The Sandbox

Every game presents its own unique sandbox. You get a base set of classes, races, magic, monsters, gear, and ideas to use to create your stories. Part of the reason I love Old School Essentials is that it is one of the ultimate sandboxes in gaming, classic, iconic, defined, and limited in scope to just the best of the best in dungeon adventuring.

I am sort of hesitant to use the words 'old school' dungeon adventuring since I really have no idea what modern adventuring is these days, other than 'a contrived plot leads you to a sequence of battle map-like areas.' We have not progressed beyond D&D 4E's 'series of combat encounters' in nearly 20 years, and 5E is still very much aligned to map and grid tactical encounter play.

4E used to have that sandbox, too. Early on, before the game became an MMO, where the classic worlds were "starting zones," and everyone was forced to adventure in the planes, starting at level 10. That model still exists in D&D today, and it is the death of the sandbox in D&D. This assumption killed the classic fantasy worlds of D&D, and it turned into "Plane Hoppers: the RPG."

5E never really felt like it had the sandbox to me, since the planar model was baked in. 5E always felt too big, too massive, like a fantasy universe simulator more than a sandbox fantasy game. I get this feeling from ToV and Level Up A5E, too. They are less focused on sandbox games than they feel like a "d20 version of fantasy GURPS." And 5E gets worse the more you add to it. It already starts off way too massive, and it just keeps getting bigger.

4E felt like it had a defined sandbox world, and it worked consistently and logically.

5E felt too generic and planar in scope. I get overwhelmed. There is too much in the game. And 2024 makes it worse since there are four subclasses per class. I might as well be playing GURPS if I am expected to design that hard. Yes, it is just four choices over a billion, but comparing 20 levels of four subclasses to plan out what I want and what I would be happy with? Give me a point-buy system and set me free to get what I want, since the designers will never make me happy.

OSE has one book or two books, maybe the Zines, and that is it. OSE is very "wrap your head around able," and I can memorize everything and run the game like a micro operating system in my head. With 5E, I can't store it all in my head, none of it becomes second nature, and I am forever tied to looking things up in those darned books.

With OSRIC 3.0, and especially Adventures Dark & Deep, I feel myself slipping again. OSRIC 3.0 I do a little better with, since it is so similar to OSE, but there are so many more rules to remember.

OSE has a few "planar spells," but it never goes beyond that. The entire game feels rooted in one world, without dragging the massive planar framework like a junky piece of furniture tangled with cords, dust, and some random strings wrapped around everything. You can "do planes," but for the most part, they are never brought up, and the game feels rooted in one world with very little, if any, planar travel. OSE does not even have the gate spell.

Sanity.

Finally.

A fantasy adventure game that just focuses on one sandbox world, manages that self-contained framework, and doesn't pull in 1001 garbage ideas and genre-breaking science fiction and weird fantasy elements. I am sick of "the planes" and "planar campaigns," and I am ready to return to smaller, more sandbox, manageable, and simulation-like standalone worlds. I don't need all my fantasy worlds in some multiverse where characters can jump between them in an instant, reducing them to background images and VFX in some trash-science-fiction movie.

It reminds me of that scene in the new Star Wars sequels where they used hyperspace to "jump between" iconic worlds, with no world mattering, them only existing as nostalgia backdrops, and them never being forced to interact with any of them. In the end, they were there to say "remember this," and they each meant nothing, and the entire sequence diminished every world and cheapened the entire universe in a very short sequence of film.

The modern theory and design concept of "the multiverse" is complete and utter garbage.

Bringing it into D&D destroys every classic game word, if it hasn't already.

Why, as a creator, do I have to accept a concept that diminishes my work? So, my world must be in your "planar framework?" Or your "labyrinth?" Or your "thousand worlds?"

I begin to think that those who push these concepts are either lazy, jealous, or anti-imagination. There is another class in that group that plagiarizes, too, claiming the work of greats as their own, even though they will never be anything close to them. To them, the multiverse exists so they can put mediocre work next to the creations of legends and have greatness prop up their weak, derivative, and trite ideas.

