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

[Hussar]

I'm not asserting that it is impossible to introduce variant rules into 5e D&D that will give it the same sort of structure as some of these other RPGs - I don't know 5e well enough to be confident in any such assertion! You could use intent-and-task, stakes-based resolution, for instance (that is, drifting the game in the direction of Burning Wheel). But that would still leave the issue of how to handle non-combat spell-casting. Perhaps this could be done similar to 4e D&D skill challenges?

Heh, considering I've adapted the Ironsworn exploration rules for D&D, I'd say that it is very possible.

 

[mamba]

How did they pick their first quest? What rumours? Rumours of adventure locations that the DM hasn't created yet?

yes, if you can do that for later quests, you can do it for the first ones too

How did they travel to the location that doesn't exist yet? How did they know where it was? How did the DM know how long it would take to get there? So many questions.

you overcomplicate things, how did you know these things in your sandbox with one page of prep?

Just because you have a town and its surroundings prepared does not mean that you (the DM in this case) do not know more than that about the world, like where the next town is, what some factions are, etc. - and what you do not know, you improvise

And note, without the DM having anything outside the town prepped, what could the players actually do? It's not like they can say, "Hey, I want to check out X" when nothing outside the town has been detailed yet.

they can say whatever they want, they cannot necessarily do it

When I say town, I did not literally mean that you know the 10 streets and 50 NPCs in it and that is it, you know nothing of the world as soon as you are 100 feet outside the town walls. You do have an idea of what is around it, probably a very roughly sketched out ‘world’, you just did not prepare 10 or so locations the players can go to. So they can travel to a location, have some encounters along the way, as mentioned. That plus the town itself uses up the time of the first session, and by the next, you have a location prepared. If you really wanted to / had to, you can improvise a location for 1st level characters too, a goblin or bandit camp is pretty standard fare

If you think you can run a sandbox and have everything prepared all the time and need zero improvisation for it, then I would like to know how you ran yours that way. I do not even manage that with APs…

You seem to overemphasize prep for your D&D sandbox to make it a lot of work and be able to point to D&D and say it is not good at this but seem to be fine with a lot of improvisation when running a sandbox yourself

 

[mamba]

On a strong success, I'd make something up that leads them on an adventure. If I had no idea, I'd turn to the rest of the players and ask for options. Or, possibly, Ironsworn does come with an Ask the Oracle mechanic that allows for some random inspiration.

The simplest Ask the Oracle is Yes/No questions. So, in one episode where we did pretty much exactly this, I framed the question - "Is this a supernatural event?" (No) "Is there a mystery?" (Yes). "Is it a murder mystery?" (No) "Missing person?" (Yes)

Ah, ok, I've got enough to work with now. It's just starting out so there is a missing child that needs rescuing. I'm not going to worry too much about the mystery yet, because there's time for that as they progress.

and you are telling me you could not have 10 of these as this level of detail for your first D&D sandbox session for the players to choose from?

Why does D&D need this

Six different stat blocks, including one NPC, several traps that need to be statted out, stats for things like the bridge and the flood trap. Seven typed pages (although a bit of art) but no stat blocks are listed.

All for the simplest 1st level adventure.

but Ironsworn gets away with you making stuff up on the fly and does not turn into

the most boring adventure I've seen.

Serious question, I want to understand your reasoning / the difference

 

[pemerton]

Why does D&D need this

but Ironsworn gets away with you making stuff up on the fly and does not turn into


Serious question, I want to understand your reasoning / the difference

Ironsworn uses a completely different action resolution system from D&D. It doesn't use stat blocks in the same way.

(I haven't read Ironsworn all the way through. But I've skimmed it. And I'm relying here on the fact that it is a cousin of AW/DW.)

 

[Remathilis]

Well, if I was doing D&D? I'd have a setting bible with lots of stuff. I'd do the prep work.

Now though? Yeah, I'd likely lean into something like Ironsworn (although, to be fair, that's a fairly narrow genre and not as broad as D&D - I'd have to hunt for another game if I wanted something as encompassing as D&D) where you'd start with a village. Player makes a Move - Gathering Information, for example. On a strong success, I'd make something up that leads them on an adventure. If I had no idea, I'd turn to the rest of the players and ask for options. Or, possibly, Ironsworn does come with an Ask the Oracle mechanic that allows for some random inspiration.

