Sandbox Campaigna

You make the mistake of thinking there's only one level of sandbox campaign. It exists on a scale between how railroaded it is and how sandboxy it is. A hexcrawl is the ultimate sandbox. Having a main quest with complete player choice is still a sandbox, but less of one than a hexcrawl. Having a main quest where it's pre-determined how the players are going to finish it is railroaded.

>You make the mistake of thinking there's only one level of sandbox campaign. It exists on a scale between how railroaded it is and how sandboxy it is.

No, I'm not. You're making the mistake of thinking that it's a continuum based around player options, with railroading on one end, and sandboxing on the other. They are COMPLETELY separate concepts, and it is quite possible to do a railroading sandbox, or a non-sandbox in which player choice is virtually unlimited. (I have no idea why you'd do the former, but hey).

What makes a sandbox a sandbox isn't the number of player options for dealing with whatever their problem of the moment is, it's created by an emergent narrative centered around what the PCs and players, or sometimes just one of them, want to do. As soon as you have a main quest, the one that they have to beat to "win" the game, you've left the sandbox, even if they can pursue that aim in whatever manner they damn please. If it were a sandbox, the players or one of them would be coming up with the main plotline.

They are coming up with that. It is their choice as to what the characters pursue, usually based on character motivations and goals.
See

>They are coming up with that. It is their choice as to what the characters pursue, usually based on character motivations and goals.

But that has nothing to do with the level of choice in pursuing their goals. Obviously, it's your campaign and you can do with it as you please, but it would easily be possible to set up an extremely tight manner of dealing with this black mist stuff and that only an A to B to C to D to E action progression gets them anywhere, assuming you even allow other options (Not that I suggest you do this, of course, it seems stupid and unsatisfying.) Voila, you now have a sandbox railroad.

>What have you tried that's worked well?

Fitting players. I know it's kinda vague, but a surprising number of them actually wants to be ralilroaded, even if just a bit. Nothing wrong with this, I mean, it's not always sandbox when GMing, and if you are in charge you have to come to terms with their playstyle. If you want to run a Sandbox Campaign, put together a small group of experienced players who know what they're getting into. Don't use d20 system would be my suggestion, but I guess it's Veeky Forums suggestion as well, so I won't bother getting into details.

>Any interesting techniques or pointers you've come up with?
As long as you do enough prep work in between the sessions, you're good. Most RPG systems aren't meant for sandbox, so you gotta be prepared for homebrewing a bit - not too much, and keep things smooth. Draw maps (a lot of them), 'cause players feel more comfortable in a free-roaming environment when they know exactly the layout of the gaming world. Focus on NPC names (a lot of unexpected NPCs will come up and you can't just always improvise them on the spot) and on political worldbuilding - just in case the party goes murderhobo and tries to take over something, or just runs in problems with authority. Other than that: if there's no main quest, make all quests feel like they're the main one, rather than making them feel all side quests, if you know what I mean. Work a lot on PC's backgrounds, you'll need help from them to develop a storyline, you just can't do it alone.

>Any good resources you keep on hand to make your games run smoother?
A lot of pen and paper for both you and the players. Notes and sketches always help when the plot gets too heavy and you all have multiple hooks and names to remember. I'm not a big fan of pre-generated characters and random tables, but you might want to browse Veeky Forums once in a while for inspiration. Char art threads and generals (I know it's unpopular) help.

There's an old joke about the 3 most important things in real estate being location, location, and location. With sandboxes, the three most important things are preparation, preparation, and preparation. That being said, your preparation needn't be detailed to an anal retentive level.

Check out this blog post. It's for Traveller, but it works for any sandbox:

batintheattic blogspot com/2009/04/how-to-make-traveller-sandbox.html

You need to prepare enough general details about the sandbox and the locations within it to be able to quickly create specific details when or if the players choose to go there. You need to know that people staying in tavern A get robbed occasionally or that village B's crops keep failing. It's when or if the players visit the tavern or village that you determine why that shit is happening.

I use a lot of "slush piles" to produce the necessary details on demand; stacks and lists of rumors, pregen NPCs, names, motivations, events, incidents, etc. I also create a bunch of plots, big and small, that will be triggered at some point by either me or the players' actions. Some plots are general meaning I can drop them anywhere, some are tied to specific locations. With plots I use simple Gantt charts to keep track of the plot while the players are elsewhere.

