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

[Hussar]

Certainly if creating own world, it would take a lot of time, albeit the campaigns themselves may help flesh it out.
That is why I relied on forgotten realms when doing sandbox, as most of work was done for me and i could just reference the many 3rd edition supplements they had filled out to flesh out things whatever direction the players chose.
Ironsworn does sound interesting though for creating own view of it as such. Are there any quickstart rules or the like to get a feel for the system?

Tomkin Press - The Ironsworn Family of Tabletop Roleplaying Games

Tabletop roleplaying games of perilous quests for solo, co-op, and guided play. Award-winning games by Shawn Tomkin include Ironsworn, Ironsworn: Delve, Ironsworn: Starforged, and Sundered Isles.

tomkinpress.com

It's free and honestly, the rules are so short it doesn't really need quickstart rules. I do highly recommend it. But, to be perfectly fair, my other group bounced off it hard. They wanted more traditional style gaming where they play twenty questions with the DM in order to learn about the setting. If that's what your group is into, they likely won't like Ironsworn.

 

[gban007]

I mean, if you want non-linear sandbox games, might I recommend any of the better 4X games out there? Stellaris is about as non-linear sandbox as you could possibly play. There's a million end states, non of which could be predicted from the outset and the path to those end states are too numerous to list.

You make a good point there, I hadn't really considered 4x games as sandbox games before (tend to think of it for more low character number based games), but they do
allow for a lot of freedom of choice, and a good number of AI parties that will do their own thing that you can interact with, really allowing for a lot of scope of choices and outcomes, and no two playthroughs being the same. Even paradox more historical games do allow a lot, even if somewhat more constrained and have the same start state each time in contrast to Stwllaris.

 

[gban007]

Tomkin Press - The Ironsworn Family of Tabletop Roleplaying Games

Tabletop roleplaying games of perilous quests for solo, co-op, and guided play. Award-winning games by Shawn Tomkin include Ironsworn, Ironsworn: Delve, Ironsworn: Starforged, and Sundered Isles.

tomkinpress.com

It's free and honestly, the rules are so short it doesn't really need quickstart rules. I do highly recommend it. But, to be perfectly fair, my other group bounced off it hard. They wanted more traditional style gaming where they play twenty questions with the DM in order to learn about the setting. If that's what your group is into, they likely won't like Ironsworn.

I think we as a group have tended towards traditional, but have been branching put a lot lately, and playing games like 2d20 systems or FFGs systems are giving a taste of metacurrencies and giving players more control over the system, so they may be open to it.

 

[pemerton]

the players can of course declare their actions, what they cannot do is declare that their actions succeed, to me that is where the permissive or restrictive DM comes in. Much of the resolution is decided by the DM, they can decide no check is needed and the action succeeds, they can say the action fails / is impossible, they can ask for a check, set the DC, and describe what happens because of the result. Do you think that whether the DM is permissive or restrictive does not affect the outcome of a character's action despite all of this?

I think you're describing very GM-controlled play. Not far upthread I posted some extracts from the core Burning Wheel rules. These show how action resolution can operate so as to not be GM-controlled in the same way.

In addition to the rules I quoted - which explain when a test is called for and when not, and what happens when a check succeeds or fails - there are also very extensive rules for setting the difficulties ("obstacles") of tests.

Also, the rules for PC advancement - which you can find in the free core rules download - require the character to face a wide range of tests, from routine through difficult to challenging. Players also have a lot of capacity to vary the size of their dice pools, by augmenting with similar/related/relevant skills (called FoRKs ("Fields of Related Knowledge") in the rules), spending Fate and Persona, and receiving help (which also helps the helper advance). So the system is quite forgiving of the GM's decision-making about how high or low to set a given obstacle.

This is the sort of thing I was getting at when saying to @AlViking that "one obstacle to playing 5e D&D in that sort of way is the lack of clear rules and principles for framing and resolving non-combat challenges", meaning that "some work/adaption would be required to play it in a fashion that lets the obstacle system guide the outcome".

 

[pemerton]

Your world sounds neither particularly broad nor deep.

I don't think there's any basis on which to form this judgement. @Hussar has told us nothing about the fiction that he and his players created while playing Ironsworn.

 

[Lanefan]

Again, I think your autocorrect is having its way with you.

Sigh. This does nicely illustrate why the conservatism of D&D fans is exhausting.

1. Example of sandbox play is a clear example of linear play.
2. Deny that it's linear repeatedly, despite being proven that it's linear.
3. Change the example to add in new elements absent from the original example to prove why the original example wasn't linear.
4. Ignore the fact that even with the changes, it's still 100% linear. You must proceed from A to B to C, even if you can choose a different A starting point.

Granted, why would the players choose a new starting point? The players asked you how to get to Nexus. You told them to go see the Sage Basil Exposition to find the portal to the Nexus.

Players then say, "Nope, we don't want to go to see Basil, what else you got?" And, in your mind, a sandbox DM will then create a completely new path to get from A to D. Granted that new path is completely linear as well, but, apparently that's what sandbox adventures are?

This seems a no-win situation for the DM.

