The Sandbox vs the Railroad | Running the Game

it was the best of games it was the worst of games a tale of two campaigns the sandbox and the railroad it's 1977 and John tells his friends he's going to run D&D they heard about the game he played in last summer and they're dying to try it the players get together to roll up characters and one of them looks at his stats and the different racial bonuses and says I think I'll play a dwarf one of the other players says dude I was thinking about being a dwarf we should be brothers that sounds cool too the first player so now they're dwarven brothers John puts the campaign map in front of the players while they're making their dudes and they all say wow this is amazing did you do this yeah John says I've been working on it for a while it's super cool the players say and they start asking questions about the map where do we start they asked and John points to a small town in the civilized area what's this over here oh that's an elven stronghold whoa this says tower of necromancy what's this place that's a haunted forest who knows what's in there Wow Oh hold on what is this dude there's a dragon drawn right on the map here oh yeah Shawn says that place is famous there's a dwarven citadel under the mountain but a dragon came a while ago and kicked the doors out supposedly there's a whole kingdoms worth of treasure there the dragon's hoard dude we should be from that dwarven Kingdom one of the dwarf players says hey John could we be like the rightful heirs in exile the other door says now John had planned on the players just being a bunch of random adventurers so his first reaction is to say no he already knows who the Dwarven leader in exile is it's Thrain son of Thror not this first level pc train is an epic npc john was planning on making him an important NPC that the heroes could meet but John can see the players are into it he doesn't want to say no where's the fun in that you could not be the heir to a dorvan Kingdom in any game at this point it's just backstory and it's a cool backstory and John's happy the players are engaging with his setting so even though it means the players are going to be more important than John had planned he says sure you're the son of Thrain son of Thror the last king under the mountain at this point the players all look at each other and say dude we should all be dwarves we're the retinue of the Dwarven Thane in exile John can see what's coming and things Oh meanwhile the first two dwarf players are like oh that was gonna be our special thing but before they can say anything the other players are like dude let's go on a quest to kill the dragon and take back our kingdom now the first three door players are like actually that would be pretty awesome and meanwhile John is like first of all he doesn't have the dorvan citadel under the mountain ready it's a lot of work also these guys are first level the Dragon will barbecue them but John's a good DM rather than follow his instinct and say no he tries to think of a way to say yes he realizes hey the mountain is way off on the other side of the map it'll take several gaming sessions to get there and in that time he can get the doorman Citadel ready and on the way there'll be lots of adventures the players will level up they'll get some cool magic items it might work and besides who knows will happen on the way there he says sure if that's what you want to do and everyone Cheers they continue making their dwarf characters come the first session though and one of the players shows up with a halfling dude we said we were all gonna play dwarves you were there you agreed the player shrugs and says yeah but a halfling is basically a dwarf what's the big deal this happens every time my group is hit upon the idea of playing a mono class or a mono race or even a mono alignment party one player always bucks the trend there's always one player who if everyone else is doing one thing they want to do something different when we made our first all evil game after everyone agreed to make evil characters only my friend Brad and I actually went through with it everyone else made chaotic neutral characters I think they got excited not by evil but by the freedom to not do good their excitement only lasted until the point where Brad and I retreated and left them for dead when a combat encounter went south they were really angry but we shrugged and said guys were evil remember when we said we're wrong to make evil characters we actually did that anyway there's one not dwarf among the dwarves and the other players say fine play a halfling but you better play a thief and Ian the halfling player says I am a halfling thief they're awesome and the other players are liked okay cool so they go off on an adventure to have lots of different encounters classic pulp storytelling out of the frying pan into the fire at one point john rolls a random encounter describes a troll camp the players come across and rather than ignore it they send the thief in and the players all get caught and it looks like a total party kill and the players look at each other and say man why did we even go after the trolls whose idea was this they think the trolls are too hard to encounter but rather than blame John they remind each other hey we got ourselves into this these trolls didn't attack us we tried to steal from them of course John just want to kill these guys so he asked his friend who played D&D with him last summer come play his high level wizard and save the party even though this is kind of a deus ex machina the players think meeting a high-level PC from the previous campaign is pretty cool so they don't mind they continue toward the mountain and they make friends and enemies and in some cases someone the DM said to be a friend and stuff an enemy because the players were stubborn and someone the DM set up to be an enemy ends up a friend because the players were clever and they do find some magic they find some magic weapons and halfling finds a magic ring but it's while he was separated from the party so even though the players all know he has this ring their characters don't and there isn't really anything the players can do about it eventually the players reach the mountain instead of fight the dragon they try to trick it into thinking their local humans from the nearby town and the halfling player rolls really high on his charisma and the dragon buys it thanks to some fancy role-playing now they've got the Dragons treasure but the Dragons gonna come back right well the party is only about fifth and John thinks letting them kill this dragon he's built up to be this fearsome beast would be anticlimactic having the dragon boil them would be another huge letdown so he kills the dragon off screen the players grumble a little at this but before they can think too hard about what's happened John has a couple of armies show up and try to take the Dragons treasure this is gonna be cool the players think all worries about the dragon now forgotten some of the players enemies show up as some of their allies show up and there's a huge battle it's super epic and one of the PCs dies but he dies in battle and in the end they win so he thinks the campaign was awesome that's the end of the game the entire thing was the players idea John had a completely different adventure in mind but when the players