Record keeping becomes as the players move around. Say the players visit village A for the 1st time. I fish businesses, NPCs, names, motivations, rumors, etc. out of my various slush piles. I can even trigger a plot. After doing all that, I then keep all those recently made details tied to that location.

While there's software and web apps that can do that, I'm an oldfag so I use 3x5 cards, envelopes, and folders. When the players visit Village A in County B, I pull out the county folder, open the village envelope, and there are all the cards with my pregen stuff and notes.

Preparation, preparation, preparation.

Have you ever even read the pdf?

Yes, but it's definitions are stupid and hardly universal. Having already demonstrated that it is quite possible to have emergent plot but still have the GM straitjacket player action, you're left with a gaping hole in style of gameplay that the PDF doesn't even bother to address.

Allowing a wide variation of player actions isn't anything special, certainly not enough to bother creating a word for dealing with action and consequence.

Not to mention that a large portion of the advice given, by far the bulk of it by length, is terrible. "Never try to anticipate your players, it's wasted effort, no plan survives contact with them!" I don't know about you, or them, but once you've played with a group for more than a month, you should have a pretty good idea as to how they're likely to react if you've been paying the least bit of attention to their past behavior. While obviously, you won't be able to anticipate every action and reaction, you should have a pretty good idea as to how they're likely to react to whatever you throw at them next, and plan accordingly.

Hell, the big, bolded, larger font

>IT'S ONLY RAILROADING IF THE PLAYERS NOTICE

is incredibly dumb, and speaks very badly on the work as a whole.

This.

The pdf is well meant, but it's advice is mostly terrible.

I'd like to see you do better.

No, seriously.
If you think you can provide better definitions and advice, I would sincerely appreciate hearing it and discussing it.

As for that, "only if they notice" line?
If the players don't notice, how badly could the restriction of choice to one path be?

>If you think you can provide better definitions and advice, I would sincerely appreciate hearing it and discussing it.

I already provided the definitions. If you want advice, I can lay it out. Was there anything in particular you wanted to hear about? GMing is a very complicated and manifold task, there's a lot of skills,very few of which directly relate to one another.

>If the players don't notice, how badly could the restriction of choice to one path be?

Who said that restriction of choice was necessarily a bad thing? Maybe the players don't want to do anything other than run through The Dungeon and slaying all in their path and then using the loot they garner to buy better equipment to do it all over again.

The point is, it's completely inconsistent with their own definition(s) given on the same page "Railroading is a specific term for GM's with ONE adventure. ONE plot. It can be resolved in ONE way." The players not realizing that they can't even try other alternatives doesn't change the fact that their definition is grounded in GM planning and allowance of alternatives. They could simply be stupid, or enjoying the trip along the rails.

>Who said that restriction of choice was necessarily a bad thing?
>What if they like it?
Not really related, relevant, or the point.

>The point is, it's completely inconsistent with their own definition
If the cattle immediately run to where you want them to go before you can herd them, you aren't really herding them.
If the players never turn from the rails, it's not really railroading.

>A sandbox has a player-driven plot, an absence of a main quest
Those two are not mutually exclusive.
What if the players choose a main quest?

>Not really related, relevant, or the point.

How is it not? The author(s) gave a definition of what is a railroad, grounded completely in what the GM allows, and then contradicts himself as to also making it conditional on the players noting their fetters.

Then you came along and made a value judgment as to whether or not a definition is self-consistent. Not exactly relevant to the discussion as before, but I tried to give a number of reasons why.

>If the cattle immediately run to where you want them to go before you can herd them, you aren't really herding them. If the players never turn from the rails, it's not really railroading.

Or you're herding them extremely skillfully. In any case, you are then disagreeing with the definition posted in the PDF, which is grounded in what the DM is and isn't allowing for progress to occur. I have yet to see a competing definition, or a theoretical framework for deciding that railroading is always bad, which is definitely the tone the PDF is taking.

Because I have over 10 different players who may or may not show up each week at an open table, I'm pretty much required to run things as a sandbox.

I basically just made a big map with a bunch of hexes and make every session a different dungeon. Every week the players start in the town and I go, "okay, what rumors do you want to follow into the perilous wilds this week" and the players either pick one of the rumors in the local tavern or go after some dungeon they had heard hints about some previous week. Sometimes they'll go somewhere another group of players wiped or had to flee earlier and try to do it themselves.

