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

[AlViking]

Your sarcasm is not doing you favors. I literally just said this isn't a criticism.

You would think I had pissed in someone's cheerios the way people are reacting...

People are disagreeing with you telling them that what they consider a sandbox is really a linear campaign. If you define that as pissing in cheerios then I guess we have more than one thing we disagree on.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Then I do not share your definition of "agency".

Exactly. This will never reach a satisfactory place, because the definition of agency cannot be agreed upon, and people who like agency and believe they have it are being told otherwise by those with a different definition, which will always lead to an emotional response.

And again, this divide shares a lot in common with Narrativist play vs not-Narrativist play.

 

[Micah Sweet]

@AlViking Can't quote your post as it contains no text (only quotes which don't get carried forward)

I stand by what I said. You know everything the players could interact with in the hexes. You, the DM, have to determine what all that is before any player can be allowed to interact with it. That is nailing things down. There are games, both those that require a GM and those that don't, which explicitly do not work that way.

Ok, granted. Such games exist, and some people enjoy them. Others do not. Is there any conclusion that can be drawn from this, other than personal preference is a thing?

 

[Remathilis]

People are disagreeing with you telling them that what they consider a sandbox is really a linear campaign. If you define that as pissing in cheerios then I guess we have more than one thing we disagree on.

The issue is this is all really theoretical/philosophical anyway. Even if you could create a sandbox with infinite permutations each created without random element and the limits of a single GM, the end result would be a series of events happening in chronological order all caused by a series of cause and effect. To the character (and to a degree, the player) there is only one path of action and that's the one they witnessed. It doesn't matter if the DM had one, ten, a hundred or infinite possibilities, the player only experiences one of them. To them, the only question is do they feel they have the illusion of choice or free will or not. And as long as they feel their choices matter (regardless if they actually do or not) the rest of this debate is just about how much does the DM need to prep.

 

[Faolyn]

Your sarcasm is not doing you favors. I literally just said this isn't a criticism.

You would think I had pissed in someone's cheerios the way people are reacting...

I was being silly, not sarcastic.

 

[AlViking]

The issue is this is all really theoretical/philosophical anyway. Even if you could create a sandbox with infinite permutations each created without random element and the limits of a single GM, the end result would be a series of events happening in chronological order all caused by a series of cause and effect. To the character (and to a degree, the player) there is only one path of action and that's the one they witnessed. It doesn't matter if the DM had one, ten, a hundred or infinite possibilities, the player only experiences one of them. To them, the only question is do they feel they have the illusion of choice or free will or not. And as long as they feel their choices matter (regardless if they actually do or not) the rest of this debate is just about how much does the DM need to prep.

All labels from what a species is to what is or is not a planet (go Pluto!) to what defines a sandbox or linear campaign is pretty arbitrary. I just don't understand why people are so hostile to a label that's a handy shortcut to defining how a game is run. If I'm playing Tomb of Annihilation I may have some sandbox elements in there on how I get to the final dungeon and confrontation, but I know what the end goal is and I can't change anything about it. So I, and pretty much everyone I've ever played with, knows the difference in approach and understands that it means.

 

[AlViking]

Ok, granted. Such games exist, and some people enjoy them. Others do not. Is there any conclusion that can be drawn from this, other than personal preference is a thing?

I don't see allowing players determining the fiction of the world in and of itself adding to autonomy in a game. It's just adding different options. There will still be things they have no direct control over.

Conflating narrative control and autonomy does not make it so. But I agree, it seems to be just another way of trying to justify why one type of game is somehow superior.

 

[Lanefan]

With very few justifications*, I find this attitude to be the worst insult you can give me as a DM. For all the talk of player entitlement, THIS is the truest expression of it.

Where for me, what you call player entitlement is in this case what I call player agency.

As the DM, I put time into creating the play experience from setting to adventures and the encounters within. It's an insult to have the players say "no, I don't want to stop the mad king from sacking the town. Let's buy a boat and go be pirates instead." These days, I'd be like "fine. Go be pirates. But find another DM or retire your characters, because I'm not running that."

If I-as-DM have designed a setting and determined that the campaign will start in the port city of Praetos, and have come up with a few potential adventures in-around the city to get things going, and the players' first in-character action as a party is to say "Hey, let's buy a boat and go looking for adventures in-around-across the Axenos Sea!" then I think I-as-DM have to be both willing and able to adapt or else I'm just not doing my job.

Maybe I can re-skin one of the close-to-town adventures I've prepped and have them find it somewhere else, or (more likely) maybe I design something new and save the near-town adventures for another party and-or another day.

 

[Lanefan]

@AlViking Can't quote your post as it contains no text (only quotes which don't get carried forward)

FYI you can hard-quote anything by typing "QUOTE" using [ ] instead of quotation marks, cutting and pasting the relevant text in, then typing "/QUOTE" (again replacing the quotation marks with brackets) after the bit you just pasted in.

If you want to assign a name to what you're quoting, e.g. if I wanted to quote you it would be "QUOTE=EzekielRaiden"

It'll look a bit different while you're editing but will look normal once it's posted.

 

[AlViking]

Where for me, what you call player entitlement is in this case what I call player agency.

If I-as-DM have designed a setting and determined that the campaign will start in the port city of Praetos, and have come up with a few potential adventures in-around the city to get things going, and the players' first in-character action as a party is to say "Hey, let's buy a boat and go looking for adventures in-around-across the Axenos Sea!" then I think I-as-DM have to be both willing and able to adapt or else I'm just not doing my job.

Maybe I can re-skin one of the close-to-town adventures I've prepped and have them find it somewhere else, or (more likely) maybe I design something new and save the near-town adventures for another party and-or another day.

While I generally ask that the don't skip town in session 1, I would do much the same. A campaign I started a while back was going to kind-of follow the plot of Rime of the Ice Maiden but they decided to head to a city I had mentioned. Been an urban campaign ever since. Which is fine by me as long as we're having fun.