Role-playing Rants: Why I dislike the "sandbox approach"

LenaPon Temmuz 06, 2022

A few days ago I've posted a rather controversial tweet about sandbox games, and why I think they're infinitely less appealing than those "on the rails".

I also made a terrible mistake of forgetting about how much people get offended these days. My meme-based tweet twisted a lot of panties, fortunately most of the people interacting with it were reasonable and understood its tongue-in-cheek nature. To those people I say: thank you. Now back to topic.

I dislike sandbox games a lot. They're boring, sluggish and only offer the guise of freedom. Shit, I almost forgot - this is of course only mine opinion, even if I present it as a revealed truth.

Introducing the meme that started it all!

Anyway, sandbox games - they're boring. Every single sandbox that I was playing or running was suffering from that problem. Even the ones that I watched on YouTube were horribly boring. The main problem here is that sandbox only works if the players have a clear goal for both their individual characters as well as the whole party. Most of the time they don't. Oh sure, there will be some sort of idea, like organising a mercenary company, creating your very own criminal organisation or simply get rich. That said, it almost never moves beyond that. In every sandbox game that I saw, the PCs were moving like children in the dark - clueless. "Yeah, we should go here and here, talk to this guy. Oh shit, he doesn't know anything. Errr... Ok, I know - let's grab a beer. We'll think about something. Oh, hey - let's go the library! Libraries have a lot of info in them, right?". And so on, and so on...

The sandbox, by its very nature, is a much slower type of game than your usual structured adventure. It rests almost solely on the PCs initiative and willingness to do something else than just sit with their thumb up their assess. Unfortunately the core nature of sandbox usually encourages this kind of gameplay, which, frankly, fucking sucks. I don't mind the players' taking things slow, from time to time, but if they're playing like that all the time, it just gets boring. And boring kills roleplaying, no matter the game, no matter the genre. Boring is the one sin which is always unforgivable during any session. Boring kills games and can bring even the most promising campaign to early grave.

A good example of bad sandbox is the third part of the classic "The Enemy Within" campaign - "Death on the Reik". It's also worth mentioning here that in the Polish version, it's scenario number 3. From my knowledge, in the original "TEW" it's the second part of the story, although I can be mistaken. Anyway, "DotR" is a very interesting scenario, probably the longest of all "The Enemy Within" adventures. It focuses on the PCs going after a heretical wench named Etelka Herzen. This chase will take them through most of Reikland and a solid portion of Talabecland, and will eventually culminate in a climactic infiltration/storming of the dreaded Schloss Wittgenstein!

That is, if the players don't decide to swim around Reikland, selling wool.

Yeah, early on the PCs are given a small boat filled with lots of high quality wool. The scenario heavily encourages them to travel around the Empire and engage in numerous mercantile deals. Oh, that evil Herzen lady? Nah, it's cool - I'm sure that one of the most dangerous heretics in the Old World will just wait patiently for them to earn a bit of coin. Nothing to it, no biggie.

I like "Death on the Reik" a lot, but its sandbox aspect is fucking horrible. I'm sorry but there's no better way to describe this. The entire campaign is about stopping the machinations of a powerful chaos cult. The fact that at least a quarter of the second most important part of "TEW" is centred around sandboxing, kills any sort of tension that this scenario offers to the players. Naturally, like a lot of people I know/have read about, I did the only reasonable thing - made sure that the players won't enjoy their stupid boat for too long. There was this fantastic article about this whole wool buisness which I've read a couple of years ago, and which I can't find right now, but the gist of it was clear: burn the bloody thing and enjoy the much more interesting, tightly written and engaging plot about chasing down a heretical sorceress.

Damn, now I wish that I had saved that link, all those years ago...

Then perhaps you should visit it, you dumb twit!

Anyway, "Death on the Reik" is just one example of a sandbox done wrong, but there are many, many more. A Vampire: The Masquerade game in which the entire city was at risk of being erased from existence, and our characters were either drinking blood, playing music in clubs and creating rat familiars. Hell, even "Shadows in Bogenhafen" can turn into a beer-drinking picnic if done wrong, and if the GM won't step in at the right time.

By the way, the above examples are some of the reasons why I prefer the much more orderly and tightly-written "The Thousand Thrones", rather than the classic "The Enemy Within". Just sayin'.

Now look, obviously my view may be warped. As I've mentioned before, the fact that I've had so many bad sandbox experiences, that I simply don't believe that this kind of games can be done right. I've been regularly role-playing for almost 12 years now, and every time a well structured, plot-oriented and cohesive scenario or a campaign, worked best, and not just in one group. For me and my friends, RPGs are like interactive movies or tv shows - they're much better if the script makes sense and keeps the tension from start to finish. If suddenly entire episodes and plots become long-winded and sluggish, then the whole experience just starts lacking any sort of tension and cohesion. It becomes boring, and boring kills this hobby.

Now it's worth mentioning that I don't condone running RPGs in a strictly linear manner, with not side plots, keeping players on short leash and telling them that "no, you can't turn left on this road because I say so". There's a huge difference between running a cohesive, tightly structured and engaging scenario, and "choo-chooing" the game from beginning to end, with no options for the PCs to take a (short) detour or a trek down one of the side roads. It takes skill and cunning to make a linear campaign engaging, but from my experience it is a much easier, and often more rewarding a task, than creating a sensible and working sandbox game.

This is probably one of the best RPG truths ever written...

I've seriously lost count of the amount of times when my players thanked me for running a linear story for them, that got them engaged in the plot, feeling like they're in a cool movie. Every time we were playing a sandbox, it was... just ok. At best, mind you. I don't like going for "just ok" in my games. I prefer to go for the absolute best, most memorable experience possible, and I know that I'll never achieve this with the so-called "open world games". But hey, if these kind of sessions work for you, it's great. Just don't tell me that non-sandbox games are bad, and I'm a bad Gamemaster for liking and running them. You'd be dead wrong here, I'm afraid. To each their own.

Oh and I wanted to thank Andreas for the idea to change the title to its current version. Thanks, man!

Until next time... Hopefully James Purefoy won't murder me for constantly delaying the "Ironclad" review!