came up with their own idea he rolled with it as a result even though John had to do some trickery behind the scenes and the party relied on his friends high level wizard too much and there was a whole dragon thing which was supposed to be the final battle and it happened off screen the players still remember this for years as an epic campaign it becomes legendary among their friends that is a classic example of a sandbox game the DM put a map in front of the players they've checked it out and came up with their own goals John had no idea before they sat down that the dragon under the mountain was going to be such a big deal the whole point of the game but he rolled with it and it was an epic campaign a few years later it's 1982 and John's younger brother Elijah is old enough to play and he's heard tales of this epic campaign and asks John if they can play in his world and John says sure now John's a little older at this point he's done a lot more work on the lower of the world he has this elaborate backstory epic bad guys gods and men and kingdoms and so when the players get together he has an adventure ready for them they make characters and because Elijah heard stories about the all dwarf party for years he suggests they play all halflings Elijah's friends think this is awesome and they make for halflings Elijah knows all about the previous campaign so John thinks it would be cool if he was related to the halfling care from the first game hey how about you play that character his son that way there's a good reason for your character to know all the stuff you know his brother thinks that's a little too contrived and says well how about like an adopted nephew or something that way he still gets to feel like his own character but there's that connection to a previous character John says sure and says hey that means you inherit all that character stuff he had a magic sword and mithril armor and a ring of invisibility Elijah thinks this is amazing he feels kind of like he's getting away with something none of the other characters have this cool stuff doesn't seem fair the players start talking about what they want to do but before they can formulate their own goals John has the wizard NPC from the previous game show up and declare that he thinks the ring can do a bunch of other stuff like what the players ask well I don't know the wizard NPC says you'll have to take it to the Elvin Loremaster and have him identify it that seems like a reasonable first adventure for a bunch of halflings so the party decides to journey to the elf stronghold and get the ring identified they don't realize this was John's plan all along they never really had a chance to do their own thing John lured them into going the direction he had planned all along John thinks this is great the last campaign sure everyone remembers it as being awesome but he remembers all the stuff that went wrong he remembers having to bust out a powerful NPC to save the party over and over again he considers that failure he remembers killing the dragon off screen he hated that his favorite monster killed off screen this time he vows it will be different the players have adventures appropriate to first all the characters and then a new player joins the party let's call him Vigo Vigo doesn't know anything about John's previous game but he's read all the settings stuff John's written has a great idea for his character and John's super excited that someone's finally engaging with the setting the way he wants Viggo's character isn't a halfling and the other players are kind of disappointed but he seems cool so they don't make a big stink about it they all play for a while to have more adventures and meet some death Knights that are apparently chasing after this ring what is this ring the players are beginning to think two things one this ring is cooler than we thought and two it may be more trouble than it's worth Elijah starts thinking it would be best to just dump the ring with the elven lore Smith right before they reach the elven stronghold a whole company of death Knights attacked the party and basically kill Elijah's character at the last minute John decides no they were attacking to subdue you're still alive and even though Elijah is happy his character lived he knows John let him live and against nine death Knights he should be dead at this point he is sick of the stupid ring and wants to get rid of it he's third level and apart from the stuff John gave him at the beginning adventure they found no magic items they arrived at the elven stronghold and now Viggo's friends join the group Vigo told them all about this game and they're super excited this makes the group pretty large and these new players aren't all as cool as Vigo Sean for instance seems like a bit of a Wang rod he basically stole Vigo's character's backstory and says I am also the heir to this kingdom and John says well you can't both be the heir to this kingdom that's stupid and so Sean says he's the son of the regent okay well that's actually pretty cool Jon thinks because again it looks like the players are actually using the stuff in the setting he put there he hasn't noticed the fact that Sean seems only interested in making his character the most awesome in the group and stealing everyone else's thunder the other two players seemed perfectly happy just being murder hobos and have no real ambition but they're fun to hang out with Elijah thinks okay the group has gotten pretty big and Vigo's friends sean is sort of a Wang rod but finally we can get rid of this stupid ring god no the elven lore master pronounces this ring is the talisman of an evil God you must destroy it or the world will end what Elijah thinks this does not sound like fun this does not sound like the game Jon ran before hang on Sean says why don't we use the ring it's just a magic item it doesn't know if it's good or evil whoa Jon had not thought of that it never occurred to him the players might decide to keep the ring after they found out what it was he has to think fast actually John says it's an intelligent item it's got an ego and its own purpose which is to destroy the world that doesn't sound that bad Sean says everyone looks at him is there no other way to deal with this Elijah says he's pretty sick of this game already and wants to get back to the way Jon used to run the elven lore master says you have only one choice the ring must be destroyed well only one choice is actually as it turns out in this context identical to no choice so the party is screwed they have to go throw the ring into the volcano Elijah is not really having fun but everyone else seems down so they continue adventuring John has this great dungeon ready huge Dorf stronghold basically what he imagined would be under the mountain with a dragon but he never had time to get it done but the players say that's dumb let's just go over the mountain but that would be hard Jon says yeah but only as hard as climbing a mountain whereas we could all die in the dungeon let's climb the mountain fine Jon says and he basically throws a bunch of crazy stuff including like boulders from storm Giants at them until they give up and decide to go the way John wanted me to go in the first place at this point everyone is starting to get the idea that they basically have to do what John wants they've never really had any choices