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

[Micah Sweet]

Which is exactly the same thing! Color, or whatever, depending on how the game goes. You can try to cut this any way you want, but the premise of the argument is BS.

So you disagree that presentation and intention of design is the salient difference here?

 

[Hussar]

Ideally the map is strewn with places that have cool-sounding names,

The first time I drove from here to Indianapolis for GenCon (both a route and area I'd never seen before) it sure felt like exploring.

Really?

So, you stopped every few kilometers to check out every single thing? You stopped at every gas station, rest stop, roadside attraction, town, village, city, and house along the way to interact with the people there and discover what you could learn about all these things?

Or, did you speed past 99% of these things at highway speeds, stopping only when you needed to, until you reached Indianapolis, you goal at which point exploration actually began?

So, in what way were you "exploring" the path from your initial point to Indianapolis? This is the point that several people have glossed over. "Oh, sandboxes are all about exploration". Sure. Exploring the set locations that the DM has provided, "strewn" across the map. I.E. entirely reactive actions taken by the players in service to the material provided by the DM. And that material will never be objectively created by the DM. It will always be some interesting thing for the players to interact with - and "interesting" will be 100% determined by the DM's understanding of the group and his or her personal biases.

Look, I am not saying this is a bad thing. I am simply rejecting this narrative that sandboxes are somehow this bastion of objectivity which means that they only work for very narrow playstyles which place the DM in the privileged position of being the sole source of material for the setting and campaign and the players basically react to whatever the DM has put on the menu. There ARE other ways of doing it.

 

[Lanefan]

One of the side effects of how I run my sandbox campaign is that the campaign works out fine for players who don't have any goals or strong beliefs for their characters. They are mostly reactive in how they handle things. They generally pursue straightforward objectives like asking where the nearest dungeon or ruin is, then heading out.

In a groups where some players are goal-oriented they come along for the ride, especially if they are friends of the goal-oriented players.

A subset of these players will tell me, I don't want any backstory, I am just here to hang and see where things take me.

If the campaign goes long enough, usually something happens where they get invested in something and become slightly more proactive in seeking out conflict (as TB/BW defines it). Often, after roleplaying with an NPC, and they really like that character.

That's about par for the course here too: characters might not start with any specific personal goals (other than maybe "get rich or die trying") but goals could emerge during play for any number of reasons. It's up to the player; and if-when such a goal emerges and if-when the player takes steps to have a character pursue said goal, I'll gladly DM it.

 

[SteveC]

Yes, this is a fine way to phrase it. To restate my point--when I've played these games, I find it unsatisfying to be asked "what do I hate about venturing deep into the Great Forest". It implies to me that the Great Forest wasn't defined before I sat down, and by extension many aspects of the world weren't defined either. That makes my decisions feel less meaningful, because the world is shifting beneath my feet.

I think this is such as important point for people like me to listen to. I am very much the kind of GM who will ask questions like you hate while running a game. And I've run enough games so I have encountered many players like you who don't like this. And as a GM and a designer you need to take that into account. Maybe you just say "if you don't like creating content and working with the GM, this isn't the game for you," but maybe you should also put things in place to help the GM run a more traditional game.

I just ran a game last week with friends, Fabula Ultima, that encourages players to speak up and create the world. What I do is make sure that I know the important details of a location or what NPCs are doing at a particular time, and then I just let players riff on details. The game I ran started off onboard an airship you might see in a JRPG. We started out by describing how it was laid out and setup with the players in mind. With a group of players, or even a single player who doesn't like describing things, I had a good idea in my head of how I saw things setup, and I was ready to go with that if they didn't care to make choices.

For me, if you were going to play in a game I was running, we'd have to talk about things before the game started, so I could make sure you'd feel it was "real" enough. And that might mean my game wouldn't be for you, but I think we could reach an accommodation.

 

[Lanefan]

Really?

So, you stopped every few kilometers to check out every single thing? You stopped at every gas station, rest stop, roadside attraction, town, village, city, and house along the way to interact with the people there and discover what you could learn about all these things?

Or, did you speed past 99% of these things at highway speeds, stopping only when you needed to, until you reached Indianapolis, you goal at which point exploration actually began?

Even speeding past a lot of things at highway speeds I was still seeing a whole lot of scenery, geology, landforms, and vegetation types I'd never seen before. Never mind the central USA ain't the west coast when it comes to weather, that's for sure!

Since then I've done that trip four more times, never using the same route to get there* - once via Vegas-Denver, once via Montreal, and once via Orlando - and it's felt like exploration every time. Even more so when I've got lost: I saw far more of Atlanta than I wanted to while searching for my hotel there, on the Orlando run.

