Crimson Longinus
Legend
Yes, I saw that. And I think that was a better example and shows what's actually going on.
I didn't. I described (some of) the examples opaque.
D&D 5E Respect Mah Authoritah: Thoughts on DM and Player Authority in 5e
- Thread starter Snarf Zagyg
- Start date
But what I don't get is this: if you don't think AW is opaque, then why couldn't you interpolate the same prequel to my original example as I did? I mean, I constructed the prequel in 5 or 10 minutes of thinking about how a shed might be set alight in AW.
Ovinomancer
No flips for you!
No, he was chastised for imagining stuff not in the example as having to be in the example. Specifically, the how it got there, which @FrogReaver assumed. There was a very good response by @pemerton on this.
Crimson Longinus
Legend
I might. But this assumes the reader is familiar with the system which necessarily isn't the case. And if the reader already knows how the system works, certainly we don't need examples at all, they already know where the decision points lie!
And that demonstrates the unique structures of AW play. The actual shed example didn't, thus is not a good example if the aim is to demonstrate those structures.
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Ovinomancer
No flips for you!
The aim of the initial shed example was to look at a different point of play. It was @FrogReaver assuming other things and attempting to use that example of a specific point of play in a different context -- ie, to assume that the framing was the same as his usual approach -- that caused the confusion and then need to expand to present an example of play that encompassed @FrogReaver's question about things that the example was not trying to show.
In other words, you're blaming the example because it didn't showcase all of the possible things instead of looking to see what it was the example was trying to show. It is very clear and very good at the point it was trying to make. That someone else took the example in a different direction and asked "what if" is not a failure of the initial example. I feel this is a form of the argument that is so commonly made with examples of play -- the interlocutor changes the example and then demands to know why the changed example fails to show what is claimed.
Here my own thoughts incline Ovinomancer's way: if someone is given an example of play from a game they're not familiar with, and an assertion that it is different from the game(s) they are familiar with, then why extrapolate to further features of the example on the premise that it is not different? To me that's a bit odd.
The shed example is enough to illustrate that whether or not a neighbouring building catches alight is apt to be decided by reference to the result of a check made to rescue the water canisters from the burning shed.
As I already posted, I've never heard of any D&D resolution looking like this other than 4e skill challenges: there is an example skill challenge in the Essentials Rules Compendium that has exactly this structure (although it is not explicitly called out, just presented as an exercise for the reader - one of the many weaknesses in that example as a teaching text). I also imagine that @Manbearcat must be reminded about now of his notorious gorge (ie the narration of a gorge as an obstacle in response to a failed Nature check in an escape-through-the-wilderness skill challenge). Discussion of the gorge - which is a perfectly fine proxy for any number of similar narrations in "situation first" RPGing - caused vast quantities of apoplexy back in the day from mainstream non-4e D&D/PF players. Hence why I'm surprised that @FrogReaver would suggest that the shed example is not very different from any sort of D&D play.
FrogReaver
The most respectful and polite poster ever
I have limited time this morning. But I have a good response to this part.
Also there's this - In an infinite world (or one that approaches an infinite one) 'everything' is in the world. So what becomes most important isn't how the world is generated, but what the players focus on in the world.
So I agree, I wouldn't describe those games as living sandboxes - although they do appear to share those 4 criteria in common.
Getting to your question - there are numerous methods in sandbox play to resolve PC actions.
A mix of backstory or procedural generation as the need arises. I think I explained that in my post (looks like you left off the relevant bit).
Also there's this - In an infinite world (or one that approaches an infinite one) 'everything' is in the world. So what becomes most important isn't how the world is generated, but what the players focus on in the world.
Having their characters do things and having the GM narrate the results.
That (a)-(d) are descriptive of a living sandbox didn't mean they are prescriptive of one. I only claimed that those 4 criteria are true of living sandboxes - not that they were only true of living sandboxes.
So I agree, I wouldn't describe those games as living sandboxes - although they do appear to share those 4 criteria in common.
Getting to your question - there are numerous methods in sandbox play to resolve PC actions.
Ovinomancer
No flips for you!
And they are.... This is where discussions like this always falter. There's a statement made that things are wide open, but it's just left there without any support.
I can say how the living sandboxed I played in worked. The GM had a huge amount of setting backstory in their notes, much of it secret. We played by taking actions seeking to explore this backstory and engage the secrets. Actions were adjudicated by the GM first and foremost with respect to the backstory, and then, as needed, by invoking the system. However, the outcome space was always tightly constrained by the GM's backstory notes and the GM's conception of what made sense here. If the player wanted a clean success, but the GM felt that this wasn't warranted due to backstory/the GM's conceptions, the clean success was not ever on the table, rather some lesser success was.
In short, even in a strong living world game where the world reacted to what the players did (we started wars, ended them, saved cities, started and stopped a demon invasion, got into a huge war with the Drow that embroiled much of the surface, lots of stuff we did had impacts on the gameworld) the primary means of action resolution was whatever the GM thought should happen. Our GM was pretty good, and usually fair, so it was fun and we kept playing. But the fact that we had a benevolent GM (he was personally quite abrasive, but ran a good game) didn't change the fact that resolution was entirely up to the GM and their backstory. Players had little ability to actually enforce anything at any point unless the GM agreed.
Now, that said, that game was immensely fun for me, and defined my play for more than a decade. When I ran, I strove to imitate it quite often. I can point to games I've run in the last few years that have elements of this in play -- the hexcrawl I ran about 3 years ago was strongly about being a "living world" sandbox, with player choices about things changing how the game played out. But, I'm not fooling myself into thinking that this was the players having authority -- it was still very much me as GM extrapolating from backstory and resolutions as to what happened next. This is violently different from how the game played out when I ran Blades for the same crew. Or how the Blades game I playing in operates.
