Improvisation vs "code-breaking" in D&D

[Zak S]

As I said, I think that sandboxing and problem-solving are basically orthogonal.

Yes and I already pointed out this is wrong because there's a connection.

I'm going to point it out again:

You said a sandbox is too constraining because there's GM-created content. I'm simply making a side-note: GM-created content is necessary for certain kinds of puzzle and problem-solving to occur.

You can't, for example, have a riddle to be solved using players skill using only stuff the player invented. Then there' nothing to puzzle out--the player has all the information.

The same goes for any complex encounter with hidden-but-findable info. If the GM doesn't invent content, the character of solving via player skill (a murder mystery for instance, or a complex trap with clues) ceases to exist. There's no thing to be uncovered.

 

[pemerton]

What you are quoting is strategic advice for the players.

Yes. I know that.

Players set their objectives in D&D, not the DM. The DM must not change anything regardless of these decisions.

Yes, I know he is saying that. If it's true that you started playing D&D in 1985, then I was familiar with this particular approach to play (especially from the writings of Lewis Pulsipher) before you started playing the game.

Everything the DM is allowed to tell the players is from that map.

The thing is, this is not literally true. Most GMs label the rooms on the map, and then have a separate bit of paper on which they right down the details, under the relevant labels. And different GMs write down differing degrees of detail.

Suppose, for instance, that the GM doesn't write down the colour of the roof. What happens if the players ask "What colour is the roof?"? The GM can't answer that it is colourless. S/he has to make something up. And making up that stuff can have downstream consequences. For instance, suppose s/he tells the players that the roof is grey in colour. And suppose the players know that the belly of a lurker above is typically grey in colour. The players can then try to have their PCs trick NPCs into not entering the room - "Don't go in there - look up at the roof - that's actually a lurker above!" Which is to say, the improvised detail might actually matter to gameplay down the line.

In D&D the players are capable of gaming the system. Their decisions go directly to it, even if at all points they are unsure what what choices are immediately available. They are always working on suppositions, but they are seeking to discern the code as much as game it.

"There's more mountain to the east, so I bet the dungeon expands that way. We just haven't found it. Plus all those stupid bat-like creatures keep coming from that way and they seem to have hundreds of them. Either there's a hidden lair, a passage off this level, or something else I'm not thinking of."
---- None of that is "talking about the fiction"

Also, none of that is about trying to work out what method the GM used to generate that content. And it in no way depends on whether the GM generated the content randomly or non-randomly. (Except that if the GM has in fact just rolled a lot of bat-like creatures as wandering monsters than the players could form a hypothesis about their being a lair or passage which is, in fact, just wrong.)

Seeking out encounters, even specific creatures is a large part of D&D too. Both require players to decipher the maze they are in based on all sorts of factors the DM is using. Population density. Environmentally-preferred habitats by creatures. % in lair vs. out wandering. Etc. This is directly the players "trying to work out what system of dungeon generation the GM is using".

Yes, the players need to learn that hill giants live in hills, that fire giants live in volcanoes etc. But they don't need to learn whether the GM put these fire giants in this volcano because s/he rolled on the "volcanic regions encounter table" or because s/he thought it was a good idea.

Everything the DM does to create that map is rule following.

No. There is no rule that tells the GM whether or not s/he can place a monster and/or a treasure in this room or in that. (And Gygax expressly encourages the GM to manage treasure placement so as to avoid too much.)

All the things Gary is referring to are real things in that they are really on a gameboard before play begins. If you want an "Alien God" you need to design what deity and alien mean in your game prior to play

Neither of those sentences is true. The altar to the alien god is on the "gameboard", but the alien god need not be. The GM is allowed to place the altar, then make up stuff after the event. In the real world, this is actually how a lot of GMs invent a lot of stuff!

it isn't a simulation of "everything" anyone could ever think of, but solely systems covering everything relevant to the roles (class) players are expected to play. Their improvement through play of the game is directly related to their game score, per role, and thereby level.

Note that in classic D&D there is no "game score" that is role-relative. All players earn XP in exactly the same ways (enemies defeated, loot collected).

