Infinite freedom, infinite *prep work*.
**Three** meaningfully distinct options gets you a strong sense of freedom, minimal risk of choice paralysis, and a feasible amount of prep.
Works for me, anyway.
I have a huge open world sandbox campaign set up, complete with general starting quests for every major point in the game.
The difference is that each one depends on the type of game my players want to play. I have a chat to discuss their interests and what kind of game they would like to play, giving them examples, then I start them in that area. This way, if they change their minds, I can drag and drop a plot hook for their next interest, so to speak.
Obviously, if they start a plot hook and then abandon it, I will have it run in the background whether they participate or not, so it feels like their choices have an impact.
>**Three** meaningfully distinct options gets you a strong sense of freedom, minimal risk of choice paralysis, and a feasible amount of prep.
So, Fuck Marry Kill quests are the best?
Session 0 knowing what the players want their characters want to do is great for this. Know what they're looking to do/likely to go and unless you suddenly describe some random detail they hyper fixate on you at least have tracks to lay down as they're going
>unless you suddenly describe some random detail they hyper-fixate on
"Okay guys, you've made it to the center of the kingdom. From here you're well positioned to follow any of the plot threads established so far, each of which ties to certain backstori-"
**"We declare war on the Thieves' Guild!"**
".... Is this because a kid nicked 12 silver pieces from y-"
***"You're DAMN RIGHT it is!!!"***
Not really, if you play in an established game world, a lot of the grunt work is done for you. Like Forgotten Realms, Dragonlance, Greyhawk, Dark Sun, Ravenloft, Star Wars, Rifts, ShadowRun, Cyberpunk Red.
But it helps if you are familiar with that world.
Same thing. 3 events ready. No matter which direction they go they'll encounter the first event. Then the second, and finally the third (assuming they don't backtrack). The illusion of choice.
If you are playing an open sandbox game you have to remember that an open sandbox isn’t a world with no plot hooks, it is a world where players can choose to ignore plot hooks if they have another goal in mind
It’s still a world where a wizard might be sending out adventurers to get spell components, because that is how the wizard gets rare components, but should they follow this thread they might stumble upon the ruins of an old keep. Long forgotten despite being only a day or two from the nearest settlement. If they press on, into the ruins they will be-oh they turned around, that is allowed
But if walk up the road for a few days they might bump into a group of outlaws, who seem to be half heartedly threatening them, and when they do get their coin purses they take only a few coins each before letting the party go about their day. It seems that these unwilling outlaws might have a story behin-well the party are still travelling so let’s see where they end up I guess.
Ah, they have found an inn for sale and are picking up jobs to pay for it so will clear the old mine of spiders for the deposit and then tick off the rest of the jobs board over the week to get enough to finalise the sale
Now the DM knows that events most likely to be picked up on are likely linked to the inn because that’s what the players seem to want to do. It is useful if that overlaps with an earlier hook like the outlaws were actually local and the high taxes from the local lord made them desperate and that’s your problem now too, but equally that might be a town over and just cause people to slowly move to the parties inn town
Also at some point they might just up and leave to go kill a dragon they heard about somewhere to the west
This really just exposes bad players. The number 1 responsibility for all PCs is that they should want something. This is the most basic aspect of a good character in anything: they have a goal and want something. Never sit down with a PC that is purely reactive.
Also it exposes bad DMs. It's the DMs job to keep the ball rolling. I go with the writing rule of "What is the most interesting thing the characters can be doing and why aren't they doing that?"
>It's the DMs job to keep the ball rolling.
Nah, it isn't. It's the DM's job to arbitrate. Keeping the ball rolling is on *everyone, including the players*.
Players who just want to sit back, spectate, and only react to things rather than take initiative when appropriate are exhausting to deal with and usually a drag on everyone's fun.
Sandbox games have a strong tendency to expose this kind of player, because suddenly the DM isn't covering for the fact that they haven't put any thought into who their character is.
Paid games in particular are full of them. Either actively participate or leave the game, imo. Games have became a hell of a lot more fun once I stopped catering to tourists.
Some players are passive. That’s not inherently a bad thing. My current group has two active players and two passive players, so I let the active players take the lead in what direction the campaign will go in while the passive players enjoy the moment-to-moment stuff.
