Taking 20 Podcast - Ep 246 - Railroads vs Sandboxes 2

Episode Date: January 26, 2025

There are railroads and there are sandboxes and never the twain shall meet, right?  Not so fast, my friend.  Today Jeremy discusses the two game types and multiple ways to blend them together.   #pf2e #Pathfinder #gmtips #dmtips #dnd #rpg #railroad #sandbox Resources: Game Masters of Exandria Roundtable:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LmZSWKPXhZ4 Sandbox vs Railroad:  Which is Better?  https://www.thearcanelibrary.com/blogs/news/sandbox-vs-railroad-which-is-better?srsltid=AfmBOopkIlstCFvZ_Z2HSQu1-oxxkmLXKKzgH5jLgjzjQuX0m5_INiLA

This week on the Taking20 Podcast. The adventure is written such that they will go to a place A and do things one, two, and three. And then they'll go to place B and they will do things four, five, and six, and so forth all the way through. All three modules, all six books, whatever the campaign or adventure path turns out to be. Thank you for listening to the Taking 20 podcast, episode 246, more discussion about railroads versus sandboxes.

I want to thank this week's sponsor, Toast. I like it when toast stays overnight at my house. They always wear jammies. Again, this episode, I'm not going to ask you for a donation. If you have any desire to donate to a worthy cause, please consider one of the non-profit organizations helping out with the recent wildfires in California and the crippling cold that has descended into traditionally warm states in the south. I'm not going to recommend a specific one, but if you'd like to help, please consider

researching a worthy organization and donating money or extra clothing or whatever you can. My heart goes out to all of those affected by these disasters, and I really wish I could do more than I have. Now you may be asking, another Railroad vs Sandbox episode, Jeremy? Yeah. I think it's been five years since my last one and that episode predates my YouTube channel so yeah we're doing railroads and sandboxes today. Players, I want to give you a direct and clear warning about

this episode. In this episode a great GM secret will be revealed. If you've never sat behind the screen and never tried to run a game for an extended period of time, the reveal of this secret may diminish the magic of the game somewhat. The secret that I'm going to reveal isn't used by all DMs, but many of us do it in order to keep the game moving along at a reasonable pace and in order to save our sanity. So I'll give you that warning. This may be an episode that pure players may want to skip.

If you do listen on and it does cast a shadow over your home game, please accept my sincerest and wholehearted apologies, but if you want to come yell at me about it, I'm going to point you back to this warning. I promise, a pure player episode is coming soon to make it up to you. Last chance to back out. Since the vast majority of my listeners joined after that early episode 7 where I talked about railroads and sandboxes, let's do a level set and define some terms.

A pure railroad adventure is an adventure where player character choices do not matter, or they matter very little. Player agency is sacrificed for story narrative. The great dungeon master Chris Perkins once said that a railroad denies players any opportunity to affect change through actions or decisions. So in short, the traditional definition of a railroad is where the DM forces players down a series of events regardless of the choices that the players make for their characters. A primitive and

literal example of this would be a five-room dungeon laid out in a straight line. There are no branching paths, there are no secret doors, there is no way to experience the adventure in any other way other than room A, then B, then C, then D, and finally E. You can't skip C through creative use of skills or negotiate your way from A to C with a good diplomacy check on the door guards. Nope. The adventure goes in order no matter what the characters choose to do. Contrast that with a pure sandbox where, for example, you have a quest hub, maybe the job board at the center of the town of Hot Springs, where residents leave strips of leather with a potential quest on it and the PCs select the next adventure they want to go on.

The GM then reacts to the adventures that the PCs want to go on and select and the living breathing world changes to reflect the choices made by the PCs, both good and bad. Back in episode 238, I discussed West Marches type campaigns, which are sandboxes in their purest form. There have been so many discussions about railroads and sandboxes. Which one's better? What should your campaign be? Are there times when you want to use one or the other?