I don't see how any of the advice you listed could in any way be considered credible in an entirely improvised game

It wouldn't be. For instance, that advice would have very little relevance for the players in my game.

It can have relevance for a game in which improvisation takes place, however. For instance, none of that advice becomes invalidated if the GM improvises rules for swimming, for jumping, for using insulated poles to try and disarm electricity traps, etc. Because none of that advice has any bearing on the action resolution mechanics.

That everything that ever happened in the entire length of the campaign informs, relates, and may even effect everything else that ever happens for the rest of the campaign is the awe inspiring accomplishment of D&D design. ---Something missing in non-design, improv sessions called games.

What makes you think that things that happen in the length of a campaign in "non-design, improv sessions called games" can't affect anything or everything else that ever happens? I've had experiences that contradict this.

For instance, in an early session of my 4e game the gods gave one of the PCs the task of rebuilding the Rod of Seven Parts. That has affected a great deal else of what has happened in the campaign.

What game time and entropy (chaos) are in the D&D game should be understood by the DM for their own system. That may sound like a non sequitur, but if you've been building functional D&D world designs, you know these come up.

I think this claim is in tension with your claim that "it isn't a simulation of everything that anyone could ever think of". I have never had the second law of thermodynamics come up in over 30 years of GMing until one of my players thought of it and brought it into the game!

The result of the effect your player is proposing is still limited to what is possible within the system. If it isn't, the Player's explanation would need to be described until such terms are covered by the game and then proper results could be determined.

<snip>

you were simply adding an untested, unbalanced game effect into the system by the player's rationale rather than what was possible in the game.

<snip>

playing a broken game system until anyone involved "just makes it up" is still disabling of game play.

<snip>

IMO, such a powerful effect would require very high level ability and not be "swappable" for alternate game damage or conditions or however the system you used worked.

<snip>

There is no game design the rules are referring to, the field of play.

<snip>

To me, what is sounds like you were doing applied to D&D was allowing a player to create a spell without study, cost, or time requirement - which is built in to so you can do work out of session to test the balance of such. Or whether they could even create such a level of effect in the first place.

By your measure craps is not a game, given that it has no board or "design". Yet if anything counts as gaming, surely craps does!

In the system I was using, the basic rules are quite clear: the player has to roll a d20, add relevant bonuses, and reach a pre-defined target number. The target number is read from a chart with three columns. The GM has to choose which column (Easy, Medium or Hard) is used. I chose the Hard column, for exactly the same reasons that you say "such a powerful effect" and "such a level of effect". The player then generated bonuses to the roll by making choices which the system permits to be made - in this particular case, spending resources (healing surges/hit points). The system is not broken - where did it break?

you were simply adding an untested, unbalanced game effect into the system by the player's rationale rather than what was possible in the game.

<snip>

I feel like in your game players are projecting their desires and gaming for the right to have their imaginings be added to the "game", i.e. narrative.

The player is rolling to find out whether or not the PC succeeds at his attempt to seal the Abyss. At that level of description, it's not different from rolling to see whether or not the PC succeeds in hitting an orc in melee.

I don't know why you say the effect is unbalanced. Where is the lack of balance? I also don't see why you say it is not possible in the game. One of the explicit uses of Arcana skill, per the game rules, is to manipulate magical effects.

As I posted upthread, this is the 4e analogue to creative spellcasting. You may be familiar with the rule in the AD&D books that a Light spell can be cast on a creature's eyes to blind it. Where do you think that rule came from? What would you have done, a GM, the first time a player attempted that? The rulebooks wouldn't have given you an answer.

I'm saying the RPG hobby has been usurped by the story making hobby. Anyone can choose to look for recognition of that fact and stop perpetuating it.

I think the notion of "usurpation" has no work to do here. Suppose it's true that more people enjoy playing my way than your way. And, as seems likely, that many more again prefer playing adventure paths than prefer either your way or my way. That's not a "usurpation" of anything. It's just people engaging in the hobbies they enjoy.

 

[pemerton]

You said a sandbox is too constraining because there's GM-created content. I'm simply making a side-note: GM-created content is necessary for certain kinds of puzzle and problem-solving to occur.

