In the ancient, glorious age of first edition, I recall DM’ing whole campaigns with nothing more than a world map, an erasable grid mat, some general notes, and a monster manual. I just rolled along with any plan-foiling, campaign-breaking, hook-ignoring idea my players had. It was great.
Now, decades later, some of the same friends and I are playing on Foundry VTT. We live hundreds of miles from each other and could not game together any other way. I search Google images for content I can steal, edit all manner of images in Tiled and Paint.net, and carefully set everything up scene by scene, image by image, token by token. My players love the effort I put into it, and mostly understand that ignoring the planned adventure results in the party falling into a featureless gridded void. They also like all the little automations, effects and conveniences that Foundry and its mods provide. It is also great.
But…
Even though I enjoy all the prepping and editing it takes to put adventures into a VTT, I often feel like I’m designing a video game instead of prepping an RPG. I feel I have to wall off certain player ideas because I don’t have maps made up for them. It can also be frustrating to put detail work into maps and encounters that my players may just avoid entirely. At one point, the party rogue wanted to case houses to rob during downtime, and I talked him out of it between sessions because I just didn’t want to prep maps that had nothing to do with the main story (there were lore-ish reasons for this, too, but I still felt like I was saying "no" when I should have been saying "yes, and...").
At the moment, my current (and first VTT) campaign is going great. It is railroad-y by design because the PCs work for a crime boss who tells them where to go and what to do, but not how to do it.
As we get to higher tiers of play, however, I would like to give the PCs the opportunity to evolve into bosses and shot-callers in their own right, but I have few good ideas as to how to ensure that I have content (formatted maps, images and such) to support a more sandbox style campaign on VTT. We do a fair amount of theater of the mind stuff, but my players really enjoy the tactical goodness of a well-designed battle map (as do I).
I love it when the players surprise me, but if they surprise me too much, it’s off to that gridded void again…
So, I’m looking for advice from DM’s who have run open-ended, sandbox-y campaigns on a VTT. How do you balance the need to prep assets with the desire to embrace player agency? How do you reduce the workload while still giving options? How much improvisation were you able to pull off and how did you do it?
I have a whiteboard with a grid on it I use for my in person games to sketch out maps quickly. for my remote game I just take a picture of that and then load it up to
my games are 60% theatre of the mind so I have maps I pre create on Inkarnate and have loaded up to above VTT ready to go, but for those moments when the party go off piste the quick draw appraoch works well. Another friend does the same but uses graph paper and scans it in but he has a super quick scanner.
It takes minutes to do and you can snap a grid to the map and import the characters tokens in from DnD beyond in seconds.
I have used Foundry VTT, a friend has a licence and server that they gave me access to as a DM, but I agree it is far to heavy weight.
Another option I have seen used well is to use a shared whiteboard online to post a map and let the players all manipulate and draw on/move tokens about,
In terms of prep I work session by session, I do create maps for the main encounter areas I think the party might get to, but I don't over prepare anything because who knows what they will do. I run a full sandbox campaign but the VTT is only used for the largest battles. I have also just pointed a webcam at my whiteboard to show the map and had players describe where they want to move to.
I have this issue as well. I will go theater of the mind of I have to, but as a perfectionist DM, I sort of feel like doing that when the rest of the adventure is on lovely maps, clearly demonstrates that this is an area I was no prepared for them to go. So far, I haven't actually had it happen. I have two solutions:
One is a blank white map that I can draw on at need, as described above. Haven't needed it yet, but you should definitely have one in your VTT.
The other solution I have come up with, also haven't needed it yet, has been to make up a handful of "generic" maps. I have a "campsite" map, in case they get ambushed in a camp. I have a "forest" map and a "city street" map and a "sewer" map, all generic, one-size-fits-all. I have a few others. If they go to someplace that I'm not ready for and I have a generic map available, I can just move them onto that map and we're golden (and they are none the wiser, LOL).
