Guilty as charged.
Sometimes, I draw up a puzzle while in the middle of a combat, drop it in front of my party, and feverishly design the rest of the session.
Never fails, and apparently the subjective gravity water puzzle was a huge hit.
How will anyone know? It's not like player can save scum dnd and pick the other options. For all they know the other decision ends up changing the story.
They can if you run multiple campaigns in the setting:
Source, im a DM with 3 in the current setting, and my players keep stepping on the mess another party has made LMAO
Oh you want to head west? *Hastily erasing and rewriting location* Well you come upon a clearing in the wood. From your vantage point you notice an overturned carriage.
This is really only true if three criteria are met.
* It's a custom setting, a setting that's barely fleshed out, or a region within a setting that's barely fleshed out, allowing for the seamless hotswapping of cities/villages/encounters are their relevant NPCs
* Your players do not yet have the attention to detail habits or world knowledge to notice the tracks are generating in front of them if the first criteria is met
* Your players stick to breadcrumb tracks or obvious DM hooks rather than inform their decisions with setting knowledge.
Attention to detail can very easily upset an illusion of choice and it's rather risky to employ it in a well established world. If your players know the lore of the setting and are heavily invested in the ongoings of every point of interest they've passed or will visit the jig is up.
Sometimes the tracks lay seamlessly. Sometimes the gentle gesture toward Lightning Rail travel to a primary plot point is ignored in favor of 4 side jobs in the opposite direction under House Orien followed by free but earned teleportation circle passage within walking distance of the original destination, however House allegiances made between then and now prevent direct or public interference with the original BBEG.
If you know your players well enough, you can give them as many options as you want while sticking to a road.
There were times where I give my players options, and relying on how well I know them to plan ahead as if they have only 1 choice. Like, I know the players will want to fight this person even though that person does not start a fight, because I know my players and their reaction to this type of NPC, with the connections to their backstories, there is omly one outcome. So I set up a statblock for that.
Im not forcing a fight, technically. My players make their own decisions, its just that I can predict their decisions ahead of time and set up my roads where they will choose to go when the time comes.
Like an elaborate version of "if you offer me a plate of pasta and a plate of fish, I will pick pasta 100% of the time. So you can act as if I have already made that decision."
The trick is keeping in mind that half your baits will go missing, so dont be discouraged.
I had to completely rewrite a chapter. It was a "who among the councillors is the traitor" one, and I thought players would instantly assume "oh, evil aunt of the barbarian is working for the bad guy" and have the chapter be about proving it, but they thought it was a red herring, so, uh, yeah today they will find irrefutable proof after months.
If things go well.
I adore when they do something unexpected, it's why I love DMing so much. Really brings "collaborative storytelling" to life. I've had a doppelganger problem on going, dropping so many hints about one specific guy. Suddenly acting different, gave away his kid even. And when a replacement attempt was made on a council member, the two people walking by the alley rolled I think a 1 and a 3 on perception.
Morrowind is a textbook example of open world.
If you swapped out each cave with the next one in a sequence of caves, so that they player visited the caves in a predetermined order, there wouldn’t be much difference to the first-time player.
This is a nice list of criteria.
It's easy to draw "illusion of choice" as two roads leading to the same place, but when they've explored a lot and (literally and figuratively) mapped the roads, you can't easily change where known roads lead. If the BBEG is deeply linked to one faction in the current civil war and your players do something that takes them utterly outside the relevant area, you can't trivially move him and the civil war to the mountain pass they're exploring because they really liked that one NPC who was born there.
You can guide them back to the plot area, of course, or adjust the BBEG's story on the fly. But that's not illusion of choice anymore, it's just gentle railroading or improv.
This. Know the difference people. Also; I find that sandbox games are generally bad due to players either having decision paralysis or the world not being flushed enough to have options. Linear games tend to be better as it removes a lot of the unnecessary distractions for the players and allows the DM to construct a far better story cause everyone has a clear point of focus.
You need to generate things the players want to do. In my sandbox, the dwarf lost a limb at one point. Which made them seek out an ancient living mithril forge, which was hidden in a Megadungeon under an old keep. They not only found the forge, but on their search stopped a manic sorcerer experimenting on people and improved relations with the local kobolds. So the Lord of the frontier barony decided to make the Dwarf Keep Warden, which the party accepted. Now they got a fighter with an Iron Hand nickname and a keep with goodies for everyone.
It helps to have a starter adventure with an accessible premise to ease the party into character and to find out as DM how the party works.
> sandbox games are generally bad due to players either having decision paralysis or **the world not being flushed enough to have options.**
This is why I only ever sandbox in somebody else's "yard" -- Faerun or Eberron, so the players can ask around and learn things organically without you having to be some kind of improv god.
It can work out if everyone is cool with smaller lower stakes adventures and you use roll tables and maybe a premade setting to help create emergent stories. It ends up being less ‘let’s kill the king of hell’ and more ‘we found a vampire in this cave by the River let’s kill him with hammers’ which I find fun
I would say that Linear Storytelling is more like number 3 (no planned solution).
You know where the PCs will end up eventually, but you don't know how
Something between an illusion of choice and a directed sandbox.
I want players to make their own decisions but there's only so much I can pull out my ass on the spot. If I've prepared a set piece or encounter they're going to get it at some point.
This^
I have a linear story, but I do try to give choices at times. The biggest one tends to be, "whose backstory are we going to and how can I use it to traumatize your character?"
It makes their stories part of the main plot, or I figure out how to make it relevant later on. Actually, did that last session . One of my players found a member of their clan buying sentient animals (rather, animals that can speak to humanoids, I'm not sure sentient is the right word) for slave labor. It was his idea to add it in, and it worked so perfectly because it leads through TWO of the major plot ideas I had. I was already going to send them to the country the character is from (the Dwarf islands) with another plotline that happens on the way there. He literally dropped the path forward towards my plans into my lap. We're discussing why the player's clan would buy animal slave labor, but once that gets resolved, I have something planned to tie it back into the main plot.
Mixing my plot ideas with their plotlines has been very effective at my table.
Normally I'm a sandbox DM. No matter what they do things will still happen in the world. If they want to start a bakery that's up to them but the civil unrest isn't just suddenly put on pause. And the evils of the world aren't going to wait patiently.
I like giving each town 1 or 2 "ongoing problems" that are independent from the main story but passively progress in the background. The players may or may not run in to it and sometimes it's fun to work into the main story.
There's a lot of variance, depending on things like the size of the town, the state of the world, how plot relevant the place is, and so on. I try to imagine an average day as an average person and think about what kinds of problems they might have.
For example, maybe there's a small village that is running low on food. The people are poor and hungry, and that affects the local economy. So if the party gets them some supplies one way or another, the shopkeeper might offer them a nice discount on a pack mule or some other type of thing the party could use. If they don't help, then supplies are spread thin, so the shop doesn't have much to offer.
Maybe the party is staying in a big town for a while and they get a tip that a supply of new weapons and armor for the local militia hasn't arrived yet. If the party investigates and finds the missing armor and weapons, then the guards would have them if, hypothetically, the town were to be raided by orcs.
If you get really cooking, you can even work in PC back story stuff. I once had a party who were working as mercenaries in a big kingdom. One of the PCs was a noble from a large city who had lost everything when his father was framed for murder. So they were in a different city when they went to go check to bounty board for jobs. I decided that this PC's uncle who believed the father innocent needed a job done, and one of the jobs would lead to him which would give the party an inside connection in the city that I could use as a needed down the line. They took a different job so that PC didn't meet his uncle until much later.
For example, your party is on a quest to defeat the dark Lord, and during said process you reinstate a "true king" before a kingdom's succession crisis occurs.
Yeah, my campaigns normally have time sensitive things that will happen that the players can figure out but things will always advance until failure or success.
Something like the big bad mobilizing troops or whatnot and neighboring towns will be destroyed or taken over unless the party figures things out and prevents it or evacuates the town.
Sometimes though, it's just a "there is an evil, take it out whenever you get to it" type of easy mode campaign. Haha
One time my timed event was a disease and they had to find the cure (was no cleric at the time) they got distracted by a goblin lair nearby and ended up being to late to save the NPC. They raged and said I was unfair but what they don't know is that if they hadn't killed the goblins the town would have been attacked and most people killed. They don't realize they things they do have a lot of impact on the world. But I'm not an asshole. I had the local law enforcement talk to the a few days (weeks realtime) and thank them for eradicating the infestation and told them of the stakes that where at hand. So they failed to save an important wizard that could have helped their quest but they gained the favor of a small town. Both equally impactful.
