The third part of Quentin Bauer's notes on doing a mythos sandbox (in Raiders of R'lyeh but applicable in general).  What do you think?

RPGPundit

I think "sandbox" isn't quite being used the way I think of it.

QuoteLooking generally at how an investigative scenario may be structured, we see the following as an assumed paradigm in many types of play. Characters are hired to investigate a mystery (in our example scenario, a purportedly haunted house with a malevolent pattern of historical tragedies.

But if the players are being hired to investigate a haunted house, it's not a sandbox in my book, because they are reacting to a set scenario. It doesn't matter if they can solve the problem non-linearly, that they have to solve the problem in the first place means it's not a sandbox.

I realize sandbox can have different meanings. Like on one hand, you have Minecraft. On the other, you have the Elder Scrolls games. Both are considered sandbox, but in TES, you at least have a set story line and a lot of side quests.

Or in D&D. You can explore the local dungeon. But you can also do other things. Build you own dungeon. Just wander around aimless and meet people.

But reading that page it doesn't seem any different than plain old CoC. You're foiling evil plots, rather than making your own plots.

Quote from: JeremyRI think "sandbox" isn't quite being used the way I think of it.

Seconded.

Quote from: JeremyR;679228But if the players are being hired to investigate a haunted house, it's not a sandbox in my book, because they are reacting to a set scenario. It doesn't matter if they can solve the problem non-linearly, that they have to solve the problem in the first place means it's not a sandbox.

It's a sandbox if the players do not have accept the job(s) without the session having to shut down because said job was the adventure the GM planned.

In my fantasy sandboxes there are often npcs in towns and cities willing to hire the PCs for a job, but the PCs may not be interested. If they aren't, the session goes on with whatever the PCs do decide to do.

In my experience, it's possible to have a mission-based sandbox, but "mission" and "sandbox" need to operate at different levels of the campaign. Individual missions may have the conventions of a standard storyline-based adventure, but the acceptance or rejection of any given mission can make room for a sandboxy sort of self-determination.

Horror and intrigue games are particularly tough to do sandbox-style because very few GMs are capable of whipping up an ad-hoc mystery or extemporaneous intrigue. Any GM with a blank map sheet and a few random tables can produce a dungeon in ten minutes if the players aren't too picky, but a half-assed dungeon is playable in a way a half-assed intrigue isn't. Even with good tools and a nice library of resources, most GMs need the downtime between sessions to brew up something worth playing.

This necessity means you need to control the campaign's pacing more tightly than you would in a standard hexcrawl campaign. You start things with a short intro adventure to help the group gel and get them used to the setting. You wrap the adventure up by the end of the first session with a few clearly-labeled hooks for potential further involvement. You let the players pick the hook they want to follow, and then you spend the downtime between sessions building out that adventure. If you have any energy left over, you start creating "blank" adventure templates that you can drop NPCs into later.

The next session rolls around and the players get to involve themselves in the hook they've chosen. If they decide to abort the mission halfway through for whatever reason, you hopefully have a blank adventure template you can slot some NPCs in quickly to give them something else to do with the evening. If not, you pick a prior adventure they had, briefly work out whatever problematic consequences might've followed from the PCs' choices, and then throw that at the party as something they can wrestle with for the rest of the session. If you don't have a template or adventure prepped, you don't try to get fancy with things unless you're very confident in your ability to extemporize the kind of play a horror/intrigue campaign involves.

As time goes on, you'll start to build up a library of templates and have something suitable for most occasions. Complex conspiracies or intricate crimes are still tough to fashion except as specific setpieces for the evening, but most players understand that if they start charging in random directions on the map, they shouldn't expect intensely byzantine material to crop up on demand.

Quote from: JeremyR;679228But if the players are being hired to investigate a haunted house, it's not a sandbox in my book, because they are reacting to a set scenario. It doesn't matter if they can solve the problem non-linearly, that they have to solve the problem in the first place means it's not a sandbox.

So if in a D&D Sandbox the campaign starts with the GM saying "Ok, you guys are in Karameikos near the keep on the borderland.." then its instantly NOT a sandbox?

I would suggest that in order for a sandbox to even effectively exist, it must begin with the GM putting people somewhere, and there being a reason why they are there; be it because they were born there, or were sent there, or have been going away from or to something.

That's not a railroading scenario, that's just setting up the sandbox.  Without that, there's no "box" at all.

RPGPundit

Right - we shouldn't mistake the swings, or the monkey bars set up in the sandbox for the sandbox itself.

That's the purpose of the Haunted House, or the Keep on the Borderlands - they're set-pieces within the "Sandbox" for the players to do with as they please for the most part.

That they hang upside down while another friend wires current to the monkey-bars to see how it will react doesn't mean that someone won't get hurt doing so.

The idea should be: this setpiece is here and there should be, for the GM, a good reason it's there (but there doesn't HAVE to be.)

Quote from: JeremyR;679228...that they have to solve the problem in the first place means it's not a sandbox

JeremyR, thank you for the comment and keep the feedback coming. For clarification, the scenario I am using as an illustration is the traditionally accepted type of setup in a horror investigation (in this example, a scenario loosely based on “The Haunted House” aka “The Haunting”), in which the scenario begins with the players already hired and expected to conclude the scripted plot. I am using it merely as a basis for comparison to what we are doing with RoR.

