Jak pojęcie "sandbox" pojawiło się w papierowych RPG?

Pojęcie "sandbox" jest wykorzystywane w odniesieniu do gier komputerowych z otwartym światem i nieliniową rozgrywką. Zostało ono także zaadaptowane do gier fabularnych, gdzie używane jest do opisu wyjątkowo nieliniowego stylu gry w otwartym świecie lub settingu, który wspomaga granie w tym stylu. Prowadzenie nieliniowej rozgrywki nie zawsze jest łatwym zadaniem, dlatego Mistrzowie Gry, którzy się tego podejmują, posługują się nierzadko różnego rodzaju narzędziami ułatwiającymi prowadzenie gry w otwartym świecie. Są to między innymi losowe table, mapy heksagonalne, różnego rodzaju programy komputerowe. Ich głównym celem jest pobudzenie wyobraźni prowadzącego sesję i ułatwienie mu improwizacji.

Niektórzy Mistrzowie Gry uznają wykorzystywanie części z tych narzędzi za konieczny warunek prowadzenia prawdziwego sandboxa. Zdaniem niektórych jest to wykorzystanie tabel konkretnego rodzaju (na przykład tych ustalających reakcję napotkanych postaci) czy mapy heksagonalnej lub ogólnie utrzymanie dostatecznie dużego poziom losowości generowania eksplorowanego przez bohaterów świata.

Sandbox nie jest pojęciem precyzyjnym, zdefiniowanie go nastręcza liczne trudności. Gracze nie zgadzają się ze sobą w 100% co do tego, czym on właściwie jest.

By lepiej zrozumieć istotę gry w piaskownicy i zwiększyć szanse na dojście do porozumienia w dyskusjach prowadzonych na jej temat, warto prześledzić historię używania pojęcia sandbox w papierowych RPG. Naturalnym punktem startowym jest oczywiście pierwsze pojawienie się tego terminu w odniesieniu do gier fabularnych. Bardzo możliwe, że miało to miejsce to wraz z opublikowaniem Wilderlands of High Fantasy Boxed Set przez Judges Guild w 2005 r. Wilderlands of High Fantasy Boxed Set to rozbudowana, dostosowana do trzeciej edycji D&D wersja Wilderlands of High Fantasy z lat 70'tych. Jej współautorem jest Rob Conley, prowadzący bloga Bat in the Attic, znany przede wszystkim ze swojej serii How to make a Fantasy Sandbox.

Jak pisze Rob na rpg.net:

Term originated in computer games and it meant to describe a game where it's playing field was wide open for the player to do what they want. Around 2005 with the release of Necromancer Game's Wilderlands of High Fantasy Boxed Set, it's authors, I am one of them, used it to describe to people what made the Wilderlands different than other setting. It was designed to make it easy for the referee to adjudicate his players roaming freely across the map.

Later still the term got attached to a specific playstyle. However this is beyond what myself and other Wilderland author intended. The problem is that people take the hard core simulation of wandering the map too literally. This often results in frustration as many PC groups feel rudderless and the game without direction. In fact if you read through various forums posts, like enworld, you see these campaigns fail more than succeed.

The trick to overcome this is World in Motion. You work with the characters to give them a background they like in the setting. This provides a framework in which the players can make his initial choices. This background can incorporate what some consider railroad elements like being members of a noble household, a guild, a temple, etc. But the key difference is that the players are free to leave or ignore those elements as long as they are willing to suffer the consequences.

Along with this you develop a timeline revolving around NPCs, locales and events. This timeline is created with the idea that this is what happens if the players didn't exist in the campaign. This timeline becomes your plan. It gets altered as a result of the consequences of the player's action. At some point the campaign will become self driving as the consequences of the consequences start propelling the players forward.

Again the Sandbox was meant to describe a type of setting not a playstyle. But you can't control how these things go on the internet so hence the confusion.

Rob Conley

O początkach wykorzystania słowa sandbox w papierowych RPG Conley mówi także na stronie therpgsite.com:

It originated among the authors of Necromancer Games' Wilderlands boxed set. And used to describe we were doing with the material and how other can use the Wilderlands boxed set.

Yes it is a "new term" borrowed from computer games. But it best described what James Mishler, myself, and other were doing with the Wilderlands for the past 25+ years.

I don't know who actually came up with it among our group. I do know we all started using it all at the same time. Almost immediately, especially among those liked to push debates to extremes, we had to correct the idea that to use the Wilderlands the referee couldn't have any plot at all. That the game only consisted of players wandering from place to place.

Our main point was that the list of ruins, islands, lairs, castles, and villages made it really easy for us to respond to unexpected choices by the players. That the supplied detail acted as a idea generator and did not force us to always made shit up on the fly. Instead there was some basic information and a preview of what was ahead which made running the game smoother.

But your creativity wasn't stifled as there was a lot of details that needed to be made up in order to implement a particular locales. As a side note most of the detail in the boxed set of the Wilderlands were local so it wasn't a big deal to rip out whole regions to put your own material in. Plus much of the overall background was so vague that you still reuse much of the original locales for whatever you wanted to do.

The problem has been and still remains that most campaign setting stuff are written as travelogues and not many people are doing stuff that support sandbox play. So we keep seeing rounds of explanations, misunderstanding, and more explanations.

Again the term is new the style is not. In fact it is the default mode of Traveller campaigns.