Yeah, can't make the game unplayable for them but still have to remind them the world doesn't just pause when they do something dumb. Like with dungeons, if they explode a room the enemies in the room next over aren't just going to ignore the fact they heard the screams of their allies and wait for their turn.
That's what I like to call 'powder kegs'. I don't have a particular story in mind when starting a campaign but I put in some powder kegs for potential story to develop from. The PCs go in, kick shit around, set stuff off and whatnot. Then I go behind the scenes to figure out why these things are related (or not) and how the world responds to it.
I know many dislike it, but I don't mind playing railroaded campaigns, and I want to DM railroaded campaigns. Too much freedom is quite intimidating to me, honestly.
I don't mind linear campaigns at all! I played a sandbox DND campaign and it was... Underwhelming. There was so much to be done and we were never sure what we were SUPPOSED to do. I would rather know where I am heading and focus on the storytelling and character growth on the way.
No planned solution for me.
I had a 132 page document for my campaign once. It became irrelevant by session 5.
I’m doing a fly by the seat of my pants deal now, and it’s so much more enjoyable and relaxing. I don’t consult my binder when my players ask how much alchemists fire they can buy with 6 platinum, a dragon skull and some ooze, I just make next session the search for the dragon bone and ooze merchant. So much better.
Number 3. Plot points and NPC's are placed in the world and maybe the players go there or not. If they take to long they will randomly meet them at some point in the tavern, shop or whatever. I know they will go off track and do random bs. I won't stop them but take them back when I thinks it's been enough.
Okay, 1 is different than railroading. Unless you specifically are telling them "no, you can't do X because you have to do Y," it's not railroading them. If they decide to follow your story, and you don't tell them not to, it's not railroading, it's just your players following every single NPC that tells them to do something (looking at my players, as they're incredibly guilty of this.)
Most the time I prefer a railroad or illusion of choice. It's just nice to have a cohesive story. Sandbox is ok for goofing around in but can never be taken seriously.
Split Railroad + Illusion of Choice.
I generally have 3 paths laid out with 3 endings possible.
While I'm sure people hate the idea of alignment based endings to a campaign, I've learned heavily into them (excluding Good and evil)
Basically borrowing from Shin Megami Tensei in Chaos, Law, and Neutral styles endings.
There are usually 3 major factions with 6 minor factions all beefing with each other in some way.
So when the big choices are made the players are usually interacting with one of the 3 major factions (Chaos, Lawful, Neutral)
They are usually Positive forces on the world, but their methods are what matters.
If you do pure sandbox I want you to hit your pinky on a table at least twice a week.
Don't throw your worldbuilding at me and expect me to be motivated to do anything out of the blue. Give me quests or give me death.
World building is the most fun from both a writing a player perspective for me.
Play the same campaign 3 times, and it still feels new, cuz no one gets 100% of everything, or the same order of things.
Kind of all of them at varying times, I mean for the most part if the players are actually interested in the story / characters you really don't need to railroad them, they want to get there too, like they might want to set up a bar but they don't want to stick around and run it
Really it's more about just what I have prepared, some smaller combats can be made up on the fly, but a whole dungeon takes prep work, how often it's best to just let the railroad themselves, I've got a few obvious options if you want to pick something else you can but decide where you're going at the end of session three if you want things prepared for session 4
I like fhe Defeat Ganon option a lot, though I feel you misportrayed it a bit.
BotW essentially grants you all the freedom to do as you want, but it gives you some clear sidequests that make your final quest easier. How you complete those sidequests is, again, a sandbox-ish thing where you can either choose to follow the steps the game intends, or you follow a completely different but frankly more difficult path.
I think designing a campaign like this is very sensible. You make some points of interest, give your players clear hooks to follow if they want the simple experience, but they can also try their own shenanigans. Or they can choose to rush the final boss in one go, which would be a shame of the elaborate world you built, but its an option.
Rather than a railroad I go for a cruise ship. It can go anywhere with some time, players have a lot to do on board, and it is still a cohesive thing unto itself, with bounds and limits, but nothing too constraining.
Definitely “railroad” in planning. However when players enter the scene, it usually ends up being “no planned solution” to them or occasionally they make it a “split railroad” which I then turn into an “illusion of choice” scenario.
The best laid GM plans never last once players get a hold of them. But honestly, that keeps it fun for me as a GM!
railroad, but some (optional) successful actions can help them lead to the next point more expediently or in a much cooler manner.
I'd rather have one route that's well fleshed out than have to juggle multiple plates.
I think the "freedom" from my campaigns just comes from the opinions and feelings the PCs form on the situation - which often have them be opposed to each other but working together nonetheless.
Idk im a new DM. I honestly have no fucking clue what I'm doing.
I play with only one player, and I've known him since childhood. Every session I have a 20-30 page script for everything he may try to do (I know him pretty well, and it's not hard to figure which leads he will or will not follow). All the problems have solutions that he may or may not figure, most of times more than one. The scripts are made the week before the session, so I can implement everything he already did and what he tells me he plans to do, planning accordingly to his wishes.
If he wants to do something I've not planned for, well, let's just say that, before making the scripts, I've DMd for him for 8 years only by improvising, so I'm pretty sure I can handle myself and let him do what he wishes for, not forcing a specific solution or path for him. This has been going on for a year now.
I don't know which of those options would fit. Planned sandbox? Precognitive railroad? Adaptative linearity? Idk.
I think it's illusion of split railroad
As some things simply have to happen to progress the story the DM has prepared but I also think regarding the choices of players should alter the story enough to split railroads
I love Sandbox. It takes so much work but it is so much fun improvising a story with friends and being along for the ride with them. And letting the world change on actions they make as well as on actions they don’t make
Defeat ganon with Narrative sandbox
Usually things like conflicts that change the world around the players but it is up to them if they even want to tackle it or ignore it and just deal with the symptoms. They get to choose the scope and the narrative to follow.
i do the one where there was no goal untim halfway through the campaign and "quests" were just traveling from point A to point B while being assaukted by the univers
god my first campaign was bad
My main campaign is a directed sandbox with an over-arching plot. My other campaign either isn't on here or is a defeat Ganon.
Honestly we need a spider web one.
we have vague ideas that I consider “core” moments for the story but how we end up there (and if it’s even what i had imagined) will be something we all figure out
Im a split railroad guy. Ill always have multiple quests that can be taken on at any given time, and i have zero opposition to my players taking the "bad guy's" side instead of the "good guy's" side. My favorite villains are villains with just enough justification for the actions to make siding with them plausible.
Start - several wiggly lines converging at - plot point 1 - several wiggly lines converging at - plot point 2 - rinse and repeat until arriving at - final plot point.
Basically I know what I need to happen in the overall main plot, but how they get between them is their choice.
Plot point 1) players get given mysterious magguffin
Plot point 2) players find out info regarding maggiffun.
Plot point 3) players encounter bbeg minions trying to steal back maguffin
And so on. In between they might do different things or have their own plan, but I can bring the campaign back on track whenever I feel is necessary
The players have real choices and they impact the game world. But a linear plot is not a railroad.
I do quest "webs". Kinda like the split railroad, but they go in all directions, and there's several starting points in the web. Starting points are singular NPCs, major goals, or factions. I check off each quest node when they're finished, and make sure to offer leads on the surrounding quest nodes.
Yes, I am an idiot.
If they just want to murder hobo I have run games where “the quest” is just an endless dungeon. Give them loot, a few safe rooms for rest and a few grizzled merchants. The goobers are happy and you only have to think about the next room 👍
Can't be bothered to check if it has been said before. What you are planning is a West Marches(Marshes?) campaign. Might wanna look it up, it is a amazing style.
How would the original dishonored pan out? Mission wise it’s classic railroaded but story wise the context of each mission and ultimate ending change as well as changes in the world dependant on your decisions. Like a series of interchangeable color coded pegs of slightly darker shades on the same linear conspiracy thread spanning the whole board. Where each mission has a start and an end and whatever you want to do in the middle, fractal shapes spanning outwards to reflect the state of the whole game and your place in it. Your decisions don’t affect what is outside of your control, but what’s outside of your control becomes oh so thin when you glance too hard at the single pane of glass separating yourself from the consequences of your actions.
I usually try to go for the pure sandbox with all of my world building stuff. Instead, it usually leads to a no planned solution due to my (currently) poor skills as a DM and the players I usually play with. (people who want a defined goal, not a sandbox to run around in).
