Let's do this (again), and let's keep it civil

Let's do this (again), and let's keep it civil.

Railroad or sandbox?

Personally, both as a GM or player, I prefer a mix, where you can run off to do different things, but you're always caught up by the main plot.

>Porque_no_los_dos?.jpg

Why do we have to go over this again and again?
Both are bad.
>railroading happens when the GM excercises complete control over the game, effectively making it just like a video game with only one direction to go and slim to none player input.
>sandbox happens when the GM is too lazy to come up with anything resembling plot and is content with plopping the players into random encounter after random encounter

In my experience, playing RPGs is like driving a car. There are multiple roads that you can take and you can of course select a destination when you get in the car. Then you just take whatever way you figure is best for you and start driving, eventually getting where you wanted to. Or you can take another destination and go another way instead. Sometimes you'll encounter roadblocks or dead-ends: it happens. But you press on and finally you arrive at the destination you chose... or not.

Sandbox, in my experience, is a term that lazy GMs use to excuse the big fucking hole that is where the plot should be.

I imagine most would prefer a mix of the two. It allows the players a degree of freedom to fuck about to their heart's content while also letting the DM run the story they actually started the campaign for.

That's how i've run all my games, though i have played in pure railroad games.

Railroading is a deliberate violation of player agency so it's always bad. Linear adventures are a completely different thing. As long your players are informed about the linear structure, it's not a railroad. But, if your players _think_ that scenario is a lot more dynamic and freeform and you're forcing them in certain situations as required by plot, that's where railroading occurs.

Obviously, a sandbox without a theme and conflicts is a bad sandbox. Good sandbox is filled with situations and NPCs that actually advance their agenda. When players engage some of the existing conflicts, they create their own plot. Of course, players always should have freedom to disengage from whatever "plot" they're involved in and face the consequences, positive or negative.

None.

The fact that Veeky Forums is absolutely unable to comprehend the whole thing in more variables than binary choice between two extremes is beyond me.

Here is how I like my games, both being run and played:
GM prepares a broad idea for adventure, scenario or campaign. Then he proceeds with outlining the more possible ways how the whole thing will evolve, knowing his players and already having broad situatiom.
Then he proceeds with creating NPCs to play more important role in the plot. Then he proceeds with details and on this stage adds or substracts entire plot-lines and hooks or even changing the whole thing.
This leads to situation where GM has more or less broad idea what story he wants to tell, what NPCs he is going to use, what locations will be important and how players can possibly resolve the situation.
From there on, GM is focusing on finer details - enemies, obstacles, layout of buildings; then focusing on even greater details.
Then the GM has to zoom out and prepare the surroundings for the story - all the things that play no or barely any role in it, but important nontheless for the game immersion itself.
In the end, GM has preprepared situations and story to tell, with all broad variables and details, so the amount of improvisation is reduced to minimum. The world is organic and reactive, with most possible elements of it already ready and rest can be - based on the zoomed out work - quickly assembled when players will try to do something outside of the box prepared by GM.
All in total usually takes between two hours to two days, depending on how complex the whole thing is supposed to be.

And for whatever reason, spergs on Veeky Forums consider such thing extreme railroad, but hey, nobody is judging, apparenly some people just don't know what a railroad is.

Game needs to be prepared in advance. Anyone who tells you otherwise is either a lazy GM or never GMed in his or her life

Mystery/faction sandbox. Forevergm.

>you're forcing them in certain situations as required by plot, that's where railroading occurs
Define such situation.
Because as you just put it, any situation, where action-reaction chain occurs, it turns the game instantly into a railroad

How about road system? Rather than a railroad that has only one path, you have a road system that allows you to take a variety of turns or routes to a variety of destinations.

Flexible.

I want the track to change its direction, path, and even destination based on what players do. In exchange, players agree to stick to some realm of reason when roleplaying - no murderhobos, no blatantly and deliberately ignoring obvious quest hooks, and in general acting like we're playing a role rather than dicking around.

I agree, not a good wording. Ok, here's a better one: it's when player supposedly meaningful choice is invalidated.

Here's some situations I would consider a railroad:

* Antagonist escaping or getting a power up in a deus ex machina fashion at the last moment without any red flags whatsoever.

* Having no other option of resolving conflicts or getting things done other than to fight in a game not explicitly defined as "hack n' slash".

* No matter how strongly players invest in influencing political intrigue in the region, GM only grants a chance of success for the actions which don't disrupt his idea of the endgame. Like, he already decided certain NPC gets the throne or whatever but he still lets players to play it out, as if they have a say in the matter.

The last one is bullshit and extremely setting-sensitive.
Also, it sounds as if you were unable to understand PCs can be tricked, which includes tricking players. I hate cunts that don't grasp the simple truth they might be used in actual scheme, but then again I've started playing TTRPG with Paranoia, so go figure

>last one is bullshit and extremely setting-sensitive

It's not. Let me be clear: if this game is focused on intrigue and PCs are supposedly influential, they should have a chance at influencing all kinds of major decisions. A chance, not a guaranteed success which is just as much a railroad as a guaranteed failure.

It's not about tricking PCs and players which is understandable and acceptable. It's about making sure they're going to be tricked no matter what.

