Dookie in the Sandbox?

[Krensky]

Players start labeling a game as a railroad when these events occur so frequently that players are no longer satisfied with the game.

Stop redefining jargon. It's a railroad when the GM doesn't let you do anything other then what he's plotted out. The GM presenting you with hooks playing off of your background and characterization is not railroading. Even if he can accurately predict how you will react to that hook. It just isn't.

What about the characters who do want to save the world? Or when the characters find out later that things are now horrible, and that their outlook was flawed?

If they're OK with how things went down then kudos to them for having fun. Some players may look at what has happened and say 'well it's not really my fault, the DM made all of this crap up.' In that respect there's no pressure, but there's also no reward. Where is the fun there?

To some degree it's the GM's fault for not shifting the campaign when it's apparent the players aren't biting the hooks that lead to the end of the world plot. The 'not my fault' bit sounds more like whining then anything else though. There's no pressure in your examples of letting the players find their own adventure either. If there are no outside forces acting on the PCs there can be no pressure.

I never said it was an entire campaign. But if that's what the players really wanted to do, why stop them? They're having fun. Why poop in their sandbox?

Because I'm not having fun. Seriously, if my players spent an hour minutes in a tavern detailing how they're drinking, chatting up the bar maids, pumping the guy in the corner for information and generally doing everything imaginable to not engage with the game, I'd kill myself. Actually, no I wouldn't since I'd have told them everything they were entitled to know (ie what their 'Gather Info' check results turns up) and had something kick the door in after about ten minutes of it. There are exceptions, but the interactions between the players had better be so awesome that Michael Bay is asking about the pyrotechnics guy they hired.

It might not be a tavern. They might be exploring a mine. Or hitting on a shopkeeper. If everyone's having fun then there's no need to inject changes into the status quo.

The status quo is boring. Nothing changes. Not the world. Not the characters. The side of the screen does not determine who has the right to change the setting and narrative, just the nature of the tools available to do so.

That was just one example of player motivation. I also included the Wild West and Grand Theft Auto examples. If a character is really trying to play an anti-hero who is forced to adventure then that's great too. But make no mistake that you are kicking him around and IMO every player has a breaking point.

Mine would be the moment I realized you didn't even have something resembling a plot and expected me to do all the work of driving the game forward and that you were going to cram your views on manifest destiny, heroic fantasy, and what the medival period was like. There's an enourmous amount of ground between absolute dystopia and pure utopia. I try to hit a realistic balance where some places are pretty good with a few problems, and some places are giving hell a run for it's money with a few tiny points of light.

 

[takasi]

See, I've never heard that kind of thing called a railroad before. That's a potential hook. You can follow it or not. Even in a sandbox game, when you go to a specific area, there's stuff to do there. You can choose to engage it or not. Saying that, "it's railroading because it'd be out of character for my character to not follow through on this hook" is a HUGE red herring.

It's not about the option to do something, it's about the option to avoid something. When you can't avoid it then it's a rail. It's an edge you can't get around. The consequences are inevitable.

And it's not black and white. Some hooks may involve events that may never unfold, or may take a very long time to happen. The amount of time and pressure on a player determines how wide and tall the railing is.

How is that the GM's doing? YOU as the player made the character. If you don't like that it'd be out of character, then have a different personality. That's totally under your control.

The DM knows the personality of the character and can also change the world. He has the power of a god and can toy with you at his leisure. This becomes a major railroad when 'The Call Knows Where You Live'. A DM learns that a character cares about something, so he can put that something in danger and call it 'motivation'. Personally I'd be unhappy as a player if the DM then turned around and said 'well, you can always change your character's personality and NOT care about it right? So now tell me about your new personality and what you care about again? '

What about it?

If you truly don't feel that changing the world through evil plots and general mayhem puts any pressure on someone living in that world, in character, then I'm intrigued. Do you create worlds where stress simply doesn't exist? Where everyone is just apathetic and lazy? Are they under mind control?

What do you mean by reward? The reward is a rewarding play experience. I don't actually believe that any other reward is worth playing for, personally.

As I said before, it's in character rewards. Players might high five each other when they get insanity points in a game of Cthulhu, but I would hardly call that a reward for the character.

I know, I did. I presented what I thought was a really absurd idea for a campaign, and you said, "hey, I've done that at one-shots and had fun". Since my I-thought-this-was-an-extreme-example didn't phase you, I'm upping the ante.

Anyway; why not do it? Because it's not fun for me. Also, I'd be really surprised to find that more than a very small handful of gamers would have fun with that either. If everyone's having fun, then hey, yeah, more power to you.

Thanks. It can be surprising what a group will find fun and motivating when left to their own devices.

 

[takasi]

That's not true, though. You could find another potion maker that can make the potion.

No you can't. That's not how I setup the hook in that example.

You can kill the potion maker and take his stuff (specifically, the "make dog pretty" potion recipe), then make your own potions, or sell/give it to another potion maker so you can continue to purchase potions of canine beautification. Or you could just look for other ways to make your dog pretty. Or get a dog that doesn't need cosmetic alchemy to be pretty. Or upgrade to a pony.

But that's the only dog that knows how to defeat the evil king. And he has self esteem issues and runs away frequently. But the DM just has to add 'suspense' and put the only potion maker in the world in danger.

