Pathfinder 1E Sandboxes? Forked from Paizo reinvents hexcrawling

[Umbran]

By "non reactive" I meant non-reactive to player input of course, so your second point doesn't apply.

It may apply, if the concept is that there will always be notable reaction to player action - I was covering the case of PC actions that are, "below the radar," so to speak. If the GM does not feel the action merits a reaction, then there'll be no reaction.

Which, of course, leads us to note that the GM always has a place where they drive the plot, rather than the players - in a game of chess, it isn't like one player is always reactive. Both take initiatives.

On your first point, I guess the GM can choose not to cross off the 4 orcs in the room when the PCs kill them, so they are there again next time the PCs visit, but it takes the same, possibly less, work to cross them out - ie, to have the sandbox react.

Do you wish to claim that if the GM crosses off those orcs, his setting is properly reactive? To me, that seems pretty trivial. The important question is whether those 4 orcs being dead has any impact beyond the fact that there's nothing guarding the pie any more.

I think the real questions are longer range - how the environs react to the clearing of the dungeon. Do the local economy and politics change with the removal of the threat? Do the monsters who survive take some sort of follow-on actions? If the PCs intervene in a mugging, does the local Thieves' Guild choose to make an example of them? If they involve themselves in a war, do their actions on the battlefield help determine who ends up as King? These to me would be what determines if the setting is "reactive" or not.

 

[Hussar]

I agree with that - you can have globe-trotting linear campaigns, and you can have small-area sandbox games; I've run several. However I think a truly 'Open' campaign cannot be a small-area sandbox, because 'Open' campaigns develop in whatever direction the PCs choose to go, whereas a sandbox has a box. However I've seen people appropriate the sandbox term for unboxed, fully-Open gaming.

Y'know, that's an interesting point. Could it be that the problem stems from a lack of descriptive terms being used?

Instead of sandbox being the opposite of linear, it could simply be one point on a web of styles. You have Sandbox - where play is prescribed by a particular area (usually geographic, although not necessarily - such as a single city, country or whatnot) and Open campaign where you have no such "box" and play simply continues where ever the players happen to take it.

 

[Umbran]

and Open campaign where you have no such "box" and play simply continues where ever the players happen to take it.

I kind of think of that "open" campaign as a sandbox where the box is the size of the setting's universe, whatever that might be.

 

[S'mon]

Y'know, that's an interesting point. Could it be that the problem stems from a lack of descriptive terms being used?

Instead of sandbox being the opposite of linear, it could simply be one point on a web of styles. You have Sandbox - where play is prescribed by a particular area (usually geographic, although not necessarily - such as a single city, country or whatnot) and Open campaign where you have no such "box" and play simply continues where ever the players happen to take it.

Yes, I agree.

To me, the nature of a sandbox is that it is somewhat predefined and preconstructed. A sandbox *can* be world-sized, eg Necromancer's Wilderlands of High Fantasy box set setting.

An Open campaign by contrast does not require any pre-construction beyond the needs of the immediate session, the GM can create entirely in reaction to player action, possibly using a lot of random generaton, and creating in whatever direction the players go in.

I think the first (sandbox) approach is typified by Judges' Guild, whereas the second (Open) approach is very Gygaxian, and typified by the 1e World of Greyhawk set, where the GM pretty much has all the development still to do but is assisted by a brief overview plus random tables.

 

[Desdichado]

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) uncharitable reading of the concept, it may be more useful to approach it from a "so why do people like it?" perspective.

It's neither charitable nor uncharitable. It's an attempt to describe the approach with some objectivity.

The problem I have with your approach is one that I've seen many times in this specific discussion over time: people who like sandboxes, or profess to, and people who don't, when you get to brass tacks and start really describing their games, they sound eerily similar for folks who are supposedly coming at this from diametrically opposed philosophies.

Which leads me to the conclusion that people who profess the sandbox approach are merely conflating the term "sandbox" with "reasonably well-run game." When your description of a "charitably characterized sandbox" focuses at least as much on elements that aren't unique to sandboxes, then I have to wonder why there's such an impetus to label such a game a sandbox, exactly.

