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Sandboxes? Forked from Paizo reinvents hexcrawling
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<blockquote data-quote="Melan" data-source="post: 5124892" data-attributes="member: 1713"><p>Wow, a casual look at ENWorld, and I don't just notice an interesting thread, but one with a lot of old associates. Hey there!</p><p></p><p></p><p>This post serves as a good reminder in all gaming discussions. It is one thing to look at something as an external observer, but another thing to do it in practice - with compromises, "mistakes" that would seem out of place from a theoretical standpoint, temporary solutions and odd tangents. In fact, <em>unplanned</em> games are wholly in that spirit, sometimes even in some of their rules -- solutions developed to suit actual and specific problems, not general issues.</p><p></p><p>As I see it, the main thing in sandbox campaigns is that they emerge from the constant collision of GM and player agendas <strong>and</strong> constant adaptation within a relatively loosely defined framework. My campaigns since about 2002 or 2003 have all been more or less built on this idea. Not always completely successfully, but in the better cases, they made for a smooth and enjoyable experience. </p><p></p><p>Adaptation may mean a change of tone and structure: my first Wilderlands campaign had a splinter group of evil/mercenary PCs, whose exploits first developed into a series of (mostly unsuccessful, but very enjoyable) heist stories, then suddenly and without warning, a sort of adventuring - domain management hybrid (the PCs freed some slaves, killed the evil cleric subjugating them, and decided to hang on to the village). In another campaign with different participants, what I first intended as a very casual playtest of Necromancer's <strong>Tegel Manor</strong> almost instantly turned into domain management and "feudal planning" by the careful players. To my chagrin, they never even <em>entered</em> the dungeon and I had to test it with others. My current Fomalhaut campaign, now in its fourth year and close to its conclusion, has changed multiple times in its approach and themes -- there were segments with forays into strange foreign worlds and a lot of city action, two large dungeons, island-hopping on the seas, city intrigue and - at the moment - more strangeness and tying up loose ends.</p><p></p><p>Playing sandbox campaigns did not mean it was all non-correlated freeform play all the time. It meant an open mind and adaptiveness, but some adventures were more free than others, some dungeons more linear than other dungeons. Playing in them also meant some losses had to be taken - mini-modules left unexplored, potentially cool adventure hooks left avoided (some of them could be reused for different campaigns, of course). But there were also tremendous advantages - player+GM ideas producing something more than the sum of their parts; unexpected twists, embracing a creative idea and running with it, and more.</p><p></p><p>To conclude, this is my main point: "sandboxing" is at best when it is an approach (as in "approaching something"), not a dogma.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Melan, post: 5124892, member: 1713"] Wow, a casual look at ENWorld, and I don't just notice an interesting thread, but one with a lot of old associates. Hey there! This post serves as a good reminder in all gaming discussions. It is one thing to look at something as an external observer, but another thing to do it in practice - with compromises, "mistakes" that would seem out of place from a theoretical standpoint, temporary solutions and odd tangents. In fact, [I]unplanned[/I] games are wholly in that spirit, sometimes even in some of their rules -- solutions developed to suit actual and specific problems, not general issues. As I see it, the main thing in sandbox campaigns is that they emerge from the constant collision of GM and player agendas [B]and[/B] constant adaptation within a relatively loosely defined framework. My campaigns since about 2002 or 2003 have all been more or less built on this idea. Not always completely successfully, but in the better cases, they made for a smooth and enjoyable experience. Adaptation may mean a change of tone and structure: my first Wilderlands campaign had a splinter group of evil/mercenary PCs, whose exploits first developed into a series of (mostly unsuccessful, but very enjoyable) heist stories, then suddenly and without warning, a sort of adventuring - domain management hybrid (the PCs freed some slaves, killed the evil cleric subjugating them, and decided to hang on to the village). In another campaign with different participants, what I first intended as a very casual playtest of Necromancer's [B]Tegel Manor[/B] almost instantly turned into domain management and "feudal planning" by the careful players. To my chagrin, they never even [I]entered[/I] the dungeon and I had to test it with others. My current Fomalhaut campaign, now in its fourth year and close to its conclusion, has changed multiple times in its approach and themes -- there were segments with forays into strange foreign worlds and a lot of city action, two large dungeons, island-hopping on the seas, city intrigue and - at the moment - more strangeness and tying up loose ends. Playing sandbox campaigns did not mean it was all non-correlated freeform play all the time. It meant an open mind and adaptiveness, but some adventures were more free than others, some dungeons more linear than other dungeons. Playing in them also meant some losses had to be taken - mini-modules left unexplored, potentially cool adventure hooks left avoided (some of them could be reused for different campaigns, of course). But there were also tremendous advantages - player+GM ideas producing something more than the sum of their parts; unexpected twists, embracing a creative idea and running with it, and more. To conclude, this is my main point: "sandboxing" is at best when it is an approach (as in "approaching something"), not a dogma. [/QUOTE]
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