D&D 5E Do You Prefer Sandbox or Party Level Areas In Your Game World?

So these are two approaches that campaigns can (and do) use. They have various names, but I'm using these names. I've used both approaches in the past.

Obviously there is more nuance than the definitions below, but these are two possible extreme ends of the poll when voting feel free to choose whichever end you tend towards, or embellish in the comments.

Sandbox -- each area on the world map has a set difficulty, and if you're a low level party and wander into a dangerous area, you're in trouble. The Shire is low level, Moria is high level. Those are 'absolute' values and aren't dependent on who's traveling through.

Party -- adventurers encounter challenges appropriate to their level wherever they are on the map. A low level party in Moria just meets a few goblins. A high level party meets a balrog!

Which do you prefer?

 

[Maxperson]

Nor must I lend credit to the argument that having notes makes for more real games, as this is also demonstably untrue by dint of other approaches that do "real" well. Instead, there's a specific thing that's being sought that's hiding behind "real" in these discussions, and is likely different for each person (although probably in some distinct camps in aggregate).

Then do it. Demonstrate that our opinions and feeling about this are untrue. Demonstrate that we do not know what we are talking about with our own experiences and feelings and that you know better, because that's the claim you are making there.

 

[S'mon]

Except the moment will inevitably come when I-as-player realize that it's only the result of my check that determines where Higley is in the setting. Andit's at that moment the whole thing falls apart for me.

Funny - I'm often happy to tell my players "Hm, 3 in 6 chance Higley's in Singapore... roll" - I'm one of those 'no GM screen/all open rolls" guys. I've never received complaints about this breaking immersion. Last night the PCs were looking for a missing knight, they found his corpse in the troll lair. They were sad their rescue attempt failed. I told them "Bad luck - I rolled for when the troll found Sir Rodney - worst possible result" (it was a 1 on a d6, with lower = worse, my default mechanic) "Nothing you could have done". So they see 'behind the curtain' a lot, but no one has ever asked to be kept in the dark about how the simulation works, or told me that Rodney's death/survival should have been scripted rather than rolled.

One thing I find is that my d6 wandering monster checks (6 = monster) soon evoke a Pavlovian response. Just rolling the d6 in front of the players immediately raises tension and gets the PCs appropriately wary. I find this if anything increases immersion - the players are feeling a shadow of the dread their PCs are feeling.

 

[Jack Daniel]

Except this isn't the real world, it's made up entirely, so we can't at all say what exists until it's shared with the group and entered into the fiction.

I simply can't buy this premise. In fact, I reject it utterly. For some groups and play-styles, it may indeed be feasible to decide that something is only "canonical" to the campaign once established in the fiction. (A long tradition in improv acting as well.) But that's certainly not how all RPGs operate.

If a DM fleshes out their campaign milieu in sufficient detail and then chooses not to change details once the proverbial fait is accompli, the fact that the DM could in principle change their mind about things doesn't invalidate the "reality"—by which I mean fictional existence—of the setting as it exists in the DM's notes and/or "head-canon." The campaign milieu is as "real" in that sense as any fictional world created by any author, and the parts that haven't yet been committed to "text" are as valid as those that are.

In the same way that a fanfiction writer who goes beyond the established text of their fandom's canon is always at risk of being "Jossed" by any future official work, a player who carries an idea of the game world that conflicts with the DM's is likely to be in for a rude awakening.

If someone is saying that the GM's notes hold as much permanence and "real"ity as the shared fiction, this is demonstrably false -- the GM's notes are far more malleable than the shared fiction, and can be changed at any time. Thus, I need not lend much credit to an argument that the GM's notes are equally "real" as the shared fiction.

Well too bad. That's precisely how some DMs operate. (And some writers, death of the author arguments notwithstanding.)

 

[tetrasodium]

@Lanefan it feels like your turning a blind eye to things in order to split hairs needlessly fine in defense of unintroduced gm notes=just as real as introduced shared fiction. Earlier you talked about the setting specifically so I'll stick to that path with an example. In the eberron setting there are a bunch of reasons behind what caused the day of mourning & many of them have been very strongly implied as the possible cause in various printed eberron books. This makes for a good example of something that can exist within a GM's notes & never be "real" until the shared fiction somehow proves one or starts disproving others

 

[Xetheral]

Yes. So, to put it another way, "the game" in my view extends beyond just what happens at the table during the session. It includes GM prep and imagination, setting construction and design, rules modifying, record-keeping, and all the other bits that go into making what happens at the table happen.