It's lasted two years now so I'm doing something right, and I suppose there's no railroading involved on account of I just made/keep making a bunch of dungeons and said "here you guys go."

>What if the players choose a main quest?

Well, that depends on how you define a "main quest", and I suppose "player-driven plot".

Generally though, I think of a "quest" as some objective the players are attempting to attain. Kill this bad guy, get that item, put such and such on the throne of whatever country. At some point, they finish, either in success or failure. The quest is over, and then the game either ends, or a new objective has to be determined. If it's a main quest, the former usually happens, or at least after some wrapup.

A player-driven plot, on the other hand, doesn't necessarily have an endpoint, it's just whatever the players have as their goals, which might or might not have at cusp a binary success or failure condition. As an example, suppose the player-goal is

>We want to build a town in this location, see it thrive.

which isn't a "quest" in the classic sense, as the town will, assuming things go well for the players, continue to grow, and it's not easy to come up with a cutoff point as to what counts as success or failure.

But I'll admit, I was thinking primarily in terms of a "Main Quest" as "This is the BBEG you need to beat and if you don't Something Bad will happen", which is generally incompatible with sandbox gameplay. The two do not necessarily contradict, even if they often do.

>Or you're herding them extremely skillfully.
>before you can herd them
Read

>In any case, you are then disagreeing with the definition posted in the PDF, which is grounded in what the DM is and isn't allowing for progress to occur.
No, I'm providing an analogous example that showcases how, just because railroading is made irrelevant by preemptive actions by the players, that doesn't affect the definition of railroading.

>I have yet to see a competing definition, or a theoretical framework for deciding that railroading is always bad
Genocide isn't always had either, but people tend to skew against it.

>Read

I have. You're acting like player choice is completely separable from DM action, which is just idiotic, since all setting information that fundamentally informs player choice ultimately comes from the DM. There never is a "before the DM has a chance to herd them."

>No, I'm providing an analogous example that showcases how, just because railroading is made irrelevant by preemptive actions by the players, that doesn't affect the definition of railroading.

You've done no such thing; there is no such thing as a preemptive action by the players. And in any event, the difference between

>The DM is railroading but the players will never notice because of their own predispositions

is distinct from

>The DM isn't actually railroading because he's carrying them along the path they would have chosen anyway.

>If you think you can provide better definitions and advice, I would sincerely appreciate hearing it and discussing it.

You're presenting railroading vs sandboxing question as some autistic, binary, one/zero, up/down, yes/no choice. The reality is far more nuanced.

RPGs are COLLABORATIVE efforts between the referee and players. Sometimes the referee has more control over the story line, sometimes the players have more control. Such control can and does shift constantly during a campaign. Such shifts actually make for good play.

I've set up sandboxes like I described in , seeded them with "BBEG must be thwarted" plots, and then had the players go off in an entirely different direction. In some cases, I tweaked the plot so that the players could still stumble into it. In other cases, I ditched the plot entirely. In still other cases, the players only tumbled to a fraction of the plot.

In all cases, however, whether the players followed, ignored, or only intersected with the BBEG plot was a COLLABORATIVE choice. They listened to me, I listened to them, and the campaign then followed the consensus.

There's a HUGE area between "player choices don't matter/this is going to happen anyway/railroading" and "players actions have no consequences/theme-free/sandbox" play.

Life isn't binary. Neither is RPG play.

>I have. You're acting like player choice is completely separable from DM action, which is just idiotic, since all setting information that fundamentally informs player choice ultimately comes from the DM. There never is a "before the DM has a chance to herd them."

Very well said.

The first sort. If the PCs don't see it, the players don't see it. Why waste time talking to myself?

>But that already disqualifies it as a sandbox.
Semi-sandbox. My current players don't have the drive to find their own plots, and I've had bad experiences with other groups doing randumb things just because they could.
The main quest is a highway rather than a railroad. They can wander off and go do stuff when there's a junction.

I like pure sandboxes, but I have to temper that against the players.

I've had a significant challenge with my current group, because their players and characters are not suited for sandbox, while still desiring sandbox. They have no effective sort of leadership, and will talk in circles forever, never arriving at a decision. Really tricky to work with.

