit some of the options that might have been open to them had they not made an enemy of that NPC.  But that's just the logical consequences of the choices that they made.  That's not a railroad, that's just common sense.  

By the same token, the world doesn't just sit around static.  In a computer RPG, if you talk to an NPC in town and he says something to you, he usually ends up just sitting there indefinitely and says the same thing to you again if you come back to his area and talk to him again.  In my games, if the PCs elect to follow a plot hook that they find interesting, something may well be happening with the plot hook that they ignored.  If they decide to go look for treasure in the Old Forest and ignore the hints that orcs are brewing in the Black Hills, they may come back to town with their treasure only to find that the town has been razed to the ground and most of the inhabitants dragged into slavery, or left to rot in ruins of the streets.

I strongly believe in giving the players their heads to go drive the adventure that they want to have.  But I also strongly believe that most players aren't motivated to make adventure out of nothing, and prefer to have rather obvious hooks to pursue.  This is especially true early in the game, when they don't yet have much of a connection to the game world, to each other, or even to their own characters yet, and need a bit of a heavier hand until such time as they can develop those traits.  I don't really worry about trying to label my games as sandbox or railroad either one, because to me, both are pejorative.  

I also find that rah-rah sandbox type players raise a lot of red-flags with regards to the implicit social contract.  Sure, it's nice to have players who are ambitious enough to take on the game and really engage with it.  But that can also easily turn into spotlight hogging and pushy/bossy behavior that alienates or aggravates the other players.

Like I said, both approaches have things to recommend them.  Both of them "unbridled" would be disasters from my perspective.  The trick is to walk a line somewhere between them, giving the PCs both enough direction and enough freedom that they feel satisfied with the game.

To me, this has little to do with how an adventure is written.


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## mcbobbo (Sep 18, 2014)

pemerton said:


> I'm not sure where you think the railroading is here.
> 
> Telling players that their PCs see an observer in the shadows doesn't look like railroading to me. Nor resolving a conversation with an NPC via a quick summary (in the absence of any conflict or disagreement between PC and NPC).



Avoiding that jargon then:

I would override player choice in the following ways...

1) I would make the radish player commit to the decision to have that discussion. 
2)  I would insert a plot device in front of everyone else to get the game moving again.

What I would not do is spend valuable table time catering to that type of player agency.


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## pemerton (Sep 19, 2014)

mcbobbo said:


> I would override player choice in the following ways...
> 
> <snip>
> 
> I would insert a plot device in front of everyone else to get the game moving again.



I don't see how this is overriding player choice. I see that it is _forcing_ a choice. But I'm missing how it is _overriding_ a choice.


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## Janx (Sep 19, 2014)

mcbobbo said:


> Railroading, sandboxing, and illusionism are all tools in the GMs toolbox.  Just as you wouldn't necessarily use a grinder to remove a nail, but sometimes it becomes your only choice.




That's a good way to look at it.

As I've learned through the years, the only thing that matters is Perception.  Perception is Reality.  What the players think is going on trumps everything else.

So if you know what's important to the players, you use the right tool at the right time to satisfy their expectations.


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## mcbobbo (Sep 19, 2014)

pemerton said:


> I don't see how this is overriding player choice. I see that it is _forcing_ a choice. But I'm missing how it is _overriding_ a choice.



Those words are synonyms in my vocabulary.


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## Quickleaf (Sep 19, 2014)

Nice to see this thread veering back into civil thoughtful discussion  Dropping in with some quick thoughts.l.



			
				Hobo said:
			
		

> Adventures can be written with a sort of assumption of a more sandboxy or more railroady approach, but in reality, the sandbox/railroad dichotomy really only makes sense when describing GM behavior at the table, not what's written in the adventure.



