Lessons Learned: Experiences in a Sandbox Game

[Sparky McDibben]

Some of you might have picked up on it, but I'm a veteran of the US Army. One thing I noticed about the Army was it's propensity to screw up. The armed forces in general fail all the time. The one thing the Army is better at than failing, though, is learning from failure. Every training exercise and mission are wrapped up with an After-Action Review (AAR). Broadly speaking, these are three things that went well, and three things that could have gone better.

I think DMs can learn a lot from that approach, and I try to do autopsies of each campaign I finish as I finish them. I figured I'd share the lessons I learned from my last campaign here, because I think they're highly applicable to anyone trying to run a sandbox game using 5E or one of its hacks.

For those of you wondering if this is just me touting a really good campaign, no. In fact, last Saturday we all agreed to just stop playing because everyone was pretty tired of it. I'm taking a month off of DMing (something I've never had to do before) to take a break after it. It has not gone well, and that's why I wanted to share what I learned through it.

For those of you wondering if I need a shoulder to cry on, no thanks. I have a sympathetic bottle of bourbon and an even more sympathetic heavy bag I've been working over, so I'm clearly handling my emotions like a champ.

No, I'm posting these up here because I think it'll help DMs avoid the pitfalls I'm discussing. And because screaming into the Internet is how I deal with stuff. Please do not bash my players; constructive criticism is welcomed, but let's keep it civil, y'all.

(Feel free to bash me, though.)

Spoiler: Campaign Basics

Show

This game was run in Esper Genesis, a hack of 5E that uses (per the developer) "the same room with slightly different furniture." Minimal rules differences, designed to deliver a Mass Effect-style experience. I had five players, all of whom have run a 5E PC from 3rd - 20th levels in a game I ran. There was a good spread of short and long rest classes, spread among martials, half-casters, and full-casters.

The conceit was that we were playing as humans (or genetically engineered near-humans) just before First Contact, exploring a newly discovered sector of space called the Tartarus Sector. At some point, I knew the PCs would come into contact with hostile and benign alien civilizations, and how they handled those would reflect back on humanity as a whole, triggering war or diplomacy (or both).

The core gameplay loop was designed as:

1. Party hears rumor about an interesting thing in a star system
2. Party goes to star system
3. Party explores star system
4. Party resolves threats in the star system, or flees
5. Party returns to port

XP was milestone. It derived from discoveries, meaning things that your character did not know that required risk and effort to find out. You needed a number of discoveries equal to your proficiency bonus to level up, and my design expected at least one discovery per session.

The campaign lasted for 35 sessions over the course of a year, reaching level 15. We did not do a session zero all together; rather, I met with players in ones and twos in the weeks leading up to the campaign to run preludes for their characters, essentially "dropping them off" right at the first adventure hook.

The sandbox itself was overdesigned. I generated 30 star systems, several with multiple sites of interest / conflict, using Kevin Crawford's excellent Stars Without Number. I baked downtime into the game by requiring solar recharges (a la Battletech's Jump Drives). These meant that you needed 1 - 5 weeks of recharging (depended on the star you were using to recharge) per about 20 parsecs of movement. Building this thing took months of time and effort, and I can't tell you how ready I felt to use it!

Lesson One: Do Not Try To Run Exploration-Centric Play If Your Players Don't Care About Exploration

It is a truth universally acknowledged that for every DM who wants to present a world with causality, consequence, and then run it as an impartial referee, there are like two hundred players who have had a rough week, don't want to think too hard, and just want to play through a cool story.

Yeah, I'm butchering Jane Austen. Sue me.

Now, it should be noted that these players are not wrong. I might find running for them boring as hell, but they aren't playing the game wrong.

I had already run my players through a pretty epic campaign (in scope, anyway) that was so player-led they didn't want to take downtime. At all. So they already knew my position on plots in RPGs (namely, that they are dumb and should be avoided), knew my DMing style (I consider myself an impartial referee, portraying NPCs as loyally as I can to their core principles), and knew how I adjudicated actions. So I figured they would be up for an exploration-based campaign. I literally pitched them a sci-fi game or a western, and they asked for a space western. I mean, when you get handed XP rules that are based around discoveries, you figure that finding sh!t out is the core premise of the game, no?

Well, apparently that was a surprise to some of them. During our last session, I solicited specific feedback on how everyone was feeling, and how they were enjoying the game. To paraphrase one player, "I kinda felt like there was no plot." Now, I could have blown my stack at that, because we had literally had a pre-game conversation around "I don't run plots," but I felt like that response was missing the player's point.

He was having a hard time caring about the campaign, because it was, literally, not something he cared about. In Robin Laws' categorization, he's a Wallflower. He likes to show up, roll some dice, have some cool spotlight time now and again, and that's it.

He was a bad fit for this campaign, and I should have seen that coming. Skerples tells us:

Selecting players for a game is like selecting ingredients for a dish. Sometimes, you're making do with the stuff in the fridge. Sometimes, you get to pick and choose. Sometimes (as with drop-in games), a bunch of ingredients shows up on your doorstep and you need to try and figure out what you can cook with them.

Post: OSR: Behind the Curtain: Session 1 Examination, 07/12/22

This actually holds up pretty well here. I had functionally lost a player before I even started the game, and I should have been aware of how different his playstyle was from what this game demanded.

Lesson Two: Run Collaborative Session Zeroes

This one would have solved like half the issues I ran into in this friggin' game, y'all. I figured we had all made characters in isolation in our last game, and that had turned out fine, so this game would be fine, too. In retrospect, this is like saying, "Well, the last time I played Russian Roulette, nothing happened, so this time it'll be fine, too!"