The simplest Ask the Oracle is Yes/No questions. So, in one episode where we did pretty much exactly this, I framed the question - "Is this a supernatural event?" (No) "Is there a mystery?" (Yes). "Is it a murder mystery?" (No) "Missing person?" (Yes)

Ah, ok, I've got enough to work with now. It's just starting out so there is a missing child that needs rescuing. I'm not going to worry too much about the mystery yet, because there's time for that as they progress.

In Ironsworn, when you undertake a quest, you swear an Iron Vow (resolving those vows is how you gain XP to advance your character). So, the players swear - which can fail btw, resulting in more complications. Play progresses from there.

Note, the players could make multiple Gather Knowledge checks and spawn multiple events. As the players progress through a vow, checks can also spawn more complications. So on and so forth.

By the end of the scenario, we could discover (and I'm making this up, this is hypothetical) that the missing child is the illegitimate child of the leader of the town and was taken into the woods Hansel and Gretal style to be eaten by a witch. At the outset of the task, literally no one at the table knows anything. It is all revealed during play.

Basically, an entire couple of sessions of play could easily be generated by a couple of die rolls and some leading questions. Totally sandbox, total player freedom.

Forgive me for asking a dumb question, but what's the difference between this and having a bunch of random tables to roll on or use for inspiration?

You start in a town. The DMG has tables for determining a settlement info. Roll or pick what's appropriate.

The players attempt to gather information, research or rumors via skill checks, or they can ask to follow an idea they present. The DMG has a bunch of plot starters by tier. Roll or pick a few and present them.

The PCs opt for going to explore a dungeon overridden by kobolds. They set out. The DM uses wilderness tables to determine terrain, weather, things found along the way, and random encounters.

When they get to the dungeon, you can randomly generate the map and stock it with traps, monsters and treasure.

Now I will say that such random generation takes a lot of time when done at the table, and you have to be careful to weed out nonsensical results, (such as not rolling any kobold encounters in the kobold dungeon, unless you decide you want to keep the swerve). And the tools may not all available depending on the specific edition or books present, but I'm theory it's all just random generation, DM fiat and player input which is plausible in any game?

Then again, I tend to play a far more linear form of D&D than what is preferred around here, so I may be off base. I LIKE my 1000 page setting bibles.

 

[Hussar]

You seem to overemphasize prep for your D&D sandbox to make it a lot of work and be able to point to D&D and say it is not good at this but seem to be fine with a lot of improvisation when running a sandbox yourself

When I've run sandboxes in D&D, I've had big, beefy setting bibles. I did mention that playing the World's Largest Dungeon, for example, meant I had a thousand page module to work from.

But, yeah, as @pemerton has said, there's no monster stat blocks. Monsters never attack. You take damage when you fail to hit. You choose what kind of damage you take that makes sense in the context of the situation. The amount of damage you take depends on the "level" of the monster, but, by and large, monsters don't actually have any stats. Even the level of the monster is largely determined by the situation, rather than any individual stat block.

When you're playing PbtA games, improvisation is required. And it's not the DM improv'ing. It's the entire group. Virtually every element that is added to the game is done so by the players. So, it's entirely possible that, say, while traveling from A to B, a failed roll spawns an entire side plot - such as happened in my game where a failed roll resulted in a monster attacking, which spawned hunting the monster and tracking it back to its lair, all the while creating from scratch what the monster was, how it lived, a good chunk of its ecology and whatnot. I'd say about 1/3 of the ideas came from me and 2/3rds from the players.

It's a very different experience from running something like D&D. Honestly, I found the whole thing just so liberating. But, I'm a massively drooling Ironsworn fanbois, so, I'm not even remotely objective about this.

 

[Hussar]

Forgive me for asking a dumb question, but what's the difference between this and having a bunch of random tables to roll on or use for inspiration?

You start in a town. The DMG has tables for determining a settlement info. Roll or pick what's appropriate.

The players attempt to gather information, research or rumors via skill checks, or they can ask to follow an idea they present.

Not dumb at all. And, to be fair, Ironsworn actually HAS these tables. If you need them.

The difference is generally it's the players who generate the setting details. Which means that the players are already invested in the setting details. After all, they're not going to add something that doesn't interest them. So, when a player asked if the female chieftain was married, my answer was, "I dunno, is she? And, if she is, tell me about her husband." Which spawned an entire side plot about the chieftain's husband trying to take over the clan from the chief.

Could this have come from random rolls? Possibly. But, when the players are generating content like this, they're not going to generate stuff that no one cares about. Some stuff might catch more traction than others - the need to take a root vegetables to the elven village in order to pitch woo was a particularly unique thing for example - but, overall, the group isn't going to just throw stuff at the wall in the hopes something sticks. They are going to generate stuff that pertains to their characters.

