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

[Paul Farquhar]

What principle does the GM use to decide if something is uncertain?

If they are not certain that something is certain, then it must be uncertain.

 

[Kromanjon]

For me, sandbox is a campaign style, totally divorced from system. A sandbox can be played prepped or not prepped. The question then becomes one of energy. Someone who prepps a lot before the game has expended energy before the game and so has an easier time at the table. Improvising then puts the expenditure of energy at the table. Now a co-authored campaign between GM and players spread that energy expenditure over more participants but will at the same time run the risk of loosing that singular vision, something that might be a turn off for some.

With that said I would propose that discussing system in regard to campaign style is a moot point, and that ease or speed of prepp is as well.

 

[Lanefan]

That being my point. This approach to building sandboxes - while certainly successful - also requires a lot of front end work to get things off the ground. And there are systems out there for which that isn't true. Thus, some systems are faster and easier for creating sandboxes than D&D.

I'm honestly not really sure why this is so contentious.

I think it's a question of perception.

The idea of a sandbox implies that both the box and the sand were there ahead of time before anyone played in it and are still there (absent any sand that got thrown out of the box) after everyone's done playing in it. There's a sense of permanence.

That you and your group - going by your posts upthread - tend to run largely without prep and in effect make it up as you go along kinda takes that sense of permanence and chucks it in the lake. It seems you're defining "sandbox play" at least in part to mean building the box and shoveling the sand in on the fly during play, which is at least by perception a completely different experience than bashing around in a pre-existing sandbox that someone already built.

 

[Lanefan]

If they are not certain that something is certain, then it must be uncertain.

Certainly!

 

[pemerton]

If they are not certain that something is certain, then it must be uncertain.

It's a fiction. All the likelihoods have to be decided by someone. How does the GM decide whether or not some task attempted by a PC, as declared by their player, is uncertain in its outcome? Intuition? Extrapolation (from what)? Because they think it will be more fun if the dice are rolled here and now? Something else?

 

[Bedrockgames]

Viewing all rules as inherently "they box you in and prevent you from doing good things" is a position I don't agree with. That is definitely something that can happen, and I do not in any way mean to argue otherwise. But to presume that every rule is a terribly bad thing unless it does something so amazingly wonderful that it becomes indispensable? That is just as much a mistake as assuming that every rule is always an amazingly wonderful thing unless it does something terribly bad.

Just a note, this isn't what I said at all. My comment was about guidelines and advice, and about sandbox ideologies. I have positions on rules and procedures too, but that isn't what this comment was about

 

[Alzrius]

Again, cherry picking points while ignoring clarifications are not exactly helpful. Sure, I misspoke. Ok, mea culpa. I have since made it very, very very very very very very clear what I was saying. So instead of belaboring something that I have already clarified REPEATEDLY, why not actually stick to what I'm saying.

So just to be as clear as possible, you misspoke when you said that "D&D is not a very good sandbox game," and that's not what you actually think?

 

[Bedrockgames]

That being my point. This approach to building sandboxes - while certainly successful - also requires a lot of front end work to get things off the ground. And there are systems out there for which that isn't true. Thus, some systems are faster and easier for creating sandboxes than D&D.

I'm honestly not really sure why this is so contentious.

I honestly have no issue with this position. I don’t think faster means better and I suspect the trade offs with this system would be a serious consideration for many sandbox GMs but some games are easier to prep. If I made a sandbox using esoterrorists (and to be clear that isn’t what it is designed for), it would be way faster to make than my D&D and Ogre Gate sandboxes because it strips down monster and villain creation so that it literally can take seconds. There would definitely be trade offs, but a GM prioritizing fast prep could get by with this system (it is meant for modern settings so might require tweaking for a fantasy sandbox but it is so simple, I think that would be easy)

 

[AlViking]

To me, this is all strange.

Without getting too metaphysical, a game is a type of social activity that is characterised by the rules, principles and practices that govern how it is played. Change those, and you change the game.

Obviously, it does no good to be too prescriptive about these things. For instance, when I play backgammon it is for fun with family members, and we don't use the rules for doubling; whereas I imagine that serious backgammon players with money on the table would use those rules - and yet I'm still happy to describe my game, and theirs, under the common label backgammon.

Likewise, we still call the game chess whether or not it is being played with a clock.

But just as we don't want to be too prescriptive, we don't want to be so loose that we lose all purchase on fundamental contrasts. Focusing very narrowly just on what dice are rolled or what bonuses are applied won't shed much light on how play is actually working in a RPG.

In a RPG, the most important thing that has to happen, for the game to work, is for the participants to all agree on (i) what actions are permissible for the players to declare for their PCs; and (ii) on what happens next, in the fiction, after a player declares an action for their PC. The systems of a RPG are aimed towards providing answers to these questions. So a radical change in how the answers are generated means a change in system.

GMing a sandbox seems to generally imply two things:

First, it strongly suggests, or implies, a certain relatively broad range of permissible action declarations for the players. They are permitted to declare that their PCs do things or journey to places without the GM having provided a prior cue that the players are expected to have their PCs do this thing or go to this place.

This range of permissible action declarations is at least part of what people are getting at when they talk about the "freedom" that players enjoy in a sandbox; and when they contrast sandbox play with very highly curated GM-driven play.

A game having, or not having, these sorts of permissions is pretty significant. For instance, if I am trying to work out whether or not I will enjoy playing an offered RPG session, knowing what sorts of permissions I will enjoy in relation to action declarations is much more important than knowing whether basic action resolution will be d20 or d%.

