It was a dark and stormy Game Night

 

A reflection on the ideals of the sandbox gaming style in the context of a multithreaded RPG campaign.

It was a Wednesday evening, and that means it was Game Night (not especially dark, or stormy; I borrowed from Bulwer-Lytton for dramatic effect). We had just concluded a high-level D&D adventure, a beefed-up version of Goodman Games' "The Stormbringer Juggernaut". Treasure divided, prisoners given over to the authorities to receive justice, loose end tidied, i's dotted, t's crossed.

What next for our band of intrepid heroes? Numerous threats to the stability of the realm were discussed. I decided to roll the dice on this occasion: players' choice. I don't normally do this, for reasons that will shortly become evident.

First, I must explain a few things about our D&D game to the unfamiliar reader. Our campaign setting - an instance of the World of Greyhawk - has enjoyed an unbroken run since 1995, though the gaming group, subject to line-up changes, has existed since the late 70's. One reason for the longevity of the campaign is that it's multi-threaded, that's to say there are several adventuring groups in existence at any point in the campaign timeline and various other characters inactive on the benches, so to speak. We aperiodically switch between these threads. Parties are usually composed of PCs who are of roughly similar power level though sometimes with a fairly wide spread about the mean, maybe +/-3 experience levels. Sometimes there is crossover between parties. The front running party in this race is average level 19.5. The hindmost is approximately 7th. I feel a new party of 1st levels might be spawned sometime soon as players hanker once again for some street-level antics. Meanwhile, I still have plenty of epic-level material in my drawer to challenge the higher level party for years to come. More discussion of our campaign may be found in the 'Gherkin's Greyhawk' thread elsewhere on this forum.

(Apologies to gamers reading this who don't do the whole D&D and 'levels' thing. I understand how much the mention of 'levels' and 'classes' pains you, I really do, but in our game these are accepted abstractions that we have embraced and actively enjoy, while fully aware of how poorly they represents any kind of [quasi-]realism.)

So, having explained a little about the history and structure of our campaign, let's return to the game night in question. Generally, the determination of "What Next?" is made by the main campaign DM, being yours truly. There had been some recent remarks made by a player, let's call him "Beta", implying that the way I was running things was a bit 'railroad'. Now in fact, every adventure I run is a predetermined environment in which PCs are at complete liberty to react in any way they wish (including, if they so choose, simply walking out of the 'box' though this rarely happens these days).

The "Alpha" player who is usually the main decision-maker for the group in gaming matters cleared his throat. "Well" he declared, "those Hill Giants in the Jotens are the nearest threat, so let's deal with them first."

OK. Not actually what I had in mind as my first preference....but, after all, I had opened up the decision making to the players, so I should be prepared to accept the consequence.

Alpha continued, and immediately confirmed my worst suspicions regarding what would happen if I democratised the decision making that went into the inception of a campaign adventure:

"Let's round up everyone we know and launch a mass strike on those Hill Giants."

My heart sank.

Imagine, in real life, trying to get all of your friends, family, colleagues, and contacts, to assemble in one place, at a particular time. In our campaign, my guess is there are probably nigh on a hundred player characters and closely associated NPCs, cohorts etc. Excluding followers.

In real life, we understand that it's a 'big ask' to get a large number of people physically together and focussed on one task. But in the RPG fantasy world, it's not so clear why they wouldn't answer the call. The plethora of campaign PCs are not independent individuals with lives of their own....they are controlled by 5 real people who will have no trouble agreeing to move all their toons to a particular place and 'engage'.

Let's suppose they managed to show up with 50 PCs. The bulk of them are, say, 10th-13th level. A few in the 14-17 range and even fewer, 18+.

With a fighting force like this, they could chew up the opposition pretty rapidly, though some lower level PCs may be at risk of becoming casualties if they are outflanked.

What are the downsides, for the PC army, if they do this? Well, when it comes to division of the spoils, each individual PC might find their haul a little disappointing. (The same applies to their earned experience points). But if they finish the adventure very rapidly, then the rate at which they are earning may be acceptable. It will feel more like a mass, set-piece battle rather than an adventure, over in one short-lived orgy of destruction.

However, in approaching things like this, the PCs will be breaking an unwritten rule of the campaign that applies both to themselves and their opponents in various quarters. Imagine if their various enemies, had a get-together one day and singled out ONE of the PC parties that are trawling around in the campaign, and said: "Let's all team up and eliminate that threat".

Pretty soon, the campaign would descend into a mob war style of game rather than the dynamic of a series of adventures that take small groups of PCs into interesting settings and provide opportunities for roleplay. The RP side of things would be stretched thin in a game of large hit squads stomping about the place as they pursue their vendettas, in which players are controlling half a dozen characters each or more.