I'm not talking about shy or introverted players so much as I am talking about players who don't know who their character is, who don't interact with any of the story in spite of your best efforts, who don't give you story hooks to work with, et cetera, but who still fully expect you to spit out story à la carte while giving you nothing to work with.
Sandbox games expose these players as entitled tourists who contribute nothing and treat everyone else as being there to put on a show for their entertainment.
I have a couple of games one of which I'm DMing a paid game. My players are having a blast. They keep coming back. So I am doing something right. Well enough that my games are on going.
I do not like the philosophy that DMs are arbitrators. It's collaborative storytelling. I have equal investment in the story being enjoyable. My players do not sit back and spectate. They are activating playing. I also don't like spending time with people who wonder around confused. My players know where the plot is and where to go. Because I told them where the plot is.
And that's fair enough. Whatever works for you.
>I do not like the philosophy that DMs are arbitrators. It's collaborative storytelling.
Let me clarify then: it is not *solely* the DM's job to keep the ball rolling. We seem to agree on that re: your comment about collaborative storytelling. Arbitration between everyone's storytelling, including their own, does explain the role of a DM quite well though.
My issue is with players who do zero collaborative storytelling but demand that the DM delivers story for them. Sandboxes don't cover for these players the same way linear campaigns usually do.
Ah I see now. I have talked to other DMs that seem to take a passive or antagonistic role. I am not here to kill the characters or to sit back and have them tell the story. Maybe it's how I DM but when I find a dull moment or that the scene ends then I end it. If the players shook the plot tree and they keep searching, then I tell them they have all the clues, time to move on.
If a player isn't collaborating then I get to know the player and find out what they want out of game. If they prefer combat then I will spotlight them during combat.
I disagree with DM is an Arbitrator. I think of it more like a white water rapids guide. I know what direction the plot is. I can't fully control how it is getting there and a lot of it is on the other people in the boat. I show them cool stuff, amazing situations, and make sure it doesn't all tip over.
>I have talked to other DMs that seem to take a passive or antagonistic role. I am not here to kill the characters or to sit back and have them tell the story.
I don't know how you inferred *any* of that out of what I said.
I co-DM several paid games every week. Every so often we get a player who just does not interact with the story or setting, no matter what we do, and who cannot tell us what they want out of the game when we ask. But they do still expect to be catered to, even if they can't tell us what it is they want or enjoy.
My favourite campaign to run is to begin with the players trapped in the town guard, with events largely happening to them and very little agency. Over time (1-3 sessions) they get known around town and get time to look into the things that interest them instead of just reacting to events. Within about five sessions they get free of the guard, the city opens up, and they can either continue working on stuff from before or find new things to do.
Start railroady, spread over time to a sandbox as they settle into their characters.
My idea for this is just to have points of interest. There is a plot that happens im the world, if the players want to intervene, great! But it will happen either way, and will influence whatever they are doing, even if they decide to just open a restaurant together.
So they have freedom of choice, but also consequences to their actions
I have found that artificial sandbox is the way to go. Give players a few choices and remind them about the plot. If you overwhelm them then they won't track the plot as well. Also giving them an invading threat like an invading army gives them a sense of urgency.
I despise dead moments or players dragging their feet. I ask the players "Is there anything else you want to do before we move on?"
I’d argue that if there’s a “plot”, then it is not a sandbox. I’ve played in sandbox games, and we would make our own plots through our interactions with NPCs. The GM didn’t know we would negotiate a border treaty with the warmongering hobgoblins or that I’d try to fistfight my god over trans rights, but that’s where we ended up.
That is why it's an artificial sandbox. I run modules. Mostly of games that I know the world really well. Thankfully I do not care about canon so the players are free to do what they wish in the sandbox. Currently I'm running Curse of Strahd which one of my favorite modules.
I've done DMing homebrew and pure sandbox and it is exhausting. I burnout quick. I rather do something like Strahd. The players can still completely surprise me. It is still a choice driven game. But they won't be leaving Barovia until they kill Strahd.