What actually happened is that no one was invested in anyone else's characters. Everybody kinda just stayed silo'ed the entire game. They never gelled as a party, because no one had built a character that would care about the party. You remember how I said I was really proud of building in downtime to the game, with weeks spent in space as they recharged? I figured that would be great fodder for RP-heavy scenes as PCs processed the weird alien crap they just saw.

In actuality, what happened was this:

Me: "OK, you spend five weeks in space together. What are you all doing?"

PCs: .....

Me: "Anybody want to have a scene with anybody else?"

PCs: .....

Me: "The NPCs?"

PC: "Nah, I'm good."

It was painful, y'all. And so much of it could have been avoided. Another thing that popped up was that one character wanted to be a cool pilot with her own ship! And of course! Why wouldn't you? That's an awesome character concept!

I decided to just give her the party's ship, and that was what her prelude was about - stealing her family's old ship back from these shadowy government types that would come up later in the game, and to which everyone else had a tie, as well.

This was about as smart as asking Michael Vick to dog-sit for you. The player thought, "Oh, cool! For this first game, I can create a cool moment of tension for the party by telling them all that there's a fee if they want to go on the adventure!"

That is a legit source of tension. It ****ing infuriated some of the other players. She never cleared that with me, or with the rest of the group (which, why would she? I hadn't established that as an expectation), and it kind of blew up. She never wound up collecting on it, and it was pretty clear that the weird energy at the table was notable, but I did an even dumber thing here:

I didn't intervene immediately.

I should have. "Pay 50 gp to go on this adventure" is basically a flashing red sign that you've screwed up as a DM. But I didn't. I instead reached out afterwards, and so freaked out this player (who just thought she was creating a cool scene) that she told the rest of the party they could ignore her character, or throw her in the brig.

End result? I basically set that player up to fail. That whole situation did not need to happen. The key to building PCs that are interested in one another? Build that in from the jump, with a collaborative session zero. Otherwise, you're playing with fire - sometimes, it'll catch. Sometimes, it'll fizzle. This time, it fizzled so hard that it lowered the godd@mn room temperature.

Lesson Three: Too Many Notes Is Cacophony, Not Symphony

One other piece of feedback I got was around how overwhelmed the PCs felt. See, I had built in interconnectivity between all my star systems, so if the PCs spent more than a few weeks in a star system, a random encounter check could give them a new rumor about another star system. From the second session to about the ninth, the PCs (through just dumb luck and a lot of socializing), generated about three rumors a session. So that's about 24 rumors. So the PCs are looking at the quest board as it starts to balloon like Aunt friggin' Marge just aggravated a pubescent wizard, and can't decide where to go.

This is also a function of the overdesigned sandbox. By creating thirty freaking systems, they were constantly lost as to where to go.

Moreover, my core gameplay loop failed. They never had a mechanical reason to go back to the main port; they got their fuel from solar charging, so there was never any need to refuel. I never set up a system to track food or supplies, so they were free to wander pretty much aimlessly. The reason it felt aimless was because without meaningful constraints ("We can only pick two options!"), navigational choices feel meaningless. Because there was never an impactful cost, there was never a real choice. It was *Spin the DM's Twister Card of Quest Options* and go.

Analysis paralysis and aimless wandering? Pretty much the two biggest things that you'll hear as negatives for sandbox play. I knew about them, planned to avoid them...and still got slapped upside the head with 'em.

Now, for my next turn running this game, I plan to address this by enforcing fuel as a constraint. No more free recharges; if you run out of fuel, you can make a last ditch effort to get some helium-3, but that's dangerous and will definitely damage your ship. Fuel will be costly, and repairs will be even more costly. Doing so keeps the PCs hungry for the next score, and keeps them wanting to go on adventures.

Lesson Four: No One Cares Unless You Give Them A Reason To

Another piece of feedback I got was that the campaign lacked stakes. Again, I tried to tamp down on my temper and really listen to the player giving me this feedback - she told me that the scale made the stakes feel grander, but less meaningful. She talked about saving an entire planet (something they managed to do by the skin of their teeth!), but said that it really didn't resonate with her. Because she didn't care at all about the planet itself. Like, yeah, they saved a planet. Cool. But...they don't really care about the planet, despite just saving the people who lived there from an awful AI-created tyranny.

Now, I could have countered by saying that in a player-driven exploration campaign, the players are supposed to tell the DM what they care the most about, and then spend as much time as they want to dealing with that. But again, that misses the point - she's telling me that she's having a hard time caring about anything, so there's nothing for her to emotionally invest in.

Saving a planet didn't matter to her. Getting jackfruits to an emotionally stunted mob boss named Jack-Jack so he could fulfill his lifelong dream of selling people "Jack-Jack's Jackfruit"? That mattered, because she could invest in that. And so most of those 30 star systems (and like two months of my life) did not matter worth a darn.

Lesson Five: Sandboxes Give You A LOT Of Tools. Pick Three

The PCs also mentioned that they didn't care about most of the factions in play. If anything, they enjoyed mucking with one or two, but that was it. They liked hunting pirates, but did not care at all about the colonial resistance movements they freeloaded off of. Sandboxes can be designed packed with content. Players check out after like three things, or at least mine did. Focus on a couple of factions, people, groups, or places, and introduce a third as the tension escalates between the first two. Let them get to know only a couple of things, and it'll make it more meaningful when you rotate everything out.

Lesson Six: Encounter Design Is Garbage

Esper Genesis inherits a lot of the design flaws from 5E. You can tell where the designers have tried to fix a few things, and where they just threw up their hands and said, "Ah, screw it."

Encounter design is clearly one of those places.

