Quote from: BedrockBrendan;830004I don't know if I run sandboxes by the book definition or like others here, but one of the hardest parts in my experience is keeping track of the many events that get set in motion by PC action and the NPCs. In my experience it is never simply go find something to do. I mean it can start that way, and there are moments where the players are doing just that, but as long as they are intersecting with NPCs, groups, locations, items, etc, stuff tends to be set into motion. I've literally had so many things going on at certain points, threads have been forgotten until a player mentions them. Careful organization and note taking have been important in this respect.

Granted, I may not run straight forward sandboxes, since my games tend to be a mixture of what I feel will work for the group at the table. But I personally don't see sandbox play as the players exploring a static environment (if that is what folks are suggesting).

The best sandboxes are; or at least feel, very dynamic.  They should be the opposite of static, except for certain points.  

and as to the organization and notetaking, I add pages and such to the http://celtricia.pbworks.com/w/page/14955575/FrontPageCeltricia Wiki.  I also let the players add onto their own pages, so that they help me remember what is important to them.  
This is the player page for the Collegium Game, about 2/3 done by me now and 1/3 done by the pcs.  Most of what I do is add the new session notes.

Quote from: LVRight. That's a sandbox. And, to an extent, it defines my setting...and my games often go on for decades, so 'open ended' also defines them.

But the 'go find something to do' part infers a lack of event chains and plots that are evident and interesting. Bad GMing. Rather, a good Sandbox has the complete opposite issue. Players try to keep track of what is going on because there is so much happening around them, and very quickly they have loose ends (as event chains often intersect) all over the place.

Third Rule of Setting Design,
"The World In Motion is critical for Immersion, so create 'event chains' that happen at all levels of setting design. The players need to feel like things are happening and will happen with or without them. They need to feel like they can affect the outcome, but that these events have weight of their own. Event-chains need velocity, not just speed.
Cause and effect from an event-chain cements the feeling of setting-weight and the march of time to the players. It's not enough to have an election in a town, the effect of that election must be there when the players return to that town. It is not enough that a band of trolls and giants is spotted, what devastation due they cause and what actions do the locals take, and from there what wreckage and ruin?"

First Corollary of the Third Rule
"It is the interesting task of the GM to create a feel in the world that everything, every event-chain, is happening around the PCs without the least concern whether the PCs join or not, while in reality making sure the game and these event chains are actually predicated on PC volition. The setting consistency should never be compromised, and a good GM should be able to keep both setting and PC needs logical at the same time "

Howzat for meshing with your description?

Quote from: Nexus;830012It's certainly different from anything I've run into a games described as Sandboxes.

OK, well, that is interesting.  Sandboxing, as I call it, is more about the amount of player volition to me.  But the world is moving all around them, with many, many opportunities and options and influences.

Anyone want to weigh in with impressions?

I think he's interpreting "sandbox" as a purposeless, activity-less game world where the players just wander around. Like touring around a park. Or just a literal sandbox. There's nothing there but what you make out of the sand. In that respect, "sandbox" is kind of a misleading term.

Quote from: soltakss;829941It depends.

The Trojan War could be a mission. The end of the mission is the end of the campaign. A follow-on campaign might be the Odyssey.

However, the Trojan War might be broken down into a number of missions:
gather the troops
Sail to Troy
Combat on the beaches
Attacking Troy
Trojan Horse
The Aftermath

Each of these is a mission, but the end of each mission is not the end of the campaign.

That's not a mission sandbox IMO. A mission sandbox might be "Take Troy - we'll check back in 10 years to see how you're doing". Specifically I was thinking of Star Trek's Five Year Mission: To Seek Out New Life And New Civilisations - if the players get to decide where to go & more or less what to do, within the scope of the overall mission, that's a mission sandbox. Or Rogue Trooper 'wander Nu Earth looking for the Traitor General'. Or Cudgel the Clever's mission to get home across the Dying Earth - twice.

Quote from: mAcular Chaotic;830017Basically with some choices, there is no going back. If you decide to murder the king, you can't walk that choice back and the game will forever be one funneled into you being on the run from the law.

I agree completely but I don't see how that relates to linearity. Maybe I missed something above but my notion of linearity, which I don't think is radical or uncommon, is that once you have a particular starting point (whether it be a mission, player-defined goal, or a situation such as "you are an outlaw"), the game will proceed along a series of scenes or encounters that are basically known to the GM in advance. Whether the fixed nature of the series is logical from the PCs' perspective is separate from the linearity.

