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

[Micah Sweet]

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.

Why should we care what 5.5 prioritizes?

 

[EzekielRaiden]

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.

Then I disagree with the assertion you have claimed here. There isn't one standard. "Internal consistency" has massive limitations that are being glossed over, ignored, or apparently never even considered in the first place. "Independent causality" is simply a falsehood; nothing is or ever can be, to any degree, actually independent of the people making and running and interacting with the world.

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.

Isn't it? We ignore sleeping time, most eating time. Infamously, adventurers never go to the bathroom. ("Never" is obviously a generalization, I'm sure some games out there track this, but even a majority of hardcore simulationists don't demand that granularity.)

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.

Yes. But my key point here is: there are many paths to reach that feeling. This hyperfocus on "guided by prior prep" isn't the only way--and the "plausible extrapolation" isn't actually distinct, in any meaningful way, from the extrapolation that occurs in the kinds of systems @pemerton has been talking about up to this point. That extrapolation is not just inherently subjective, it is pervasively so. There can be no meaningful "minimizing" this subjectivity. It is mandatory for any experience that filters any amount of information--and no game, genuinely no game ever in the history of gaming, has lacked a massive filter getting rid of a bunch of stuff that is (usually all three of) (a) irrelevant, (b) uninteresting, and (c) unproductive.

Some approaches certainly have wider or narrower definitions of what is relevant, interesting, and/or productive. But the clear argument, over and over and over again in this thread, is that somehow this "internal logic, guided by prior prep, dice rolls, and plausible extrapolation" is somehow NOT filtering for those things someone subjectively decided were relevant, interesting, and/or productive. That it is special and better because it lacks for this filtering.

It doesn't. The filter is still there. Indeed, it's just as strong as any other approach's filters. It's just filtering different things.

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.

But they do still privilege one narrative arc! That's the whole point I'm making here. There is still narrative privilege going on. It's just narrative privilege with different focuses and different intention. That's what I mean when I say things like "realism is also a style, and like any style, its stylized elements are a choice, not an objectivity".

 

[Campbell]

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.

I'd take another look at the rules for how the game is run. That's where the magic is. The mechanics reinforce the fight for what you believe in ethos, but the process where the GM frames scenes in reference to belief statements written on the player's character sheets and we test whether those beliefs are reinforced or changed over time and with complications in reference to those beliefs are the rules that really matter.

For games like Apocalypse World, Burning Wheel, Dogs in the Vineyard it's the basic loop of play, including the GM's particular responsibilities that should be grasped with first. The mechanics then are layered on top to reinforce that play loop.

 

[zakael19]

I would say it falls under the general distinction of what they call Episodes and Serials. If you're doing an episodic campaign you aren't planning out long term story arcs ... sounds an awful lot like sandbox to me if you follow the advice on in the getting players invested section. No, it doesn't go into detailed categories or break it down by categories, I'm not sure they ever did. About the only people who get caught up on "What is a sandbox" are those weirdos who contribute to long threads discussing them.

In any case there's a ton of advice out there and I figured out how to run a sandbox game all on my lonesome a long time ago.

The 2014 DMG had sandbox play called out as a specific style with some talk about what that looked like. Episodes and Serials IMO is like, non full-campaign play, but adventures linked together (eg: Ghosts of Sandmarsh; Candlekeep Tales; & etc).

Note that as a guy who started play D&D again back in 2018, I had no idea what a sandbox was until I started reading The Alexandrian circa 2023? It just doesnt show up in a lot of the younger circles at all IME - most of the folks recommending "hey, try doing a sandbox instead" are reaching back into the history of D&D or drawing on decades of experience. Hence some of the points in the OP of this thread.

 

[zakael19]

Why should we care what 5.5 prioritizes?

Isn't this literally what this thread is about?

 

[Micah Sweet]

Then I disagree with the assertion you have claimed here. There isn't one standard. "Internal consistency" has massive limitations that are being glossed over, ignored, or apparently never even considered in the first place. "Independent causality" is simply a falsehood; nothing is or ever can be, to any degree, actually independent of the people making and running and interacting with the world.


