One of my hobbies over the last year and a bit has been computer games. Yes, I know – I’m a computer programmer, don’t I play computer games? Well, yes, I do, but during the covid lockdowns I started playing games more intently. The game that really got me into playing Open World games was Cyberpunk 2077. I have over 700 hours on that game now, and as you can see from those hours spent, I’ve greatly enjoyed it.

Elden Ring is the newest big open world game, and after 150 hours, I finally finished the game. Not to 100%, but enough to get the end credits. It’s an absolute masterpiece of design – huge open world with lots of monsters, dungeons, tricks, and incredibly hard boss fights.

But I found it significantly less fun and fulfilling than Cyberpunk. And it got me thinking about the role of the sandbox in Dungeons & Dragons.

In D&D, we talk about “emergent” stories and “structured” stories. Emergent is where the actions of the players create the story; structured is where the DM creates the story and then the players face the challenges.

Let’s face it – most campaigns fall between those two poles. It’s very hard to create a campaign that is entirely emergent – if only because it typically requires the DM to do an immense amount of work or be very good at improvising. Meanwhile, creating entirely structured campaigns sort of requires the players to co-operate. And though players do co-operate, in most longer adventures there are times when the players go off-script and the DM gets to put them back on track (while enjoying the emerging storyline).

Elden Ring sits between these two poles. It has a set of steps that absolutely must be completed for the game to finish. But apart from those steps, the game world is filled with things for the player to do, and the player can do them in any order they like. Sort of.

Elden Ring is actually comprised of various regions, each of a certain difficulty level – with a few dungeons and bosses in each region providing a spike to that difficulty. Or even possibly being a higher tier of difficulty above the underlying region.

So, the “best” way to play the game is explore the region for which you’re the right level, killing monsters and solving dungeons, until you gain enough levels to fight the end boss of that region and then move onto the next region and start exploring there.

Now, Elden Ring doesn’t sign-post these regions. You can learn about whether a region is too difficult by going there (and likely dying). And so, you either need to find another region to explore or stay in the old region and kill monsters more until you’re of the right level to hit the next region.

This reminds me a lot of how Princes of the Apocalypse worked. Each of the Keeps and Temples had a level range, and if you tried going into one that was too hard for you, you had to turn around and try somewhere else.

Except, for both Princes and Elden Ring, this isn’t explained. And, given both have markers indicating “go here next”, some players get very frustrated when the story of the game is telling them something, but the actual game play expects them to do something else.

It is something to watch out for. It’s very easy to make assumptions about play patterns without realising that these may not be obvious to players.

Honestly, if there’s anything I think Elden Ring does incredibly badly, it’s in making me care about what’s going on. It is very story light. It has a lot of lore you can discover (read every item note!), but most of the play is wandering around, killing everything you meet and exploring dungeons that have little rhyme nor reason. (And most dungeons have an extremely underwhelming reward at the end). You go into dungeons because they’re there and you hope there is a good reward.

Other open world games (and most sandbox D&D games I’m aware of) have lots of side quests, but they’re wrapped in bits of story. There’s a quest-giver, and a reason for why you do that quest. The best of these make you care about the quest-giver, the task, and the other people involved.

For me, I prefer having story. Elden Ring is brilliant at allowing you to create wildly different characters (lots of summons, spellcasting, and weapon use options you can play with), and at then bringing those elements into combat. But when it comes to giving you a reason to care about what you’re doing? It’s not so strong. This doesn’t doom the game to mediocrity. You don’t need a story to enjoy challenges. (So, how many hours have you spent playing Tetris?) But for my RPG-like experiences, I rather enjoy having stories.

Which is why, after finishing the game, I wasn’t filled with feelings of triumph and joy. By that stage, I was playing it to beat the game, not because I cared about why my character was doing it.

It was odd. A few days later, I decided to return to playing The Witcher 2, of which I haven’t played much and haven’t finished. And shortly after resuming, I was in a discussion with four NPCs (Vernon Roche, Triss, Dandelion, and Zoldan) with banter and real stakes – and I found myself grinning from ear to ear. This was what I wanted – the interaction with NPCs. So, knowing your own play preferences is important.

However, one difference between a computer RPG and a tabletop RPG is that in the TTRPG, NPCs aren’t quite as important as you have the other players at the table to interact with. You spend the sessions talking and interacting with them, and they can do a lot of heavy lifting in that respect, allowing the DM to have an easier time of it. Yes, good NPCs do enhance things, but the mere presence of other players changes the dynamic significantly.

Which makes me wonder how I would have found Elden Ring as a co-operative game, with a friend aiding me in the same world and us talking to each other as we explored. Better? Possibly.

As I said before, Elden Ring is a masterpiece. But it is a masterpiece within its own boundaries – there are many things it does poorly or doesn’t attempt.