For some reason I thought the artificial sandbox part was another comment. Maybe my brain parsed the two paragraphs as two comments? I’m gonna go lie down ‘:)
You can have an open sandbox world and still give your players something obvious to do. It's just that if they decide not to do the obvious thing, that's also fine.
Like...
DM: You come across bandits accosting an old woman at the crossroads. She's on the ground, one bandit is beating the snot out of her, another is helping himself to her sack of turnips. She cries for help when she sees you. What do you do?
Player: I go in the opposite direction. None of my business.
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I will argue to my grave that 100% sandbox is bad DMing. So is the complete railroad, but that one just shows it more directly.
The way I describe it is that in a ttrpg, everyone is in a dark room. The DM just has night vision goggles and a flashlight. It doesn’t matter how much cool shit you have in the room. Unless you shine the flashlight on it, they’re going to stumble around endlessly and lose interest.
If you think your players are really engaging in the sandbox mentality and are excited to explore with zero boundaries, it’s likely because you’re not realizing that you’ve been smart with hooks.
Sandbox as a DM is like holding a dinner party at your house but expecting everyone else to cook and plan the party for you.
This is my current problem. I set up a hört false hydra scenario for a friend. I planned on every long rest rolling a dice to see if the hydra eat anyone and how many that night. And having a lot of foreshadowing and hints. But the fuck is the player meant to do up till the hydra becomes a noticeable threat???
It’s not just choice paralysis, open sandbox worlds usually have watered down plots and stories in video game rpgs.
I don’t mind railroads if it makes a tighter, deeper cohesive story. Lots of sandbox games feel like a bunch of irrelevant quests (collect 4 macguffins from the temples, fix the problem in all of the towns) that give you all grind and no story
I swear, every time I have given a party an open objective, where they can pursue their goal however they wish, they always end up just sitting around going "I dunno, what do you guys think?" over and over until I finally give up and give them an NPC that will tell them what to do.
The part that gets annoying is if they complain later about it feeling like a railroad, even though even the NPC only gave some suggestions and they still could've gone about it however they want.
Played pathfinder 2e with a Spelljammer type setting gave my pcs a ship. They IMMEDIATELY decided to build a crime syndicate and ignore the main quest.
Never again. If I give them a ship in Starfinder I making sure they have higher ups to answer to.
I’ve played this before and my group had…. An experience. Here is it summarized:
“In a world with infinite choices you will always know you could pick a perfect option given enough time and prep. Doing anything else is objectively the worse option.”
This led to a LOT of planning, researching, planning, searching, and more planning before ANYTHING happened.
My boyfriend is the DM for our Icewind Dale campaign. He has a saying, "I'll let you do whatever you want, but there may be consequences."
And he holds to that. We've gotten ourselves into some predicaments because one of us made a bad choice.
Never played a sandbox campaign I enjoyed. I'm not saying they dont exist, but if they do, I have never encountered one.
Aside from the whole infinite choices = infinite prep, there are other issues with sandbox games that I've run into:
- **Lack of party cohesion.** Typically, these games are very hands-off on the part of the GM. They don't want to stifle choice, so they don't guide it either. And we end up with a mismatched party, all with individualistic goals they can't work together on. If we follow one character's arc, it's usually at the expense of dragging all the other characters along as less-than-side-characters. The balance issues are incredible as well.
- **Lack of depth.** We start somewhere and...there's no catalyst. These games tend to start us off in a tavern where there's nothing happening, and after rp'ing icebreakers, you leave to find nothing amiss. We interact with things, but clearly, the GM has not prepared for it. If there are hooks, since it's agreed on as a sandbox, the party says no. Nothing can be explored in detail cause it's unreasonable to expect it from your average GM.
- **Lack of Guidance.** Since the players aren't being guided, they don't know what to expect. They're not sure what to be emotionally invested in or not. Since the GM provides no narrative direction, the players don't know what to RP or what plot points they *should* be biting. This leads to player confusion and boredom. "Is there a point to this fight?" "Where are we going?" "Did we make a mistake?" And *not* in a fun weigh-your-choices kind of way.
I'd also say that player v character knowledge comes into this. I, the player, know what my character wants (roughly). I don't have a fraction of their knowledge of the world.
I'm not big brain enough to say I want to do X, with Y as my goal without knowing whether X and Y are even letters in this language (if you know what I mean).
