Player Guide: How to Sandbox

Player Guide: How to Sandbox

WALL O' TEXT RANT

Before I get into the tips, I think it's important to talk about what a sandbox game is not, so that it's easier to define what it is and how to use those characteristics to your advantage as a player. The #1 complaint I hear from players about why they don't like sandbox campaigns is:

"I don't know what I'm supposed to do." 

That statement is based around a false assumption that in a sandbox game there is something the player is supposed to be doing and by not doing whatever that thing is that they are not really playing the game. It could probably be reworded to be more correct by saying:

"I don't know what my character would do"

or possibly

"I don't feel creative and want a GM to give me stuff to react to instead of taking action myself"

but let's not get all pointy. I'm here to help. As per the wisdom of the Grand Poobah himself: Vincent Baker, I'll start with a question:

What sort of movie would it be if Luke Skywalker had told Ben Kenobi to go to hell cause he was gonna stay on Tatooine to take over his recently murdered uncle's moisture farm as it's a lucrative business on a desert planet? 

It wouldn't necessarily be a bad movie. You'd just end up with an entirely different movie that was interesting for different reasons, but the core of the original story would be ruined by the hero stepping outside the scripted plot points. Maybe it would be fun to see when Luke takes a year off to explore Space Europe, or when the entire crew of the Millennium Falcon has to stay the night at the Space-Motel 6 and deal with creepy a gross bathroom and space-drug dealers next door, or stopping off at the intergalactic 7-11 for hyperspace snacks.

A clearly defined adventure script has no room for that sort of deviation without risking the story's conclusion. A player doesn't really get to decide what they are doing or where they are going, because if they go off adventure script the rest of the adventure doesn't happen. The trade off is then that the way through the story would be obvious and filled with "correct" choices. Typically through narration from a GM about an evil wizard causing problems or a good king needing help or a dungeon full of loot nearby to lead the players to the story's safe-zones. These types of clearly defined story structure makes it easy for the protagonist. The game revolves around the story and the protagonists as tools to push the story further. The protagonists are essentially an afterthought to the process. The GM has the world/story act and the player reacts to that action, thus the scripted plot moves forward.

It's that very obvious structure that I hate about scripted/pre-written RPG adventures. Playing tabletop RPGs with people you know, or even with complete strangers for that matter, at it's very core is about having a conversation with people and sharing an experience. Having someone or something tell you ahead of time what conversations should be about and the way you can have them seems boring and presumptuous to me.

Fuck you, scripted adventures. My players and I will come up with the better story than you would have been able to.

Sandbox campaigns, when done well, reverse the normal flow of action. It's important to understand that in a sandbox there are usually no keystone plot points that you can hit to make the story carry on without the player's input. The game is driven by player action, not reaction. A player acts within the world and the GM reacts to that action, thus the plot is created. The actions that a player can take in a sandbox campaign are very simple:

• Gather information about the world
• Take action based on information gathered.

The how to of each is where the game happens. A grizzled detective gathers/uses information about the world totally differently than an eccentric scientist. Neither is the "correct" way to do things, but either one of them pursuing their methods would give the GM an opportunity to push the plot along or reveal details about the situation before the players. That detail the GM reveals then feeds back into the process for the player and they can take further action based on the way the world reacted to them.

It's simple if you let it be, so I guess the tl;dr version of this post would be:

• Gather information in whatever way makes the most sense for your character.
• Use the information you have to get what you want from the world.
• And don't expect to show up to a scene and the plot to happen to you just by being there.