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News and Special Offers occasional. Techopedia Explains Sandbox. What Does Sandbox Mean? A sandbox game is also known as an open-world or free-roaming game. I asked this question in a thread one time and everyone ignored me. Thanks for making this a thread.
Still confused. Sandbox is do whatever you want and usually gets boring after an hour or so. A normal open world game actually has a point to it. An open-world game is the same as a free-roaming game - the gameplay takes place in a game world that the player can move about at will, not in a series of linear levels. Example: Ocarina of Time A sandbox game has little to no structure, or can be enjoyed outside of the structured content.
A sandbox encourages creative ways to play the game with the tools given. I think of them as the same thing but for me sandbox implies the ability to go out and have an effect on the world and change course of events etc where as open world is more interacting with the world and following the trajectory of events in a more prescribed manner just in a non linear fashion letting you choose what to do when or even ignore it.
But it wouldn't suprise me if I am completely wrong. The way I see it an open-world game is any game which allows non-linear progression whereas sandbox suggests a game that gives you an arrays of tools or powers and allows you to experiment with them. Just like DukeT said Garry's Mod is a good example of a sandbox game which is not open-world and Fallout 3 is a good example of an open-world game which is not a sandbox. I always thought sandbox is where you can make your own shit and open world is place pre-made for a character to interact with.
In it's most basic form i would say that: Crackdown - Sandbox oblivion - open world. Role-playing Games Stack Exchange is a question and answer site for gamemasters and players of tabletop, paper-and-pencil role-playing games. It only takes a minute to sign up. Connect and share knowledge within a single location that is structured and easy to search. As with anything, usage varies, but usually when people say "sandbox" today they mean a campaign that does not have a specific prescribed storyline, but one where the GM sets up a world or at least a small section of one and the PCs are free to wander where they will and find adventure where they will.
It's about freedom of player choice. Pure sandbox play is purely simulation driven. A super hardcore sandboxer places a dungeon or whatever in the game world and that's where it is, for the PCs to come across or not and for NPCs to come across before them or not.
If a thief is sneaking into a mansion, in a sandbox game he is able to avoid guards and traps, and not have predetermined plot points presented to him regardless of his actions. Sandbox is not an antonym for adventure module. Some of the early modules, most notably Keep on the Borderlands, were extremely sandboxy, as were many of the early dungeons Castle Greyhawk, etc. Here's a place, there's fell monsters and treasure there, go do what you want. More recently, Paizo did a sandbox-style adventure path called Kingmaker for Pathfinder.
Sandbox is a different approach from story-driven - a "story of what happened" may emerge from a sandbox session but a preconception of story, or what "the GM wants to happen," is never applied to the game. Adventure paths, being a series of adventures, can try to be sandboxy but generally try to provide enough story to get PCs from one chapter to another, but event timelines and things like that can serve that purpose without being railroads though people often complain and call things like that railroading, just because they feel pressured to do something.
Railroading, the antonym of sandbox, is simply extreme constraint of choice. You can be apparently providing a sandbox but using the game world to provide so many restrictions that you are effectively railroaded into a single course of action.
A dungeon full of one-way doors that inhibits all teleportation and divination, for example. Most games are somewhere on the continuum between pure sandbox and railroad, or even move between the two based on need and GM inclination. Many campaigns switch back and forth between railroad and sandbox. Railroading to move the story on when the players lose momentum and sandbox otherwise it a frequent GM tactic that lets the players be free when they want to be but gives them structure when they're feeling lost.
Sandbox gaming can be desirable because it produces a sense of game world reality that enables the player to focus less on the metagame and immerse in their character and the game world. It can be problematic because players can feel like they are spinning their wheels and wasting limited leisure time without more guidance, and because sometimes a preplanned story cam have more "big, interesting" things happen in it plot-wise than a sandbox.
I tend towards sandboxy play, but in my most recent campaign I had players get frustrated and ask for more direct guidance from me on "what they should do" - I am normally reluctant to do that but did so to make them happier. Often players want the illusion of sandbox and unlimited choice, but with the GM pulling strings behind the scenes to keep them headed towards interesting things. The term originated in computer games and it's meant to describe a game where its playing field is wide open for the player to do what they want.
Around with the release of Necromancer Game's Wilderlands of High Fantasy Boxed Set, its authors—I am one of them—used it to describe to people what made the Wilderlands different from other settings.
It was designed to make it easy for the referee to adjudicate his players roaming freely across the map. Later still, the term got attached to a specific playstyle as mentioned by mxyzplk. However this is beyond what myself and other Wilderland authors intended. The problem is that people take the hard-core simulation of wandering the map too literally. This often results in frustration as many PC groups feel rudderless and the game feels without direction.
In fact, if you read through various forums posts, such as on ENWorld, you see these campaigns fail more than succeed. The trick to overcome this is "World in Motion.
This provides a framework in which the players can make their initial choices. This background can incorporate what some consider railroad elements, like being members of a noble household, a guild, a temple, etc. But the key difference is that the players are free to leave or ignore those elements, as long as they are willing to suffer the consequences.
Along with this you develop a timeline revolving around NPCs and events. This timeline is created with the idea that this is what happens if the players didn't exist in the campaign.
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