This, I think, is where sandbox purists tend to over-idealise their chosen style of game. The pure sandbox does not function well for every kind of setting, though it might work well for the typical self-contained, bounded setting inhabited by a single PC party that is encountered most frequently in RPG games. For a small group of itinerant adventurers exploring a wilderness and encountering fragmented, disconnected opposition, it can work well. Similarly, a small group exploring a city that is either predetermined or randomly determined usually works fine. And in fact, even a large party can work satisfactorily in a sandbox city environment; because there are several considerations that will serve to split the party up into smaller, more manageable groups. First, unlike the dungeon environment, the city is a relatively safe place, and so there is less pressure to stick together. Second, the city serves disparate character interests, and not all in the same location. Third, if push comes to shove, the DM can invoke laws of assembly; the local despot won't take kindly to a large well-armed group wandering about like they own the place.

But in the multithreaded campaign, it is incumbent upon the referee to artificially keep groups of PCs separated, if the players have a tendency to form 'megaparties' when permitted to do so. And this artificial separation....can feel a lot like a railroad to some players (because it is). But it's the only way to prevent the campaign from collapsing in on itself if the players fail to come up with a roleplay rationale for that necessary distance themselves.

I find the sandbox / railroad dichotomy interesting. I don't really recall any discussion about it pre-2000 though that's likely due to my being more isolated from the wider gaming community in the pre-interweb days. The impression I have is that this dichotomy was identified in the late 90's and with particular relevance to 2nd edition D&D adventures, and if we look earlier, Dragonlance. These adventures had an ambitious tendency to style themselves as story narratives, but often deprived the players of agency. In truth, I think this irked some players more than others. My recollection of Dragonlance is that some of the players really didn't mind being led by the nose as long as they got to kill monsters and take their stuff in the process. Though it was a bit harsh if your character was destined for death by the story. Perhaps the most rigid, inflexible example of railroading was the module "Vecna Lives", where the players literally have no choice but to follow a linear path and the DM is explicitly instructed to invoke Deus Ex Machina to ensure they do. The plot is predetermined and the PCs are virtual bystanders. The purpose of the module is to conclude story threads in the World of Greyhawk. In its own way, though, it fulfils a purpose which might be useful to a certain target audience of DMs. Another argument in defence of "Vecna Lives!" is that it is intended to be a "horror" style adventure. Does a lack of agency inflicted on the PCs make for a better horror-style experience, like a nightmare whose outcome you are powerless to alter?

I am sure that terrabytes of articles and blog posts have been written on the subject of sandbox vs. railroad. I find the underlying reasons why sandbox advocacy (in particular, advocacy of the style as "Proper RPG-ing") rose to prominence a more interesting discussion point than the actual arguments for & against the style. My feeling is that it may be more than simply a counter-reaction to the linear nature of narrative-driven D&D adventures. Over the same timespan as the emergence of the sandbox dogma in gaming, social and political ideas in the West have increasingly and more stridently revolved around individualism, (economic) liberty, small-statism and these are ideas that have been talked about by a wider spread of the public than before rather than just students and practitioners of politics. We have also witnessed what is referred to as a "narcissism epidemic". Meanwhile, we have seen a growing tendency by the public to eschew the advice of experts, and a rejection of technocratic solutions to society's ills. Is it coincidental that we have seen in gaming culture, the rise of the Cult of Sandbox, with its promise of unlimited player agency? Is it a coincidence that some referees nowadays feel it's a good thing to allow the players, subject only to some challenge-rating-dependent budgetary limit, to determine for themselves the loot they find in a haul of treasure, even? Though my own games do not follow such a style I am not saying those who do, are "doing it wrong"; but it's interesting to see how it possibly ties in to a wider social context.

I veer away from absolutist dogma. The spectre of the Railroad Adventure (like the spectre of the worst excesses of collectivist & technocratic modes of social organisation, perhaps...) stands as a warning against the Games Master assuming too much agency for himself at the expense of player agency, but the ideal that we must Destroy All Railroads is as flawed as its antithesis. And I believe this to be analogous to a wider truth about society.

I will end with a proposition to serve as an additional talking point:

The Sandbox is only ever a Sandbox for one player

This is not strictly true in a genuine sandbox game, but it is often, de facto, a practical truth. Ponder this if you will, 'greners.

