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

[soviet]

I am sorry but this just isn't true in my experience. Especially if you are running the game trying to emphasize giving the players freedom to choose. The idea that we have to be worried about crypto-railroads is just absurd in my opinion. I think these conversations are much better if we take people at their word about this stuff. You aren't in my head, you aren't in @AlViking or @robertsconley's head. You don't know what is happening when we make these kinds of choices.

To be clear then, you're saying that when you decide for example that 'Bob can never be bribed, it's a defining character trait that cannot be moved' you've already determined every possible factor that could affect that. His cardiovascular and mental health. Any changes in the weather this season that has affected his crops and so his likely financial position later in the year. Whether he's ever heard about wizards before and might be swayed by meeting one in the flesh. Whether the people that normally watch for him and keep him honest have gone away for the week. Whether he had a run-in with the suspect this morning and thinks, you know what that guy has it coming. All these and other factors are known to you and form part of your decision making?

 

[soviet]

The players rarely, if ever, know the whole picture. If they do not know who Bob the Rat Catcher really is, how can they decide whether an attempt to gather information should work or not? If that doesn't work for you there are plenty of other games out there.

I really don't see why people insist that every square peg needs to fit into the round hole.

'I can't railroad the players because I don't give them enough information to tell if it's happening' is quite the take

 

[robertsconley]

I don't play 5E, but when it came out, reading through it, it seemed quite friendly to sandbox play and to rulings. I didn't see anything that would obviously obstruct sandbox @robertsconley can probably weigh in as I believe he may have more experience with the system than me

It works fine. If folks have specific questions about how exactly it worked out specifically in regards to 5e, I am happy to answer. However, the best way to learn the details is through the excellent campaign log that one of my players kept.

https://gamingballistic.com/category/actual-play/majestic-wilderlands/

Just first scroll through the entries until the last post, which is the first post chronologically.

I am currently running a sandbox campaign using 5e in my Majestic Fantasy Realms. This is something one of my players said recently.

With a few minutes of time to think, I want to share a fairly cool "Rob moment in gaming." Rob's been fleshing out his setting, and we've been playing in a new spot to lend a hand with that. I'm making Rob's side up since I didn't talk with him about it, having been on vacation.

So Rob sets this up: gives us a rumor that some hill giants are running a toll racket in a location we are heading. We're like 8th level and fairly "ambush" focused, so we're thinking we can fix this problem for the locals and build some street cred. Point of note though, this is NOT what we're here for—it's a "side quest."

We scout out their hideout, and it's a large complex, with support, and the wife is a druid that talks to wargs. Hm... there are four of them. This might hurt. We toss some ideas about; I have to miss next week, so the group goes back to report, musters some troops, then heads over to say hi to the elves. Apparently everyone has considered this and just been paying them for years. There is a larger contingent of hill giants in the mountains that don't like what this one is doing, but isn't stopping him.

We get back, tell the locals what we learned, then head back up. We catch the female out, and instead of ambushing, we send a warning, because we don't want the hill giants descending to get revenge. Turns out she's the chieftain's daughter—and an Appalachian redneck. We let her go. Leaving that discussion, we realize that killing them will likely result in a blood feud.

So, this simple encounter, had we gone through with it as originally intended, likely would have resulted in the local towns being wiped out by a marauding band of hill giants. Actions, consequences—great gaming moment. I've been on vacation, and solving this problem has been something I'm trying to work through.

The map the player used for context.

 

[The Firebird]

Bit again this is where context comes in. I don't presume that anyone walking up to the King as a complete stranger, a nobody, with no leverage at all, has a 5% chance of taking over the kingdom. But if the characters can build a proper context and leverage... why not?

Sure, if they can construct a scenario that reasonably would result in the king handing over the kingdom, that can happen. I don't think these kinds of scenarios exist for most kingdoms. The English crown is not going to be passed to a wanderer.

 

[pemerton]

Sandboxes involve the players making decisions and declarations for their characters.

All RPGing involves this. It's not unique to, or distinctive of, sandbox RPGing.

I've never heard of the term "living novel".

As I posted upthread, it's used by Lewis Pulsipher, writing in White Dwarf, to describe a type of play that was happening among D&D players in the late 70s/early 80s: the GM makes up situations, and consequences, as they go along, in response to the players saying what their PCs do.

So if the GM makes a call without procedural restraints, it can't be a sandbox.

I don't think I used the phrase "procedural restraints". That's your phrase, and as best I can tell you're attributing to me a view that I don't hold.

What I did say is that, if the GM's procedure is simply "make it up as takes their fancy", then the game is not a sandbox, in my view, because the players can't make choices informed by a reasonable sense of what will happen next.

 

[soviet]

Not wanting to make this about skill systems, but my point is that if a player can at all times have the autonomy to play their PC they see fit, a DM (being a player at the table) can call on the same privilege. It's no more a railroad to say an NPC won't drink (except under pain of death) than it is to say the PC paladin will not be seduced by the NPC strumpet in the bar, regardless of how well she rolls because the player won't allow it.*

* Barring magic like mind control, of course.

This is an extremely radical position of GM privilege. The same privilege of protagonism that I want for my fighter should apply to the GM and his billions of NPCs?

 

[Faolyn]

It's not just "one stubborn character". It's "one stubborn character with a completely and objectively ridiculous viewpoint in 99.99% of cases".