In Raiders of R’lyeh, the players would absolutely have the choice to either accept or not accept the investigation. The house in the example could be an “inert” set piece, remaining in stasis until players interact with it. OR, the house could be on a “timeline," so the act of players not investigating carries consequences. One consequence, for example, could be the following: the house contains a valuable artifact stashed in its cellar — a sorcerer’s gem — that may or may not be the source of malevolence. A third party with their own lead independent of the landlord, and hired by a criminal syndicate, moves in and steals the gem. Or alternatively, the gem is protected by a booby-trap and the house burns down with the burglars inside. If the keeper wanted to keep his timeline “lighter,” he could make this house an inert location. If he wanted the myriad of connecting threads and new potential leads that a timeline set piece offers, he could bring in the third party to complicate matters and introduce new hooks.

I’ll address more of these options in another post (and these comments are very helpful to me).

Note: some of the original copy of the “Sandboxing the Mythos” post may be slightly edited; the copy that originally stated, “Looking generally at how an investigative scenario may be structured,” which you quoted, has been changed to “Looking at a traditionally structured investigative scenario,” for clarification. I also changed “Structure of a Scenario” to “Structure of a Traditional Scenario.”

Quote from: TheRPGPunditSo if in a D&D Sandbox the campaign starts with the GM saying "Ok, you guys are in Karameikos near the keep on the borderland.." then its instantly NOT a sandbox?

What you are saying here is a set premise, not a set adventure. But the example in your first post is a set adventure.

A set premise is not disruptive to sandbox (on the contrary, its a requirement for it, or any other kind of game, to exist in the first place). But a set adventure, specially one the group can´t refuse, is disruptive to a sandbox.

Quote from: Quentin BauerIn Raiders of R’lyeh, the players would absolutely have the choice to either accept or not accept the investigation.

Thanks, this clarifies the point.

But then we are back at the start: what kind of structure is provided to promote/organize the sandbox ? What tools or procedures are there to help with it ? Notice that the original post, and its linked article, didnt adress this question at all.

Quentin, please ignore Silva. He has this tactic that he's been using for some time trying to pretend that Storygames are actually "sandboxes", and trying to infuse storygame-discussion on Sandboxes.

Silva, cut it out.

RPGPundit

Premise does not negate sandbox. It does not remove player agency anymore than starting in a poorer part of the world negates agency. It's merely a justified place to share a mutual start.

Parting from there just leads to consequnces. If you're willing to accept such consequences, with your imperfect knowledge of the situation, then you're free to walk away. Such consequences are built into every setting beginning, even down to location and status.

And Sine Nomine has the right of it, you can sandbox mission-focused play. The level of GM prep or creative talent is higher, but nothing all that out of reach. In Nomine SJG and Vampire the Masquerade work off of a similar city/regional sandbox filled with subsumed mission content. Quite doable, I recommend others to try it.

I know that Crawford's writing on sandboxes has been a major influence on Bauer's perspective for Raiders of R'lyeh.

RPGPundit

Quote from: SineNomine;679340In my experience, it's possible to have a mission-based sandbox, but "mission" and "sandbox" need to operate at different levels of the campaign. Individual missions may have the conventions of a standard storyline-based adventure, but the acceptance or rejection of any given mission can make room for a sandboxy sort of self-determination.

Horror and intrigue games are particularly tough to do sandbox-style because very few GMs are capable of whipping up an ad-hoc mystery or extemporaneous intrigue. Any GM with a blank map sheet and a few random tables can produce a dungeon in ten minutes if the players aren't too picky, but a half-assed dungeon is playable in a way a half-assed intrigue isn't. Even with good tools and a nice library of resources, most GMs need the downtime between sessions to brew up something worth playing.

This necessity means you need to control the campaign's pacing more tightly than you would in a standard hexcrawl campaign. You start things with a short intro adventure to help the group gel and get them used to the setting. You wrap the adventure up by the end of the first session with a few clearly-labeled hooks for potential further involvement. You let the players pick the hook they want to follow, and then you spend the downtime between sessions building out that adventure. If you have any energy left over, you start creating "blank" adventure templates that you can drop NPCs into later.

The next session rolls around and the players get to involve themselves in the hook they've chosen. If they decide to abort the mission halfway through for whatever reason, you hopefully have a blank adventure template you can slot some NPCs in quickly to give them something else to do with the evening. If not, you pick a prior adventure they had, briefly work out whatever problematic consequences might've followed from the PCs' choices, and then throw that at the party as something they can wrestle with for the rest of the session. If you don't have a template or adventure prepped, you don't try to get fancy with things unless you're very confident in your ability to extemporize the kind of play a horror/intrigue campaign involves.

As time goes on, you'll start to build up a library of templates and have something suitable for most occasions. Complex conspiracies or intricate crimes are still tough to fashion except as specific setpieces for the evening, but most players understand that if they start charging in random directions on the map, they shouldn't expect intensely byzantine material to crop up on demand.

Agreed. Great post, btw.

Nice idea, but the problem I have with the stuff I've seen so far is that it all seems to be based on abstract concepts of how such a campaign shoud work, rather than on actual in-game experience of a playing or running a sand-box Mythos campaign (unlike Kevin's post, for example, which reads like it is based on the hard-earned lessons of actual sand-box play). I could be wrong on both counts of course, but that is the way it comes across.

Glazer, yours is the exact point I made earlier. Pundit linked the article in the first post as "notes on doing a mythos sandbox", but the actual article show very little (if anything) towards it. What it showed is what Shadowrun calls "legwork", and is completely orthogonal to a sandbox, as I see it.

SineNomine managed to propose a much more clear and solid structure in its post for executing a sandbox, even if not adressing the Mythos related difficulties (which is my main interest about the project).