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

[Hussar]

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.

That would be my personal version of hell as a player or a DM. Play in one setting? No thank you. The world of fantasy is far, far to large to play in one setting.

Lessee, since 5e released I've played or DM'd:

Dragonlance
Forgotten Realms - Storm King's Thunder, Candlekeep Mysteries, Dungeon of the Mad Mage, Dragonheist, Tyranny of Dragons, Phandallin and Shattered Obelisk
Spelljammer (although that one was 99% homebrew)
The Chaos Scar (a rebuild of the Keep on the Borderlands for 4e that I brought forward to 5e - very sandboxy. )
Ravenloft
Currently doing Out of the Abyss which is also Forgotten Realms, although very niche.

So, either played or DM'd 12 different campaigns in the past ten years. Note, a lot of those were concurrent. So, yeah, zero interest in playing one campaign setting for seventeen years.

 

[pemerton]

To me, the comparison is linear and non-linear scenarios.

I can see this, although I'm not sure that I agree. I think the most significant contrast is between player-driven action/scenarios/play and GM-driven actions/scenarios/play.

That would be my personal version of hell as a player or a DM. Play in one setting? No thank you. The world of fantasy is far, far to large to play in one setting.

A consequence of setting not being central to play means that it is not super-important which setting I play in.

In the past 15 years, I've used the default 4e setting, Greyhawk (maps and broad geography and history - I don't worry about minutiae) and a non-specific Viking settting.

 

[Lanefan]

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.

Maaaaay-be?

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.

On the scale of a single adventure, I agree with this assessment

But we're not really talking about the internal structure of a single adventure. We're talking about the overall structure (if any) of a whole campaign, which usually but doesn't always include discrete single adventures within it.

Within a single adventure the comparison is between linear and non-linear (a.k.a. Jacquaysed); and we can all pull out published examples of each with trivial ease.

Within a campaign the comparison is between linear and sandbox, and many of us can't pull out published examples of the latter because nearly all publications that purport to be whole campaigns (e.g. WotC hardcovers or PF adventure paths) are very much the former. What this means is that any examples given of the latter are almost certainly non-published homebrew campaigns, all too easily dismissed as anecdotes by those who wish to do so.

The reason for the comparisons being different is degrees of freedom. Even in a fully Jacquaysed dungeon you're still in a dungeon and, absent means of cutting new passages or passing through stone, you kinda have to stay between the walls. But out in the greater setting, if it's a true sandbox there's either no walls to stay between or those walls are so far away that the odds of ever hitting one are remote at best.

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

It's a spectrum, sure, but I do think sandbox and linear are at the opposite ends of said spectrum.

 

[Lanefan]

That would be my personal version of hell as a player or a DM. Play in one setting? No thank you. The world of fantasy is far, far to large to play in one setting.

Lessee, since 5e released I've played or DM'd:

Dragonlance
Forgotten Realms - Storm King's Thunder, Candlekeep Mysteries, Dungeon of the Mad Mage, Dragonheist, Tyranny of Dragons, Phandallin and Shattered Obelisk
Spelljammer (although that one was 99% homebrew)
The Chaos Scar (a rebuild of the Keep on the Borderlands for 4e that I brought forward to 5e - very sandboxy. )
Ravenloft
Currently doing Out of the Abyss which is also Forgotten Realms, although very niche.

So, either played or DM'd 12 different campaigns in the past ten years. Note, a lot of those were concurrent. So, yeah, zero interest in playing one campaign setting for seventeen years.

Had you run all these (you don't note which ones you ran and which you played), had you so desired you could have run the whole lot of them on different parts of Toril (or, for Spelljammer, based out of Toril), thus giving you the opportunity to build out your own setting lore as a side effect and have one campaign more or less loosely connect to one or more of the others.

And for returning players, that's always fun - realizing that what they did in campaign A still resonates even though we're now on campaign E.

 

[mamba]

No, this was a hypothetical situation, not a play report. Ahh, that might explain why you are failing to understand.

hypothetical or not, this was one way to get there, not the only one. We do not even know if the DM said ‘go see this sage, he might he able to help’ or the players had the idea and created that sage out of whole cloth.

We disagree on who is misunderstanding this…

 

[mamba]

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.

you were asking about what I meant by ‘permissive DMs’, of course that means there is some DM control involved…

As to your quote, I can use that 1:1 for D&D, it said nothing that does not happen in D&D sessions all the time (apart from it being a dice pool). Roll if the result is unclear, otherwise do not, if you roll well enough the attempted action succeeds, otherwise it does not. Not exactly an unfamiliar concept.

It is still the GM who controls whether the outcome is unclear and how difficult the task is / how good the roll has to be, or is that a group vote? I doubt these can be prescribed for every situation

At a higher resolution level, how is it decided where the Spelljammer ship is, how to get to it, and how difficult it is to get (to) it? If any of this is still up to the DM, then the DM can still very much be permissive or not.

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.

maybe these are more extensive and provide better guidelines

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.

seems to be more prescriptive than D&D but that is usually the case in D&D too, even if not by design

 

[mamba]

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.

I see nothing about conservatism here, instead I see you stubbornly clinging to your preconceived notion that D&D must always ever be linear despite all ‘evidence’ to the contrary. You insist on there only having been one path to get to the goal, and pointing out that there were others gets treated as a retcon that then is dismissed as still being linear.

You seem to believe that only an improv game can be non-linear and nothing will change that. I see nothing about conservatism here on either side

The only difference is who is coming up with ‘the linear stuff’, exclusively the DM or are the players involved and to which degree, and D&D does not mandate that it is only ever the DM either

 

[mamba]

A sandbox that doesn't work on a lot of impov means that it requires a mountain of effort from the DM.

yes, but that still makes it a sandbox

 

[mamba]

So, either played or DM'd 12 different campaigns in the past ten years.

much of them in a small part of one world, and most of the others are similar enough they could take place on the same world too…

 

[AnotherGuy]

I think some great points have been made

@Hussar states that linear play exists within sandbox play, and that perhaps sandbox play is not the true opposite of linear play.
@Lanefan counters that the above may be true for adventures within a sandbox, but not necessarily true for a sandbox campaign at large. The reason for the comparisons being different is the degrees of freedom
@pemerton adds the distinction that is most important is player driven vs gm driven as to whether an adventure or campaign is linear or not.

I find myself agreeing with all 3 above perspectives.