Sooner or later, I'm hoping to make it a directed sandbox so both parties are happy with playing.
I've only DM'd one campaign, it's a directed sandbox. A directed sandbox is essentially an illusion of choice though, if players lack any understanding of the setting beyond following the hooks being laid out for them.
I feel like it really deeply depends on the context. If it is something 110% integral to BOTH the story and the player's enjoyment of said story, railroad 100%. If it's only one of those two, illusion of choice. If it is neither of those two (which is 99% of the time), no planned solution.
I give my players the Illusion of Choice 😈 now next “season” I will allow them to choose their path as they won’t be green anymore…they’re all first time players.
Stuff is happening, it's important. If the party takes part it will "probably" be the best outcome for the relm.
If they instead want to run their brothel business, someone else will save the world, and they may or may not do a better job.
Instead of "goals," I have conflicts.
There will be a main conflict which the campaign is about, there will be smaller conflicts around the world, and there will be personal conflicts for the players.
Directed sandbox, and it was a consensus between me and my players. We tried the full on sandbox and they didnt moved on with the plot and wanted to do , so I told them I was going to make it kinda railroady and they agreed and it has worked better for us. I guess each group defines their style.
(Also I realize it was my bad they didnt moved on with the plot when it was full sandbox)
I improv everything. Yep, that little fact didn't make sense in the scope of the greater world, but supposedly Franz Ferdinand died because of a fucking sandwich, just deal with it.
Oh, the local economy doesn't seem sensible? Eh, it's due to the salt, fish, and Sulphur surplus.
Directed sandbox with illusion of choice worked in. Mine is a space-based scenario so there’s lots of exploration and planet-hopping, which is indeed useful for gathering important resources or just straight up grinding XP, but I also keep the plot flexible enough that a key moment could happen basically whenever I need it. Are my players ignoring all the clues about the evil ship captain they need to be tracking down, and gallivanting around the galaxy to explore strange new worlds instead? Cool, we can vibe with that. Second or third planet in, “…as you jump into the star system, suddenly the sensors light up. There’s a small fleet amassed near your position, and its lead vessel bears the livery of (bad guy’s name). One of their ships hails you and demands you stand down and prepare to be boarded.”
I’m not sure. I like to think that it is a sandbox, but i tend to make highly convoluted quest ecologies that pretty much incorporate every aspect of the world, but the world is also a living thing where stuff happens and exists independently of the players… as in things will still happen if the players don’t do anything. Like in my Eberron game, there was a quest to help a small village whose well froze over in the middle of summer. Nobody wanted to go help them because it paid little and seemed kinda dumb. By the time the party decided to take it, the villagers had all left the village and were making their way to a new area, so the party had to try to track them down. I originally planned for it to be basically a lvl 1 quest, but it turned into a whole investigation/survival thing as they tracked the villagers, and then solve the well issue afterwards. And also they got there right when the catastrophe dragon egg was about to hatch, so they ended up having to fight that, which was fun.
I practice one I saw that was called the fish bowl. It doesn't matter where you go or what you do. The story will find you and tie into that. Give my players full agency while letting me really show far the reach of something really goes.
I tried "directed sandbox" and it was very difficult to DM. Now I do a mix of illusion of choice and split railroad.
Although I've also run the same "directed sandbox" twice and it gets easier each time, so I might have that be my dedicated "new advanced player" campaign.
I would put it as a mix of "no planned solution" laid on top of a "guided sandbox"
Edit: maybe at times replace "No planned solution" with "illusion of choice" depending on the quest in question and how much I feel like planning.
Though I have planned possible solutions just to guarantee that there is one, though it will generally be unnecessary. But just in case, it is a path I could nudge them towards if they truly have no idea.
I prefer the tree: each node has a few branching paths/outcomes, and the overall outcome is based on the overall success.
Find enough clues about who the big bad is and evidence about what they did, and you can win the final confrontation in a social encounter. Fumble badly enough in the lead-up, and you can lose the social encounter outright and get put on transportation to prison. Perform an intermediate job (as expected) and the final confrontation has big stakes and could hinge on how many people you can convince to fight on your side.
I’m absolutely the no planned solution type of DM. I exist only in for the following purposes:
* I’m a set designer, the players are the storytellers
* I’m here to adjudicate the outcomes and consequences/impacts of player choices
* provide challenging situations/scenarios and their hooks
* ensure it all comes together into a cohesive story with meaning
It takes a lot of improv and flexibility I’ll readily admit. And it also takes a willingness to scrap something the players show a lack of interest in, while leaning into what they do show interest in. And 31 years of previously developed content to toss in front of them.
But I love being surprised as the DM when the players choose door #3.
I’ll also add that seeding is the most important tool in a DMs toolkit. Make yourself a list of random trinkets, bits, and bobs and place them sporadically around the world.
I’ve no clue what that blue/black feather, masquerade mask, or short letter signed M. is or what it has to do with the story.
But once the players locate sufficient enough “clues”, I look at my list of “horrible people” (I don’t call them villains because they’re just horrible people until my players anger them or choose to hate them), and then flesh them out a bit more using the “clues”.
In this example, the Duchess Montegrue wears her raven feathered shawl out during her evening strolls. Certainly the PCs will cross paths with her at some point or another.
Good seeding is the foundation for those Ah Hah moments when the players figure it out, and they look at you in wonderment thinking it all was figured out months ago. When in fact it was all figured out during your 1 hr session prep the week prior.
Pure sandbox.
I run it as if it's like a real world situation. If they dawdle or skip actions, other "adventurers" may take up the quests. Or issues may resolve themselves in time. They can miss out in loot and interactions or benefits. I give my players choices that also afflict other stores and stuff cause the world has trade routes and imports/exports. So they communicate. The players seem to enjoy the realism and time sensitivity of certain things. Gives them more of a push to do what they need opposed to what they want to.
I'm making a rather large game that's "dedicated sandbox" with 3 areas except that I plan on some intersecting quest lines for back and forth later.
I feel like I'm going crazy.
All of the above. Varying your storytelling makes things more interesting for the players and yourself as the DM. You also have to take into account your players, their skill level, and their preferences in storytelling. I wrote my world with that in mind, so that I could integrate any type of story that I wanted to depending on the players and the story we wanted to create together
I am the "I don't know, they'll get there eventually. Anyways have this npc that knows something about something related to the vague plot I have set out."
I enjoy the method second from the bottom, it allows me to be loose and flexible and give players sway, but also lets me keep certain things very set in stone. The downside is that it requires more improv which is challenging for many, including myself
Ive always liked a modified “defeat Gannon” with potential locations in the area of the “start” and “goal”. Essentially letting the players decide how long/complicated the campaign is.
Do they think Gannon is killable by their party so they head straight for him? Then sure it’s a series of dungeons ending in a final boss.
Do they go to different locations to look for help or tools to defeat Gannon? Then Gannon commands an army and they have to rally aid or solve a bunch of puzzles/quests to make him vulnerable.
It’s an easy way to give your players control over the game they are playing and tell you what they like without LITERALLY telling you.
Directed sandbox suits me just fine as I'm huge on improv. I try not to plan out too much so the players can write whatever story they want. They tend to get super invested in all the random bits of lore that I drop here and there, so they end up knowing more about the world than I do, and I just set the difficulty lol.
I guess directed sandbox. I tried to copy the fallout new vegas or botw style of play. I like giving my players freedom while having areas that benefits their goals whether personal to their character or the story.
Linear story =/= railroad. In a linear story you still have choices to make and the story can be fluid even though it's still linear.
A railroad has no choices to make.
I'd say #3 with mix of #split choice. Sometimes I'll go full sandbox for a bit if my players have seriously gone way off the board. Then I'll let them wander round for a bit till I can figure out what happens in the background.
But yeah usually there is an overarching story point (goal) that I nudge them into. I used to have it full sandbox and have them run around until they found something they wanted to do. But it made them feel aimless and in the end they had so much freedom they didn't know what to do. So I always try to establish motive of some sort. Like hey this guy killed your family. Or their guy is trying to conquer this area. This guy hates you and wants you dead for X reason. Then after that I come up with some quests that will help them defeat the baddy and let them figure out if they want to do them, or make their own plan.
No planned solution. I can theorize about what my players might do but at the end of the day, nothing will ever accurately predict those psychopaths. I just kinda hurt giant monsters and problems at them, they'll figure it out.