I think in retrospect, I should have gone more theater of the mind with this game, but I tend to like making maps, and DungeonDraft and WonderDraft make doing that so fun and easy that I kind of went overboard. I'm on hiatus now for a few months while a friend takes over DMing duties and is running us through Candlekeep and I feel like he is getting caught in that same "every area has to be mapped" trap a little. When I take the reins back, I think I am going to go more TOTM for things that are not boss fights and such.
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WOTC lies. We know that WOTC lies. WOTC knows that we know that WOTC lies. We know that WOTC knows that we know that WOTC lies. And still they lie.
Because of the above (a paraphrase from Orwell) I no longer post to the forums -- PM me if you need help or anything.
My campaign is mostly in a city, so I have already collected some generic street brawl maps, but I will definitely try to branch out to some sewers, buildings, etc. I will have to experiment to find the best way to draw on a blank grid (I'm not much of a sketch artist).
It was also good to hear that I'm not the only one who spends time thinking about this stuff.
I make huge amounts of stuff. I find that the art is to make it seem like the players are making a bunch of free choices (and you're offering them!) but all roads lead to Rome.
Example:
Level 1, after the inciting incident the party can choose to venture to three locations nearby: a lighthouse, some foothills, a dead forest. Whichever they go to, they will find leads that will take them to each of the other two. The players get free choice of where to go, but they'll end up at all of my locations unless they're adamantly against following story hooks.
Level 2, having been to those three areas, they know that the problems in the region lead to a mine. They go to the mine.
Level 3, having cleared the mine they have free choice of where to go: A town to the west, through a swamp and over a river, north into mountains, back where they came from, or to another town to the east, which is also through a swamp. And over a river. They don't know this, but the mountains are essentially impassable and they'll need climbing gear from the towns to cross them. The towns to the east and west have different names, but whichever one they go to just uses exactly the same maps, NPCs, quests and so on. They have free choice, but they're also following the story, they just don't know it.
Level 4-6, the characters do quests in and around the town, learn that the mountains were fairly dangerous, before either heading to those mountains, or heading into a forest where they've been warned there's a dragon. The players choose to go to the mountains because they're level 6 but they did surprise me by hiring the pirates whose leader they killed to go upriver instead. The ship sinks on the way, just near the mountains.
At level 8, my players still don't know what lay in that town to the east and have occasionally pontificated on where they'd be now if they'd only gone that way. In case they ever go back that way, I found a map of a ruined village - it's been destroyed now.
Doing it this way means that you can ensure that you get to use all your prep, and your players are still making all the choices about where they go and what they do. Despite this, I have a few locations that they've never ventured to, but I rather enjoy that and I can always use them again later.
I make huge amounts of stuff. I find that the art is to make it seem like the players are making a bunch of free choices (and you're offering them!) but all roads lead to Rome.
Example:
Level 1, after the inciting incident the party can choose to venture to three locations nearby: a lighthouse, some foothills, a dead forest. Whichever they go to, they will find leads that will take them to each of the other two. The players get free choice of where to go, but they'll end up at all of my locations unless they're adamantly against following story hooks.
Level 2, having been to those three areas, they know that the problems in the region lead to a mine. They go to the mine.
Level 3, having cleared the mine they have free choice of where to go: A town to the west, through a swamp and over a river, north into mountains, back where they came from, or to another town to the east, which is also through a swamp. And over a river. They don't know this, but the mountains are essentially impassable and they'll need climbing gear from the towns to cross them. The towns to the east and west have different names, but whichever one they go to just uses exactly the same maps, NPCs, quests and so on. They have free choice, but they're also following the story, they just don't know it.
Level 4-6, the characters do quests in and around the town, learn that the mountains were fairly dangerous, before either heading to those mountains, or heading into a forest where they've been warned there's a dragon. The players choose to go to the mountains because they're level 6 but they did surprise me by hiring the pirates whose leader they killed to go upriver instead. The ship sinks on the way, just near the mountains.
