Imaro
Legend
Okay now my interest is piqued... is the implication that following the 5e DMG text leads to these questions being answered in the affirmative?
What is *worldbuilding* for?
Okay now my interest is piqued... is the implication that following the 5e DMG text leads to these questions being answered in the affirmative?
Lanefan
Victoria Rules
Agreed.
Keep in mind, however, that true sandbox play requires a well-built cohesive internally-consistent sandbox to play in.
Ovinomancer
No flips for you!
But, and this is a point, it doesn't require the box to be built before play. The box that results from the different styles can be (I'd venture nearly guaranteed) pretty different, yes, but you can sandbox in both styles.
AbdulAlhazred
Legend
I think it is true that 5e, largely implicitly, assumes a game centered around GM authority and a GM authored story line. There's a bit of a nod to player-generated character backstory in the form of the personality traits and background, and you can tie those to some mechanics through skill choices, but there's really very little which concretely ties these things in a mechanical sense to the fiction which happens at the table. There isn't even the SC construct with which to mediate and structure conflict in a way that is largely amenable to player manipulation.
I think 5e is a step up from 2e, which espouses a narrative type of game without ANY mechanical support or concession to it at all. 5e has the traits and backgrounds, Inspiration (weak as it is), and a much 'tighter' resolution system than 2e such that players at least have some expectation that things will work a certain way when they try something. Yet it falls far short in specific ways of what 4e offered in this area.
To be clear, 4e could have gone a good bit further (I have authored that game myself). 5e pulled back a lot in critical areas.
AbdulAlhazred
Legend
MY understanding and conception of a 'sandbox' includes the idea that it is, ideally, a pre-generated environment. That it is authored specifically without regard to any agenda of or focus on the PCs. The conceit is anything you do, anything you build, any conflict you generate, etc. is all on you. The purest sandbox even lacks any backstory beyond basic reactive kinds of stuff like "the orcs pull up stakes and beat it for the mountain passes during the night. All you find are cold campfires and empty warrens in the morning, and a few broken tools."
That might not, in theory, be incompatible with on-the-fly authoring of content, but it is pretty hard to imagine it really being pulled off. How can you even be sure that your content is NOT a story in being as opposed to a simple collection of elements ready to be engaged with (which is what I would say the term 'sandbox' literally implies, a box of sand in which the player can do whatever they wish without regard to anything but the basic 'laws of nature').
Now, I tend to believe this concept is an idealization which a) is less interesting in most cases than is fondly imagined, and b) exists mostly as a theoretical construct for practical reasons. In fact I think players find it intriguing for the very reason they play Story Now games, it implies that THEIR agenda will be THE agenda.
S
Sunseeker
Guest
I would suggest that the "purest" sandbox would actually be a blank canvas and utilize a "Yes and..." system of going round robin or whatever getting player (and DM, since at this point the DM is only barely above the player) input on what and where they are. IE:
Once the party is made....
DM: So you find yourselves...
Bob: In a town!
Joe: A small town!
Sue: A dirty small town!
Jill: That's overrun with orcs!
Fast Forward a bit >>
DM: Okay, you made peace with the orcs and they're helping rebuild the town in exchange for supplies to their...
Bob: War camp!
Joe: In the high mountains!
Sue: The ones a couple days travel away!
Jill: Overrun with dragons!
DM: I'm beginning to see a pattern with you Jill...
Jill: Well how else will we get XP?
DM: >.>
And so on and so forth expanding from there in the direction that interests the players slowly mapping out "the world", however zany it may be.
AbdulAlhazred
Legend
I would say that is a highly dynamic 'conch passing exercise'. It certainly produces tremendous player agency, but its questionable if it makes a good RPG. Nor would I personally call it a 'sandbox' in any sense. There are games which use a controlled form of this type of open authorship, and it can work, but it generally breaks down or simply doesn't play out like an RPG when its this loose. For instance the players are likely to clash and also likely to violate the Czege Principle, and IME are likely to lack focus and goals. Its hard to HAVE goals when you're simply pushing material into the narrative with effectively no guidelines or limits. You will DEFINITELY not get a sense of exploration from this kind of play, though you may get a sense of authorship.
