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

[AlViking]

He is saying not everyone needs the system to help in the same way and that the most essential thing for sandbox to function as he is describing it is that core play loop. It isn’t like physical technology. The X card might help some groups but it might hinder others. It isn’t always going to be helpful for groups pushing the envelope (and some people find it can cause more problems). The same with any mechanical development. Some of the examples I have seen in this thread for good sandbox play, scale back combat for example, making it less granular. In those campaigns having more rules to help positioning during a fight would probably not help, but in a game where combat is more standard, positioning rules could help (but such rules could interfere with the core play loop for some people if they want a more flexible and open approach to positioning), same can apply to rules for overland travel. One man’s helpful mechanic or procedure is another man’s obstruction

Some of the examples of "better" also seem to really push a metacurrency, points that the players can spend or gain via their declarations. So if a player does X then they know what to expect because the response is limited to Y, possibly with some randomization. This is obviously true as well in D&D for combat, if I attack the goblin with my sword I expect that if I roll high enough to match or exceed their AC that the orc will take Y amount of damage. If that accumulated damage exceeds their HP threshold, the goblin is out of the fight. With of course explicit rules messing with expectations here and there.

But I don't want that kind of systematic approach to social or exploration encounters so games that have that kind of play are meaningless to me. I need it for combat because I would have no clue how to run it. Meanwhile I like that D&D takes a more hands-off approach to non-combat with GM authority defining the world and player authority limited to their characters. It's more immersive and believable to me to follow the D&D paradigm, which is something I value over that systematic approach,

Along the same lines I don't see collaborative world building to be any more of a sandbox than the GM giving me options so I can make an at least somewhat-informed decision about where to go. If I go for a walk in the forest I may have an idea of what's over the next hill, I don't help create the waterfall that I find. That doesn't affect my agency or my ability to make decisions about where to go.

To use the so-so analogy I don't see much value to comparing a drill to a hammer. They serve somewhat similar roles but they are different tools with different approaches, objectives and experience.

 

[Thomas Shey]

It is one possible valence of "better". It isn't the only one.

Well, in part because it only tends to work in the context of accepting that none of the things that are eliminated to make it faster are worth as much as the gain of time (or in some cases, at all). Otherwise you run into the issue I hit halfway often where its just assumed a lighter game is automatically superior because its faster. That's not a bridge I'm willing to cross.

 

[Thomas Shey]

Yes it can?

It is better in one particular sense. Like that's literally what it means. And even if speed isn't the only thing you care about, a massive gain in speed may be worth a sacrifice elsewhere.

May is doing some serious heavy lifting there. It may also destroy most of the point in the game. And that absolutely is a subjective value. There are things I care about in an RPG experience others not only don't value, they're sometimes actively hostile to. So without establishing what those other values are, talking about gains in speed are largely pointless.

 

[The Firebird]

I mean it is literally better at sandboxing. That's what it's for, to be better at being more sandbox-y. It's just not better for the specific needs of a particular person, who doesn't want that much sandboxing.

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Like, this is the third or fourth time you have turned this into "well that doesn't make it UNIVERSALLY better". Neither I nor Hussar has said that it is universally better! Universal better-ness was never in the offing!

It's not even better at sandboxing unless we accept a somewhat idiosyncratic definition of sandbox.

 

[Thomas Shey]

I don't care about speed in my sandbox play. It does not make the experience better for me. Therefore, speedier sandbox equals better sandbox is not objectively true.

I can use logic too.

I'm going to take the other side of this, just a little.

An increase in speed if it did not reduce the other elements you value would almost certainly make an improved result to some degree. So you can talk about speed as a virtue. What you can't do is talk about it as such in the absence of other values in use.

 

[robertsconley]

To use a more contemporary example, things like X-card and O-card mechanics actively help players who want to do relatively "risky", pushing-the-envelope play-experiences. Having no mechanics at all for such things, neither interfering nor helping, is pretty clearly not enough, otherwise folks would never have developed the concept in the first place.

Sandbox campaigns result from a decision about how to referee the campaign, a decision that exists independently of the choice of setting and system.

As I stated before systems that actively work against player agency are rare. This includes mechanics like the X card described above. Could it be used to limit player agency to the point where a sandox campaign is difficult sure. But that is a result of how the idea of X cards was implemented for that campaign. The general concept is flexible enough to implemented any number of ways including ways accommodating groups wanting to experience a sandbox campaign.

