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

[Lanefan]

Correct! Low-stakes play is not a component of Burning Wheel. That's one way in which, as I posted, it contrasts fairly markedly with the example @TwoSix posted: 'a starting point of "You start in a room. There are doors to the north, east, and west. What do you do?"

Doesn't that fairly quickly run the risk of meeting the (amended to suit) axiom "When everything is high-stakes play, nothing is"?

I mean sure, you (generic) can enjoy watching the sportscast highlight where a football player scores a pretty goal, but IMO that by itself doesn't make you a football fan. A fan also enjoys the perhaps several minutes of buildup that led to the highlight-reel goal, and watches the whole game if-when circumstances allow.

 

[Lanefan]

Ok, let's see if this works. In the interests of building bridges instead of burning them, let me outline how I would run my next Sandbox campaign, which won't be for some time as I've just embarked on my current one, but, at some point in the future, this is what I would do to run my next sandbox. Buckle up boys and girls, this might be a bit long.

Step 1. Choosing a map.

Ok, here this is easy. The unbelievably talented @Dyson Logos has recently being doing a project he calls The autumn lands I both love @Dyson Logos and hate him for being so damn talented at the same time. Anyway, I'd use this map:

View attachment 404413

It's freaking GORGEOUS. Lots of goodies. Tons of stuff to play with. I have zero idea what the actual story of this land is, and don't care. I'm just unabashedly stealing this map.

Step 2. Creating the Truths of the World.

Now, this is where system steps in. I am a drooling fanbois of Ironsworn and I'd probably go out and get Delve and maybe a couple of other books as well. But, when playing Ironsworn, the basic Session 0 is used to establish the truths of the world. In the Ironsworn world, the idea is that the land you are in now has only recently been settled (think Vikings in Vinland or Canada). That gives a kind of base to work from. Now, as a group, we decide the Truths of the World which more or less sets the boundaries of the genre - is it a high fantasy world with wizards and whatnot or is it more or less historical fiction with no magic at all? Are there monsters in the world? If so, how common are they? Are there other species a la demihumans in the world? So on and so forth. This is done as a group exercise so everyone gets a say. IME, it generally works out with ties simply being put to a vote. So, that's the background of the world taken care of.

Step 3. Choose a Starting Point

This part is fairly easy. Find a town that people like the name of and that's where they are going to start. Even easier since nothing on this map has names. But, if you look closely at the different maps, there are villages and whatnot scattered around. Find a couple people think might be fun - near the mountains, near the water, near the swamps, whatever. And, at that point, we're good to go.

Huh. This wasn't quite as long as I thought. Players create characters and I take a few minutes to bang out a town of some sort. Maybe consult the Oracle to get an idea or two for a potential conflict that needs resolving. Or not. The party could simply Undertake a Journey to go to somewhere on the map and I know that the system will build on stuff as we go, developing into an interesting campaign. The players are meant to each start with 2 (3? Sorry, book is not in front of me and I could be misremembering) Bonds with someone, so, right there, if I've got 4 players, I've got 8 NPC's with direct ties to the PC's before I even start. Additionally, every character starts with an Epic Quest of some sort, something that takes a VERY long time to resolve which also drives things along.

Oh, I guess there should be a step 4.

Step 4. Keeping meticulous notes.

This is very important. After all, stuff that gets generated in play can potentially be important, even if it's not important now. Keeping notes means that I, or any of the players, can call back to earlier stuff to drive events.

So, there. Done. I'm ready to play my new sandbox. With a map like this, I should be able to keep the game going for a year or more.

For me, it's step 4 where I'd crash and burn. I can't talk and write and think at the same time, and if I had to keep notes to that degree on the fly the play sessions would quickly become filled with long gaps while I put everything on hold so I could write things down (and sorry, recording the sessions for later playback is a non-starter).

I'd much rather determine the truths of the world way ahead of time as part of the pre-play worldbuilding process, and get the bulk of the note-taking done then (and mapping, if I'm doing a bespoke homebrew setting). That way, during play I only have to note a) what actually happens in play, for the game log, and b) any names etc. I have to dream up on the fly; and even there I'm awful at doing b) and usually do the game logs 90% by memory.

 

[Lanefan]

Might I suggest gentlemen that you follow my lead here. Post how you would develop your next sandbox. And then let's see where the discussion takes us?

I'm heading out for brunch in a moment but please remind me of this later; I'll give it a go.

 

[Faolyn]

This is all demonstrated in The Sword, which you can download for free and that I linked to above. Here it is: Burning Wheel The Sword Demo Adventure PDF

I'm not really inclined to write up a summary. You can look at the PCs and see their Beliefs (I quoted some salient ones upthread). You can see the setup (I quoted this fully, upthread). The scenario also gives some suggestions for how to frame a new scene/situation, based on the outcome. (I quoted some of this upthread.) The way it turns into a longer term campaign is to keep doing it.