In a sandbox, your players will likely have multiple long rests between locations, unless you are playing with gritty realism or slow natural healing rules. That means that 1) random encounters will need to be triply deadly to make a mark if they are focused on combat, 2) You have a wide range of level latitudes when you build your locations, and 3) Triple-deadly combats get boring fast. Play Tomb of Annihilation to see all of these in action.

I approached this by avoiding gating my locations by level. In a few cases, I didn't even have statblocks written down. It worked well; a combination of a lot of 1/4 CR gang members and a CR 13 shadow technocrat was a pretty solid encounter for a level 8 party. I also noticed that by randomizing their reactions to the PCs and avoiding using combat-focused statblocks, I was able to focus on RP a lot more. The party wasn't being rewarded for combat, and actively avoided it frequently. Ergo, a lot more of this game was focused on finding creative ways to avoid combat and make those sweet, sweet discoveries.

Lesson Seven: Letting Players Murder Their Own Fun Is Miserable

I screwed up early on and told the players that they could play through the quests they got in whatever order they got them in. I did this to remove a lot of that analysis paralysis, even though it violates one of my core principles about running games (that time should matter).

This was very, very dumb. It was about as dumb as calling Alexander the Great a cotton-headed ninnymuggins.

It immediately removed all time pressure from the game. The players treated the sector like it was Skyrim, and told me so several times. "We're doing this Skyrim-style; all side quests, baby!"

I let them, because I figured if they murdered their own fun, it would encourage them to stop screwing around.

This did not work. To quoth St. Gygax:

YOU CAN NOT HAVE A MEANINGFUL CAMPAIGN IF STRICT TIME RECORDS ARE NOT KEPT

I mean, the guy's a bit of schmuck, but on this point, he's on firm ground.

Letting players murder their own fun is miserable, both for the players (who are pissed they are "doing the right thing" and feel crappy about it) and the DM (who is just letting their world get trampled on). Don't do this. Just talk to your players, or lay down immediately how you want to enforce the world.

OK, y'all, I've got all that off my chest. Ask questions if you want. Laugh, learn, hug your players / DM (with consent!). I'm going to go blow some stuff up in Battletech. Thanks for reading along!

Note to the mods: if this needs to be moved, just let me know and I'll submit a ticket.

[animorte]

For starters, I would gladly read your review of the nutrition facts of a water bottle. Keep being you!

TL;DR

I think DMs can learn a lot from that approach, and I try to do autopsies of each campaign I finish as I finish them. I figured I'd share the lessons I learned from my last campaign here, because I think they're highly applicable to anyone trying to run a sandbox game using 5E or one of its hacks.

• Lesson One: Do Not Try To Run Exploration-Centric Play If Your Players Don't Care About Exploration
• Lesson Two: Run Collaborative Session Zeroes
• Lesson Three: Too Many Notes Is Cacophony, Not Symphony
• Lesson Four: No One Cares Unless You Give Them A Reason To
• Lesson Five: Sandboxes Give You A LOT Of Tools. Pick Three
• Lesson Six: Encounter Design Is Garbage
• Lesson Seven: Letting Players Murder Their Own Fun Is Miserable

Very nice tips all around for new and experienced DMs alike. You don’t mind if I add this to my extended sig “got time to read” section, do you?

Spoiler

Show

Some of you might have picked up on it, but I'm a veteran of the US Army.

I read a thing some time ago, don’t recall where it’s from (paraphrased, of course): ”There are two places you can always find a [D&D] game, military and prison. When people are stuck somewhere they don’t want to be, you can bet they’ll find a way to pretend they’re somewhere else.”

(Feel free to bash me, though.)

No need. You seem like an honest and self-aware individual. The biggest lesson to take away from all of this is in opening up the lines of communication. It’s a powerful thing.

Yeah, I'm butchering Jane Austen. Sue me.

You’re safe from me. Not sure about my wife though.

Analysis paralysis and aimless wandering? Pretty much the two biggest things that you'll hear as negatives for sandbox play. I knew about them, planned to avoid them...and still got slapped upside the head with 'em.

Every. Single. Time.

…having a hard time caring about anything, so there's nothing for her to emotionally invest in.

This goes along with the “kill your main character” trope. Oh, the writer killed off one of the main guys in episode/chapter 3. Why… should I give a ****?

It was about as dumb as calling Alexander the Great a cotton-headed ninnymuggins.

My brother uses the same insult template!

To quoth St. Gygax:

Truth, not an easy one at that.

OK, y'all, I've got all that off my chest. Ask questions if you want. Laugh, learn, hug your players / DM (with consent!) Thanks for reading along!

As always, thank you for sharing!

[Sparky McDibben]

Very nice tips all around for new and experienced DMs alike. You don’t mind if I add this to my extended sig “got time to read” section, do you?

Go right ahead. Thanks, animorte, and I appreciate you!

[Sigreid]

Lots of good stuff in your post. I usually do sandbox and think I understand the core problem you ran into. It's not that a sandbox campaign has no plot, it's that the players get to build the plot they want out of the materials they're presented to work with. In other words, they only work well long term when the players set goals for their characters and pursue them.

[Waazraath]

Thanks for the good read and the interesting lessons. I recognize this, lots: "... there are like two hundred players who have had a rough week, don't want to think too hard, and just want to play through a cool story." You can spent uncounted hours as a DM preparing complicated stuff, complex story lines, loads of intrigue - and at the end of the day, it's my experience (as player and DM) that the party is most likely to kick in a door kill some monsters and take the loot. The positive thing is that 5e is best with that play style, including in its encounter design.

[Pex]

I'm also in the camp of needing a campaign plot. I prefer linear campaigns. Avoid the railroad by letting the players Save The World how they want to, but I'll follow the plotline. For me to enjoy a sandbox game I need two things. Plot hooks and consequences.

