D&D General [rant]The conservatism of D&D fans is exhausting.

[Lanefan]

Has anyone in your experience taken you up on this offer and "buggered out"? If not, how can this even be a practical issue?

I've DMed parties that have abandoned adventures halfway through for various reasons. Ditto parties that have unexpectedly said (to the effect of) "Screw it, we're going that way" where 'that way' is across an ocean or otherwise very far removed from where they just were and what they were just doing.

 

[mamba]

No. Absolutely not. That is wrong.

The players go to see the sage because they need the sage to find the portal. Without the sage they cannot progress. They need the portal to travel. Without the portal they cannot progress. They need to go to nexus because there is nowhere else they could go.

no, that is where you are wrong, the sage was not the only possible first stop, they were a possible first stop. The sage might even have been suggested by the players and not have existed in the setting up to that point. What lead to this sequence is decisions made by the players, not something forced by the DM.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Has anyone in your experience taken you up on this offer and "buggered out"? If not, how can this even be a practical issue?

If a prisoner never makes an effort to leave the prison before their sentence is finished, are they still imprisoned? Or are they free, and just (somehow) prefer to stay inside the prison walls?

If the President never elects to order military officers, are they still Commander-in-Chief? Or have they given up that authority through disuse?

Just because someone does not elect to use a power at their disposal does not mean that power is irrelevant. In fact, the effort put into ensuring that they do have that power is, itself, extremely important.

By the logic of this question, every invisible railroad is actually a sandbox, because a player who doesn't know they're on rails cannot desire to get off of them, and thus they are precisely as free as someone who correctly knows they aren't on a railroad.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

In a sandbox campaign they can forge into unknown territory whenever they like and the DM has to (be able to) respond to that even if it means winging it without prep for the rest of that session.

But this too involves DM permission, no? This is where that aforementioned "strict" definition of "sandbox" comes into play.

Same here, unless the in-fiction situation at the time prevents it (e.g. they're off-world on a small demiplane and stuck there until-unless they can figure out how to get home).

Sure. Jewel of the Desert doesn't really have that kind of magic available at present (but I'm sure our Cleric-with-Wizard-training might find that an interesting challenge to investigate.) But the point behind the example remains, the fiction needs to be compatible with the action undertaken. Such compatibility isn't difficult to achieve, and I emphatically would not put obstacles in their way, at least not in the sense of preventing. Their allies would be shocked, hurt, and/or worried by their sudden desire to depart, but that's just an unavoidable consequence of having allies and choosing to leave them behind.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

If someone really wanted to leave the sandbox in my game, they could. I would figure something out.

It's never happened. Games have simply ended for other reasons before a suggestion like that ever came to fruition. I've had the opposite happen sometimes, when it becomes clear my players want a game with more direction and I have to retool, but never has anyone just decided to turn left and hop out of the box onto the grass.

As a result, while technically a possibility, I simply don't worry about it or agonize over the theoretical loss of agency it represents, and as far as I know neither do my players. It is not a practical concern, and no one to my knowledge feels that my sandbox game falls "well short" of the IMO high degree of agency the playstyle promises.

What do you mean by a game "purporting" to be a sandbox? Can you give me an example of such a game? Every TTRPG I ever saw that called itself a sandbox delivered.

Invisible rails. I know you already know of this "technique." We had a thread about it a while back and I'm 99% sure you posted in it.

There are also things that claim to be sandboxes but are actually, as noted above, CYOAs or menus. Yes, you have choice, but it's between or among proffered options, rather than actually being player-driven. Which was the whole point of Hussar's claim that D&D works against the most complete form of sandbox play (my phrasing, not his.)

 

[Umbran]

CYOA/"chooseable-path adventure" books offer pretty limited but nonzero agency. They are far, far, far away from being "a sandbox" in the strict definition.

I make no claim that CYOA books are sandboxes.

But, it isn't like all adventures or campaigns are either clearly a sandbox, or clearly a railroad. There is more in heaven and on Earth than are imagined by those two categorizations.

