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

[Faolyn]

It doesn't matter if most things you prepare don't see the light of day. Because having prepared them will give you a greater understanding of the world, and cause the things you do present to feel that much more real.

Plus you can always reuse them. Or use them to further background events. The PCs didn't do anything about A because they chose to deal with B and G instead, so A has continued to progress.

 

[Faolyn]

Let me put it this way.

A lone GM working on a setting spends X number of hours writing, creating, doing worldbuilding. Every hour is 1 man hour of work.

As I said before, some people have the time and/or like doing all of that work, so it's not an issue. I'm having fun thinking up the various encounters and obstacles for the next leg of my game.

That's the advantage to using these systems for doing sandboxes. Say it takes 20 hours of work to get a setting off the ground. I'm picking a totally random number - pick a different one if it works for you. In any case, these systems let you leverage the entire group in sharing the work of building a setting instead of everything funneling through one person at the table.

Even if the players are offering suggestions, it's still going through the GM in order to get it into a working form that can be used at the table.

Having the GM stat things up doesn't make it not a sandbox.

Also, and this may come as a bit of a shock, some players enjoy not knowing what's going to happen next and uncovering the world's secrets. That's a bit hard to do if the players are the ones making those secrets.

 

[Hussar]

Which doesn't work for a player who as a function of play wants to explore something someone else has built, with all the mystery and surprises and discoveries said exploration should (ideally) provide.

Oh absolutely. I did mention that my other group hated the system. They wanted to explore the setting that was already created and had zero interest in building the setting collaboratively. So, sure, I get that not everyone is going to like something like Ironsworn. I saw that in action.

I've largely become the opposite. I have zero interest in exploring something that someone else has built. Actually, that's too strong. It's not that I have zero interest, it's just that I find that I enjoy being able to directly develop the campaign more.

 

[Hussar]

But it's ridiculous to say that other games are "terrible" for sandboxes just because you don't like worldbuilding and prefer to do everything during game.

And here we go again. I make a statement, back that statement up with facts, and the counter argument is "nuh uh".

Having the GM stat things up doesn't make it not a sandbox.

Also, and this may come as a bit of a shock, some players enjoy not knowing what's going to happen next and uncovering the world's secrets. That's a bit hard to do if the players are the ones making those secrets.

I never said that having the GM stat things up doesn't make it a sandbox. I said that forcing the DM to spend gobs of hours and do all the work means that it's more difficult to use D&D as a sandbox game.

And, the fact that you think that it's hard for the players to uncover the world's secrets in games like PbtA pretty much shows how you do not have a strong grasp of how these games work. These games center on creating and uncovering mysteries.

 

[pemerton]

Burning Wheel is not magically superior to other games. It's different from trad games. You like it more. That's OK.

I could be wrong, but I don't believe @Hussar has much, even any, experience with Burning Wheel.

 

[pemerton]

the fact that you think that it's hard for the players to uncover the world's secrets in games like PbtA pretty much shows how you do not have a strong grasp of how these games work. These games center on creating and uncovering mysteries.

It probably depends on the details of the system/game being played - but I agree that mysteries can certainly be a part of play in games that don't rely heavily on GM prep.

There was a quite involved discussion of this in another recent thread!

 

[Hussar]

I gotta admit though, this back and forth does nicely illustrate why it's so exhausting discussing with D&D fans. The merest suggestion that D&D isn't the perfect system for all things means that we hate the game and think D&D is terrible.

Again, apparently the controversial statement that I am making is: There are other systems that work better for creating sandboxes than D&D. Not that it's impossible to do. That's 100% not what I'm saying. I am saying that because D&D is so prep heavy, there are other systems that make creating sandboxes easier.

 

[mamba]

I gotta admit though, this back and forth does nicely illustrate why it's so exhausting discussing with D&D fans. The merest suggestion that D&D isn't the perfect system for all things means that we hate the game and think D&D is terrible.

I did not see anyone claim that

Again, apparently the controversial statement that I am making is: There are other systems that work better for creating sandboxes than D&D. Not that it's impossible to do. That's 100% not what I'm saying. I am saying that because D&D is so prep heavy, there are other systems that make creating sandboxes easier.

you could have used the same approach to your sandbox in D&D, there were several people who said that they do not first create a 300+ page setting bible but a rough outline of the starting area and maybe its surroundings and the rest gets fleshed out during play


Your controversial statement was more that traditional sandboxes aren’t sandboxes at all but linear instead

 

[AlViking]

This is one of my challenges also. There's been a push for minimalism recently. I'm thinking of the shadowdark hex crawls. No doubt they're easy to get to the table. But so much is ill defined I feel I'm doing the majority of the creative work anyway.

I like Hemingway's iceberg theory quote in this regard:

If a writer of prose knows enough of what he is writing about he may omit things that he knows and the reader, if the writer is writing truly enough, will have a feeling of those things as strongly as though the writer had stated them. The dignity of movement of an ice-berg is due to only one-eighth of it being above water. A writer who omits things because he does not know them only makes hollow places in his writing.

It doesn't matter if most things you prepare don't see the light of day. Because having prepared them will give you a greater understanding of the world, and cause the things you do present to feel that much more real.

I think different people need to and should take different approaches to the game. For me? At least 80-90% of what I build is paper thin. The vast majority of time I don't come up with a detailed background, I never have paragraphs of text describing a character since I only spend time on things I think will add value.

When I'm developing NPCs and organizations I have two sections. The first is just a line or two - the name, how they're important to the campaign, maybe a quick description. That's where I start and, fairly often, where I end. Because that's all I need. I know that Helga Svenson is "The Burrough Chief of Downwind District, Helga's not above taking a bribe or two as long as the young-uns aren't getting hurt. Stocky with graying red hair." Because when I sketch her out, I'm not sure the characters are ever really going to interact with her. I've mentioned her because the Downwind District is the poorer part of town, literally downwind of the stockyards and tannery, where a hook or three might lead the characters. Not sure if she'll ever be more important than a name.

Then if the NPC comes more into focus for whatever reason I'll think about adding more as necessary. If she's the one who put out a request for help maybe I'll decide I need more information about how she was once happily married and lost her child during a gang war. She used to be more idealistic but now she's just tired even if there is still a spark of that idealism deep down. But even then, I don't need nor care much about her life history because the characters will likely never know it. If I need to add the names of her late husband and child I can reference my big list of random names that I have handy.

 

[Remathilis]

All this talk just reinforced my love of Adventure Paths. There is a certain beauty to buying a campaign (setting and all) in a box.