Sandbox gods, how do we stop winning all the time?
pretty easy to win when playing calvinball
found the railroadcuck LMAO
>run a play by post game>have far more time to write responses>railroad players anyway by ensuring they only have one optimal choice>brag about it as an example of sandbox play
>>97913212How do you recommend I run a Sandbox game? I've been running systems for over a half-decade now, and while I'd like to say I can think on my feet, most of my games have heavily pushed players to take up the quest that's offered to them - which, I guess, is railroading? Like, for example; does it count as railroading if the PCs are out on the road to a monastery, and then I say the countryside is infested with Ankheg, and the PCs are beseeched by both the monastery and farmers to destroy the hive?That feels like railroading. The PCs technically have the ability to say no, but why would they? Anyway, that's just me rambling about my most recent campaign, but my original question stands; how do you run an effective player-driven game when prepping encounters or battlemaps is such an important part of the hobby?
>be furious other people are having more fun than me in better games>greentext about it like a bitchkek
>>97914505Just create a bunch of quests and let them choose which ones they want to do. Encourage the players to come up with their own. Encourage the players to create setting elements. There's nothing wrong with an ankheg infestation. Just avoid influencing them to make any particular decision. They can decide if eradicating an infestation is in their interests, or if their time would be better spent on other objectives.
>>97914505>How do you recommend I run a Sandbox game?The first thing to keep in mind is that running an effective sandbox requires a proactive group that actively goes around with ideas on what they want to do somewhere. You are the ones giving them hooks to get ideas from. So you don't sweat the details at first, you give them a rough introduction to a few areas with a bunch of points of interest. You keep around prepared notes about the situation and factions there, but keep it vague, you don't want to go too deep if it's going to end up useless because the players want to focus on something else.>does it count as railroading if the PCs are out on the road to a monastery, and then I say the countryside is infested with Ankheg, and the PCs are beseeched by both the monastery and farmers to destroy the hive?No, because the PCs can always choose to say "fuck that" and walk away. Now, if you say they can't walk away because of some reason, and the only way for them to leave the area is defeating ankheg, that's closer to railroading. But it mostly is up wo that the players try to do and how you react to that.
And remember, just as the players can freely choose to interact with people and things in the world, people and things in the world can freely choose to interact with them. And the players can freely choose how they react to those interactions. We don't get to decide whether the homeless guy at the gas station accosts us, but we can freely choose how we respond, if at all.Rolling in the open helps a lot with this. It doesn't feel like as much bullshit if the ankheg that attack the party genuinely operate according to the rules of the game and aren't made invincible because you want to herd the players back to where they're "supposed" to be. If the players make decisions that lead to defeating their opponents in a single round, that's what happens. If there's a huge impassible mountain in the way, it's not railroading if they perform their Survival / Agility / Toughness / Whatever rolls, and the Hazard rolls are made in the open, and they either succeed or fail according to their decisions.
>>97913212I find the best way to run a sandbox is to start them off in a huge city with each PC having *some* level of investment in the city. Killing the corrupt guard that orphaned them, finding a lost sibling, stealing a specific treasure, saving the local inn, or whatever.Then I pepper the surrounding areas with tiny little scaled level plothooks. Pickpockets, crazy beggars, glowing sewer rat, escaped livestock, etc. No plan. Each with minimal level of detail.Then I evenly spread a good number of mini boss proto-BBEGs, typically 8 or so , each with a two sentence description. I try to make vague connections like putting the pickpocket or thief hooks near the Kingpin Prime boss and magical glowing hooks near Jilted Morticia.Then I give ask the party for a reason to join or a reason to be at an event where they'll join. That part is pretty collaborative so you don't get lone ninjas sitting in dark corners away from the party.Then I let them direct themselves based on their immediate needs and responses. As they follow or ignore hooks, I put detail into hooks I can connect to them.Meanwhile, I have each boss grow, seeking their goals. The actions of the PCs either strengthen or weaken the bosses and they eventually fight some, eliminating some and letting others take over the power vacuum.All of this boss development is happening behind the screen so it doesn't need to develop at a realistic pace.Eventually, the party chooses the final boss who might be revealed to, retroactively, have been the most powerful the entire time.The players choose everything and the GM forges the setting to shape itself around them in a way that makes sense, fleshing out details as they become needed. Ideally you're fleshing out the session beforehand.And the players are left with a story that's taken place in a solid, unchanging setting fully detailed wherever they went and whatever they did.
