How I play in the sandbox (campaign)

Today I got a PM through a gamer forum that I frequent. In it, a fellow gamer asked me about sandbox campaign game play. There has been much talk about sandbox campaigns on various old school blogs. But I'm not sure that has been a lot of explicit detail about exactly how these sandbox campaigns develop. I learn best by example. So I tried to to answer with examples from my current experiment with old school gaming, Blue Dancer. My PM reply turned into a very long message. And so to make it worth my while, I've edited a version for this blog.

My fellow gamer wrote:

I wanted to ask you something about "sandbox" style campaigns. Do you still have events going on in the background that may or may not influence the PC's? What about the PC's influencing those events?

Where I am going with this is that I too often run into the pitfalls of the story arc. It sounds great at first, but the PC's don't get that one clue they should have, or they don't kill the guy they should have, or maybe they killed somebody they SHOULDN'T have.

In answer to the question, I do not have events going on in the background that may or may not affect the PCs. At least, not at first. And maybe not the way one would expect. Instead, I have factions of monsters and NPCs that are set in place within the campaign world that are poised to react to the PCs if they are encountered. From there, stories might spontaneously generate themselves through the improvisation of both the PCs and the DM.

For example, I've started a 1e campaign with some folks I met through KnoxGamers. I have Castle Xeva, a tent pole mega-dungeon, outlined but I've only mapped out a couple of levels. At the beginning, I told the players that one of them acquired a map to a secret entrance. We had the obligatory tavern scene. They were expecting various adventure hooks but I gave them none. The way was paved to the entrance of the dungeon. I had random lists of various types of names that I could fish from to assign to NPCs. On the way to the dungeon, I rolled a random encounter in the woods. Goblins! They laid ambush. I was surprised that they took one goblin prisoner and questioned him. I had absolutely positively nothing prepared. I improvised. The goblin said he was part of a patrol sent out from the castle dungeon (where the party was going). While the PCs were arguing about whether or not to slay the goblin, a treant snatched the goblin and ran off into the woods. This gave me ideas about where the goblin came from, what the treant was up to, and what might happen in the future.

When they got to the castle's dungeon, I still hadn't filled all the rooms with details, monsters, and traps. I had noted some of the monsters near the entrance. When the players traveled beyond what I noted, I randomly picked out appropriately powerful monsters and improvised. Their tentative explorations have given me ideas about how to flesh out the dungeon further. The PCs have been discussing their theories about how the various monster factions within the dungeon are interacting based upon my sparse (and sometimes improvised) hints. Privately, I've been taking note and preparing for future adventures.

I've repeatedly explained to the PCs that I would not be easy on them. I would not look the other way at bad dice rolls. Thus they burst into a goblin training room without listening at the door and two of their characters went down. They rest barely managed to escape and regroup. Were the players upset? Absolutely not. They all had a good laugh and were ready to roll up new characters. But, since the players were taken prisoner and not permanently destroyed, I told them to hang on until the next session. You see, I had some vague ideas about how the PCs could find their way out of this mess.

In their previous encounter with goblins, one of the players asked if they bore a common symbol on their armor or shields. Perhaps this would indicated what tribe they were from or what organization they represented. That caught me off guard and so I said they did not wear any sort of symbol. But that gave me ideas for the future. When they encountered goblins in the dungeon, I said that they all had white symbols on their armor.

The following week, I introduced an NPC thief, a character I had used last year in this same campaign world but with a different group. With her help, the PCs escaped. The NPC thief promised that she could repay them by introducing the party to a powerful magic-user that she knew in the nearby capital city. (Yet another character I used in a previous campaign.)

When the PCs left the dungeon, they encountered an elf and a treant holding a tied-up goblin. The elf explained that he was a ranger from a nearby faerie city in the woods to the north-east (the name of which I randomly chose from a list right there at the table while we were playing). The treant, of course, was the one they had encountered before entering the dungeon. The elf explained that the goblin was not from the castle dungeon but was actually from a tribe that had occupied a nearby abandoned manor house somewhere to the west. This explained the goblin's lack of identifying symbol. The PCs decided to go check it out next time. This has somewhat eased up on my session prep because I plan to use an existing published module. That's why they called them modules, after all. So you could modularly insert them into any campaign world.

At the beginning of the campaign, all I had prepared were some spare dungeon notes and some general ideas about the surrounding wilderness. There were no adventure hooks other than the map to the secret dungeon entrance. Now that they are returning to town for the first time, they have at least three or four choices of where they could take their adventures. My main castle mega-dungeon is, of course, the central focus of my campaign and allows for endless adventure possibilities. But there are other places that they can now explore.

