Taking 20 Podcast - Ep 7 - Railroad vs. Sandbox Adventures

Episode Date: March 10, 2020

Jeremy finally learns how to cover a topic in a single episode.  Railroads and Sandboxes are defined, compared, with benefits and drawbacks for each.  Jeremy also discusses the concept of the linear storyline and chain of sandboxes.

The Taking20 Podcast is sponsored by Strangers, the number one source of free candy if you're not a little bitch. Welcome to Taking20 Episode 7, Railroad vs. Sandbox. I'd like to ask that you give us a like and subscribe wherever you got this podcast. It would mean a lot to me and it would help me prove to my wife that people actually listen to podcasts. So let's start by defining some terms. A railroad. A railroad is an adventure where player character choices do not matter or they matter very little. Player agency is sacrificed for story narrative and if you've listened to any of the other episodes you know how important player agency is to me. The great dungeon master Chris Perkins once said, a railroad denies players any opportunity to affect change

through their actions or decisions. So in short, a railroad is where the DM forces players down a series of events regardless of the choices that they make. A sandbox is the opposite, where player choice is paramount, and sometimes story is sacrificed for player choice. There's a third definition that I want to talk about called the linear story timeline, or in some cases, railroad light. We'll come to that here in just a little bit. So for railroad, rather than go deeper into definitions, I'd like to get into an example. Suppose the party's on a stagecoach. The party asks, can we slow the horses? No, you can't. The horses are running wild. Well, can we jump off? No, I'm sorry, you can't because it's going too fast. Okay, well, I'm going to try to pull the reins to change the direction of the horses.

You can't. They fall into the ground and they're being stepped on by the horses. The DM won't let the party affect the outcome of the situation they're in in any way. The party just has to wait until the stagecoach stops. Maybe the DM didn't prep anything else, but basically what they're on is a railroad even though they're on a stagecoach. Another example. You're walking through the merchant district when you see a space sandwich salesman on the opposite corner across from the Illuminati building. One of the players says, I'd like a space dog. I'm going to cross the street to talk to him. The DM didn't prep this conversation. They have nothing planned for who this person is, what their background is, and how they connect to the story. So the DM just says, uh, uh, he's putting his cart away and packing up to go home. He seems really

too busy to talk to you right now. Really? I just would like to, no, I'm sorry. He's too way too busy and he ignores you and just keeps going about his business. In both cases, you're taking away player agency and they're just riding the rails to the end. It's a railroad even if nothing goes choo-choo. Now for a controversial statement. What many times is termed a railroad doesn't automatically equal bad, and many times what's termed a sandbox doesn't automatically equal good. There are some railroads that allow for player choice to matter, and it's more of a linear storyline. Linear storylines aren't railroads even if the DM designs them as a railroad. You as the DM can shift set pieces

around and the players would have no idea they're on a linear storyline. Let's say you have a zombie apocalypse adventure planned and it somewhat resembles the early stages of a TV show and comic book series called The Walking Dead. You decide, okay, the players are going to start at the hospital, then they're going to go home, then they're going to meet the neighbors, then they're going to go to the police station, and then they're going to fight through a horde of zombies to arm themselves, and a zombie big boss shows up outside for the last fight of the evening. What if the players, after meeting the neighbors,

want to go to the gas station before they go to the police station? Here's what a bad railroad sounds like. All the gas stations are on fire. All of them within a 50 mile radius. Wait, all of them? Yep, that one too. And that one. Oh, and the one you haven't named yet? Yeah, that one's on fire. The DM's in full panic mode. The DM is trying to force them to go from neighbors directly to police station with the player choices not mattering at all. So let's convert that to a linear storyline. The players are at the neighbors and they say we want to go to the gas station

instead of the police station. So what do you do as a DM? Why don't we move that horde that they're fighting from in front of the police station to in front of the gas station? Maybe the big boss shows up at the end just as the party has gotten gas and the big boss chases the party all the way to the police station for them to get armed. Maybe the entire way the PCs are throwing Molotov cocktails at the big bad, slowly leaking down hit points so that the party can hole up inside the police station, get some guns, go out and knock this thing's head off. It's a small shift. They're still in a linear storyline, but the players' choices still mattered. Ergo, it's not a railroad.

We're really dealing with nuance at this point, because some DMs are out there saying, well, okay, all you did is moved a few things around, they're still on a railroad, even if the players don't know they're on a railroad. I prefer to think of this as adapting what you prepared to allow the players to choose, but not lose all the prep time. But in summary, when I start talking about railroads, rather than forcing players to stay on a railroad when they go off script, and not if, when they go off script, DMs should improvise, adapt, overcome, and still give the players a great story. Let's go to the opposite side, sandbox.