Some interesting thoughts, Gherkin. Thanks for sharing. :)

I think it's interesting that what it means for a game to be a "sandbox" game seems to have increasingly skewed over time. The implication from the "sandbox" descriptor is that there's flexibility and freedom within some set of specific boundaries, that is to say, the sandbox has edges or walls of some sort. As you mentioned, the sandbox game evangelist often praises the notion of "Unlimited Player Agency," but the fact is that everything is bounded.

The advantage that the RPG has over other formats is that it has the capability for the walls to move. As a strictly practical matter, no game can be perfectly unlimited: there aren't enough hours in the day (or patience, for that matter) for that much prep. However, the RPG has the flexibility to change and move with its actors. The players may "exit the box," but the fact is that the box follows them wherever they go. Even excluding the practical limitations, there are boundaries to the experience: Are we playing fantasy, or sci-fi, or noir? Ok, but what kind of fantasy? Does my dwarven wire-fu monk fit within the aesthetic of this game? You could argue that disallowing someone from playing their cyborg sniper agent in a Greyhawk DnD game is "limiting player agency," but I think that even the most diehard sandbox advocates would agree that some degree of consistency in style and substance is vital to the success of the game.

I'd argue that any RPG experience exists as a contract between everyone at the table, and that games are most successful when everyone can agree on what the boundaries are. The GM may act as a dramaturge of sorts, but by and large these games only succeed when everyone agrees on the dimensions of the sandbox. Your example of the PC "megaparties" is interesting. To me, that signals a (perhaps unconscious) pushing up against the walls of the box. Your players are exploring an optimization of solving a problem within the game by taking advantage of opportunities allowed by it. However, the logical conclusion of this approach runs in violation of the style and feel of the game up to that point, which in turn brings up the question as to whether you as a group want to allow that course of action in the game and what other consequences may result from doing so.

It's important to reiterate that what should be "allowed" in the context of that example doesn't have to be determined by the GM alone. There may be an out of game conversation about how clumping up in megaparties could impact the game negatively, and as such the players at the table agree to not pursue that course of action. Creating our own restraints is, after all, an important component of the much-lauded principle of player agency.

I've been a part of games that were "too railroady." I've also been a part of games that seemed to wander aimlessly, lacking any kind of drive, direction, or purpose. My feeling, however, is that those complaints stem from a similar source: confusion or frustration with the shape of the sandbox. A player complaining of a game feeling too much on the rails is, in essence, saying "I wanted this game to do X, but its doing Y instead," or perhaps "I don't understand why X fits into our sandbox and Y doesn't."

In summary, I guess what I'm saying is that "player agency" is perhaps more about what we choose not to do than what is chosen. Furthermore, the difference between a Railroad and a Sandbox game is not about player agency so much as it is stylistic choice: Are the PCs the driving force behind the plot and events of the game, or are they a reactionary force, responding to the plot as it is lain out ahead of them? A great game can arise from any point on that spectrum.

Thanks for your well-considered response, Lorthyne. Clearly, Gamegrene is still the place to come to if you want an intelligent conversation about RPGs. Even if it's a little too quiet around here these days. ;-)

Your players are exploring an optimization of solving a problem within the game by taking advantage of opportunities allowed by it. However, the logical conclusion of this approach runs in violation of the style and feel of the game up to that point, which in turn brings up the question as to whether you as a group want to allow that course of action in the game and what other consequences may result from doing so.

Yes, this cuts to the heart of the matter. In fact, "Alpha" described it as the logical thing to do to take as many people as could be laid hands on. In a sense, he had a point, because the players / PCs at that stage had sparse intelligence on what kind of opposition they were facing. But you might say that's true of any adventure, at the beginning. He also knows that I don't always do "level appropriate" encounters, and whatever it is at such and such a location on the map won't be scaled up or down to level X if they show up with a party of level X.

In another sense, taking the immersion deeper might solve this problem: within the game reality all those hard-bitten adventurers and mercenaries are going to be pissed if they trek halfway across a continent and find they've wasted their time when they get there to find a small gang of penniless prankster kobolds who were just pretending to be giants. (That gives me an idea for a scenario! Hmmm.....) They will be even less happy if it turns out their opposition is an epic-level Hecatonchiere that starts cutting them down like wheat. More intelligence gathering should be the logical first step in the adventure to avoid those scenes; then call for back-up if it's needed. But, to be fair, "Alpha"'s main character who would be the initiator for this, is well known for his kick-in-the-door approach. (I don't hate characters like that, but I do hate it when they become the default party leader....).

And in yet another sense, perhaps this is best characterised as an example of "My Guy" syndrome, a concept I came across quite recently though it looks like it's been kicking around for a few years in gaming circles. The cure for "My Guy" is not to immerse deeper, but to pull back from the game and consider "What should I have my character do?"

https://rpg.stackexchange.com/questions/37103/what-is-my-guy-syndrome-an...