Would I have seen or experienced any of that had I flown there? No.

* - coming home is different; I've a set route and just book it in order to make the last ferry on day 3 and thus not have to pay for another hotel night.

So, in what way were you "exploring" the path from your initial point to Indianapolis? This is the point that several people have glossed over. "Oh, sandboxes are all about exploration". Sure. Exploring the set locations that the DM has provided, "strewn" across the map. I.E. entirely reactive actions taken by the players in service to the material provided by the DM. And that material will never be objectively created by the DM. It will always be some interesting thing for the players to interact with - and "interesting" will be 100% determined by the DM's understanding of the group and his or her personal biases.

And yet were I to describe in some detail what the PCs see and experience during their otherwise-mundane travel I'd be accused of slowing things down and adding in too much no-stakes colour.

Setting design is IMO entirely the purview of the DM. Also, the bolded isn't necessarily true: while I put interesting-looking things on the map I also put a lot of mundane things there as well, and for all I know the players might decide that something I see as mundane - such as some little farming village somewhere - is of great interest to them.

An example from right now in my game: some time ago I stuck the little logging village of Esbow in a forest not all that far (about 4 days walk) from the big city that has slowly become the characters' de-facto base. Nothing more than a way-station along the trade route, really...until last session when a PC decided* to set up her base there. Suddenly, what I saw as a mundane little village is potentially going to become important, meaning we'll all be paying a lot more attention to it.

* - more or less, they're still in the field right now and that player won't be here next session, but the sense I got was it'll be a done deal as soon as the PC gets there.

 

[SableWyvern]

Really?

So, you stopped every few kilometers to check out every single thing? You stopped at every gas station, rest stop, roadside attraction, town, village, city, and house along the way to interact with the people there and discover what you could learn about all these things?

Or, did you speed past 99% of these things at highway speeds, stopping only when you needed to, until you reached Indianapolis, you goal at which point exploration actually began?

So, in what way were you "exploring" the path from your initial point to Indianapolis? This is the point that several people have glossed over. "Oh, sandboxes are all about exploration". Sure. Exploring the set locations that the DM has provided, "strewn" across the map. I.E. entirely reactive actions taken by the players in service to the material provided by the DM. And that material will never be objectively created by the DM. It will always be some interesting thing for the players to interact with - and "interesting" will be 100% determined by the DM's understanding of the group and his or her personal biases.

Look, I am not saying this is a bad thing. I am simply rejecting this narrative that sandboxes are somehow this bastion of objectivity which means that they only work for very narrow playstyles which place the DM in the privileged position of being the sole source of material for the setting and campaign and the players basically react to whatever the DM has put on the menu. There ARE other ways of doing it.

Who has said that sandboxes are (only) about exploration or only suitable for a very narrow range of play? If anyone has, I would disagree. Sandboxes can be about a lot of things; they certainly don't need to be about exploration unless exploration is being defined so broadly as to start losing it's usefulness. I find it hard to believe that point is controversial. A Vampire sandbox might be about "exploring" the political landscape, but that's not exploration in the sense one typically refers to when discussing RPGs. Pirates of Drinax might involve exploring the Trojan Reach and visiting new words, but what it is about is typically going to be making political and economic connections and building a power base, whether with the aim of supporting Drinax, usurping it, or something else entirely.

However, it feels to me as if, instead of simply pointing out ways in which a sandbox can be about things other than exploration, you're instead trying to redefine exploration such that a sandbox can never be about about exploration. Which is to say, you're opposing one extreme (and, I believe, self-evidently false) position by trying to defend a polar opposite position which is just as extreme and self-evidently false.

Why is it important to you to try and prove exploration can't ever be a goal of play or ever be something that really happens? Why is it critical to you that no defines what they're feeling or doing as exploring if they're travelling through a place they haven't previously been? Instead of tilting at this windmill, why not focus on the the non-exploration things you enjoy in sandboxes? If the only way you can prove that sandboxes aren't about exploration is by refusing to allow anything to actually be defined as exploration, I don't think you're operating from a very strong position. But, to reiterate, if your underlying point is simply that a sandbox can be about things other than exploration ... well, that's trivially easy to show and not especially controversial, surely?

 

[pemerton]

I will grant that you've posted a lot. But obviously people who have never played the game have no clue what you're talking about. I was just trying to provide feedback that using the same approach repeatedly is not working. Not only is the game so different from D&D that it seems to be comparing apples to oranges, you just don't get that people don't understand the flow of play past perhaps one or two scenes.