I appreciate the spirit of your post, and agree the DM is critical in this regard. However, I wouldn't discount the role adventure design plays. Earlier [MENTION=1210]the Jester[/MENTION] mentioned Red Hand of Doom as an adventure style that accommodates both railroady and sandboxy gaming styles. But that's thanks to its unique design. It's very hard work for a DM to parse information from a linear adventure and turn that into a sandbox. Likewise, with a pure adventure setting it's hard work for a DM to make a linear story out of it.

In other words, yes it CAN be down, but that ups the DM's workload significantly. If you're using a published adventure why not have it be as close to the style (railroady/sandboxy) that you want? Better yet, why not write adventures to accomodate both styles (like Red Hand of Doom)?



Janx said:


> That's a good way to look at it.
> 
> As I've learned through the years, the only thing that matters is Perception.  Perception is Reality.  What the players think is going on trumps everything else.
> 
> So if you know what's important to the players, you use the right tool at the right time to satisfy their expectations.



That's totally true, but even with experienced players I know well it is still tricky. For example, mostly they are fairly reactive players but sometimes they'll fight me framing a scene when their "railroad" antennae go up. Now, I know it's from their past DM experiences, but what I've found is my safest best is to eliminate the  illusionism. So now when I give them a choice, it's always a really choice, no illusion of choice.


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## Janx (Sep 19, 2014)

Quickleaf said:


> That's totally true, but even with experienced players I know well it is still tricky. For example, mostly they are fairly reactive players but sometimes they'll fight me framing a scene when their "railroad" antennae go up. Now, I know it's from their past DM experiences, but what I've found is my safest best is to eliminate the  illusionism. So now when I give them a choice, it's always a really choice, no illusion of choice.




That does make it complicated.

I figure try to look at what not to do as a GM, by what I think a player typically wants from a GM:


I want my choice to matter
I want my choice to not be active thwarted because it is outside of what the GM envisioned happening
i want to have plausible choices
I want to have meaningful choices
I want what happens next to make sense in the context of my character, the NPCs and the setting
I want opportunities that would be interesting to my PC, rather than what's in the module the G< bought
I want reactions/outcomes to my previous activities to demonstrate an effect and change on the setting

As listed, I don't know that those points will help you make an adventure.  But they will help identify when the adventure or the GMing is at risk of conflicting with all that.


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## Sadras (Sep 29, 2014)

pemerton said:


> In fact, in the traditional D&D adventure, the GM writes the adventure before the players have even designed their PCs.
> 
> And in an adventure path the _whole thing_ is authored in advance of PC-creation and play.
> 
> When I talk about framing in response to hooks provided by the players, I'm talking about the GM following the players' lead in framing scenes and providing opposition.




I think you might have taken my post out of context. I was initially replying to mcbobbo's post #27 where he described all published modules as railroads. I inferred then he was taking the railroad/sandbox issue from an adventure debate to campaign debate.
So we were indeed talking about things on opposite ends of the scale and not all the variances in between
or about indie-style adventures.



> In a game run indie-style there is no conceptual scope for sidequests because the whole game is nothing but player-driven "sidequests".




Nice definition.


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## Emerikol (Sep 29, 2014)

Umbran said:


> There is something that people forget.  Sandboxes are *boxes*.  Boxes have sides.  There is (implicilty or explicitly) an agreed upon play area, and your'e expected to stay within it.  If you step out and go over to the basketball court, well, that's your wish, but you are clearly outside the sandbox.
> 
> An adventure is a sandbox if, within the context of the adventure, the players are free to do what they wish.
> 
> ...




Umbran beat me too it.  

I would of course give some clues at character creation about the type of sandbox I was creating so that if an all rogue group didn't make sense the party would know that.   A sandbox does not have to have everything in the universe in it.   It just has to allow the PCs to do whatever they want within it.

I'm not even anti-designed adventures.  I just prefer they be offered within the context of a sandbox setting and the players can opt in or out as they please and they can quit whenever they want too.   Of course sometimes that means consequences inside the campaign but that is okay.