 

[Doug McCrae]

As I said before, it's in character rewards. Players might high five each other when they get insanity points in a game of Cthulhu, but I would hardly call that a reward for the character.

First to zero wins! My old gaming club used to do a pub-crawl called Crawl of Cthulhu, you won by being on 0 San at the end of the night.

 

[takasi]

Stop redefining jargon. It's a railroad when the GM doesn't let you do anything other then what he's plotted out. The GM presenting you with hooks playing off of your background and characterization is not railroading. Even if he can accurately predict how you will react to that hook. It just isn't.

A railroad is not just about what characters can do, it's also about what's going to happen in the world around them, especially when those actions affect the character.

To some degree it's the GM's fault for not shifting the campaign when it's apparent the players aren't biting the hooks that lead to the end of the world plot. The 'not my fault' bit sounds more like whining then anything else though. There's no pressure in your examples of letting the players find their own adventure either. If there are no outside forces acting on the PCs there can be no pressure.

What about self motivation? That's part of making a character. Characters have goals and objectives even in a world where things don't change very often.

Because I'm not having fun. Seriously, if my players spent an hour minutes in a tavern detailing how they're drinking, chatting up the bar maids, pumping the guy in the corner for information and generally doing everything imaginable to not engage with the game, I'd kill myself.

If that happened then you're in the wrong group.

I think it's wrong to say they're not 'engaging in the game' though. It sounds like you're the one who doesn't want to.

The status quo is boring. Nothing changes. Not the world. Not the characters. The side of the screen does not determine who has the right to change the setting and narrative, just the nature of the tools available to do so.

Things change in status quo sandbox games, but it's more often from player action rather than DM fiat.

Mine would be the moment I realized you didn't even have something resembling a plot and expected me to do all the work of driving the game forward and that you were going to cram your views on manifest destiny, heroic fantasy, and what the medival period was like. There's an enourmous amount of ground between absolute dystopia and pure utopia. I try to hit a realistic balance where some places are pretty good with a few problems, and some places are giving hell a run for it's money with a few tiny points of light.

All games are a mix of styles, and some players are more tolerant of differences than others. I think my GM would be equally offended if he created a world, which of course has a story behind it, and I showed up expecting to coast along with his 'plot'.

 

[takasi]

You're arguing that event-based DMing is about halting the progression of good to bad. (The peaceful kingdom is threatened; stop the menace or all will be ruined) whereas status-quo is about improving the bad into good (the desolate ruined kingdom must be cleared of menaces so it can be prosperous again.)

I don't really see a difference, IMHO. The ruined kingdom got ruined by SOMETHING. Its all a matter of when. The peaceable kingdom today that isn't saved by the PCS becomes the ruined kingdom tomorrow the PCs clean out. A good game has give and take. Sometimes Acerack sits around in his tomb waiting for foolish heroes to try to plunder it, but other days he leaves to go do evil things to the local countryside (and thus insure more foolish heroes try to enter his tomb).

The difference is that the players are in charge of when they want to save the world. It's their plot. They are going to foil the villains, not vice versa. They are going to change the DM's world (for better or worse, it's up to them and their alignment), rather than the DM pulling the rug from under the players' backstories.

 

[coyote6]

No you can't. That's not how I setup the hook in that example.

Sorry; you could go *looking* for another potion maker who can make it. You might never find one, but you didn't have to save the other guy.

And you can still steal the one guy's recipe before he dies.

But that's the only dog that knows how to defeat the evil king.

Oh, it's an intelligent dog, eh? Mind fog + probe thoughts -- ho ho ho, now you have a machinegun the secret to evil king-killing, too. And hey, get the potion brewer at the same time, with the same spells, and you scored the Daily Double -- evil king and dog-prettifying secrets. Now that's efficiency -- leaves you plenty of time to go back to the tavern and talk about that time that one guy did that one thing over on the west coast of the campaign setting.

Slightly more seriously, while one could make that sort of thing railroady, i.e., via the time-honored DragonLance-approved technique (you run into an army with a bunch of dragons if you go anywhere but down the road to Plotville), it isn't automatically. And what you've been describing just doesn't, by itself, rise to the level of railroad or evidence of one.

(Unless the players calling a plot hook based on motivational flags they raised in the first place a railroad is actually evidence of said players having ridden the railroad to Crazytown, of course. ).

 

[takasi]

Sorry; you could go *looking* for another potion maker who can make it. You might never find one, but you didn't have to save the other guy.

This guy is the only potion maker in the setting and the character knows this.

And you can still steal the one guy's recipe before he dies.

But the players didn't want to do any of that. They just wanted to make a quick pit stop into town before going back into the jungle to explore. The freedom they had before, to just stop into town and keep the dog happy, is gone now thanks to a rail put up to impede their current action. They can try to jump the railing, but what if they didn't want it there in the first place?

 

[Doug McCrae]

What sort of world is this, that just sits around waiting for the PCs? It doesn't sound much like our world. Here, bad things will happen (and good things) if I, the protagonist of my story, do nothing.

 

[The Ghost]

But the players didn't want to do any of that. They just wanted to make a quick pit stop into town before going back into the jungle to explore. The freedom they had before, to just stop into town and keep the dog happy, is gone now thanks to a rail put up to impede their current action. They can try to jump the railing, but what if they didn't want it there in the first place?

Where you see a rail I am seeing an opportunity to adventure.