"No myth" uses GM-created content too. But it is created in a different way, at a different time in the play process.

That difference matters to sandbox vs no myth. It isn't relevant to most problem-solving. (As you say, there are certain kinds of puzzles and problems that it might be relevant to. They're a small subset of the totality, though.)

 

[Maxperson]

What you describe is the sort of approach to GMing that I generally try to avoid. Eg I don't work out stuff that "goes on without the players" which they can discover if their PCs ask the right questions.

That's just the sort of thing that I said, upthread, is too railroad-y for my tastes (my approac is that, if the PCs "ask the right questions", then in response I'll work out some stuff that is happening.). Of course tastes differ.

How!?!? If the plot goes on without them, by definition it cannot be a railroad since the PCs are not on it and have not been forced onto it.

I run a living, breathing world. The rest of the world does not cease to exist just because the PCs cannot see it. Things put into motion play out as they will. Only PC intervention will alter those things. If they choose to intervene, things play out differently. If they choose not to intervene in the assassination attempt on the king's life, the assassination attempt goes forward without them. That's not railroading. It's the opposite of railroading.

In a typical sandbox game, if the players don't engage the GM's content then there is no game. The GM might generate a lot of content all over the place, but the players aren't free to engage none of it yet still be playing the game.

Yes they are. It's called coming up with their own goals. At that point, I have to improv until I have time to prepare better for the path they have decided to go down.

That said, at a certain point the sandbox you describe could bleed into a type of "no myth" play. If, in fact, all the content the GM is generating is improvised in response to hooks and signals provided by the player, then that's not the sort of thing I find railroad-y. But I don't think that's what is typically meant by "sandbox", either.

All a sandbox is, is a game where the PCs decide what they do and just go. No limits. That does not mean no DM preparation. Once I see the direction they are taking it, I will prepare things along those lines. If halfway through they zig when I thought they would zag and leave for something new, I improv some more and make new plans based on the new direction of the PCs.

So will you please explain HOW planning things with no rails is railroading?

 

[Celebrim]

That's exactly what the borders are for the Big Model. In it, Tetris is scene shifting to create a narrative, or some such BS.

First of all, again, the Big Model doesn't apply to Tetris. I went back and looked, and three different sources all agree that The Big Model is a theory of RPGs, and not games generally. Besides which, you aren't even correctly describing The Big Model. Besides which, you are the one that keeps dragging The Big Model into this discussion. As far as I'm concerned it is a complete red herring. You keep refusing to discuss RPG's as they actually exist pre 1985 without reference to The Big Model based solely on the cultural artifacts that existed at that time without referencing The Big Model or any other irrelevant anachronistic theory.

The biggest irony in this whole thread is you are The Big Model's biggest proponent.

Games are simply patterns existent in the world which we treat accordingly within the culture of games.

Stitch heap tense snobbish mint of adamant reading ergo earthy knee scattered symptomatic chance.

Or in other words, I'm having a really hard time extracting any meaning from most of your sentences. If conversation was pattern decipherment, your part of it reads like it came from a random number generator.

The first was Palace of the Vampire Queen 1975, TSR's first was in Blackmoor Supplement 2.

These were extremely rare items. How do you think people played the game without access to these things? Do you think that people were only playing "Temple of the Frog" and "Palace of the Vampire Queen"? The truth is, that not only do we not need modules, but that many people didn't play with anything that could be neatly classified as an adventure. That isn't to say that they didn't have adventures, but rather that something like "Temple of the Frog" is quite obviously an attempt to impose and communicate an overall narrative structure via a specific situation ("a strange cult", "a baroness needs rescuing").

You wanted evidence of intention in the design of D&D. Screens are evidence. Modules are evidence. Quotes in responses to other posters in this thread include more evidence. That you deny screens and other game components as unnecessary doesn't disprove their need in the actual game.

