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

[Paul Farquhar]

My next sandbox will most likely be setting the 1e Forgotten Realms Savage Frontier. There are plenty of monsters in that area. A wilderness area beyond civilisation is a pretty standard setting for a fantasy, exploration sandbox.

Then you are not being objective and impartial. You have specifically chosen a region because it is high in monsters and other interesting things for players to do.

 

[Lanefan]

I think what the actual problem here is that you (and some others) think there is only one way to play D&D. Go on adventures, kill monsters, take their stuff. And while that is probably the most common way, it's certainly not the only way. In the D&D game I'm in, we rarely have combat--maybe once every 4-8 sessions. The rest of the time is mostly RP, and a lot of that is "very low stake." We had an session that took place almost entirely at a bardic performance--and that was player choice, since it was the player who sought the performance out. Likewise, in my Level Up game, one player, who was new to the city the game has thus far taken place in, decided she wanted to get an apartment. And thus she and another player or two--and I, the GM--went apartment-hunting.

Whilst I personally think this is great stuff to have happen now and then, there are (sadly) some here who would take umbrage with such low-to-no-stakes play even occurring, never mind it being seen as important.

Heck, I once ran a heavily-modified Curse of Strahd (I didn't like the actual presented adventure) and we spent the better part of a session once having tea. There was an attack by ghouls later on, but the session itself? Tea time.

And that's just it - those low-or-no-stakes sequences can be highly enjoyable in themselves and help set the table for the high-stakes moments that come later, and further help those high-stakes moments stand out as memorable.

 

[Lanefan]

There only are four or five sites. When players look anywhere else, then and only then is something else produced. At which point, you have--as has been explicitly rejected by several posters in this thread--parts of the world being created in response to the PCs, rather than existing "independently" of them.

Things are created in order to make the things the players look into interesting.

There's four or five sites on the map the players see.

There might be thirty on the DM's map.

 

[AnotherGuy]

I didn't find Goblins in the rulebook.

Here's a Raider (p 140):

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Rank:	Dangerous (2 progress per harm; inflicts 2 harm)
Features:	Geared for war Battle fervor
Drives:	What is theirs will be ours Stand with my kin Die a glorious death
Tactics:	Intimidate Shield wall Burn it down

Raiders survive by seizing what they need from others. Our grain. Our meat. Our animals. Our iron. They’ll take it all, and leave us facing the long winter with nothing to sustain us but prayers to indifferent gods.​

And here's a primordial:

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	Extreme (2 ticks per harm; inflicts 4 harm)
Rank:
Features:	Personification of the natural world Turbulent, changing visage Vaguely human-like or animal-like form
Drives:	Embody chaos Cling to vestiges of power
Tactics:	Control the elements Destroy with primal rage

The primordials, said to be the vestigial spirits of long-forgotten gods, are the most ancient of the firstborn. Each embodies some aspect of the natural world, bound in a crude mimicry of a human or large animal. A river primordial is a mass of rock, gravel, and flowing water. A forest primordial is formed of wood, earth, rocks, and plants. A mountain primordial is a lumbering being of glacier stone and ice. A fire primordial, depending on its mood, might take form as embers, ash, and smoke - or as a raging pyre.​

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They range in size from the height of an Ironlander to half-again as tall as a giant. Rumors persist of primordials who dwell in the deepest parts of the Wilds, or high in the ranges of the Veiled Mountains, who are as tall as an ancient tree. Beyond, some suggest, in the Shattered Wastes, live primordials who tower into the clouds. Is the sound of distant thunder sometimes the footfalls of mountain-sized primordials who dwell beyond the edge of the known world?​

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Primordials are solitary beings as unpredictable as the natural forces they personify. They might ignore you. They might lurk at a distance, as if observing you. Or, they might attack. They do not speak in any language we can understand. Some suggest they have no intelligence, and are merely a manifestation of the natural world, no different than a winter storm.​

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How do you kill a primordial? Most scoff at the idea. You are just as likely to kill the rain or the sea. A mystic might tell you to use a weapon imbued with elemental power. Don’t trust them. If you see a primordial, keep your distance. Better yet, run.​

This gets to the heart of it I feel. Low gritty level fantasy which many of the D&Ders (certainly me) have been striving to do by tinkering on every edition. I like it, it is very evocative (and simple). Certainly worthy of the praise @Hussar has been banging on about.

 

[SableWyvern]

Then you are not being objective and impartial. You have specifically chosen a region because it is high in monsters and other interesting things for players to do.

This is correct. I do indeed look to run and design campaigns that I expect will be fun and not boring, and many of the design steps aren't done with a sense of impartiality (although some are).