And all of that is, at any given moment, established. And here my perspective may differ from some, in that if (for example) I-as-GM have determined during setting construction - before play even starts - that there's going to be a large city on the south coast named Spieadeia, then in my view that's an established thing. Yes I can still change my mind and pull that city off the map, but until-unless I do that city counts as established in that whatever I think up next for that area is going to be flavoured by the presence of a big city there.

My quibble is more with the idea that the game only consists of the sessions at the table; and that the term "scope of play" reflects this thinking.

I'm treating unshared parts of the setting as established parts of the setting, even if they're established only in my own mind and-or in my own notes/maps. The unestablished bits of the setting are where the map yet remains blank.

That said, there's the question of level-of-detail. My setting maps might show a particular area as merely "hills"; which means it's locked in that there's hills there but also means I'm still free to add villages or trails or adventure sites or other more-detailed elements to those hills as time and the campaign go on. What I can't add is anything that, had it been present all along, might have changed anything that actually happened during play. I cant, for example, add a towering mountain into those hills that the PCs could have seen in the distance when they passed through six months ago; as for all I know the presence of said mountain might have prompted the PCs to check it out.

Thanks for the detailed response! It sounds like my overall understanding was correct, but my choice of terminology left something to be desired. I appreciate you taking the time to clarify.

 

[S'mon]

Thanks for the detailed response! It sounds like my overall understanding was correct, but my choice of terminology left something to be desired. I appreciate you taking the time to clarify.

Can I just say I greatly appreciate the cordial tone of your posts, Xetheral. You definitely elevate the discourse!

 

[Xetheral]

When the statement made runs directly into observable inconsistence, the benefit of the doubt is waved. If someone is saying that the GM's notes hold as much permanence and "real"ity as the shared fiction, this is demonstrably false -- the GM's notes are far more malleable than the shared fiction, and can be changed at any time. Thus, I need not lend much credit to an argument that the GM's notes are equally "real" as the shared fiction. Nor must I lend credit to the argument that having notes makes for more real games, as this is also demonstably untrue by dint of other approaches that do "real" well. Instead, there's a specific thing that's being sought that's hiding behind "real" in these discussions, and is likely different for each person (although probably in some distinct camps in aggregate). Asking people to actually stop, put away the surface arguments that don't help, and look at what it is they're getting from play is not dismissing that there a valid way to play there -- it's saying that the given reason of "real"ness isn't really it.

The GM needing notes to do a good job at presenting a real world is perfectly understandable. This differs from just saying prep equals "real" in that it allows the player to recognize areas they may be weak and they can then decide if this is something they want to work on. Hiding this behind "prep makes for real" means there's never a reason to consider this.

The GM wanting to provide a keyed experience so that they can act the arbiter in play rather than a director (as with AP play) is also perfectly valid, and this difference from claiming "real" lets the GM better understand what's important to prep to get this experience because they're not evaluating prep by "real" but instead by how well it creates the environment that the players then try to "solve."

Or, some other question. If you stop at "real" you'll never examine your play.

So despite agreeing with each other about the role of improv at our own tables, I see the "scope of play" (just for consistency and continuity I'm going to keep using this terminology in the discussion, despite the flaws pointed out be @Lanefan) as a choice. You and I choose to define what has been presented at the table as the dividing line between what is and is not part of the game, but that's not the only possible choice.

Demonstrably, other posters in this thread instead choose to include material that has been created (and not yet shared) as part of the game. Alternatively, a table could go in the other direction and take a Tolkien-esque approach and define what has been presented in play as not necessarily the definitive statement on what is and is not "real" in the game world. I've heard of some tables running individual modules repeatedly (sometimes with the same characters) so presumably they don't take what happens at the table on any given runthrough as definitive even after it's been introduced.

Given that I see the scope of play as a choice, I expect those options to be inconsistent with each other. Therefore I can't agree that it is meaningful that that the choice of a broader scope of play is "observably inconsisten[t]" with our narrower choice. I recognize that you don't see the scope of play as a choice at all, and that's probably why we're so far apart on how we view the disagreement in this thread, despite the similarities in how we view and use improv.

As for asking people to put away surface arguments, I don't think that approach is likely to get very far when there is evident disagreement about what is and is not a surface argument.