This is a bit of knotted up nonsense that twists back on itself and ends up nowhere. To the extent that screens and modules provide evidence of anything about the design of D&D, they provide no evidence that the design of D&D is equivalent to "code breaking" or "pattern discovery". Nor have you provided that evidence by analyzing screens or modules as actual products to prove they have the features you claim or the purpose you assert. I own both a 1st edition and a 2nd edition DM's screen, and actually still use. I don't need them to run an RPG (and have ran 1e AD&D without a DM's screen many times), but they are handy as a means of quickly looking up rules without stopping play. Any feature of them that you think proves that the game isn't meant to have improvisation or a narrative, feel free to cite without worry as to whether I could confirm your observation.

Nor have you addressed the fact that the game was played before screens and modules existed, and played by many groups that did not have them. Disproving the necessity of screens and modules only requires a single counter-example. If the game was played successfully even once without them, they are not necessities. I have provided the counter example. I can easily show that there is no feature of a DM's screen which you would point out as essential to play, which cannot be replaced or done without without harm to the game and I'm sure we can get many people who will confirm that they also have played the game without modules or DM's screens well before 1985. My denial is backed up by actual evidence, something you are decidedly adverse to providing and show no signs of even recognizing.

And if you've played modules you know modules aren't "episodic" but continually transitioning as the game is played. Even if you clear a dungeon level, you need to fight to keep the monsters from repopulating it. The modules never go away, but are simply tightly balanced designs within the larger game. (of course, so too are the PCs, monsters, treasure...)

Of course modules are episodic. They have beginnings and they have ends. They are generally loosely connected to other modules and can be played as stand alone adventures or parts inserted in practically any order to an existing campaign. The mere fact that the setting of the module could be dynamic and changing doesn't make modules less self-contained, or mean that many were not close ended (the foozle is destroyed, the foozle is restored to its rightful owner, etc.). A campaign that consisted solely of playing through modules, which since you insist modules are necessary components, would have to describe all possible campaigns, would inherently have an episodic nature. The events described in the module would inherently reach a conclusion, and the module would cease to contain relevant content. Of course, the big irony is that you are continually describing improvisation - something you claim the game doesn't have - when describing how modules are played.

Propostion #1: The vast majority of published modules do not contain references to dungeon areas be repopulated once cleared. A DM that repopulated a dungeon area and repurposed it would be inherently engaged in improvisation. In some cases, where modules are at least partially event based and not entirely location based ("Worldshaker", "Needle", "Day of Al'Akbar", "Saber River") such repopulation is meaningless because its the events that drive the story not the locations.
Proposition #2: Off the top of my head, the only published module that mentions repopulating the dungeon over time is B2 keep on the borderlands (and I'll have to check that just to make sure I'm not confusing text in B2 with text in the DMG, which notably wasn't intended as a relevant rules text for playing B2). But to the extent that any module mentions a dungeon repopulating over time, they generally do not detail the exact process by which that would occur, leaving it again up to improvisation by the DM to decide how and when a dungeon is repopulated.
Proposition #3: Repurposing a module like B2 to set it in the icy north or tropical jungle clearly requires DM improvisation. No mechanical engine for doing that is given to the DM, and even the idea that B2 should be converted to a different setting is improvisation.

The redefining of an RPG as a storygame, to the point even you don't seem to remember or understand what RPGing is.

I don't define story games as RPGs. Nor do I define theater games as RPGs. Story games to my mind lack essential features that would make them qualify as RPGs. And I was playing an RPG last night. But unlike you, I've actually repeatedly demonstrate that what I say an RPG is, is what the rules of the game say an RPG is, what the creators of the game say an RPG is, and what this historical record says an RPG is, and is congruent with how RPGs are actually defined in a dictionary or encyclopedia article. You on the other hand have engaged in the same silliness the people pushing The Big Model, of defining your own invented terms and then asserting that everyone conformed to your model. But you don't actually find people thinking about the game in the way you are here asserting, nor do you find the language that you claim defines a game used in the games you are describing. Your "millions of people" are entirely figments of your imagination.

So here is a challenge for you. Explain in a non garbly gook way in what manner you consider an RPG differs from a wargame. Or more specifically, what feature(s) do you add to a wargame to make it an RPG? Because your theory of games seems to argue that there is no non-ephemeral difference between an RPG and mastermind or tic-tac-toe.