I let my players have fun in their sandbox, and then cook up a plotline about things that grab their attention.
You find a letter without the king's signature with some evil druids? aight, the guy who wrote the letter is now the bad guy
You really want to find and kill said bad guy? too bad for you, he skipped town, and you'll stumble upon three or four of my other plotlines while trying to catch him

>You can trick players
>But only if they are aware of that
Which defeats the whole point, you stupid cunt.
It's like advocating to start each viewing of Usual Suspects with half-long lecture explaining who is Kaiser Soze and what is the actual plot of it.
Or watching Polish Manhunt cut into chronological order.

You're actually dense, because that's not what I'm saying. I'm saying if players saw through the trickery or caught your NPCs redhanded, then it's a railroad to ignore that and cook up back-up scheme that's going to enforce an outcome GM wanted. Because this conspiracy is so big that players could never unravel it or whatever, choose your own excuse.

But they won't catch them. Because you can just metagame the players away from any sources of catching them

You can. Doesn't mean you will. I wouldn't.

That's the sort of obstacle I'd like to see players overcome. I'm not interested in shutting down whole parts of the game ("yeah, good job with exposing this guy, shame you can't do anything about it since everyone supports him basically"). If I did, I'd be explicit about it ("yeah, sometimes you'll run into really influential people you can't do shit about"), which is really about preventing huge frustrations. But otherwise, yes, they can try and succeed. Or fail. But surely something will change.

It's mostly about expectations. And you should be clear about them, because violating those expectations (railroading) is a huge copout.

Lets put it in terms of D&D modules.
Tyranny of Dragons was a railroad with no player agency. It was horrible.
Many old modules were hexcrawling sandboxes and people enjoyed them. But you had to have a good DM and a well-written module.
Many of the best modules, like Castle Ravenloft, were somewhere in the middle, with the players being nudged in the right direction and barriers put up to stop them leaving, but they were allowed to enjoy the brilliant content of the adventure in their own way at their own pace.

Tell me about Tyranny of the Dragons. What made it horrible? How I could avoid that when making my own adventures?

Tallship

you can do whatever you want, sail wherever you want but in the end your still at the mercy of the sea.

I didn't say you'd shut them down after catching them. I said you'd shut them down BEFORE catching them.

I said you'd never present an opportunity to the players to catch them. Because in the end you are the only one that controls the background. And can shift things to fit your railroad.

I guarantee, later on, the players are going to complain about an inconsistency, where it will be obvious you were tailoring the situation to prevent any action you didn't wholeheartedly condone.

Think about what the villain does in his downtime, what challenges they face in order to succeed in their goal. They are only people, just like the adventures, and have a chance to fail. Make a story out of it so that the players might even be able to sympathize with them. And above all else. Give the players the opportunity to undermine your story. Because otherwise it's just as I stated before. Will-full neglect is the same as meta-gaming and railroading, just less obvious.

Interstate. There is a long smooth road that will get us through this fast, but at any time you can exit onto a scenic highway or local road, just don't expect perfect upkeep, and if you go offroading things could get rough.

Railroad with lots and lots of player-controlled switches
and a whole box of extra track

Both are quite interesting, but neither are my favorite.

I believe that timing is absolutely crucial to all good storytelling. When the players are bored, you HAVE to move them on. When they want to see examine something closer, you HAVE to spend more time with it. Anything else will leave them unsatisfied.

I would say my games are more like a series of problem solving activities. The players are thrown challengers, and then I sit back and watch them try and devise a solution. A fairly linear story connects the events, but if the players are encouraged to develop interesting characters they will be having far too much fun to notice.

Also, every game always takes twice as long in real time as you anticipate, so just accept it will never get finished.

I also maintain a fairly natural form of karma. If they go around murdering people, no one will help them. Life in the wilderness is harsh.


Just ran a highly successful game of Call of Cthulhu with a bunch of Chinese folks tonight. Believe it.

>story
>plot
u srs
Here are the players with their own personal goals, here are NPCs with their goals, that's fucking all

...

Pure sandbox.

Though as shit to find another gm who can fucking do it though.

The two aren't opposed to each other. In fact, most "sandbox" games are actually quite railroady, in that the player choices don't actually matter, and whichever direction they take off in happens to be exactly what the GM had prepared anyway, the rails are just better hidden.

The fundamental alteration you make to a game to create a sandbox isn't the amount of choices the players have, it's that the narration is driven by the characters, which isn't usually the case even though they're the focus.

Picture a stereotypical campaign. You have the Big Evil Lich who is going to raise an undead army and kill everyone. Players are going to stop him. They're not driving the plot, the Lich is. Ultimately, should the players be successful, everything will go more or less back to the status quo that existed before they showed up. You can replace individual characters with no huge alteration to the overall story, in fact, depending on how lethal your campaign is, you can have the ending party have none of the members in common with the beginning party. But as soon as the lich is defeated, you've won and it's over.

Rather, what makes a sandbox a sandbox is that the narrative, the goal is one created by the players rather than an outside force that they're trying to stop. I've only run one real sandbox, and that was kind of by accident, the players bought an old mages tower (still trapped!) and worked for ages to try to secure it.