 

[Xetheral]

Can I just say I greatly appreciate the cordial tone of your posts, Xetheral. You definitely elevate the discourse!

Thanks for the kind words!

 

[Ovinomancer]

I simply can't buy this premise. In fact, I reject it utterly. For some groups and play-styles, it may indeed be feasible to decide that something is only "canonical" to the campaign once established in the fiction. (A long tradition in improv acting as well.) But that's certainly not how all RPGs operate.

If a DM fleshes out their campaign milieu in sufficient detail and then chooses not to change details once the proverbial fait is accompli, the fact that the DM could in principle change their mind about things doesn't invalidate the "reality"—by which I mean fictional existence—of the setting as it exists in the DM's notes and/or "head-canon." The campaign milieu is as "real" in that sense as any fictional world created by any author, and the parts that haven't yet been committed to "text" are as valid as those that are.

Actually, definitionally what can be easily changed is not canon, so...?

What's in the GM's notes can be changed easily prior to introduction in play. This assessment is absolutely independent of a GM's preference or willingness to change it. And no one is 100% on this, so it's not like we can find someone that has never and would never change anything once it's in the GM's notes (this rather ignores any brainstorming or drafting or in-work phases of GM's notes where things change all the time), so this isn't even an argument where we can postulate a hypothetical GM that's absolute on this issue without engaging in farce.

If the notes are available to be changed, whereas things introduced into the fiction are usually unavailable to be changed, then there is a difference in kind here, and that's what I'm pointing out -- the GM's notes cannot be cannon because they can be easily changed. Whether or not they are is utterly irrelevant to this point.

In the same way that a fanfiction writer who goes beyond the established text of their fandom's canon is always at risk of being "Jossed" by any future official work, a player who carries an idea of the game world that conflicts with the DM's is likely to be in for a rude awakening.

And this is different issue that goes to the same point -- the GM's early imagining is not privileged over the players as far as being canon because of this authority divide! The only thing the player can leverage to play is what's introduced (in a game where they have no other authorities, this isn't universal although it's a hallmark of D&D -- spells being a notable exception), then only what's introduced is of any value to the majority of players at the table. This is what the game canon is -- that which is shared. It can't be what the GM is thinking might happen next, but could change, if motivated.

Well too bad. That's precisely how some DMs operate. (And some writers, death of the author arguments notwithstanding.)

And I'm saying that by doing so they're hiding what they really care about behind the wrong reason -- because the GMs notes cannot be on the same level as the shared fiction as far as canon goes. Instead, what's going on here is that the prep informs the choices the GM makes and is a play aid. How does that work? This is a good question, but one that will never be asked if analysis is stuck on the false premise that prep is "real".

 

[Ovinomancer]

So despite agreeing with each other about the role of improv at our own tables, I see the "scope of play" (just for consistency and continuity I'm going to keep using this terminology in the discussion, despite the flaws pointed out be @Lanefan) as a choice. You and I choose to define what has been presented at the table as the dividing line between what is and is not part of the game, but that's not the only possible choice.

Demonstrably, other posters in this thread instead choose to include material that has been created (and not yet shared) as part of the game. Alternatively, a table could go in the other direction and take a Tolkien-esque approach and define what has been presented in play as not necessarily the definitive statement on what is and is not "real" in the game world. I've heard of some tables running individual modules repeatedly (sometimes with the same characters) so presumably they don't take what happens at the table on any given runthrough as definitive even after it's been introduced.

Given that I see the scope of play as a choice, I expect those options to be inconsistent with each other. Therefore I can't agree that it is meaningful that that the choice of a broader scope of play is "observably inconsisten[t]" with our narrower choice. I recognize that you don't see the scope of play as a choice at all, and that's probably why we're so far apart on how we view the disagreement in this thread, despite the similarities in how we view and use improv.

As for asking people to put away surface arguments, I don't think that approach is likely to get very far when there is evident disagreement about what is and is not a surface argument.

Well, there's a bit of a shift here. I'm saying that prep is does not cause nor is it at the same level as the shared fiction. I haven't said prep is not part of the game -- this is silly because it would require also removing character building and similar tasks, all of which are absolutely part of the game. My argument is focused on the statement that prep is just as "real" as the shared fiction, and this is obviously incorrect because it can be changed at any time prior to introduction.