Okay, but that is well known as being a campaign destroying module.

So? You are now evading and spinning. It's a module. Unlike your hypothetical modules, the text of UK1 is a tangible bit of historical evidence. We can cite it. We can quote it. The fact that you don't like the module doesn't mean you get to dismiss it as an example cultural artifact. UK1: Beyond the Crystal Cave wasn't written by Ron Edwards or anyone that had been exposed to The Big Model. It can't have been created by revolutions real or imagined in the 1990's. It's a cultural artifact of no later than 1983 and perforce had to have been created by a gaming culture that existed prior to that time. Again, what does that cultural artifact tell us about the gaming culture as it existed in 1983? What does that cultural artifact tell us about the game that the creators of the game wanted the players to play?

UK1's design is not a campaign ender.

There is in your complaint that finding that you've been in a demiplane for 100 or 1000 years is a campaign ender, a remarkable hidden admission. If the design of UK1 had been, "The lovers must be rescued in 48 hours time or everyone suddenly dies", then this would have been a design that literally had the potential to be a campaign ender. Many parties might go in, hit the time limit, and suddenly die. In your terms, they would have failed to properly analyze the pattern, missing the clues such as the waterfall that time distortion was in effect. But arriving back in the world 40 or 1000 years later isn't a campaign ender in any literal way. Points were still scored. The player's token has not been removed from the game. If the game is nothing more than "code breaking" arriving back in the real world 1000 years later is not harmful to the game and not problematic. The only reason that it could be considered problematic is in fact if up to that point, the campaign was creating a narrative and that narrative has now been disrupted, broken, and invalidated by the change of setting. The only real complaint that could lead to claiming that returning to the real world 1000 years later is a problem is because the existing story of the campaign is then ruined.

The cultural artifacts of 1983 indicate that DMs were expected to improvise, that adventures placed characters in a situation that had an expected narrative arc, and that the designers and players of the game expected their adventures to create a story.

And if we boil out your invented garbly gook about "code breaking" and other irrelevant novel language, you are continually affirming that.

 

[Celebrim]

How!?!? If the plot goes on without them, by definition it cannot be a railroad since the PCs are not on it and have not been forced onto it.

You are going to find that pemerton liberally sprinkles the description of his techniques with Forge terminology. But that when you get down to it, pemerton is not actually describing techniques that correspond in any tight way to the terminology as Forge defined it. In fact, from his examples, the game pemerton actually plays and the techniques he actually describes using are bog standard DM preparation and resolution. Indeed, even when pemerton actually employs systems intended to empower certain agendas of play, pemerton actually ends up employing them in slightly different ways that end up being functionally not that different from anyone who wasn't consciously trying to be Forge-y.

Burning Wheel can be played, and I imagine usually is, as a bog standard fantasy heartbreaker.

You might then be inclined to wonder what in the world is going on here. I know I have many times.

Celebrim's Second Law of Roleplaying (tm) says, "How you think about playing a system is more important than the rules system itself." What I think actually happened is that reading some Forge essays revolutionized how pemerton thought about playing and preparing to play a game and set him off in new directions. I don't know much about his pre-Forge preparation or style (but the fact that he played RM for 20 years tells you a lot), but his post Forge preparation and scene adjudication sounds remarkably familiar to a lot of things I've seen done going back to at least the early 90's. However, rather than describing his normal play in the normal terms that ought to characterize it, he stays stuck in Forge-isms because it was those things that caused him to question his earlier techniques and develop new largely system independent approaches. But I've heard him describe the process of creating a dungeon backstory while preparing for play as "no myth", and call linear process-sim resolution as "Story First" drama techniques. So that he describes sandboxes as railroads because there exists content the PC's don't choose to engage with doesn't surprise me either.

Whatever works for him to help him frame the way he thinks about the game. It seems to be working for all that it baffles me what he means 90% of the time. I think that the answer might be, compared to how he formally thought about adjudicating play, he's more improvisational, or more outcome focused and less system focused, and so forth. Its broadened his palette apparently and made him happier with his game, so I'm good with it.