But the fundamental premise of the OP is flawed, because you don't have a continuum with "Railroad" on one end and "Sandbox" on the other. They're two completely separate axis, one to do with how much actual player choice there is, and another to do with the driving force of the narration.

>games that claim to be sandbox but aren't, aren't really sandbox games.
No kidding.

>in a sandbox game the narration is driven by the characters.
Obviously.

>typical non sandbox lich campaign
Not a sandbox at all. Agreed.

>You can totally have a sandbox on rails! Our a non sandbox without rails!
What? You lost me. No. That doesn't make sense. It's totally a single axis.

A sandbox game has the narrative dictated by player decisions, like a game in a Ravnica type setting where the pcs can at any point work with or against any guild, and stuff is happening in the background which they can choose our not choose to get involved in, however they like, and their choices have consequences. A game on rails has the narrative forced on the players, like your lich campaign.

It's also binary moreso than a spectrum.

Either there's no main plot the players have to follow and the game is about their decisions, or it isn't.

Either it's on rails, or not.

There's not really a "sortof on rails".

>What? You lost me. No. That doesn't make sense. It's totally a single axis.

Scenario A. We have a "sandbox" Players are plopped down in the midddle of a field somewhere. You can go anywhere! Do anything! But, no matter which direction they strike out in, they're going to be ambushed by a pack of 11 bandits armed with a mix of crossbows and old hunting spears. And after that, they're going to run into a woodcutter, who is concerned that his wife is sick and there aren't any healers he thinks he can bring her too in time. And regardless of how they handle that, there's a gryphon patrolling the area who takes a liking to their horses.

Sure, the players can make all the decisions they want, but it's pretty easy for a GM to make all their movements end up narratively where he wants them to be.

On the other hand, you can have a very structured, linear campaign where you're literally people in the fictional military being ordered to, I don't know, blow up an enemy command post. But it's up to them how they scout the defenses, circumvent them, make whatever deals or alliances they can, even if there is an imperative handed down from above "BLOW UP COMMAND POST OR WE TRY YOU FOR DESERTION"

>A sandbox game has the narrative dictated by player decisions, like a game in a Ravnica type setting where the pcs can at any point work with or against any guild, and stuff is happening in the background which they can choose our not choose to get involved in, however they like, and their choices have consequences. A game on rails has the narrative forced on the players, like your lich campaign.

I'm not really familiar with Ravnica as a setting, but if you have a guild war going on, you're going to have substantial to enormous narrative impact based on what these guilds want and how they're going about things and any decisions the important NPCs make when out of the PC's field of influence.

The hypothetical lich campaign can still have almost unlimited latitude for the players to deal with the problem as they see fit, which might lead to all sorts of different outcomes, even if there's just a context of "BIG BAD LICH KILL HIM"

>Either there's no main plot the players have to follow and the game is about their decisions, or it isn't.

Are you stupid? That's one of the stupidest things I've read in weeks. You can have an external main narrative where the decisions the players make are enormously important. Live or die for the nations and the world.

Which is precisely why I said that the sandbox and the railroad aren't really opposed to each other.

Scenario a isnt a sandbox at all.

Its rails you're trying to hide. Not even close to the same thing.

Both your examples are railroad campaigns.

>In a guild war type setting, stuff will happen in the background that affects the pcs in meaningful ways.

Yes. But the plot is about what they choose to do. There's so much going on that they can't possibly do everything and have to make meaningful choices. They could side with, or against, whomever they choose. They might actually join a good and give up some of that agency, or stay independent, and risk pissing people off. The plot is about the pcs and their choices in the world.

>the players can decide how to deal with the lich.
Sure. But they still need to deal with the lich. If your game allows for the option of "join the lich", and "ignore the lich entirely" then it may not be in rails.

>you can have a main narrative the players have to follow while still allowing them to have other freedom of choice.
Obviously? Less restrictive rails maybe, but calling it a "sandbox" is a bit much.

You seem to be saying
>a sandbox is a game where the players can decide stuff of some consequence.
This is not incompatible with rails.

Whereas I'm saying
>a sandbox is a game where the plot and narrative are decided by the players. The big-bad is who the players choose it to be. The game is about what the players choose it to be, within the confines of the world.
This is incompatible with rails.

>The game is about what the players choose it to be, within the confines of the world.
Using the guild-war setting example again, the players can get involved in the guild-war in amyriad of ways, on a myriad of sides, including their own. They can decide to deliberately avoid it entirely. Maybe they run a criminal organization while trying to stay under the guilds radar. Or Maybe they start working for the police and only deal with the guilds when they break the law and cross lines.

The game is about what they want it to be about. That doesn't mean the world needs to stay still in the background unless they interact with something. The folks can do stuff on the background. Things can change. This change could affect the pcs. That's fine.

>Yes. But the plot is about what they choose to do.

If you're defining "the plot" as "what the players choose to do" then the aforementioned lich campaign is also a sandbox, assuming they have multiple avenues to achieve their goals. That is clearly ridiculous, hence the reason why defining a sandbox is such is a problem.

>Sure. But they still need to deal with the lich. If your game allows for the option of "join the lich", and "ignore the lich entirely" then it may not be in rails.