in all this it seems like the party are no longer fighting against John's plans so in the dungeon he kills off the NPC wizard he'd been using to keep them on track that sucks because the players liked that guy but they also thought it was weird that this high-level wizard was with them telling them what to do but never really doing anything John wanted a voice and the party to keep everyone on track but he didn't want this NPC to solve every problem for them so he kept coming up with reasons to have the wizard leave now that the wizard NPC is dead Shawn sees his opportunity before he knew if he tried anything the wizard would just turn him into a toad but the wizard is gone so he tries to take the ring he loves the idea of having an evil ring everyone's pissed at him but he's like what I'm just playing my character this is what he would do and rather than have everyone start fighting John throws a bunch of orcs at Shawn until eventually his character dies Shawn is like this game sucks and leaves Elijah sort of feels the same way he didn't like Shawn but he also feels like the party got too big and he wants to go back to a smaller party so he puts on the ring and runs away John looks at Vigo and says aren't you gonna search for him if he goes says actually I'd like to head to the human Kingdom and reclaim my birthright the elephant dwarf don't care one way or the other but they're Vigo's friends so they'll go over he goes John in desperation and sick of trying to keep everyone together decides to run two games one for Vigo and his buddies and one for Elijah no idea what he'll do for Vigo they'll have to wing it Elijah's game is the one John really wanted to run but at this point Elijah is so sick of John's plot and the total lack of choice that he doesn't even show up for some adventures so his buddy also named Shawn has to run his character for him they need more players so they get their friend Andy to run the Goblin NPC Scout they've been using the guy doesn't really understand D&D so sometimes he does crazy stuff and John has to sort of take over his character but at least Andy and Shawn are having fun Shawn doesn't mind running Elijah's character he actually thinks this whole thing is super cool he's been an audience member the whole time but now he's the leader of this party this is his time to shine meanwhile Viggo's game is going great like the first campaign this is not what John had planned but everyone playing in Viggo's game is totally engaged they don't notice all the stuff John has to do to keep things running like resurrect the wizard for no obvious reason they're fighting orcs and negotiating with NPCs and it's awesome John tells Elijah that his party's final session is coming up so Elijah shows up because he doesn't want to let John down and it was his game in the first place but all during this final session he's reminded of all the stuff John did that pissed him off and at the last minute he says Rainey's which causes John to go and he says fine the goblin Scout attacks you I do and he says yeah and you bite the ring off Elijah's finger this is crap Elijah says and gets up and leaves and he says wait I have the ring woohoo no John says because you were too close to the edge of the volcano and failed your Dex check and fell in you're dead and the ring is gone forever and he doesn't know enough about the game to complain Shawn and Andy look at each other and a weekly smile and tell John they had fun John meanwhile continues running for Vigo and his buddies because everyone's having a lot of fun in that game Viggo became the king the end if you're wondering what that story was about then I am NOT as good as storyteller as I thought John ran two games the first a sandbox game the second of story based game on Rails John thought the second game would be more fun because he was way more prepared but because he insisted on the players following the plot he laid out the group fell apart the analogy is imperfect virtually every adventure you can buy is story based and there's a social compact here DMing is a lot of work so the players are expected to do the thing the DM has ready the lesson here is not don't have a story ready the lesson is don't be afraid to let the game go off the rails player choice is critical to D&D I think the worst thing your players can say to you is we never felt like we had a choice every time I've experienced what I consider a critical failure of my DMing skills it's always been followed by the players telling me they felt railroaded including last week that's our next episode how everything fell apart and I am a terrible DM I guarantee you many of you watching next episode will say you should have known better in the interest of keeping these videos short and really because I'm still suffering with this demony I can't even hear I'm like right here we're gonna have to stop here in the weeks to come we'll talk about how to run a sandbox game and the ultimate sandbox game the hex crawler will also talk about how to wing it how to start with something prepared and allow the players to go off in a different direction should they choose those of you who join for the deck of many things episode where I'm giving away a d20 in the comments you'll be interested to know that as of the recording of this video Sunday night April the 3rd I am 32 subscribers away from 5,000 and my friend is 11 that's insane when you think about when we started this contest I think I was 2,600 away from 5,000 and my friend Jay was 400 away so in the time he's gotten 400 subscribers I've got almost 3,000 so those of you who are just joining us now welcome aboard I apologize if this episode seemed like a long drawn-out narrative but I wanted to set the stage for future episodes talking about how to run a story based game and make it feel like the players have choice and how to run a sandbox game which is my normal game I know a lot about running sandbox games I think I can make it seem well maybe not easy it is kind of advanced DMing but certainly doable and a lot of fun in fact I think we're gonna create a campaign setting together maybe we'll do it live and I'll stream it and we'll all get together in hex Agra fur and I'll show you how to do it I'd like to experiment with stuff like live-streaming and doing stuff maybe on Twitch where you guys can vote for how we'll build a party for instance or how we'll build a campaign setting we've had a huge influx of people joining us in the last just couple of days and I'm still really encouraged by what happens in the comments you know the reputation YouTube comments has but this may be the end of that we may be entering into an era where people are really building communities on YouTube and as a result like the comments on my videos are all great I love all you guys as always there are no ads on this station by me except this one I don't have a patreon if you wanna help support the station come by my amazon page i am an independent fantasy author if you like fantasy or D&D read the reviews of my books you might like them that's it for this episode you can follow me on twitter at Matt Colville please subscribe if you haven't already you'll get notified whenever I upload a new video next week we talked about catastrophic failure what happens when everything goes wrong like it did in my game last week until then peace out

