Bitchslap

In essence, a "sandbox" is usually ascribed to be a world built for freedom of motion rather than the delivery of a fixed narrative. The DM prepares places, factions, resources and tensions but doesn’t predetermine which ones will matter. The players decide where to go and what to engage with, and the narrative arises from the friction between their choices and the world's structure. What distinguishes a sandbox from a plotted campaign isn’t the absence of design — it’s that the design creates potential instead of direction.

That's not my definition, that's ChatGPT. It's beneath me in this day and age to spend a lot of time quibbling about this word or that in a definition when I have a program to do it for me. I changed one word in the above. Bonus points if you can guess it.

I have written numerous posts in defense of the "sandbox." I have talked about how systems should be designed to "take the DM out of the loop," to effectively sabotage the DM's freedom to be arbitrary. I believe that a list of imposed narratives ("1–3: bandits raid; 4–6: plague spreads...") does not really provide choice for the party, it merely catalogues which story the DM's going to force on the players first. I've sparred with dozens of naysayers who tell me I don't understand, that the "sandbox" I've defended really isn't one, that I'm a fraud, that I'm playing mindgames with my players and so on.

But I haven't had any of these conversations in years for a couple of reasons. First, because I've stopped using "sandbox" in my head to think about the game I design. I don't really think its a good label, it's a hypersimplification of what's really happening and it's a metaphor. Of late, as a writer, I'll still use a metaphor of course, but when I'm trying to define something, I try to avoid them. Not using a metaphor puts one less thing between the message I'm telling and the reader's comprehension.

Likewise, I don't use "railroad" anymore, either. I don't care if it's meant as a verb or a noun, because it's a metaphor and therefore unclear. I prefer, "arbitrary DM manipulation of players" because that doesn't have another meaning. It can't be spun by pretending its a form of grammar. The DM should not use assumed authority not rightly granted to dictate the actions or otherwise manipulate or enforce actions upon the players without their sincere and informed consent. There, that's even clearer. No metaphors necessary.

When I see someone use "sandbox" or "railroad" in an argument, I think immediately, "That is soooo 2011. Fourteen years and they've learned nothing."

The other reason is that, for me, the argument is settled. Nobody anywhere is going to rationally come forward and say, "I prefer to run a railroad." They're going to frame that sentiment in a lot of other gobbledygook that rationalises, "I feel perfectly justified in fucking over my players, because..." and so on. So basically, if you're still fighting this fight, you're doing it against an enemy that doesn't exist. The present justification, "I’m just telling a story," "I’m maintaining tone," "I’m guiding pacing," are all using corporate speak to justify what corporations use it for: "We're exploiting you, you're ripe for exploitation, you need this job, so we've invented this language to make you warm and fuzzy while we bend you over a table. Really, we love you. Spread your legs a little wider, please."

The people on the net NOT using corporate speak separate into two groups: those who don't care any more, because they're done explaining math to ignoramuses; and those like me, who talk about the "agency" of players without talking about it. For years now I've just assumed my reader knows what I mean. My rhetoric includes, plainly, that I'm speaking of the players being given agency to do whatever they want in the game setting, without any expectations whatsoever, from a belief that whatever they do, I can adjust, roll, design in my head and have it ready for them by the time they get there. If I need an extra three minutes, this is a good time to go to the bathroom, get a coffee, whatever. I dungeon master at the speed of a firefighter putting out a fire. The fire isn't going to do what I want, it won't give me very much time to pivot, so I've learned to pivot as fast as I have to. I wrote a book about this.

When I read others, or hear them, talking about how they can't do this, how they have to urge the players this way or that to manage them in a finite system, because "no one" can build a world at the speed that the players can change their minds, I think, "amateurs." 

Anyone who thinks it's easier to fight a fire than it is to DM has their head on wrong. If a fire, if a war, if an emergency room, can be run at the speed they experience, then any DM who really tries can do it too. It requires just a few revisions to the thinking process.

Let's start, first of all, with the "story." Stories take a long fucking time. You need to invent characters, provide exposition and reason, provide motivation for said characters, invent a solution that resolves that motivation, create an end destination and have it all make sense, because that's what stories do. This takes a really, really impractical amount of time. Even in the space of a week, doing this well really isn't in your wheelhouse unless you're a writer, and an educated one at that, and still you're going to steal to get it sorted in that amount of time. You haven't the chops to INVENT something from scratch that fits this exact place and time where the players are. And you're certainly not going to manage it while the first starts eating the second floor.