At level 8, my players still don't know what lay in that town to the east and have occasionally pontificated on where they'd be now if they'd only gone that way. In case they ever go back that way, I found a map of a ruined village - it's been destroyed now.
Doing it this way means that you can ensure that you get to use all your prep, and your players are still making all the choices about where they go and what they do. Despite this, I have a few locations that they've never ventured to, but I rather enjoy that and I can always use them again later.
This is a valid approach to DMing but to me still is railroading to an extent. I like to try and give my players a fully free choice of where to go and what to do I might give them clues or ideas but they will have complete freedom to interpret them as they wish, or just ignore them. So I will have threads in area 1 if they choose not to go there I don’t move those threads, I instead apply new threads suitable to where they are going. I shape the encounters and adventure around them and almost let them decide who the bbeg is they care about
I make huge amounts of stuff. I find that the art is to make it seem like the players are making a bunch of free choices (and you're offering them!) but all roads lead to Rome.
Example:
Level 1, after the inciting incident the party can choose to venture to three locations nearby: a lighthouse, some foothills, a dead forest. Whichever they go to, they will find leads that will take them to each of the other two. The players get free choice of where to go, but they'll end up at all of my locations unless they're adamantly against following story hooks.
Level 2, having been to those three areas, they know that the problems in the region lead to a mine. They go to the mine.
Level 3, having cleared the mine they have free choice of where to go: A town to the west, through a swamp and over a river, north into mountains, back where they came from, or to another town to the east, which is also through a swamp. And over a river. They don't know this, but the mountains are essentially impassable and they'll need climbing gear from the towns to cross them. The towns to the east and west have different names, but whichever one they go to just uses exactly the same maps, NPCs, quests and so on. They have free choice, but they're also following the story, they just don't know it.
Level 4-6, the characters do quests in and around the town, learn that the mountains were fairly dangerous, before either heading to those mountains, or heading into a forest where they've been warned there's a dragon. The players choose to go to the mountains because they're level 6 but they did surprise me by hiring the pirates whose leader they killed to go upriver instead. The ship sinks on the way, just near the mountains.
At level 8, my players still don't know what lay in that town to the east and have occasionally pontificated on where they'd be now if they'd only gone that way. In case they ever go back that way, I found a map of a ruined village - it's been destroyed now.
Doing it this way means that you can ensure that you get to use all your prep, and your players are still making all the choices about where they go and what they do. Despite this, I have a few locations that they've never ventured to, but I rather enjoy that and I can always use them again later.
This is a valid approach to DMing but to me still is railroading to an extent. I like to try and give my players a fully free choice of where to go and what to do I might give them clues or ideas but they will have complete freedom to interpret them as they wish, or just ignore them. So I will have threads in area 1 if they choose not to go there I don’t move those threads, I instead apply new threads suitable to where they are going. I shape the encounters and adventure around them and almost let them decide who the bbeg is they care about
I don't buy into 'railroading' as a concept unless there is literally nothing for the PCs to do except follow the story, and you force the PCs actions and don't react to their preferences. 'Sandbox' games where players wander without a strong driving force behind their actions are extremely boring to DM, and generally mean that the DM doesn't have a compelling story. A measure of railroad is needed in order for the game to have stakes - otherwise the DM is constantly having to decide what happens next based on PC decisions, not their world planning, or no events take place, or the world is simply destroyed because the PCs didn't follow the quest hooks and the campaign ends.
As far as I see it:
Pure "Railroad" game (as people think of it): The players arrive on the beach. They have to go to the lighthouse, there is no other option. They are in a stony corridor that allows no other way out. Whether they want to or not, they have to kill the monster there as there is nothing else to do. This game is best suited to a one shot. It's not very satisfying for players, as they have only one real course of action so are more or less following a script.
Pure "Sandbox" game: The players arrive on the beach. They can wander in any direction, do things if they want, or not, and may just not do anything. This game is best suited to murder hobos. It is deeply unsatisfying for a DM, the players often miss a lot of pre-written content because there is not sufficient motivation to send them to places, or just by pure chance.
