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

[Thomas Shey]

I just want to chime in and say that this isn't a problem (unless you don't trust your DM to make these decisions fairly, and that's not really a "rules" problem). Not only that, the DM is both allowed and encouraged to make such decisions, per the rules in the DMG.

I'll just note that, as I usually do, that you can trust your GM's motivations and not their judgment, and problems with the later are, IME, much more common. But bad judgment is still a problem if you're heavily dependent on the GM in a given game.

Folks here in this thread (and elsewhere) often cite this as a flaw or problem to be avoided/overcome/corrected. Maybe it is, maybe it isn't, but it's consistent with the 5E D&D rules...it is what the devs intended.

Just means that an objector thinks that was a big design error. I can point at a number of games that do things deliberately I think were a terrible idea.

 

[Bedrockgames]

That is pretty much all I care about in these conversations; what is a game trying to do, how (very specifically) does it go about that, and is it successful?

But in this process it seems you are overlooking an entire way of playing the game (or at least being a bit dismissive of it)

 

[Swarmkeeper]

But in this process it seems you are overlooking an entire way of playing the game (or at least being a bit dismissive of it)

I mean, great if you find another successful way of playing a particular game.

Too often I see the opposite, though: people complaining about a game not doing D, when it was designed to work for A, B, & C.

Right tool for the right job and all that.

 

[Bedrockgames]

I mean, great if you find another successful way of playing a particular game.

Too often I see the opposite, though: people complaining about a game not doing D, when it was designed to work for A, B, & C.

Right tool for the right job and all that.

But we aren't even talking about specific games. We are talking about approaches to sandbox. He is responding to posters like Rob who have OSR material out there designed for that, and it works for plenty of people. If @Manbearcat needs another kind of game to scratch the sandbox itch, that is totally fair. Like I said, @Hussar was talking about using a game like Ironsworn, which sounds more like it would be up @Manbearcat's alley, and I think that is a legit way to explore sandboxes. But there have been extensive back and forths with @Manbearcat where explanations are provided as to how we play and achieve sandboxes, and he just kind of dismisses them, as if people aren't adequately examining every tiny minutiae of play. But this play is most assuredly functional. It works for lots and lots of people. But we keep getting these arguments that are drawn from the whole "Kitty box" take down of sandboxes (i.e. sandboxes are really just multiple railroad adventures). And when we try to clarify and explain 'no that isn't what we are doing because X" the points just never seem to register

 

[Lanefan]

I think the difference here is an expectation of the state of the sand.

Imagine for a moment you went to the beach and someone had built an elaborate sandcastle. No, a whole whole bunch of elaborate sand castles spread out across the beach. They said, "play with these however you like. You can explore them, add to them, or knock them over." That's what a traditional D&D sandbox is; a bunch of pre built castles someone already built. You can use them to tell whatever game of make believe you want, but they were there when you got there.

Hussar is suggesting a type of sandbox where you can your friends are given a bunch of buckets and molds and told to build stuff as you play. You are given nothing but sand and tools and told to make your own castle. So as you play, if you decide you need a castle, you stop and mold the castle. Nothing was pre-decided upon before you reached the beach, everything was made up as you go along.

The way I've been interpreting Hussar's (and maybe others'?) suggestions would map to there not even being any sand or beach or tools to start with, meaning in order to build any sandcastles [the players and DM combined] first have to provide the sand. About the only pre-set element going in is that the building material will ideally be sand and not stone or water or coral, i.e. we're playing medieval fantasy rather than space pirates or 20th-century gumshoes or comic-book superheroes. After that, everything - even including the rules of procedure - are or could be malleable.

The first of your options is, as you say, fairly traditional - and was at one time also very common. The second is more freeform but still has sand and tools in place ahead of time, i.e. the DM has already laid down some foundations beyond just setting genre; she's decided on a specific setting and has given that settng some backstory for the PCs to interact with if so desired, has a rules system in place, knows where the PCs will be starting off, and so forth.

Both styles of play have strengths and weaknesses. The first has the advantage of forethought. The castles are more elaborate and ready to use. You can do what you want with the benefits of these beautiful castles. The latter is messier, on the fly, but far more free. Things don't exist until someone gets a bucket of wet sand and makes it then and there. The past is vague, the future uncertain.

And consequently the primary DM workload comes at different times (someone - maybe even you - already noted this upthread). The first puts much of the work up front, often before play even begins, but makes the actual sessions easier to run. The second puts that work in-session, which in a system like TSR-era D&D where much of the in-play mechanics workload is already DM-side, could quickly become overwhelming.

 

[Lanefan]

I am fine with a mixture of ad lib and pre-prepped material as long as the GM is being considered in their application of it and keeping this solid once they are set down for consistency.

So you're fine with something that...isn't really a sandbox, but calls itself one?

For goodness' sake, I thought the one thing we all agreed here was that railroad and sandbox were opposites!

Pre-prepped neither means nor equates to railroad, and to suggest it does only muddies the waters in the already murky pool this discussion is becoming.

 

[hawkeyefan]

IME, after just an hour of game the players are still trying to get to know each other and figure out why they're hanging out together. The depth of the setting rarely matters at this point.

The depth of the setting matters, in my experience, after that. When the players really begin exploring.

Well in my case, the players all know each other already, so that's not an issue.