Most of the obstacle in this scenario will be opposed checks (versus tests in the terminology of the game for which the scenario is written, ie Burning Wheel). But suppose someone tries to break the sword - then the obstacle would be taken from the list of obstacles in the rulebook. As I've already said, there are hundreds of sample obstacles provided.

I think that people don't want a re-hash of the rules. We want to know your interpretation of them, and how they compare/contrast with other systems. Or at least I do.

Like, I'm looking at the rules (or at least those presented in the free "The Hub and the Wheel" quickstart thingy) and The Sword scenario, and I'm thinking "OK, this is like if GURPS Fantasy and Fate had a baby, and that baby developed a crush on the World of Darkness system and started to mangle worlds to be more like her." (Artha seems to be a form of XP and/or a metacurrancy in BW, but in real life is a word from Hinduism meaning one of the goals of life, the pursuit of material wealth or advantage.) Oh, and baby Burning Wheel also stole FASERIP's weird difficulty chart thing, possibly in an attempt to develop a "bad boi" cred to impress WoD.

What I'm not getting is how BW lets you (re)frame things in any way that's significantly different than any other game out there.

So clearly just looking at the rules is not helping me to see the game the way you do.

 

[mamba]

Thank you. This very clearly defines what you mean by control of the fiction. And why we will never agree on it.

agree on what, which style you prefer? Why would you. On which one gives the player more freedom / input / control? There seems to be a clear answer

 

[mamba]

The DM can adjudicate it impartially, because success still keeps them on the rails. He doesn't need to railroad them for this event.

and my point, and from how I understand that of the post I replied to, is that saying ‘yes’ can be as much a railroad as saying ‘no’. Neither have to be, but both have the potential

 

[Lanefan]

A lot of my players, and myself if I'm being honest, are pretty casual about our games. Challenging beliefs, deep introspection of a character? Not interested. Detailed backgrounds just aren't that motivating. Fighting the (obviously) evil guys, making bad jokes and laughing at the stupid things our characters do? That's what we're there for.

Hear, hear! That's largely our lot as well.

The thing that I get tired of is people pushing other games with such different approaches like they add anything to the conversation. We get it. Other people like BW or BitD or DW. Do we have to always go on these tangents when those games don't really apply to D&D? There's a TTRPG forum for discussing other games. But we always go round and round how D&D doesn't do.... something... that other games do better and if we would only not be so blind and unwilling to open our eyes we'd agree.

It's more muted in this thread than in some, but the indie-games crew sure like promoting what they do and telling us how great it is.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

My issue with the meta distinction is simply that IMO it encourages one to think of the setting and the campaign as a narrative construct and not a world existing independently of the PCs interacting with it. And I don't want that.

Okay.

Whether you want it to be or not, (a) it is a world that only exists in order for people to interact with it (no GM would create such a world solely to create it, without any hope that players might interact with it!), and (b) it is a narrative construct, even realism is a narrative construct and a huge, huge, huge amount of what should be there for "objectivity" and "existing independently" etc. simply cannot and will not ever be implemented into the world.

Like...

My problem isn't saying that you have high and distinct standards for what counts as a world that feels real (which is what terms like "realism" and "verisimilitude" are aiming at). That's perfectly fine--purely a matter of taste. Other bars in other directions will apply to other people.

My issue is that this standard is being presented as necessary because it is in some way inherently more objective; that it is not a style but rather enforced by anything external to the decisions of the person/people making it; and that it even remotely comes close to functionally eliminating subjective, user-centric design or presentation.

The thing is, it isn't any more objective than any other approach, because it's subject to extensive subjectively-oriented filtering, just a different kind of filtering. Realism is as much a style as any other stylistic choice, and that entails decisions that are audience-specific and subjective, the direct result of the person/people making it choosing some parts to exalt and other parts to dismiss. And while there are certainly degrees of difference in focus, the comparison implies that this is going from (say) 99.9% unreliable subjectivity (an unfair mischaracterization) to 0.1% unreliable subjectivity, when it's a lot closer to going from 70% to 50%--certainly a big step, but a huge amount of the game is still, unequivocally, riddled with elements that are inherently subjective and opposite to what a physically-real person in a physically-real world would experience.

Hence part of why I refer to "groundedness", for example. Groundedness recognizes that what is grounded or not is subjective, not objective. The world isn't and can't be actually objective--it can't even draw close to objectivity. But it can give the air of objectivity, and I understand why that air would be important to folks trying to imagine a fantastical world in a way that feels right to them.

 

[pemerton]

reducing sandbox play to "travel between locations" misses a lot of the tradition.

Not all description is reduction. I'm trying to explain - based on what I've read in this thread, which includes more than your accounts of your play (eg it includes @Hussar's accounts of Ironsworn play, and also his adaptation of the Ironsworn journey rules into 5e D&D) - what strikes me as characteristic of sandbox play.

