Wide Open Sandbox: Difference between revisions

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* The gamebook series ''[[The Fabled Lands]]'' (''Fabled Quest'' in the US) was based around this idea, with hundreds of different side quests, some stretching across multiple books each of which represented a geographical area. If your character walked (or sailed) to edge of the map in one book he would end up in another, and there was no need to start the books in any order. Unfortunately, [[Too Good to Last|only six of the planned twelve books were published]] leaving the world incomplete. Rumours of a ''[[Lone Wolf|Project Aon]]''-style online revival with all twelve books remain unconfirmed.

** What has been confirmed however, is that the first 6 books are being re-released on the iphone sometime in 2010, and if interest is high enough, the other twelve will also be written and released

* Some of the [[Lord of the Rings|Middle-Earth Quest]] gamebooks also managed this. Notably, ''A Spy in Isengard'' let you go anywhere on the map, and let you revisit the same location as many times as you liked (although, granted, there were a finite number of events that could happen at any location. There was a time limit, but only if you used the advanced rules, and even if you blew it, you didn't lose, you just got a less optimal ending; in the basic rules, [[Take Your Time]] was in full effect (that could actually be a minor problem, since it forced you to show up early for certain critical events). There was a goal, of course, but you could choose among multiple possible ways of accomplishing it. All in all, this was a very high degree of openness for a gamebook. Some of the other books in the series managed comparable levels of openness, but at least one, ''Treason at Helm's Deep'', thoroughly averted this trope.

* Some of the [[The Lord of the Rings|Middle-Earth Quest]] gamebooks also managed this. Notably, ''A Spy in Isengard'' let you go anywhere on the map, and let you revisit the same location as many times as you liked (although, granted, there were a finite number of events that could happen at any location. There was a time limit, but only if you used the advanced rules, and even if you blew it, you didn't lose, you just got a less optimal ending; in the basic rules, [[Take Your Time]] was in full effect (that could actually be a minor problem, since it forced you to show up early for certain critical events). There was a goal, of course, but you could choose among multiple possible ways of accomplishing it. All in all, this was a very high degree of openness for a gamebook. Some of the other books in the series managed comparable levels of openness, but at least one, ''Treason at Helm's Deep'', thoroughly averted this trope.

** The first book in the series, ''Night of the Nazgûl'', used the same game mechanics to achieve a similar Wide Open Sandbox feel, although with some wrinkles. As with ''Spy'', there was a time limit in the advanced rules, although that again only determined the optimality of the ending. More peculiarly, many locations were functionally identical to other locations. For example, almost every map hex within the Barrow-Downs contained tombs that you could explore and loot. Each location text entry for the Barrow-Downs, however, referred you to one of maybe two or three encounter text passages, so if you thoroughly explored the entire Barrow-Downs, you would run into effectively the same monsters and the same loot, and the same text passages describing them, over and over again. So in effect, you were playing in a Wide Open Sandbox in which many places were completely identical to many other places.