If you mean the characters, that's usually something we've established during character creation. We always do that as a group, regardless of game.

I've never experienced that at all, except in cases where (A) the setting is a commercial one (the Realms, or the World of Darkness) and (B) the GM expects the players to know it all from the beginning rather than uncover it during play.

I've been both GM and player in cases where this happened. I had prepped a frankly ridiculous amount of material to start a campaign and I expected it to work very well and it was for my longtime group and I talked it out with everyone ahead of time (individually, mostly... we didn't have like a forma session zero) and yet once we began playing, one player just couldn't get interested in what I'd prepared.

As a player, a buddy wanted to run Starfinder. I was a bit leery as Pathfinder had word thin on me by now, and Starfinder seemed, if anything, even more crunchy. But I had fun with it because I had a fun character concept and so did the other player characters. In fact, our interest in the characters totally shadowed any possible interest we had in the AP that was being run. We wanted nothing to do with the mission across the galaxy to find relics.

That depends on what is defined as "the good stuff."

Sure, I didn't define it because it will be different for every game and group.

Of course, then there's a potential for a mismatch in player interests. Like, in my group, we have a couple of players who really like anthros and I... don't.

I do agree that having players work with the DM to make the world is great--but have to note that not every player wants to be involved in worldbuilding. Some find it boring. Some players have lots of time to invest in it, and others don't, leaving those players feel left out.

I'm not talking about assigning homework. I'm talking about working together before play begins. Like one session, maybe? A half session may do. Depends on how long a group typically plays.

Yes. Why focus on on the potential negative?

I was talking about a potential problem due to the mismatch in setting investment between the GM and the players. So that's what I'm going to talk about.

To say "Well what if the conditions were such that such a mismatch wasn't a concern?" just avoids the topic. Ideally, conditions would be such that it wouldn't be a concern. You know how that's most likely? To be aware of the concern!

I think you may have a very different definition of "deep." The Realms may be a mash of genre and tropes but there is a lot of world info and lore.

That's possible. I don't think the volume of material is what makes a setting deep. The Forgotten Realms is pretty absurd... and I don't just mean because of dragons and goblins and such.

In the case of BitD, that has a very distinct world and purpose to the game (play as member of the criminal underbelly). So for that, it really wanted to focus the game on what it's intended for. And AW was literally the first game of its kind and thus was trying to differentiate it from the other games.

I don't really think it's a whole lot more focused than D&D. I mean, "criminals" is a pretty broad descriptor. So is "adventurer".

But either way... these are the examples I can think of off the top of my head. I'm sure there are others out there.

We're talking about sandboxes, not railroads. And that's on that particular GM, not the game or type of game.

Right but you asked me what sort of games I might play where random is the same as plotted, so I provided an example.

I don't think preparation is going to prevent railroading. Quite the opposite, really... though I don't think it's a certainty or anything like that.

But I think there's an inherent tension between large amounts of preparation by the GM and player-driven play. It's kind of definitional, isn't it? It's not insurmountable, but it exists and I think needs to be addressed to make functional player-driven play. Not being aware of it is the reason that I've seen people describe something as a sandbox, but really it was just a whole bunch of GM generated plot presented in a slightly different way.

 

[Bedrockgames]

But I think there's an inherent tension between large amounts of preparation by the GM and player-driven play. It's kind of definitional, isn't it?

Only if you are prepping 'adventures' and even then, that isn't hard to avoid

 

[hawkeyefan]

First, it's generally not making things up "on a whim" in my experience. Second, when you determine something can make a difference. When it comes to map details if I plan everything ahead of time I can't tailor what they find based on what the players are expressing an interest in or based on the context of the game. In general I have large scale mapping figured out ahead of time, but let's say the group decided that they needed supplies before going into the mountains. This is something I hadn't anticipated and I don't have any major settlements mapped out ahead of time.

If they're on the windward side of the mountain where there's more rain there will be higher population density and more settlements so there's a good chance of a decent sized village being nearby. I either decide that there is one that has the supplies they're seeking nearby or think about the odds of there being one and determine it randomly. If they were on the lee side of the mountains, the odds of there being a village may drop significantly. If there is a village I need to think about recent developments, for example if someone has put a bounty on the characters and then what the odds are or any number of things. There are also things that I will add that make the game more fun or engaging.

If I had planned everything out ahead of time, none of that would have happened, I would have just looked at the map and said there were no villages indicated. Neither option is better or worse but it does lead to different results. I tend to think of a sandbox as an ever-changing thing. There are things that have been established or that I've thought through ahead of time but up to the moment something is revealed to the players it's not set in concrete. That's kind of the whole reason for sandboxes to exist for me.

I think my comment may have given you a false impression of my thoughts on this. I don't have any problem at all with material that's produced as a result of or during play.

My comment was about a specific exchange between two other posters. It shouldn't be viewed outside of that context.

 

[AlViking]

I think my comment may have given you a false impression of my thoughts on this. I don't have any problem at all with material that's produced as a result of or during play.

My comment was about a specific exchange between two other posters. It shouldn't be viewed outside of that context.

Misunderstanding what someone means and not understanding their intent? Bah, that never happens! Okay ... maybe it happens all the time because especially when you have a lot of people having somewhat related conversations over multiple pages it's easy to misinterpret.