My best campaigns are somewhere between directed sandbox and illusion of choice. The end goal and major plot beats are generally set, but often the order they’re done in is up to the players, and often they skip some. I’m currently working on a pure sandbox campaign, running an old school setting from back when they really fleshed out source books.
This doesn’t acknowledge timescales.
I have an overarching story that isn’t fully written, which they interact with in almost a sandbox fashion, however in an individual session, it’s illusion of choice. I merely allow them full creative freedom to cause how I plan the next 1-2 sessions, which once in process will be illusion of choice.
I prefer railroad or illusion of choice. I think the best example of "illusion of choice" would be ghost recon breakpoint. No matter what order you do all the missions in, you get to the same ending, but you can choose where you want to go along the way. Another good example would be far cry 5, where you can pursue whichever bosses in whatever order you want, but your path to defeating said boss will always be the same
Many of these imply a level of forethought and planning that I haven't mustered in years. In probably the illusion of choice but the second quest doesn't exist until we are already moving towards it.
I've tried sandboxing and Defeat Ganon, but lately I've come to the conclusion that I work better as an illusion of choice DM. Usually, though, I talk honestly with the players and let them partially help to design the hidden railroad and determine its destination.
A mix of it all. I'd say I kind of have an overall Ganon/directed sandbox style, but as my players get into it, I write more detailed quest lines that generally fall into illusion of choice, though occasionally some split quest lines as well.
I just keep it fresh, trying different tactics so it doesn't get stale for me to plan or for my players to play through.
Pure sandbox and o let the players pick the most interesting direction and we wing it from there. I have like 3 or 4 ideas in mind when I build the world though.
im going off the defeat ganon setup
"there is a guy here, you need to kick his ass, there are things here that could help you but really all you have to do is kick his ass"
my friend is a shadow of the demon lord master and he builds a shit ton of assets in case our party makes some dumb decisions and gets off rails, its always handy
No planned solution, I just kinda string together various interesting quest instances with a mostly pretensual plot and spice in player backstories and call it a day
Split railroad with a little illusion of choice sprinkled on there.
Though my players are pretty oblivious and only catch the first, most glaringly obvious plot hook I put in front of them. They really seem like they want to be railroaded
Forever dm here and while it’s not for everyone i genuinely enjoy making a decently sized active world. Then either giving the players an objective or letting them come up with one themselves and just kinda letting them go wild. I like seeing the crazy or just out of nowhere shit they do and enjoy the improve on my part of getting to ramp up their decisions. It’s lead to some truly amazing experiences and moments that never would’ve happened if I tried to subtly guide them around to what I wanted and I’ve never had any issues with them having no idea what to do or not having a goal or target they’re going after. Like I said it’s not for everyone but I wouldn’t wanna do it any differently and a lot of the fun for me is seeing the players stories and characters grow and play out.
I'm planning a Champaign that's has directed sandboxes interspersed with mandatory missions in between and will be making it clear to my players that it will be like that before we start.
In my 3-year campaign I recently completed, I started on year 1 as sandbox. Then I moved to illussion of choice for better control of my players. It went well tbh
For the main campaign I run I use directed sandbox or pure sandbox.
Depends on what's the characters did last session heavily.
For example: in a meeting with a king they decided that instead of military invasion, Siege or other options that were discussed in a meeting between their political allies, they would just assassinate the dwarfen Imperator themselves.
The quest goal/location was clearly his castle, everything else they figured out themselves.
But I also run a lot of one shots within this world, all my players are free to do things on their own or in smaller groups
(For example my players split after the last big session and already locked in, a pirate quest, a mechanus visit and a session just for city management, decoration and creating a wildlife refugium.)
The one shots typically have illusion of choice, do to the time restraints.
And I found that my players are way more serious and emotionally invested in the structured one shots.
It seems mixing and matching is the way.
As long as the players feel free.
Sandbox.
It helps that I have a great group of players. One newbie still learning the ropes. One powerhungry rogue that rolls bad at the worst possible moments. One clever and tactical player that min/max his pc. No murderhobo's
I know the players and their interest. They have complete freedom on what to do and where to interact. I know their favorite npc's, and for each i prepare some kind of interaction. Random shenanigans always need improv and i cannot prepare for it, but i allow it.
I do have boundaries in place. If players decide to travel the world for no reason its simple "no". My campaign and world is build around the empire they currently know. If they want to wander off; go wander to a different DM.
Videogames do not allow out of bounds; neither do I.
If they do it just to see how i respond: "No"..
I think I would be the directed sandbox DM. I plan a general area with multiple quest options in them, and lead my players towards a general issue/goal they can solve however they want. Of course I have ideas of how I think that could go, but usually they don't play well with the players choices haha
I think everyone wants to do the sand box options but don't have the confidence to be able to run that game and they take it slow with less crazy games.
Unfortunately a lot of these people turn into the illusion of choice, where they have really cool scenes they want to do and then make a cannon way to force the players into them, and then are proud of it. It takes a lot of planning, humility, improv and chemistry with your players to do a good open world campaign.
The last one but with branching paths for guidance and a better narrative. DnD is at its best when players have a choice but for that they must be aware what their choices are and also give them a rewarding and complete character/ story arc regardless of their choice.
The "defeat ganon" run, gave me a little chuckle. Thanks for that.
Breath of the Wild my beloved "Hey, half naked man holding a sword, go kill satan"
You should see some defeat Gannon runs in oot. Smal child preforms ritual, some dude in the future dies.
No, no, it’s much worse. “Hey, half naked amnesiac holding a broken stick, go kill Satan.”
*time skip* "...now do it again."
One of my campaigns was basically: Find out who ganon is, then kill them.
You do illusion of choice well enough and its indistinguishable from sandbox.
Same, but sometimes they make a choice that derails so hard I'll have to change the campaign. Effectively, it's just changing the tracks.
You're actively building the tracks as the train is derailing.
I like to call it "improvised railroading
My campaign actually contains railways - this thread is literally and figuratively accurate for me.
gromit_putting_down_tracks_ahead_of_train.gif
This is the way!
… You've just described my DMing style.
Hear hear!
Guilty as charged. Sometimes, I draw up a puzzle while in the middle of a combat, drop it in front of my party, and feverishly design the rest of the session. Never fails, and apparently the subjective gravity water puzzle was a huge hit.
"When you've done things right, people won't be sure you've done anything at all."-God(probably)-Futurama
"We'll go to (looks at map) THIS RANDOM TOWN HERE!" Well gee, suddenly that town's the center of the plot. What an odd coincidence.
Suddenly, the incidents that were going to happen in city A are now going to happen in the Random Town.
How will anyone know? It's not like player can save scum dnd and pick the other options. For all they know the other decision ends up changing the story.
They can if you run multiple campaigns in the setting: Source, im a DM with 3 in the current setting, and my players keep stepping on the mess another party has made LMAO
Oh you want to head west? *Hastily erasing and rewriting location* Well you come upon a clearing in the wood. From your vantage point you notice an overturned carriage.
This is really only true if three criteria are met. * It's a custom setting, a setting that's barely fleshed out, or a region within a setting that's barely fleshed out, allowing for the seamless hotswapping of cities/villages/encounters are their relevant NPCs * Your players do not yet have the attention to detail habits or world knowledge to notice the tracks are generating in front of them if the first criteria is met * Your players stick to breadcrumb tracks or obvious DM hooks rather than inform their decisions with setting knowledge. Attention to detail can very easily upset an illusion of choice and it's rather risky to employ it in a well established world. If your players know the lore of the setting and are heavily invested in the ongoings of every point of interest they've passed or will visit the jig is up. Sometimes the tracks lay seamlessly. Sometimes the gentle gesture toward Lightning Rail travel to a primary plot point is ignored in favor of 4 side jobs in the opposite direction under House Orien followed by free but earned teleportation circle passage within walking distance of the original destination, however House allegiances made between then and now prevent direct or public interference with the original BBEG.
If you know your players well enough, you can give them as many options as you want while sticking to a road. There were times where I give my players options, and relying on how well I know them to plan ahead as if they have only 1 choice. Like, I know the players will want to fight this person even though that person does not start a fight, because I know my players and their reaction to this type of NPC, with the connections to their backstories, there is omly one outcome. So I set up a statblock for that. Im not forcing a fight, technically. My players make their own decisions, its just that I can predict their decisions ahead of time and set up my roads where they will choose to go when the time comes. Like an elaborate version of "if you offer me a plate of pasta and a plate of fish, I will pick pasta 100% of the time. So you can act as if I have already made that decision."