I've tried forcing the decision, or just abstaining until they actually pick something, but it doesn't work well at all. The players just get increasingly upset at 'everyone else' for not deciding. Even voting doesn't really work all that well because the minority gets passive-aggressive about not getting their way.

What I've found to work best is a choose your own adventure sort of deal. I find excuses to provide them with several distinctive, concrete options, so they at least have a list of choices for what they want to tackle, often attaching NPCs that the PCs might grow fond of. It's sort of like a job board without being an actual job board. The "jobs" still vary in locale and purpose to such a degree that the plot can spin in entirely different ways depending on where they go and what they do.

My best advice for a sandbox game is to keep a box of 'spare parts' ready. In a more tightly controlled game you can have a series of encounters readied. But because the plot can go anywhere, the players can dodge basically anything. You need to be able to grab a something useful out of a hat and make it work on short notice. For example, keep a list of generic names ready, or encounters that work with only small modifications. You never know when players will walk into just the right scenario for that mini-dungeon you had thought up three months prior.

>Very well said.
No it really wasn't.

Are y'all trying to be deliberately obtuse?
Yes, it is true that a player's actions can never be completely free of the GM's influence. But GM influence is not synonymous with railroading.
When a GM railroads, it is through "railroading actions" that are part of, but not the entirety of, all of their GM actions.
"Railroading actions" are, by definition, actions that have the sole purpose of keeping a player, or players, from deviating from the one possible path, their path.
The railroading does not begin until the "railroading actions" begin, and these are usually done when the player begins attempting to deviate from the GM's plan.
If the player never deviates from the GM's plan by their own will, then GM will not take "railroading actions" and is therefore not really railroading.

It sounds like you are trying to say that it is physically impossible for a player to take actions that happen to line up with the GM's plan without the GM first taking "railroading actions" to ensure it.
If that's the case, you are being very, very silly and possibly have a foolish definition of railroading that includes "if the GM has a plan, he's railroading".

>Life isn't binary. Neither is RPG play.
This, however, is true.

>You're presenting railroading vs sandboxing question as some autistic, binary, one/zero, up/down, yes/no choice.
Not really.
I am making the distinction between the relative level of GM influence and when that influence passes the subjective threshold of limiting player actions to one path.
Railroading vs Sandbox is a sliding scale.
Is this Railroading? Is a binary question.

So you're saying you use what's written in AW to GM sandbox games better in every other system you play?

Can you give some examples?

No, I can't.
I don't run sandboxes outside of AW.
Losing my group reduced me to running one-shots at cons, so running sandboxes is not even an option.

So you're not doing that AW is filled with good sandbox advice in general, merely that it lends itself well to sandbox games?

Sorry to hear about your group. My group is currently 3 time zones away. I haven't gamed since January 2016. The plan is to pick it up again when I move back home.

>"Railroading actions" are, by definition, actions that have the sole purpose of keeping a player, or players, from deviating from the one possible path, their path.

And what about these actions have to be perceptible by the players? What makes your next line, "The railroading does not begin until the "railroading actions" begin, and these are usually done when the player begins attempting to deviate from the GM's plan." true at all? The railroading can easily begin with how information is presented to the players such that they can only conceive of one course of action.

>If the player never deviates from the GM's plan by their own will, then GM will not take "railroading actions" and is therefore not really railroading.

No, that's wrong, and stupid besides. The "Railroading actions" can and often will be in the presentation of information and feasible actions. If the DM has you all wake up in a prison cell, and there's only one, convoluted way out that has any hope of success, the players go for that method, then the DM has railed them without ever slamming a door in their face.

>It sounds like you are trying to say that it is physically impossible for a player to take actions that happen to line up with the GM's plan without the GM first taking "railroading actions" to ensure it.

No, I'm not saying that. I'm saying that, contrary to what you asserted in previous posts, that the players not noticing they're on the rails has absolutely nothing to do with the fact that whether or not they're being railroaded, which is grounded in the GM's level of control. That the players don't test said control doesn't mean they're not on the rails, it just means they're either enjoying the ride or don't realize they're on one.

And while not directly the part where you responded to me, you still haven't even bothered to engage my definitions such that railroading vs sandboxing isn't diametrically opposed and can both be present in the same game.

No, I am saying that AW is filled with good sandbox advice in general.
The entire MC section is gold for any sandbox game, with a bit of tweaking occasionally.