Which goes back to a point I made earlier; it seems that much of the pro-sandbox crowd has created such an inclusive interpretation of the term, that it means very little that's more specific than "anything that's not a railroad." That doesn't strike me as a particularly useful label to have.

I would say it comes entirely naturally 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).

This is perhaps where I find myself at odds with the sandbox approach. Maybe I'm reading too much between the lines, but much of the tenor of sandbox discussion online seems to have this Mel Gibson shouting "Freedom!" at the top of his lungs, all the while subverting the games in the name of an abstract principle. Hyperbolic? Possibly. Except, of course, that I've seen too many examples of it in play to not be wary of it.

As a GM, I hate the concept of a railroad. I'm almost religious about making sure my players have enough environmental feedback to have several meaningful choices with regards to direction in which the campaign can go, and I'm equally religious about not planning more than a few hastily scrawled notes about what each of those potential directions really means until I see what the players actually do. To me, that sounds very nearly exactly what you describe as the action/reaction model of campaign running, except without the unnecessary pejoratives overtones of "if you're not very imaginative, maybe Adventure Paths are for you after all." So why don't I call my campaign a sandbox? If it looks and quacks like a duck, it must be one, right?

And I think the difference is in the approach. While I like freedom as much as the next guy, and I like my campaigns, both the ones I play in and the ones I run, to have enough freedom for me to explore both the setting and the character, to some extent, there's also a very strong element, to me, of "this is the game the GM brought to the table tonight. Are you going to engage it, or insist on doing your own thing the detriment of the session and the group overall?" Too strident a passion for sandbox seems to me to be pushing the limits of the implicit social contract. Again: am I reading too much between the lines? Possibly. But I've seen an awful lot of that vibe from many sandboxy supporters. Most likely, they've got a group where the social contract is a bit different; where the GM doesn't expect to come with a "game for tonight" so to speak, so there's no friction between players and GM. Which you describe in one of these posts here as a good thing, but I never would. But contrary to apparently popular interpretation of my posts, I'm not trying to claim badwrongfun on those who like it, merely understand why it is that this has suddenly popped up as a gamestyle that has a lot more visibility than it used to. If, as you say, it's a natural evolution of the very concept of roleplaying in the first place, why, thirty five some odd years after the advent of the hobby, is it now become such a term du jour?

That said, it's also my experience that a "narrow-wide-narrow" approach leads to games that I enjoy better. When you first start up a new campaign, few players have a good handle on the setting or their characters either one. If you just throw descriptions at them and expect them create something out of that, it tends to be a frustrating exercise in spinning wheels until they get a bit of traction. Rather, I'd prefer to lead with a slightly heavier hand as a GM until the players have a better sense of what's really out there for them to do, at which point I let go of the reins and let them decide the course of the game.

And I like a nice satisfying conclusion to campaigns, so some GM intervention to bring things together into one is a requirement for me these days.

The idea that the sandbox approaches "real life" in its multiplicity of options and control by the characters is, I think, also a false analogy. Rather, it's what happens when the GM expects every player to be an entrepreneur. In real life, people act on "plot hooks" that come their way, and then follow those plot hooks to where they lead. They naturally narrow down their subsets of options into those that look like they have the most potential in a way that is best replicated by the GM giving them some solid "direction" at various points in the game, rather than continually telling them that they can do whatever they want to.

Then again, that's not so different from what you said either, below.

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)?

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.

I don't disagree. That's not anywhere near where I wanted to go at any point in the discussion. But, it happens anyway, sometimes.

 

[catsclaw227]

Because the GM isn't interested in changing it? Maybe because despite being given a chance the change things, the players don't choose to or simply haven't done things that change it? Maybe because the players are having a grand old time kicking in doors, killing monsters, and taking their stuff, and aren't interested in what happens after they've left the dungeon behind, so why bother? I'm sure there are other reasons - some good for the group as a whole, others not.

By "non reactive" I meant non-reactive to player input of course, so your second point doesn't apply. On your first point, I guess the GM can choose not to cross off the 4 orcs in the room when the PCs kill them, so they are there again next time the PCs visit, but it takes the same, possibly less, work to cross them out - ie, to have the sandbox react.