Railroad/Sandbox combination: The players arrive on the beach. They discover that there is an urgent problem to solve. If they don't solve it, they (and maybe the world) will all perish. They have motivation to explore the area in line with the clues that they discover. This is the best option for a long campaign as it combines the best elements of both.
Sanvael, I totally agree with you. Personally I always run a railroad/sandbox combo, although proportions differ. My players love the social and roleplaying aspect of the game, and for us having an overarching plot or some kind of carrot works best. Not that the players follow it in a straight line most of the time and it is the usual tap-dance of improvisation, being responsive to the players actions and re-prepping, but that's what make DM'ing fun right :-)
But your comment on pure Sandboxing is especially true. It is uphold as some kind of ideal to strive after, but in my experience pure sandboxes lead to boring kill'n'loot fests and campaigns die off quickly, unless the players are incredigood and motivated for that play style. It was the usual way to play for us during the eighties, but nowadays me and my players want another experience where a bit of railroading is necessary.
Sanvael, I totally agree with you. Personally I always run a railroad/sandbox combo, although proportions differ. My players love the social and roleplaying aspect of the game, and for us having an overarching plot or some kind of carrot works best. Not that the players follow it in a straight line most of the time and it is the usual tap-dance of improvisation, being responsive to the players actions and re-prepping, but that's what make DM'ing fun right :-)
But your comment on pure Sandboxing is especially true. It is uphold as some kind of ideal to strive after, but in my experience pure sandboxes lead to boring kill'n'loot fests and campaigns die off quickly, unless the players are incredigood and motivated for that play style. It was the usual way to play for us during the eighties, but nowadays me and my players want another experience where a bit of railroading is necessary.
Even with a strong overarching plot, player actions can have major impacts - they never do what you expect!
My current players waited in a town for 6 days for an airship, due on the 8th day (I randomly rolled the number of days until it was due on a d8 when they arrived). In that time they burned down a mansion, took out a pirate captain, killed the BBEG in his first incarnation (they weren't meant to, I underestimated their power!) but only by finishing him at 120ft range when he was fleeing on a flying carpet so they couldn't get to his body, cleared a dungeon beneath the temple, went off on two sub-quests to defeat a hag and to stop the corruption of a key story artifact, participated in a fencing competiton, and then, after all that time they decided to storm the local fort.
I had absolutely no intention of them ever storming the town fort. Fortunately I had a suitable map ready, and I'd long ago written down that there were 25 Hobgoblins, 2 Hobgoblin Captains, a Hobgoblin Warlord and 2 Hobgoblin Devastators as the garrison. They'd already killed 9 hobgoblins, there were 2 at the town gate and 2 on patrol. They killed 2 more on the way in, missed a third guard and he alerted them. After they battered down the garrison's door, they had to take on every Hobgoblin who was still present: 7 Hobgoblins, 2 Hobgoblin Captains, a Hobgoblin Warlord and 2 Hobgoblin Devastators. I've never come closer to a TPK, with only one PC standing on 34 hit points, a second on 9, and the other 4 all on death saving throws when the Warlord finally burned to death through Alchemist's Fire.
They never did get that airship, which would have tried to dock at the fort.
The players are heavily pushed in this game to solve the calamity affecting the region. If they don't, the world is doomed. But there's space to give them powerful motivations and then let them roam around in those areas, doing the things that they want to, and sometimes those things aren't even remotely expected.
I make huge amounts of stuff. I find that the art is to make it seem like the players are making a bunch of free choices (and you're offering them!) but all roads lead to Rome.
Example:
Level 1, after the inciting incident the party can choose to venture to three locations nearby: a lighthouse, some foothills, a dead forest. Whichever they go to, they will find leads that will take them to each of the other two. The players get free choice of where to go, but they'll end up at all of my locations unless they're adamantly against following story hooks.
Level 2, having been to those three areas, they know that the problems in the region lead to a mine. They go to the mine.