I can more or less agree with this, however I will say that pretty much every structured game has restrictions. You don't create a starship if you're playing an age of sail pirate game.

The second thing implied by "GMing a sandbox" is adoption of a particular way (or perhaps one of a bundle of ways that are related in various ways) of determining what happens next: rather than the GM determining that by reference to a script or pre-authored plot, the GM does so by some other process that is more open to "variability" and more sensitive to where the players are having their PCs go, and perhaps also to what they are having their PCs do.

I disagree with this assertion and I've never seen another description of sandbox that says this. What happens next should be dependent on the declaration of the characters and potentially other world events. The DM needs to be fairly neutral in response to the character's actions. That can include responses of NPCs to whether they can climb a wall. Yes, the GM may be deciding difficulty but as long as the difficulty is not set in order to force a predetermined outcome it can still be a sandbox.

Not every process other than following a script will necessarily be sandbox-y, however. I already mentioned upthread that I think it would be misleading to describe Burning Wheel as a sandbox game; although it is a very non-script-y RPG. To count as a sandbox, I think the process has to make journeying matter in some way - journeying has to have a distinctive sort of heft in resolution.

But there are different ways of establishing that sort of heft: the map-and-key, tracking-movement-on-a-map style of classic D&D; the progress-tracks-and-waypoints style of Ironsworn; the landmarks-on-a-map-create-toll style of Torchbearer 2e; no doubt others too.

If I am thinking of joining a RPG that describes itself as a sandbox, I would want to know what sort of method is being used to handle journeying, and to permit resolution without scripting. These are all crucial aspects of the system. If @Hussar tells me that he is playing D&D - because he's using the D&D combat rules - but then I turn up and travel is being done via his adaptation of Ironsworn rather than map and key and movement rates, I'm going to get a bit of a surprise despite the trademark on Hussar's rulebooks!

You only need an RPG that describe itself as a sandbox because you've redefined what a sandbox is. Obviously there are some games that will fit your criteria I just don't see any broader use of your criteria.

Whether one characterises these rules as "hard" or not doesn't really matter to me, and I don't see why it would matter to anyone else either. A rulebook for a voluntary leisure activity doesn't exercise power in itself - all RPG rules get their purchase by being taken up and accepted by a game's participants. But the idea that there is no particular correlation between mechanics and other rules and principles isn't right at all: for instance, Apocalypse World's resolution system, which requires the GM to decide what happens next at many points in the resolution process, will break down if the GM ceases to be a fan of the players: the hardholder's steading will be destroyed, the gunlugger's guns all broken down or wanting for ammo, the hocus's followers all committing ritual suicide, etc. Or to pick a different example, Burning Wheel without its rules for framing and consequence just becomes a particularly brutal dice pool variant of Rolemaster or RuneQuest.

In the context of sandboxing, the map-and-key technique of classic D&D won't be very satisfactory if the GM is just making up the map on the spot (and I don't mean here determining in a procedurally rigorous way, like Appendix B of Gygax's DMG, but literally just making up as the fancy takes them). Because how is just making it up any different from the scripting that sandbox play was supposed to be an alternative to?

The map itself isn't particularly important but again I disagree (surprise, surprise). As long as the GM is not forcing a direction I don't care if the location, obstacles or opportunities are predetermined, procedurally determined, made up on the spot. All that matters is the entertainment value provided, which for most people includes a sense of consistency and logical world building.

TL;DR - to talk about system without addressing the basic points of what action declarations by players are permissible and how it is decided what happens next is to miss what is most important about the rules and principles that we use when RPGing.

TL;DR - you've decided that sandbox can only exist for a style of game you've defined, it's a definition that does not match how most people define a sandbox.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

I can more or less agree with this, however I will say that pretty much every structured game has restrictions. You don't create a starship if you're playing an age of sail pirate game.

The "restrictions" you speak of are in the fiction, not the rules. The fiction of a world that doesn't have spaceships, electronics, rocketry, etc., isn't going to permit one, barring active effort to simulate these things fantastically (e.g. Spelljammer).

I disagree with this assertion and I've never seen another description of sandbox that says this. What happens next should be dependent on the declaration of the characters and potentially other world events. The DM needs to be fairly neutral in response to the character's actions. That can include responses of NPCs to whether they can climb a wall. Yes, the GM may be deciding difficulty but as long as the difficulty is not set in order to force a predetermined outcome it can still be a sandbox.

Uh...this...isn't disagreement? You're just restating what pemerton said in different words? Well, without being quite as specific, I should say.

You only need an RPG that describe itself as a sandbox because you've redefined what a sandbox is. Obviously there are some games that will fit your criteria I just don't see any broader use of your criteria.

See above. The criterion isn't any different, it's just avoiding vagueness.

The map itself isn't particularly important but again I disagree (surprise, surprise). As long as the GM is not forcing a direction I don't care if the location, obstacles or opportunities are predetermined, procedurally determined, made up on the spot. All that matters is the entertainment value provided, which for most people includes a sense of consistency and logical world building.

.....how can you possibly not care whether the obstacles are predetermined?

By this argument, every invisible railroad is by definition a sandbox, because the players think they have freedom even though every challenge they face and place they go is actually predetermined.

TL;DR - you've decided that sandbox can only exist for a style of game you've defined, it's a definition that does not match how most people define a sandbox.

Seems perfectly in keeping to me. You'll have to actually give what "most people" allegedly define a sandbox to be in order to take this argument seriously.