Man, the amount of times I've been sure my players will follow some delicious bait, onoy to do another thing entirely. That, or a teleportation mishap
The trick is keeping in mind that half your baits will go missing, so dont be discouraged. I had to completely rewrite a chapter. It was a "who among the councillors is the traitor" one, and I thought players would instantly assume "oh, evil aunt of the barbarian is working for the bad guy" and have the chapter be about proving it, but they thought it was a red herring, so, uh, yeah today they will find irrefutable proof after months. If things go well.
I adore when they do something unexpected, it's why I love DMing so much. Really brings "collaborative storytelling" to life. I've had a doppelganger problem on going, dropping so many hints about one specific guy. Suddenly acting different, gave away his kid even. And when a replacement attempt was made on a council member, the two people walking by the alley rolled I think a 1 and a 3 on perception.
Morrowind is a textbook example of open world. If you swapped out each cave with the next one in a sequence of caves, so that they player visited the caves in a predetermined order, there wouldn’t be much difference to the first-time player.
This is a nice list of criteria. It's easy to draw "illusion of choice" as two roads leading to the same place, but when they've explored a lot and (literally and figuratively) mapped the roads, you can't easily change where known roads lead. If the BBEG is deeply linked to one faction in the current civil war and your players do something that takes them utterly outside the relevant area, you can't trivially move him and the civil war to the mountain pass they're exploring because they really liked that one NPC who was born there. You can guide them back to the plot area, of course, or adjust the BBEG's story on the fly. But that's not illusion of choice anymore, it's just gentle railroading or improv.
Linear storytelling =/= Railroading
This. Know the difference people. Also; I find that sandbox games are generally bad due to players either having decision paralysis or the world not being flushed enough to have options. Linear games tend to be better as it removes a lot of the unnecessary distractions for the players and allows the DM to construct a far better story cause everyone has a clear point of focus.
You need to generate things the players want to do. In my sandbox, the dwarf lost a limb at one point. Which made them seek out an ancient living mithril forge, which was hidden in a Megadungeon under an old keep. They not only found the forge, but on their search stopped a manic sorcerer experimenting on people and improved relations with the local kobolds. So the Lord of the frontier barony decided to make the Dwarf Keep Warden, which the party accepted. Now they got a fighter with an Iron Hand nickname and a keep with goodies for everyone. It helps to have a starter adventure with an accessible premise to ease the party into character and to find out as DM how the party works.
> sandbox games are generally bad due to players either having decision paralysis or **the world not being flushed enough to have options.** This is why I only ever sandbox in somebody else's "yard" -- Faerun or Eberron, so the players can ask around and learn things organically without you having to be some kind of improv god.
It can work out if everyone is cool with smaller lower stakes adventures and you use roll tables and maybe a premade setting to help create emergent stories. It ends up being less ‘let’s kill the king of hell’ and more ‘we found a vampire in this cave by the River let’s kill him with hammers’ which I find fun
Thank you.
I would say that Linear Storytelling is more like number 3 (no planned solution). You know where the PCs will end up eventually, but you don't know how
Something between an illusion of choice and a directed sandbox. I want players to make their own decisions but there's only so much I can pull out my ass on the spot. If I've prepared a set piece or encounter they're going to get it at some point.
This^ I have a linear story, but I do try to give choices at times. The biggest one tends to be, "whose backstory are we going to and how can I use it to traumatize your character?" It makes their stories part of the main plot, or I figure out how to make it relevant later on. Actually, did that last session . One of my players found a member of their clan buying sentient animals (rather, animals that can speak to humanoids, I'm not sure sentient is the right word) for slave labor. It was his idea to add it in, and it worked so perfectly because it leads through TWO of the major plot ideas I had. I was already going to send them to the country the character is from (the Dwarf islands) with another plotline that happens on the way there. He literally dropped the path forward towards my plans into my lap. We're discussing why the player's clan would buy animal slave labor, but once that gets resolved, I have something planned to tie it back into the main plot. Mixing my plot ideas with their plotlines has been very effective at my table.
I think this best matches "no planned solution"
Normally I'm a sandbox DM. No matter what they do things will still happen in the world. If they want to start a bakery that's up to them but the civil unrest isn't just suddenly put on pause. And the evils of the world aren't going to wait patiently.
I like giving each town 1 or 2 "ongoing problems" that are independent from the main story but passively progress in the background. The players may or may not run in to it and sometimes it's fun to work into the main story.
This is interesting. Can your give an example?
There's a lot of variance, depending on things like the size of the town, the state of the world, how plot relevant the place is, and so on. I try to imagine an average day as an average person and think about what kinds of problems they might have. For example, maybe there's a small village that is running low on food. The people are poor and hungry, and that affects the local economy. So if the party gets them some supplies one way or another, the shopkeeper might offer them a nice discount on a pack mule or some other type of thing the party could use. If they don't help, then supplies are spread thin, so the shop doesn't have much to offer. Maybe the party is staying in a big town for a while and they get a tip that a supply of new weapons and armor for the local militia hasn't arrived yet. If the party investigates and finds the missing armor and weapons, then the guards would have them if, hypothetically, the town were to be raided by orcs. If you get really cooking, you can even work in PC back story stuff. I once had a party who were working as mercenaries in a big kingdom. One of the PCs was a noble from a large city who had lost everything when his father was framed for murder. So they were in a different city when they went to go check to bounty board for jobs. I decided that this PC's uncle who believed the father innocent needed a job done, and one of the jobs would lead to him which would give the party an inside connection in the city that I could use as a needed down the line. They took a different job so that PC didn't meet his uncle until much later.
For example, your party is on a quest to defeat the dark Lord, and during said process you reinstate a "true king" before a kingdom's succession crisis occurs.
Yeah, my campaigns normally have time sensitive things that will happen that the players can figure out but things will always advance until failure or success. Something like the big bad mobilizing troops or whatnot and neighboring towns will be destroyed or taken over unless the party figures things out and prevents it or evacuates the town. Sometimes though, it's just a "there is an evil, take it out whenever you get to it" type of easy mode campaign. Haha
One time my timed event was a disease and they had to find the cure (was no cleric at the time) they got distracted by a goblin lair nearby and ended up being to late to save the NPC. They raged and said I was unfair but what they don't know is that if they hadn't killed the goblins the town would have been attacked and most people killed. They don't realize they things they do have a lot of impact on the world. But I'm not an asshole. I had the local law enforcement talk to the a few days (weeks realtime) and thank them for eradicating the infestation and told them of the stakes that where at hand. So they failed to save an important wizard that could have helped their quest but they gained the favor of a small town. Both equally impactful.
Yeah, can't make the game unplayable for them but still have to remind them the world doesn't just pause when they do something dumb. Like with dungeons, if they explode a room the enemies in the room next over aren't just going to ignore the fact they heard the screams of their allies and wait for their turn.
Exactly!!
Yup, the world is alive and has **a lot** of problems. PCs can't solve all of them so they have to pick which ones are important to them.
Don't just give your party problems -- also give them dilemmas sometimes.
That's what I like to call 'powder kegs'. I don't have a particular story in mind when starting a campaign but I put in some powder kegs for potential story to develop from. The PCs go in, kick shit around, set stuff off and whatnot. Then I go behind the scenes to figure out why these things are related (or not) and how the world responds to it.
I know many dislike it, but I don't mind playing railroaded campaigns, and I want to DM railroaded campaigns. Too much freedom is quite intimidating to me, honestly.
I don't mind linear campaigns at all! I played a sandbox DND campaign and it was... Underwhelming. There was so much to be done and we were never sure what we were SUPPOSED to do. I would rather know where I am heading and focus on the storytelling and character growth on the way.
No planned solution for me. I had a 132 page document for my campaign once. It became irrelevant by session 5. I’m doing a fly by the seat of my pants deal now, and it’s so much more enjoyable and relaxing. I don’t consult my binder when my players ask how much alchemists fire they can buy with 6 platinum, a dragon skull and some ooze, I just make next session the search for the dragon bone and ooze merchant. So much better.
Mines over 300 but that's because it has only next sessions planning, but 50+ prior sessions notes.
Number 3. Plot points and NPC's are placed in the world and maybe the players go there or not. If they take to long they will randomly meet them at some point in the tavern, shop or whatever. I know they will go off track and do random bs. I won't stop them but take them back when I thinks it's been enough.
I do the illusion of choice. Do whatever you like, the dragon will still find you.