In a true sandbox, players are given toys, tools, and time. Players have to find the story, find the fun, find the plot hooks. Tendency there is a lot of time wasting. Four different PCs could go off and do four different things, and it quickly turns into complete chaos. Successful sandboxes critically depend on good plot hooks. Plot hooks give the PCs purpose. The player is no longer just messing around, but now they have something that needs to be accomplished. How can you do that? Job boards, some major town event or town celebration, a rumor mill, mercenary opportunity, traveling caravan, a murder to be

solved, orphans need money for new spacesuits, whatever it is. Give them something to do and a reason to do it. Why would they go out and help the orphans raise money for new spacesuits? Maybe the owner of the orphanage is calling in a favor. Maybe they enjoy helping others in need. Maybe they're trying to solve a murder because they've been hired to do it and they're going to get a favor that they can call in later themselves. Maybe they will gain money because of it, reputation, power. Maybe it ties into a character backstory, but give them a reason to want to participate in this particular plot hook. You as the GM, as you're going through your adventure, have to create conflict and raise the stakes as you go.

Much more is coming on this in the plot episode coming up very shortly. But if you run a sandbox without plot hooks, it's an empty book with no purpose. The players will just goof off and try to find something to do, start a bar fight, what have you, but give them a reason to do something. So let's go to the third type, which is the linear storyline. This is where the fun lies. In a linear storyline, you follow a story, but many times you improvise within that story. I always make an analogy of flying on an airplane. If you've flown on an airplane any time recently, you know at some point when the plane gets up to a certain altitude,

you have the ability to roam about the cabin, but you're not allowed to open the doors. Same thing is true whenever you're running kind of a linear storyline. Give the players the opportunity to use ingenuity, give them some success, and then maybe add reasonable complications. Maybe the players are trying to kill the Lich King and they are ready to do it.

They are armed to the teeth and tough as nails and they are ready to put this thing down. The players adventure through the big bad evil guy's stronghold. They make it to the throne room and discover the Lich King is not there. Maybe that Lich King is left to sow terror, or maybe that Lich King is somewhere else. But the Lich King is not just sitting at the throne waiting for the party to show up and kill it. Now the party has a choice. Do they want to go back and try to find the Lich King where it is?

Or do they lay in wait in the heart of the enemy stronghold to ambush the Lich King when it returns? If they decide to do that, are there patrols? Is there anyone that they've left, pardon the term, alive behind them that can report back to the Lich King when it arrives? Can the Lich King use some sort of remote viewing spell to view his stronghold? Is there an alarm spell on its throne? Because inevitably, the rogue's going to sit on it. In a goofy twist, I'm kind of picturing this Lich King returning after a long day, showing up, taking off his boots and sitting on the throne and kind of going,

ugh, eh, it's been such a long day murdering peasants, and starts rubbing his feet even though they're just bones. such a long day murdering peasants and starts rubbing his feet even though they're just bones. The point being is that if the players choose to lay in wait and set an ambush, throw in some complications, but maybe give them the ability to do it. Maybe the players are trapped on a shuttle that's bound for the big bad evil guy's landing pad, and one of the players says, I'd like to scuttle the engine. If your answer to either lying in wait for an ambush or scuttling the engine is you can't do that, then all aboard GM Railroads, toot toot, they're on a railroad. Nearly every adventure, adventure path, or module is a linear storyline. A lot of times they're linear storylines that connect sandboxes together. The Lost Mines of

Phandelver, that adventure is basically a stack of sandboxes if. The Lost Mines of Phandelver, that adventure is basically a stack of sandboxes if you really break it down. Rise of the Runelords, same thing. Both of them are great adventures and they are a ton of fun, but they are just connected sandboxes. They go to place X,

they adventure in the sandbox until they find the plot hook that takes them to Y. They go to Y and they fiddle fart around until they find the plot hook that leads them to Z. They go to Z, maybe solve a murder, find the next clue that takes them to A, and so on and so on and so on until you get to the end of the adventure path. What if the players are at X? They're adventuring in the sandbox, you give them too much information, and the players learn they need to go to Z. Do you shoehorn them to Y first? Do you say, no, I'm sorry, you can't go to that town.