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## gamerprinter (Sep 29, 2014)

For the Kaidan setting of Japanese horror (PFRPG), *The Curse of the Golden Spear* mini-AP (5th - 8th level) has both linear and sandbox elements. The base storyline is the delivery of a gift as part of a trade introduction, a merchant hires a band of PCs to escort him and his item to a noble lord in an exotic land. Thus taking an item from point A to B, makes it linear. However, 2 courses of getting from point A to B is included - one across the wilderness mountains through a little traveled mountain pass, and one along the coast requiring passage through several coastal towns. Circumstances make the trip through the mountain pass the most viable option, though instructions are included if the PCs take the other route. At the end of the first adventure, the PCs find themselves in a small town about to get hit by brigands. This is an event based action, since the town would get hit that day, whether the PCs were there or not. There are ramifications in modules 2 and 3, on whether the PCs chose to help defend the town, as well as the level of success attained if they do chose to defend the town. Allies may or may not be available in later modules depending on the actions of the PCs, thus this encounter is very sandboxy and event driven.

Once the PCs leave the gift with the noble at point B, its all about returning to port to get in their ship and go home. And there are several avenues open for such a return. While one way is more detailed in a linear return as written, included gray box text, discuss if the PCs choose a different route. Also the curse included in the title of the AP becomes apparent during the return trip. It will certainly help to have some allies on the PCs side, but as mentioned, based on the defense of the town hit by brigands in the first module determines whom and how much help the PCs can get - so prior PCs actions determine this part of the adventure. The rest of the modules are both escape from Kaidan combined with how to deal with the curse the PCs find themselves under.

So this mini-AP, as mentioned by many in this thread regarding most published adventures has elements of railroad and sandbox throughout the storyline, with additional instructions if the PC party chooses to be more sandbox than the included linear parts - the adventures are designed to accomodate either style depending on how the GM and PCs desires to run it. And as an introductory exploration of Kaidan, the land and its unique rules, this mini-AP is nothing like other adventures and campaign settings. Despite possible similarities with other pre-written adventures, The Curse of the Golden Spear is a very different kind of adventure - occuring in a place you've never likely experienced before.


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## pemerton (Oct 1, 2014)

Janx said:


> I figure try to look at what not to do as a GM, by what I think a player typically wants from a GM:
> 
> 
> I want my choice to matter
> ...



I like your points. I think they make nearly any published adventure hard to run _as published_. Almost all published adventures either set out an area and its inhabitants, or set out a series of events/locations for the PCs to progress through.

With the former, it is very hard for "what happens next to make sense in the context of PCs, NPCs and setting" unless the GM injects most of that content. Or unless you count as "makes sense" nothing more elaborate than the orcs from room 2 rush in when they hear combat between the PCs and the orcs in room 1. That is a very narrow form of "meaningful choice" which is well-suited for a certain sort of classic D&D game but I think is different from what many contemporary players are after.

With the latter - event/travel-to-locations type adventures - the basic issue is that the story of the PCs is prescripted. Which is mostly at odds with "reactions/outcomes to previous activities demonstrating an effect and change on the setting".

I can think of a couple of published adventures that come pretty close to satisfying your desiderata without needing major revision. One is the Penumbra module Three Days to Kill. Provided the players buy the initial hook, the play will be driven by their choices, which can definitely make a difference. But I have seen criticism of this module (on rpg.net) for having too little material - the way it satisfies your desiderata is by presenting a single situation for the PCs to resolve. This takes about half-a-dozen pages. The other 20-odd pages are backstory and framing advice.

Another module that comes reasonably close is OA3 Ochimo - the Spirit Warrior. (I'm sure there are other modules, from the latter part of the 80s through to the d20 era, that are similar in structure, but I don't know them off the top of my head.) At it's core this is similar to Three Days to Kill - it presents the PCs with a single situation to resolve - but it pads it out a lot more, to generate more content for play at the cost of diluting the in-play frequency of meaningful choices. It does this in two ways: to get from the foreshadowing to the location of the crunch you have to hack through a wilderness, which has some interesting foreshadowing of its own but perhaps not enough to warrant the amount of material; and then the crunch location is a fairly traditional dungeon-esque adventure which again involves elements of padding/dilution of meaningful choice.

