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

[pemerton]

Can you also accept that for many players, satisfying "uncovering of setting mysteries" and "earned actions" do not require detailed notes and sole-GM authority? That it feels as real to them without any of that? That they love being asked to either establish or embellish parts of their POV ("Painting the Scene" is a technique I rely on a lot to draw character's perceptions of the world out), and this shared ownership is a highlight of our play?

Like, at the end of almost every session of Stonetop my two-lore focused players register that they loved digging in and finding new details about the world or uncovering mysteries (or are frustrated that they just haven't quite gotten there yet, so that's a wish for next time!) - but it's all extrapolation with some occasional exploiting of the setting prep. Often with provocative questions, or a cross-cultural check ("Zel, what did your church down in Lygos teach you about X? Oh ok, cool! Hey Naren, what have you read in books up here in the North about the same thing that's very different?"), and some GM adjudication. And always addressed to the characters, grounding it in their experiences and background and perceptions etc.

Right.

I don't think I use the approach you describe here as much as you do. But I do use it a bit. I also present lore to the players, based on appropriate in-fiction situations, generally to provoke them or to seed further possibilities for hope or despair. I already posted this mystery from my TB2e game; here I've preceded also with some recount of a previous session in which Fea-bella discovered that she had a half-brother, Lareth the Beautiful:

Fea-bella then made two Scholar tests by instinct. The first was to quickly survey the books - as per the room description, she identified that

The bookcases are filled with rare books and scrolls . . . [dealing with] ancient celestial language, its laws or the tracking of the passage of time and movements of the firmament. The bookcases contain 25 treatises (pack 1 each) and nine codices (pack 2 each).​

One codex in particular that she noted, and placed in her backpack, was On the Mingling of Elven and Human Knowledge of the Firmament. It contained a loose sheet. She pulled that out and read it: it mentioned the Elven Lady scholar of the Wizard's Tower, ill omens, and suggested that the birth of Lareth - though he was a beautiful child - was not fortuitous.

A successful Lore Master check allowed her to recall that Lareth is a favoured name for Half-Elves.

A third bout of instinctual reading had her looking through the codex itself, for more information about this Lareth. A marginal note referred to "Fella" - the name of Fea-bella's mother, who is a scholar who lives in the Wizard's Tower - and also recorded that

as the earth moved, so did the firmament, and the dark constellation of the void was ascendent when Lareth was conceived.​

The codex proper also recorded that, according to the lore of a now-forgotten temple, the void is an evil admixture of elemental air and elemental earth.

Golin's player asked me if the Forgotten Temple Complex where he grew up is full of nut-jobs. I told him that, as per what he had said back at PC creation, he hung out with the nut-jobs who worked on explosions - the combination of elemental fire and elemental air.

Fea-bella's player, meanwhile, was speculating about the coincidence of an earthquake and a constellation, and there was some laughter at the table. I asked if a Lore Master test to interpret human folk idioms was in order - it was made, and succeeded, and so Fea-bella learned that "the earth moved" can also be a reference to a sexual experience. Golin's helping die was a success, and Telemere remarked that one can always trust the Dwarves to make everything tawdry. I suggested to Fea-bella's player "Wasn't it your mother who asked you to come to the Tower of Stars in the first place, to see what had happened to the Beholder of Fates?" The player agreed.

A Healer test then revealed that Beholder of Fates, lying on his bed, seemed to have died peacefully in his sleep. Fea-bella, claiming right of inheritance from her apparent step-father, took his 5D gold ring and placed it on her own finger.

And Telemere made a Scholar check of his own, which succeeded, to find information about his brother - the original reason he had come to the Tower of Fates. He learned that Kalamere came to the Tower six years ago, seeking information about the Elf Celedhring who was rumoured to have entered into communion with the Outer Darkness. Beholder of Fates notes recorded that he did not tell Kalamere anything - including the connection he discerned between Celedhring and the demon of the Outer Darkness called Duran - and Kalamere left the tower unhappy. The players took this opportunity to remind one another of the various details of what had happened in the Shadow Caves beneath Megloss's house, where they had freed the demon Duran and driven him off, and had found the wight Celedhring in his sarcophagus but successfully escaped from him.

Lareth then turned his attention to Fea-bella. The conversation established that Lareth's father was the wizard Pallando, and his mother (Fella) was an exile from Elfhome. She was exiled because of her role in the theft of the Dreamhouse post by Celedhring, the evil Elf who is now a barrow-wight beneath what was Megloss's house. Lareth explained that Celedhring was Fea-bella's brother (and hence his and Fea-bella's uncle), and that Fella was exiled with him much as, in the ancient times, Galadriel was exiled with her cousin Feanor. "And who is your father?" asked Lareth of Fea-bella.

This caused much discussion among the players - was Lareth implying that Fea-bella was the child of an incestuous relationship between Fella and Celedhring? There was also discussion about where Fea-bella did her dreaming, before she woke, Dream-haunted, and ran off bearing a half-moon glaive. Was this not in the Elf-home Dreamhouse, but rather in Pallando's house?