What matters is that the PCs are given an adventure that proceeds at an interesting pace. And at their own pace. What matters is that they have monsters to slay, traps to avoid, treasure to find, and NPCs with whom to interact. What matters is that each player can be given challenges appropriate to their PCs' classes. Their ultimate goal is to reach higher levels so that they may attract henchmen, build strongholds, create temples, start guilds, or whatever the players want to do. Each class has an endgame that is specified in the earliest editions of D&D but were abandoned in later editions. PCs need to be able to carve out their niche in the untamed chaotic wilderness between the "points of light" that are the waning remnants of lawful civilization. How they do it is up to them. It's up to the DM to provide realistic obstacles to whatever the players want to do. But a DM planning out every last level and room of a dungeon that the PCs might not completely explore is folly.

Along with rule books full of monsters to fight, spells to cast, treasure to loot, and magic items to wield, all of these parameters allow the DM to easily improvise a "story" right there on the spot as they are playing the game. Based on what happens in previous sessions, further story developments can be improvised. As more information about the game world is accumulated, the easier it is to improvise new story developments.

When I started my recent campaign, I had no idea that they would encounter some goblins in the woods. But this inspired the use of the module with the goblin-infested manor house that the PCs can explore. The treant encounter, which I had vaguely planned before the start of the campaign, inspired a possible future plot development and a "mission" that the PCs can complete. The elf encounter, which I had also vaguely planned before the start of the campaign, might allow potential allies for the PCs. The thief that helped their escape created a powerful connection in the nearby city. But I hadn't planned this connection at any time before the PCs were captured by the goblins. And the big bad guy? He/she/it is within the castle ruins and has yet to notice the PCs. I'm not even sure about the agenda of all the factions yet. Whatever it is, it's up to the players (and the DM) to figure it out. There is always a possibility that the players will figure out the bad guy's nefarious plot before the DM!

With sandbox campaigns, there is no railroading. The possibility of the PCs doing or saying the wrong thing is irrelevant. Excessive game world design is pointless. It's good to have some extremely general details worked out about what's nearby the first dungeon that the players explore. But there is no point in planning out agendas and rolling up NPCs until you know that the players are going to have anything to do with them in any significant way. Over time, NPCs flesh themselves out. Plots play themselves out in an improvisational manner. The so-called "plot" of the campaign could very well result in Total Party Kill. So be it! It is a game, after all. Adventure paths with story arcs are what I call "gaming entertainment" and are not actually games in the true sense of the word. The players can roll up new characters. And when they do, the DM already has the campaign world fleshed out even more than when the group first started out. It gets easier and the pace of the game moves faster than before because both the DM and the players are already familiar with the established stories of previous game sessions. I had already played a campaign with another group within this game world and so I have several characters that I can call upon as NPCs. Back when I still thought campaigns needed story arcs, I had even developed a rough outline of a world-shaking event for this campaign world. Will that story develop in this campaign? Only if it seems relevant to the actions of the PCs. I could care less if they pursue that plot hook.

My gamer friend also asked me:

Anyway, I was just wondering more about this free form stuff. Are you running anything like this during the 3 River Con? If so, I would be very interested in playing or, if you are already full, just observing.

As for running a sandbox campaign at 3 River Con, I don't think that will happen. The very nature of a sandbox campaign is that it's a multi-session thing that snowballs over time. Gygax and all the rest of the old schoolers carefully prepared adventures in advance for their convention games. These were known as tournaments and even had their own scoring system.

It's been theorized that Gygax's 1st edition AD&D was actually a formalized version of the original edition in order to be used for tournament play. (James M. over at Grognardia mentioned this but I can't find the specific post at the moment.) Many of the tournament games from way back when were eventually published as some of the famous modules that we know today. This probably encouraged gamers everywhere to emulate the style of carefully pre-planned modules and eventually encouraged the development of adventure paths with story arcs. I don't think there was ever a formal presentation or "how-to" guide for playing RPGs like they did back in the early days. Lately, folks like me have been re-examining what playing D&D is really all about. I've been wondering about this for the last couple of years. To my delight, I've found through the magic of the internet that there are many other people who are of a like mind. Thus, we seem to be having an "old school renaissance."

Blue Dancer session #6

Yes, it's been a month since the last campaign update. There hasn't been much to report other than that the dungeon crawl has been proceeding at a slow to moderate pace. But the pace is picking up as we become more familiar with 1e rules and discuss the establishment of house rules. Nevertheless, I think we are succeeding in our attempt to return to the old school roots of D&D.

During the second session, the PCs entered the valley of the faerie and followed the overgrown road to Castle Xeva. On they way, they had an encounter with some goblins and a mysterious treant. In the third session, they reached the location of the castle. A high stone bridge spanned a crevice above a wide river next to a huge waterfall. On the other side, upon a tall rock formation, rests the castle. Cautiously, they crossed the bridge and find the secret trail up to the collapsed wall beneath a curtain tower that opens to a corner of the underground dungeon.