Sandbox is not necessarily the players go someplace and see what's there. Give me reasons to go someplace. Offer different and interesting stories to do that I'll care about. If another player cares about something more than I do that's fine. I can play along to play the game, and ideally I get to do what I care about in turn. I may even start to care about what the other player is interested in as the adventure plays out.

However, once that particular adventure is done there needs to be consequences. That means, presuming we Saved The Day, those NPCs we helped remember us. We hear from them again and have good relations. Our reputations grow so when we go someplace new those NPCs are glad to see us because they have confidence we can help them. More plot hooks develop as people purposely seek us out for help. We have downtime activities depending on the players - start a business, gain land to become a Lord, become a celebrity, gain social status, the typical stuff you'd find in linear campaigns. Being in a sandbox allows for such ties.

Maybe, just maybe, a campaign plot develops anyway. The players chose it. Maybe we tend to do plot hooks of similar theme. Maybe the players talked too much inventing a hypothetical BBEG behind it all. The DM never had one, but he now exists because the DM thought it cool what the players discussed. The sandbox became a quasi-linear game because the players chose to pursue this one idea out of interest and fun of the game.

[Sigreid]

I'm also in the camp of needing a campaign plot. I prefer linear campaigns. Avoid the railroad by letting the players Save The World how they want to, but I'll follow the plotline. For me to enjoy a sandbox game I need two things. Plot hooks and consequences.

Sandbox is not necessarily the players go someplace and see what's there. Give me reasons to go someplace. Offer different and interesting stories to do that I'll care about. If another player cares about something more than I do that's fine. I can play along to play the game, and ideally I get to do what I care about in turn. I may even start to care about what the other player is interested in as the adventure plays out.

However, once that particular adventure is done there needs to be consequences. That means, presuming we Saved The Day, those NPCs we helped remember us. We hear from them again and have good relations. Our reputations grow so when we go someplace new those NPCs are glad to see us because they have confidence we can help them. More plot hooks develop as people purposely seek us out for help. We have downtime activities depending on the players - start a business, gain land to become a Lord, become a celebrity, gain social status, the typical stuff you'd find in linear campaigns. Being in a sandbox allows for such ties.

Maybe, just maybe, a campaign plot develops anyway. The players chose it. Maybe we tend to do plot hooks of similar theme. Maybe the players talked too much inventing a hypothetical BBEG behind it all. The DM never had one, but he now exists because the DM thought it cool what the players discussed. The sandbox became a quasi-linear game because the players chose to pursue this one idea out of interest and fun of the game.

To me, sandbox means it's not all on the DM to chart the course. The players have to decide what the goals are and the DM then knows where to focus his attention and keeps track of the fallout. I.e. I know it was fun to burn that village, but there was a survivor that will now do whatever they have to, make any bargains they have to make in order to make you suffer as they and their people have.

[False God]

I've learned there are degrees to a "sandbox".

I'm not much interested in a cold unfeeling universe with a billion things going on and none of them particularly interesting.

I don't need rails, but sometimes a "tour bus" can go a long way to getting me interested in the setting and whats going on in it. Show me some notable sights, give me some options to follow the tour or get off where I see something I AM interested in.

I don't need or want ultimate freedom, nor do I want a linear railroad. But some kind of path to follow is always helpful, especially at the beginning. The couple "hard" sandboxes where the party has just been dumped in a setting and asked "What do you do?" are games I pretty quickly walked away from.

----

@OP: I think you may have missed out on where the party said they enjoyed pirate hunting. Let the game world come to them with bounties, missions and requests to put a stop to this or that. Sure, maybe they miss out on the greater game world, maybe they end up on the side of the Imperials vs the Rebels, but hey, if they're enjoying killing space pirates and making coin, have at.

This is, I think, where sandboxes excel best. Allowing players to do what they love, be it hunting pirates, being pirates, or being heroes. But they have to know that hunting pirates, or being pirates, or being heroes are options available to them. Saving a planet is meaningless if what you really wanted to do was steal all its jewelry and run.

[Sparky McDibben]

Lots of good stuff in your post. I usually do sandbox and think I understand the core problem you ran into. It's not that a sandbox campaign has no plot, it's that the players get to build the plot they want out of the materials they're presented to work with. In other words, they only work well long term when the players set goals for their characters and pursue them.

Yep! And that's exactly what I didn't encourage them to do. Or rather, I suppose I went about it the wrong way. For example, at one point one of my players got really invested in freeing a group of exploited clone secretaries. I was building towards consequences for that, but it never came to fruition. Also, I tied too many PCs to a single bad guy, and when he died, the game kind of stalled out when the rest of the PCs didn't have a backup motivation. So I guess the lesson there is that in a sandbox game, make sure your PCs want to have a long-term impact on the setting.

@OP: I think you may have missed out on where the party said they enjoyed pirate hunting. Let the game world come to them with bounties, missions and requests to put a stop to this or that. Sure, maybe they miss out on the greater game world, maybe they end up on the side of the Imperials vs the Rebels, but hey, if they're enjoying killing space pirates and making coin, have at.

But see, I did that. The NPC was like, "Y'all go take out all those pirates now, y'hear? We'll pay y'all so much more money. And some nice upgrades fer y'ship!" And then they got a starting point to go pirate-hunting, and then...nada. Bupkis. Zilch.

What I suspect happened is that this is roughly where their motivation died. They realized that pirate-hunting was fun, but ultimately nothing they could really invest in. And that's when the campaign broke. Now, if they'd had backstory hooks about a pirate crew that had destroyed their family, then at least one of the PCs could have been invested! But as previously mentioned, I tied too many players to a single BBEG and then they did the thing that PCs do - and wiped out a whole continent trying to get him (it was ugly).