If I want "the planes," it means I must play with OSRIC 3.0, Adventures Dark & Deep, or other 1E games. These games have full support for that campaign model, with more planar monsters (demons and devils, at least, at the moment), the high-level planar spells, and support for the framework.

I can play "The Planes" in OSE, but it is my choice.

With 1E, that is baked in, and I accept its presence, but the nature of the planes is still entirely up to me, or if they are even survivable. I remember when we first did a planar exploration game in 1E, I had zero structure or reason for the planes; it was almost Lovecraftian, and some of them were not even survivable or breathable. Some had alien geometry where, if you walked down a mile-long tunnel and turned around, you would be facing a solid wall of rock. Turn around again, and the walls shifted and moved like you were in some bad video game with strange bugs.

The entire nature of these places drove my players mad.

They fled back to their home world as soon as they finished what they needed to do.

Those gates stayed closed, or my players actively hunted gates down and closed them themselves.

Nothing good comes from the planes.

But those are the planes. They aren't a utopia or socio-economic paradise, happy pastel-colored places full of frog people, massive cities, or what have you. They are often alien and incomprehensible. Most of them are unsurvivable. Many of them will drive a human unprepared to experience them insane. Most will not see "life as we know it" as anything worth consideration for survival, and you will be crushed like an ant, poisoned, enslaved, killed, abused, or swatted like a pest if you set foot in these places.

Lesser creators, again, will use a planar model to foist their dumb ideas into an official setting and force you to accept their world-breaking garbage because "it is an official book." Many of the Magic: the Gathering-based books in the D&D line are like this, terrible, lesser ideas forced into the D&D multiverse, with no real weight, fiction, or creative chops behind them, and they are garbage "me too" ideas which end up diminishing the greats: The Forgotten Realms, Greyhawk, Dark Sun, and others.

But those great settings are no longer great, anymore.

Years of mismanagement and abuse have left the classic D&D fantasy worlds in a ruined, corrupted, and unappealing state. They don't even have great novels in these places anymore. There is nothing special about them, and the fiction is mostly dead. While I have fond memories of these places, they exist as ghosts today.

OSE gives me a fresh start, two small, self-contained books that simulate "the classic fantasy world." Every OSE world could be "The Realms" or "Greyhawk" in the early days. Every time I start a world with OSE, it feels like starting a new Minecraft world, fresh, interesting, boundless, but using a limited palette of possibilities combined in infinite ways. The logical mechanics are consistent. The options are limited, yet expansive.

And I absolutely do not need the infinite character options 5E gives me; they hurt the story of the world and characters more than they help it. Too much focus is put on the characters. With my BX thief, sure, he may be a simple character, but that does not bother me at all in Minecraft. I am who I make myself in the sandbox, and my story and adventures matter more than a treed character build that takes a few dozen pages of character sheets to figure out.

If I am a complicated mess of choices and 5E build options, I am largely self-contained with powers and a massive 20-level entitlement syndrome baked into my build. I cease caring about the world. It is always about me. No matter what I do in the sandbox, I can always count on those powers being handed to me by the rules.

No wonder so many players of 5E don't understand the appeal of sandbox worlds. They are never forced to interact with one to engage and thrive inside it. Everything is given to them by the "mommy rule book" and "daddy game designer." They already have the next 20 levels of power, so they never need to build soft power or interact with a sandbox world. Every adventure is a pre-chewed story meant to drive progression along a set of rails.

If I am a simple BX character, I need to engage with a sandbox world to thrive in it. How I engage with the world, my stories, and the relationships within it will define my character's power. This "soft power" of my interactions and relations in the sandbox is often greater than any "hard power" the rules give to me. Who I am, the people I know, the gear I found, and what I built matter more than my character sheet.

That farm I struggled to build in Minecraft with the enchanting room to make magic weapons and armor? That took a long time to put together and set up. It took me numerous sessions and adventures to build. That gives me real character power. And none of it exists on my character sheet.