I did my best to describe this first room of the dungeon as safe place to set up a "base camp." This became more apparent when they discovered that much of the corridors and rooms immeadiately beyond this first room had only non-intelligent monsters. Some of the rooms seemed to be neglected, forgotten, or at least didn't see much traffic.

The first creatures they encountered were a bunch of giant centipedes inhabiting a forgotten latrine. After squishing these horrors, the players were confronted with a monster that challenged them. One of the PCs, Cedric the cleric of the Flying Spaghetti Monster, correctly guessed what was going on. The first clue was the unusual cleanliness of the corridor. The second was the floating skeleton coming down the corridor. Undead! And a weird, powerful undead. Not some run-of-the-mill skeleton warrior. This threw everyone else off. It took a while for them to figure out that it was just a gelatinous cube. The point is that I didn't just say, "A gelatinous cube is approaching." I tried to describe it in indirect terms and I successfully added some flavor and mystery. The PC playing Himo Liadon, the elven fighter, commented that he immensely enjoyed being challenged by an old school monster that he never thought much about. He was impressed by the fact that I had placed this monster in the dungeon and had it fulfilling its intended purpose: dungeon cleaning. I explained that I was trying to achieve what James Maliszewski termed as Gygaxian Naturalism. I'd like to have the dungeon monsters to have some sort of reason for their placement.

At the beginning of the fourth game session, the players slayed the gelatinous cube with flasks of burning oil. (Unfortunately, Cedric couldn't make it for this session.) The PCs cautiously explored further. After Milo Tosscobble, the thief, disarmed and unlocked a door trapped with a chopping blade, they found a cobweb-filled corridor and a dark figure shooting a hand crossbow at them! The elf goes down, the bolt tipped with sleep poison. The mysterious enemy disappears behind a door. Before the thief could unlock it, he was long gone. They try to follow his trail but they waste further time trying to sneak past a sleeping gryphon.

The fifth session was at a new location, in the basement of player running Hibob, the magic-user. Here there was more space and a larger table. And his huge collection of WotC plastic minatures was amazing. But me and my 1e monsters! The first monster I asked him to pull out didn't exist in 3rd edition. Unfortunately, two players were missing this time around, Cedric and Himo. Exploring another room, they found a pool of black water feeding tree roots hanging from the ceiling. Beyond the draped roots they encountered whipweeds that were a good challenge.

The sixth session, which took place last night, was the most exciting session we've had so far. But before we began, we went over some house rules. (I'll address these in a separate blog post.) All five of the players were present and we we all felt much more comfortable with the rules. After the PCs had their night's rest, I peppered their night with semi-random texture. During the first watch, Himo the elf spotted a dragon-like creature flying from the castle to the mountains to the east. Right before dawn, Royor, the half-orc fighter, spotted the gryphon flying off for its morning hunt. Milo, playing the perfect thief, wanted to go back and steal the eggs! But the others wanted to explore other dungeon rooms. Thus they burst into a goblin training room and a glorious battle ensued. Things were going badly for the goblins at first. But then then Milo went chasing after a goblin spear-chucker. This brought the attention of more goblin spear-chuckers and things went south for our heroes.

As I explained to my players during several previous sessions, I would not be going easy on them. I do not have any sort of long-term plot in the works for this campaign. I have no adventure path. There is just the players and the dungeon. If they die, they die. It's the nature of the old school game. Thus it came to pass that Royor and Hibob went down. Cedric made the rational decision to take Hibob's wand and make a hasty retreat with Himo. Milo, when he went after the goblin earlier, had become separated. But the thief managed to escape and, with succuessful climb rolls, managed to work his way around the cliffs and back to the dungeon entrance. I explained to Royor and Hibob that they awake in a dungeon cell guarded by golblins.

Gloom and doom! But we all had a good laugh. The adventure has taken a turn that no one expected, least of all myself. This has sparked yet more ideas about the future of the campaign. And everyone is very much looking forward to next week's session.

The Blue Dancer campaign begins!

Actually, it begins again. But this time, I'm focusing on a megadungeon.

In the last several months, I've been reading various old school blogs. One of the key elements that I think were lacking in all my previous campaign starts was a so-called tent pole megadungeon. I knew that Greyhawk and Blackmoor started with a large dungeon. But I suppose that I hadn't considered such dungeons essential until recently.

