A Question Of Agency?

[Bedrockgames]

This is why I invited @FrogReaver, @Bedrockgames and @estar to comment on my post upthread. In what ways do they think that the episodes I set out - one imagined by Vincent Baker, one actual in my Prince Valiant game - differ from a "true sandbox"?

I don't think any of us are trying to carve up the world into 'true sandboxes' and untrue ones. I used the term pure sandbox, to describe a style of play that adheres closely to the ideal of sandbox you often see described. And I said, my campaigns aren't even pure sandboxes. I think there is distinctions to be made between sandboxes in terms of style, system and techniques the GM uses, but I don't think there is a contest between them.

 

[Bedrockgames]

Just because prep exists for a sandbox doesn't mean the DM is beholden to it. It happens all the time. So sure, in a vacuum, a dungeon or brother could be manufactured on the fly. I've done it, as, I'm sure, have lots of people. Not all of course, and maybe not even many, but some. I think it's a mistake to take the pov of the most prep beholden sandbox GMs and then project that onto the wider group. This is why taking playstyle as the first layer of analysis is so fraught IMO.

Yeah, I think sandboxes can vary considerably from one group to one group, and from one GM to another. I think of these campaigns when I run them, more as active world with factions in them (that also happen to have locations like dungeons, but those aren't the main course). There are prepped locations, but I find the chemical reaction of the live elements and the PCs is what is most interesting to me. I would say a campaign has several things: prepped material (locations, npcs, factions, etc), material produced on the fly, and the stuff that generates from the energy of the campaign once it starts to gain motion (i.e. a prepped NPC deciding to ally with another prepped NPC against the PCs). And everyone views prepped stuff different, and some people just do rough sketch, while others get real deep.

 

[Fenris-77]

@pemerton - I'll start by rejecting the notion of 'true sandbox' out of hand. No offense to anyone in particular but there is no such thing, and to insist that there is smacks of one-true-wayism. Here's the problem with having this conversation at the level of playstyle, sandbox especially. Most of the rules sets used to run sandbox play place a lot of agency in the GMs hands, and do not provide many strictures for it's employment beyond the adjudication of the basic pass-fail mechanic. There a lot of ways for that agency to be employed, so it becomes very difficult to talk about agency within the style. Some GMs use that agency splendidly, and some do not, some devolve a lot of it on the players in ways that are reminiscent of PbtA play, and others apportion it in any number of other ways.

My point is that one sandbox game, one that proceeds from predetermined prep, would be very different, while others might be far more similar to your style. If the question is 'agency', a satisfactory answer isn't 'sandbox'.

 

[Bedrockgames]

This relates to what I posted upthread to @Bedrockgames: you two are using "traditional" or "old school" to capture something that is actually a retro-oriented reconstruction.

I am just using handy descriptors. And yes, the OSR stuff is retro. In Estar's case though, a lot of what he is doing is just a style he has been developing from his early days in the hobby.

I am not trying to assert anything about the lineage of the style i play in when I use these terms. Like I said, I actually agree with you about the history of the hobby: it often gets very simplified. And while I have only played classic traveller (I haven't run it or read the books), so I can't weigh in on that mechanic specially with deep knowledge, I do think, especially in the earlier days when a lot of these lines didn't exist, you saw all kinds of rules, techniques and mechanics that transcend and predate the boxes and concepts we have now. I remember things being all over the map when I first started in the mid-80s. I have always been wary of the 'history of the hobby' as it gets advanced online. It isn't like there are all that many secondary sources, and the primary sources are still living memory for many people. And most of the people writing about the history of the hobby are actively involved in it (that makes being objective about the history, especially around contentious topics, very difficult in my opinion).

 

[Bedrockgames]

Yeah, I was only discussing that in the context of lifting it and dropping it into a D&D game of the type @estar was talking about. It works great in BitD because the players simply create some fiction for themselves as they go about taking advantage of a bonus or whatever. Because very little is nailed down about the setting in terms of factual details they are free to do that, and it is simply part of the process.