The answer to that last question is absolutely. Both have their place in gaming, and different games are designed for different weight of railroad versus sandbox. If you've been gaming a while, be honest with me. different games are designed for different weight of Railroad vs Sandbox. If you've been gaming a while, be honest with me, when you hear the term Railroad, chances are you don't automatically think of something positive. You've probably heard terms like the GM is Railroading the players or the Adventure is just one big Railroad. Railroads get a really bad rap because most people cite the worst, most egregious examples

of them when criticizing them. In an early episode I used an example of PCs being on a runaway stagecoach. The PCs ask if they can slow the horses down and the DM just says no because the reins are on the ground between the horses legs. They ask if they can jump off the stagecoach. No you can't do that because you'll die it's going too fast. So the PCs ask if there's any sort of emergency equipment on board that can help them out of their situation and the DM says no. The PCs are stuck with no way to change their fate and no way to alter the path the DM has put them on. In situations like this, yes, this is an example of a bad railroad. The GM has put

them in a situation where none of their choices matter and they have no alternative but to go along with what the DM has planned for them in the near future. Why do DMs do this? Well that answer could be an episode all its own. Maybe the GM had one specific thing prepped and is trying to get to it. Maybe the GM knows what the next story domino is and trying to get the players to that location where it can happen. Or maybe the GM just can't think of what they would do if the PCs stopped the stagecoach and they put events in motion that does not allow them to alter the trajectory of the story.

I can sense some of you already lighting your pitchforks and sharpening your torches ready to riot at the thought of a DM doing this to their players. I mean, what kind of monster would put player characters on a railroad with a set beginning, middle, and end? They would have to be unrepentant bastards who have no regard for their players' feelings, right? Well, now's when I'm going to tell you that the vast majority of pre-printed adventure modules that are out there are primarily railroads. That doesn't make pre-printed modules equivalent to stagecoaches that PCs can't steer. In the example of the stage coach, player agency has been completely taken away from the PCs.

This is an example of a bad railroad. The GM has one plan, the PCs can't change it no matter what they do, there's almost no point in playing the game, the GM should just go become an author and write the story they want. However, pre-printed modules tend to be the better type of railroad, one that the PCs have agency in and can dramatically affect the outcome of the story. If you doubt that pre-printed modules are railroads, some adventures are dozens, even hundreds of pages long, and depend on the events happening in a certain order. Let's talk about the classic adventure Keep on the Borderlands, one of my favorites. The players are expected to go to the Keep, explore the hills, find the caverns, and then find the

Caves of Chaos, and then do the big dungeon all in that order. That's a railroad, like so many adventures published today. The adventure is written such that they will go's a railroad, like so many adventures published today. The adventure is written such that they will go to a place A and do things one, two, and three, and then they'll go to place B and they will do things four, five, and six, and so forth, all the way through. All three modules, all six books, whatever the campaign or adventure path turns out to be. Things in the adventure happen in a certain order and have to for the story to play out anything close to what's printed in the module.

The PCs have to steal the MacGuffin from Lieutenant Danube so Captain Tigress can later take her revenge. You maybe just asked yourself, Jeremy, are you just naming things after rivers right now? And the answer is yes, but I do have a very good reason. To combat a possible hernia that I have and until I can get imaging done my doctor has prescribed me some new muscle relaxers and to quote the poet Wade Wilson I am orbiting Saturn right now. Dear God I probably do not even need to

be recording. But I have a deadline and this has to get done my apologies if my thoughts wander a little bit. So most pre-printed modules you can buy and run at your table are big railroads. That means they suck, right? Because railroads are awful and should be avoided by DMs. Now, you may get tired of hearing me say this, but railroads are not always a bad thing. Railroad adventures make it easier on your hard-working GM who has to prep all these sessions and get them ready in a certain order. That's the reason so many adventures are written as railroads, is because it allows your GM to stay one step ahead of you in the adventure. The night that you were in the sewers of Waterdeep looking for the Brown Cloak Assassins,

your GM was prepping the Brown Cloak Assassin hideout. Railroad adventures allow DMs to prepare efficiently. There's little worse behind the screen than trying to prepare the next session for three or six or nine possible decisions or outcomes. That's why my first tip for today's episode is this. DMs, if you are running a campaign and there's a decision to be made about where the party's going to go next, make absolutely sure your group makes that decision before tonight's session is over. That will give you the opportunity to focus your prep for the next session. I know what you might be thinking, Jeremy, that's obvious I knew that