It's going to take a HELL of a lot of work--no pun intended--to make me think it's in any way reasonable for a person to believe "if I drink alcohol, I and my entire family will face eternal torment" isn't just the DM inventing whatever they need to invent to ensure that this NPC is infinitely stubborn. Which is precisely the problem @soviet is pointing out. The DM can, almost always, invent whatever they want in a way that is: (a) consistent with the fiction, (b) using real-world logic, and (c) radically restricts player choice, in any system that gives D&D-like latitude to the DM and functionally nothing to players....unless granted to them by that very DM.

Why assume that the GM is making it up right there and then. Maybe it's part of an established religious belief?

 

[soviet]

Why assume that the GM is making it up right there and then. Maybe it's part of an established religious belief?

That he made up yesterday. Big difference!

PS all religious beliefs are made up

 

[pemerton]

regardless of the results the GM arrives at and how much player input they incorporate?

If the GM is just making up what takes their fancy, how do the players know how much of their input will be incorporated? And if they don't know, then how can they make reasonably informed decisions?

If there's some sort of principle or expectation operation about incorporation of player input, that is a different matter. But such a principle or expectation obviously is a departure from "the GM just making up as takes their fancy:.

So unless there is a prescriptive procedure that the DM has to follow, it would not be a sandbox, regardless of whether what the GM arrives at could be an outcome of that procedure or even be better (more interesting and incorporating more player input) than what the procedure would arrive at?

I don't know what you mean by prescriptive procedure. I've given actual examples of actual procedures in this thread, from multiple RPGs: classic D&D, Ironsworn, and Torchbearer 2e. Do these count as "prescriptive procedures"?

And if you want to incorporate more player input, why not make that part of your procedure? It's not like there are no RPGs out there that show how this might be done. The earliest I know of, which is also a good system for sandbox RPGing, is Classic Traveller (1977).

 

[pemerton]

Sure if he is just using some kind of setting rationale to railroad, then yeah it could be. But if that isn't the reason, the players are just coming up against the limits of the setting itself, I don't think it is railroading.



This would be an odd NPC characteristic to create. So it is a slightly unusual example. But if you did have a character who had something they would never ever do, I don't know I would consider it railroading. We could certainly talk about whether it is good characterization. And it might depend on the system of course because some systems give things like social skills more control here. And there is a point where even the most staunch person might act (I wouldn't ever swim in the ocean, but if someone threatened to kill my family if I didn't, sure I am going to do it. But you are never going to persuade me through argument to swim in the ocean. Some just people won't do certain things unless the party physically forces them or coerces them (and coercion doesn't work on every single person, just ask Giles Corey)). Now if it is being done simply to obstruct the party, that is different. But staying true to an established character trait in an NPC, I wouldn't regard as railroading.

Is it reasonable in character for the NPC not to? Most people have things that they will not do.

Agree that if they would reasonably do that and the GM says no it can be railroading. In that case the GM is not making the world respond realistically.

Sure, there are some things people won't do. Although 1984, and I believe also Aristotle, present the opposite view, ie, that anyone can be broken if subjected to enough stress ("Do it to Julia!").

One way, in a RPG, to find out what a NPC is not prepared to do is to put it to the test of the mechanics (eg reaction rolls, or Persuader tests, or whatever else is the framework for the RPG in question).

If the GM decides in advance, and keeps it secret, then the fact that the GM's decision is "realistic" to their secret authored stuff doesn't make play not a railroad. A lot more has to be said about the workings of play than that - for instance, what actions might the players have reasonably declared that would then have obliged the GM to reveal the secret?

Who establishes that the character has that trait? Why is it established so?

Speaking for myself, I don't really care why the GM decided that the NPC can't be persuaded to do <whatever>. Maybe they thought it was quirky? Maybe they thought it would make for a big reveal? Maybe they have modelled the NPC on some character they enjoyed reading about in a comic?

What I care about, as a player, is how I am able to play the game. If I can't reasonably judge the likely prospects of my action declarations achieving <this> or <that?, then I can't really play the game. And the more salient the action declaration is to the situations that the GM is presenting to me, the bigger an issue this becomes.

So, for instance, the GM deciding on a whim that the ground is too hard for me to dig a hole with my wooden shovel is probably harmless, if there's nothing really at stake in relation to shovel-digging, and I've just declared the action to establish a bit of colour for my PC. But the GM presenting a situation where there are action declarations that would be highly salient ways for the players to respond, while having secretly determined that some of those actions will fail if declared, and not making this reasonably knowable by the players, is a completely different thing. The fact that the GM's secret decision also includes an explanation as to why the impossibility is "realistic" is neither here-nor-there.

Did you stop the character from attempting to persuade the NPC? If a character can never succeed (or fail depending on what is being attempted) unless it follows the predetermined path the GM has chosen then it's a railroad. A character can state that they climb a rainbow if they want but it's not going to work unless magic is involved.

There's no guarantee of a chance of success to any action a person in real life takes, I don't see why it would be any different in a game. Once again it looks like you're just adding things to the definition of what is required to play a sandbox because of your preference for a specific type of game.

From time to time I - the poster pemerton - persuade people of things, without using magic. It's a thing that can really happen. So the action I try and persuade so-and-so to do <this thing that is the sort of thing a person in so-and-so's circumstances might be persuaded to do> is not comparable to I climb the rainbow.

You ask, why should there be a guarantee of a chance of success in a game? I think the answer is obvious: that's part of what it means to sit down and play a game! If I bring my wits to bear, and have a bit of luck, then I have a chance to win.

The GM secretly deciding that I will fail in some meaningful action declaration, where I don't have a reasonable chance to work out in advance of the action declaration that it will be futile, is in my view not good game play. It's classic railroading!