ANd why does THAT decision matter and not

>Do we try to save country X or country Y or country Z when we only have the resources to evacuate one?
>When we have enormous amounts of civil unrest due to all the displaced refugees and all the extremely dicey situation, do we try to improve their lot or just crack down on them?
>Are we going to try for some sort of grand assassination, or to build up a coalition of actual military powers and break the lich's army in the field?

>a sandbox is a game where the players can decide stuff of some consequence.

No, that's not what I'm saying. I'm saying that the defining characteristic of a sandbox isn't the number of choices the players have, it's whether the fundamental goal that the players have is created by the players as opposed to being created by an NPC of some sort. As soon as you put the players on the back foot and have them reacting to major NPC action, you no longer have a sandbox.

>a sandbox is a game where the plot and narrative are decided by the players.

The problem is that the plot and the narrative are two separate things, and can go in different directions as to who is deciding what.

>The big-bad is who the players choose it to be

having a Big bad at all, unless he's some vague evil guy who sits on his throne of skulls and doesn't do anything of actual consequences is incompatible with a sandbox.

>The game is about what they want it to be about. That doesn't mean the world needs to stay still in the background unless they interact with something. The folks can do stuff on the background. Things can change. This change could affect the pcs. That's fine.

Except they can't. Because as soon as any NPC or outside force gets too much power or influence, you're back in "railroad" territory, assuming the players have to decide to deal with it in some fashion.

Again, I'm not that familiar with Ravnicia, but say the players get involved in guild war politics. They piss someone off, someone important enough to send repeated assassins after them.

At that point, the player agency has dropped off sharply. At some fashion, they have to deal with this, or they're going to be killed. Sure, it's in response to their previous decisions, but their field of available actions has narrowed precipitously. Does the sandbox stop being a sandbox at that point?

>having a big bad at all is incompatible with being a sandbox.
>the game ceases to be a sandbox is the players decide they want to focus on a particular npc as an antagonist.
Either i don't follow your reasoning, or you misunderstood the statement you're replying to there.

>Do consequences for choices narrowing your options stop a game from being a sandbox?
Not at all. Why would they?

Yes, the players now have a problem they *have* to deal with. But they created the problem through their choices. That's what makes it a sandbox.

Otherwise you might argue a game cars being a sandbox if the players can't walk away from a fight with a demon they started to run a bakery, mid combat, because if they try to leave and run a bakery rather than finishing what they started, theyll die.

> (You)
>>npcs can do stuff on the background. Things can change. This change could affect the pcs. That's fine.
>Except they can't. Because as soon as any NPC or outside force gets too much power or influence, you're back in "railroad" territory, assuming the players have to decide to deal with it in some fashion.
Why does a change "have to be dealt with" at all?

X territory is now controlled by Z faction instead of Y faction.
The mayor has been assassinated.
You have a new tax collector, and your taxes have gone up 2%.
A new guilds headquarters has been built across the street from your house.
3 Cops were gunned down in the hallway outside your apartment.

All these things are events happening
All of them are hooks that might get the players involved.
None of them require the players to do so.

>Either i don't follow your reasoning, or you misunderstood the statement you're replying to there.

Because of your objections in this post. If a list of encounters (which is not necessarily a narrative-impacting thing) is enough to disqualify a game from being a sandbox because the GM has determined this will happen regardless of player choice, then having to dodge assassins, or whatever other problems the Big Bad is coming up with to throw at the players, either to directly get at them or just in the course of his general activities; then antagonizing an NPC to the point where he becomes that same action limiting force should also disqualify the game from being a sandbox at that point.

It's not their focus on the NPC as an antagonist that creates "sandbox" problems (again, with your definitions here, which is one of the reasons I prefer mine), it's the fact that the NPC antagonist will inevitably do things to hamper the choices of the players, if he's a meaningful opponent. If you're defining your sandbox by how the players can or can't get involved, and their choices to do so, they've just been committed, and at which point it's not really a sandbox, isn't it?

>Not at all. Why would they?

Because your definition for "sandbox" seems to be grounded in the notion of how the players are free to address major NPCs or factions of such.> But they still need to deal with the lich. If your game allows for the option of "join the lich", and "ignore the lich entirely" then it may not be in rails.

>Yes, the players now have a problem they *have* to deal with. But they created the problem through their choices. That's what makes it a sandbox.

Why? I thought what made it a sandbox was

>Either there's no main plot the players have to follow and the game is about their decisions

Congratulations! You've created a plot (maybe not a main plot, but a serious one) and the game is now as much about the NPC's decisions as it is theirs.

>Otherwise you might argue a game cars being a sandbox if the players can't walk away from a fight with a demon they started to run a bakery, mid combat, because if they try to leave and run a bakery rather than finishing what they started, theyll die.

That would be an extreme example, yes, but that's why I think that basing your defintion of the game being a "sandbox" or not in the terms of their available choices is a bad one.

>Why does a change "have to be dealt with" at all?

Not all changes do. But any change that becomes significant enough that the NPC or NPCs are going to try to influence the actions of the PCs, personally, you get there, at least using definitions of sandboxishness that have to do with player choice, which is why in my first post in the thread I tried to get away from that entirely.

That's why I conditioned the statement with an assumption (that the change is one the players have to react to) and followed up with an example of "NPC tries to kill the PCs, as it has become one of his goals)

I'm sorry if I wasn't clear.

