Pathfinder 1E Sandboxes? Forked from Paizo reinvents hexcrawling

[Desdichado]

No game can, or should, actually attempt to emulate a sandbox? That's an argument, Hobo, and one based on a "true Scotsman" interpretation of a sandbox or status quo setting.

No, that was an offhand comment. I guess that might be where we're missing each other if you're tilting at my offhand comments instead of trying to address the broader thrust of the discussion I'm trying to have.

You're defining it as something that cannot exist in actual play - a theoretical, a reference point - despite the fact that, as Ariosto has pointed out in multiple threads on the subject, gamers do, in fact, run wide-open sandbox style games and talk about their experiences on gaming forums.

Ariosto hasn't demonstrated jack or squat.

In addition, you're arguing against a strawman. I never once said that people don't try to approach a "pure" sandbox state, in fact the entire freaking premise of this entire freaking thread is that I've noticed that is a recent fad in RPG discussions online. I don't believe it's technically possible to be done. But that doesn't mean that there aren't plenty of people who don't idealize the form and attempt to get there to some degree or another.

Sorry, but that last is the false analogy: you're equating the experience of playing a computer game with that of a tabletop roleplaying game, when the parameters, particularly for sandbox play, are quite different.

Sorry, but strictly speaking its not an analogy at all, and it's not false. This discussion would go a lot smoother if you'd quit telling me that I don't know what my own tastes are. Just because I offered two examples of games that happen to be computer games doesn't mean that I can't come up with others from gaming. However, "Trey's game back in '88 in High School" isn't an example that has any meaning to anyone except me, Trey, and a handful of other people who were in it. Similarly, if I say "Bob's Wilderlands of High Fantasy game from a couple of years ago"... no point of reference.

Speaking of logical fallacies in addition to the strawman above. Just because I offered an example doesn't mean that's the sum total of the examples I have to offer.

And that's another misunderstanding about sandbox style games, in my experience.

As any number of status quo referees on these boards have explained in the past, one of the elements of sandbox play is that stuff is going on around the adventurers all the time, from large-scale events like wars and plagues and famines to small-scale activities like a local merchant running for consul of an important port-city. The adventurers may be affected, directly or indirectly, by any of these, and they may choose to involve themselves, or not, as they please: flee from the plague, help the merchant get elected, et cetera. Whatever the players choose to do, the game-world moves on: the plague runs its course, the merchant does or doesn't get elected (or maybe dies from the plague!), and so on.

I misunderstand nothing. That's your interpretation of a sandbox. It's not a universal take on a sandbox.

Now, if it makes you happier, I'd say that sounds like a much better run sandbox than some others I've heard of. But that's neither here nor there. Any type of game is better if its execution is better. That goes without saying.

 

[Desdichado]

Perhaps it's not all that complicated a question.

:shrug: Perhaps not.

People responding to your posts aren't being "extremely defensive" any more than you're being "extremely offensive."Perhaps, but you have derided sandbox play itself: it's boring, pointless, purposeless, unsuited to long-term play, and something that no one can or should emulate.

Are you really surprised that there's some pushback?

I didn't deride it at all. I was very clear to add the "To me" dependent clause to all of my opinions. If there's pushback, it's because a bunch of really defensive people are annoyed that some guy on the internet that they've never heard of doesn't enjoy the same kind of game they do.

It could be fun for "three score years and ten", if you're lucky and play well!

Yeah, again, next time read the "To me" dependent clause before you make statements that are obviously false. I quit gaming in the 80s, in part because I was annoyed, frustrated and unhappy with the paradigms of the people I played with... which included a lot of sandbox style gaming, which I found pointless, purposeless and boring.

Granted, we were high school kids. Could someone else run a game today that I'd enjoy more using a similar paradigm? Probably. That doens't mean that I wont' still enjoy my only somewhat sandboxy game even more than I would that hypothetical game.

 

[Desdichado]

Mostly, I have kept wanting Hobo to cut the baloney -- not just about his straw-man 'sandbox' but also about his trumped-up complaints blaming me for a 'problem' he created for himself. His put-downs of me (for playing one of the editions he does not, and writing from my experience in other threads just as he writes from his) did not make either of those more palatable.

So start your own thread about that if you want to talk about that. What's stopping you?

I haven't put you down, I've just asked you to attempt to stay on topic. Why you've interpreted that as an insult is quite frankly beyond me. Although your projection of all kinds of things that I haven't said in the paragraph above certainly shows a bit of where you're coming from. I'd really appreciate it if you'd stop making up these things that I haven't said and then attributing them to me, though. I mean really. It'd seriously be appreciated.

Besides, as I've said before, a published game can't be a sandbox. Only an actual game at the table can be a sandbox, because being a sandbox is an artifact of how the game is run and is therefore dependant on a GM who in fact runs the game as a sandbox.

