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Sandboxes? Forked from Paizo reinvents hexcrawling
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<blockquote data-quote="Melan" data-source="post: 5124987" data-attributes="member: 1713"><p>On to the contentious part of the thread:</p><p></p><p>It appears to me that your idea of "sandboxes" is largely at odds with that of the people who play and enjoy them, and you aren't prepared to accept what they have to say about it. Your interpretation certainly doesn't describe the campaigns I have had experiences with as a player or a GM. Instead of sticking with this negative and (I'd say) <strong>uncharitable</strong> reading of the concept, it may be more useful to approach it from a "so why do people like it?" perspective.</p><p></p><p>To address specific points:</p><p></p><p>The point is adventure. Context, theme and complexity are created not outside of, but through play. The central entity is probably not the "game world" but the campaign; that is, the collected consequences and collective memories of the gaming that has taken place. Hence: Greyhawk the D&D campaign vs. Greyhawk the D&D setting. One is a set of experiences, the other is a document. Fun comes from testing oneself against the milieu and seeing the consequences; it comes from the content that is generated by the table. A "sandbox" computer game is a bad model for understanding a "sandbox" tabletop campaign because the computer can only give you what it was previously told it can do and you can only give it back what the user interface allows you (hint: it allows you very little). <em>There is exchange but there is no growth, no added value.</em> You can change things in the world but you can't really shape/co-build it. When you stand up from the screen, you haven't accomplished anything lasting.</p><p></p><p>Now in a tabletop campaign, you can also play this way: if you only receive a narrow range of stimuli and only give back a narrow range of responses, there is indeed going to be no point to the process: it may be better to play an adventure path, since it comes packed with a lot of conflict, context and action pre-imagined for your conveniance. On the other hand, if we deviate from this and add an action-->reaction-->action-->reaction flow in which multiple player characters and GM-controlled NPCs/situations/agendas/settings can provide their feedback, <em>even relatively simple individual choices can generate a lot of interesting new content</em>. This is a very simple and straightforward creative/imaginative process which benefits from the setup based on multiple complex and more or less unpredictable actors. It takes a lot of man hours to teach a computer to do something unexpected and interesting; in even a moderately imaginative human individual with an interest in roleplaying games, the same thing comes naturally and easily. You don't need, as it is sometimes proposed, a game world with a lot of complex NPCs and lots of detail to achieve complexity or establish a focus; you can get it painlessly from the process of play in a game based on regular adventuring.</p><p></p><p>Which brings us to:</p><p></p><p>I would say it comes <em>entirely naturally</em> from the original (historic) sense of playing roleplaying games: "what happens if I do this?" (Which is somewhat, although not necessarily different from "what happens if my character does this?" even if the consequences are identical) You have action, then reaction, then more action, then yet more reaction. Since others around the table are pitching in, including the GM (who of course serves to direct and "catalyse" the process), the results have a lot of pleasantly unpredictable variety, can go in a lot of interesting ways, and over the course of play, produce a sort of direction to the entire campaign. This may mean the players take all the GM's plot hooks, or none of them (although beyond a certain point, this can be rude - surprise, don't subvert). Is there a plot? Yes, there may be. The fundamental issue is that <em>which plot out of a dozen possibilities</em> emerges is up in the air at the time of play, and you, the player, or you, the GM, are making it happen together with your friends.</p><p></p><p>The dilemma of snadboxing is, do the players want a creative process where they contribute a lot to the direction of the game (note, this isn't "co-DMing" in the way indie style games are), or do they prefer a more passive form of entertainment where they don't have to do that (not a value judgement)? But Beginning of the End put it well:</p><p></p><p></p><p>...which is my arguably subjective personal opinion as well.</p><p></p><p>Also, FWIW:</p><p></p><p>In my experience, discussions about definitions go nowhere and rarely produce better understanding - usually only more misunderstanding. Therefore, I would prefer to stay away from the precise meaning of definitions; the same goes for debates built on a lot of framing.</p><p></p><p>Thanks.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Melan, post: 5124987, member: 1713"] On to the contentious part of the thread: It appears to me that your idea of "sandboxes" is largely at odds with that of the people who play and enjoy them, and you aren't prepared to accept what they have to say about it. Your interpretation certainly doesn't describe the campaigns I have had experiences with as a player or a GM. Instead of sticking with this negative and (I'd say) [B]uncharitable[/B] reading of the concept, it may be more useful to approach it from a "so why do people like it?" perspective. To address specific points: The point is adventure. Context, theme and complexity are created not outside of, but through play. The central entity is probably not the "game world" but the campaign; that is, the collected consequences and collective memories of the gaming that has taken place. Hence: Greyhawk the D&D campaign vs. Greyhawk the D&D setting. One is a set of experiences, the other is a document. Fun comes from testing oneself against the milieu and seeing the consequences; it comes from the content that is generated by the table. A "sandbox" computer game is a bad model for understanding a "sandbox" tabletop campaign because the computer can only give you what it was previously told it can do and you can only give it back what the user interface allows you (hint: it allows you very little). [I]There is exchange but there is no growth, no added value.[/I] You can change things in the world but you can't really shape/co-build it. When you stand up from the screen, you haven't accomplished anything lasting. Now in a tabletop campaign, you can also play this way: if you only receive a narrow range of stimuli and only give back a narrow range of responses, there is indeed going to be no point to the process: it may be better to play an adventure path, since it comes packed with a lot of conflict, context and action pre-imagined for your conveniance. On the other hand, if we deviate from this and add an action-->reaction-->action-->reaction flow in which multiple player characters and GM-controlled NPCs/situations/agendas/settings can provide their feedback, [I]even relatively simple individual choices can generate a lot of interesting new content[/I]. This is a very simple and straightforward creative/imaginative process which benefits from the setup based on multiple complex and more or less unpredictable actors. It takes a lot of man hours to teach a computer to do something unexpected and interesting; in even a moderately imaginative human individual with an interest in roleplaying games, the same thing comes naturally and easily. You don't need, as it is sometimes proposed, a game world with a lot of complex NPCs and lots of detail to achieve complexity or establish a focus; you can get it painlessly from the process of play in a game based on regular adventuring. Which brings us to: I would say it comes [I]entirely naturally[/I] from the original (historic) sense of playing roleplaying games: "what happens if I do this?" (Which is somewhat, although not necessarily different from "what happens if my character does this?" even if the consequences are identical) You have action, then reaction, then more action, then yet more reaction. Since others around the table are pitching in, including the GM (who of course serves to direct and "catalyse" the process), the results have a lot of pleasantly unpredictable variety, can go in a lot of interesting ways, and over the course of play, produce a sort of direction to the entire campaign. This may mean the players take all the GM's plot hooks, or none of them (although beyond a certain point, this can be rude - surprise, don't subvert). Is there a plot? Yes, there may be. The fundamental issue is that [I]which plot out of a dozen possibilities[/I] emerges is up in the air at the time of play, and you, the player, or you, the GM, are making it happen together with your friends. The dilemma of snadboxing is, do the players want a creative process where they contribute a lot to the direction of the game (note, this isn't "co-DMing" in the way indie style games are), or do they prefer a more passive form of entertainment where they don't have to do that (not a value judgement)? But Beginning of the End put it well: ...which is my arguably subjective personal opinion as well. Also, FWIW: In my experience, discussions about definitions go nowhere and rarely produce better understanding - usually only more misunderstanding. Therefore, I would prefer to stay away from the precise meaning of definitions; the same goes for debates built on a lot of framing. Thanks. [/QUOTE]
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