I suggested that Fea-bella might try a Nature (Remembering ) test, but her player didn't want to - too much grind, and little chance of success. So I resorted to my NPC, and called for another Manipulator vs Manipulator due to Lareth's goading. This time Golin helped Lareth! The test was failed, and so (as a twist) Fea-bella could not help but cast her mind back . . . As her player put it, Fea-bella wanted to remember only happy times of her childhood, with the Elven forest and rainbows and unicorns, and I set this at (I think, from memory) Ob 2. Telemere helped with his own Remembering Nature, and Korvin used Oratory to remind Fea-bella of tales of her childhood she had told her companions. Golin also aided Fea-bella this time, with Dreams-wise.

This test was a success, and so Fea-bella was spared any horrible memories (and the truth about her father remains unknown at this point).

Answers to mysteries - who is Fea-bella's father? why did Fella leave the Elfhome? who is Celedhring? why is the Forgotten Temple Complex forgotten? what happened to Golin's parents, and why does he have someone in the Wizard's Tower who looks out for him? etc - gradually get revealed, or show themselves to be more complicated than was anticipated.

This doesn't require pre-authorship.

 

[robertsconley]

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.

It seems like the issue is being framed as if proponents of sandbox campaigns believe some external authority mandates this approach, as if we’re saying “this is the only real way to play.” That’s not the case. The point is that when you choose to run a sandbox campaign, you commit to a standard: internal consistency and independent causality. It’s a design choice with specific implications, part of a larger framework that serves different creative goals than narrative-first RPGs.

It’s still subjective in the sense that the referee creates and updates the world. But once set in motion, the world’s behavior isn’t arbitrarily altered for emotional effect or narrative payoff. Instead, it unfolds according to internal logic, guided by prior prep, dice rolls, and plausible extrapolation. This isn’t philosophical objectivity. It’s about maintaining a world that feels real because it functions autonomously, and the players' accomplishments feel earned within it.

The kind of objectivity we aim for comes from using deliberate, replicable procedures that don’t privilege any one narrative arc or player. The group can evaluate these procedures to ensure they’re achieving the goals are being met. The proof that these techniques are working lies in the feedback given.

Of course, every campaign is shaped by human creativity, but different styles focus that creativity in different ways. That leads to different techniques, different tools, and different kinds of payoffs.

 

[pemerton]

The major difference is that when we say your way is unrealistic to us, we are using realistic how it's commonly used.

But you're not! You're using it as piece of jargon, to describe certain real-world gameplay dynamics!

 

[pemerton]

Was there no way for the PCs to learn the NPC was a member of a powerful faction?

<snip>

Perhaps the players should take care when charming random NPCs.

I don't know if you're talking about my actual play experience, or @Lanefan's example that I quoted.

If the latter, I think the example speaks for itself.

If the former, the players (as their PCs) knew that the NPCs belonged to a powerful faction. But they chose to have their PCs deal with them, because they had turned up to play an adventure-oriented FRPG.

 

[AlViking]

...
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.

I run sandbox games all the time using standard D&D 5e rules. There's nothing preventing it unless you take the stance that in order to be a sandbox there has to be <insert some random aspect of your favorite game>. It may be more common for a lot of people to run published mods which are largely linear with maybe some sandbox sections. I've always found published mods them more trouble than they're worth for me.

I do give people pretty clear signposts so they know what options are available, but there won't ever be just one way to go and a player can always suggest an alternative not on the list.

 

[pemerton]

If the GM is making things up as they go, I start to feel like I'm playing the GM, not the world. If I want to succeed, I have to appeal to their sense of what would be fun or interesting moreso than what is good in universe.

As I already posted upthread when you said this, it seems to me that you are describing freeform play here, not rules-governed RPGing.

 

[pemerton]

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

No.

This is like saying that a novel which doesn't contain boring bits must be boring - "If everything is interesting, nothing is."

 

[pemerton]

We want to know your interpretation of them, and how they compare/contrast with other systems. Or at least I do.

I've posted quite a bit about this, with links to actual play.

I'll have another go - here's an actual play report, which also explains PC creation for that game: [Burning Wheel] First Burning Wheel session | Roleplaying Actual Play

 

[EzekielRaiden]

You are correct, I do think that. To me that is what notes and worldbuilding are for: that way you have a setting that exists prior to play and Independently of the PCs (which is what I want). Your feelings otherwise are of course perfectly valid, but are just another example of the personal preference that characterizes nearly everything being said in this thread (and most of the site IMO).

But I think this begs an extremely important question:

Does it in fact "exist prior to play and independently of the PCs"?

Or is this technique simply something which gives you the subjective feeling that that statement in quotes is true, even though it isn't?

 

[zakael19]

I run sandbox games all the time using standard D&D 5e rules. There's nothing preventing it unless you take the stance that in order to be a sandbox there has to be <insert some random aspect of your favorite game>. It may be more common for a lot of people to run published mods which are largely linear with maybe some sandbox sections. I've always found published mods them more trouble than they're worth for me.

I do give people pretty clear signposts so they know what options are available, but there won't ever be just one way to go and a player can always suggest an alternative not on the list.

Sure, but the 2024 DMG doesn't even mention it as a play style any more. I think that if you're prioritizing classic sandbox style play in the current edition of D&D you're in the minority, although I see it recommended constantly over on Reddit to new DMs who are flailing trying to "pre-write" an entire campaign, poor souls.