# Roleplaying Sandbox

🌿 _Budding_

_Planted_  
_2 years ago_  _Planted 11/17/2024 9:33 pm_

_Last tended_  
_a year ago_  _Last tended 12/30/2024 5:04 am_

_⚠️ Disclaimer: what follows is a video game genre that currently doesn't exist, but I'd very much like it to._

I spend a lot of time thinking about and studying game design, both because I like making games, but also to better understand the games I like to play. I tend to gravitate to games tagged as survival, RPG, and sandbox. While I enjoy these genres greatly, there's often elements that I wish they did differently.

# What is a Role Playing Sandbox?

At a high level, the Role Playing Sandbox (RPS) genre describes a game that offers players a richly detailed fictional sandbox that empowers them to play out their own narratives. Specifically:

- No overarching preset narrative for the player.
- Detailed world building either with hand-crafted, procedural generation, or a mix of both.
- Allows the player to roleplay as any occupation/profession. Not limited to preset archetypes and allows mix matching them.
- Crafting, building, or other mechanics that allow the player to "live" in the world.
- A world that reacts to the player being in it.
- A focus on exploration, and making traveling through the world engaging.
- Player directly controls a single character in either first or third person.

# Why not existing genres

- **Sandbox**: Often provides a plethora of mechanics and content to play with, but shallow world building  
  - [Teardown](https://store.steampowered.com/app/1167630/Teardown/) has tons of fun mechanics for destroying structures, but has a shallow and preset narrative for the player.
  - [Minecraft](https://www.minecraft.net/en-us) provides a lego-like building sandbox, but has little world building.
  - [Kenshi](https://store.steampowered.com/app/233860/Kenshi/) supports roleplaying any role, but takes a real-time strategy approach to character control.
- **RPG**: Provides deeply detailed worlds, but forces the player into a specific narrative  
  - You're always a witcher in the [The Witcher 3](https://store.steampowered.com/app/292030/The_Witcher_3_Wild_Hunt/).
  - You're always the [dragonborn](https://en.uesp.net/wiki/Lore:Dragonborn) in [Skyrim](https://store.steampowered.com/app/489830/The_Elder_Scrolls_V_Skyrim_Special_Edition/).
- **Survival**: Often provides procedural generation, a loose overarching plot, and fun building and crafting mechanics, but is very focused on the survival aspects.  
  - [Valheim](https://store.steampowered.com/app/892970/Valheim/) has a procedurally generated game world soaked in Norse mythology, but you're always a viking trying to reach Valhalla.
  - [Don't Starve](https://store.steampowered.com/app/219740/Dont_Starve/) has deep crafting and rewarding exploration, but you're always just someone trying not to starve.

# Partial examples

While this genre doesn't officially exist, there are some existing games that I think partially fall into the definition, and heavily inspired this idea.

## Caves of Qud

- ✅ Mix of procedural generation and hand-crafted content.
- ✅ Huge open world.
- ✅ No overarching narrative for the player.
- ✅ Faction system makes it feel like the world is reacting to player choices.
- ⛔ Doesn't have crafting or building mechanics.
- ⛔ Focused on combat and character progression. It's not satisfying to roleplay as a [watervine farmer](https://wiki.cavesofqud.com/wiki/Watervine_farmer) who just...farms watervines.

## Minecraft

- ✅ Procedurally generated terrain.
- ✅ Complete player agency.
- ✅ Freeform building.
- ⛔ World is largely unreactive to the player.
- ⛔ Shallow world building.
- ⛔ You can truly roleplay "anything" but the world doesn't acknowledge or support it.

## Skyrim

- ✅ Mechanics that support roleplaying as anything.
- ✅ Deep world building and lore.
- ✅ Rewarding exploration and travel.
- ⛔ Has a main story and preset identity for the player. While you generally can ignore it, it can be distracting to be acknowledged as the dragonborn when you're trying to play a simple hunter.