Presenting players with inormation is influencing them, not preventing them from taking any but one path.

>then the DM has railed them without ever slamming a door in their face
Aside from the prison cell door?

>That the players don't test said control doesn't mean they're not on the rails, it just means they're either enjoying the ride or don't realize they're on one.
If they are in no way being constrained by the rails, then they aren't being limited by them, and aren't being railroaded.
If you go to Baskins and Robins and immediately ask for vanilla, your choice has not been railroaded.

>railroading vs sandboxing isn't diametrically opposed
>Sandbox is an emergent narrative centered around what the PCs and players, or sometimes just one of them, want to do.
How is this specific to sandbox and not every ttrpg?

The number one important thing in a sandbox is information about the different locations. If the players don't know what their options are then they aren't really making a choice, just a random pick.

To make travel interesting in the sandbox, I try to set up the map so the party always gets a choice of two paths when travelling between two locations - one slow and safe path, and one fast and dangerous. Again, information is key so the players know one path is more dangerous than the other.

I'll have to give it a more thorough read them. Thanks.

Like user said, the game is a mix of GM direction and PC direction.
Railroading and Sandbox are just the extremes.

>Presenting players with inormation is influencing them, not preventing them from taking any but one path.

Unless of course, that information leads them to the conclusion that one and only one path is viable.

>Aside from the prison cell door?

user, are you being deliberately obtuse? You can set up a prison escape start with multiple avenues out. Maybe you can just hack your way through the door and try to bull your way out. You could try to bribe a particular guard to smuggle you something you can use. You can try to make yourself useful to the prison authoritie. You could try to set up a revolt among the general prison population. There are numerous possibilities, depending on the exact nature of the setting and how much flexibility the DM has. If the DM is particularly inflexible, there is one and only one way out, at which point it's a railroad.

>If they are in no way being constrained by the rails, then they aren't being limited by them, and aren't being railroaded.

So, you're fundamentally disagreeing with the PDF that I beleive you cited and your statements upthread; railroading is not in fact about GM inflexibility and control, it's about players being unable to do something they wanted to do.

>If you go to Baskins and Robins and immediately ask for vanilla, your choice has not been railroaded.

Let's run with that analogy for a second. If B&R has 20 flavors presented, but they're all actually vanilla, then yes, their customers are being "railroaded" into having vanilla. My personally liking vanilla and ordering it every time doesn't change the fact that there is no actual choice, whether or not I'd make a different choice if presented with one, or whether or not I'm aware that my choice is meaningless. But it is still meaningless, and I'm still being forced to "choose" vanilla.

1/2

2/2

>How is this specific to sandbox and not every ttrpg?

Because most ttrpgs do not have player driven plots. They have player centered focuses, but that's not the same thing. The bog-standard plot, so common that it's a cliche of a cliche, is that everything is fine, you have some Big Evil who sets up shop and has the Evil Plan that will cause untold havoc, and the players try to stop him or her.

The plot is being driven by the actions of the BBEG, not the players, and certainly not the characters. The PCs are in a fundamentally reactive position, and "win" by eliminating the threat of whatever it is the BBEG has planned, at which point status quo returns, and the players enjoy their accolades. But they're not driving the plot. The plot can exist if any individual PC dies, if any individual player leaves the group, a TPK happens and the players start over with completely different characters. But you know who isn't so replaceable? The BBEG. When he goes down, the game is over, because the plot was really about the bad guy, not the players and their characters.

Contrast that to say, a game which is about the PCs starting up a settlement on the edge of the wilderness. They defend it against monsters, they attract new settlers, they go hunting for whatever resources they need to keep this town going. The primary plot of the game isn't being imposed by some NPC who will take actions, whether the PCs interfere or not, it's totally hinging around what they want and what they're doing.

And note, you could railroad the hell out of this kind of game. As long as you present or control only one method per each step in building up the town, the players are being railroaded, even if their core goal is from them.

You know, that thing about player centric-plots got me thinking. Thank you user!

So in your opinion whether it's railroad or sandbox is a matter of proactive players reactive gm vs reactive players proactive GM?

Isn't it theoretically possible to have a game that's somewhere in the middle, alternating back and forth?

>So in your opinion whether it's railroad or sandbox is a matter of proactive players reactive gm vs reactive players proactive GM?

