When I first read through Numenera, one of the first things I thought of was that this system would be great to sandbox with. Coming up with challenges or even combat scenarios on the fly would be fairly easy, which makes rolling with the unexpected turns the player take simpler to handle. While listening to GMI Episode 33, it got me to thinking about sandbox vs. plot. I look at these two as a sliding scale. While there might be people out there that love 100% sandbox or 100% plot, I think most people fall somewhere in the middle. They want the freedom to explore and to interact with the world but they also want something that motivates them and moves the story along.

One of my favorite elements of the sandbox is exploration. Seeing that shadow on the horizon, wondering what secrets it holds and exploring it is one of the very reasons I took to RPGs. While exploring that shadow on the horizon is exciting. Over time if all you do is move from one shadow to the next, then you might start to ask yourself, “Why am I doing this? What is the point?” That is where I think plot comes in and is necessary at some level. To a player the plot provides a possible answer to “Why is my character doing this? Or what drives my character?”

By the same token if you flip the slider all the way to the other end of the spectrum you can have other issues. I have played in several games that had epic story lines from the very get go. These plots were very much like the Lord of the Rings trilogy. You knew who the bad guy was and that there would be dire consequences to the world should you fail. In those campaigns I felt very constricted. Even when the GM threw out potential side plots, we as a group rarely bit on them as we felt we had to race to the next objective as fast as possible or the world would be doomed. I often referred to this as “Plot Fatigue” and over time I just wanted it to be over so we could do other things in the world.

Whenever I build my own campaigns now, I look for ways to have a central plot line but have it be flexible that the players can stop along the way and smell the roses. In some ways I try to build it so they do not ever realize there is a central plot line until I reveal the connections later in the campaign. I would also try to seed several side plots in the middle of an adventure so that when they get a break or finish an adventure they would have something they could pursue if they wanted. That way they were not sitting around waiting for someone to burst into the room with the next crisis they needed to solve. When I read through the Vortex, for example, I felt that something like the Nave is a perfect example of this. The plot line drives the players along the Path of Light, but there are eleven other cat walks that run off into darkness. This provides a great side plot to come back to and explore for no other reason than it is there. As a GM all I have to do is provide these seeds and make sure there is not always a fire burning that needs to be put out.