So I can't understand why anyone would ever want to GM a truly non-reactive sandbox in a tabletop game (ie not a CRPG). It rather feels to me like a fictitious straw man created by those who dislike the style.

I am not sure if Umbran means a world where there's NO change in response to the PCs. I am guessing that he means something like how the world won't have a "reaction" to the PCs passing through a village and buying stuff. For example, four children saw the PCs in the market, were excited to see adventurers, then go play "heroes" with sticks. Now... two days later (and two days after the PCs leave) those kids are still playing heroes and one gets their eye poked out and then the drunk father of the eye-less child goes and slaps around the single mother of the kid with the stick for not watching her kid.

I am not sure the world "reacts" like that. In my experience, the world goes into a sort of stasis or at least doesn't require a reaction to the PCs passing through the village.

Or maybe that's not what Umbran meant and I am misinterpreting.

Either way, this is kind of what Rechan (or maybe another poster, I thought it was Rechan) meant when they mentioned a "static" world when the PCs pass out of the scene, there isn't much necessary that has to go on in the village, unless the DM has a specific reason for there to be something going on.

My experience is that the nature of the campaign experience has less to do with what model you're theoretically following, and has more to do with how the GM and players choose to work within the model.

And another factor that adds into this may be how much time the DM has to prepare for gametime, as well has how much content he want's to produce to work within the model.

 

[Raven Crowking]

The goal of a sandbox is never, IMHO, to lead to a "campaign conclusion" of any type.

 

[Bluenose]

The goal of a sandbox is never, IMHO, to lead to a "campaign conclusion" of any type.

There are though natural "end-points" where the characters have defeated whoever their particular enemies turned out to be and the players don't feel there's much point carrying on. Their characters have achieved wealth, status, or whatever other goals they had in mind. Carrying on is just adventuring for the sake of adventuring.

 

[Raven Crowking]

It is true that players retire characters in the sandbox, but that doesn't mean that the sandbox itself is concluded, or that the "campaign" is concluded. Some characters may retire, while others go on, for instance. And even the "retired" characters may be brought out to influence later events in the sandbox.

I agree with Ariosto; if you are thinking about a single group of characters having a single set of adventures, you are probably not thinking of a "sandbox" in the way I mean the term. A sandbox, to me, includes multiple parties (even if the players are the same), each of which represents the distinct interests (or a distinct subset of the interests) of the players involved.

Events may (and, with any luck, often do) lead to satisfying conclusions; the campaign (and by extension, the campaign milieu) does not. There may be some exceptions to this. A sandbox in the Last Days of the campaign milieu, where the end of the world will occur whatever the player characters do, and the interest lies in what they decide to do in the face of it, might be well worth playing. Likewise, a sandbox might include the PCs intentionally bringing about the end of the universe.

These are is not typical sandboxes IME and IMHO, however.


RC

 

[Umbran]

I am not sure the world "reacts" like that. In my experience, the world goes into a sort of stasis or at least doesn't require a reaction to the PCs passing through the village.

Or maybe that's not what Umbran meant and I am misinterpreting.

Seems to me you've pretty much got it. I turn from "stasis" again to the term that was used for a long time: "status quo". As in the Latin status quo ante - the state of affairs that existed previously.

The farmers keep farming, the miners keep mining, the rulers keep ruling. The socio-political-economic arrangements keep on running as they have been. If two nations historically have bad blood between them, there's skirmishes along the border, but nothing that actually shakes up the situation. If the party kills off a few orcs, well, orcs breed rapidly. Soon enough, there's more orcs to replace them. If someone kills the king, well, he's got a son to take the throne, and the son acts pretty much like the father did.

Basically, the world operates in a fairly stable equilibrium. Life goes on. It isn't "stasis" so much as a machine that just sort of keeps on running. it is robust, and does not change its course much from having the party poke and prod it on occasion. The forces that move things in the world are robust, and not particularly worried about what the PCs are doing.

This sort of thing is remarkably annoying to players who want to "make a real impact" on the game world. It is dreadfully useful shorthand if the players are more interested in their personal stories than what happens to the larger world due to their actions.