For the last several years, I had been tremendously interested in the imminent release of Castle Zagyg, Gary Gygax's legendary dungeon. In anticipation of it's release, I obtained a copy of WGR1 Ruins of Greyhawk and a copy of the Free City of Greyhawk boxed set. Impatient for the release of Castle Zagyg, I purchased the Yggsburg hardback and examined the region surrounding the castle dungeon. Finally, Castle Zagyg: The Upper Works was released. As I examined the module, I wondered if I could do better? Now I'm trying to put that to the test.

I had never gamed with any of the players before. But our common interest was playing 1e (OSRIC) in the old school style. Our first session was mostly spent getting to know each other, rolling up characters, and re-familiarizing ourselves with the rules. Of primary importance to me was knowing what the players expected out of playing D&D. The real learning experience for me was the second session, which took place last night, when I could learn more about how the players wished to conducted the game.

This time around, I made very minimal world building notes before I started the first actual session of game play. Excessive world building can cause infant campaign death syndrome. The best way to prepare for a sandbox campaign is to make a map of the local country side, place a few monsters here and there, note some important NPCs, briefly detail the "home base" town of the adventure, and prepare the first dungeon.

But although I knew the essentials of starting a sandbox campaign, I spent almost no time working on anything other than the megadungeon itself and the map how to get there. Because of previous attempts at starting this campaign, I had already worked out some general details about the campaign world. With this group, I was starting it again at a new locale. I knew the name of the home base town, Walton, but I wrote up absolutely no detail about it other than the name of the tavern and who owned it. I knew that there was a chain of forts linked together, Hadrian's Wall-style, on the nearby frontier border but I drew up no floor plans or details of any NPCs. I knew that beyond the wall was a valley that was a part of the Feywild that was permanently affixed to the Prime Material Plane but I detailed nothing other than a random monster encounter table. And although I had focused most of my attention on Castle Xeva, the megadungeon sitting in the middle of this magical valley, I had only drawn up one or two complete levels and I had only sketchy notes about the inhabitants.

One might think I was horribly unprepared for DMing a new campaign. Especially in the last decade, it seemed standard practice to work out all of the details of a campaign world before it actually begins. But it seems to me that tremendous preparation yeilds little in the way of anticipated results. Unless you're trying to railroad the players. And my ability to anticipate the actions of players I had never gamed with before was nearly zero. So what was the point of rolling up stats for the captain of the town guard? The players might not interact with that NPC at all. What if the players make a bee-line to the megadungeon and purposefully skip any nifty side adventures? This time around, I really did not want to put any work into anything that had less than a good chance of being used.

So I prepared a list of randomly-generated names of people, places, and things. I typed up one-page briefings of the campaign world and the history of Castle Xeva for the players. The campaign details I gave them were very general and allowed for tremendous latitude. Before I start filling in details of this campaign world, I want to see how the PCs behave. Indeed, I learned much during the first session of game play.

Luckily, this crew of players turned out to be excellent, experienced gamers. All of them had played various editions of D&D before. Although few had actually played 1e, this wasn't a problem. To my delight, the players had plenty of ideas that gave me fodder for future encounters. They all knew the cliches of D&D adventures. It turns out that I could have thrown a few adventure hooks at them because they were expecting them. But since I was laying out a clear path straight to the megadungeon, I didn't put such distractions before them.

Perhaps players have been conditioned to expect plot hooks. I intentionally started with just one. This band of heroes are all friends for whatever reason they want to work out amongst themselves. The half-orc fighter and halfling thief won in a game of chance a map to a secret entrance to Castle Xeva. With the help of the cleric and magic-user, the party obtained official permission to travel beyond the wall. They were there in the town of Walton to equip for an expedition to this legendary dungeon. All PC inquires about local threats and kidnapped merchant daughters turned up nil.

Was this lack of side adventure hooks a mistake? Maybe. But I have every intention of providing new adventure hooks later on in the campaign. But not now. I tried my best to make this clear to the players. They seek gold, fame, and fortune. And gold. When/if they come back from the dungeon, they'll gain a bit of noteriety. But right now, they are just 1st level nobodies.

The first encounter was randomly generated. A group of four goblins were out on patrol on the trail leading to the castle. After the ambush and capture, the PCs questioned the goblins. Uh, oh! I didn't expect that. I figured that the PCs would probably just slay them and take their stuff. The players wanted information! So I made it up on the spot. The goblins, of course, were based in the castle. Their chief brought them there from the mountains to the north. And, along with other tribes of demi-humans, they work for a group of humans that seem to be calling the shots. But these lowly goblin chumps knew little else. While the PCs argued about what to do with the surviving golbin prisoner, an unnoticed treant standing behind them snatched up the golbin and ran off into the forest. Why did that happen? Did the treant rescue the goblin? Or was something else going on? Did I make up all of this on the spur of the moment? Some parts yes, some parts no. But I won't be specific because my players will more than likely read this blog. The point is that I had some general ideas about wilderness surrounding the megadungeon and I'm letting random events shape the course of things to come.