OTOH once you are in estar's high background detail 'Majestic Wilderlands' (or whatever) then how would the players do that? They can't easily just invent an old boarded over basement window everyone forgot about, for example. Nor can they simply invent a judge to be bribed to explain the +1 they got on some check because they own the Warehouse District. All of that COULD be sorted out, but it has to be sorted out by the GM, because nobody else has permission to introduce any fiction, and nobody else has his (what must be) 1000's and 1000's of pages of notes on everything under the Sun! In a more subtle way, how fitting are all of those details to the execution of a given sort of activity (IE gang building in this case) to the established fiction, which is so dense that there may well be no area in the whole setting where you won't run into endless obstacles that thwart any such effort? Now, we don't know of that is true or not in this specific case, but as a player contemplating taking on some sort of activity like that, I'm already a bit worried.

I am not sure I 100% follow the boarded window thing, so apologies if this isn't an accurate response to your post, but the thought this prompts for me is in Estar's games, there is assumed to be more to the setting than is prepped. I mean even the Majestic Wilderlands, as much as it has in it, the players can always take more fine a comb to the setting or seek something that likely exists but hasn't been pinned down. In my own games for example, I have maps, and those maps have many cities and towns on them, but like real world maps, they are not all the towns assumed to exist. I assume there are villages, towns and other settlements. And even within an existing town, there is only so much I can prep in advance. The players may ask "Does this town have an X?" and if I haven't answered or thought about that, I have to come up with a decision on the spot about it. Or maybe the setting specifically mentions X existing broadly in the setting (for instance maybe every county has a patrolling inspector) but I haven't detailed the particular patrolling inspector and his men of that county.

 

[robconley]

OTOH once you are in estar's high background detail 'Majestic Wilderlands' (or whatever) then how would the players do that? They can't easily just invent an old boarded over basement window everyone forgot about, for example. Nor can they simply invent a judge to be bribed to explain the +1 they got on some check because they own the Warehouse District. All of that COULD be sorted out, but it has to be sorted out by the GM,

It sorted like if you were there as the character, you check the condition of the warehouses' basement windows before. Or you take your chances. You ask around to see if there is a bribable judge, bribe them and use them to further your goal.

to explain the +1 they got on some check because they own the Warehouse District.

They don't need to explain why the +1 because already die something as their character to earn that +1. At the level of specific action it expressed by having the players describe what it is their character is doing. And if it warrants a modifier then it get a modifier. And in majority of the case circumstances modifier is already defined in the rules.

because nobody else has permission to introduce any fiction, and nobody else has his (what must be) 1000's and 1000's of pages of notes on everything under the Sun!

I have a lot of notes but not 1,000s of pages. For what I haven't detailed at that moment, I will turn what been described about the setting. The odds are significant in a run down neighborhood that one of the basement are broken. So I make a roll reflecting those odds and those are the result the players and I deal with. If it exists the players caught a break, if it doesn't then the players have to deal the situation with that detail.

If they want create a advantageous situation then they have to create as if they were there. The challenge is part of the appeal. And it not for everyone like any specific niche within this hobby. But it absolutely doesn't require 1,000s pages of note. It does require some work and some planning like access to a decent set of random tables for the setting.

In a more subtle way, how fitting are all of those details to the execution of a given sort of activity (IE gang building in this case) to the established fiction, which is so dense that there may well be no area in the whole setting where you won't run into endless obstacles that thwart any such effort?

Life is vast and full of possibilities even in a medieval hamlet. What you are calling obstacles are not obstacles. The vast majority will be neutral towards the PCs. Some will be allied or positive circumstances, other will be enemies or negative circumstances. I would say a referee running a campaign the way I do make everything negative or everything positive or even everything neutral is not doing a good job of making a compelling setting. Places have a mix. Exactly what there is discoverable. With that information one can formulate a plan to further one's goals.