Level 3, having cleared the mine they have free choice of where to go: A town to the west, through a swamp and over a river, north into mountains, back where they came from, or to another town to the east, which is also through a swamp. And over a river. They don't know this, but the mountains are essentially impassable and they'll need climbing gear from the towns to cross them. The towns to the east and west have different names, but whichever one they go to just uses exactly the same maps, NPCs, quests and so on. They have free choice, but they're also following the story, they just don't know it.
Level 4-6, the characters do quests in and around the town, learn that the mountains were fairly dangerous, before either heading to those mountains, or heading into a forest where they've been warned there's a dragon. The players choose to go to the mountains because they're level 6 but they did surprise me by hiring the pirates whose leader they killed to go upriver instead. The ship sinks on the way, just near the mountains.
At level 8, my players still don't know what lay in that town to the east and have occasionally pontificated on where they'd be now if they'd only gone that way. In case they ever go back that way, I found a map of a ruined village - it's been destroyed now.
Doing it this way means that you can ensure that you get to use all your prep, and your players are still making all the choices about where they go and what they do. Despite this, I have a few locations that they've never ventured to, but I rather enjoy that and I can always use them again later.
This is a valid approach to DMing but to me still is railroading to an extent. I like to try and give my players a fully free choice of where to go and what to do I might give them clues or ideas but they will have complete freedom to interpret them as they wish, or just ignore them. So I will have threads in area 1 if they choose not to go there I don’t move those threads, I instead apply new threads suitable to where they are going. I shape the encounters and adventure around them and almost let them decide who the bbeg is they care about
I don't buy into 'railroading' as a concept unless there is literally nothing for the PCs to do except follow the story, and you force the PCs actions and don't react to their preferences. 'Sandbox' games where players wander without a strong driving force behind their actions are extremely boring to DM, and generally mean that the DM doesn't have a compelling story. A measure of railroad is needed in order for the game to have stakes - otherwise the DM is constantly having to decide what happens next based on PC decisions, not their world planning, or no events take place, or the world is simply destroyed because the PCs didn't follow the quest hooks and the campaign ends.
As far as I see it:
Pure "Railroad" game (as people think of it): The players arrive on the beach. They have to go to the lighthouse, there is no other option. They are in a stony corridor that allows no other way out. Whether they want to or not, they have to kill the monster there as there is nothing else to do. This game is best suited to a one shot. It's not very satisfying for players, as they have only one real course of action so are more or less following a script.
Pure "Sandbox" game: The players arrive on the beach. They can wander in any direction, do things if they want, or not, and may just not do anything. This game is best suited to murder hobos. It is deeply unsatisfying for a DM, the players often miss a lot of pre-written content because there is not sufficient motivation to send them to places, or just by pure chance.
Railroad/Sandbox combination: The players arrive on the beach. They discover that there is an urgent problem to solve. If they don't solve it, they (and maybe the world) will all perish. They have motivation to explore the area in line with the clues that they discover. This is the best option for a long campaign as it combines the best elements of both.
A slight disagreement from me, the sandbox version, I don’t pre prepare huge areas because it is a full sandbox, in my case by now the whole world with teleportation magic. There are threads and potential places they know about and might choose to go, but they might also latch onto a one sentence throwaway descriptor and go off on a tangent. I will say my party are not murder hobos we can go sessions with no killing and pure roleplay. What I have are threads and story, if the party ignore a thread then that event happens anyway and I track the outcome to the area of them not intervening and this might include the me of the world type disaster, the result of which they then have to deal with.
To the OP, one suggestion I’d have is the same I often have for in person games. At the end of the session, have the players decide what they’re going to do in the next session, so I can prep. And that prep can include acquiring the proper elements for a vtt. Also, when playing online during Covid, we once or twice threw off my DM by going somewhere he didn’t expect, so we got hand “drawn” maps on a grid as we explored a dungeon, and it really took me back to 1e days and the reams of graph paper we went through. The nostalgia was pretty fun for us old folks in the group.