The difference is that they get to decide what to commit to rather than it being arbitrarily predecided for them, not that a sandbox game is one without consequences of commitments.

Except in this case the players created that plot by choosing to get involved with those npcs, rather than me being the one who decided what the plot would be.

The game *is * about their decisions. And the consequences of those decisions.

It's not about the number of available choices. It's about whether their choices decide the plot and narrative, or whether there is a lot of series of encounters they are forced to deal with that are not consequences of their choices.

>circumstances they *have* to deal with
Gotcha. I see what you mean now.

As far as i see it, that's not incompatible with a sandbox, what matters is whether that stuff is decided arbitrarily by me, or as a consequence of their own informed decisions.

>The difference is that they get to decide what to commit to rather than it being arbitrarily predecided for them, not that a sandbox game is one without consequences of commitments.

And why is that difference significant?

>The game *is * about their decisions. And the consequences of those decisions.

But then we run into the problem of "Lich game is really a sandbox as long as the players can make meaningful decisions within it"/.

> It's about whether their choices decide the plot and narrative, or whether there is a lot of series of encounters they are forced to deal with that are not consequences of their choices.

You've said and implicitly linked three things here, which I'm not at all certain go together. Namely, that sandboxes are so if

1) Player choices decide the plot
2) Player choices decide the narrative (These two seem to be treated as the same thing, which I again would take issue with)
3) Mechanical encounters are consequences of their choices.

You can tease apart any or all of them, to yield 8 different possible outcomes

None of 1,2 or 3 are true,
1 is true but 2 and 3 aren't
2 is true but 1 and 3 aren't.
3 is true but 1 and 2 aren't
1 and 2 are true but 3 isn't.
2 and 3 are true but 1 isn't
1 and 3 are true but 2 isn't.
1, 2 and 3 are all true.

At which point, do you stop being a sandbox and start being a railroad? Again, I have my "BIG EVIL LICH THREATENS THE WORLD!" game going. Players can't really decide the plot, but they can decide the narrative insofar as they determine how they're going to react to the existential threat. They can decide, to a limited extent, what sorts of mechanical consequences to their actions are. Railroad or sandbox?

>Obviously, a sandbox without a theme and conflicts is a bad sandbox. Good sandbox is filled with situations and NPCs that actually advance their agenda.
Good sandbox is a dime a dozen though.

This. The ideal is that your players create their own campaign out of the raw materials of your setting.

>can the lich game be a sandbox?
The lich game could be a sandbox if one of:
>1. They can ignore that plot.
>2. The lich exists, but they don't necessarily have to take him as antagonist.
>3. The lich is their enemy because they made him their enemy and they're now dealing with the fallout of fucking him over earlier.

>why is that difference significant
Because it means they get to decide what the game will be about through their in game choices.

Cont...

>As far as i see it, that's not incompatible with a sandbox, what matters is whether that stuff is decided arbitrarily by me, or as a consequence of their own informed decisions.

And why is that the defining factor? Especially since almost all games will require players to make decisions which they might or might not have all the requisite information to make an informed choice; does the consequence of a blind choice eliminate a railroad?

Plus, the game's narrative will start to be self enforcing. Consider the following:

Players get involved in a war between two rival thieves guilds. After a particularly successful heist, the other guild leader swears undying revenge and sends assassins after them.

Based on how I understand your position (please correct me if I'm wrong), dropping the players into the situation where the campaign starts at the end of that, already dodging assassins, is railroading. Putting them there at the beginning of that, where they're deciding to get involved in this heist, is sandboxing.

So we go with the latter. And a new guy joins the game, and the party, and consequently gets on the other thieves guild's Official Shit List. Is he being railroaded by the actions of the other players?

>1/2/3
I'd say you need all 3 for it to be a sandbox. Yes.

Admittedly , you may need to just do 1&2 for the first session or so, while the players get established in the world.

Do you mean it's rare?

Because that expression means is outrageously common to the point of being cheaply available.

The problem is that if you require all three to be a "proper" sandbox, I don't see how you can ever have a game, short of never having any NPC ever make a decision out of sight of the players that affects them somehow.

You would need for them to come up with their own goals, and then pursue them in such a way that nobody around ever really reacts to it, preserving both player control of plot and narrative. I don't know about you, but I find such passivity in the world to stretch the suspension of disbelief.

You could never, for instance, have a war break out between two neighboring countries that has nothing to do with the PC's actions but a lot to do with the local history and antagonisms; at least if the war impacts the PC's to the point where it affects their choices

>they may not have all the information.
Possible. I wouldn't require that they *have* all the information, merely that there be several ways to obtain said information, and that information could have been had with some sort on the part of the players.

If they *choose* not to get any information before acting, or ignore information they find, that says something on its own, and I'd argue that counts as an informed choice. They know they could gather Intel, but decided not to.

>games narrative becomes self enforcing over time.
Yep. This is true. Unavoidable though.

>if i do it it's railroading, if the players do it it's sandbox.
Correct.

>Can a new player be railroaded if dropped into a stream of events decided by past player decisions?
Possible, though they could also opt to not go with the group, theoretically. Not super common, but it has come up.