Take my video for example. The inciting incident is that you are camped on the side of the road at night. You see another campfire, you hear a scream what do you do?

Do you get involved? Do you ignore what going on? Which side you join when youd.

If you opt to get involved you will find bandits attacking two individual. One obviously a young man who is a peasant, the other a young woman who obviously a noble's daughter.

Now I have run this over half a dozen time. Every time the group decides to rescue the pair and fight the bandits. But I am prepared if they decide to join the bandits. Or to ignore the situation and let the bandits have their way with the couple.

Most assume that I mean for the group to rescue the couple. That it is my preferred outcome. Well I don't have a preferred outcome. I tell players do what you want to as a character. I will roll with it. Join the bandit and make the couple the party's prisoners, OK. Ignore what going on, OK.

But I find that everybody wants to be a hero and thus fight the bandits and rescue the couple. And they learn that the couple is running away and that the lady's father is a knight and that he doesn't want the two to marry.

And this incident is the first major point of divergence in how the different groups handle the situation. A slight majority will take the couple back to the village. All of them came up with a story to get the peasant boy out of trouble. Half of them succeed and other half didn't because father is a knight who is the bailiff (administrator) of the village and major naughty word. Some group are good at talking down naughty words some are not. The last group did it succeeded because one of them was a paladin of the major faith of the region and she milked it for all it worth and intimidated the naughty word out of the knight.

Keep in mind I let players roll up characters for my one-shot so I no idea beforehand this was going to happen. But she picked up on the social implication of the background details I gave her on paladins right away.

Other groups will find a hiding place in the woods (there is an abandoned cottage that not far from the village that they can find) and stash the couple there while they deal with their mission from the bishop and figure the deal with the girl's father the knight.

So yes the players are not creating the fiction. But I breathed enough life into the setting to bring it to life so they don't need to in order to experience it and find opportunities to advance their own goals. And because the place has it own life it has it own troubles that the players find themselves in the midst of.

Not something they anticipated as players. It not a fiction they created to experience. They literally had no idea of the complications they were about to face. But the part of the fun, dealing with the unexpected. Then finding a way to resolve it.

I admit there is a chance they could ignore the complications. The conflict between the knight and the villagers, the plots of the Russet Lord a winter faerie lord seeking to recreate one of the stories that gave him birth that will result in the destruction of the village. The slothful monk who habitually late on the tithe. The players could march right in, drop off the couple, resolve getting the tithe, and march right out*.

But the reason I work on this particular adventure is that like my Scourge of the Demon Wolf I found that the overall situation was compelling to a broad range of players. That given human nature, players decide on their own to deal with it in a way that they find fun. And to me that how the best sandbox campaigns work. I don't have do anything keep the campaign going. They want to continue, to climb the next hill, talk to the next NPCs.

And all this approach is neither better or worse than any of the other in this. But it does offer quite a bit of player agency.

*So this happened not in my Russet Lord adventure yet, but in my Scourge of the Demon Wolf adventure there is a red herring where the players can encounter a group of bandit pretending to be wolves. Most group don't think the bandits are the cause of the problem that they were sent to investigate. But one group did, they were positive that they solved the mystery. And this was after 1 hour in a four hour time slot at a convention.

Luckily they encountered the bandits well before reaching the village so never went there to talk to them. When they returned to the baron that sent them out, he asked OK are they going to bring in my harvest. The players realized they didn't complete that part of their task. So headed back out. And quickly found out that the bandit were not the sole cause of the wolf attacks.

 

[FrogReaver]

This means that one of the most famous RPGs of all time, Traveller (1st published 1977), turns out to be a "collaborative storytelling game" rather than a traditional RPG.

This relates to what I posted upthread to @Bedrockgames: you two are using "traditional" or "old school" to capture something that is actually a retro-oriented reconstruction.