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A bit of backstory…
In the ancient, glorious age of first edition, I recall DM’ing whole campaigns with nothing more than a world map, an erasable grid mat, some general notes, and a monster manual. I just rolled along with any plan-foiling, campaign-breaking, hook-ignoring idea my players had. It was great.
Now, decades later, some of the same friends and I are playing on Foundry VTT. We live hundreds of miles from each other and could not game together any other way. I search Google images for content I can steal, edit all manner of images in Tiled and Paint.net, and carefully set everything up scene by scene, image by image, token by token. My players love the effort I put into it, and mostly understand that ignoring the planned adventure results in the party falling into a featureless gridded void. They also like all the little automations, effects and conveniences that Foundry and its mods provide. It is also great.
But…
Even though I enjoy all the prepping and editing it takes to put adventures into a VTT, I often feel like I’m designing a video game instead of prepping an RPG. I feel I have to wall off certain player ideas because I don’t have maps made up for them. It can also be frustrating to put detail work into maps and encounters that my players may just avoid entirely. At one point, the party rogue wanted to case houses to rob during downtime, and I talked him out of it between sessions because I just didn’t want to prep maps that had nothing to do with the main story (there were lore-ish reasons for this, too, but I still felt like I was saying "no" when I should have been saying "yes, and...").
At the moment, my current (and first VTT) campaign is going great. It is railroad-y by design because the PCs work for a crime boss who tells them where to go and what to do, but not how to do it.
As we get to higher tiers of play, however, I would like to give the PCs the opportunity to evolve into bosses and shot-callers in their own right, but I have few good ideas as to how to ensure that I have content (formatted maps, images and such) to support a more sandbox style campaign on VTT. We do a fair amount of theater of the mind stuff, but my players really enjoy the tactical goodness of a well-designed battle map (as do I).
I love it when the players surprise me, but if they surprise me too much, it’s off to that gridded void again…
So, I’m looking for advice from DM’s who have run open-ended, sandbox-y campaigns on a VTT. How do you balance the need to prep assets with the desire to embrace player agency? How do you reduce the workload while still giving options? How much improvisation were you able to pull off and how did you do it?
I have a whiteboard with a grid on it I use for my in person games to sketch out maps quickly. for my remote game I just take a picture of that and then load it up to
https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/abovevtt/ipcjcbhpofedihcloggaichibomadlei?hl=en
my games are 60% theatre of the mind so I have maps I pre create on Inkarnate and have loaded up to above VTT ready to go, but for those moments when the party go off piste the quick draw appraoch works well. Another friend does the same but uses graph paper and scans it in but he has a super quick scanner.
It takes minutes to do and you can snap a grid to the map and import the characters tokens in from DnD beyond in seconds.
I have used Foundry VTT, a friend has a licence and server that they gave me access to as a DM, but I agree it is far to heavy weight.
Another option I have seen used well is to use a shared whiteboard online to post a map and let the players all manipulate and draw on/move tokens about,
In terms of prep I work session by session, I do create maps for the main encounter areas I think the party might get to, but I don't over prepare anything because who knows what they will do. I run a full sandbox campaign but the VTT is only used for the largest battles. I have also just pointed a webcam at my whiteboard to show the map and had players describe where they want to move to.
I have this issue as well. I will go theater of the mind of I have to, but as a perfectionist DM, I sort of feel like doing that when the rest of the adventure is on lovely maps, clearly demonstrates that this is an area I was no prepared for them to go. So far, I haven't actually had it happen. I have two solutions:
One is a blank white map that I can draw on at need, as described above. Haven't needed it yet, but you should definitely have one in your VTT.
The other solution I have come up with, also haven't needed it yet, has been to make up a handful of "generic" maps. I have a "campsite" map, in case they get ambushed in a camp. I have a "forest" map and a "city street" map and a "sewer" map, all generic, one-size-fits-all. I have a few others. If they go to someplace that I'm not ready for and I have a generic map available, I can just move them onto that map and we're golden (and they are none the wiser, LOL).