[kebusmaximus]

Thank you, sparky, I also found this very interesting.

Mt attempt at a tl;dr:

1. Find out what your players want from the game and run that (alternate: pick players that you know will enjoy the kind of game you want to run). Make sure your players actually care about what they're doing.
2. Get the players invested in each others' PCs.
3. Make sure the game system mechanically reinforces the kind of game you want to run.

[False God]

But see, I did that. The NPC was like, "Y'all go take out all those pirates now, y'hear? We'll pay y'all so much more money. And some nice upgrades fer y'ship!" And then they got a starting point to go pirate-hunting, and then...nada. Bupkis. Zilch.

What I suspect happened is that this is roughly where their motivation died. They realized that pirate-hunting was fun, but ultimately nothing they could really invest in. And that's when the campaign broke. Now, if they'd had backstory hooks about a pirate crew that had destroyed their family, then at least one of the PCs could have been invested! But as previously mentioned, I tied too many players to a single BBEG and then they did the thing that PCs do - and wiped out a whole continent trying to get him (it was ugly).

Why couldn't they invest in pirate hunting? Cool ship stuff, crew, a base, maybe a corporation, some awesome space-lasers. Backstory, IMO, has nothing to do with it.

I mean sure if their motivation and interest in the game as a whole was just dead by that point, yeah okay. But this was a sandbox right? Investment in whatever they want to do is kinda the point, instead of being forced to care about saving some princess or slaying some dragon.

[Kane0]

This is the kind of thread I think is best.

I'm going to go blow some stuff up in Battletech.

May the PPCs always land in your favor.

[MoiMagnus]

Lesson Seven: Letting Players Murder Their Own Fun Is Miserable

I quite like this quote from Civilization' devs (Sid Meier and Soren Johnson):

“Given the opportunity, players will optimize the fun out of a game”; therefore, “One of the responsibilities of designers is to protect the player from themselves.”

For context, Civilisation is a turn-based game where you can do a lot of micro-management during your turn, and since there is no time constraint to end your turn quickly the designers have to be very careful not to encourage the players to take 30min to play a single turn, as it would ruin their own fun.

And I think that swapping designers for GM it capture the fact the situation quite well: if you remove a constraint (like time pressure), you can't just hope for the best, you really have to work to compensate and keep the players from ruining their own fun by abusing the lack of that constraint.

[RogueJK]

You remember how I said I was really proud of building in downtime to the game, with weeks spent in space as they recharged? I figured that would be great fodder for RP-heavy scenes as PCs processed the weird alien crap they just saw.

In actuality, what happened was this:

Me: "OK, you spend five weeks in space together. What are you all doing?"

PCs: .....

Me: "Anybody want to have a scene with anybody else?"

PCs: .....

Me: "The NPCs?"

PC: "Nah, I'm good."

It was painful, y'all.

It was painful because, in my experience, that's way too open-ended for most D&D players. Unless you're dealing with a group of experienced actors/"theater kids" (ala Critical Role) who are deeply invested in their characters' personalities and naturally generate their own deep roleplaying out of an internal desire to "act" and get some spotlight time.

It's akin to: "The party arrives at a tavern... Anyone want to roleplay something? No? Okay then."

Instead, if you're wanting to encourage roleplaying, you could try to build in some roleplaying prompts to encourage them. Have an NPC ask about a character's appearance, or clothing, or some other clue about their backstory. Or develop a scenario that causes minor conflict (as in conflicting desires/motivations, not combat) between two different characters. Put a character in a specific situation and then allow them to describe how their character would react to that.

You end up with something more like: "The party arrives at a tavern... The barkeep takes one look at Michael and exclaims "By the gods, that cloak... You're from Abbadon, aren't you?" Meanwhile, the tavern wench bats her eyelashes at Bob the Bard, clearly entranced by his fancy clothing, and she keeps trying to catch his eye. Over in the corner, there's an armwrestling match, and looking them over, Lilianna figures she could easily best any of the local farmboys. Michael/Bob/Liliana... Who do you do?"

[Segev]

How did doing all of the side-quests murder their fun?

[Sigreid]

How did doing all of the side-quests murder their fun?

[False God]

*image*

Supposing of course, that the players only find enjoyment in equitable challenge.

Curbstomping a baddie who thinks they're hot stuff can be fun as heck.

*insert "Combat as Sport" vs "Combat as War" debate here*

[Sparky McDibben]

Thank you, sparky, I also found this very interesting.

Mt attempt at a tl;dr:

1. Find out what your players want from the game and run that (alternate: pick players that you know will enjoy the kind of game you want to run). Make sure your players actually care about what they're doing.
2. Get the players invested in each others' PCs.
3. Make sure the game system mechanically reinforces the kind of game you want to run.

Breviloquently put!

Why couldn't they invest in pirate hunting? Cool ship stuff, crew, a base, maybe a corporation, some awesome space-lasers. Backstory, IMO, has nothing to do with it.

I mean sure if their motivation and interest in the game as a whole was just dead by that point, yeah okay. But this was a sandbox right? Investment in whatever they want to do is kinda the point, instead of being forced to care about saving some princess or slaying some dragon.

At that point I don't think they cared enough to invest. I know; I was perplexed, too. Maybe I was giving off signals of "You need to go here?" I certainly wasn't trying to, but I'm really, really bad with people.

This is the kind of thread I think is best.



May the PPCs always land in your favor.

Thanks! Got a headshot on a King Crab last night...then kicked myself when I realized I hadn't bargained for any salvage.