>>97914505I don’t have too much to tell, but if you’re going to run a sandbox game, something I would recommend is to come to an understanding what sort of activities and quests your players are the most interested in before you fill the game with them. Like if they prefer combat scenarios, they’ll naturally be less inclined to exploration and gravitate more towards say combat arenas or dungeons. Basically, if you want to make a sandbox, remember to build it partially in mind for the players’ interests and not just for yourself or to say “I filled the world with stuff”.
>>97914505Simple, just play Session 0, play it.
>>97914944Define “session 0”
Want to truly challenge yourself? >Run Star Wars>Full sandbox>Obviously have plenty of hooks based on player interests/backstory/etc>Genuinely OK with players fucking off to whatever planet they want>Give them giant poster of galaxy map>Each week they go to a different planet they choose at the end of the session
>>97914505Basically >>97914521 and >>97914557. Having a map is especially useful and effective, because it opens up the chance for them to say "No, fuck this ankheg, I wanna see what's at the ??? in the middle of the forest" or "Fuck the Ankheg, I'm going to Humber to see what's up there".A huge part of the fun for Me is having PCs explore and discover new cities and locations on the map. I keep most of the ??? vague until they explicitly say they want to check it out, at which point I'll flesh out the details for them. They technically haven't been to Blackpool or Humber and it's neighbours yet, but those cities connect to player backstories so I have them marked.>>97914654>The players choose everything and the GM forges the setting to shape itself around them in a way that makes sense, fleshing out details as they become needed. Ideally you're fleshing out the session beforehand.Also based.
>>97913212Look everyone! The braindead retard made another thread where he pretends to be smug and superior over some shit he can't even articulate! Look as he responds to his own thread over and over to try and create the appearance of consensus while spoofing activity so this shitty fucking site looks like it still has an active userbase!
>he's STILL seething about being inferior
>>97915263Found the seething OP
>damage controlkek
>>97915230>railroadfag btfo once againMany such cases!
>>97915391Must be exhausting being such an obnoxious faggot all the time. Unless it just comes naturally to you.
>>97915417yeah you must be exhausted KEK
>Seething bad enough to make a thread like thislolinb4 op seethes about it like a cuck.
>seething so hard you repliedKEK
>>97915471>Seething like a cucklol, gotem
>STILL seething kek
>>97913212I railroad, and here's why you should too:>Dice are random enough to add suspense>Preparing thirty directions is fine... If you don't have a job>Playing with more than one group is impossible
>just make up a bunch of obviously false assertions with no supporting evidence or reasoning, surely no one will notice!
You're gonna tire yourself out, the way you're fighting shadows
I don't get the sandbox approach. Seems like a waste if time where you over prep or end up using cringe roll tables..Just ask your players where they wanna go at the end of the session and prep that. This guarantees player freedom and that the DM can do other things in life. Organic path > pre-assembled Railroad > dilute Sandbox
>>97915185Meh, just play Traveller, it has 11,000 star systems in the Imperium alone, each fully statted with attributes that effect trade, culture, law level, etc. https://travellermap.com
Me and my frens exclusively do open-world sandboxes. Nothing better.
>>97916092so you've never run a sandbox? lol
Sandboxes are shit. Railroads are also shit. The best way of playing are collaborative RPGs where players also get to create the world
he doesn’t know that's orthogonal to the sandbox railroad axis lol
>make a cool map>ask everybody to make cool PCs>drop em in and let em run wild>"story" is entirely dictated by player choices and actions, followed by the consequences to those decisionsHell yeah
>>97916162You'll never get me to say a bad word about traveller, anon. My friends and I just enjoy the Extended Universe lore.
>>97913212Portraying yourself as gigachad is the surest way to tell everyone you're an insecure loser.
lol railroadcuck
>>97917212Ok, the players have helped with all the worthless worldbuilding info, now how do you actually play the game?