No, in my opinion they're two completely separate axis, and don't directly interact at all. Sandbox vs not sandbox is pretty binary, but the railroad vs not railroad is a more granular continuum, leading to all sorts of possibilities; sandbox railroad, sandbox open ended, sandbox somewhere in the middle, non-sandbox open ended, etc.

>Isn't it theoretically possible to have a game that's somewhere in the middle, alternating back and forth?

I suppose, if you make it episodic, for lack of a better word; break the game down into smaller arcs, some of which are player emergent, others of which are external.

I've never really seen that done, mind you, and I imagine that transitioning from one to the other would be tricky to pull off, let alone doing so repeatedly.

>Isn't it theoretically possible to have a game that's somewhere in the middle, alternating back and forth?

Of course it is, dipshit, and well run games do that all the time.

Only binary thinking sperglords and autists insist that it's always ALL one way or the other.

>Sandbox vs not sandbox is pretty binary, but the railroad vs not railroad is a more granular continuum

Could you define the axis better?
I'm not seeing anything other than more player agency vs less player agency.

I tend to make up everything except the major plot points on the fly so all of my campaigns are sandbox campaigns just by virtue of that.

>>If they are in no way being constrained by the rails, then they aren't being limited by them, and aren't being railroaded.
>So, you're fundamentally disagreeing with the PDF that I beleive you cited and your statements upthread; railroading is not in fact about GM inflexibility and control, it's about players being unable to do something they wanted to do.
Okay, at this point I'm not even sure you're paying attention to what you're saying, let alone what I am.
One more shot:
If they are not being limited at all, then they are not being limited to the GM's one path.
Savvy?

For them to not be limited at all, there needs to be no path.

If there's only one path, they're limited whether they realize it or not.

>Could you define the axis better?
>I'm not seeing anything other than more player agency vs less player agency.
This.
It is a spectrum with 100% GM driven on one end and 100% Player driven on the other.
Most games being a mix.

>For them to not be limited at all, there needs to be no path.
GM plans a path, PCs take it before he can try to sway them.
Customer walks into 31 flavors and asks for vanilla before they can be told that they're sold out of the other 30 flavors.

Right. Whether it's a railroad or not has nothing to do with what the players want to do, but what they're able to do. You finally understand.

Your situation is the ideal railroad from a player perspective. A railroad that takes you exactly where you want to go.

But if I get on a train that only goes to New York and that's where I wanted to go anyways, that doesn't change the fact that the train only goes to New York.

That was my thinking too.

But I'm not sure that I fully understand what the argument was about.

He's saying sandbox vs not and railroad vs not are not one axis, but an axis and a binary yes/no that don't interact at all, and you can combine railroad and sandbox in all different combinations.

He's disagreeing with the definition of 1-axis railroad>>sandbox

And that "railroad sandbox" while unusual, is entirely possible.

>If there's only one path, they're limited whether they realize it or not.

Could you be more of a sperglord? Seriously. You're either autistic, retarded, trolling, or all three.

My players come to me and say "We want a sandbox this time" and I begin my prep. I don't set up ONE plot. I set up a couple of plots. Then, during play rumors, NPCs, random encounters, and player actions create even MORE plots.

All those plots, the ones I prepped, the ones the players and I created, all of them aren't going down at the same time. Some the players trigger, some they stop, most they simply effect. Some plots never even begin because the players made choices I didn't foresee.

Because there isn't ONE plot, because the players interact or don't interact with all the plots in more than ONE way, and because MORE plots are created during play, there isn't the ONE path you keep blubbering about.

I got that much, but I'm not sure how those function as different axis.

Isn't a "railroad sandbox" just somewhere between the two extreamse of 100% player agency and 0% player agency?

I'm not sure what the other variable is meant to be. Amount of choice? With the other axis being whether those choices have an effect on the plot?

Sandbox: pc planning and choice dictates the plot.
Railroad or not: one way forward vs open ended accomplish goals however you want.

That sounds like a normal sandbox game.

How does any of this contradict "it's still a railroad if the one thing the PCs are allowed to do also happens to align with what they want to do" Or "a railroad is a railroad whether the PCs realize it or not"?

You just described a sandbox game. What of it?

I'm not sure I agree with his assessment, in that I define railroad by way of DM choice dictating plot and PCs being more or less along for the ride.