Which is why, when you invent a story — or buy a story — you're going to milk that puppy for everything you can squeeze out of it, because when it ends, you're fucked. Not only do you need another story, it needs to compete with the first one and you have to hope your players liked the first one enough that you can sell them on committed to that eventually sucked-dry story concept again. Good luck with that.

So that's your second problem, and it doesn't just apply to stories: sustainability. You have a fingersnap of time to get these players' imaginations to catch on fire, a need that's crippled by them knowing you want this more than they do. They have no reason to buy in; and if they do want to buy in, it's not for the same reason. So now, whatever you do, it has to please everyone. Good luck with that.

No matter how good it sounds, no matter how many are trying to sell you that storytelling creates "a better game" or "more excitement," inventing a narrative is the driving a train equivalent to a dead stick. You may be flying now, but it's going to crash and when it does, you won't have a train. How's that for a metaphor.

I can hear the whining. "But Alexis... how am I going to run a game if I don't know what happens next?"

I don't know... how the fuck do you play chess?  What blankety-blank said you were entitled to know what happens next in a D&D game?

That right there is the crippling dependency foisted upon you by the first module you ran, which made you stupid. It was so nice, so comfortable, so convenient to know what would happen next, you never put down that security blanket. And it's enslaved you ever since, dulling your mind so that as a DM you have to wait for the players to act while you already know everything, while you're bored, while you're wishing they'd just stop dicking around and opening the next door. The only fun part of those modules is when the combat happens, because then it's like a sport. If you roll the dice honestly, and the fight's a good match, you don't know who's going to win.  You know, the way a GAME works. EVERY GAME. 

Just not this one, just now.

But hey, if you want to go on giving guided tours the rest of your life, have at it.

How many times has it been said? The DM's role is to describe what the player sense about their location. The players then ask questions or explain their actions. The DM provides the reaction of the setting to the players actions, or describes what can now been seen, heard, touched, etcetera, that couldn't before. Why precisely do I need to know ANYTHING before the players get there?

I've explained that situational awareness provides an ability to recognise patterns in accumulated experiences. If I run D&D for a year, the number of experiences running D&D, if I do it once per week for what I did at the time, 5-6 hours a session, I'll gain around 250 to 300 hours of listening to players tell me things they want to do and what they want to know. If we assume around 30 such phrases per hour, that's an experiential pile of some 7500 to 9000 queries or statements. Just one session offers 300 to 360. Just one session is enough, if you're paying attention, to provide a semblance of patterns that a focused DM can create. If, then, after a game, we go through what we heard, and think about it, then we have time to build patterns out of patterns.

Once a set of patterns are comprehended, either consciously or not, one's situational awareness in a fleeting moment of time allows for the prediction of what players are going to say next, if given exposition about any number of specific things that naturally repeat in games. The players want to go through a door, the players want to fight the bad guys, the players don't know what to do next and want to talk about it, the players want to interrogate the NPC and so on. As this predictive ability accumulates, more and more accuracy is gained. And so, like seeing three moves ahead on a chessboard, a DM can see three moves ahead on the players deciding what to do when entering a given room or whatever.

So I don't have to prepare for every contingency, just the ones I haven't any experience with. And that's pretty darn rare after ten years of running... and what's more, D&D really doesn't offer that much for players to do other than to talk to NPCs, fight them, deal with hazards, move from place to place and  make plans. And if you know your setting cold, I mean really cold, then all of this is easily managed without that much effort.

Of course, you've gotta fucking practice. If your answer is always, "Room 17 says..." then you're not practicing. You're a tour guide.

Still, if people tell you that no amount of practice is going to make this possible, then you're probably going to believe them. Remember when you decided you were going to learn guitar?  And you found that practice was hard? But it was so much fun to play Guitar Hero? Well there you go.

I play D&D. You play D&D Hero. That's the difference between us.

And just because you make pre-gen programs for your D&D Hero game doesn't mean you're doing what I'm doing. When I sit down to run, I have a prediction for what's going to happen, but if it doesn't, I'm fine, I can roll with it, I can invent something here and now that will let the players use their agency to find what they want and go where they want and never feel like I'm boxing them in. But if they don't do what you expect them to do... then you're rapidly flipping through your text trying to find where your D&D Hero should start up again, so you can feel safe and secure in your dependency blanket.

Yeah, I know, you're having a good time. Well, sure. Think whatever you want to. But I've had the choice to do it your way, and I find it pretty boring. Like knowing the Mariners were mess this up months ago.

I don't mean thinking they probably would. That gives you hope. But knowing. Which really sucks, doesn't it? For me, that's what your D&D feels like.

I was going to call this post D&D Hero, but after writing it, the title used seemed more appropriate.