Not all of the encounters that happen in this campaign will be random. But it's been my experience that random events can precipitate new directions. This one little random encounter has set a chain of events into motion. Not only has it given me ideas, it has given my players some ideas as well. One player thought it might be good to take the goblin shortbow and arrows and use them to kill members of rival demi-human tribes within Castle Xeva in order to precipate fueds. Brilliant! I had no idea that they would think of something like this. Maybe it will work! Go for it!

Another interesting PC-inspired development was that our cleric decided that he was a follower of the Flying Spaghetti Monster. Sure! Why not? I expected the player to pick from the defined set of deities from the rule books. I could have set up a big campaign story arc involving the scheming of gods that used their priests as pawns. Or maybe a world-shaking divine threat needed to be thwarted. All such long-term story planning would have been shot to hell because the cleric PC decided to take on a joke god. So I'll probably address the campaign gods in a more humorous manner for the time being. And lots of pasta jokes.

Our first session of game play ended with the goblin encounter. No doubt next week they will enter the dungeon proper. And already the plot thickens like a good tomato sauce.

I'm gaming again!

Support your local gaming forum! That's how I got the chance to continue my D&D campaign. And this time I get to do it old school style! It just goes to show that with some patience and courage, you can eventually find a good gaming group. And with luck, this new group will endure for a good while.

I met some of the guys in my group through a tiny gaming convention sponsored by Knoxgamers.org, a gaming forum in Knoxville, TN. In 2007, I had used that forum to start a small gaming group. Once we played through a module, the group dissolved. After that, I was uncertain as to whether or not I'd ever find a game group in my area again. I tried MeetUp.com and the group I organized was successful at first but it eventually fell apart due to lack of regular attendance. But I always paid attention to the goings-on at KnoxGamers.org. And it appears it has finally paid off.

I think that the "old school renaissance" significantly contributed to the formation of this group. I noticed someone on the KnoxGamers forum expressed interest in playing 1e D&D. I posted in that thread, stating that I was interested, too. A few others chimed in and we discussed it off and on for the last couple of months. We finally got to meet each other face-to-face at the little convention that the forum organized. It turns out that some of us had been reading the same old school-oriented blogs. That was encouraging for everyone and it has resulted in my DM'ing an AD&D campaign for the first time in decades.

At first, there was talk of using the Swords & Wizardry rules. I was in favor of the idea. But after some review and discussion, a few of the players noted that those rules seemed too simple. I pointed out that S&W, like the original D&D rules from 1975, was designed to be extremely open-ended for house rules. However, we decided that any house ruling we would make would end up looking like AD&D anyway. I'm still curious about Labyrinth Lord, which is based on the Moldavy rules, and I've ordered a copy from Lulu. (I'm getting the hardcover with the alternate design.) But we decided that we will use OSRIC as a base and the original AD&D rule books as further reference.

I really wish that OSRIC was available in print. I would gladly pay for a relatively expensive hardcover book. PDF files are swell. But nothing beats having a rule book in hand.

Ramblings about Pathfinder vs. 4E

I haven't been posting in a while because of work. But I've been reading the RPG blogs every day. Today I noticed a link to a very interesting blog entry at Chad Perrin: SOB titled How Paizo Fixed D&D. Then I noticed a response to that blog entry at The Core Mechanic. So I've come out from under my rock to post some of my thoughts regarding this issue.

I am no longer enthusiastic about 3.5E. And I'm even less interested in 3P, as the Pathfinder system is being labeled. The set of D&D rules that accumulated since the publication of 3E back in 2000 became a bloated mess. D&D is an exception-based rule system and the amount of exceptions became monumental and sometimes contradictory. The amount of preparation on the part of the DM became too much. The game's complexity is a turn-off to newbies.

When I returned to gaming in 2005, it was with D&D 3.5E. But even though I had decades of experience with playing RPGs, I was constantly at a disadvantage because I didn't have the level of skill with the 3.5E rules as my fellow gamers at the table. The group I was with was very unforgiving and lacked patience for newbie gamers. I saw several newbies come and go from that group. Newbies who had the time to play but were either rejected because of their seeming "unwillingness to learn the rules" or either just plain lost interest. Right before I left that group, it was suggested to me that I should just play a fighter since it was the simplest character class.

Good grief! There shouldn't be this massive learning curve for RPGs!

When I started my own gaming group, I DM'd in the fashion that I thought would be friendlier and more accommodating to newbies. But there was still that barrier of rule complexity. One fellow who joined my group was a really great guy who knew the 3.5E rules very well. Even though I was the DM, I found myself deferring to his wisdom regarding rule mechanics. Since I wasn't running a store-bought 3.5E module, I had to write up monster and NPC stats for each game session. The amount of time I spent preparing materials was massively disproportionate to their amount of game-time use.