I enjoyed Ochimo when I ran it (adapted to Rolemaster) 15-odd years ago (though even then I compressed some of the exploration aspects). But these days I think I prefer the pith of something like Three Days to Kill. When I use longer published modules I pick out the key situations/crunch points and use them in the same sort of style as Three Days to Kill. I just ignore all the filler, or repurpose it as crunch points for some future episode of play.


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## Janx (Oct 1, 2014)

pemerton said:


> I like your points. I think they make nearly any published adventure hard to run _as published_. Almost all published adventures either set out an area and its inhabitants, or set out a series of events/locations for the PCs to progress through.
> 
> With the former, it is very hard for "what happens next to make sense in the context of PCs, NPCs and setting" unless the GM injects most of that content. Or unless you count as "makes sense" nothing more elaborate than the orcs from room 2 rush in when they hear combat between the PCs and the orcs in room 1. That is a very narrow form of "meaningful choice" which is well-suited for a certain sort of classic D&D game but I think is different from what many contemporary players are after.
> 
> ..snip...Three Days to Kill...snip...




I absolutely despise Three Days to Kill.  A GM of mine ran it and it violated our party Meta-game rule to Bite the Plot Hook on the basis that we trust the Plot Hook is not an obvious screw job.   We took the plot hook, knowing it sounded like a trap.  And it was. And it cratered the campaign.

Personally, I have run ONE published adventure, an RA Salvatore one.  Otherwise, I don't use them.  I write my material during the week before the next session and I write enough material for 4-6 hours and that's it.

Thus, it's easier for me to meet those "What I think most players like to see" points.  And if I accidentally make a railroad, it's a 4-6 hour ride, based on best guess of what the players wanted to pursue and at the end, I can make course corrections for the next session if I wasn't able to realize my mistake during the session.


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## the Jester (Oct 1, 2014)

mcbobbo said:


> Those words are synonyms in my vocabulary.




Not to me! The key difference is that, when you override a player's decision, you tell her what she thinks or does.

When you force a player's decision, you ask her what she thinks or does.

That, right there, encapsulates the difference (to me).


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## pemerton (Oct 2, 2014)

Janx said:


> I absolutely despise Three Days to Kill.  A GM of mine ran it and it violated our party Meta-game rule to Bite the Plot Hook on the basis that we trust the Plot Hook is not an obvious screw job.   We took the plot hook, knowing it sounded like a trap.  And it was. And it cratered the campaign.



As written, I'm not sure what the trap is in Three Days to Kill - are you referring to the diabolical mirror?


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## Janx (Oct 2, 2014)

pemerton said:


> As written, I'm not sure what the trap is in Three Days to Kill - are you referring to the diabolical mirror?




As we played it, we got hired to go to a house in the country and kill a leader there.  If he wakes up, he sounds the alarm.  The alarm summons a world ending amount of demons.  We thought the job smelled fishy, but it was obviously the plot hook and we didn't see any other options, so off we went.  I don't think we even saw the rest of the carnival.  I did a great job of sneaking in while the rest of the party waited.  Then my halfling rogue computed his expected coup de grace damage and saw the whole thing fall apart.


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## pemerton (Oct 2, 2014)

Janx said:


> As we played it, we got hired to go to a house in the country and kill a leader there.  If he wakes up, he sounds the alarm.  The alarm summons a world ending amount of demons.



That's not how the module is written. The job is disruption, not assassination; there is no alarm; and the amount of demons is expressly described as up to the GM (to modulate encounter difficulty and pacing), and not as world-ending (the module expressly canvasses a follow-up to close the gate to Hell).