Some posters have talked about player freedom etc, but given that this is a feature of Burning Wheel play, and of some Marvel Heroic RP play, but neither system seems to me much like a sandbox, I have not adopted that as a touchstone. It ends up being over-inclusive.

Torchbearer 2e doesn’t meet that standard. While your players may choose where to go, they can’t choose whether or not to engage in conflict, because the system mandates it. As you’ve pointed out, the entire structure of Torchbearer (and BW) revolves around tension, pressure, and dramatic stakes, conflict as a system focus. That’s not how sandbox campaigns traditionally work. In sandbox campaigns, conflict is emergent. It happens only if the players choose to engage with situations that produce it. And sometimes, it doesn’t happen at all.

And here we see it: a game which uses the WoG map; has players choosing to have their PCs travel all over (a certain part of) it, from the Bluff Hills to various locations in and around the Griff Mountains and the Troll Fens, to Stoink and Wintershiven; using rules for journeys, and for resource management; with random weather and random vents tables being used as key components of the resolution of those journeys, and camping, and time spent in towns; is not a sandbox, because it doesn't conform to your particular requirements.

the impact of control is exactly that: whoever holds it has their goals prioritized.

You've denied that, in your sort of play, the GM pursues any goals; and you have asserted that, in your sort of play, the GM exercises a lot of control over the content of the shared fiction; from which it follows that your own posts entail that the quoted claim is incorrect.

In sandbox campaigns, the referee’s job is to respect the players’ decisions as their characters. If they choose to go left instead of right, the referee describes what’s to the left. This is a baseline for most TTRPGs, but it matters here, because it contradicts the idea that sandbox referees exercise total control over the shared fiction.

You've just described the GM exercising authorship: the GM is the one who describes what the PCs find! The players have prompted it. Whether that is an instance of the GM or the players exercising control depends on further considerations that I have stated upthread, primarily in a series of posts replying to @The Firebird.

You consistently frame your preference for Torchbearer 2e and similar systems around how they share narrative control more evenly between player and GM

No I don't. I've never used the phrase "narrative control". I have talked about control over the shared fiction, and have explained in detail what I mean by this, with reference to parallel ideas of controlling the play/position that come from other sorts of gameplay (eg chess, bridge).

What's often overlooked is the role of the system itself and the goals of the game's designer.

Overlooked by whom?

When we talk about who controls the fiction, we also have to acknowledge that Torchbearer’s system as a RPG imposes its own priorities on the campaign. It sets the tone, the expectations, and the loop of play, all centered on resource scarcity, interpersonal friction, and moral tension.

Yes, I'm aware of this.

Your approach similarly sets a "tone" or a default.

 

[zakael19]

Doesn't that fairly quickly run the risk of meeting the (amended to suit) axiom "When everything is high-stakes play, nothing is"?

I mean sure, you (generic) can enjoy watching the sportscast highlight where a football player scores a pretty goal, but IMO that by itself doesn't make you a football fan. A fan also enjoys the perhaps several minutes of buildup that led to the highlight-reel goal, and watches the whole game if-when circumstances allow.

Stakes, as in "there is something of priority to the character at stake here." @pemerton has noted many times that in Burning Wheel "Something being at stake means just that - does the outcome of the action matter to the PC (and thus, the player)?" and it ties back to their Beliefs.

When I run Forged in the Dark games, we'll often have an entire session that plays out in Downtime - generally we explore character interactions, see how Vice goes, deepen the connections to the world and each other, maybe do some romance and flirting or project work, etc. Low stakes, rarely any rolls - because there's rarely conflict (Entanglements and choices might make that different, but that's open). We have a great time, and then we build towards a new Target/Goal (for Scores/Missions respectively, two different games) with some Gather Info stuff and groundwork. Next session, we kick things off, and now there's Stakes constantly en-route to achieving the target of the score.

So it's a rollercoaster of tension (sometimes with quiet moments during a score, but usually building to a climax or denouement). And the players are the ones fronting the stakes. We know what's at stake in a Score (the Target, or failure), etc.

A lot of my players, and myself if I'm being honest, are pretty casual about our games. Challenging beliefs, deep introspection of a character? Not interested. Detailed backgrounds just aren't that motivating. Fighting the (obviously) evil guys, making bad jokes and laughing at the stupid things our characters do? That's what we're there for. Obviously different people should play what they enjoy and I'm not saying any of this like it's a negative aspect of those games. But we all play for different reasons.

Oh totally, lots of people dont have the interest in any sandbox play at all! They want to see a GM hook and pursue it, and enjoy a story being told at them. I think that's what the 2024 DMG / play set is really geared up towards as well, relatively open sandbox play like @robertsconley is running is I think really rare these days outside of OSR space? I know none of the 5e only players I've run games for had ever run into it as the primary focus of a game, and mostly preferred Bioware style "lakes and rivers" narratives where its a mix of linear questing with some open places where you get to choose direction a bit before getting back on the narrative tracks.