coming in. Fair enough. If you're not wowed by that advice, let me start with another one. Most of the best adventures are a mix of railroads and sandboxes. I've mentioned that I always go looking for what others have said about a topic and I found a great article on the arcane library.com about which is better sandboxes or railroads and they tend to agree that it's best if you can mix them together. They call a mix between a railroad and a sandbox a sand road and I'm going to put a link to that article in the description and resources of the episode Go give that a read for a little more in-depth discussion on it So how in the world can you blend a sandbox and a railroad? They seem to be completely opposite of one another for the first blended example I'm gonna use the game cyberpunk 2077 as a great case of blending the two don't worry

I'm not going to spoil anything about the game. In the game, Night City is one big sandbox. You're given a number of possible missions and gigs. Some of them directly relate to the main questline, but others don't. It's the player's choice whether they take on the main missions related to the storyline of the game, or start doing side missions and gigs for various fixers throughout the city. The main quest line is a railroad. You have to do A, then B, then C, then D in order to get to one of the endings of the

game. But in a bit of a break from realism, you can take all the time you want between A and B or B and C and so forth. Sure, in the game you're sick, but you can take days or even weeks between main plot points. It's done for gameplay reasons, but most players can suspend their disbelief enough to tolerate this little fantastical design decision. I think that this game is a full blend of railroad and sandbox, and I've just come to an agreement with the article on Arkane Library like just now as I was talking, I'm going to call this type of blending a sand road, with apologies

to the author of that great article. The advantage of this type of adventure is the complete agency afforded to the player characters. They can interrupt their quest for the Platinum Chalice to take care of the wolves that are hunting farmer Brandy's crops. Well, it just so turns out that Brandy is a witch and has taken it upon herself to rid the countryside of wolves, and she's been doing so on a bloody conquest to wipe them all out, so you can argue that the

wolves are justified in what they're doing. Sorry, I'm stopping the story here, but that sounds like a really fun adventure if somebody wants to write it. Anyway, the PCs can make whatever choice they want and have complete freedom to take on the main quest or any side quests that you want to show them. If the party feels unprepared for the next big thing that you foreshadowed, they can take on smaller quests to get more powerful and better equipment. Of course, with an adventure like that, there's a drawback. The GM has to be ready to run not only the main quest, but have a few side quests ready to go as well. A wide variety of choices for the players almost always results in a larger amount of work for the DM. Now, I'm going to call the next example of blending these two types of adventures together a Necklace of Sandboxes.

Wait, what the hell? Did you just say necklace of sandboxes, Jeremy? What is wrong with you? Oh, well, remember how I said I'm on muscle relaxers? Necklace of sandboxes? Okay, um, series of sandboxes? Fine, okay, you know what? Fine, I'll call it a rail box.

Work with me here. A rail box would be a fixed series of locations or quest hubs that are sandboxes, but the players have to visit them in a certain order. I'm playing a video game right now called SteamWorld Heist 2. Now before you ask, no, they're not a sponsor. I'm just trying to give examples that fit what I'm talking about. In SteamWorld Heist 2, you are the captain of a ship or submarine and start off in an area called Backwater Bay, where you have multiple missions you can go on in any order.

When you clear enough of them and earn enough stars, you can break through to the next sandbox, which is called Angler's Reef. You complete enough missions there, you go to the next sandbox called Shiner's Cove, and so forth. You complete, quote unquote, one sandbox sandbox which opens up the path to the next sandbox. A lot of video games do this so you're of sufficient level and power before you go on to the next area. The sandboxes that DMs have to build if they choose to build an adventure this way are much smaller than the example of

a sand road and are much easier to maintain. Adventures built like this allow the DM to rebuild these smaller sandboxes because they'll know what level your characters are at least pretty close to it when they get to each sandbox. They don't have to prepare an area not knowing whether you'll be level 3 or 13 when you get there and believe me that's a much easier prep when you know approximately the level the characters will be. But Sand Road and Rail Box are not the only ways to blend a railroad and sandbox. For the last example, I'm going to give you a quote from the great DM Brennan Lee Mulligan