This has got to end. I've offered to use another term than "traditional". It's your own dang fault that you haven't proposed something else.

My only issue with retro is that I've never played in any kind of retro game that I'm aware. I've never been in any retro communities that I'm aware of. So I don't really think it's ever had any measurable influence on me. Which is why I'm baffled to hear that coming up as your reason for me using the term. I use the term because D&D has pretty much dominated the RPG market from the beginning and to me that makes this style and those similar to it "traditional". Again, I'll use another term as I'm not married to "traditional" but I don't know of a better one to use. Retro rings too hollow to me.

My first familiarity with D&D was the baulders gate and icewind dale PC games. I didn't play 3e and I'm fairly happy for that as the player facing mechanics for it feel too simulationy to me. I started playing pen and paper early 4e. I liked 4e but my 4e games are nothing like you describe yours as being. I like 5e better than 4e. I tend to enjoy analyzing tactical options and character builds about as much as I like playing the game. That's the case for me and most games. I probably like Stars Without Number a little more than 5e.

Even early D&D players - many of them being also wargamers - thought that plyers could establish facts about the story other than PC attempts, eg by using the combat rules to bring it about that opponents are dead.

*Correction - they thought the combat rules could establish facts about the story other than the PC attempts.

This distinction has been pointed out 100's of times on this thread. I don't know why you keep returning to it like the answer is going to be anything different.

 

[Bedrockgames]

I'm rather unclear on this point! Every sandbox, at some level boils down to a 'menu', that is it is some sort of collection of 'interesting situations' which are scattered around on some sort of 'map' (these could actually be anything, they are dungeons/lairs/terrain typically in most D&D games which are spread on a literal map). By dint of exploration and decision making the players select (or maybe stumble upon) some of these 'situations', or possibly learn about them and select them explicitly (IE they get a treasure map, they follow it instead of selling it).

I think the more active the players are, the less true this is. But it does depend on what you mean by 'interesting situations'. A lot of things don't even become interesting situations until the PCs actively involve themselves. I often have places and people on my map, I don't think of as 'situations'. And a lot times I am inventing things on the fly. The players don't have the power of authorship that Pemerton has described in some of his examples, but they do have the ability to force the GM to create new things (with statements as simple as "hey is there a pizza shop in this area of town"). We had a group of players decide they wanted to rob a bunch of banks in a campaign a few months ago. That prompted a bunch of setting considerations on the GMs part (are there banks, what do banks actually look like in this setting, what kind of security do they have, what specific banks are here and in what settlements). I think this goes beyond selecting from a menu of options.

 

[pemerton]

Even early D&D players - many of them being also wargamers - thought that plyers could establish facts about the story other than PC attempts, eg by using the combat rules to bring it about that opponents are dead.

*Correction - they thought the combat rules could establish facts about the story other than the PC attempts.

The combat rules set out the procedure and norms that govern how players establish those facts. That's what rules are for.

If the contrast that you are drawing were a sound one, then there would be no example of a RPG in which players can establish facts about stories other than PC attempts. Because in every case it would be the rules that are doing it.

 

[pemerton]

I use the term because D&D has pretty much dominated the RPG market from the beginning and to me that makes this style and those similar to it "traditional". Again, I'll use another term as I'm not married to "traditional" but I don't know of a better one to use. Retro rings too hollow to me.

My first familiarity with D&D was the baulders gate and icewind dale PC games. I didn't play 3e and I'm fairly happy for that as the player facing mechanics for it feel too simulationy to me. I started playing pen and paper early 4e. I liked 4e but my 4e games are nothing like you describe yours as being. I like 5e better than 4e. I tend to enjoy analyzing tactical options and character builds about as much as I like playing the game. That's the case for me and most games. I probably like Stars Without Number a little more than 5e.

I first played D&D in 1982. @AbdulAlhazred first played in 1975, I believe. A style of D&D play that dates from the 90s or 2000s just doesn't seem very "traditional" to me.