Railroading and Sandboxing: When Vocabulary Lets Us Down

One of the great advantages to re-engaging with the RPG hobby after three decades out is that we now have a vocabulary for talking about the concepts we employ when we play. Granted, it’s more of a jargon than a real vocabulary, but that’s an academic nit-pick.

We had that language, too, back in the 1980s. An overpowered campaign was called a Monty Haul, for example. If your barbarian had a light saber, you were in a Monty Haul campaign. But we didn’t have the amount, nor the precision of terms that exist now.

A lot of these terms are borrowed and stolen from Video Game studies, which is deeply ironic in that video game culture owes everything to role-playing games. It’s just as well that we share the cool words and terminology.

Unfortunately, that terminology can be as limiting as it is expressive. Maybe not the words themselves, but in describing conditions they inevitably create a dichotomy, an either-or choice that’s a bit of a fallacy.

I’m talking about “Railroading” and “Sandboxing.” Railroading refers to a campaign or an adventure with no room for player deviation; narrative, plot, and structure are rigidly controlled and any attempts by the players do alter that are summarily defeated. The way it’s talked about, it’s two steps below slaughtering newborns in their cribs.

Sandboxing is shorthand for an “open world” where the players have free reign to roam about the game space, doing what they want on their nickel and being the sole architects of their fates. It’s usually spoken with awed reverence, such as when you first lay eyes on the Ark of the Covenant.

Whenever campaigns are discussed (or disgusted) it’s because these two tensions are in play, much to the howls of outrage from game masters who insist on 100% player agency and no room of any kind to impose their will on the players. Or it’s someone complaining that they got forced into a mission or a dungeon where the DM kept having bad things happen to them and there was no way to avoid it.

I’m nearly 50. I am squarely in the GenX demographic. I don’t like absolutes and never have. Blame it on my formative years, popular culture, whatever. I don’t care. But I don’t think a little railroading is a bad thing in a sandbox campaign. And I suspect that most other people don’t, either. I’m talking about the dungeon master, here.

Oh, sure, there’s certainly a percentage of DMs who run everything on the fly, gleefully pulling stuff out of their ass in response to whatever crazy nonsense the players get up to. I knew a guy like that. Played briefly in his game. His players had been with him for years, and they had developed a co-dependent relationship with one another built on the mutual idea that they were going to fuck each other over as often as possible. So all decisions where made like chess moves, three steps ahead, trying to figure out what the GM (let’s call him Gary) was GONNA do if they did X, Y, or Z.

Games progressed at a glacial pace, and took six hours at a time, most of which was spent arguing about what to do next while also trying to slip role-playing notes into the game narrative. It was madness. But hey, it was a sandbox, and moreover, the players really seemed to enjoy it, for all of their kvetching.

I never liked that. For my games, I mean. I always had something planned. What that plan was depended on the game, the players, the system, you name it. Railroading is usually conflated with campaign structure, but follow me here for a second: if the goal of table top role-playing is to create a story that everyone participates in, doesn’t that implicitly require structure of some kind? Plot, Story, and Character are essential elements for telling a story, even in Improv. Right? And while a sand box game, even one like Gary’s above, is open-ended, eventually players will have to engage with the world. They will require a goal. Conflict. Intrigue. Something, anything, move them forward and roll some dice.

To me, having the characters forced into a mission they don’t want, or having them wake up captured with all of their stuff taken isn’t railroading—it’s bad DMing. Either the DM is a novice, not quite clear on the concept, or just doesn’t “get it” for one reason or another.

My current campaign, the World of Thera, is technically an open world. I say technically because even though the players can do what they want, what they really want is something to do. Even when they were starting out, I never asked them “what do you want to do?” without first giving them some choices: “You can investigate the rumors of the haunted tower, go check out the supposedly abandoned keep, or explore the surrounding wilderness. Or stay here at the trading post and get to know folks. Or something else.”

For new players, that’s really too many choices. I had to remind them that they can do it all, but not at the same time. After that, they quickly prioritized what they wanted to do and we were off and running. I think many modern-day players understand the idea of main quests and side quests thanks to video games, so it’s not a hard sell. Generally speaking, players in the game want the story. They like knowing they are getting clues and info and help and plot points. It’s not railroading to keep them on task.

Strictly speaking, I don’t think there’s much difference, DM-wise, between railroading and sandboxing. You still need the prep (though what you prep is very different) and you still have to pay close attention to what the players are doing. I don’t like it when players go off-script. I can deal with it, mind you; I’ve been doing it for years. I just don’t like it. And the other thing is this: I never let my players know when they are in the weeds.

There are ways to do this that allows you to keep your cool and your street cred as a DM. I’ll talk about that more tomorrow.