in an interview called Game Masters of Exandria Roundtable. I'll put a link to the description, and if you're listening on YouTube, there should be a card in the corner taking you to the video of that great discussion. Paraphrasing the question he was asked a bit, there was a discussion about how a DM can tell a story about a historical event that's already set in stone and the adventure that you're running is fairly short. In other words, how can you get to a fixed point that has to happen without railroading your players to that outcome. And Brennan's answer intrigued me. Loosely quoting him, he said,

people were talking about player agency versus railroading, which is interesting because I think that's a false dichotomy. Now, he's saying that the division and difference between railroad and sandbox is a false one. He goes on to explain that your players are going to do things you don't expect. However, the way you get around that fact in a campaign, especially one that needs to hit certain things at certain times, is that essentially you need rails.

But it does suck for those rails to come from the dungeon master. So what you can do is use session zeros to say, hey, I have a small amount of time to get this done. I need to know everything about your character because that's what the rails are going to be. The rails are going to be who you tell me your character is. So that way you grant this full degree of player agency and give yourself the ability

to create rails that were designed by the players. Now this quote grabbed my attention because I think it captures a lot of what I'm discussing in this episode. DMs have a better chance of success with the adventure being a railroad, but the worst kind of adventures are pure railroads that eliminate player agency. So the third kind of blend between railroad and sandbox, I'm going to call a Brennan. As I first was putting my thoughts together on this, I called it a mulligan, but that's a term for a do-over. So it's a Brennan.

In a Brennan, more work is done by the DM re-adventure during session zero and before session one. You have the players tell you who their characters are and what is important to them. Maybe the cleric was tortured by members of a different faith so it's important to them to reduce the spread of that faith. Meanwhile, the wizard is more interested in collecting all the information they can about a lost civilization that was in the area thousands of years ago. Stopping there, you have enough to add encounters that

you plan. A few of them could be related to the evil torturing faith, maybe hints to hidden cabals of worshippers of this evil faith, that the cleric could root out during the adventure, while other areas maybe have hints to troves of information on the lost civilization. You're laying out the railroad using what the players have told you is important to their characters, and you can prepare those adventures and payoffs ahead of time. You dangle a hint about a local evil worshipping group or ruins to that lost civilization that were uncovered during a recent earthquake and wait for them to take the bait.

If they don't, then I guess those really weren't important to their characters after all. For bonus points, you can blend elements of what the characters say are important to them. What if knowledge about that lost civilization tends to corrupt those and drag them towards worship of this evil faith? Now, not only do you have multiple backstories blending together but done right, the PCs feel like they've been chosen by fate or destiny or the gods or whatever to unite and defeat this big bad evil together. That was just an example of two characters with one fact in each of their backstories.

Imagine having five characters with three main facts to their backstory. Now you can shuffle and mix and match to your heart's desire. So in a Brennan, there is a railroad, but as you can see, it's the player's background and the player's information and what's important to them that's building the tracks of that railroad. Adventures can be pure railroads, pure sandboxes, or likely a blend of the two. There are multiple ways to combine the concepts of a sandbox and a railroad, whether it's a sand road where the PCs are given a wide number of adventure options at the cost of DM prep time,

it could be a rail box where there are multiple smaller sandboxes connected in a railroad, or a Brennan where the railroad is built with decisions the players make at the very beginning of your time together. All of them can make a great adventure and no matter what you pick as the structure, if you put in a little work as the DM, I'd be willing to bet that you and your players would have fun doing it. Hey, we have a website, www.taking20podcast.com. I haven't updated it because I'm just one person doing all the writing and editing and everything else. I do have a dream of one day updating that site.

It's just a matter of when I can find the time and resources to do it. Tune into the next episode when I'm going to give DMs some tips for running combat to make it more fun for everyone. But before I go, I want to thank this week's sponsor, Toast. Did you know that I made toast that was celebrated all over the city? It was the toast of the town. This has been episode 246, discussion of the toast of the town.