Sandbox worlds: How much freedom is too much?

So, I'm relatively new to the forum, but I've noticed that the Multiverse is quite popular--one might even say EXTREMELY popular. After taking a look at it for a few days, I got to thinking... How large does an open world need to be in order for it to be too big? What does it take to make a good sandbox world without leaving it too open to interpretation or just... too vague and bland?

In short, at what point does open-ended become too much?

I would say that this question has two questions to it; Size and number of players.

The Multiverse to my limited knowledge of it is quite a perfected combination of these two elements; Potentially infinite for a potentially infinite number of characters and players. While i have never roleplayed inside the Multiverse the impression i get is that characters and players create the space and therefor it can grow and shrink to suite the players needs.

Most roleplay's are not as flexible because they rely on individual players to work, the Multiverse works because it has as much roleplaying potential as all the roleplay's on this side combined in some ways.

Again i must stress that i am speaking from opinions that are not based on much...

One example for a poor choice of characters&space is as follows;

One roleplay decided to base itself inside the solar system creating a number of locations secluded from each other with no obvious means of character interaction. Upon character creation the rolepaly had too few characters to conduct character interaction as individual characters where located in individual locations therefor denying the roleplay the very air which keeps a roleplay going; character interaction.

The error in some roleplay's is to create a large world without regard to the player number. This is normally the result of the unknown as the number of people who will join a roleplay which has not been preplanned can't be determined.

A better method would be to start from a small setting and expand along with a growth in roleplay population, too small and characters will have no freedom of movement which will lead to multiple interactions taking place in a small space which results in a confusing state of affairs in which many people may be trying to get attention.

For example a roleplay about a family of five can't have 20 players, if twenty players join such a roleplay it can be potentially expanded to a roleplay about a family of 20 or a roleplay about a neighborhood.

The creation of a large world is riskier then that of a small one since a small one can always be expanded while a large one can only be shrunk and in my experience doing that can be complicated.

Character interaction is the most important aspect of a roleplay and the relation of character&size is critical for this.

Its always best to assume that even if you create a roleplay 10 maybe as many as half will ether abandoned the roleplay or be busy for a time therefor the potential to get the remaining five characters to interact is critical of the death of the roleplay will be inevitable.

The ability to be flexible and to compensate for losses and adapt to successes is what keeps a roleplay running.

That is my opinion on the matter.

Natural selection works here just as it does in RL, roleplay's that can adapt survive and those that can't die out.

I think Colonel_Masters says a lot of things that make sense, but I'd like to add something else in particular.

It's completely okay for a world to be much bigger than the characters that inhabit it. In fact, I think most of the time, it should be. The reason for this is simple: you can always narrow the focus of a given plot without narrowing the scope of the actual world. You could run a RP in one tiny prison colony on a nowhere planet where the world is actually composed of several galaxies, if you like. The trick is to keep the focus on the stuff going on in the colony. Galactic politics can be running apace while the characters just drift by day to day in labor camps or whatever, and technically that's within the scope of the setting, but it doesn't become a factor in the story unless someone's new waste dumping law causes a bunch of space-garbage to hit the colony at high velocity or something.

Granted, you probably won't show the council or whomever debating on the law, but you'd sure as heck describe the impact and what it does to the planet the characters are on. The wider world can also have influence in character backgrounds and histories, or even appearances and personalities (particularly if aliens are involved in this example). The characters may never make it out of the colony, never so much as step into a spaceship, but the world lore will influence how they think, what they do, and what they're willing to believe.

I may have mentioned this before in a slightly-different context, but think of it like an iceberg: only the tip is ever written IC, but you want the rest to be at least somewhat formulated so that the setting maintains a certain depth or gravitas. So the world can be much, much larger than the writers will ever have use for (as it is in the multiverse), but that doesn't mean you need to show everything that happens in it, or give the characters every possible opportunity.

You are absolutely correct Kurokiku, The Roleplay can be and should occur in a larger universe.

For example Star Trek takes place potentially in the entire Universe... and beyond however the series itself remains normally inside the confines of a ship.

I should have better described what i meant and missed expressing this vital fact.

In a roleplay taking place in the solar system the solar system is potentially an area the characters can interact with however at least at the beginning a focus should be found and maintained to some degree. The error was that characters where based in a number of planets which where further reduced as these planets where divided into nations, the only connection possible became a radio frequency which was essentially a filler.

This is a fairly rare example since most roleplay's actually do begin centered in one location but many which eventually die tend to split up into interaction groups which die out with inactivity.