And I think that swapping designers for GM it capture the fact the situation quite well: if you remove a constraint (like time pressure), you can't just hope for the best, you really have to work to compensate and keep the players from ruining their own fun by abusing the lack of that constraint.

I think that's an interesting viewpoint. I don't like thinking of having that much power over anyone else's experience...but I think you're onto something there.

It was painful because, in my experience, that's way too open-ended for most D&D players.

That is really good feedback! I didn't figure they needed that, because they hadn't seemed to need it in the last campaign, but I just checked and I did a ton of work to lay groundwork in the first campaign. Damn, I forgot about all that. I think that this post by Mindstorm would have been super useful for some of the heavy lifting.

How did doing all of the side-quests murder their fun?

General aimlessness translating to a lack of sense of direction; lack of returning to the same place translating to a sense of a lack of consequences.

[Sigreid]

Supposing of course, that the players only find enjoyment in equitable challenge.

Curbstomping a baddie who thinks they're hot stuff can be fun as heck.

*insert "Combat as Sport" vs "Combat as War" debate here*

That meme was a pretty direct summary of what devs consider players ruining their own fun.

[Segev]

That meme was a pretty direct summary of what devs consider players ruining their own fun.

Speaking as a player who enjoys being the curb-stomper in a curb-stomp battle, I do not see that as ruining fun.



As to the sense of aimlessness and lack of consequences, might I suggest "side quests" turn into the main quest line in a sandbox game, with the side quests they do leading to the consequences of their actions opening up new quests in the same area that draw them back there if they follow them?

[Sigreid]

Speaking as a player who enjoys being the curb-stomper in a curb-stomp battle, I do not see that as ruining fun.



As to the sense of aimlessness and lack of consequences, might I suggest "side quests" turn into the main quest line in a sandbox game, with the side quests they do leading to the consequences of their actions opening up new quests in the same area that draw them back there if they follow them?

I didn't claim the dev's were right. Just that's where they often seem to land.

[False God]

At that point I don't think they cared enough to invest. I know; I was perplexed, too. Maybe I was giving off signals of "You need to go here?" I certainly wasn't trying to, but I'm really, really bad with people.

Fair enough. Maybe less big, universe-sprawling sandbox next time and some more small-scale interpersonal stuff. I know being bad with people is a common element of playing D&D, and I'm not saying I haven't been there, but it's something everyone who wants to play needs to develop to, IMO, play well.

That meme was a pretty direct summary of what devs consider players ruining their own fun.

I generally agree that this was the original approach to most game design. "Must be this tall to ride this ride." forms of gating higher-level content were common artificial approaches, most common in plot-heavy games, to ensure that players played through the story, and didn't just go kick the BBEG and win the game. I feel like this approach has lessened in more recent game design, though games with ties to older methods of play still implement them.

[kazaryu]

Fair enough. Maybe less big, universe-sprawling sandbox next time and some more small-scale interpersonal stuff. I know being bad with people is a common element of playing D&D, and I'm not saying I haven't been there, but it's something everyone who wants to play needs to develop to, IMO, play well.
.

idk, i don't think having a sprawling setting was the problem Per Se. I think the problem was more the focus on the entire setting rather than individuals within the settings. so like...the PC's don't *have* to operate on a galactic scale. the galaxy is still there, and theoretically offers new horizons. But that doesn't mean the players should be encouraged to pursue all of them. Im sorta agreeing with you, sorta disagreeing with you....like. in a sandbox i want the larger world to exist. but when i play in that world, its nice to be able to focus on a specific portion of it, rather than everything.

Spoiler: Campaign Basics

Show

This game was run in Esper Genesis, a hack of 5E that uses (per the developer) "the same room with slightly different furniture." Minimal rules differences, designed to deliver a Mass Effect-style experience. I had five players, all of whom have run a 5E PC from 3rd - 20th levels in a game I ran. There was a good spread of short and long rest classes, spread among martials, half-casters, and full-casters.

The conceit was that we were playing as humans (or genetically engineered near-humans) just before First Contact, exploring a newly discovered sector of space called the Tartarus Sector. At some point, I knew the PCs would come into contact with hostile and benign alien civilizations, and how they handled those would reflect back on humanity as a whole, triggering war or diplomacy (or both).

The core gameplay loop was designed as:

1. Party hears rumor about an interesting thing in a star system
2. Party goes to star system
3. Party explores star system
4. Party resolves threats in the star system, or flees
5. Party returns to port

XP was milestone. It derived from discoveries, meaning things that your character did not know that required risk and effort to find out. You needed a number of discoveries equal to your proficiency bonus to level up, and my design expected at least one discovery per session.

The campaign lasted for 35 sessions over the course of a year, reaching level 15. We did not do a session zero all together; rather, I met with players in ones and twos in the weeks leading up to the campaign to run preludes for their characters, essentially "dropping them off" right at the first adventure hook.

The sandbox itself was overdesigned. I generated 30 star systems, several with multiple sites of interest / conflict, using Kevin Crawford's excellent Stars Without Number. I baked downtime into the game by requiring solar recharges (a la Battletech's Jump Drives). These meant that you needed 1 - 5 weeks of recharging (depended on the star you were using to recharge) per about 20 parsecs of movement. Building this thing took months of time and effort, and I can't tell you how ready I felt to use it!

This Does sound really cool in theory. And for the record, i don't think it was a mistake having all those planets ready to go. from what i've read it was more in how you handled things. having an entire galactic sector spread out like that sounds almost ideal for running a sandbox within. keyword being within.