Which is why the entire premise you are trying to derail the thread to is a different discussion altogether. OD&D isn't a sandbox and more than Call of Cthulhu is, or 4e, or Paranoia, or The Window. A game can only be a sandbox if the GM runs it as a sandbox.

But, yeah, I think the thread could be salvageable if we chuck Hobo's stipulation that it must only be about agreeing that his misconceptions are actually the Truth.

Look, the guy's premise is rigged to be wrong.

"I define chocolate pudding as made of liver and beets, and yet there seems to be a sudden radical change of taste toward that among American children."

It's an "Emily Litella" sketch gone bad because the attitude from the start was so hostile.

It would also be salvageable if you'd make an attempt to have the discussion instead of some other one. And then get smarmy and insulting when I resist your attempts to change the subject.

 

[Ariosto]

The notion that aimless wandering must be intrinsic to a wide open game, and is in fact the big draw, is pretty weird to me.

The game of Real Life has no plot. That can, I admit, trip up some people. Believing that one is the hero(ine) in a story of tragedy and triumph, guaranteed a happy ending, can be pretty messed up.

In Real Life, one must choose for oneself what goals to pursue, and how. Some people choose excitement of one sort or another, while others choose to build stability amid chaos.

Some people do indeed spend a lot of time wandering aimlessly, at most starting projects never completed. That is another choice. It is not generally put forth as a very good one, much less some sort of "pure ideal" that a purpose-driven life only approximates.

Do no stories emerge from this? Are there no real adventures? Is it just deceit that some people seem to keep finding more than boredom in being astronauts or marine biologists, helicopter ambulance crewmen or firefighters, merchant mariners or muleskinners or wildcatters or insurance claim investigators -- or doing whatever it is they happen to find interesting?

 

[Umbran]

I would like to thank Ariosto, Hobo, and several others for demonstrating my point earlier. The nature of this discussion is very much akin to an edition war. People conduct themselves on this topic just like in an edition war thread.

So, you want to understand how and why "sandbox" became such a big thing for discussion, I suggest you look at Edition War thread dynamics for clues.

 

[Ariosto]

I'd really appreciate it if you'd stop making up these things that I haven't said and then attributing them to me, though.

*sigh* Ariosto, is it possible for you to engage in a discussion about RPGs in general without forcing the discussion down paths of OD&D in particular? ... If in fact it's true that OD&D specifically called out a playstyle that we would call a sandbox ... which I personally doubt ... then, hey, thanks for making us aware of that minor note of historical trivia, but that's not really germaine to the discussion we're having here today.

You "made up" the misleading and invidious implication in your first sentence -- which is the first of eight namings of D&D (three of "OD&D in particular") in that full post. You made a point of drawing the dichotomy of

sandboxes, not old style D&D

, in response to my reference simply to

the old style

As this whole affair demonstrates why I choose not to use the newfangled 'sandbox' jargon to refer to things that don't resemble your straw man, it should be no cause for dismay that I used another term instead. Moreover, that post quoted your previous

A "pure" sandbox is an extreme condition, far removed from any game that I've ever played in, even back in the late 70s and early 80s.

 

[coyote6]

I would like to thank Ariosto, Hobo, and several others for demonstrating my point earlier. The nature of this discussion is very much akin to an edition war. People conduct themselves on this topic just like in an edition war thread.

So, you want to understand how and why "sandbox" became such a big thing for discussion, I suggest you look at Edition War thread dynamics for clues.

It's kind of like a different front of the Edition Wars.

Actually, it's probably more correctly a different front of the larger conflict that the Edition Wars are themselves merely a part of. For further fronts, see also any thread on a Hero Games or SJGames site or fan site on the subject of "HERO vs. GURPS"; or "HERO vs. M&M"; or SR3e vs SR4e; or rec.games.frp.advocacy in the late '90s.

 

[Ariosto]

Your quixotic attempt to portray a few scanty paragraphs of text from OD&D as representative of an entire worldwide community's playstyle, at least with that ruleset, is quite frankly a laughable notion.

I have made no such attempt. As to how well informed you are about "a few scanty paragraphs of text from OD&D", your own words again suffice:

since I didn't really start playing D&D until the AD&D and BD&D sets were the ones everyone was using, I can't confirm via primary sources

and the rest is just more of your "laughable" (and, par for the course, unsupported) notion. For a fella who resents being misrepresented, you sure do an awful lot of misrepresentation -- when you're not busy redefining others' words for them.

 

[Haffrung Helleyes]

It could be fun for "three score years and ten", if you're lucky and play well!

It could even be considered 'A tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury signifying nothing'!

And that wouldn't be so bad!

Ken

 

[Umbran]

You "made up" the poo in your first sentence

All right, that is quite enough.

EN World requires you to be civil, and show a modicum of respect for other people, and ideas. Likening another person's words to excrement is pretty classic disrespect.

So, next person who cannot contain themselves can expect to lose the privilege of being part of the discussion. I hope that is clear to everyone.