But, again, I will state I'm not interested in rehashing the entire discussion, especially since you seem to be trying to disagree with a point I haven't been trying to make.

 

[mamba]

It seems to me the following two propositions cannot both be true, of some episode of play of a RPG:

* The players exercise no control over the content of the setting;​

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* The GM authors setting elements in response to things the players express interest in.​

Likewise for the following two propsitions:

* The GM is not required or expected to follow any procedure or heuristic in deciding what to say happens as a result of a player having their PC do something;​

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* The players are readily able to anticipate what sorts of outcomes will follow from them having their PCs do particular things.​

I would agree, the only question is what qualifies as a heuristic. Is the DM following their model of what they consider to be realistic and probable in the world a heuristic, or does it take a set of rules in a book for that?

 

[Lanefan]

the town and the guards potentially (*) are still there, even if the party would never go to that location, but since the party is not going there, why would the DM describe this in the game?

*depends on the DM and how fleshed out the world already is / whether that location was previously visited during a session

I do not believe that the game world is utterly independent of the PCs, I do however believe that it is not utterly dependent on them either. The players do their thing, the DM spreads in some rumors of near and far away events, the players ignore them or not, and even events that were ignored can have results and trigger new events

I doubt anyone does more than that, certainly no one is simulating a continent one NPC at a time. If that is what you require for a world to be called independent then I do not consider that reasonable and I do not think that anyone meant that when they used the term

Indeed.

On my setting map there's an agricultural supply and market town of about 2000 people called Demetres. To the best of my memory no PC has ever done anything there other than maybe pass through it during travel (it's on the main road between the region's two big cities), and thus I've never fleshed anything out about the place beyond name and vague-guess population.

And yet we can all assume that in in-setting Demetres there's townsfolk going about their days doing townsfolk things and plying their assorted trades, crafts, or professions. Further, for that assumption to hold up I don't need to stat out even one of those townsfolk; we just know there's a few thousand of 'em, and if the place ever becomes more relevant for some reason I'll flesh it out further at that time.

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Something else just occurred to me. All that talk upthread about how maps aren't objective becuase they tend to show more "interesting things" than would be the norm? Well, of course they would! The maps the players see are what their characters would see; obviously those characters are going to be more focused on potential adventure sites and supply bases than are the usual buyers of maps, and mapmakers would know this.

Thus, it's only logical that maps made for adventurers will focus on interesting sites, ruins, and so forth rather than what farm goods and crops tend to be sold in which markets on what days.

 

[The Firebird]

So what regulates the "correctness" of representations? What makes it true that a NPC will do <this> rather than <that>. Some of us in this thread - and I'm one of them - doubt that the details of a setting are so specifically set out that unique, correct "truths" are entailed about what is, or could be, the case. Decision is required.

Yes, the DM of a sandbox makes decisions to adjudicate the world. Is this the sticking point? As I said before, for you "the DM adjudicates the world" seems to be a railroad.

What games allow players to “easily change aspects” of the game world?



A flashback cannot change what’s happened, though. It can reveal new information which may establish a new context for a scene. But it doesn’t change anything. Not if done per the rules of the game.

They give the players more narrative control. This is one of the main appeals for blades as a player. It's what I enjoyed about it when I was into the system.

How so? What “story” may the players tell?

I can't help but have the feeling most of the fixed world skeptics have had poor experiences with GMs who didn't respond to player choice or give the players adequate information. Because I think it is just so obvious that the players determine the course of the story. I'm sorry if that hasn't worked out in your games.

It's the GM's world. You're just getting the chance to witness it.

Likewise for this comment.

 

[The Firebird]

Likewise for the following two propsitions:

* The GM is not required or expected to follow any procedure or heuristic in deciding what to say happens as a result of a player having their PC do something;​

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* The players are readily able to anticipate what sorts of outcomes will follow from them having their PCs do particular things.​

"Make the world respond based on established fiction" is a heuristic. I gave you some specific examples of this for the example of the PCs angering a powerful faction.

The issue you seem to have is that the heuristic doesn't fully determine the referee's response. I.e. they have to make a judgement call. That's fine imo. That's their role.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

Can someone be in the driver's seat when the only positions on the map are those the GM creates for them to go to?

Maps are anachronistic in any type of pre-industrial society. Maybe the rulers have them - highly inaccurate ones, but ordinary folk don’t. They just know where the few places are that are relevant to them.

I.e. the solution to your problem is: don’t give the players a map. They can ask for directions, or follow a road, or strike out into the wilderness in whatever direction they like.