(All assuming that the presence of a "failure" option doesn't take us out of the definition of linearity for the scope we are examining whether it be scenario or campaign.)

Quote from: Nexus;829942Speaking for myself, I don't like Sandbox because it feels really directionless with no urgency. I try to think like a person in the setting and, right or wrong, that generally doesn't urge me towards running towards danger  not without some pressing reason. I also like having something to hang a character concept with some assurance that it'll come up in the game. Which is meta, I admit.

Also the genres I prefer to run don't mesh with pure sandbox very well and sandbox require either heavier GM prep workload or well above par improvisational skills.

Yes, sandbox play works best with proactive 'adventurer' type PCs, not "what's my motivation in this scene?' types. And the GM had best enjoy improvisation, though I don't think you have to be above average to run a decent sandbox. The idea it's hard to do is one I see a lot on the Internet these days, but I don't recall ca 1985 a lot of "oh woe, Gming AD&D is so so hard, only a master of improvisation can do it!"

Quote from: LordVreeg;830034OK, well, that is interesting.  Sandboxing, as I call it, is more about the amount of player volition to me.  But the world is moving all around them, with many, many opportunities and options and influences.

Anyone want to weigh in with impressions?

I tend to think of an ideal sandbox as a setting where players drive the object of activity. I tend to think of an ideal mission style game as one where the GM drives the object of activity via the missions.

There is nearly always overlap between the two styles.

Most sandbox settings include various story hooks that essentially are voluntary missions. However, unlike a mission style game the PCs are totally free to ignore the hooks. Whereas in a mission style game the hooks are in one sense mandatory as there are additional consequences for ignoring missions ranging from pissing off your patron, loss of position, up to mutiny or desertion in the face of the enemy with attendant possibilities of pursuit, firing squads, etc. Also if the game was pitched and accepted as a mission style game, say about playing Great War flying aces, a player who wants to desert the Royal Flying Corps to smuggle guns to Mexican revolutionaries is peeing in the collective pool. Whereas in a sandbox, the players should hassle out either in or out of character whether Biggles Jr. goes off to Mexico alone or with his chums.

Most mission settings allow the opportunity for some player choice in activities -- volunteering for a mission, suggesting a new mission to your superiors, choosing to investigate or look into something in the PC's off duty hours, ignoring orders (the classic rogue cop), secondary plots driven by PC interest e.g. romance, shopping, friendships, challenges to duels, searching for new patrons, etc.

Quote from: mAcular Chaotic;830038I think he's interpreting "sandbox" as a purposeless, activity-less game world where the players just wander around. Like touring around a park. Or just a literal sandbox. There's nothing there but what you make out of the sand. In that respect, "sandbox" is kind of a misleading term.

Until he chimes in I suppose we won't know, but what you write here is definitely one way that I've seen sandbox characterized. Usually by people who don't like it.

Similar to how people will look at "world in motion" elements and call them "plots" without specifying if they mean railroaded storylines, NPC goals and activities, or something else.

Quote from: Exploderwizard;829952Sandbox play requires a key ingredient that is getting harder to find these days- proactive players.

Players who are interested in the setting and want explore/ find out more about it are a rare breed. Many players treat the setting as a backdrop, a meaningless scrolling screen that exists just to facilitate their characters being awesome and looking good doing it.

So if players come to the table with the expectation that a mission will just appear and they will rush to complete it, a sandbox is a waste of effort.

I've been running two successful sandbox campaigns recently - one with old grognards off Dragonsfoot I persuaded to play 5e D&D, the other tabletop with complete newbies playing Mentzer Classic D&D. These two groups both have no problem being highly proactive - though the grognards will naturally grumble about stuff - the newbies are all wide-eyed in wonder at the amazingness of it all.  
The kind of players you talk about do exist, I have encountered them, but they seem to be mostly those who came of age in a particular era, and they tend to play 3e/Pathfinder, maybe 4e (but not so much 4e IME). If they get hold of newbies they can train those newbies in passivity, which is getting close to Ron Edwards' 'brain damage' from playing railroady White Wolf '90s stuff.

What it boils down to is you may have a perfectly functional world, static, dynamic, whatever, but the campaign is not going to get off the ground, or be sustainable, without a motivating force that provides a reason for the PCs to interact with it in an interesting fashion. I started a thread about this problem a while back.

http://www.therpgsite.com/showthread.php?t=25668

IMO starting and sustaining are separate issues. They may have the same answer but they might not. A mission-based game where the PCs are grunts in a war basically wouldn't need any player choice or initiative outside the set-pieces of combat. But the ideal for a sandbox is commonly that the campaign should take on a life of its own, with PC actions and interactions motivating their subsequent goals and also possibly issues that push them--such as an NPC out for revenge or somebody trying to recover an item they obtained. Or an ally in need, etc.