Lesson One: Do Not Try To Run Exploration-Centric Play If Your Players Don't Care About Exploration

while this is true, its also not neccisarily something you're going to be able to anticipate about players, especially if you've only played 1 campaign with them. if they're particularly experienced they might have an idea. but even then its unlikely. TBH, i'd say that while this can be a contributory factor for a game falling apart, its better treated as an unavoidable mistake. things like 'exploration centric' are fairly broad, and there are numerous ways they can be run, some of which may work, even for players that would normally swear they don't care about exploration.

TLDR: i wouldn't beat yourself up too much over this one. its almost impossible to know how someone will react to your style of play, regardless of genre or subgenre.

Lesson Two: Run Collaborative Session Zeroes

ehhh, i disagree that a lack of collaborative session 0 was the problem. its just important to, during a session 0, ensure the players are building a character that is designed for the game you want to run. in this case even with the individual sessions, you could have discussed with the players to make sure there characters had motivations that would lend themselves to taking on, and caring about, teammates. they don't even need to give up the 'edgy loner' vibe. you pick up teammates because they're useful, and you talk to/learn about them to ensure that their use is worth the risk of betrayal. (learning about them helps you gage the risk in the risk/reward calculus). some characters can do the 'loner to true friend' trope. while others may end up as sort of the 'old man in a profession when men die young' type deal. they never *really* make friends. but over time they become friendly with some other operators in the region, even after they part ways. "yeah, i ran with him for a couple years back in the early 20's. best pilot i'd ever met at the time. just don't mention hydrospanners, kid'll go on for hours".

TLDR: while a collaborative session 0 is probably ideal, you can still make sure people make team focused PC's in individual session 0's.

Lesson Three: Too Many Notes Is Cacophony, Not Symphony

oof, i feel that. im actually feeling the opposite problem (mostly, maybe, my own paranoia) in the current game im running. i feel like im not offering enough options, and that maybe my players will feel like im railroading them...but noones said anything, and they all seem to be excited to show back up soo...

Lesson Four: No One Cares Unless You Give Them A Reason To



Lesson Five: Sandboxes Give You A LOT Of Tools. Pick Three

I agree with both lessons, but think that really they solve each other. the reason you pick a few, is to give the players specific things they can focus on and invest in, when then gives them reasons to care.

an alternative that i've found is that you give them reasons that are very similar to real world reasons. things like 'children are in danger' or uhhh....i can't think of any other universal things like that off the top of my head. My current Players's have had very little consistent contact with any NPC's but they're still fairly invested. for their first overall adventure they learned that dopplegangers had infiltrated this town, and revealed themselves relatively early to them. this resulted in the PC"s being framed for some crimes, and alienated from the town until they managed to pull together a plan that revealed the dopples. The players were invested, in that case, i think largely because they were wrongfully accused, and for several sessions, every step they took was used the the dopples to also push the town further against them
-PC's find the mayor murdered, get the guard involved. Dopples murder/replace the investigation team and pin it on the PC's.
-PC's manage to investigate/destroy the dopples base of operations while they're away pretending to be guards? dopples make it look like the PC's murdered the dopples former cover in a particularly violent and sadistic maner
-PC"s dig up the mayors manservant (also murdered) to see what he might know? well..you get the picture.

then the current situation has the PC's delving into a meenlock nest to rescue some kids. one of the kids specifically is a relative of someone that helped them escape from some slavers. but the real hook that seems to be drawing the players in is the meenlocks. if you're unaware, meenlocks beat their captives unconscious, then keep them their while they torture them nightmares. This continues until the captive(s) go insane and turn into more meenlocks. so with the current captives being children....idk, it seems to be working.

and i should note that this is in 2 different locations that are independant from one another. the two quests didn't lead into each other, party just decided to go to this one town. So...perhaps that can help you. you already have the 30 planets, maybe take a look at the quests and see if you can rework them to make them more personal, if not to the PC's, then to the players.

Lesson Six: Encounter Design Is Garbage

i can't comment too much on this as i rarely use monsters out of the box, and i've never tried to use the games built in encounter designer. i just wing it....almost every time. typically i try to focus on making each encounter memorable. but then i also tend to not run tons of encoutners, or at least, i haven't in my current campaign.

Lesson Seven: Letting Players Murder Their Own Fun Is Miserable

ooof, yeah, ideally you don't want to put players in a position where 'its not fun right now, but hopefully it will be down the road'. as you have already gathered, communication is probably the solution here. not really much else to add.

Yep! And that's exactly what I didn't encourage them to do. Or rather, I suppose I went about it the wrong way. For example, at one point one of my players got really invested in freeing a group of exploited clone secretaries. I was building towards consequences for that, but it never came to fruition. Also, I tied too many PCs to a single bad guy, and when he died, the game kind of stalled out when the rest of the PCs didn't have a backup motivation. So I guess the lesson there is that in a sandbox game, make sure your PCs want to have a long-term impact on the setting.
.

hmm, idk if thats necessary. i think its more about making the players feel like they had an impact. period. and while that *could* be on the setting, i think thats a bit harder to actually feel. like 'yeah man, i get that in reality what we did changed the galaxy but...idk, it just doesn't feel like it'. If OTOH they feel like they impacted the lives of key NPC's they cared about. that could work as well, if not better.

[Sigreid]

idk, i don't think having a sprawling setting was the problem Per Se. I think the problem was more the focus on the entire setting rather than individuals within the settings. so like...the PC's don't *have* to operate on a galactic scale. the galaxy is still there, and theoretically offers new horizons. But that doesn't mean the players should be encouraged to pursue all of them. Im sorta agreeing with you, sorta disagreeing with you....like. in a sandbox i want the larger world to exist. but when i play in that world, its nice to be able to focus on a specific portion of it, rather than everything.

