Originally Posted by
Skrum
OK so you're playing a sandbox, the concept of which I literally addressed. Directly. The Dm is coloring in the road the players are on just ahead of them...and that is exactly what I said. The DM isn't going to spend a ton of time rendering places in the world the players couldn't possibly reach, because that would be a huge waste.
I personally run a more world-forward game. Like, before the first game begins I come up with a couple different locations, make up the relationship between them, and then introduce some kind of event, NPC or NPC's acting upon the area, what have you. The idea being that this world existed before the players showed up, will continue to exist after they leave, and the NPC's have an agenda of their own. I'll probably have something like a Main Antagonist that's got some plan, and they'll make moves to carry out that plan, and the players can figure out how they want to interact with that. I.e., if I read my players and their characters correctly, they're probably gonna be fighting Vladdic VonVillainGuy at some point.
Also, modules. A lot of DM's use modules for their games. That's a great example of "can take lots of paths, but the paths end up in certain place."