Pathfinder 1E Sandboxes? Forked from Paizo reinvents hexcrawling

[Desdichado]

Hobo, you don't like sandbox games. We get it. No need to keep on about how they're badwrongfun to those who do like them.

Whiskey Tango Foxtrot?!

I haven't yet done that, and I never would. I've had all of two answers to the question I asked; what about today's environment is making them a resurgent playstyle option in online discussions.

Other than that, I've been sidetracked by a lot of quibbling with what exactly is or isn't a sandbox and extreme defensiveness from those who do like them.

I never once said anyone was wrong for liking sandboxes. Saying that I don't like them, and why, isn't an attack on anyone who does.

Geez.

 

[Ariosto]

Hobo, the problem is that people are not so enthusiastic about some unplayable notion stuck in Hobo's head.

Those actual games you don't want to talk about? Those are what people are enthusiastic about, talking about on blogs and in forums. Not Hobo's Generic Truth and Purity.

Apart from in your mind, that may not be any phenomenon requiring extraordinary explanation.

The Game That Must Remain Nameless -- here at EN World TGTMRN / RPG News -- has, for the past 36 years, been by far the biggest fish in its hobby pond. I'm sure you can explain why it's suddenly irrelevant to what you claim is "suddenly a massive wave of playstyle change."

 

[The Shaman]

No, that's not what it is. There's not even an argument involved. I defined the "pure" sandbox as a reference point.

Hobo, you defined it thus:

A theoretical end point that no game could (or should) actually attempt to emulate.

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.

In fact, the entire premise of my thread was that it was always only a reference point, but a lot of discussion recently seems to be idealizing the sandbox.

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.

It's not a false analogy and can't be, because it was just an expression of my taste. By definition it can' t be false.

Rather, state it ias, "I find sandboxes to get boring over time. There's no point, no focus, and no purpose. Here's an example of a sandbox game that I got bored with. It happens to be a computer game, but I'd have been equally bored with it in a tabletop environment."

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.

If you could play a computer game where a programmer was actively creating new content in real-time in response to your in-character choices, then the analogy might hold. But that's not the case.

That's not to say that I don't want the GM to not allow me to wander around town arguing with locals, poking my nose in stuff that interests me from time to time, or what have you, but I don't want to have to make my own game out of scratch. I'd like there to be things going on for me to react to.

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.

You said something in that same quoted passage to which I can relate, Hobo: "I don't want to have to make my own game out of scratch." That's exactly how I feel when I'm behind the screen. All of us at the table are "making the game," which is one of the reasons I prefer to run status quo settings; in my experience, it maximizes player and character influence over the direction of the game.

 

[Ariosto]

I think of my copies of Hulk Ultimate Destruction or Ultimate Spiderman which have missions, but also have "sandbox mode" where you can ignore the missions and just wander around doing whatever you feel like. To a point, that can be kinda fun, but after a little while, it gets extremely boring, and so you go on and do the missions. The idea that the sandbox mode could support extended play is, to my mind, almost ludicrous.

Why should the experience be boring when you can do the same things and more and the only difference is that you don't have someone else telling you what to do?

Or is that not how it is in your computer games? And do you really think that computer-game limitation is how it is in the human-moderated games about which people are talking?

The idea that the sandbox mode could support extended play is, to my mind, almost ludicrous.

Might common sense suggest something, then, about the likelihood that people are really grooving on what you -- not they! -- have chosen to define as 'sandbox'?

Yet, that seems to be what a wave of folks is promoting, at least in regards to tabletop games.

Maybe your 'that' is not their 'that', eh?

If the GM railroaded them back onto his predetermined plot, then it's not a railroad.

?

 

[The Shaman]

I've had all of two answers to the question I asked; what about today's environment is making them a resurgent playstyle option in online discussions.

Perhaps it's not all that complicated a question.

Like I said upthread, I think Stoat nailed it in the very first reply: interest in status quo settings is a reaction to adventure paths and a resurgence in interest in the early days of gaming.

Other than that, I've been sidetracked by a lot of quibbling with what exactly is or isn't a sandbox . . .

You've staked out some territory on what is and isn't a sandbox, so I can't really see why you're surprised that there might be some disagreement over the boundaries you've chosen

. . . and extreme defensiveness from those who do like them.

Please stop with this.

People responding to your posts aren't being "extremely defensive" any more than you're being "extremely offensive."

I never once said anyone was wrong for liking sandboxes. Saying that I don't like them, and why, isn't an attack on anyone who does.

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?

 

[Ariosto]

To me, at least, a sandbox is nearly as negative as a railroad. It suggests a game that has no point, no purpose, no focus, no theme, and one that ultimately isn't going to be fun for very long.

