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

[The Firebird]

True. But, does that mean that in a sandbox, the DM is constrained from ever introducing encounters that might be too difficult if the party does not play smart? I would have thought that this was pretty much one of the basic tenets of sandbox play. That smart play is rewarded and poor play is penalized. How is the DM introducing a hunting party chasing the PC's not exactly that?

No. And this kind of chase mechanic can actually work great in a sandbox.

The problem with OotA is that it wants to make the players like the underdark and form relationships there so they want to return to save it in the second half. But optimal play in the first half will have them moving as fast as possible rather than exploring, helping out, and making allies.

On top of that, smart play to evade pursuit is not that rewarded, because they will be caught by fiat in any case.

 

[FrozenNorth]

This was not a very good example though. I think even the person who proposed it agreed the example was an attempt to explain after the fact. But that is very different form a situation where the deity and belief system already exist in the setting and the NPC believes that because that is their religion.

I think it is a very good example because it reflects how the process actually works in games. A party interacts with an NPC. If it is a minor NPC (shopkeep, random guard), they essentially don’t have any traits before they speak. Even with major NPCs, who often do have a couple of traits, PCs’ tendency to act in unexpected ways often means that the GM has to create new traits on the fly.

That is what happened in this example. You came up with a trait on the fly « will not drink alcohol out of religious belief ».

Then, when pushed on a trait, the GM doubles down by creating lore to justify the trait.

Same thing happened in the guard example. We are presuming a sandbox, and the guard is a minor NPC, so the guard did not have the trait « cannot be bribed » until the PC tried to bribe him. Afterwards, to justify the trait, someone posted about weekly Zone of Truth spells to ensure that guards weren’t accepting bribes.

Essentially, contrary to what you are arguing, the traits aren’t consequences of the lore. The lore is being created to justify the traits.

This also runs headlong into the first point I raised. If weekly Zone of truth spells can be argued to be based on realism, then anything can be argued to be based on realism. Including countermeasures to the weekly Zone of truth spells.

 

[AnotherGuy]

The roll is almost never to determine if the guard is bribable in the first place.

When there are no notes (published or otherwise) about the guard or other things, I let the rolls decide things.
I just need to better communicate to the table whether the check is Binary, Fail Forward, Success with Complications...etc

That little bit of gamist injection does wonders for a little uncertainty and excitement.

If I or the module have gone to all that trouble for a backstory about an unbribable guard then I'm going to use that guard either for some info dump, create an interesting character exchange or for a source of tension or friendship. Possibly more than 1 option.

 

[AlViking]

Yet I’ve repeatedly been told that my sandbox campaigns are not sandboxes ...

Join the club.

 

[Hussar]

No. And this kind of chase mechanic can actually work great in a sandbox.

The problem with OotA is that it wants to make the players like the underdark and form relationships there so they want to return to save it in the second half. But optimal play in the first half will have them moving as fast as possible rather than exploring, helping out, and making allies.

On top of that, smart play to evade pursuit is not that rewarded, because they will be caught by fiat in any case.

None of that is actually true. Well, almost. The "caught by fiat" encounter at the very end is possible, although, it certainly doesn't have to be run. It is suggested. But, again, I thought in a sandbox, that the DM was entitled to add in encounters that fit with their desires for realism and whatnot in the setting. Having the people that have been chasing them throughout the Underdark catch up with them as they are getting ready to leave is hardly an egregious example of the DM exercising authority to add things to the game.

But, "moving as fast as possible" is flat out not true. So long as the party doesn't tarry too long in any one location (and too long can vary a LOT by location), staying ahead of the hunting party isn't exactly difficult. And, in nearly all of the locations where the party forms relationships with the denizens of hte underdark, the hunters cannot catch them.

I'm failing to see how this is anything other than a perfectly reasonable element of a sandbox campaign. And, considering it's a fairly minor element of the campaign, it would hardly qualify in discounting the entire campaign as no longer being a sandbox.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

If you want to talk about things to include in a game that could serve the problems I expect to see, we can start talking about safety tools and what goes into a session zero to help keep everyone at the table safe from harm.

Safety tools are also rules, and thus by your standard utterly useless.

 

[Bedrockgames]

I think it is a very good example because it reflects how the process actually works in games. A party interacts with an NPC. If it is a minor NPC (shopkeep, random guard), they essentially don’t have any traits before they speak. Even with major NPCs, who often do have a couple of traits, PCs’ tendency to act in unexpected ways often means that the GM has to create new traits on the fly.