I think in retrospect, I should have gone more theater of the mind with this game, but I tend to like making maps, and DungeonDraft and WonderDraft make doing that so fun and easy that I kind of went overboard. I'm on hiatus now for a few months while a friend takes over DMing duties and is running us through Candlekeep and I feel like he is getting caught in that same "every area has to be mapped" trap a little. When I take the reins back, I think I am going to go more TOTM for things that are not boss fights and such.
WOTC lies. We know that WOTC lies. WOTC knows that we know that WOTC lies. We know that WOTC knows that we know that WOTC lies. And still they lie.
Because of the above (a paraphrase from Orwell) I no longer post to the forums -- PM me if you need help or anything.
Thank you both for the suggestions.
My campaign is mostly in a city, so I have already collected some generic street brawl maps, but I will definitely try to branch out to some sewers, buildings, etc. I will have to experiment to find the best way to draw on a blank grid (I'm not much of a sketch artist).
It was also good to hear that I'm not the only one who spends time thinking about this stuff.
I make huge amounts of stuff. I find that the art is to make it seem like the players are making a bunch of free choices (and you're offering them!) but all roads lead to Rome.
Example:
Level 1, after the inciting incident the party can choose to venture to three locations nearby: a lighthouse, some foothills, a dead forest. Whichever they go to, they will find leads that will take them to each of the other two. The players get free choice of where to go, but they'll end up at all of my locations unless they're adamantly against following story hooks.
Level 2, having been to those three areas, they know that the problems in the region lead to a mine. They go to the mine.
Level 3, having cleared the mine they have free choice of where to go: A town to the west, through a swamp and over a river, north into mountains, back where they came from, or to another town to the east, which is also through a swamp. And over a river. They don't know this, but the mountains are essentially impassable and they'll need climbing gear from the towns to cross them. The towns to the east and west have different names, but whichever one they go to just uses exactly the same maps, NPCs, quests and so on. They have free choice, but they're also following the story, they just don't know it.
Level 4-6, the characters do quests in and around the town, learn that the mountains were fairly dangerous, before either heading to those mountains, or heading into a forest where they've been warned there's a dragon. The players choose to go to the mountains because they're level 6 but they did surprise me by hiring the pirates whose leader they killed to go upriver instead. The ship sinks on the way, just near the mountains.
At level 8, my players still don't know what lay in that town to the east and have occasionally pontificated on where they'd be now if they'd only gone that way. In case they ever go back that way, I found a map of a ruined village - it's been destroyed now.
Doing it this way means that you can ensure that you get to use all your prep, and your players are still making all the choices about where they go and what they do. Despite this, I have a few locations that they've never ventured to, but I rather enjoy that and I can always use them again later.
This is a valid approach to DMing but to me still is railroading to an extent. I like to try and give my players a fully free choice of where to go and what to do I might give them clues or ideas but they will have complete freedom to interpret them as they wish, or just ignore them. So I will have threads in area 1 if they choose not to go there I don’t move those threads, I instead apply new threads suitable to where they are going. I shape the encounters and adventure around them and almost let them decide who the bbeg is they care about
I don't buy into 'railroading' as a concept unless there is literally nothing for the PCs to do except follow the story, and you force the PCs actions and don't react to their preferences. 'Sandbox' games where players wander without a strong driving force behind their actions are extremely boring to DM, and generally mean that the DM doesn't have a compelling story. A measure of railroad is needed in order for the game to have stakes - otherwise the DM is constantly having to decide what happens next based on PC decisions, not their world planning, or no events take place, or the world is simply destroyed because the PCs didn't follow the quest hooks and the campaign ends.
As far as I see it:
Pure "Railroad" game (as people think of it): The players arrive on the beach. They have to go to the lighthouse, there is no other option. They are in a stony corridor that allows no other way out. Whether they want to or not, they have to kill the monster there as there is nothing else to do. This game is best suited to a one shot. It's not very satisfying for players, as they have only one real course of action so are more or less following a script.
