Sandbox games, and why I love them

Of all the campaign types Ive ever played in or run my favorite have always been Sandbox games. The concept is best known in popular conversation due to the (in)famous Grand Theft Auto games. Rather than having a chain of "must do" quests that limit or prevent you from advancing the plot like in games like Dragonlance or Okami, where the player does have a choice to make (however limited), a sandbox game doesn't have a plot line to follow. And that's because the plot is the tale of the adventurer's exploits. And there in lies the single thing I like most about this style of game - I'm not telling a story that the players dance to like well dressed monkey'. In all honesty if I wanted that why wouldn't I just write a story? Rather than trying to out guess or predict peoples actions I can focus on crafting a rich world for them to interact with. I am far more interested in who my players decide to latch onto and interact with than any amount of slaying the big baddy of the week, because if I want tactical combat I run Classic Battletech; Total Warfare most Saturdays for a few hours. And no matter how much tactical play is in an RPG, a wargame with over 25 years pedigree does that better (and with giant robots and massive explosions..)

Anyways, in my list of games to run at GASP I listed my top five ideas, so to give examples of characteristics of Sandbox games I really like, I'll flesh some out for some of the ideas. And to give credit where credits due this whole blog post was spawned by the wonderful gamemaster chapter in Stars Without Number, an OSR sci-fi rpg I picked up on RPGnow.com.

1. Lamentations of the Flame Princess "Bridgeport Blues" - The nasty seedy city of Bridgeport (named rather unimaginatively due to the massive and ancient "bridges" around and over the sheltered bay the port grew up around) is a paradise for a sandbox. I want this to be a blend of Ankh-Morpork (Terry Pratchet), TunFaire (Glen Cook), and Lankhmar (Fritz Leiber). What that means, for those who dont know these literary towns, they are a hive of scum and villainy, filled with individuals of most of the major sentient races in the game world, though many of the less powerful are shoved into ghettos, there are corrupt or ineffectual civic leadership and a thriving criminal underworld at least on part with Prohibition era major cities. What all this means to players is there are plot hooks everywhere you look, go, eat at or fall down. In a sandbox game the players are the driving force in the plot, they have to at least make some effort to head out and look for something to do, or have a goal they are working towards. And a city where everyone has an angle, a sob story or something the players can help with there should be NO reason for a lull or dead space, but that all relies on the players being active.
2. Dark Heresy "Hiveward Bound" - Dark Heresy is a wonderful example of another facet of sandboxes, you have to find out what youre up against before you charge through that door. The "disturbance" that brought your characters out might be some griping old workers trying to set up a strike or a cell of genestealer cultist who will slice an unprepared party to shreds under thier horrifically warped claws. Unlike more modern games with tight storylines, where the encounters a party finds are carefully scaled and balanced, sandbox games (especially those with any sort of OSR roots, like Dark Heresy's pedigree from Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay) dont have artificial limits like that, because the encounters are usually location based. So when the commoner tells the players about the "weird beast that lives out in the ruins" it does NOT mean go fight it. It means find out more about whats there. Just like in real life, in sandbox games "there's a time to hold'em and a time to fold'em". Its completely acceptable to run AWAY from something. This places an emphasis on investigation and interaction over combat that I prefer, like I said I get all the tactical combat I want from Battletech.
3. Alternity "Changes" - The Changes campaign show cases the final major thing with sandbox games I enjoy, consequences. Unlike infamous "wagon train" stories like Star Trek: The Original Series where the characters can come down, topple a working system of government, bed the attractive whats-her-name, and then fly off, the whole living world idea means the player character actions will have results that ripple through the world and over time. No longer will the villager say nothing but "Sigh, times are tough" ,no matter anything you do in the world. This is actually the hardest to manage for me, mostly for a matter of keeping things straight as the ripples fly out.

Thats enough for now, I still have both Savage worlds games that I can touch on as things come up