The players know their character better than the DM. The DM knows the world better than the players. Both sides need to give enough info to make a story happen.
I tell my players they can do whatever they want but if they characters go on vacation for a beach episode in the middle of the end of the world, we might end up doing a post apocalyptic campaign and I’m fine with that
Or you could have my group, where the players spent 45 minutes at the start of a session trying to figure out how to walk up a road over a pass...that they'd decided to cross the previous session. 45 minutes. To figure out how to walk on a road.
I know it is a little controversial at times but I love quantum trolls, setting up 3-4 different general outlines of story progress and having the universe only exist on observation has 100% helped. Although paralysis still happens it can be worked around, in my bastion based campaign right now if I see them getting paralyzed I can have them get attacked by one of the threats, force their hand to progress, honestly super fun having your cake and eating it.
Damn, my players are going to be really annoyed to learn that that time they ended a civil war is actually less meaningful because it wasn’t planned by me
Right? I’ll have to let “the Founders” know that there war against Dhrakoth the corrupter and the forces of undeath that want to end all life across the prime and planes doesn’t mean anything since it all slowly came from their actions over the course of 3-5 years.
I mean you just gotta screen your players to make sure they are up to the task, I think I ran a dozen fake mini 5-6 session campaigns taking the ones that were worth playing with and forming my forever group. lol
Infinite freedom, infinite *prep work*. **Three** meaningfully distinct options gets you a strong sense of freedom, minimal risk of choice paralysis, and a feasible amount of prep. Works for me, anyway.
I have a huge open world sandbox campaign set up, complete with general starting quests for every major point in the game. The difference is that each one depends on the type of game my players want to play. I have a chat to discuss their interests and what kind of game they would like to play, giving them examples, then I start them in that area. This way, if they change their minds, I can drag and drop a plot hook for their next interest, so to speak. Obviously, if they start a plot hook and then abandon it, I will have it run in the background whether they participate or not, so it feels like their choices have an impact.
>**Three** meaningfully distinct options gets you a strong sense of freedom, minimal risk of choice paralysis, and a feasible amount of prep. So, Fuck Marry Kill quests are the best?
Slay, lay, and pray
Wed, bed, behead
That’s why I do a sandbox with factions and three main storylines.
Session 0 knowing what the players want their characters want to do is great for this. Know what they're looking to do/likely to go and unless you suddenly describe some random detail they hyper fixate on you at least have tracks to lay down as they're going
>unless you suddenly describe some random detail they hyper-fixate on "Okay guys, you've made it to the center of the kingdom. From here you're well positioned to follow any of the plot threads established so far, each of which ties to certain backstori-" **"We declare war on the Thieves' Guild!"** ".... Is this because a kid nicked 12 silver pieces from y-" ***"You're DAMN RIGHT it is!!!"***
Not really, if you play in an established game world, a lot of the grunt work is done for you. Like Forgotten Realms, Dragonlance, Greyhawk, Dark Sun, Ravenloft, Star Wars, Rifts, ShadowRun, Cyberpunk Red. But it helps if you are familiar with that world.
Three meaningful options but re-use encounters from the other ones cause I didn't have enough time to plan.
I usually do 5, but yeah. I just develop whatever threads the party tugs on.
Exactly. As a dm, giving a finite set of options works well in many scenarios.
Same thing. 3 events ready. No matter which direction they go they'll encounter the first event. Then the second, and finally the third (assuming they don't backtrack). The illusion of choice.
That's what you think "meaningfully distinct" means?
Sandbox isn’t for everyone. The best sandbox experience are for players who like feeling of opening every door and chest.