That is what happened in this example. You came up with a trait on the fly « will not drink alcohol out of religious belief ».

Then, when pushed on a trait, the GM doubles down by creating lore to justify the trait.

Same thing happened in the guard example. We are presuming a sandbox, and the guard is a minor NPC, so the guard did not have the trait « cannot be bribed » until the PC tried to bribe him. Afterwards, to justify the trait, someone posted about weekly Zone of Truth spells to ensure that guards weren’t accepting bribes.

Essentially, contrary to what you are arguing, the traits aren’t consequences of the lore. The lore is being created to justify the traits.

But that is why the example is not the best. One it is a very silly belief. But two the belief is established then the lore created. That is different from establishing the trait around the lore

Also this is why I advocate pinning it down. The GM should know a detail like that before hand.

Also, also, a trait like this should be extremely rare. All we are arguing for is the right of an NPC trait like this to exist, because NPCs having will is important in a living setting. But you shouldn't be using that to thwart players. If it arises in the course of play and happens to thwart them on occasion, that is fair. But if you are doing it to railroad, that is a problem.

This also runs headlong into the first point I raised. If weekly Zone of truth spells can be argued to be based on realism, then anything can be argued to be based on realism. Including countermeasures to the weekly Zone of truth spells.

I missed the Zone of Truth argument so someone will have to explain it. But the GM shouldn't be interfering with something like a spell ability without extremely good setting reasons (and those should be extremely rare and not just made up to make sure the adventure goes the way the gm wants). Players using spells to get through things faster is fair. For example if I prep a whole mystery (something I usually avoid in a sandbox anyways), if the players have a spell that can tell them who did it at the very start sot they don't have to investigate, I am not going to block that. That doesn't mean once in a while they might not meet a killer who can use magical countermeasures to divination on their own. But even if these exist, they won't be common, they will abide by the same spell rules as the players, and the decision is going to be based on teh NPC in question, not out of a desire of the adventure to be a certain way.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

I see you're still harping on the unserious response to an unserious scenario. One that has never and would never come up in a real game. Maybe you should look for some new material because there aren't even any bones left of this horse you keep beating on.

It did not appear to be unserious in context. It appeared to be perfectly serious. And the person to whom you were replying was almost surely serious. They were using a string of escalating incentives (which, yes, became quite extreme!) to show the point that on most things--not absolutely everything, but definitely most things--"utterly and eternally unwilling to be persuaded/intimidated no matter what" is ridiculous and inaccurate.

Their whole point was to show you that what you almost certainly actually meant was "unwilling to be persuaded, except by means which the party would find too extreme/evil/difficult to actually do", outside of a small handful of exceptions.

And I'm only beating on this dead horse because people kept, over and over and over and over, pushing back that no, this is totally realistic, how could you possibly think this was in any way weird or problematic? If you meant it unseriously, the thread at large definitely didn't take it that way! It's not JUST me thinking that.

 

[Bedrockgames]

Funny how these statements aren’t “ought to” yet I’ve now been told a few times that the sandbox campaigns I’ve run aren’t actually sandboxes.

Seems pretty normative to me.

While I think a majority of sandboxes probably are closer to what I am saying than you are, so in that sense, what I am saying here does reflect a norm. But that is just because of how sandbox play got popular (which I think had a lot to do with it becoming a picture in the OSR). But I am not enforcing any kind of normative values here. I am not saying other sandboxes don't exist (I've defended your approach multiple times in the thread). I was just trying to answer a question about our approach. So you can complain about my phrasing if you want, but I don't think it makes sense when in a bunch of other posts I am clearly saying I think sandbox can include games like the ones you are suggesting. I think experimentation with sandbox is good. I don't think we have to have strict boundaries around it. We might use qualifiers so people are on the same page. This is why I call my campaigns Drama+Sandbox. My approach is slightly outside the typical sandbox itself

 

[EzekielRaiden]

I think anyone at the table can harm the game, I've seen my share of jerks at the table who make the game less fun for everyone else. The DM is no exception but they don't have near-absolute levels of power within the game because without players there is no DM.

That would be why it is "near-absolute" rather than "absolute."

And it's very^100 easy to say "oh players can just walk away". It isn't nearly that easy at an actual table, with people you know and have connected to. As is almost always the case in these situations, you blithely ignore the social contract when it's inconvenient to you (e.g., the social contract elements about not flipping the table when you're upset, about "going with the flow" rather than kicking up a fuss even when a fuss is totally warranted, etc.) and then completely rely upon it when that's convenient to you.