>>97918178Roll a couple dice
>>97918685How dismissively reductive and hostile to discussion
>>97918807Play a diceless system
It was going well until I got hit with a benevolent sentence from a friend> I like discovering the narration you have about the worldIt seems innocent here and would need more context but I keep it quick. It was a super friendly, gentle but direct way to tell me that our last two sessions were not really sandboxy and that I was taking over as a DM.I was humbled down in 15 seconds, took it hard, and made arrangements/rules to avoid that in the future.Players' dynamics go so fast when you have loose rules, sandbox rules, etc. It's worth it though, as long as you don't play with randos and play IRL (not online) and willing to speak up when people go off rails. I would go as far as saying that sandbox ttrpg is an excellent "exercise" of roleplaying. Not performative or antything, just something to test and then the day after, think about it.
>>97914505>which, I guess, is railroading?It isn't. Railroading isn't the opposite of a sandbox. Railroading is a gming failure.
>>97918178Why do you think the players would be doing this before the game and not directly inside it
>>97918900>the more effort you put into a sandbox the more the players appreciate itshocked I am shocked
Planning to run a Warcraft RPG and the world already helps a ton by giving enough freedom with where the party can go but places soft barriers in the form of, "You're free to do so, but you go to a high level zone prepare to get party wiped."Party has several zones they can choose between which gives them choices but narrows it down enough for me to plan around each.Seems to be a good compromise between full sandbox and railroading.
>>97919304I tried really hard to understand your statement, I got the idea that you were trying to say that I was not making efforts enough which is made up completely??I'll rephrase my original post to be more clear: I did do the GM role for a sandbox game with friends. I did do the mistake of not letting the players do full sandbox. One friend told me "hey please let us do sandbox". I was humbled and learned from that. It went well after that. I hope you were able to read that many words and understand their meaning now.
>>97919382>I tried really hard to understand your statementput more effort into it
>>97919382>>97919556One of you is ESL and I can't tell who
Probably the guy who thinks "looks like putting effort in makes the game better" is the same as "you weren't putting effort in".Let me help you out. Those two statements are completely unrelated. They have nothing to do with each other. At all. Neither implies the other.
>97919628>ESL confirmedIt is (You)
Yep, it's you, which is why you can't actually present any alternative interpretation, and will not.
>>97913212Been playing on a sandbox 3.5e campaign for the last 4 (I think?) years and shit's crazy.Everywhere we go there's local shit happening, then adjacent shit happening, all alongside the far away shit that we know is happening, and we usually have to be somewhere else, also far away, with some sort of time limit. Actually, since the world keeps trucking on on its own, everything has an implicit time limit.Fuck around for too ling, and that rumor you heard 20 sessions ago is already outdated as shit.It's pretty cool. We don't even have time for decision paralysis.It does help that we are playing on a pre-existing campaign setting with plenty of built in plot hooks of things going on right now in the chronology as well a plenty of shit from the past that can (and does) come back to bite everybody in the ass, as well as having a DM that can just come up with so much shit.Good shit too.Thank you for reading my blog, I guess.
>>97920165Based, real, and straight
bump :)
still winning :)
>>97913629How does running a sandbox immediately make a game not have a solid rule structure?
>>97923608None of the retards that ever start a thread like this ever talk about the system they use, even if it were on the level of “gentleman’s code” like most play by post games. That, along with the constant emphasis on “you just make it up” leads one to believe they intentionally refuse to have any structure or consistency, possibly out of stupidity or laziness.
>>97924279No, none of that is true, actually. You can run a sandbox with any rule system.
>>97924331Name twenty different and unique rulesets you’ve used to run sandbox games with then, please.That aren’t Dungeons & Dragons.
>>97924370>assuming anyone on /tg/ has played at least 20 games with at least 20 different systems
>>97924483He said “any” system
>>97924370Like I said, all of them. Are you illiterate?
>>97924732Nobody here plays games. That's not the point of this board.
>>97924830Prove it then.>>97924918It should be.
>>97920256I suspect it's more to the campaign setting's and most of all to my DM's merit than anything.I've been part of one or two sandbox D&D 5e games that got real boring real fast and didn't take long to die.
>>97924999Done :)
>>97924999You wish. All of us are just the same guy replying to himself over and over so I can pretend I have friends. (You) are literally (Me) on my other computer.
>>97927609Surely masturbation is a less shameful solution, then?