Point is, I think we make far too big a deal about the labels we use. In practice, what most DMs actually do is a lot like what all DMs actually do, whether they want to call it a 'sandbox' or a 'railroad' or not. The players don't stay at your table if you can't run a fun game.

 

[Maxperson]

You are going to find that pemerton liberally sprinkles the description of his techniques with Forge terminology. But that when you get down to it, pemerton is not actually describing techniques that correspond in any tight way to the terminology as Forge defined it. In fact, from his examples, the game pemerton actually plays and the techniques he actually describes using are bog standard DM preparation and resolution. Indeed, even when pemerton actually employs systems intended to empower certain agendas of play, pemerton actually ends up employing them in slightly different ways that end up being functionally not that different from anyone who wasn't consciously trying to be Forge-y.

Burning Wheel can be played, and I imagine usually is, as a bog standard fantasy heartbreaker.

You might then be inclined to wonder what in the world is going on here. I know I have many times.

Celebrim's Second Law of Roleplaying (tm) says, "How you think about playing a system is more important than the rules system itself." What I think actually happened is that reading some Forge essays revolutionized how pemerton thought about playing and preparing to play a game and set him off in new directions. I don't know much about his pre-Forge preparation or style (but the fact that he played RM for 20 years tells you a lot), but his post Forge preparation and scene adjudication sounds remarkably familiar to a lot of things I've seen done going back to at least the early 90's. However, rather than describing his normal play in the normal terms that ought to characterize it, he stays stuck in Forge-isms because it was those things that caused him to question his earlier techniques and develop new largely system independent approaches. But I've heard him describe the process of creating a dungeon backstory while preparing for play as "no myth", and call linear process-sim resolution as "Story First" drama techniques. So that he describes sandboxes as railroads because there exists content the PC's don't choose to engage with doesn't surprise me either.

Whatever works for him to help him frame the way he thinks about the game. It seems to be working for all that it baffles me what he means 90% of the time. I think that the answer might be, compared to how he formally thought about adjudicating play, he's more improvisational, or more outcome focused and less system focused, and so forth. Its broadened his palette apparently and made him happier with his game, so I'm good with it.

Point is, I think we make far too big a deal about the labels we use. In practice, what most DMs actually do is a lot like what all DMs actually do, whether they want to call it a 'sandbox' or a 'railroad' or not. The players don't stay at your table if you can't run a fun game.

Very well said.

I am moving more and more towards the improv end of things. Not so much because I don't want to prepare or feel that prep is bad, but because I have less and less time to prepare for the games coming up.

I do agree that we make a bigger deal about labels than is necessary, but when one person is using a label in the complete opposite manner as the rest of us, it's going to cause confusion. Labels do mean things. It's how we know what an orc is vs. an ogre with a single word.

 

[Aenghus]

How!?!? If the plot goes on without them, by definition it cannot be a railroad since the PCs are not on it and have not been forced onto it.

I run a living, breathing world. The rest of the world does not cease to exist just because the PCs cannot see it. Things put into motion play out as they will. Only PC intervention will alter those things. If they choose to intervene, things play out differently. If they choose not to intervene in the assassination attempt on the king's life, the assassination attempt goes forward without them. That's not railroading. It's the opposite of railroading.

Yes they are. It's called coming up with their own goals. At that point, I have to improv until I have time to prepare better for the path they have decided to go down.

All a sandbox is, is a game where the PCs decide what they do and just go. No limits. That does not mean no DM preparation. Once I see the direction they are taking it, I will prepare things along those lines. If halfway through they zig when I thought they would zag and leave for something new, I improv some more and make new plans based on the new direction of the PCs.

So will you please explain HOW planning things with no rails is railroading?

I'm not Pemerton, but I've seen sandboxes go wrong before, at least in the eyes of the players, in a variety of ways. This isn't to say that these things are happening in your game, but I've seen them happen in others to the detriment of those games.