How are those different axis?
Sandbox means the players choice dictates the plot. So Not Sandbox would mean that the players choices don't dictate the plot, ie they're on rails.

Rail road is only one way forward, (the rail). Not Railroad means it's open ended and there are multiple ways forward (No rail)

Not Sandbox seems to be the same as Railroad, and vice versa. Things that are "railroad sandbox" are just where normal games end up, somewhere between the extremes.

>I'm not seeing anything other than more player agency vs less player agency.

I'm not sure how to make it any clearer than I already have. Player driven plot vs GM/NPC driven plot is a completely separate concept to the one about the level of player agency in how they go about attaining whatever their goals are at the moment.

>If they are not being limited at all, then they are not being limited to the GM's one path.

That's completely irrelevant, because railroading is about how the DM creates options (or lack thereof), not about whether or not the players feel limited by those lack of options.

Furthermore, that has absolutely fucking nothing to do with how I've been defining sandboxes or railroading, so I don't know how you can possibly make the claim that I haven't been consistent to what I've been saying.

I'm not sure how you come to that conclusion, I'm not sure how you'd come up with a mix of player driven plot and externally driven plot.

A railroad sandbox would be a game in which the players set the goals of the adventure completely without interference, and the GM then creates a situation in which there is one and only one way to go about that said goal.

>Sandbox means the players choice dictates the plot. So Not Sandbox would mean that the players choices don't dictate the plot, ie they're on rails.

No, it doesn't. Player choice very rarely dictates the plot (in fact, almost never dictates the plot) because the plot is hugely influenced by the actions of the NPCs, the villains if nobody else. They are often far, far more critical to the plot, especially the Big Bad, than the players are.

That doesn't mean that the players don't have choices and can't affect things, but it does mean the central protagonist, the one who is actually driving the progression forward, isn't the player characters, who are "merely" the focal characters, and not the ones progressing the plot at all.

>Not Sandbox seems to be the same as Railroad, and vice versa. Things that are "railroad sandbox" are just where normal games end up, somewhere between the extremes.

No, they're completely different.

Say you have a game where there is the Big Evil Lich who wants to send his undead minions to kill everyone. The players have to respond to the actions of this big bad. Because the central plot is driven by the NPC, (The BBEG), it's not a sandbox. Whether or not it would be a railroad would be determined in how much freedom the PCs have to decide in how to respond to this threat. If there's only one choice, it's a railroad. As you get more and more choices, it's open-ended.

In none of the cases though, is it a sandbox, where the central plot of the game is determined by the PCs and them acting as an active, as opposed to a reactive, dramatic role. In all of those permutations, it's the BBEG who is the one disrupting the status quo, creating the plot, which will end with his defeat.

>You finally understand.
I always understood that.
Like in you NY example, just because you're between the rails, doesn't mean that you're being railroaded.

>Just because you're on rails doesn't mean you're being railroaded.
What? No, of course it does.

Just because you're happy being railroaded doesn't mean you're not being railroaded.

Being railroaded isn't inherently adversarial. It can be a bad time if you determine the rails don't lead where you want to go, but sometimes you like where the rails are going, and being stuck on the rollercoaster isn't a bad time.

>The players being limited to the GM's one path is completely irrelevant, because railroading is about how the DM creates a lack of options [in order to limit the PCs to the GM's path]
Okay, that clears it up.
There is definitely something wrong with you.
Good luck with that.

That's not what he said. He said path restrictions define railroadiness, and whether the PCs are proactively shaping the world or are reacting to an npc proactively shaping the world, determines sandboxiness

>Player choice very rarely dictates the plot (in fact, almost never dictates the plot)
What player choice always dictates the plot. Even if it's as simple as confronting or according the BBEG, without the players there is no plot. Just the GM taking note of things that happen in the background.

>If there's only one choice, it's a railroad. As you get more and more choices, it's open-ended.
Okay. So it is what I said. Player agency on one spectrum and total number of choices on the other.

I'm not sure I agree with him. I'd say a reactive campaign where there are many NPCs proactively fucking with things, and the PCs have tho choose if they're going to interfere or do something else entirely, is still a sandbox, despite the PCs reacting.

>Being railroaded isn't inherently adversarial.
It is inherently controlling.
If the PC is not being controlled, they are not being railroaded.
They made the choice to go to NY.

Railroading is a verb because it is being done to someone.
Like how wetting is a verb.
You are claiming one can wet water.