I don't think omission gets you all the way there, though. That's...sort of the point?

My points are based on four decades of experience working with various systems and running sandbox campaigns. Campaigns where player choice drive the action not a narrative. It even worked out with the few games of Fate I ran. It worked out with minimalist systems like Shadowdark and Microlite20. Complex systems like GURpS plus supplements.

Again what make a campaign a sandbox is a choice on how to referee not a choice on what systems being used. What few example I have seen on this topic in the threads are problems with the setting not the system, Sometimes this can be hard to see if the setting is baked in as an integral part of the system.But those system are not an issue if their setting is the one the group want to focus on a part of a sandbox campaign..

For example AiME and the The One Ring can both be used to run a campaign that feels like a tolkien novel, Or they can be used to run a sandbox campIgn where the players feel like they experienced living in Middle Earth as characters having adventures. This fairly straightforward because the authors were true to both Tolkien as a novelist and as a worldbuilder. Because Tolkien narrative flowed out how he created Middle Earth it is a straightforward shift for both systems. Something I done several times myself with great success.

Omission only eliminates (presumptively) accidental roadblocks. "The system hasn't actively interfered" is far from "the system is actively helping". It's certainly helpful for task X if the system in question doesn't actively interfere with doing X. But it is--I should think objectively!--better for task X if the system actively helps with doing X.


"The system doesn't get in my way, so it's better than a system that does get in my way" is a perfectly valid argument, but it is inapplicable as a rebuttal to the claim that a system actively helps with some specific task.

The part of systems that get ignored are those that try to determine a particular. narrative outcome. Those that are kept are those useful to adjudicate specific actions when the player describe what they are doing as their character.

For example the audience mechanics of TOR and AiME are not a good fit for a sandbox Middle Earth campaign but the information that the authors provide for each character to use with the audience subsystemm is an excellent resource to roleplay the character in a sandbox campaign

system matters for the setting whether trashing that setting is allowed is based on how the campaign is refereed

 

[Lanefan]

Surely there is a vast difference between discovering a useful but unintended application in something like a drug, and (as my previous analogy used) saying that a Volkswagen Beetle isn't designed for towing but a Ford F-150 is.

If we use the ridiculously loose standard of "can be used as", we're right back at 52 Pickup. Anything CAN be used for anything when it comes to game design. Anything CAN function as anything.

But something designed for a particular purpose, that fulfills that design goal, should be better in at least some measurable ways than something that was not. That's literally what it means for something to be designed for a purpose (again, assuming that it is not outright badly designed.)

I completely agree with the bolded.

Thing is, though, a game designed intentionally to be good or even great at doing some thing(s) is, due to that design, fairly likely to be bad or even non-functional at doing some other thing(s); and while some people might adopt that game specifically because of what it's good at, others are going to try it in hopes it's good at other things as well, and be disappointed.

Far more useful all round, says I, would be something that's flexible and-or multi-purpose enough to be used in all sorts of situations. A purpose-built screwdriver is probably going to be better at driving screws than the one on a Swiss army knife, and yet the Swiss army knife is without doubt the more useful tool to have in your pocket if you want to travel light.

And while the people on this forum skew heavily toward those who have tried lots of different games and systems, I'd guess that for most people one system is enough - or in some cases (i.e. those many casual players who never really learn the rules but instead just enthusiastically show up and play) more than enough.

D&D tries - and always has, with varying degrees of success over the editions - to be that Swiss army knife. Can't fault it for that.

 

[Micah Sweet]

I'm going to take the other side of this, just a little.

An increase in speed if it did not reduce the other elements you value would almost certainly make an improved result to some degree. So you can talk about speed as a virtue. What you can't do is talk about it as such in the absence of other values in use.

That's fair, but not the impression I was getting from the remarks to which I responded.

 

[Thomas Shey]

That's fair, but not the impression I was getting from the remarks to which I responded.

And you may be right, but I'm just hesitant to let overgeneralizations pass.

 

[pemerton]

Sandbox campaigns result from a decision how to referee the campaign, a decision that exist independently from those involving what setting and system to be used.

This doesn't make much sense to me. "How to referee a game" is just about the most important component of a RPG system!