Ok, so multiple posters - including you - have hauled me over the coals because "backstory first" has more than one instantiation, depending on the principles used to move from backstory to (i) situation and (ii) consequence of declared actions.
But now you seem completely relaxed about having described "living sandbox" using criteria that are also satisfied by Burning Wheel and Prince Valiant played in the standard way.
I'm not suggesting hypocrisy - that's not really apposite in this sort of discussion - more just saying that I'm a bit uncertain as to what your standards of adequacy are for an analysis of RPG play.
I don't really say how it can't be important how the fiction of a RPG is created, especially in a thread about authority in respect of the fiction.
And in play it's likely to be pretty significant. What is a player allowed to stipulate about his/her PC's personal history? Relationship? Shed content? And what principles does a GM use to decide things like who the factions target or even where the factions are active? I've used Pholtus vs St Cuthbert a couple of times now in my examples. But that will play out very differently if one of the players is playing a cleric of one or the other of those gods.
It's not a sufficient description of my 4e game to mention that opponents included Orcus cultists, without also mentioning that 3 PCs were Raven Queen devotees.
The general point is that RPG fiction isn't significant just on its own terms, but in terms of its relationship to the PCs (as central components of the fiction). An "infinite" world can be incredibly varied in this respect, which has pretty profound ramifications for the experience of play. I mean, in your example of the faction and the brother, what if - in a world that's not infinite but only as big as our earth, the PC lives in Kuala Lumpur and the only people who know what happened to the brother live on the tip of Tierra del Fuego?
Now maybe that's bad design for a living sandbox - but I can't work that out from descriptions of an "infinite" world in which players are free to set their own priorities for their PCs and choose what actions to declare. At a minimum we need a principle like once the players set their priorities, the GM should ensure that there are reasonably feasible actions the players can declare for their PCs which will meaningfully engage those priorities. But if you apply that principle frequently and with rigour, I believe - based on my own experience - that you will drift towards "situation first" play because the utility of pre-authored backstory will start to fade away.
Conversely, sticking to pre-authored backstory speaks against trying to implement a principle like the one I just described. But in that case, the idea that players are free to set their own priorities for their PCs starts to lose its purchase - as @Ovinomancer posted way upthread, that part of the GM's backstory which is feasibly available to the players given where their PCs are in the "sandbox" generates something like a list of options/setting elements for the players to engage with.
@Campbell upthread sketched a way of trying to split the difference - story now in the streets, right to dream in the sheets - which is to say, apply the relevance principle in prep between sessions, but stick rigorously to prep during actual run-time and adjudication. But I'm not sure that still counts as a "living" sandbox, because the "life" isn't based on naturalistic extrapolation from prep plus the events of play.
I've just read @Ovinomancer's account of the living sandbox he played in. I think it drives home the central place of principles or, if one prefers, reasons, that determine how the GM extrapolates and adjudicates.
Is the goal to present things as naturalistically as possible? To engage the players' hooks? Is the GM's prep a set of "tools" and other stuff to support improv? Or is it binding?
I don't mean my categories in the previous paragraph to be exhaustive - they're just some of the more obvious possibilities. And even if the GM has authority over much of the shared fiction, the play experience that results can vary greatly depending on what principles the GM follows - or to use the alternative vocabularies, depending on the reasons that inform the GM's decision-making about the shared fiction.
We can see this in @Campbell's "story now in the streets, right to dream in the sheets". That might involve the same degree of GM authority over the shared fiction as a procedural hexcrawl does, but is going to produce a pretty different play experience! For instance, it's going to support dramatic character development in a way that a hexcrawl won't.
EDIT: Just to elaborate further on one aspect of this - when a GM posts that they treat their backstory as flexible and non-binding, is that a reason to think their game is more or less raildroad-y than it might otherwise be? The answer is - we can't tell from that statement alone! At the very minimum we'd need to know the way that flexible approach to prepared backstory affects their framing and their resolution. After all, a railroader has to be pretty flexible vis-a-vis backstory to keep things on the track (eg by generating new offscreen backstory that ensures things go the right way even if the PCs miss a vital clue, or kill a vital NPC too early, or whatever); and a "situation first" GM running a system like BW or AW has to be pretty flexible vis-a-vis their emerging ideas about backstory in order to present consequences and to feed into framing in the way those systems demand.
Is the goal to present things as naturalistically as possible? To engage the players' hooks? Is the GM's prep a set of "tools" and other stuff to support improv? Or is it binding?
I don't mean my categories in the previous paragraph to be exhaustive - they're just some of the more obvious possibilities. And even if the GM has authority over much of the shared fiction, the play experience that results can vary greatly depending on what principles the GM follows - or to use the alternative vocabularies, depending on the reasons that inform the GM's decision-making about the shared fiction.
We can see this in @Campbell's "story now in the streets, right to dream in the sheets". That might involve the same degree of GM authority over the shared fiction as a procedural hexcrawl does, but is going to produce a pretty different play experience! For instance, it's going to support dramatic character development in a way that a hexcrawl won't.
EDIT: Just to elaborate further on one aspect of this - when a GM posts that they treat their backstory as flexible and non-binding, is that a reason to think their game is more or less raildroad-y than it might otherwise be? The answer is - we can't tell from that statement alone! At the very minimum we'd need to know the way that flexible approach to prepared backstory affects their framing and their resolution. After all, a railroader has to be pretty flexible vis-a-vis backstory to keep things on the track (eg by generating new offscreen backstory that ensures things go the right way even if the PCs miss a vital clue, or kill a vital NPC too early, or whatever); and a "situation first" GM running a system like BW or AW has to be pretty flexible vis-a-vis their emerging ideas about backstory in order to present consequences and to feed into framing in the way those systems demand.
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