This is the part where I start raving about the virtues 4E, right? Well, maybe.

When 4E was announced, I was excited about it. The more I learned, the better I liked it. The folks at WotC seemed to be mirroring many of my opinions about the shortcomings of 3.5E. They rebuilt the entire game from the ground up. Monsters are much easier to create from scratch. The skills are simplified. The classes are now balanced in a very precise and consistent manner. I like how the system of PC powers, feats, and tiers easily guide development so that you can have butt-kicking fun at all levels. This is in contrast to 3.5E, where you eventually discover that you have to meticulously plan character development in advance through careful examination of Byzantine rules in God knows how many splat books in order to make manifest your perfect snowflake. Massive programs have been written by third parties to assist with 3.5E character creation. 4E character development isn't nearly as complicated.

4E has some drawbacks, though, in my opinion. I miss Vancian magic. Most of the rules for PCs only relate to combat. Many aspects of 4E, so I've been told, strongly resemble World of Warcraft and collectible card games. The game now seems entirely focused on the goal of elevating PCs to inevitable apotheosis.

Nevertheless, 4E is simpler than 3.5E. But its style is heavily influenced by the popularity of computer RPGs and I'm not sure I like that. Ever since 4E was published, I've been wondering what this role-playing game thing is really all about.

I'm an old-timer who started gaming when the hobby was becoming mainstream. Only a few years after I started gaming, the adventure path style was beginning to coalesce in the form of Dragonlance, as James over at Grognardia recently pointed out. Although pre-generated characters following a scripted story repelled me, I eventually found myself buying into the idea that all good RPG adventures had to have a story arc. I convinced myself that I couldn't be a good GM unless I was a good writer. I've come to realize that this idea was utter nonsense.

As I recounted in an earlier post, I learned about the term, "sandbox campaign." I was also turned on to various blogs and forums pertaining to the "old school" gaming style. Since then, I've decided that old school sandbox campaigning is my preferred way of playing any RPG.

Then there is Pathfinder. (Were you wondering when I was going to get to that? I was too.) It is the continuation of the 3.5E rule set and is ideal for people who are not interested in the drastic changes of 4E. Apparently, much work has gone into making it a fine product. But it is not for me.

One would think that an old-timer like myself would abbhor 4E in favor of 3.5E. Or perhaps it wouldn't be surprising if I called myself a grognard that would rather play OD&D or 1E. But I'm not too sure I will abandon years of gaming evolution and return to an earlier, simpler system. And Swords & Wizardry is just about as simple as it gets!

No, what concerns me the most about modern role-playing games is the idea of the adventure path versus sandbox campaigning. In my very humble opinion, I think this bifurcation of attitude towards playing RPGs is at the heart of many discussions dating back 30 years. I think that it's at the heart of the dissatisfaction of grognards towards modern rule sets. And I also think it's at the heart of the Pathfinder vs. 4E debate. But I'm not sure that many people realize it yet.

(Here's where I really go out on a limb and where I will probably start ducking rotten fruit flung at my head.)

The 4th edition of Dungeons & Dragons is fantastic for old school-style sandbox campaigns.

There. I said it. Call me completely insane. But I think it's true. I'll try to explain why.

I've decided that story arcs are a bad idea. The adventure path is gaming entertainment and not actually a game. Paizo's Pathfinder is the culmination of that gaming tradition. It's in the name of their game, for God's sake. They've published not modules but adventure paths.

The premise of 4E is the "points of light" concept. This is as it should be. When I started my own campaign last year, I wanted it to take place in a period of time similar to that of the Dark Ages after the fall of the Roman Empire. That way there could be isolated settlements, perhaps a few warring kingdoms, and plenty of ancient ruins for dungeon crawling. I didn't want the campaign world to be too civilized like Greyhawk or other published settings. I wanted it to have as much wilderness as possible. After I dreamed up this campaign, I found out that this is exactly what was intended for 4E. In fact, the points of light premise inspired Goodman Games to publish a book detailing four sandbox campaigns in their Points of Light source book.

And then there is Mike Mearls himself who is running a sandbox campaign using the Wilderness Survival map, as suggested by Gary Gygax back in 1974. Hello? Did anyone else notice this? One of the lead developers of the 4th edition of Dungeons & Dragons is looking at the weird ways of old school gaming. Check out what he had to say about The Keep on the Borderlands. Even his blog is a play on that title.

4E is completely stripped down. Many have noticed that there is not much beyond combat rules in the core rule books. Is this a bad thing? Maybe. Or maybe it isn't. One of the virtues of old school gaming is the lack of rules. The DM and players of OD&D and AD&D were expected to make up rules on the spot if it was ever needed. Inventing house rules was part of the fun. Why is it impossible to take the rules presented in 4E and build upon it with house rules?

