Formative Sandbox
One of the best campaigns that I've ever played in was the first long term campaign I played in, back in my first year of high school (1980). It was kind of AD&D*, run by two DMs and a horde of players. We'd invade someone's house for about 24 hours each weekend. The two DMs were busy nearly the entire time. While all the players were hanging out, you could organize a group to put down the atari, pause the Monty Python and go after something in the game world - and the DMs would run it. They didn't, to my knowledge, use modules but their own world, city and dungeons. All of it was accessible for us to explore, though a lot of it was dangerous. That kind of player freedom was incredible. Throughout the day and into the evening, you'd hear bits of what other players had accomplished. "Jeff and Chris went off to the island to see the archdruid." Wow - what did they do that for? What did the druid tell them, or give them? "Gabe ...