Isn't it? We ignore sleeping time, most eating time. Infamously, adventurers never go to the bathroom. ("Never" is obviously a generalization, I'm sure some games out there track this, but even a majority of hardcore simulationists don't demand that granularity.)


Yes. But my key point here is: there are many paths to reach that feeling. This hyperfocus on "guided by prior prep" isn't the only way--and the "plausible extrapolation" isn't actually distinct, in any meaningful way, from the extrapolation that occurs in the kinds of systems @pemerton has been talking about up to this point. That extrapolation is not just inherently subjective, it is pervasively so. There can be no meaningful "minimizing" this subjectivity. It is mandatory for any experience that filters any amount of information--and no game, genuinely no game ever in the history of gaming, has lacked a massive filter getting rid of a bunch of stuff that is (usually all three of) (a) irrelevant, (b) uninteresting, and (c) unproductive.

Some approaches certainly have wider or narrower definitions of what is relevant, interesting, and/or productive. But the clear argument, over and over and over again in this thread, is that somehow this "internal logic, guided by prior prep, dice rolls, and plausible extrapolation" is somehow NOT filtering for those things someone subjectively decided were relevant, interesting, and/or productive. That it is special and better because it lacks for this filtering.

It doesn't. The filter is still there. Indeed, it's just as strong as any other approach's filters. It's just filtering different things.


But they do still privilege one narrative arc! That's the whole point I'm making here. There is still narrative privilege going on. It's just narrative privilege with different focuses and different intention. That's what I mean when I say things like "realism is also a style, and like any style, its stylized elements are a choice, not an objectivity".

The 100% realism straw man strikes again.

 

[Faolyn]

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

That completely fails to answer my questions, though. Because I, at least, am not looking for actual play reports. I don't know what +1 Ob means in any practical or useful terms (yes, I know Ob means obstacle, but not what a +1 means); I don't know if +1D advantage is a big bonus or a little bonus. I don't care about Halika and Jobe and having to pick a few tidbits of information out of their adventure is less than useful.

I'm looking for you to say "I feel that Burning Wheel does <thing> well because of <reason>" The closest you got was saying there were more failures in BW than in (D&D?)4e, and that failures in BW were different than failures in 4e, but that's it. I know enough about 4e to imagine that, as with other editions of D&D, a failure is simply a failure but there's no inherent complications, which suggests that in BW a failure comes with complications--which, yay, I like it when games do that--but that still doesn't help to explain what's so great about Burning Wheel's ability to (re)frame situations.

I just wonder why you keep linking to nonhelpful Actual Plays (especially after multiple people have said they're not helpful) instead of answering "I feel that Burning Wheel does <thing> well because of <reason>".

 

[AnotherGuy]

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.

Do you also champion the DMG on its DMing advice or is that not the cherry we pick?

 

[zakael19]

Do you also champion the DMG on its DMing advice or is that not the cherry we pick?

No idea what you're asking or snarkily asserting here. The comment a couple removed I was replying to was talking about how lots of players are just like "here to chill and have a good time and don't want to worry about their character beliefs being interrogated through heavy high stake gameplay" and I was just pointing out that many players dont even want to have to worry about classic player-directed sandbox style play and much as the latest DMG seems to emphasize the play of, simply follow a fairly linear narrative.

Simply doing sandbox style gameplay is perhaps somewhat conservative these days! Hell, OSR is the champion of it, and it's kinda intentionally conservative or like "lets play in an idealized version of what old school D&D was."

 

[AnotherGuy]

There is a monster section in the book but, again since monsters have no real mechanics attached to them specifically, it’s more about how you narrate the fight.

So how does one distinguish between say a pack of a goblins and an earth elemental with the numbers? Are the DCs (AC) higher? Is the harm/damage one receives from bad attack rolls greater from specific monsters?