When they make characters I try to get them to not only come up with a reason to work together(such as a part history or something), but also individual goals, which can clash with other players goals. Some amount of inter-party conflict can make the game more interesting.

But this definition (I am assuming you wrote as well, this may or may not be correct) expands the borders of Sandboxing extremely wide, as well as being inconsistent with , since it really only demands freedom of narrative, not freedom of plot.
>Because it means they get to decide what the game will be about through their in game choices.

But you can do that even in non-sandbox games. At which point it begs the question as to what a "Sandbox" even means.

In your opening post, you acknowledge that railroad vs. sandbox is a false dichotomy.

...So why even make this thread? I mean, other than to start a pointless argument that goes nowhere, of course.

What? No.

They don't need 100% control over the plot and narrative at all times. Again, plot and narrative forming as consequences for their choices is good.

NPCs *will*react to them.

As for your war example. You *can* have a war break out that has nothing to do with their actions, in a sandbox game. It can even affect the pcs.

You just wouldn't conscript the pcs, or have them invade unless the pcs caused the invasion somehow.

>Possible. I wouldn't require that they *have* all the information, merely that there be several ways to obtain said information, and that information could have been had with some sort on the part of the players.

But obtaining information itself is a series of choices, often with their own costs and benefits. Which can't fully be explored without knowing what exactly is in that black box of the information the GM is sitting on which the players don't have; so the determination as to whether or not to gather information is itself not fully informed.

>Yep. This is true. Unavoidable though.

Well, it is avoidable, but the usual cost is making your world full of bland idiots who stand around picking their proverbial noses until the PCs do something, which is usually even worse.

>When they make characters I try to get them to not only come up with a reason to work together(such as a part history or something), but also individual goals, which can clash with other players goals. Some amount of inter-party conflict can make the game more interesting.

So their might be conflict, but assuming the new guy does join the group, he has been dropped into a railroad campaign. And we can even go full Theseus's Ship on this, where every original player drops out, you have an entirely new group of people, all of whom are on the run from this pissed off guild head who is after them based on the decisions that none of them were a party to. Are we now running a railroad campaign here?

>you can decide what the game is about through your in game choices in non sandbox games.
How is that?
If the gm designed a lich plot on rails, and we ignore the lich/leave the country/decide to help him, the gm isn't prepared for those possibilities. Now all of his prep is for nothing, and he's going to have to half-ass it and hope for the best.

In a sandbox, his preparations are general enough that the game simply continues along without a hitch.

>They don't need 100% control over the plot and narrative at all times. Again, plot and narrative forming as consequences for their choices is good.

Why not? I'll illustrate a bit later in the post.

>As for your war example. You *can* have a war break out that has nothing to do with their actions, in a sandbox game. It can even affect the pcs.
>You just wouldn't conscript the pcs, or have them invade unless the pcs caused the invasion somehow.

And why is that the dividing line and not somewhere else? What if it's a caravan that the PCs own getting ransacked by soldiers? What if it's their shipment of arcane reagents that they wanted very badly suddenly disappearing because there's a war on?

If now the control over narrative and/or plot is partially shared with other forces, how do you separate a sandbox game from a non-sandbox game? After all, in the hypothetical evil lich scenario, we've got a whole host of NPCs who have their own agendas (The BBEG lich himself, any underlings who might not be perfectly aligned to him, leaders of various political entities he's invading, other assorted wealthy and powerful, etc.) Depending on the exact parameters as to how things are set up, the PCs might be sharing some or all of the plot and/or narrative control with some or any of them.

How do you even come up with a framework for determining "Past this line you have left the sandbox"?

Full improv, 0 prep. Somehow I still get away making it seem like it was all on my notes from the start

>sometimes you can't possibly have all the information to make good choices.
Happens, but i try to keep it to a minimum, so as to maximize meaningful choices and minimize arbitrary cointoss scenarios.

>bland videogame npcs
Ugh. Yeah that's hardly a campaign at all.

>new group of people on rails from a previous group
How does this happen? Like, gradually? Why are they stuck on the original groups path?

If it's gradual, each new player has to decide to get caught up in the existing tide, rather than get out of the way or turn on the pcs.

If it's all at once, how the fuck does that even happen and why?

Why don't they get off the bus, as it were?

>If the gm designed a lich plot on rails, and we ignore the lich/leave the country/decide to help him, the gm isn't prepared for those possibilities. Now all of his prep is for nothing, and he's going to have to half-ass it and hope for the best.

And why are you assuming the lich plot is "designed on rails" and the GM has nothing else prepped? For all you know (and this is a hypothetical, so we can make up literally anything) the GM has an enormous world sketched out with Tolkien's depth, and how each and every different city in the entire world is reacting to this, and if the players leave the country, they go somewhere else, and the lich is still there merrily taking over the world, with all the domino effects that it causes. And then, some time much later in the game's chronology, the players are now facing down the exact same baddie, just in a different context, or are watching the entire world be overrun by his forces while they do nothing about it.
Furthermore, this is the first post in the thread I'm aware of that makes the connection between sandboxing and a level and style of GM preparation. If we go absolutely mega autist genius mode; where the GM has literally thought of every single possible player action, and has prepared a book as to every reaction; but, you know, gives little control over the plot (because there's a big evil lich bent on world conquest) and even relatively little to the narrative (there are only so many places to flee to, the PCs don't have access to information to combat the lich effectively and to obtain it they'd need to ally themselves with people who have their own expectations on them), we're in a sandbox?