If, on the players asking if they can find a Spelljammer, she provides one or more paths for them to do so, the above directly says she's running a linear game. And yet if she does not provide any paths and simply says a Spelljammer cannot be found she's also accused of running a linear game.

What other options does she have?

 

[Hussar]

I don't think there's any basis on which to form this judgement. @Hussar has told us nothing about the fiction that he and his players created while playing Ironsworn.

No, see, any world that doesn't have a three hundred page setting bible apparently isn't broad or deep. DM's, in order to run a "real" sandbox, must develop an entire world from scratch or it doesn't really count, unless, of course, you buy a pre-made world from someone.

I gotta admit, I just played with a player like that. I am not a world builder. I'm not. I freely admit that. So, my campaigns focus on plot and character much more than setting. The setting is just there enough to give a framework, but, most of the time I don't think much beyond whatever is necessary to run things at the time.

I had this player who absolutely insisted on digging under every rock in order to try to figure out what was going on every time. Constantly asking ten thousand questions and wanting all these details.

Finally, in exasperation, I asked him, "What are you actually looking for? What is the goal of all these questions?"

His response? "Oh, nothing really. I just want to know everything about the setting." Which then entailed a rather lengthy discussion about how he was only going to always be disappointed in my campaigns, because, under the thin veneer of paint, there's nothing to find. I detest world building.

He eventually left the group for greener pastures. But, I know that he would have absolutely loathed Ironsworn. So, I totally get that there are players out there who want traditional world building games where the DM has spent all this time delving down into the details of the setting.

I'm just not a good DM for that player.

 

[Lanefan]

No. At least, that's not what I'm saying.

I'm saying that D&D is not a very good sandbox game. It certainly can be done. Obviously since people do it. But, it takes a freaking MOUNTAIN of work to pull it off in anything other than the most facile way. If you'll notice that most of the folks who talk about their sandbox campaigns are talking about game worlds that they've been using and developing for years, if not decades. They're talking about being able to leverage resources - spare NPC's, spare locations, spare whatever - that has been years and again sometimes, decades in the making.

True, and yet in my case other than the first adventure (for which I said "This is what I'm running, like it or not, just to get things going") the campaign was always something of a sandbox in that they could go wherever they liked and do what they liked on getting there. And if they happened to sail off into some part of the world I hadn't developed yet then I'd have to be quick on my feet.

After that first adventure, the first thing the survivors did was somewhat* unexpectedly split into two parties; so suddenly I was running two sessions a week instead of one (always fine by me, and it gave me room to bring in a few more players ).

And since then they've gradually expanded their horizons and in so doing forced me to detail more of the setting. That said, we're 17 years in now and I've still only mapped about 1/4 of the game world in any way, and 75% of what is mapped is still only at the near-continental scale. Which is nice in one way: the setting still has "legs" to spare, far more so than I ever dared hope when we dropped the puck in 2008.

* - I was expecting it to become a multi-party campaign at some point but not quite that soon.

 

[Lanefan]

No, see, any world that doesn't have a three hundred page setting bible apparently isn't broad or deep. DM's, in order to run a "real" sandbox, must develop an entire world from scratch or it doesn't really count, unless, of course, you buy a pre-made world from someone.

I gotta admit, I just played with a player like that. I am not a world builder. I'm not. I freely admit that. So, my campaigns focus on plot and character much more than setting. The setting is just there enough to give a framework, but, most of the time I don't think much beyond whatever is necessary to run things at the time.

I had this player who absolutely insisted on digging under every rock in order to try to figure out what was going on every time. Constantly asking ten thousand questions and wanting all these details.

That would be me as well, probably, had I been playing in that game (assuming I had a character who wasn't a complete fool; I have been known to play idiots now and then).

What is happening right now is one thing. Why it's happening and what led to it happening is another; those answers always require digging under rocks, and knowing those latter two things can very much help us-as-characters better deal with what's in front of us.

Particularly the "what led to it happening" piece. Making up a setting's history on the fly and keeping it consistent would be, I think, a very daunting task.

I detest world building.

Which if you only run short three-month campaigns in a different setting each time, I can understand.

Thing is, if you get it right the initial world-building process is something you really only have to do once. After that, you can run short campaign after short campaign in that same setting, slowly expanding on it as you go.

 

[Hussar]

This seems a no-win situation for the DM.

If, on the players asking if they can find a Spelljammer, she provides one or more paths for them to do so, the above directly says she's running a linear game. And yet if she does not provide any paths and simply says a Spelljammer cannot be found she's also accused of running a linear game.

What other options does she have?

None. That's the point. Sometimes campaigns are linear. Sometimes they are not. But, this claim that "sandboxes allow players to do whatever they want" tends to get overblown. And, frankly, the difference between a linear AP and a sandbox is a lot less than people want to admit.

To me, the comparison is linear and non-linear scenarios. At that level, I totally can see the difference. And it's easy to illustrate. Two dungeons. One is a series of 4 chambers A-B-C-D. There's no plausible way to do the adventure in any other order. That's a linear dungeon. Second dungeon has 4 rooms, each room connecting to the other three rooms. The dungeon can be entered at any point, A through D. That's about as non-linear as you can make it.

The opposite of sandbox isn't linear. They are both just points on a spectrum of number of player choices.