Another criticism of 4E is the lack of fluff in the Monster Manual. Well, there wasn't much more than crunch in the OD&D monster decriptions, either. Over the years, the lore regarding orcs and goblins became more and more detailed. Just take a look at the description of those monsters in the OD&D books and then look at how they ever so gradually expanded in 1E, 2E, and 3E. As of 3.5E, those creatures were fairly well defined in terms of fluff. In 4E, they are not. That's because it's now up to you. Again. As it was in OD&D.

So here I am, a quasi-grognard who thinks that 4E can be great for old school-style sandbox campaigns. The trouble is that almost all of the gamers playing 4E want video game-style "quests" handed to them on a silver platter so that the PCs can take part in the DM's scripted adventure path. And almost all of the gamers who want to play it old school want to do it using OD&D, AD&D, OSRIC, or Swords & Wizardry.

What's a weirdo misfit gamer like myself to do? Keep blogging, I guess.

The adventure path is gaming entertainment

I recently joined a D&D gaming group. In one of my message exchanges with the DM, I asked him if this was to be an adventure path or sandbox campaign. He explained that it would be a mixture of both. Curiously, he also explained that he was sometimes frustrated with his players because they seemed reluctant to interact with the world around them. And when NPCs react to their actions in a negative manner, they seem "shocked."

After writing a lengthy response to this recent message, I realized that it was too long. So I decided that a long-overdue blog post would be in order.

My new DM explained that his campaign is a mixture of both adventure path and sandbox. In my humble opinion, I would argue that it can't be a mixture of both. It must be one or the other. Either you have a story you wish the players to follow or you don't. If you have a story, it is not a sandbox campaign.

As for his occasional frustrations with his players, the problem (again, in my humble opinion) he is having is that he is giving the players the freedom of a sandbox campaign when he is actually running an adventure path. They are expecting the DM to provide the next "cut scene" (to use video game parlance) that presents to the players the next stage of their quest. They are depending on the DM to entertain them, to tell the story. They want the DM to have the king summon them to the throne room and present the quest. They want the DM to roll out the red carpet before them and present the goal of the next quest on a silver platter.

Dungeons & Dragons was not originally designed to play adventure paths. This mode of game play has evolved into being over the years because of our natural inclination to appreciate a good storyline. In my continually humble opinion, playing RPGs in this manner should not technically be called a "game." A better term would be "gaming entertainment." It is a perfectly valid form of game play. It is not "false" or somehow wrong.

Pro wrestling is not a sport but rightfully termed "sports entertainment." That is because there is a written storyline and the wrestling matches are generally choreographed. The opponents train and rehearse together beforehand. Back in the old days, pro wrestling was real. And wrestlers really did get hurt. Promoters realized that if their star wrestlers were getting hurt, they were not in the ring and therefore not attracting large crowds. So they decided to fix the matches. And, ultimately, they scripted them with the goal of entertaining the crowd and thereby making lots of money. This formula has worked for that industry for decades.

My new DM is definitely running an adventure path campaign. He has a story. He naturally wants to see it completed. He went to the trouble of planning it. He spent the time writing it. Perhaps he spent money on a module that he wishes to have the players see to completion. He might even envision how the big showdown with the bad guy is going to play out. He and his players have made an investment in this business of playing Dungeons & Dragons and they expect to see a return. The point is that they won't see the end of the DM's story if the PCs die. So the DM will be tempted to look the other way if there is a bad die roll. He will be tempted to create a deus ex machina in order to avoid the much-maligned Total Party Kill. That is the line that is crossed and that is where D&D ceases to be a game and becomes gaming entertainment.

In an earlier post, I extolled the virtues of sandbox campaigns and I declared that I would only play that type of campaign from now on. Well, I'm eating my own words! In the area of the country where I live, gaming groups are few and far between. After unsuccessfully attempting to restart my local MeetUp.com D&D group, I've been putting out feelers to join an existing group. This new DM seems like a nice guy and he's planning to run a campaign set in Greyhawk. If it is to be an adventure path, that is fine. I'll help the party see it to completion. But hopefully along the way my rogue will rise in power and take over the local underworld!

Strongholds

This is one aspect of D&D that I've never fully experienced. I have long dreamed about it ever since I got my 1e DMG back in the early '80s. But none of the campaigns I played endured long enough to warrant the building of a stronghold for my characters. The adventures I played always seemed to have been one-shot affairs. We would prepare characters and dive into a published dungeon.

As I mentioned earlier, I never became involved with an ongoing campaign until around 2005. For the first time, the players I was gaming with were actually developing their own fiefdom. But as I explained, I never had much say in that group and I eventually left it.