Pure "Sandbox" game: The players arrive on the beach. They can wander in any direction, do things if they want, or not, and may just not do anything. This game is best suited to murder hobos. It is deeply unsatisfying for a DM, the players often miss a lot of pre-written content because there is not sufficient motivation to send them to places, or just by pure chance.
Railroad/Sandbox combination: The players arrive on the beach. They discover that there is an urgent problem to solve. If they don't solve it, they (and maybe the world) will all perish. They have motivation to explore the area in line with the clues that they discover. This is the best option for a long campaign as it combines the best elements of both.
Sanvael, I totally agree with you. Personally I always run a railroad/sandbox combo, although proportions differ. My players love the social and roleplaying aspect of the game, and for us having an overarching plot or some kind of carrot works best. Not that the players follow it in a straight line most of the time and it is the usual tap-dance of improvisation, being responsive to the players actions and re-prepping, but that's what make DM'ing fun right :-)
But your comment on pure Sandboxing is especially true. It is uphold as some kind of ideal to strive after, but in my experience pure sandboxes lead to boring kill'n'loot fests and campaigns die off quickly, unless the players are incredigood and motivated for that play style. It was the usual way to play for us during the eighties, but nowadays me and my players want another experience where a bit of railroading is necessary.
Even with a strong overarching plot, player actions can have major impacts - they never do what you expect!
My current players waited in a town for 6 days for an airship, due on the 8th day (I randomly rolled the number of days until it was due on a d8 when they arrived). In that time they burned down a mansion, took out a pirate captain, killed the BBEG in his first incarnation (they weren't meant to, I underestimated their power!) but only by finishing him at 120ft range when he was fleeing on a flying carpet so they couldn't get to his body, cleared a dungeon beneath the temple, went off on two sub-quests to defeat a hag and to stop the corruption of a key story artifact, participated in a fencing competiton, and then, after all that time they decided to storm the local fort.
I had absolutely no intention of them ever storming the town fort. Fortunately I had a suitable map ready, and I'd long ago written down that there were 25 Hobgoblins, 2 Hobgoblin Captains, a Hobgoblin Warlord and 2 Hobgoblin Devastators as the garrison. They'd already killed 9 hobgoblins, there were 2 at the town gate and 2 on patrol. They killed 2 more on the way in, missed a third guard and he alerted them. After they battered down the garrison's door, they had to take on every Hobgoblin who was still present: 7 Hobgoblins, 2 Hobgoblin Captains, a Hobgoblin Warlord and 2 Hobgoblin Devastators. I've never come closer to a TPK, with only one PC standing on 34 hit points, a second on 9, and the other 4 all on death saving throws when the Warlord finally burned to death through Alchemist's Fire.
They never did get that airship, which would have tried to dock at the fort.
The players are heavily pushed in this game to solve the calamity affecting the region. If they don't, the world is doomed. But there's space to give them powerful motivations and then let them roam around in those areas, doing the things that they want to, and sometimes those things aren't even remotely expected.
A slight disagreement from me, the sandbox version, I don’t pre prepare huge areas because it is a full sandbox, in my case by now the whole world with teleportation magic. There are threads and potential places they know about and might choose to go, but they might also latch onto a one sentence throwaway descriptor and go off on a tangent. I will say my party are not murder hobos we can go sessions with no killing and pure roleplay. What I have are threads and story, if the party ignore a thread then that event happens anyway and I track the outcome to the area of them not intervening and this might include the me of the world type disaster, the result of which they then have to deal with.
To the OP, one suggestion I’d have is the same I often have for in person games. At the end of the session, have the players decide what they’re going to do in the next session, so I can prep. And that prep can include acquiring the proper elements for a vtt.
Also, when playing online during Covid, we once or twice threw off my DM by going somewhere he didn’t expect, so we got hand “drawn” maps on a grid as we explored a dungeon, and it really took me back to 1e days and the reams of graph paper we went through. The nostalgia was pretty fun for us old folks in the group.