From the link:

"My Guy" syndrome is when — often unwittingly — you disclaim decision-making power and responsibility by acting like "what my character would do" is inevitable and inviolable, even if it gets in the way of actually having fun in the game or being able to play the game at all.

The author goes on to give an example of his own past misdemeanours, that sounded eerily familiar:

So here's a practical example from the halcyon days of My Guyness and me.

d6 Star Wars. I was playing a trigger-happy demolitions expert. We were going onto an enemy ship in order to get the bad guy.

I say, "I have enough explosives, you know what? We don't even need to sneak onto the ship. I'll just plant the explosives below the engine exhaust."

Jedi player: "Dude, don't do that, I want to have my guy face off with the evil bastard in a big lightsaber fight."

Me: "But it's what my guy would do, it's the most effective way to take him out with the least chance of getting caught or hurt."

Translated into a fantasy context, this is pretty much EXACTLY what "Alpha" tried to do at the beginning of the previous adventure I ran, "The Stormbringer Juggernaut" - rather than trying to board the giant ship, he tried going underwater and blowing a hole in the hull with magical means. He was a bit upset when it didn't work, because I had already run through in my head the game of "What would My Bad Guy do?" and equipped the vessel with various magical defenses. I didn't mind that so much because his strategy was certainly worth trying as a first step and it was fully expected.

Anyway, as you remark:

There may be an out of game conversation about how clumping up in megaparties could impact the game negatively, and as such the players at the table agree to not pursue that course of action. Creating our own restraints is, after all, an important component of the much-lauded principle of player agency.

This is more or less what happened, in the end.

As for my closing comment, "The sandbox is only really a sandbox for one player" - I will elaborate further. An adventure is declared a railroad if the GM is limiting player agency. But not infrequently I see dominant players dictating the actions of the group, sometimes to the extent of shutting down other players whose ideas are worth considering. For them, the sandbox is a sandbox, but they lay the tracks of the railroad for other players. Paradoxically, the GM may need to intervene in some way to keep the sandbox, "sandboxy" for all players.

This is so very interesting.

I've been thinking about how the game structure affects the solutions that arise; this is a perfect example where the player's decision to form a mob subverts the gaming model. D&D isn't structured well to handle mobs. The at-table mechanisms are not framed to accommodate gangs of twelve. Just off the top of my head, it is cumbersome and breaks the narrative attention by having too many actors. Second, it creates game-balance problems: any enemy who could justifiably challenge a group would necessarily be able to kill outright a member of the mob when they focus their fire. There would have to be PC deaths. Also, it would put a strain on credulity by further exacerbating the act-paralysis model of the D&D turn structure (where all creatures are frozen while one acts). I am sure that there are other ways in which the game doesn't work with that many agents-of-action that aren't at the top of my mind.

This gets to a central problem in RPG's. If the mechanism by which we evaluate success -- namely the game system -- is not built for a specific scenario, should we allow the game to venture into that territory? Can we have characters get lost and die in the jungle for lack of clean water and eating the wrong food? Can we let characters enlist a mob to skip to the end of a scenario?

I really like what has been said about "Sandbox adventure." I've been DM'ing Storm King's Thunder for two different groups. The second time I ran it I deliberately helped them on the first encounter by adding an NPC to say "Let's not deal with the chapel where the bell is ringing first, but use the noise it creates as cover." Why would I give such overt help? Because... I have come to realize that these games build a set of illogical inherent expectations on the players. It is difficult, nearly impossible, for players to put their whole logical minds on a scenario when they are constantly turning their logical faculties on and off. The game gives us set pieces, and just like dramatic devices, we accept the absurdity and willingly suspend disbelief so that we can immerse ourselves in the experience. Players are conditioned to think in terms of encounters and how they are going to manage their resources through a set of interconnected encounters. When they see the scenario of the village of Nightstone in front of them, with goblins at all parts of the city, their minds are distracted by hit points, daily resources, short rests, etc. and these reduce their practical immersion -- it makes it hard to see the reality of the situation or experience the visceral and tactical scenario.

How does that relate to the sandbox? Expectations are set. The GM and players need to be experiencing the world through the same lens. They need to be using the same structures. They both need to avoid problem areas in the gaming system. D&D doesn't give you a good mass combat system. D&D doesn't do epic levels well. D&D is a poor system for travel, investigation, and exploration. The game just doesn't work well for these things. Is it railroading to steer away from those situations, or to rely on the narrative to support them? At some point though the players may want to go there. It may break the game to let it go there. It may break the game to say it can't.