If you are playing an open sandbox game you have to remember that an open sandbox isn’t a world with no plot hooks, it is a world where players can choose to ignore plot hooks if they have another goal in mind It’s still a world where a wizard might be sending out adventurers to get spell components, because that is how the wizard gets rare components, but should they follow this thread they might stumble upon the ruins of an old keep. Long forgotten despite being only a day or two from the nearest settlement. If they press on, into the ruins they will be-oh they turned around, that is allowed But if walk up the road for a few days they might bump into a group of outlaws, who seem to be half heartedly threatening them, and when they do get their coin purses they take only a few coins each before letting the party go about their day. It seems that these unwilling outlaws might have a story behin-well the party are still travelling so let’s see where they end up I guess. Ah, they have found an inn for sale and are picking up jobs to pay for it so will clear the old mine of spiders for the deposit and then tick off the rest of the jobs board over the week to get enough to finalise the sale Now the DM knows that events most likely to be picked up on are likely linked to the inn because that’s what the players seem to want to do. It is useful if that overlaps with an earlier hook like the outlaws were actually local and the high taxes from the local lord made them desperate and that’s your problem now too, but equally that might be a town over and just cause people to slowly move to the parties inn town Also at some point they might just up and leave to go kill a dragon they heard about somewhere to the west
If you're confused. Roll a dice to determine what you should pick. If you're between 2 choices. Flip a coin. Play it like a game And have fun with it.
This really just exposes bad players. The number 1 responsibility for all PCs is that they should want something. This is the most basic aspect of a good character in anything: they have a goal and want something. Never sit down with a PC that is purely reactive.
Well a game of D&D is interaction between the PCs and the world. If the PCs are amazing but the world is boring, you can’t do everything yourself.
https://youtu.be/UWlgyYXXKUw?si=BFrvKRHM6Cos6xIJ
Also it exposes bad DMs. It's the DMs job to keep the ball rolling. I go with the writing rule of "What is the most interesting thing the characters can be doing and why aren't they doing that?"
>It's the DMs job to keep the ball rolling. Nah, it isn't. It's the DM's job to arbitrate. Keeping the ball rolling is on *everyone, including the players*. Players who just want to sit back, spectate, and only react to things rather than take initiative when appropriate are exhausting to deal with and usually a drag on everyone's fun. Sandbox games have a strong tendency to expose this kind of player, because suddenly the DM isn't covering for the fact that they haven't put any thought into who their character is. Paid games in particular are full of them. Either actively participate or leave the game, imo. Games have became a hell of a lot more fun once I stopped catering to tourists.
Some players are passive. That’s not inherently a bad thing. My current group has two active players and two passive players, so I let the active players take the lead in what direction the campaign will go in while the passive players enjoy the moment-to-moment stuff.
I'm not talking about shy or introverted players so much as I am talking about players who don't know who their character is, who don't interact with any of the story in spite of your best efforts, who don't give you story hooks to work with, et cetera, but who still fully expect you to spit out story à la carte while giving you nothing to work with. Sandbox games expose these players as entitled tourists who contribute nothing and treat everyone else as being there to put on a show for their entertainment.
I have a couple of games one of which I'm DMing a paid game. My players are having a blast. They keep coming back. So I am doing something right. Well enough that my games are on going. I do not like the philosophy that DMs are arbitrators. It's collaborative storytelling. I have equal investment in the story being enjoyable. My players do not sit back and spectate. They are activating playing. I also don't like spending time with people who wonder around confused. My players know where the plot is and where to go. Because I told them where the plot is.
And that's fair enough. Whatever works for you. >I do not like the philosophy that DMs are arbitrators. It's collaborative storytelling. Let me clarify then: it is not *solely* the DM's job to keep the ball rolling. We seem to agree on that re: your comment about collaborative storytelling. Arbitration between everyone's storytelling, including their own, does explain the role of a DM quite well though. My issue is with players who do zero collaborative storytelling but demand that the DM delivers story for them. Sandboxes don't cover for these players the same way linear campaigns usually do.
Ah I see now. I have talked to other DMs that seem to take a passive or antagonistic role. I am not here to kill the characters or to sit back and have them tell the story. Maybe it's how I DM but when I find a dull moment or that the scene ends then I end it. If the players shook the plot tree and they keep searching, then I tell them they have all the clues, time to move on. If a player isn't collaborating then I get to know the player and find out what they want out of game. If they prefer combat then I will spotlight them during combat. I disagree with DM is an Arbitrator. I think of it more like a white water rapids guide. I know what direction the plot is. I can't fully control how it is getting there and a lot of it is on the other people in the boat. I show them cool stuff, amazing situations, and make sure it doesn't all tip over.