Bart Simpson telling Santa's Little Helper to sniff another dog's butt as he's doing it does not mean he is controlling him.

>then they are not being limited to the GM's one path.
>That's completely irrelevant, because railroading is about how the DM creates options (or lack thereof),
>>The players being limited to the GM's one path is completely irrelevant, because railroading is about how the DM creates a lack of options [in order to limit the PCs to the GM's path]

>That's not what he said.
That's exactly what he said.
He said it was irrelevant.
Essentially, he it was irrelevant to itself.
Go back and read the posts.

>It's inherently controlling.
Sure.

>If their only option is to do what they were going to do anyways, it's not railroading.

Not true. If not railroading, they could change their mind and do something else. If railroading they cannot.

I did. It's right there in black and white. His post agrees with my assessment of his position to which you're responding.

>If not railroading, they could change their mind and do something else. If railroading they cannot.
Exactly!
They are the same thing until the PC changes his mind.
Then the railroading begins.
If the players don't notice, it's not railroading.
So glad I was finally able to make you understand.
I was beginning to get worried about you.

No, it's railroading either way. The GM already knows the answer. The fact that the PCs don't know it yet is irrelevant.

>What player choice always dictates the plot.

No it doens't. Players are, in the overhwelming majority of the games, a reactive force. Player choice can change how things are effected in that reaction, but the plot is dictated by the villains far ore often than not.

>Even if it's as simple as confronting or according the BBEG, without the players there is no plot

Of course there's a plot; there's whatever would happen if the BBEG is unopposed. Think about it in terms of critical removal. If the BBEG suddenly vanishes, you can't really recreate the plot without him. If the PCs all vanish or die, they can easily be replaced with other PCs most of the time.

You're confusing focus with driving.

>Okay. So it is what I said. Player agency on one spectrum and total number of choices on the other.

Yes, for the railroad vs not-railroad axis. Which has nothing to do with the sandbox vs not-sandbox axis; which has to do with who is driving the plot, not the amount of player agency within it.

Your reading comprehension sucks. The number of options determines railroding, not whether or not the individual players happen to be limited by that number, whether it be one or a million.

>Isn't it theoretically possible to have a game that's somewhere in the middle, alternating back and forth?
Yes. Alternating is hard, unless the players like railroading AND sandboxes.

>I define railroad by way of DM choice dictating plot
Who else is meant to dictate it? Can you expect the players to write their own epic battle between good and evil?
As GM, I supply plot and sidequests. It's up to the players to choose what they want to do, but the story comes from the GM.
Recently, I've found just asking the players what they want gets some decent results. A series of questions can help them express what they actually want.

>Who else could dictate plot.
The players can. In a game where they're not compelled by dire consequences to take up a course of action, they might choose to do something else entirely.

In one game my PC started an organized crime organization and grew it in power, rather than follow the plot hooks I provided, for instance.

The plot became about the criminal empire, rather than about the various factions and plot lines I thought they'd get into.

All because one of the taverns allowed you to bet on cockfights.

My PCs* I was the GM.

>98% of thread is a couple autists arguing over the definition of sandbox
>2% is actual advice

This is why Veeky Forums can't have nice things

Arguing about the definition of an ill-defined concept could be very useful, if the involved anons could actually establish definition instead of just having a pissing match.

They're different in theory. In practice, if something is a non railroad sandbox under one definition, it's also a nonrailroad sandbox under the other.

Extreme theoretical corner cases notwithstanding.

> In practice, if something is a non railroad sandbox under one definition, it's also a nonrailroad sandbox under the other.

Not the guy you're responding to, but I don't think so, if I understood the two anons correctly, which I might not have done.

Consider a campaign based around ASOIF style political intrigue and shenanigans, of trying to rally a deeply dysfunctional country's nobility together in order to prepare for some kind of external invasion. The players have free reign to build alliances as they see fit, and there's a very open-ended way of both getting and keeping allies, as well as what coalition they need to build.

According to the user with the biaxial definition, this game isn't a sandbox, although it isn't a railroad either. According to the other user, it is a sandbox.

And that hardly seems like some kind of weird corner case.

Hmm. That's a fair point.

Okay, what about the converse?

Is the biaxial definition the more restrictive of the two?

If you meet the biaxial sandbox definition, might you not meet the monoaxial definition?