Channel: Matthew Colville

Views: 1,033,037

Keywords: Dungeons & Dragons, D&D

Id: EkXMxiAGUWg

Length: 17min 7sec (1027 seconds)

Published: Mon Apr 04 2016

Reddit Comments

[u/MASerra]

This was a really great video. It really explained how a GM can run a railroad without even realizing it! It also shows how one GM can be awesome in one game and crap in another simply because of choices they make.

[u/[deleted]]

I don't know. I think the point starts of strong, but then sort of erodes as the video continues - particularly as the DM's "decisions" and the player's "reactions" are contrived to resemble the plot to the Hobbit.

I don't know for example what species of person would be "ecstatic" to have an asymmetrically powerful wizard-character that tags along for the rest of your adventures. And he was a deus ex machina as well?

And then suddenly random armies? That sounds dreadful.

[u/Akryu]

I feel like there is too much stigma in the rpg community when it comes to railroaded games. I get what he's saying but if the players enjoyed themselves does it matter? Personally I prefer railroaded games over sandbox ones because it just feels more structured but to each their own.

[u/rikeus]

It took me longer than I'd like to admit to realize what was going on here...

[u/theslyder]

I've yet to be disappointed with an episode of "Running the Game." Except for the fact that I can't get enough to be satisfied, that's my only complaint. His videos have actually made me go from a person that would never consider being a DM to actively looking into what I need in order to do it.

[u/ParameciaAntic]

Andy was always a great player. He can do so many different voices.

He came over for one session of an ongoing superhero campaign and did an awesome job as this South African arms dealer.

[u/scrollbreak]

So what is he saying when he says in the comments to the video

"Railroaded" is that unpleasant feeling the players get when they feel like "we don't have a choice!"

I mean, he's saying railroading IS when the players get that feeling, right? Not at other times?

[u/Mrpoussin]

verry cool indeed