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

[pemerton]

applying realism to the setting is in my experience a big expectation in sandbox

Yet multiple posters in this thread have posited White Plume Mountain as consistent with sandboxing. Now maybe @The Firebird was just reaching for an easy example; but @Lanefan didn't seem to be. And Lanefan has told us that he has used Lost Caverns of Tsojcanth in a game that is described as a sandbox.

Almost nothing can be less realistic than either of those modules!

I've also seen B2 Keep on the Borderlands described as a sandbox. But the Caves of Chaos are also utterly unrealistic.

So if realism is a big expectation, than @Lanefan's game isn't a sandbox.

But I think the alternative conclusion is more sound: realism, in the context of FRPG sandboxes, meamore ns something like evokes some tropes received via a combination of a certain literature and wargame-y expectations.

EDIT:

I think when most people talk about realism, they aren't talking about historical authentic realism (and even if they were, what counts for being historically authentic is probably going to be debated if you have a group of gamers who are all interested in a given period). I think most campaigns are a blend of the groups common understanding of things like genre, how historical periods have been brought to life in modern media, history, etc. And that is fine. I am not a stickler for historical realism. But that doesn't mean they can't want a setting that feels plausible to them. And some people will try to do their best to make a historically believable setting or a poetically believable setting. And I get you think people might not have sophisticated enough understanding of politics or history to try to bring those things to life. But I don't think we need to require people be expert in those things to enjoy them at the table. And if there is a shared common sense in the group of what fits believable politics or history, that is great.

Right, so "realism" doesn't actually mean realism. It's a type of clique-y jargon.

 

[Hussar]

not at all because a sandbox is going to have concrete details. /snip

Again overall patterns matter here. Ina sandbox the GM is expected to give the players earned victories and not thwart them for plot reasons. But active NPCs with strong motivations are absolutely in keeping with sandbox

Note, that is one version of sandbox and not one that I ascribe to. The idea that in order to have a sandbox, the DM must be the sole source of details is a particularly idiosyncratic version of sandbox that only supports one, fairly narrow playstyle and insists that anyone doing anything different isn't actually playing a sandbox. Thus my disagreements with @robertsconley

 

[pemerton]

the example being given is a GM deciding a trait for an NPC, and a GM preferring a system or an approach to system where things like social skill rolls aren't going to have it so the players can just intimidate roll or persuade roll their way to bribing the guard. I wouldn't say the split is anything like 90-10, but I do think there is a lot of skepticism of social skill rolls and social interaction rules in general among sandbox gamers.

See, reading this, I don't see anything about realism.

It is about shaping the play experience: players are allowed to "just" attack roll their way through killing the guard; but bribing the guard is supposed to be more like solving a puzzle.

There may be a secondary concern - the "king giving away his kingdom" issue. But that's not an actual problem for functional social resolution systems.

 

[robertsconley]

RIght, this!

I mean, ten billion posts upthread this all started because one poster (whom I won't drag back in, but I think we all know the context) queried the sandbox/railroad contrast.

And now we are in a position where techniques are being vociferously affirmed as sandbox-consistent, even when they result in players making blind decisions whose outcomes are not knowable to them. But it's not railroading because the GM didn't mean it!

At this point in the thread, this shouldn’t be surprising.

What is surprising is the continued mischaracterization of sandbox campaigns despite numerous clarifications. After extensive replies addressing misconceptions, including directly answering a series of specific questions from @hawkeyefan.

If we’re going to have a productive discussion, we need to engage with the actual procedures described, not keep reasserting earlier misunderstandings.

 

[pemerton]

I would also add that sometimes there will, and should, be times when a player cannot accomplish a goal. If there are no real obstacles I would lose interest in the game.

The second sentence seems a non-sequitur relative to the first. An obstacle is a thing that impedes progress. The existence of obstacles doesn't entail that success is impossible. And if, in fact, success is impossible than "obstacle" on its own seems to understate the situation: it's really an insuperable obstacle.

 

[pemerton]

but for a lot of us player driven means acting through our characters in a setting that feels it has its own life. For that to be the case some choices are going to have to thwart my ambitions.

The second sentence is the case in any well-designed RPG that uses a fortune resolution system. It doesn't require that failure follow simply by GM extrapolation from pre-authored stuff. Every RPGer knows this to be so in the case of combat resolution, so it baffles me that someone as experienced as you posts as if, outside of combat, the only alternative are GM decides or PCs and their players never fail/

The first sentence is of course true even in the most railroad-y of railroads, provided that the GM makes sure the setting feels like it has its own life. And so to me is a pretty weak conception of player-driven RPGing.

 

[pemerton]

I think there's two very different framings of what "player-driven" might mean.

One is about the DM designing a very large setting without a lot of pre-set scenes, like an adventure path/module does. This is what I tend to the think of as the Elder Scrolls model; where the focus of play is on "discovery" of the pre-generated lore and story hooks. The player agency and freedom is the ability to discover that lore, and accept or reject hooks in any particular order the players like. I don't tend to think of that as "player-driven", but it does offer more apparent agency than your classic Dragonlance style AP.

The other is more of what you and I a few others here would generally mean, where the contours of the setting are established in play in order to frame challenges and conflicts to the PC-engendered goals.

This bit - The player agency and freedom is the ability to discover that lore, and accept or reject hooks in any particular order the players like - is a description of GM-driven play, in my view.

To turn this sort of map-and-key play into player-driven RPGing, there needs to be the injection of the sort of stuff that Gygax talks about in his essay on Successful Adventures in his PHB: players set goals, players use their initiative to obtain information, which is not gated behind GM-controlled "sidequests"; etc.

 

[Bedrockgames]

Note, that is one version of sandbox and not one that I ascribe to. The idea that in order to have a sandbox, the DM must be the sole source of details is a particularly idiosyncratic version of sandbox that only supports one, fairly narrow playstyle and insists that anyone doing anything different isn't actually playing a sandbox. Thus my disagreements with @robertsconley

I don’t know if you saw my posts but I said this is just one type of sandbox. I was defending this style as also having agency. But I said to elsewhere I think other approaches, including the ones you describe, can also be sandboxes. My point is what you are doing is in keeping with sandbox and what Rob is doing is sandbox. And both promote agency in their own ways

 

[pemerton]

No set of rules will prescribe every outcome to every action under every condition

Have you read the core rules for Burning Wheel, which you can download for free here: https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/98542/burning-wheel-gold-hub-and-spokes

I ask, because if you have then your post that I've quoted is puzzling; and if you haven't, then you might find them interesting, as they will show you how a resolution system can be designed so as to dissolve the concern that underlies your post that I've quoted.

 

[pemerton]

But that's not what you did; you posted a parallel with combat and acted like it proves something, and people who don't consider combat and social encounters parallel have made that abundantly clear before, so this does what?

No I didn't. You misread me.