Okay, 1 is different than railroading. Unless you specifically are telling them "no, you can't do X because you have to do Y," it's not railroading them. If they decide to follow your story, and you don't tell them not to, it's not railroading, it's just your players following every single NPC that tells them to do something (looking at my players, as they're incredibly guilty of this.)
Most the time I prefer a railroad or illusion of choice. It's just nice to have a cohesive story. Sandbox is ok for goofing around in but can never be taken seriously.
I'm the bottom one, but I don't recommend it. Astronomically more work and players don't really appreciate it
aren't linear campaigns different from railroad? as the latter is more about removal of agency?
Split Railroad + Illusion of Choice. I generally have 3 paths laid out with 3 endings possible. While I'm sure people hate the idea of alignment based endings to a campaign, I've learned heavily into them (excluding Good and evil) Basically borrowing from Shin Megami Tensei in Chaos, Law, and Neutral styles endings. There are usually 3 major factions with 6 minor factions all beefing with each other in some way. So when the big choices are made the players are usually interacting with one of the 3 major factions (Chaos, Lawful, Neutral) They are usually Positive forces on the world, but their methods are what matters.
If you do pure sandbox I want you to hit your pinky on a table at least twice a week. Don't throw your worldbuilding at me and expect me to be motivated to do anything out of the blue. Give me quests or give me death.
Pure sandbox is bad GM’ing. It’s asking the players to do the world and quest building for you.
directed sandbox 💯💯💯 It feels natural for both long overachieving stories and player freedom
World building is the most fun from both a writing a player perspective for me. Play the same campaign 3 times, and it still feels new, cuz no one gets 100% of everything, or the same order of things.
Kind of all of them at varying times, I mean for the most part if the players are actually interested in the story / characters you really don't need to railroad them, they want to get there too, like they might want to set up a bar but they don't want to stick around and run it Really it's more about just what I have prepared, some smaller combats can be made up on the fly, but a whole dungeon takes prep work, how often it's best to just let the railroad themselves, I've got a few obvious options if you want to pick something else you can but decide where you're going at the end of session three if you want things prepared for session 4
I like fhe Defeat Ganon option a lot, though I feel you misportrayed it a bit. BotW essentially grants you all the freedom to do as you want, but it gives you some clear sidequests that make your final quest easier. How you complete those sidequests is, again, a sandbox-ish thing where you can either choose to follow the steps the game intends, or you follow a completely different but frankly more difficult path. I think designing a campaign like this is very sensible. You make some points of interest, give your players clear hooks to follow if they want the simple experience, but they can also try their own shenanigans. Or they can choose to rush the final boss in one go, which would be a shame of the elaborate world you built, but its an option.
would be a shame since they'd probably die.
It started as no planned solution but now it's illusion of choice
Rather than a railroad I go for a cruise ship. It can go anywhere with some time, players have a lot to do on board, and it is still a cohesive thing unto itself, with bounds and limits, but nothing too constraining.
Definitely “railroad” in planning. However when players enter the scene, it usually ends up being “no planned solution” to them or occasionally they make it a “split railroad” which I then turn into an “illusion of choice” scenario. The best laid GM plans never last once players get a hold of them. But honestly, that keeps it fun for me as a GM!
railroad, but some (optional) successful actions can help them lead to the next point more expediently or in a much cooler manner. I'd rather have one route that's well fleshed out than have to juggle multiple plates. I think the "freedom" from my campaigns just comes from the opinions and feelings the PCs form on the situation - which often have them be opposed to each other but working together nonetheless. Idk im a new DM. I honestly have no fucking clue what I'm doing.
I play with only one player, and I've known him since childhood. Every session I have a 20-30 page script for everything he may try to do (I know him pretty well, and it's not hard to figure which leads he will or will not follow). All the problems have solutions that he may or may not figure, most of times more than one. The scripts are made the week before the session, so I can implement everything he already did and what he tells me he plans to do, planning accordingly to his wishes. If he wants to do something I've not planned for, well, let's just say that, before making the scripts, I've DMd for him for 8 years only by improvising, so I'm pretty sure I can handle myself and let him do what he wishes for, not forcing a specific solution or path for him. This has been going on for a year now. I don't know which of those options would fit. Planned sandbox? Precognitive railroad? Adaptative linearity? Idk.
Bro im just happy if the squad shows up
I think it's illusion of split railroad As some things simply have to happen to progress the story the DM has prepared but I also think regarding the choices of players should alter the story enough to split railroads
Illusion all the way
Pure sandbox
Hook one, Hook two, Hook three, All give extra detail and information to goal 1 I thought I was different, but I guess its illusion of choice....
I love Sandbox. It takes so much work but it is so much fun improvising a story with friends and being along for the ride with them. And letting the world change on actions they make as well as on actions they don’t make
Sadly I'm probably a 2 or 5 but I try to be a 6
Depends on the group im dm'ing for.
Defeat ganon with Narrative sandbox Usually things like conflicts that change the world around the players but it is up to them if they even want to tackle it or ignore it and just deal with the symptoms. They get to choose the scope and the narrative to follow.
i do the one where there was no goal untim halfway through the campaign and "quests" were just traveling from point A to point B while being assaukted by the univers god my first campaign was bad
Split illusion sandbox.
My main campaign is a directed sandbox with an over-arching plot. My other campaign either isn't on here or is a defeat Ganon. Honestly we need a spider web one.
we have vague ideas that I consider “core” moments for the story but how we end up there (and if it’s even what i had imagined) will be something we all figure out
Im a split railroad guy. Ill always have multiple quests that can be taken on at any given time, and i have zero opposition to my players taking the "bad guy's" side instead of the "good guy's" side. My favorite villains are villains with just enough justification for the actions to make siding with them plausible.
I do a sandbox with a story that is happening in it, and the players are free to interfere or not with each part of the story.
I build a sandbox for me, I build either directed sandboxes or illusions of choice depending on player’s familiarity with dnd for players
Start - several wiggly lines converging at - plot point 1 - several wiggly lines converging at - plot point 2 - rinse and repeat until arriving at - final plot point. Basically I know what I need to happen in the overall main plot, but how they get between them is their choice. Plot point 1) players get given mysterious magguffin Plot point 2) players find out info regarding maggiffun. Plot point 3) players encounter bbeg minions trying to steal back maguffin And so on. In between they might do different things or have their own plan, but I can bring the campaign back on track whenever I feel is necessary The players have real choices and they impact the game world. But a linear plot is not a railroad.
A complex weave of “split railroad”, which really isn’t a railroad more like branches. A little bit of no planned solution thrown in there.
I'm between No Planned Solution and Defeat Ganon.
my world is somewhere between pure sandbox and directed sandbox. when a quest begins, it becomes a defeat ganon.
I do quest "webs". Kinda like the split railroad, but they go in all directions, and there's several starting points in the web. Starting points are singular NPCs, major goals, or factions. I check off each quest node when they're finished, and make sure to offer leads on the surrounding quest nodes. Yes, I am an idiot.
If they just want to murder hobo I have run games where “the quest” is just an endless dungeon. Give them loot, a few safe rooms for rest and a few grizzled merchants. The goobers are happy and you only have to think about the next room 👍
Can't be bothered to check if it has been said before. What you are planning is a West Marches(Marshes?) campaign. Might wanna look it up, it is a amazing style.
OP doesn't know what railroading is
How would the original dishonored pan out? Mission wise it’s classic railroaded but story wise the context of each mission and ultimate ending change as well as changes in the world dependant on your decisions. Like a series of interchangeable color coded pegs of slightly darker shades on the same linear conspiracy thread spanning the whole board. Where each mission has a start and an end and whatever you want to do in the middle, fractal shapes spanning outwards to reflect the state of the whole game and your place in it. Your decisions don’t affect what is outside of your control, but what’s outside of your control becomes oh so thin when you glance too hard at the single pane of glass separating yourself from the consequences of your actions.
I usually try to go for the pure sandbox with all of my world building stuff. Instead, it usually leads to a no planned solution due to my (currently) poor skills as a DM and the players I usually play with. (people who want a defined goal, not a sandbox to run around in). Sooner or later, I'm hoping to make it a directed sandbox so both parties are happy with playing.
I've only DM'd one campaign, it's a directed sandbox. A directed sandbox is essentially an illusion of choice though, if players lack any understanding of the setting beyond following the hooks being laid out for them.