I like to start with a single village or city that is defined as the character's home. But I know when I do that my players will set about integrating themselves into their home.

Edit: Generally, I think a frontier village on the edge of the wilds provides the best start. They can move later, but I've found my players start building the village into a town and then city.

[Kane0]

Thanks! Got a headshot on a King Crab last night...then kicked myself when I realized I hadn't bargained for any salvage.

Unless you're playing modded, always go for the salvage. You can always sell it to make money as needed, or cover yourself from unfortunate losses in the field.

Also, bulwark + cover is easy mode and marauders are straight up unfair with called shots.

[da newt]

For many Players a plot hook that involves an emotional attachment is good motivation. Everyone is different, so you have to figure out what sorts of things resonate / are impactful for your Players. Some folks want to be heroic and right wrongs (slavers are EVIL so I must bash them and free the imprisoned); Some folks want to care about an individual PC and help them improve their situation (evil step mother steals the maiden's vitality to fuel her magic); Some folks want to solve mysteries and recover loot / cool magic items (I'm Indiana Jones); and other folks like to build civilizations and work on a more global scale.

IMO, figuring out the above is the primary goal of a Session 0. It's also a good place to ask your Players to create reasons why their characters decided to go adventuring and why they want to be part of this adventuring party. If you can start a campaign with those things in mind, they can drive your world building and adventure planning.

I like to think of my role as DM as being very similar to writing a 'choose your own adventure' book where every so often you offer the party a choice of path A or path B or you (the party) creates an alternate path C. (I find limiting folks to option A or B or you create option C helps most folks feel like they have plenty of agency but not too many things that can lead to analysis paralysis or 'it doesn't matter - whatever'). I also like to create / design as I go so I can better adjust to the Players. I like to have a good outline of branches and sequels, but I'll leave the details until I have a better idea that the party is headed towards something.

[Sulicius]

A wonderful writeup, thank you so much for taking the time to share this!

I had similar trouble with a sandbox hexcrawl where I tried to make basebuilding a thing, where I was woefully underprepared for the mechanical aspect.

I do want to run a sandbox spelljammer campaign at some point. What advice would you give of things that DID work out?

[LordShade]

Fantastic post. My last session was a pointcrawl that failed miserably. The players had no interest in checking out these extra locations and just wanted to get to the main objective. Reading your post is making me reflect on what I should have done differently.

[Spo]

Thank you for taking the time to write this. Having started writing a campaign (along with a campaign world), I can share your pain somewhat as well as appreciate your desire to want to build a fully fleshed out universe before the first dice is rolled. The lessons you learned certainly have me thinking about certain aspects I should be aware of.

Earlier this year a started a thread here about Railroading Players and questioned whether that was a good thing or not (thread started here but was moved to the general role playing section). You might find some of the comments made in that thread insightful as well.

Also it was a very smart/brave thing to do in ending the madness of a game that was not working for anyone without feelings being hurt on either side. Showed good communication and trust you and your players have with each other.

[Sparky McDibben]

As to the sense of aimlessness and lack of consequences, might I suggest "side quests" turn into the main quest line in a sandbox game, with the side quests they do leading to the consequences of their actions opening up new quests in the same area that draw them back there if they follow them?

Did that. The problem was they never came back to any given system, which somewhat blunted the "consequences of their actions" bit. This highlights the breakdown in the core gameplay loop - hard to have consequences when you can always just pick up and run to the next system.

Fair enough. Maybe less big, universe-sprawling sandbox next time and some more small-scale interpersonal stuff. I know being bad with people is a common element of playing D&D, and I'm not saying I haven't been there, but it's something everyone who wants to play needs to develop to, IMO, play well.

Yep! That's the goal with the posts; I figure the brain trust on here has got to have some well-adjusted human beings.

I do want to run a sandbox spelljammer campaign at some point. What advice would you give of things that DID work out?

Procedural generation is your friend. Having a system like Stars Without Number is invaluable for generating the actual adventure elements in a given place. Being able to offload that creative load onto some dice and a random table frees up a lot of cognitive load.

The factions worked well without faction turns. You don't need to really have a mechanical construct for running factions; just a couple of opposed dice rolls works. Are two factions about to have a throwdown? Roll off. If there's a disparity in strength or whatever, use different sized dice, but if one of them is a shadowy scheming secret bunch of tech enthusiasts and the other is the UN, just roll the same number. If the tech enthusiasts win, that means they've suborned and coopted the UN presence - a silent victory.

The reason factions are so useful is the aforementioned consequences. If your players screw over a faction, have them respond. That's why having all factions have (at the very least) agents in the major ports is useful. Screwed them over on a job? Let's see how you handle your ship being on fire. Or your taxes raised. Etc.

Ignoring encounter balance. Holy crap was this a load off my chest. I was nervous going into this because I didn't know how EG would play with my normal 5E design mode, and it worked pretty well.

Fantastic post. My last session was a pointcrawl that failed miserably. The players had no interest in checking out these extra locations and just wanted to get to the main objective. Reading your post is making me reflect on what I should have done differently.

Glad to help!

Thank you for taking the time to write this. Having started writing a campaign (along with a campaign world), I can share your pain somewhat as well as appreciate your desire to want to build a fully fleshed out universe before the first dice is rolled. The lessons you learned certainly have me thinking about certain aspects I should be aware of.

Earlier this year a started a thread here about Railroading Players and questioned whether that was a good thing or not (thread started here but was moved to the general role playing section). You might find some of the comments made in that thread insightful as well.

Also it was a very smart/brave thing to do in ending the madness of a game that was not working for anyone without feelings being hurt on either side. Showed good communication and trust you and your players have with each other.

Thanks!