I am glad you resolved it in the way that you did.

As for my closing comment, "The sandbox is only really a sandbox for one player" - I will elaborate further. An adventure is declared a railroad if the GM is limiting player agency. But not infrequently I see dominant players dictating the actions of the group, sometimes to the extent of shutting down other players whose ideas are worth considering. For them, the sandbox is a sandbox, but they lay the tracks of the railroad for other players. Paradoxically, the GM may need to intervene in some way to keep the sandbox, "sandboxy" for all players.

Very astute. I look forward to your thoughts.

Definitely some fascinating thoughts here.

Your comments about "My Guy" syndrome are very interesting. I've had some similar ruminations about that particular idea recently (although I similarly was not aware it was codified to this extent in other spaces on the interwebz), sparked by a recent roleplaying experience. I'll touch on those a bit here, but the topic may be compelling enough that it deserves an additional thread to discuss it. I'll see when I can fit that in later this week. :)

As for my closing comment, "The sandbox is only really a sandbox for one player" - I will elaborate further. An adventure is declared a railroad if the GM is limiting player agency. But not infrequently I see dominant players dictating the actions of the group, sometimes to the extent of shutting down other players whose ideas are worth considering. For them, the sandbox is a sandbox, but they lay the tracks of the railroad for other players. Paradoxically, the GM may need to intervene in some way to keep the sandbox, "sandboxy" for all players.

Thanks for the clarification there, gherkin. As GMs, we often talk about player agency as sacrosanct. There's this romantic ideal of roleplaying to which we all aspire: In this mythical game, player characters are fully-formed entities piloted by players with a perfect understanding of their many nuances, and they make every choice based on what "feels right" for the character. Meanwhile, the GM strikes a perfect balance between preparation and improvisation, and the whole table comes together in a perfect harmony and compelling narrative. The actions of player characters are never questioned OOC, although they probably face in-game consequences for stupid or evil choices.

The irony is that we quietly entertain a number of caveats that directly contradict this romantic ideal. Within the context of that ideal, Halfling McThiefguy is the perfect character, as his player pursues the platonic ideal of kleptomania and refuses to answer to such mundanities as "this makes everyone else at the table miserable." While Halfling McThiefguy can be a fun and delightful character in other media (or even as an NPC), as a player character he's one of the most destructive forces possible in an RPG. Why? Because every other player at the table has to spend time at the table detailing their precautionary measures against internal party burglary so that during a pivotal scene, they don't find themselves reaching for their sword and finding a rubber chicken instead.

At a recent D&D session I was running, I joked that one of the most important elements of GMing is the skeptical raise of an eyebrow in response to player actions. "Let me get this straight. You're going to charge forward, try to leap the moat and scale the castle walls barehanded, with the hobgoblins on the battlements firing arrows at you the whole time? Ok...." Sometimes the right tone of voice followed by the silent shuffling of notes behind a screen is enough to prevent stupid, game-damaging courses of action. Consistency to the principle of perfect player agency demands that the GM govern the game with purely in-narrative responses, but we all choose instead to interfere and thus safe the game from death.

This prompts the question: to what extent is "GM meddling" in player actions and behavior required? Are the PCs wholly owned by their players, only to be meddled with under extreme circumstances. Or should the GM have power to suggest, manipulate, and carefully cultivate PCs in such a way that it makes the narrative (and by extension, the entire RPG experience) better as a result? Further, what responsibility do other players at the table have to reach out and engage and influence other PCs in such a way that might encourage them to act in ways that improve the game for everyone?

One of my most memorable D&D experiences involved actively curating a betrayal of the party by one of the PCs. It was my idea, and I suggested it secretly to the traitor player during the "preparatory noises" stage of setting up the campaign. He and I were the only people in the group who knew it was coming. This PC was a new addition to the party at the start of the game, an "exiled" part of the establishment in an outlaw company. Over the course of months (and with significant unknowing help from every player at the table), I worked to forge true friendships and trust between this player and the rest of the PCs. When the time was right, the mole was ordered by his commanding officer to betray the group. It was immensely satisfying to sit back and watch all of that work pay off solely in interactions between the players. The rest of the party was shocked and furious, but the true payoff was in the traitor himself. Despite knowing that it was coming from the beginning, and his OOC excitement in being involved, the player felt guilt and shame for what his character had done. This ultimately led to his return to the party after a second act of treachery.

Mmmm, player character treachery is an interesting one Lorthyne. Definitely only for mature gaming groups where participants can maintain a psychological separation between the player and the character, both for themselves and in others.

I'll put a pin in this one for later as I have my own experiences to relate.