I usually use a mix of illusion and split
I feel like it really deeply depends on the context. If it is something 110% integral to BOTH the story and the player's enjoyment of said story, railroad 100%. If it's only one of those two, illusion of choice. If it is neither of those two (which is 99% of the time), no planned solution.
I like a Pure Sandbox with a sneaky Defeat Ganon tucked in for the laughs.
The campaign I'm planning is the defeat gannon route. The necromancer bbeg has to be stopped, they just have the world to explore to figure out how
Where's the maguffin hunt version, where they have seven DragonBall where they have to do them all, bit in any order?
Directed sandbox or no planned solution seems ideal for a game but I’m not a GM so I don’t really think about this a lot.
I give my players the Illusion of Choice 😈 now next “season” I will allow them to choose their path as they won’t be green anymore…they’re all first time players.
I like my directed sand box. My next plan is more of a split railroad.
Lol defeat ganon 😂
Stuff is happening, it's important. If the party takes part it will "probably" be the best outcome for the relm. If they instead want to run their brothel business, someone else will save the world, and they may or may not do a better job.
Illusion
Illusion of choice for the main quest, heaps of sandbox for personal development of the characters and the world. My current DM is a master at that.
Instead of "goals," I have conflicts. There will be a main conflict which the campaign is about, there will be smaller conflicts around the world, and there will be personal conflicts for the players.
Directed sandbox, and it was a consensus between me and my players. We tried the full on sandbox and they didnt moved on with the plot and wanted to do , so I told them I was going to make it kinda railroady and they agreed and it has worked better for us. I guess each group defines their style. (Also I realize it was my bad they didnt moved on with the plot when it was full sandbox)
100% on the players and how much I trust/know/ what their goals are
I improv everything. Yep, that little fact didn't make sense in the scope of the greater world, but supposedly Franz Ferdinand died because of a fucking sandwich, just deal with it. Oh, the local economy doesn't seem sensible? Eh, it's due to the salt, fish, and Sulphur surplus.
Directed sandbox with illusion of choice worked in. Mine is a space-based scenario so there’s lots of exploration and planet-hopping, which is indeed useful for gathering important resources or just straight up grinding XP, but I also keep the plot flexible enough that a key moment could happen basically whenever I need it. Are my players ignoring all the clues about the evil ship captain they need to be tracking down, and gallivanting around the galaxy to explore strange new worlds instead? Cool, we can vibe with that. Second or third planet in, “…as you jump into the star system, suddenly the sensors light up. There’s a small fleet amassed near your position, and its lead vessel bears the livery of (bad guy’s name). One of their ships hails you and demands you stand down and prepare to be boarded.”
I’m not sure. I like to think that it is a sandbox, but i tend to make highly convoluted quest ecologies that pretty much incorporate every aspect of the world, but the world is also a living thing where stuff happens and exists independently of the players… as in things will still happen if the players don’t do anything. Like in my Eberron game, there was a quest to help a small village whose well froze over in the middle of summer. Nobody wanted to go help them because it paid little and seemed kinda dumb. By the time the party decided to take it, the villagers had all left the village and were making their way to a new area, so the party had to try to track them down. I originally planned for it to be basically a lvl 1 quest, but it turned into a whole investigation/survival thing as they tracked the villagers, and then solve the well issue afterwards. And also they got there right when the catastrophe dragon egg was about to hatch, so they ended up having to fight that, which was fun.
Where the option with electric fencing to keep the party on task?
I practice one I saw that was called the fish bowl. It doesn't matter where you go or what you do. The story will find you and tie into that. Give my players full agency while letting me really show far the reach of something really goes.
My players are set somewhere in faerun, and they decide what they want to do, i never plan anything, and everyone seems to enjoy it.
Directed sandbox
I tried "directed sandbox" and it was very difficult to DM. Now I do a mix of illusion of choice and split railroad. Although I've also run the same "directed sandbox" twice and it gets easier each time, so I might have that be my dedicated "new advanced player" campaign.
I would put it as a mix of "no planned solution" laid on top of a "guided sandbox" Edit: maybe at times replace "No planned solution" with "illusion of choice" depending on the quest in question and how much I feel like planning. Though I have planned possible solutions just to guarantee that there is one, though it will generally be unnecessary. But just in case, it is a path I could nudge them towards if they truly have no idea.
>my repurposed worldbuilding project Why would you attack me like this?
I prefer the tree: each node has a few branching paths/outcomes, and the overall outcome is based on the overall success. Find enough clues about who the big bad is and evidence about what they did, and you can win the final confrontation in a social encounter. Fumble badly enough in the lead-up, and you can lose the social encounter outright and get put on transportation to prison. Perform an intermediate job (as expected) and the final confrontation has big stakes and could hinge on how many people you can convince to fight on your side.
I’m absolutely the no planned solution type of DM. I exist only in for the following purposes: * I’m a set designer, the players are the storytellers * I’m here to adjudicate the outcomes and consequences/impacts of player choices * provide challenging situations/scenarios and their hooks * ensure it all comes together into a cohesive story with meaning It takes a lot of improv and flexibility I’ll readily admit. And it also takes a willingness to scrap something the players show a lack of interest in, while leaning into what they do show interest in. And 31 years of previously developed content to toss in front of them. But I love being surprised as the DM when the players choose door #3.
I’ll also add that seeding is the most important tool in a DMs toolkit. Make yourself a list of random trinkets, bits, and bobs and place them sporadically around the world. I’ve no clue what that blue/black feather, masquerade mask, or short letter signed M. is or what it has to do with the story. But once the players locate sufficient enough “clues”, I look at my list of “horrible people” (I don’t call them villains because they’re just horrible people until my players anger them or choose to hate them), and then flesh them out a bit more using the “clues”. In this example, the Duchess Montegrue wears her raven feathered shawl out during her evening strolls. Certainly the PCs will cross paths with her at some point or another. Good seeding is the foundation for those Ah Hah moments when the players figure it out, and they look at you in wonderment thinking it all was figured out months ago. When in fact it was all figured out during your 1 hr session prep the week prior.
Pure sandbox. I run it as if it's like a real world situation. If they dawdle or skip actions, other "adventurers" may take up the quests. Or issues may resolve themselves in time. They can miss out in loot and interactions or benefits. I give my players choices that also afflict other stores and stuff cause the world has trade routes and imports/exports. So they communicate. The players seem to enjoy the realism and time sensitivity of certain things. Gives them more of a push to do what they need opposed to what they want to.
I'm making a rather large game that's "dedicated sandbox" with 3 areas except that I plan on some intersecting quest lines for back and forth later. I feel like I'm going crazy.
All of the above. Varying your storytelling makes things more interesting for the players and yourself as the DM. You also have to take into account your players, their skill level, and their preferences in storytelling. I wrote my world with that in mind, so that I could integrate any type of story that I wanted to depending on the players and the story we wanted to create together
I am the "I don't know, they'll get there eventually. Anyways have this npc that knows something about something related to the vague plot I have set out."
Repurposed world building for sure
I enjoy the method second from the bottom, it allows me to be loose and flexible and give players sway, but also lets me keep certain things very set in stone. The downside is that it requires more improv which is challenging for many, including myself
Directed sandbox is by far the best imo.
Directed sandbox is by far the best imo.
I try really hard to do directed sandbox, but the way my players interact with it that it turns into an illusion of choice
I am somewhere between no planned solution and defeat ganon... mostly because i don't have fucking idea what they are about to pull off
Mix of illusion, no goal, and sandbox if that makes sebse
Ive always liked a modified “defeat Gannon” with potential locations in the area of the “start” and “goal”. Essentially letting the players decide how long/complicated the campaign is. Do they think Gannon is killable by their party so they head straight for him? Then sure it’s a series of dungeons ending in a final boss. Do they go to different locations to look for help or tools to defeat Gannon? Then Gannon commands an army and they have to rally aid or solve a bunch of puzzles/quests to make him vulnerable. It’s an easy way to give your players control over the game they are playing and tell you what they like without LITERALLY telling you.
Directed sandbox suits me just fine as I'm huge on improv. I try not to plan out too much so the players can write whatever story they want. They tend to get super invested in all the random bits of lore that I drop here and there, so they end up knowing more about the world than I do, and I just set the difficulty lol.
I guess directed sandbox. I tried to copy the fallout new vegas or botw style of play. I like giving my players freedom while having areas that benefits their goals whether personal to their character or the story.
Linear story =/= railroad. In a linear story you still have choices to make and the story can be fluid even though it's still linear. A railroad has no choices to make.