The players create PCs. A crucial part of their build is priorities.

The GM then presents a scene that speaks to those priorities. This prompts the players to have their PCs do things in response. Those declared actions are resolved. This will produce a new situation in the fiction, which may itself prompt more actions (especially if the earlier action failed); otherwise the GM introduces more fiction in accordance with the principal of speaking to the players' priorities for their PCs.

Keep going.

Here's an example (it's me, posting as thurgon on rpg.net): [Burning Wheel] First Burning Wheel session | Roleplaying Actual Play

Here's another, that I think I've already linked to: Burning Wheel actual play

You're trying to prove .... well I'm not sure what you're trying to prove anymore.

I made a post in reply to another poster (@Bedrockgames), about the use of terminology in describing RPGing.

You responded (post 3650) with this request: "So if people are using the term narrative or character driven incorrectly maybe you should clearly explain what terms you feel are correct". I posted an account of how Burning Wheel plays, and suggested "scene framing story now" as a label. It seems that you don't like the label, and are not following the account.

 

[pemerton]

That's the problem when any of us bring up realism, verisimilitude, or plausibility. You get a response that either insists on a strict definition that can then be picked apart, or you get a refutation based on the inability to get 100% of everything right. A straw man of perfection is generated that is subsequently set up as the enemy of "good enough" or "best we can manage" that is what we want and are supporting, to somehow "prove" the impossibility of our desires, and therefore our preferences.

I'm getting very tired of this. We have a way, you have a way (with nuance and variation within each, of course). Both are viable. There are similarities and differences, but probably more of the latter. One side trying to convince the other of the wrongness/incoherence of their style or of their argument for it is accomplishing nothing productive, and runs the constant risk of offending the person with whom you are arguing.

Y'all go on ahead. I'm going to stay here and build a nice little house by the stream.

You present this as if this is a "clash of styles". When it's a discussion of techniques.

It's not as if I have no familiarity with the method of extrapolation by reference to plausibility. Upthread I posted this:

I posted an example oF what I want to avoid in the current "GM mistakes" thread: when GMing Rolemaster, the PCs had a powerful faction acting against them. I, as GM, had to decide how much effort the faction devoted to thwarting the PCs, and how seriously the resources dedicated to that effort were deployed. The rules of the game gave me measures for things like how many and how potent spells can a NPC cast, but nothing more. So all the rest was simply up to me to decide, with the upshot of my decision being the full gamut from the PCs experience little threat to the PCs are utterly hosed.

RM has no inherent devices for handling or mitigating this, because it's mechanics are basically more elaborate and simulationist versions of classic D&D mechanics (with a few exceptions - eg it has rudimentary but still workable social mechanics); but it assumes a completely different framing context from the very artificial environment of the classic D&D dungeon (which constrains and channels possible threats so the PCs don't get automatically hosed by the forces arrayed against them).

This experience is one reason why I prefer systems that - like classic D&D - provide a framework for the introduction and prosecution of adversity, but - unlike classic D&D - have a framework that will work in the more verisimilitudinous/naturalistic contexts that I prefer.

That's an actual illustration of my experienced limitations of the method-of-extrapolation.

As far as I can tell, you are denying that such experiences happen! Or at least, have not said anything about how to avoid them.

 

[Hussar]

That's about par for the course here too: characters might not start with any specific personal goals (other than maybe "get rich or die trying") but goals could emerge during play for any number of reasons. It's up to the player; and if-when such a goal emerges and if-when the player takes steps to have a character pursue said goal, I'll gladly DM it.

Can I just point out though, that this is not a "sandbox" thing. That's a game thing. Perfectly linear campaigns can start with or without specific personal goals and then develop goals later on in the campaign. And, so long as the DM shows any degree of flexibility (which a good DM should) then those goals can be added into the campaign.

 

[Hussar]

Why is it important to you to try and prove exploration can't ever be a goal of play or ever be something that really happens?

Because this wasn't actually the point of what I was trying to explain.

The point that was being made is that the DM must strive to be absolutely objective in setting creation. That the world should exist outside of the players and their characters. And that world should have nothing to do with the characters unless the players decide to interact with it.

My argument is that setting design is never objective. That the DM will always create material based on the DM's predilictions and biases and that's a good thing. The DM SHOULD be creating game worlds that are interesting and that the players want to interact with.

The problem was, that whole point got lost in the weeds in this whole exploration side bit which was never the actual point in the first place.