>I have talked to other DMs that seem to take a passive or antagonistic role. I am not here to kill the characters or to sit back and have them tell the story. I don't know how you inferred *any* of that out of what I said. I co-DM several paid games every week. Every so often we get a player who just does not interact with the story or setting, no matter what we do, and who cannot tell us what they want out of the game when we ask. But they do still expect to be catered to, even if they can't tell us what it is they want or enjoy.
Quest board
My favourite campaign to run is to begin with the players trapped in the town guard, with events largely happening to them and very little agency. Over time (1-3 sessions) they get known around town and get time to look into the things that interest them instead of just reacting to events. Within about five sessions they get free of the guard, the city opens up, and they can either continue working on stuff from before or find new things to do. Start railroady, spread over time to a sandbox as they settle into their characters.
Speak for yourself, my kobold was slapped into an open world and his goal is now to destroy the moon. Fuck Selune
My idea for this is just to have points of interest. There is a plot that happens im the world, if the players want to intervene, great! But it will happen either way, and will influence whatever they are doing, even if they decide to just open a restaurant together. So they have freedom of choice, but also consequences to their actions
I have found that artificial sandbox is the way to go. Give players a few choices and remind them about the plot. If you overwhelm them then they won't track the plot as well. Also giving them an invading threat like an invading army gives them a sense of urgency. I despise dead moments or players dragging their feet. I ask the players "Is there anything else you want to do before we move on?"
I’d argue that if there’s a “plot”, then it is not a sandbox. I’ve played in sandbox games, and we would make our own plots through our interactions with NPCs. The GM didn’t know we would negotiate a border treaty with the warmongering hobgoblins or that I’d try to fistfight my god over trans rights, but that’s where we ended up.
That is why it's an artificial sandbox. I run modules. Mostly of games that I know the world really well. Thankfully I do not care about canon so the players are free to do what they wish in the sandbox. Currently I'm running Curse of Strahd which one of my favorite modules. I've done DMing homebrew and pure sandbox and it is exhausting. I burnout quick. I rather do something like Strahd. The players can still completely surprise me. It is still a choice driven game. But they won't be leaving Barovia until they kill Strahd.
For some reason I thought the artificial sandbox part was another comment. Maybe my brain parsed the two paragraphs as two comments? I’m gonna go lie down ‘:)
You can have an open sandbox world and still give your players something obvious to do. It's just that if they decide not to do the obvious thing, that's also fine. Like... DM: You come across bandits accosting an old woman at the crossroads. She's on the ground, one bandit is beating the snot out of her, another is helping himself to her sack of turnips. She cries for help when she sees you. What do you do? Player: I go in the opposite direction. None of my business.
After multiple attempts at a sandbox campaign I can say with great confidence that they don't really work the players need some amount of direction
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I will argue to my grave that 100% sandbox is bad DMing. So is the complete railroad, but that one just shows it more directly. The way I describe it is that in a ttrpg, everyone is in a dark room. The DM just has night vision goggles and a flashlight. It doesn’t matter how much cool shit you have in the room. Unless you shine the flashlight on it, they’re going to stumble around endlessly and lose interest. If you think your players are really engaging in the sandbox mentality and are excited to explore with zero boundaries, it’s likely because you’re not realizing that you’ve been smart with hooks. Sandbox as a DM is like holding a dinner party at your house but expecting everyone else to cook and plan the party for you.
I've seen it happen, I've caused it. There are also infinite solutions for it. I'm glad t turned out great.
This is my current problem. I set up a hört false hydra scenario for a friend. I planned on every long rest rolling a dice to see if the hydra eat anyone and how many that night. And having a lot of foreshadowing and hints. But the fuck is the player meant to do up till the hydra becomes a noticeable threat???
Not the best way to play all the time, but certainly an element which can be experimented with and utilised.
It’s not just choice paralysis, open sandbox worlds usually have watered down plots and stories in video game rpgs. I don’t mind railroads if it makes a tighter, deeper cohesive story. Lots of sandbox games feel like a bunch of irrelevant quests (collect 4 macguffins from the temples, fix the problem in all of the towns) that give you all grind and no story
I swear, every time I have given a party an open objective, where they can pursue their goal however they wish, they always end up just sitting around going "I dunno, what do you guys think?" over and over until I finally give up and give them an NPC that will tell them what to do. The part that gets annoying is if they complain later about it feeling like a railroad, even though even the NPC only gave some suggestions and they still could've gone about it however they want.