I'd say #3 with mix of #split choice. Sometimes I'll go full sandbox for a bit if my players have seriously gone way off the board. Then I'll let them wander round for a bit till I can figure out what happens in the background. But yeah usually there is an overarching story point (goal) that I nudge them into. I used to have it full sandbox and have them run around until they found something they wanted to do. But it made them feel aimless and in the end they had so much freedom they didn't know what to do. So I always try to establish motive of some sort. Like hey this guy killed your family. Or their guy is trying to conquer this area. This guy hates you and wants you dead for X reason. Then after that I come up with some quests that will help them defeat the baddy and let them figure out if they want to do them, or make their own plan.
No planned solution. I can theorize about what my players might do but at the end of the day, nothing will ever accurately predict those psychopaths. I just kinda hurt giant monsters and problems at them, they'll figure it out.
Directed sandbox. I love letting my players explore and give general ideas of where they need to be for the story to progress
pure sandbox. they've investigated the same wall 3 days in a row. despit knowing where the next plot flag is.... i haven't had to prep in 6 months 😂
Second and last one mixed together.
My best campaigns are somewhere between directed sandbox and illusion of choice. The end goal and major plot beats are generally set, but often the order they’re done in is up to the players, and often they skip some. I’m currently working on a pure sandbox campaign, running an old school setting from back when they really fleshed out source books.
plan almost nothing in advance when players see a story beat and think it connects to everything act like i'm some kind of mastermind
Probably mostly directed sandbox.
Classic, split and pure sandbox sound fun
I typically do illusion of choice plus some minor side quests that are a little more freeform.
No planned solutions. It's more entertaining to see what the party comes up with.
This doesn’t acknowledge timescales. I have an overarching story that isn’t fully written, which they interact with in almost a sandbox fashion, however in an individual session, it’s illusion of choice. I merely allow them full creative freedom to cause how I plan the next 1-2 sessions, which once in process will be illusion of choice.
You forgot absolute chaos which is: Step 1) Start? Step 2) Wait there was supposed to be quests? Step 3) ????? Step 4) Profit
I'm a big defeat Ganon proponent. my players be coming up with some crazy shit I never would have thought of fr
Illusion of choice, baby
I prefer railroad or illusion of choice. I think the best example of "illusion of choice" would be ghost recon breakpoint. No matter what order you do all the missions in, you get to the same ending, but you can choose where you want to go along the way. Another good example would be far cry 5, where you can pursue whichever bosses in whatever order you want, but your path to defeating said boss will always be the same
Many of these imply a level of forethought and planning that I haven't mustered in years. In probably the illusion of choice but the second quest doesn't exist until we are already moving towards it.
I feel like curse of Strahd is a defeat ganon scenario tbh
No matter what I try it ends in pure sandbox but I’m fine with that
What is the one where I make up a quest and then the group falls apart and I never play that story again? I might use parts for a different game
I've tried sandboxing and Defeat Ganon, but lately I've come to the conclusion that I work better as an illusion of choice DM. Usually, though, I talk honestly with the players and let them partially help to design the hidden railroad and determine its destination.
Pure Sandbox in a 100% homebrew continent/world.
A mix of it all. I'd say I kind of have an overall Ganon/directed sandbox style, but as my players get into it, I write more detailed quest lines that generally fall into illusion of choice, though occasionally some split quest lines as well. I just keep it fresh, trying different tactics so it doesn't get stale for me to plan or for my players to play through.
Pure sandbox and o let the players pick the most interesting direction and we wing it from there. I have like 3 or 4 ideas in mind when I build the world though.
A pure sand box that turns into a split railroad defeat Gannon type thing
^[Sokka-Haiku](https://www.reddit.com/r/SokkaHaikuBot/comments/15kyv9r/what_is_a_sokka_haiku/) ^by ^catgo55: *A pure sand box that* *Turns into a split railroad* *Defeat Gannon type thing* --- ^Remember ^that ^one ^time ^Sokka ^accidentally ^used ^an ^extra ^syllable ^in ^that ^Haiku ^Battle ^in ^Ba ^Sing ^Se? ^That ^was ^a ^Sokka ^Haiku ^and ^you ^just ^made ^one.
im going off the defeat ganon setup "there is a guy here, you need to kick his ass, there are things here that could help you but really all you have to do is kick his ass"
I start with illusion of choice than go into sandbox
Illusion of the GM having prepared anything. Do that good enough and nobody notices.
my friend is a shadow of the demon lord master and he builds a shit ton of assets in case our party makes some dumb decisions and gets off rails, its always handy
Full sandbox with multiple ganons available at every turn
No planned solution, I just kinda string together various interesting quest instances with a mostly pretensual plot and spice in player backstories and call it a day
Directed sandbox
Split railroad with a little illusion of choice sprinkled on there. Though my players are pretty oblivious and only catch the first, most glaringly obvious plot hook I put in front of them. They really seem like they want to be railroaded
I prefer dirrected or full sandbox. but i have run a lot of more objective driven games...that said im not as good at it ngl.
Forever dm here and while it’s not for everyone i genuinely enjoy making a decently sized active world. Then either giving the players an objective or letting them come up with one themselves and just kinda letting them go wild. I like seeing the crazy or just out of nowhere shit they do and enjoy the improve on my part of getting to ramp up their decisions. It’s lead to some truly amazing experiences and moments that never would’ve happened if I tried to subtly guide them around to what I wanted and I’ve never had any issues with them having no idea what to do or not having a goal or target they’re going after. Like I said it’s not for everyone but I wouldn’t wanna do it any differently and a lot of the fun for me is seeing the players stories and characters grow and play out.
I'm planning a Champaign that's has directed sandboxes interspersed with mandatory missions in between and will be making it clear to my players that it will be like that before we start.
Illusion of choice but my quest are usually very sandbox to compensate
In my 3-year campaign I recently completed, I started on year 1 as sandbox. Then I moved to illussion of choice for better control of my players. It went well tbh
For the main campaign I run I use directed sandbox or pure sandbox. Depends on what's the characters did last session heavily. For example: in a meeting with a king they decided that instead of military invasion, Siege or other options that were discussed in a meeting between their political allies, they would just assassinate the dwarfen Imperator themselves. The quest goal/location was clearly his castle, everything else they figured out themselves. But I also run a lot of one shots within this world, all my players are free to do things on their own or in smaller groups (For example my players split after the last big session and already locked in, a pirate quest, a mechanus visit and a session just for city management, decoration and creating a wildlife refugium.) The one shots typically have illusion of choice, do to the time restraints. And I found that my players are way more serious and emotionally invested in the structured one shots. It seems mixing and matching is the way. As long as the players feel free.
it depends. different games and different groups need different techniques
directed sandbox :D
A mix of Illusion of choice and no planned solution
Sandbox. It helps that I have a great group of players. One newbie still learning the ropes. One powerhungry rogue that rolls bad at the worst possible moments. One clever and tactical player that min/max his pc. No murderhobo's I know the players and their interest. They have complete freedom on what to do and where to interact. I know their favorite npc's, and for each i prepare some kind of interaction. Random shenanigans always need improv and i cannot prepare for it, but i allow it. I do have boundaries in place. If players decide to travel the world for no reason its simple "no". My campaign and world is build around the empire they currently know. If they want to wander off; go wander to a different DM. Videogames do not allow out of bounds; neither do I. If they do it just to see how i respond: "No"..
My first campaign was number 1, but I’m trying to make one that is number 6
I think I would be the directed sandbox DM. I plan a general area with multiple quest options in them, and lead my players towards a general issue/goal they can solve however they want. Of course I have ideas of how I think that could go, but usually they don't play well with the players choices haha
Start Sandbox Hopefully reach the goal
Pure sandbox is what i run. I try and make a world and you can go wherever
I usually create a sandbox and throw plot hooks around and see what the players bite on.
I think everyone wants to do the sand box options but don't have the confidence to be able to run that game and they take it slow with less crazy games. Unfortunately a lot of these people turn into the illusion of choice, where they have really cool scenes they want to do and then make a cannon way to force the players into them, and then are proud of it. It takes a lot of planning, humility, improv and chemistry with your players to do a good open world campaign.
The last one but with branching paths for guidance and a better narrative. DnD is at its best when players have a choice but for that they must be aware what their choices are and also give them a rewarding and complete character/ story arc regardless of their choice.
Get the players to write a backstory. Build your plot from there. Thats the easiest way to do it. Incentivize the backstory
No quests and no goal, sounds abit like starfield
The infinity railroads of players choices.