(The other issue, which I'm not sure has been touched on except as a problem, is the need for something to keep the PCs interacting with each other, typically though not always as allies.)

Quote from: Nexus;829977From your description, I think we may have different ideas of what Sandbox campaign means (always a problem with jargon).  When I've played Sandbox has meant that the game is completely open ended. This is setting. Your Characters are in it. Go find something to do.

Well, a good sandbox usually includes "X, Y & possibly Z are going on. Interested?"

I started with my latest sandbox with "You have heard that adventure is to be had to the east, in Rugalov. You are at an inn 23 miles west of Rugalov" - by the time they'd got to Rugalov they'd picked up half a dozen plot hooks.

Quote from: Larsdangly;829991I would say the coolest thing going in gaming right now is that the OSR movement has finally evolved past reproducing rules (blurg! they are all the same, people!) and really dug into creating adventures and settings that are good for high quality sandbox style games. Some of this stuff is pretty amazing - at least as good as the best materials put out in the 70's.

Yup - I was gobsmacked a couple months ago when I found all these amazing Basic Fantasy RPG adventures & resources on amazon at £2.75 a book. They make it incredibly easy for me to run a great OSR sandbox with absolutely minimal effort - far far less effort than I need to put into my linear Pathfinder Adventure Path game.

Edit: But I guess you're probably talking about all the 'hipl' OSR stuff like Yoon-Suin and the LotFP stuff. BFRPG is fantastic, and definitely not 'hip'.

Quote from: BedrockBrendan;830004I don't know if I run sandboxes by the book definition or like others here, but one of the hardest parts in my experience is keeping track of the many events that get set in motion by PC action and the NPCs. In my experience it is never simply go find something to do. I mean it can start that way, and there are moments where the players are doing just that, but as long as they are intersecting with NPCs, groups, locations, items, etc, stuff tends to be set into motion. I've literally had so many things going on at certain points, threads have been forgotten until a player mentions them. Careful organization and note taking have been important in this respect.

I find blogs work well for keeping track of stuff, though pencil & paper notes work too.

One good thing about sandboxing is that players can be relied on to keep track of what's important, because 'what's important' = 'what interests the players'. Whereas in a linear game importance is pre-set & the GM needs to track it.

Quote from: LordVreeg;830034OK, well, that is interesting.  Sandboxing, as I call it, is more about the amount of player volition to me.  But the world is moving all around them, with many, many opportunities and options and influences.

Anyone want to weigh in with impressions?

The sandbox GM definitely wants to give the impression of stuff going on independent of the PCs. This may be procedurally generated with random tables, or it may be pre-plotted. Usually the best approach is to use both. I tend to use dice to find out if there is an encounter, but that encounter may be selected by me, or rolled from a table. If rolled from a table it may end up tying back into a pre-plotted event, eg last night the random bandit who (after some interaction, & a few Thief player queries re possible tattoos) turned out to be a Veiled Society agent seeking a pail of zombie cow milk from the cursed mansion...  I already had the "Veiled Society wants the PC Thief to get them zombie cow milk" plot at the back of my mind after reading 'The Zombraire's Estate' in BFRPG Adventure Anthology 1 that morning, but George the Cowardly Bandit and his flunkeys hiding out near the ruined halfling manor because they were too scared to take on the cursed mansion came into existence in-play through the luck of the dice, player questions, and GM decisions.

Quote from: S'mon;830056Yup - I was gobsmacked a few months ago when I found all these amazing Basic Fantasy RPG adventures & resources on amazon at £2.75 a book. They make it incredibly easy for me to run a great OSR sandbox with absolutely minimal effort - far far less effort than I need to put into my linear Pathfinder Adventure Path game.

Edit: But I guess you're probably talking about all the 'hipl' OSR stuff like Yoon-Suin and the LotFP stuff. BFRPG is fantastic, and definitely not 'hip'.

Not at all! That BFRPG stuff is all cool and I own and like quite a bit of it. I'ld say my favorite is Barrowmaze — nothing particularly wild eyed or hip about it, but the scope, creativity and production values are awesome. Plus it's an excellent adventure setting for any level. Beginning twerps can nibble around the edges, poking into outer tombs and dashing in and back out of the main dungeon, with only a 90 % chance of getting murdered. And high level parties can probe the depths of the dungeon in search of a big gooey demon to eat them.