I'm wondering if building a stronghold for PCs is a dead art. Is it all about adventure paths? Judging from the resurgent interest in old school sandbox gaming, it might make a comeback.

To this end, I want to draw attention to a relatively recent splat book, Stronghold Builder's Guidebook. I believe that it was published before the advent of 3.5e. However, I think that it can be perfectly useful for any edition, including 4e. It's similar to some of the rules presented in Gygax's 1e DMG but with much more detail.

But then the next question is how do you conduct seige warfare in D&D? What about large-scale battles? I wonder...

How I discovered sandbox campaigning

When I got back into playing D&D in 2005 after a long haitus, I wanted to dungeon crawl. I had started reading Knights of the Dinner Table comic book and it made me nostalgic for the game session of my youth in the 1980s. So I was happy to join up with a group that had started delving into a couple of the famous modules by Necromancer Games, Tomb of Abysthor and Rappan Athuk. Although I ended up leaving that group for various reasons, I did appreciate the manner in which they approached their campaign. Even though they were using 3.5e rules, they were playing D&D the old school way. And it seems that this year a term for this mode of play has developed among various D&D bloggers: the sandbox campaign.

Back in the 1980s, I usually played modules as one-shot adventures. I don't recall playing a character through more than one module. However, I was fascinated by Darlene's map of Gary Gygax's World of Greyhawk. It is a hex map. There are specific rules in the 1e DMG for hex mapping campaign worlds. But I had never actually played a campaign with that attitude towards personal player freedom.

I'll never forget an occasion in the late '80s when I attended a party at an older gamer's house. I was in my teens and had played D&D for several years. This guy was in his forties. In one of his rooms he had a very large hand-drawn campaign hex map up on the wall. I asked him about it and to my surprise he told me that it was an old D&D campaign that he and some others had played many years before. Presumably during the '70s when the original D&D rules were published. Ever since then, I had wondered what it would be like to play such a campaign.

Last year, when I wanted to start up my own D&D group, I wanted to do just that. I wanted to run a campaign world of my own design. It was explained to my players that I was going to start them off with an old published module and that their adventures would lead them elsewhere. I also tried to emphasize that they were free to do what they liked. I studied 3.5e rules and prepared encounters. I developed a quasi-Cthulhu story arc that I knew my players would appreciate. It seemed that the so-called adventure path style of gaming was the latest evolution of RPG.

The adventure path is a term that I think was coined by the writers of Dungeon magazine for their series of published adventures. Over the years, I had taken for granted that RPGs were all about story. An improvisational story in which the players helped to construct. Although the players created their own tone and style, there was always required an overall story arc that was provided by the game master. One of the initial reason why I ditched D&D back in the '90s was because of what I perceived to be a limitation of style. RPGs, I thought, were more than hack-and-slash. Stories were important!

Thus I concocted a campaign with a story arc. And I found that I hated it. I realized that no matter how much I dressed it up, this adventure path method of play was nothing more than railroading. With the 3.5 rules, I spent too much time preparing encounters. Since there is no way of predicting which way the players would go, I had to put a great deal of preparation for contingencies. And those contingencies had to have the primary goal of keeping the players on the adventure path's track. To me, it felt dirty and dishonest. Like I was rigging the game. What was the point? Where was the challenge?

This was my epiphany. I subconciously realized that adventure paths dictated avoiding the dreaded Total Party Kill. This was no longer a challenging game for the palyers. Sure, the adventure path is entertaining. But if a DM spends time and money preparing a complicated story arc, he will naturally have the tendency to spare the PCs in order to complete that story. The players will always be victorious. Where's the challenge in that?

When I started my D&D Meetup group, I stated from the outset that I wanted to run a do-it-yourself campaign. I would provide various adventure hooks or knowledge of such-and-such nearby dungeon. But I wouldn't tell them what to do.

As I explained elsewhere, the Meetup group didn't work out for various reasons. Scheduling was the main problem for each individual player. One of the most loyal attendies listened carefully to what I was looking for in a campaign. I lamented that I was unable to keep a weekly campaign going if people were not going to show up regularly. I wanted the players to be able to explore and do what they want, to build strongholds, to create wizardy schools, to build great temples, to start thieves guilds. I wanted to make dungeons and adventures available to the players but not require them to follow a specific story path. I said I wanted to run a game like the ones that they had in the old days.

That loyal player recommended that I read a couple of blogs about something that's been termed, "sandbox campaign."

Yes, that's exactly what I'm looking for. And I've decided that this is the only way I'm ever going to play an RPG from now on.

(For further reading on sandbox campaigns, I recommend Alex Schroeder's post on the subject and its related links.