Of Sandboxes and Railroads, part 2

Continuing the series

On the other hand you have the sandbox and there seems to be a ton of misunderstanding about what a sandbox is and how it works. Some people even go so far as to claim there is no such thing as a real sandbox. One place claims that when the DM says "you can do what you want, my world is a sandbox" that the DM is deceiving the players and they they just have to figure what the DM wants them to do and then climb on the appropriate railroad.

A lot of this starts with the misconception that a sandbox is a featureless desert with nothing but sand in every direction, so that when the players are told to do whatever you want, of course they are clueless becuase there is nothing to do in sandbox and that is why they don't exist. Of course this could not be further from the truth.

I am only going to look at one misconception today, the one that says there are no "adventure hooks" in a sandbox and there is only a pile of sand. That is completely incorrect and those who profess that view are either to be charitable "ignorant" or to be uncharitable "deliberately spreading false information." I sincerely hope that none of you fall into the second category and I trust that you do not.

"Adventure hooks" are a primary feature of a real sandbox. The better the quality of the sandbox the more "adventure hooks" there are. You see a sandbox is a living world and to model a living world prefectly there would be infinite "adventure hooks." Of course you could not do that, even if you worked at it full time. I will have much more to write about this in future posts.

The other part of this is the confusion of "adventure hooks" and "plot hooks," because they are not the same thing at all. "Adventure hooks" are options that the players can choose to pursue or not as they will. But a "plot hook" carries the meaning of "expectation" that the players will do thus and such and it also carries the meaning of an attached "agenda" by the DM that the players will do this and go here and then do this and go here and ultimately they will end up over hear and this will result.