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## mcbobbo (Oct 3, 2014)

the Jester said:


> Not to me! The key difference is that, when you override a player's decision, you tell her what she thinks or does.
> 
> When you force a player's decision, you ask her what she thinks or does.
> 
> That, right there, encapsulates the difference (to me).




There's no difference between a choice and a false choice, from a railroading perspective.


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## Janx (Oct 6, 2014)

mcbobbo said:


> There's no difference between a choice and a false choice, from a railroading perspective.




I don't know if a false choice matters but if I'm told the low road has rats and the high road has bandits and I choose the Low Road, I expect to see rats.

the choice is meaningful because I am choosing a route based on time to finish it, and danger level.

If I see rats, my choice is my own.

if I see bandits, the choice was Railroaded by the GM.

Conversely, if I hit a T junction in a dungeon, to go right or left, it doesn't really matter what's on the left or right to me if I don't have any indication on what the difference is.  As such, it's not really a choice.


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## ExploderWizard (Oct 7, 2014)

pemerton said:


> I like your points. I think they make nearly any published adventure hard to run _as published_. Almost all published adventures either set out an area and its inhabitants, or set out a series of events/locations for the PCs to progress through.
> 
> With the former, it is very hard for "what happens next to make sense in the context of PCs, NPCs and setting" unless the GM injects most of that content. Or unless you count as "makes sense" nothing more elaborate than the orcs from room 2 rush in when they hear combat between the PCs and the orcs in room 1. That is a very narrow form of "meaningful choice" which is well-suited for a certain sort of classic D&D game but I think is different from what many contemporary players are after.
> 
> With the latter - event/travel-to-locations type adventures - the basic issue is that the story of the PCs is prescripted. Which is mostly at odds with "reactions/outcomes to previous activities demonstrating an effect and change on the setting".




A good example of a module with a plot, that does not also pre-script the story of the PCs is L2 _The Assassin's Knot._ The module is a murder mystery investigation that leaves players to their own devices on going about solving the case. There are location & NPC details, and also a timeline of events which will progress in a certain manner if the PCs do nothing or are ineffective in their efforts. 

It is available free on the wizards website

http://www.wizards.com/dnd/article.asp?x=dnd/dx20001229b


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## pemerton (Oct 7, 2014)

mcbobbo said:


> There's no difference between a choice and a false choice, from a railroading perspective.



I don't quite understand this.

Suppose the PCs are enemies of a cult (either as part of their backstory, or as a result of an earlier episode of play).

The GM, to open the session, says something along the lines of "As you are walking through town, you see someone you think is following you, on the other side of the street.  She's wearing a cloak and hood, but you think you recognise the tatoo on her neck - it reminds you of the one that the cultists wore."

That forces a choice. But I don't see how it is a railroad. If the GM doesn't present the players with situations that invite them to make choices for their PCs, I'm not sure how the game is meant to take place.


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## gamerprinter (Oct 8, 2014)

I wrote and published a short module/long encounter product called *Haiku of Horror: Autumn Moon Bath House* set in the _Kaidan setting of Japanese horror (PFRPG)_ that includes a detailed hand-drawn 5 story Japanese bath house, a cast of NPCs comprised of owner, attendants, guests and neighbors, several haunts, a curse and a tragic ghost. A single haunt has the trigger of midnight (every day at midnight the haunt is triggered) which starts the activities, but beyond that, there is no story per se, rather a ghost with a curse that forces the PCs to need to lay it to rest (if they fail their saves). Once the curse is placed, the location serves as a sand-box for a general murder mystery to resolve the problem.

Note: the Ju-on curse doesn't necessarily force the affected PCs to do anything, however, the curse moves the anchor that holds the ghost to the bath house location (the site of the murder) to the affected PCs so that when the ghost rejuvenates, she appears whereever the PCs are and will continue to rejuvenate and attack the cursed PCs until she is laid to rest. That's a curse, not a railroad.


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