The sandbox/railroad divide strikes me more as points for internet argument than classifications that actually help folks understand what their choices are when they undertake a game.

 

[AlViking]

But this too involves DM permission, no? This is where that aforementioned "strict" definition of "sandbox" comes into play.

It's not about "permission", it's about who establishes the fiction outside of what the characters can do and influence. In basically every game I've ever read about or played, there's some limitation to what can be done either because of convention or rules. So if it can't be a sandbox if a person can't have their character do anything and everything they might conceive of then no game is a sandbox. The only sandbox would be story time where you let your imagination run wild.

It's that insistence that we can only use the term so incredibly narrowly that it never applies to any game that makes any and all terms meaningless to me.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

I make no claim that CYOA books are sandboxes.

But, it isn't like all adventures or campaigns are either clearly a sandbox, or clearly a railroad. There is more in heaven and on Earth than are imagined by those two categorizations.

The sandbox/railroad divide strikes me more as points for internet argument than classifications that actually help folks understand what their choices are when they undertake a game.

....

You are making this point to me when I literally gave a spectrum of options about this as one of my first posts in the thread, and posted within the past like 12 hours. Ranging from the hardest possible railroad I know of (DL, where you play pregen characters who are from the novels, and you play out the novels) all the way up to the fullest extent of sandbox that I know (Ironsworn, where you don't even need to have a GM at all).

I'm quite well aware that it's not a dichotomy. I literally said so, just a page or two back, arguing that other people were treating it as all-or-nothing from the other direction:

It is a false dichotomy to assert that players either have agency or don't. There are degrees of agency, and areas of agency. Most OSR-style stuff emphasizes near-absolute "about your character" agency, where it's considered an affront for the DM to ever speak for what a character would personally do or say, outside of a limited context like mind control or something. Other games have a different conception of agency, and accept some limited intrusion into "about your character" stuff, in exchange for greater agency in other areas.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

It's not about "permission", it's about who establishes the fiction outside of what the characters can do and influence. In basically every game I've ever read about or played, there's some limitation to what can be done either because of convention or rules. So if it can't be a sandbox if a person can't have their character do anything and everything they might conceive of then no game is a sandbox. The only sandbox would be story time where you let your imagination run wild.

Nope! There are ways to have structured fiction generation with constraints. That's literally why Hussar brought up Ironsworn. In that game, having a GM is optional, and yet fictional constraints still exist.

It's that insistence that we can only use the term so incredibly narrowly that it never applies to any game that makes any and all terms meaningless to me.

Whereas to me, the term is getting used so broadly and so indiscriminately, it's been made meaningless in the other direction. Nearly anything is "a sandbox" so long as it allows any choice whatsoever even slightly more meaningful than your character's hair color; the only thing that isnt a sandbox is the most rigid railroad possible. Or so it seems the term keeps being used!

 

[AlViking]

Nope! There are ways to have structured fiction generation with constraints. That's literally why Hussar brought up Ironsworn. In that game, having a GM is optional, and yet fictional constraints still exist.

If there is a structure then there are constraints of some kind. I can't just say "My character pulls out an 'I win' button and we save the day!" There may be actual rules that limit it or the effectiveness of the declaration or some social convention and agreement that prevents it.

Whereas to me, the term is getting used so broadly and so indiscriminately, it's been made meaningless in the other direction. Nearly anything is "a sandbox" so long as it allows any choice whatsoever even slightly more meaningful than your character's hair color.

I find it useful because I want to know what kind of game I'm considering joining. I know that if I'm playing a linear game that I have to follow the breadcrumbs as provided if I want to continue playing. If I'm playing a more sandbox style of game, I'll have a different attitude. I have no problem with either and it's a spectrum of course, but I still find the terms a handy descriptor. Unless people redefine them into uselessness of course, which in my experience only happens on the internet.

To me there's a vast difference between doing what our group agrees to and playing a published module with established decision points and encounters with a predefined ending and a sandbox style game where the GM builds the options based on what we choose to do and pursue.