First, a sandbox game can hinder communication between the DM and the players. DMs who run sandboxes often won't talk about issues of style and genre, as they want the players to explore the sandbox and discover the content rather than discuss it beforehand. This can make player experiences more "authentic" but it also risks the players rejecting some or all of the content for various reasons (thematic, aesthetic, ethical, being boring, depressing, over the top, unrealistic etc etc). Such rejection can't help but impact the DM negatively even when they deal with it well rather than defensively.

The DM is aware of lots of content of various sorts just waiting for the players to encounter it, and being human probably wants them to interact with at least some of it. DMs who like to run sandboxes tend to be worldbuilders and gain enjoyment from it in and of itself. Meanwhile the players have imperfect information on the potentially small subset of content they hear of or encounter, and that together with individual player agendas can result in players ignoring, burning down or running away from lots of content. If the DM is unwilling to move more fitting content into the path of the players, the players can by dumb chance continue to evade anything interesting to them for extended periods of time. DM frustration often leads them to railroad players into content at this point.

The railroading in part comes from issues of style and genre, where what's happening in the background propels the gameworld in directions the players aren't interested and the DM is. The events happening in the gameworld on and off camera may not engage the players. Preventing such events may require styles of play the players want to avoid e.g. intrigue and skullduggery, backstabbing and treachery, wheeler and dealer politics, hack and slash dungeons, high society hobnobbing etc etc. The players are technically free to interfere with game events, but this doesn't mean they want to or would enjoy such play if it happened. And again, this damages communication when player complaints over game events are met with the response "You could have done something to prevent it", thus discouraging them from providing honest feedback in future.

P.S. how do I do mentions properly, following the FAQ instructions doesn't seem to work.

 

[Campbell]

You are going to find that pemerton liberally sprinkles the description of his techniques with Forge terminology. But that when you get down to it, pemerton is not actually describing techniques that correspond in any tight way to the terminology as Forge defined it. In fact, from his examples, the game pemerton actually plays and the techniques he actually describes using are bog standard DM preparation and resolution. Indeed, even when pemerton actually employs systems intended to empower certain agendas of play, pemerton actually ends up employing them in slightly different ways that end up being functionally not that different from anyone who wasn't consciously trying to be Forge-y.

Burning Wheel can be played, and I imagine usually is, as a bog standard fantasy heartbreaker.

You might then be inclined to wonder what in the world is going on here. I know I have many times.

Celebrim's Second Law of Roleplaying (tm) says, "How you think about playing a system is more important than the rules system itself." What I think actually happened is that reading some Forge essays revolutionized how pemerton thought about playing and preparing to play a game and set him off in new directions. I don't know much about his pre-Forge preparation or style (but the fact that he played RM for 20 years tells you a lot), but his post Forge preparation and scene adjudication sounds remarkably familiar to a lot of things I've seen done going back to at least the early 90's. However, rather than describing his normal play in the normal terms that ought to characterize it, he stays stuck in Forge-isms because it was those things that caused him to question his earlier techniques and develop new largely system independent approaches. But I've heard him describe the process of creating a dungeon backstory while preparing for play as "no myth", and call linear process-sim resolution as "Story First" drama techniques. So that he describes sandboxes as railroads because there exists content the PC's don't choose to engage with doesn't surprise me either.

Whatever works for him to help him frame the way he thinks about the game. It seems to be working for all that it baffles me what he means 90% of the time. I think that the answer might be, compared to how he formally thought about adjudicating play, he's more improvisational, or more outcome focused and less system focused, and so forth. Its broadened his palette apparently and made him happier with his game, so I'm good with it.

Point is, I think we make far too big a deal about the labels we use. In practice, what most DMs actually do is a lot like what all DMs actually do, whether they want to call it a 'sandbox' or a 'railroad' or not. The players don't stay at your table if you can't run a fun game.

We tend to think about what constitutes system in different ways. To you system is all about the artifacts of play (character sheets, dice, and numerical representations of stuff). For me it includes directives on how to play the game, and I think those directives are the most crucial area of design because it has the biggest impact. None of that stuff (including the artifacts of play) is like binding for individual groups. We can easily play Ars Magica (as in using whatever artifacts of play and directives serve the kind of game we want to play) without like playing Ars Magica (following directives and using all artifacts of play that apply). Basically, we have different ideas as to what counts as playing a particular game as designed.