>stolen shipments or missing caravans.
Hmm. Yeah thats tricky.

My way of dealing with that (since it largely amounts to bad luck) is I dont completely decide such things.

As the campaign progresses I continually make random tables of possible events based on likelihood, and frequently roll on them.

That way something thats just bad luck is just bad luck, rather than me actively deciding how to steer the plot.

But youre right, that is murky water right there.

>Happens, but i try to keep it to a minimum, so as to maximize meaningful choices and minimize arbitrary cointoss scenarios.

I would argue that unless you give your players at the start of every new game enormously detailed guides to the world and all the important people they'll run into, it's unavoidable at least to a small extent.

Players want to pick sides in a guild war. What do the guilds stand for? What are their leaders like? Do any of the members have hidden private agendas? The answers to all can be found in the GM's head, but at least in most realistic worlds, you wouldn't be able to find out that stuff right off the bat, and gaining access to that information requires at least some getting into the sticky mess of the political situation there, and at that point you've already at least taken something of a side, which can ctrammel future action.

>How does this happen? Like, gradually? Why are they stuck on the original groups path?


I admit, I was thinking gradually, but I've never actually seen new players not join the group somehow, so I kind of discounted it as a possibility, which perhaps I shouldn't.

>Why don't they get off the bus, as it were?

The obvious answer is that as soon as they start associating with the former PCs in a friendly manner, they're also put in the target zone, and at which point they have to do something to get out of it.

>1.mega autist genius details.
>2.pcs can do anything and theres prep for it, but theres overwhelming pressure to follow the scripted plot rather than decide for yourself what the plot is about.
>3. Obtaining information restricts future choices.

1 is fine.
2 is problematic.
3 is potentially okay depending on how much and how its handled.

Both are unnecessary if your players have characters with clear and achieveable goals.

>Both are unnecessary
At least sandboxing isn't something you need to achieve a certain goal, but an end in itself as a certain game type.

So now you've created a new situation I hadn't even thought of, where narrative control is outside the hands of both the GM and the players.

But this is why I try to duck the situation entirely, and came up with my perhaps idiosyncratic definition of "Sandbox", which actually isn't directly opposed to "railroad", as at least to me, sandbox vs not sandbox is primarily concerned with plot, and railroad vs not railroad is primarily concerned with mechanics.

Narrative control wouldn't be directly related to either, although as a personal preference, I think the players should almost always have significant narrative control, greater than the GM's influence.

>campaign comes with a players guide.
I tend to do this. Maybe not enormously detailed, but like, 10-30 page overview broken down into headings and the like for ease of reference. Stuff that should be known to them.

>associating with the existing pcs makes it gradually harder to get off the bus.
Sure, but they option is typically there if they try. Maybe they set up a sit down and explain that they were misled and their involvement was minimal, or what have you.

And what do any of them have to do with the definition of the game as sandbox vs railroad?

>I tend to do this. Maybe not enormously detailed, but like, 10-30 page overview broken down into headings and the like for ease of reference. Stuff that should be known to them.

I do this as well, but the point I was aiming at and didn't say well is that often the campaign is going to hinge on stuff that isn't common knowledge; and the gathering of that information almost always comes with a cost, even if it's only in time.

>Sure, but they option is typically there if they try. Maybe they set up a sit down and explain that they were misled and their involvement was minimal, or what have you.

Fair enough. I admit, I was mostly trying to come up with a situation that the current party's decisions were actually made by the older party, of which there are actually 0 representatives left. I don't think it would ever actually come up, if for no other reason than the game would probably have fallen apart by that point.

I only do that for things that are about luck.

But yes , the plot and narrative control tends to be a combination of player decisions and actual luck. At the beginning of a sandbox campaign i have no idea where the plot will go, and like, 20-30 potential avenues that may or may not get picked up or tangented off of.

A good GM needs to do three things for me:
1. Create an interesting world with many opportunities for the players to act out their characters motivations
2. Make sure that the player can freely decide what they do in the world.
3. Make sure that the characters actions actually have consequences and don't just lead to the same results whatever they chose to do.

The thrird point directly contradicts railroading which is why it's always bad, just like said.

Now if we talk about wether the game has a linear plot or not, this shouldn't be at the GMs discretion, but at the players. Rather the GM should create an OPPORTUNITY for the game to turn into a linear one if the players desire it, by providing possibly long plot lines. Whether they want to stay on those plot lines is something the players will decide themselves.

>But yes , the plot and narrative control tends to be a combination of player decisions and actual luck.

I still don't consider plot and narrative control the same thing, by the way. We can fight about it some if you want :P And I just wanted to say I've enormously enjoyed this, it's been a long, long time since I've had this good a conversation on Veeky Forums.

>At the beginning of a sandbox campaign i have no idea where the plot will go, and like, 20-30 potential avenues that may or may not get picked up or tangented off of.