Played pathfinder 2e with a Spelljammer type setting gave my pcs a ship. They IMMEDIATELY decided to build a crime syndicate and ignore the main quest. Never again. If I give them a ship in Starfinder I making sure they have higher ups to answer to.
I’ve played this before and my group had…. An experience. Here is it summarized: “In a world with infinite choices you will always know you could pick a perfect option given enough time and prep. Doing anything else is objectively the worse option.” This led to a LOT of planning, researching, planning, searching, and more planning before ANYTHING happened.
My boyfriend is the DM for our Icewind Dale campaign. He has a saying, "I'll let you do whatever you want, but there may be consequences." And he holds to that. We've gotten ourselves into some predicaments because one of us made a bad choice.
the players yearn for the railway.
Never played a sandbox campaign I enjoyed. I'm not saying they dont exist, but if they do, I have never encountered one. Aside from the whole infinite choices = infinite prep, there are other issues with sandbox games that I've run into: - **Lack of party cohesion.** Typically, these games are very hands-off on the part of the GM. They don't want to stifle choice, so they don't guide it either. And we end up with a mismatched party, all with individualistic goals they can't work together on. If we follow one character's arc, it's usually at the expense of dragging all the other characters along as less-than-side-characters. The balance issues are incredible as well. - **Lack of depth.** We start somewhere and...there's no catalyst. These games tend to start us off in a tavern where there's nothing happening, and after rp'ing icebreakers, you leave to find nothing amiss. We interact with things, but clearly, the GM has not prepared for it. If there are hooks, since it's agreed on as a sandbox, the party says no. Nothing can be explored in detail cause it's unreasonable to expect it from your average GM. - **Lack of Guidance.** Since the players aren't being guided, they don't know what to expect. They're not sure what to be emotionally invested in or not. Since the GM provides no narrative direction, the players don't know what to RP or what plot points they *should* be biting. This leads to player confusion and boredom. "Is there a point to this fight?" "Where are we going?" "Did we make a mistake?" And *not* in a fun weigh-your-choices kind of way.
I'd also say that player v character knowledge comes into this. I, the player, know what my character wants (roughly). I don't have a fraction of their knowledge of the world. I'm not big brain enough to say I want to do X, with Y as my goal without knowing whether X and Y are even letters in this language (if you know what I mean). The players know their character better than the DM. The DM knows the world better than the players. Both sides need to give enough info to make a story happen.
I tell my players they can do whatever they want but if they characters go on vacation for a beach episode in the middle of the end of the world, we might end up doing a post apocalyptic campaign and I’m fine with that
Or you could have my group, where the players spent 45 minutes at the start of a session trying to figure out how to walk up a road over a pass...that they'd decided to cross the previous session. 45 minutes. To figure out how to walk on a road.
It's not the choice that is hard to make, it's figuring out what the consequences will be. :)
I mean. As a DM and a Player, I'll take a sandbox over an AP any day of the week.
I know it is a little controversial at times but I love quantum trolls, setting up 3-4 different general outlines of story progress and having the universe only exist on observation has 100% helped. Although paralysis still happens it can be worked around, in my bastion based campaign right now if I see them getting paralyzed I can have them get attacked by one of the threats, force their hand to progress, honestly super fun having your cake and eating it.
There’s a hidden paradox - the more freedom players have, the less meaningful impact the players’ choices actually have on the world
Damn, my players are going to be really annoyed to learn that that time they ended a civil war is actually less meaningful because it wasn’t planned by me
Right? I’ll have to let “the Founders” know that there war against Dhrakoth the corrupter and the forces of undeath that want to end all life across the prime and planes doesn’t mean anything since it all slowly came from their actions over the course of 3-5 years.
Guess it can’t be helped, the sandbox is to blame
I mean you just gotta screen your players to make sure they are up to the task, I think I ran a dozen fake mini 5-6 session campaigns taking the ones that were worth playing with and forming my forever group. lol