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Originally Posted by PK
In fact, is there anything -- anything at all -- in the actual content of that section that disparages sandbox play or insults those who use it? Because I've reread it multiple times now and I don't see it, so if I'm missing something, I genuinely want to know. In fact, everything there looks like advice on how to run a campaign that feels like a sandbox even if the GM doesn't have the time to craft a thousand plot hooks in advance.
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I just finished reading Christopher's article and he clearly states
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So how can you give your players a “sandbox” feeling without spending all your free time creating things you might never use?
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So I don't consider the section giving sandbox campaigns any type of insult. However I do consider parts of that section an inaccurate description of a sandbox campaign.
He is assuming that the prep for a sandbox campaign is doing the same thing you do for an individual adventure except multiplied by the number of possibilities the referee is willing to lay out.
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He needs multiple possibilities prepped, which means an increase in prep time for the game itself, which can lead to GM burnout, and then nobody is happy.
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When the folks involved, including myself, in the Wilderlands of High Fantasy Boxed Set project started talking about sandbox campaigns. One of the things we stressed is you don't do the same kind of prep as most people talked about for their campaigns. Rather the prep is about building a "Bag of Stuff", NPCs, Locales, and other details that can be combined on the fly to handle whatever it is the players are trying to do at the moment. For example I have several different types of peasant huts along with their occupants to use if that part of what the players are doing at the moment. Similar how GURPS focuses on presenting a bunch of stuff in the form of advantages, disadvantages, and skills that when combined can to handle different genres and types of campaigns.
Having said that. Overall the article is solid. Even if a referee doesn't organize adventures in a Quest mosaic the Random Quest Generator is a good idea generator for many different styles of running a campaign.