Again, because in part the way I define a "sandbox" campaign, they usually develop either

A) It started off as a non-sandbox campaign and the players rejected the plot entirely by substituting their own

B) I ask them what it is they want to do in a session zero, usually post world-building (although to be honest, this has never actually worked, because I've never been able to get a group to agree on something, even after providing several ideas)

Actually, as per A), it's only really worked when one player, singular, came up with the idea and dragged the rest behind him. I can't remember any time I've gotten a full party to agree on a course of action without me as GM holding some kind of sword of damocles over them.

Plot control is about the overarching plot.
Narrative control is about the smaller stuff.
But it's day in a sandbox game the players need to be the deciding factor for both.

My pcs tend to coordinate more than that. Or one of them devices on and runs headlong into a course of action and the rest tag along.

I agree. It's been a good discussion.

>what do they have to do with sandbox vrailroad?
2. Very Limited agency to decide the plot.
3. Depends if it basically removes player agency or not. Again, depends how its handled.

*id say

>Plot control is about the overarching plot.
>Narrative control is about the smaller stuff.


Precisely, but the two don't really need to go together, and I would argue the enormous primacy of player control over plot as opposed to player control over narrative.

>But it's day in a sandbox game the players need to be the deciding factor for both.

Do they? I mentioned in my first post I've only run one what I consider to be REAL sandbox game. I was playing with a new group, and was just kind of throwing a few meaningless quests at them, mostly to get a feel for them and how their group dynamics would work. They take a job to recover this book from a dead old archmage's tower, which is still filled with traps and defenders.

Well, they get the book, get paid. And then Jacob asks me if they can buy the land the tower's on, and I mean why not? For months they wage a room by room war against the tower itself, trying to bend it to their will.

I would definitely consider that player controlled plot.

But, in an effort to keep things from just being "Roll Spellcraft Equivalent X or higher to pacify room", I made the tower a huge deathtrap and maze of different interesting effects, some of which were obvious, most of which weren't. For the original dungeon crawl, I was mostly focused on the mechanics, of a set of obstacles between the entrances and their goals and other points of interesting items they could carry off with them (not having planned for this outcome, but happy to roll with it). Once they started trying to run it, it was pretty much a mission in and of itself to control or eliminate each and every magical effect. There was actually relatively little narrative control over the mechanics of breaking the various rooms and corridors into their service, mostly either them figuring out what to do, or raising money and hiring real mages to figure it out for them. I would be loath to consider this not a sandbox because of that limitation.

Sorry, ran out of characters.

So while there was some narrative control in the hands of the players, in degree of things like

>Which rooms should we tackle first
>Whom do we befriend and antagonize in our quest to bring this tower under control
>How much attention do we pay to the outside world?

for most of the core narrative as it impacted the plot of "gain control of tower" there really was one and only one solution to disable or control this, that, or the other thing. You needed THIS kind of amulet to get through the force fields, and to make it required ingredients X, Y, and either Za or Zb; etc.

>Sandbox, in my experience, is a term that lazy GMs use to excuse the big fucking hole that is where the plot should be.
Then you play with shit GMs.

Sandbox play is essentially any game in which players drive the story, and determine where its going. Instead of creating scenarios and adventures, GMs of sandbox games create plot hooks for the players to follow, should they so choose.

A lazy GM is just that: a lazy GM. No style of play would be good with someone unwilling to put forth the effort.

Go read Tracks in the Sand. It explains that neither works in the complete absence of the other; players will balk at the lack of options in a pure railroad and stagnate from choice in a pure sandbox.

You have to have a bit of both for it to run, and this is often just a series of interconnected plotlines with muddled interactions, that, without seeming obvious, lead to the same general end result.

Depends on group.

>choice in a pure sandbox

This. Once had a sandbox so pure the DM was just like "You guys do whatever" and the party split up and just fucked around and no-one had fun.

In some ways, that's my biggest problem with the notion of sandboxes; they don't always mesh well with the ensemble cast that a RPG group tends to foster.

Unless all the players come up with goals that are reasonably aligned, they'll either tend to split off from each other, or one person actually controls the party and drags the others in his or her wake.

>You have to have a bit of both for it to run, and this is often just a series of interconnected plotlines with muddled interactions, that, without seeming obvious, lead to the same general end result.
I disagree.

In one of my previous posts, I mention plot hooks. A plot hook does not have to be an interlinked plot. It simply has to be tied to another aspect of the setting.

The idea isn't necessarily to have a bunch of hidden prebuilt adventures, but to have a bunch of hidden prebuilt hints to things that you haven't really formulated, and remember to continue creating on the fly as the game continues.

>Unless all the players come up with goals that are reasonably aligned, they'll either tend to split off from each other, or one person actually controls the party and drags the others in his or her wake.
Well, I tend to like playgroups to split. I use an hourglass, and handle them in 1-hour microsessions, with groups switching after intervals and giving other people a chance to either break or audience the session.

Believe it or not, great way to keep the game from feeling like it's dragging.

That said, don't fear having to split your attention. Sometimes, that's the best way for the game to head. Could even be a great way to try and plot out a way to interconnect the two plots, if you really want to show off how good you are at running a game.

ITT
Single autist thinks that entire game, its world and setting revolves around player party

wut

>one person actually controls the party and drags the others in his or her wake.
This is how pretty much all my sandbox games went, either as GM or player