Wed 06 Sep 2023, 09:10
I sometimes find the conversation about sandboxs (and the Landmark style in TOR2e) just a bit divisive in tone.
Now my interpretation of "tone" is of course very subjective in text based messages in a forum, so this is very much my own feelings to what I am reading (VERY likely to be my mistake, I realise).
For all the experienced gamers who embrace the flexibility of what is called a sandbox approach, and confidently laud it as a "better way for them", there are several less confident requests regularly made for published campaigns with a clear trail to be followed.
Darkening of Mirkwood - to me - is just as easy to be called a sandbox as a railroad campaign. The many different entries in the tale of years take place all over Mirkwood and are effectively just as much a series of Landmarks as anything in TOR2e. The only difference is that the authors (wisely imho) provided a path from Landmark to Landmark, which gives a common thread for all gamers to use or ignore or shuffle as they wish.
I expect that Moria has lots of information in it - all great ideas from the writing team. But if it is presented as a sandbox of disconnected locations, this is not always the greatest help to first time gamers.
In TOR1e Tales from Wilderland - six stand alone stories where several could be threaded together - was a brilliant early sourcebook. And yet still incredibly simple to apply in the sandbox style if you have that confidence. Of course the MORIA book has been composed now, but if it had been filled in with a story, so what? Now that I am a more experienced gamer, I know how to corrupt the story made by an author who lays down a Railroad for me. I can make a sandbox by stripping out the connections that get in the way of my own ideas.
It would not harm any book if it was a campaign like DoM: and as an example would help other gamers start up. I'd like a mixture of sourcebook styles, to include examples of more directed stories - often such books actually illustrate the rules as intended in action.
Just my opinion of course.