Lanefan
Victoria Rules
Ditto. It's way over at the 'collaborative storytelling' end of the spectrum.
You'll definitely get a sense of authorship, and I can see how this could absolutely rock as a one session one-off with a decent group. But in a continuing game or campaign I'd sure hate to be the poor schlub who has to remember or write down everything said and done and authored this session so it'll be consistent when we come back to it next session...or next month...or next year...
Well, that's a player who isn't going to be exercising much agency over the content of the shared fiction! In effect, she's outsourcing that to the GM. Your post says as much.
Without finality of resolution, what does it mean to work towards the goal of becoming king (just to pick up one of your examples)? And if there are backstory elements that are known to the GM, but unrevealed, but also apt to be used in the context of action resolution as "hidden" elements of fictional positioning, then where is the player agency located?
The notion of "player choice of goal" doesn't do any work, as far as agency is concerned, until you tell me something about how this choice actually matters to the content of the shared fiction. It is very easy for a non-dungeon sandboxing game to become the making of moves to trigger the GM to say stuff. Changing the way backstory is established and managed makes a big difference in this respect.
Perhaps I've misunderstood.
The player tells you (speaking as his/her character) "I want to find an item that will help free my brother from possession by a balrog!" And you respond by . . . ? I thought you respond by asking "OK, how do you go about that?" and then the player says (eg) "I look for a sage" or "I look for a marketplace" or whatever it might be.
What difference that is important to you are you saying that I'm disregarding?
This is a set-up that is begging for player-driven play!
As you describe it, that's not a story. There's no rising action. There's no climax. There's no resolution.
Story now means story - in the sense of conflict > rising action > climax > resolution - as an ever-present element of play. But without pre-authorship of said story.
Roughly speaking, the players provide the characters with dramatic needs; the GM provides the framing which yields conflict; the playing through of the action resolution process yields rising action and climax, at various "levels"; and the outcome of action resolution yields resolution, again at various "levels".
To go back to the feather example: the PC wants a magic item, and is at a bazaar where an angel feather is for sale. But the PC is broke, and maybe the feather is a dud or a fake. That's the conflict. The PC tests the aura of the the feather -there's rising action. It's cursed! There's the climax. There's also a bit in there where the PC buys the feather - I can't remember how the purchase and the aura-reading interacted, but the upshot - the resolution - is that the PC now has a cursed feather, that might bring trouble upon him.
But the whole dealing with the feather is also itself a moment of rising action in the larger story arc of the balrog-possessed brother, which doesn't reach it's climax in that initial scene.
Here is how Eero Tuovinen describes it:
The fun in these games from the player’s viewpoint comes from the fact that he can create an amazing story with nothing but choices made in playing his character; this is the holy grail of rpg design, this is exactly the thing that was promised to me in 1992 in the MERP rulebook.
Instead of curtailing player agency to create story (which is what Dragolance, White Wolf, 2nd ed AD&D, fudging advice in other rulebooks, and indeed more RPGing text than I can count, recommend), this method of play relies on player agency to create story.
In your example, of the player waiting to be told by the GM where the action is - eg the local Baron is corrupt - story is not going to be reliably produced. What if the players aren't interested in the Baron? Or even suppose that they are - what is the conflict that drives the story, or even kicks it off?
The 3E module The Speaker in Dreams illustrates the issue: big chunks of the module are devoted essentially to plot download by the GM (often but not always accompanying combat encounters that, from the point of view of the players-as-PCs, are largely unmotivated ), and then the whole thing depends on the players adopting the outlook that will make the story work (eg opposing the mind flayer rather than seeking to work with it).
No. There's no trade-off. The player is free to choose what to do at any moment of play.
There is no difference in this respect between my style and yours. (And I see that [MENTION=82106]AbdulAlhazred[/MENTION] has made this same point.)