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

 

[Raven Crowking]

Rather, state it ias, "I find sandboxes to get boring over time. There's no point, no focus, and no purpose. Here's an example of a sandbox game that I got bored with. It happens to be a computer game, but I'd have been equally bored with it in a tabletop environment."

Computer "sandboxes" tend to become boring over time for the obvious reason that the computer can only react to the player goals designed into it. A human GM can, and should (and IME almost invariable does) do much, much better.

Hence the common observation that tabletop games which focus on sandboxing are not really competing against the strengths of computer games, which do sandboxes poorly.

Like I said upthread, I think Stoat nailed it in the very first reply: interest in status quo settings is a reaction to adventure paths and a resurgence in interest in the early days of gaming.

Agreed.

Imagine what would happen if we discussed a single product as a sandbox, such as the World's Largest Dungeon. Although not the world's greatest product (limited, after all, to a dungeon), it certainly offers a lot of things to react to. NPC plots and motives can certainly be found, and they certainly affect the PCs over the course of a campaign.

As soon as any actual sandbox is discussed, the problems being raised are pretty easily found to be either fairly rare or, perhaps, imaginary. Which is why, I imagine, Ariosto keeps wanting to talk about actual games.


RC

 

[Umbran]

So it wasn't define, but it was describe. Which is close to defining. I mean, if you can't describe something, how can you talk about it or define it?

Read what you yourself just quoted. Did the words "cannot describe" appear? No. I never said it cannot be done! I put a limit on how precisely it can be done. I said it can be done vaguely, in broad strokes.

"He's a tall man, with a beard and glasses," is a perfectly accurate description of a person, but it isn't very detailed. It is vague.

Hey now. I'm not the authority on sandboxes here. I am just making an observation that sandboxes seem to me to be very "static", with stuff in stasis.

Yes. I agree with that observation. I was just showing how having lots of static stuff was within the "sandbox" classification.

Emphasis mine. And I've been arguing that plot exists in sandboxes if there are any plothooks whatsoever.

I think you two are talking a bit past each other. But I don't actually agree with the idea that the existence of plot hooks means that plot exists.

I am pretty sure Hobo is talking about predetermined plot. Not just the hook, but the reeling in, netting, gutting of the plot fish, through the pan frying and serving up the meal.

To me, plot hooks don't mean there is plot - they are just a tool for starting a plot. Plot is what may happen if characters grab the plot hooks and follow them. If they don't grab, or if they drop the hook right after taking a few steps, you never get a cohesive plot.

Just to be clear, I'm taking my cue off of what constitutes plot from literature, where a "plot" is all the events in a story particularly rendered toward the achievement of some particular artistic or emotional effect or general theme. There can be events in the story that are *not* part of the plot.

Now, I'm a little more loose about it - I figure that if there's a cohesive storyline and events linked together with some decent cause and effect and repercussions and such, that the artistic and emotional points will likely fall out of the mix on their own. So will some of the themes, though some will probably need to be implemented by the GM.

For Hobo's plot - the basic series of events is, if not completely predetermined, then largely known in outline (even if the outline may change as the GM and players do neat stuff that wasn't in the original outline) before any of the action takes place.

For your plot - I would say it doesn't exist yet. It is plot in potentia - if the PCs wander without aims, then no coherent storyline, emotional points, themes, or the like are apt to become apparent as things go on.

Which is not to say the game wouldn't be fun without what I'm calling plot.

 

[Ariosto]

As soon as any actual sandbox is discussed, the problems being raised are pretty easily found to be either fairly rare or, perhaps, imaginary. Which is why, I imagine, Ariosto keeps wanting to talk about actual games.

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.

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.

 

[Desdichado]

Hobo, the problem is that people are not so enthusiastic about some unplayable notion stuck in Hobo's head.

Those actual games you don't want to talk about? Those are what people are enthusiastic about, talking about on blogs and in forums. Not Hobo's Generic Truth and Purity.

No, that's not true. If that's what you're wanting to talk about, that's something very distinct from what I'm talking about and what this thread was started (by me) to talk about.

You're simply trying to recast the discussion in a different light and are getting grumpy when I'm resisting that kind of topic drift.

The Game That Must Remain Nameless -- here at EN World TGTMRN / RPG News -- has, for the past 36 years, been by far the biggest fish in its hobby pond. I'm sure you can explain why it's suddenly irrelevant to what you claim is "suddenly a massive wave of playstyle change."

1) That's not true for OD&D.

2) It's also not true that OD&D, or any version of D&D, is played by people all over the place the same way. 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.