I'm sorry. Why? It's a living world. It's not like all of a sudden all of the caravans leading to place Z have dropped off the planet. So if you force them to go to Y first, the players will feel like that you're taking their choice away from them. Don't. Here's a very simple solution. Swap the names of Y and Z. Yes, yeah, you're going to Z next, and you're basically running the adventure inside of Y just with the name of the town Z, or mine Z, or camp Z, even though you're actually in

the book running the adventure through Y. And then when they find the clues to Z, you just got to remember to change the name of the town. They're still on the linear storyline, just with a minor change. So let's look at a case in point from a movie. Technically, this is a minor spoiler for the first Lord of the Rings movie, so if you haven't seen the movie that's 20 years old yet, go ahead and pause this, go watch the movie, and then come back, because I'm about to spoil something. The party was given the choice whether or not to go through the mines of Moria. And if you'll recall in the movie, the party tried to go over the mountains

instead of through Moria. And if you'll recall in the movie, the party tried to go over the mountains instead of through Moria at first. And in the movie, Saruman was this distant foe that created problems such as avalanches and storms that did not allow the party to go over the mountains like they wanted to. And so the party had to backtrack and go through the mines of Moria. wanted to. And so the party had to backtrack and go through the mines of Moria. You can argue that that's an example of a DM forcing the party to go a direction because if this were an adventure, maybe the DM hadn't prepped for the party going over the mountain and wanted to force the party through Moria. It feels railroad-y because it feels like you gave the party a choice of you can go through the mines or over the mountain. They say over the mountain and then because of the events you force

them to go through the mines anyway. That feels like a railroad. There are a number of examples of this in Star Trek as well because characters will attempt to escape some sort of plot or simulation or shared dream and when they think of an ingenious way to try to get away from it, they're just transported right back in and forced to finish the story as is. Back in the days of Dungeons and Dragons, there were some Dragonlance modules that were very railroad-y. They would quite literally tell the DM, the players have to make this choice in order to proceed. For example, there's a specific action in one of the modules that basically said if no one makes X choice, there will never be any clerics ever again.

There are video games that do this as well. The concept of railroading actually is built into the game Bioshock Infinite. I won't tell you what the railroad is or what the ending is that it forces you to because it's a very interesting story. The movie Jumanji, players are dropped into a board game and they have to complete the board game in order to get out. That is the classic definition of a railroad. For examples of sandboxes, look no further than Minecraft and some of their variants. Lego made an open world game. Any open world game where you're free to explore boundaries. Minecraft, Grand Theft Auto, a lot of MMOs are sandboxes where effectively you find the fun.

On the RPG side, you've got Kingmaker. It's an adventure path for Pathfinder and a video game. It can be very sandboxy, open-worldy, your choices do matter, and you have to find the plot as it unfolds. The original Eberron in Dungeons & Dragons was very sandboxy as well. You could quite literally lift it out and place it in just about any other setting that you wanted to and turn it into a sandbox very easy. Going way back, Dark Suns was the same way. It was literally a sandbox with sand everywhere. In 4th edition, you had the Neverwinter campaign setting, which had plot hooks and factions, plot threads that could be pulled on. It actually was a great example of a sandbox, even if 4e didn't really take off. Here's the thing. By no means

am I saying, railroad bad, sandbox good. That is not what I'm saying at all. What I am saying is that there are challenges if you try to force players onto a railroad and they don't want to play that way. Listen, there are groups that they want to be shoved onto a railroad, treat it like a video game, kill stuff that the DM throws in front of them, and they don't vary off of what the plan is, and they live happily ever after and they have a great time as a team. I'm not telling you how to have fun. As a DM or GM, be careful about forcing people onto a railroad because they may not enjoy it. More players than not want to feel like that their choices matter. They want to feel like that their PCs are making a difference, whether that's

to an entire universe or to one family that they're trying to take care of and rescue. You as a DM or GM, even if they're on something that resembles a linear storyline or maybe even a railroad. Reward the PCs when they come up with clever and creative solutions and make good choices. Let them short circuit the bomb. Let them sink the plague ship. Let them put out the forest fire to save that family farm. If the players are trying to stop something and you're playing an adventure path that requires that something to happen, let it still happen, but maybe its effects are lessened, or maybe it happens somewhere else. Maybe they're in a Starfinder campaign and they want to save the Ahsoka race from a plague ship that's about to crash into their city. Maybe the party steps up, they save the day, and divert the ship from its crash landing into the

Ahsoka town, and the Ahsoka are not going to catch a nasty case of space AIDS. But maybe, because the adventure demands that someone gets it, it crashes in the middle of an Akesti camp, and they get infected. And now the adventure continues on with the plague affecting the Akeshti instead of the Ahsoki. Successful campaigns can be made from railroads, from sandboxes, and from linear storylines. As long as the PC's choices make a difference, even if it's just a perceived difference and not a real one with the notes that you have, the PCs will tend to have more fun than if they're just forced to go a certain direction by invisible walls that the EDM has put up. That's all for this episode. I'd like to encourage you to tune in next time where we'll talk about the good,

the bad, the ugly of min-maxing your characters. Is it all bad? Is it always good? Usually the answer is no, but you'll have to tune in to find out. Once again, I'd like to thank our totally not made up sponsor, Strangers. They're just friends you haven't met yet. This has been Taking 20 Episode 7, Railroad vs. Sandbox. My name is Jeremy Shelley.

Thank you so much for tuning in and I hope your next game is your best game.