 

[Hussar]

but Ironsworn gets away with you making stuff up on the fly and does not turn into

Serious question, I want to understand your reasoning / the difference

Because much of the material that's being mad e up isn't made up by me but by the group who has a vested interest in creating stuff that's ... well... interesting to the group.

 

[Remathilis]

Not dumb at all. And, to be fair, Ironsworn actually HAS these tables. If you need them.

The difference is generally it's the players who generate the setting details. Which means that the players are already invested in the setting details. After all, they're not going to add something that doesn't interest them. So, when a player asked if the female chieftain was married, my answer was, "I dunno, is she? And, if she is, tell me about her husband." Which spawned an entire side plot about the chieftain's husband trying to take over the clan from the chief.

Could this have come from random rolls? Possibly. But, when the players are generating content like this, they're not going to generate stuff that no one cares about. Some stuff might catch more traction than others - the need to take a root vegetables to the elven village in order to pitch woo was a particularly unique thing for example - but, overall, the group isn't going to just throw stuff at the wall in the hopes something sticks. They are going to generate stuff that pertains to their characters.

Thanks. I hit post before I was done, so there is more to the post, but you did hit the jist of my question.

 

[Bedrockgames]

But, see, that's the thing. I've never said that you can't do it. I've just said that there are easier ways to do it. And, frankly, it seems that there is a lot of agreement out there. People running sandboxes aren't using 5e D&D - @Lanefan and @Bedrockgames are not using 5e D&D, for example. It doesn't look like @Bedrockgames is using D&D at all from that example.

I don't disagree that there are games that are easier for Sandbox (at least in terms of prep). I do think easier can be relative depending on on aspects of running a sandbox one finds hard (for example I can easily imagine a GM who doesn't mind prep or find it difficult, but finds games without huge monster compendiums as a resource difficult to run sandboxes with). Also I don't play 5E, so I can't really speak to that particular version of D&D and how well it works for sandbox (I do know people using it for sandbox but I have only read the books and played a handful of 5E games). I have used other versions of D&D for sandbox in the past.

But my issue here isn't the argument that there are easier games. I think it comes down to my impression that you are saying: 1) Easier equals better (if I am wrong here please feel free to correct me), and that 2) the ideal for a sandbox is something like a little to no-prep system (which I wouldn't agree with: I think no prep is fine for sandbox, but it isn't every group). 3) One part of your argument I am finding a bit difficult is you are painting D&D like it is so overwhelmingly challenging to prep for sandbox that it is nearly impossible. Just based on my own experience with different versions of D&D and similar medium crunch games for sandbox, this seems a bit like a straw man to me. I am not saying it is easy as pie. I just think you are overstating things. It makes it sound like there isn't enough time in the day to do this kind of prep. 4) Ease of prep is only one part of what makes a system suitable for sandbox. I think D&D does have a lot that lends itself well to a sandbox (between the MM and Dungeons Masters Guides, there is usually a lot of material in editions to help the GM populate a sandbox).

But I will say, D&D does have some prep hurdles. I think running a sandbox with an OSR system, 2E or 1E, or basic, is pretty easy to do in terms of prep. I have run sandboxes and sandbox adjacent campaigns with 3E (also ran tons of adventure paths and similar), and 3E is a nightmare for prep in general. I would never say 3E is an easy game to prepare (ironically though I actually found adventure paths more of a pain sometimes, because the standard way to prepare adventures during the 3E era became around a series of combat encounters that were painstakingly crafted around the EL/CR system. I liked 3E, but easy prep is not what leaps to mind when I think of that system. I can't speak to 4E as I only played in a handful of short campaigns, and by the time 5E came out, I was mostly just using 2E for my D&D campaigns, but otherwise running my own systems.

Not sure what system that is (although it does look cool).

Thank you. I appreciate the compliment. It is my own system for wuxia campaigns called Wandering Heroes of Ogre Gate (and it is PWYW, so if you want to check it out it is free: just a heads it is what people here would probably call Trad)

When the biggest proponents of using D&D to run sandboxes aren't actually using D&D, then, well, saying that other systems make running sandboxes easier shouldn't be all that contentious.

I would say in this thread that may be true. But I personally know lots of people who run sandboxes with some version of D&D. And my impression, which admittedly could be skewed, is most people who are out there talking about sandbox play, are OSR guys using a retro clone or older edition to run them