What you said still struck a chord with me. Here's the thing - the indie RPG community didn't invent a new way to play role playing games. They attempted to capture a way to play role playing games people had been using since role playing games were like a thing and create a set of games that were more suited to that way of playing. When John Harper was play testing Apocalypse World and read the How To MC chapter he was like "Isn't that just the way you GM?". It was nothing special for a lot of people because they were already like playing a game based on D&D of their own design that utilized the same set of techniques and procedures. Vincent Baker acknowledges this directly in the text of Apocalypse World.

The same is true of Ars Magica and Vampire. They had successfully captured a different way people had already been playing role playing games. The Ravenloft and Dragonlance modules are probably the earliest published form of this. The play techniques they utilized were something a lot of people were already doing, including a popular way to play Champions. Monte Cook totally played Champions this way, and has a post on his site I could dig up. Current games that use these play techniques (the ones in Vampire - not Apocalypse World and Sorcerer) include Numenera and Shadow of the Demon Lord. It's not a way to play the game that I like very much, but people were already doing it.

This sort of thing is important to acknowledge. The indie community totally did a poor job of communicating this from the start, and tried to appear way to avant garde. We were like making a statement man!

 

[Celebrim]

I'm not Pemerton, but I've seen sandboxes go wrong before, at least in the eyes of the players, in a variety of ways. This isn't to say that these things are happening in your game, but I've seen them happen in others to the detriment of those games.

I'm one of the leading theorists of "sandboxes aren't inherently better than linear adventures and can go wrong in just as many ways". I've been pushing the term "rowboat world" on the community for years now, and been trying my best to convince people that railroading techniques aren't always bad things just things you can misuse or overuse.

But that doesn't mean that I think sandboxes and railroads are equivalent things, particularly just because we can draw parallels to them like: "they both can go bad", "one of the ways they can go bad is players failing to engage with the content", or "both can have dungeons in them".

The DM is aware of lots of content of various sorts just waiting for the players to encounter it, and being human probably wants them to interact with at least some of it.

You have no idea how much it frustrates me irrationally, that players rationally prefer to go in straight lines rather than wander about in curling loops simply to bash into additional dangerous prepared encounters that lie to either side.

Or the pain when players decide its better to just burn down a lovingly crafted haunted house than explore it.

Or the disappointment when players decide to effectively declare a status quo antebellum, rather than root there foes out of the dungeon you spent 20 hours making.

The closest a player can come to understanding that is when the PC they've been running for 5 years dies to a series of bad dice rolls.

If the DM is unwilling to move more fitting content into the path of the players, the players can by dumb chance continue to evade anything interesting to them for extended periods of time.

If content isn't dense enough, then it won't even be dumb chance. Either way, you've got a rowboat world that needs to be solved with more content density, more content bleed and less compartmentalization, and more consciously created breadcrumbs.

DM frustration often leads them to railroad players into content at this point.

At which point it ceases to be a sandbox.

The railroading in part comes from issues of style and genre, where what's happening in the background propels the game world in directions the players aren't interested and the DM is.

This is invariably a problem when it happens regardless of what technique the GM employs. You can go full on "no myth", utilize scene framing to cut out the boring parts, and let players set the narrative goals and even situations, and yet if you the GM are uninterested in running the sort of stories the players are interested in exploring, the table has a problem and it's not a problem any amount of system or technique can solve. GNS would call this a conflict of creative agenda and pretend its a system problem, but the conflicts can really arise at pretty much any level. So much Forge is just, "My GM is a jerk.", or "My GM has low skill.", or "My GM isn't interested in running the game that I want him to run.", but "System is going to make it all right." Not only is that wrong, but there wasn't enough attention paid to, "The player is a jerk.", "The player has low skill.", or "What the player wants is boring to everyone but the player."

In actual play, if no one finds it boring, it doesn't matter whether its more or less of a railroad than a sandbox. The rails don't matter if no one tries to get off. The improvisational Sargasso sea stays fresh as long as the players are awed by the novelty of play.