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

[AlViking]

I did not say that.

I am calling out the fact that you refer to this, consistently, as though it were in any way a defense against railroading. I am specifically saying, that argument isn't true. Just because it isn't a defense against railroading doesn't mean it causes railroading. That's a thing you inserted into this, not anything that I actually said.

I disagree. I think the GM doing their best to make objective decisions based on established lore along with the decisions being made by the players means it will virtually never be a railroad. There are other factors of course but it is an important one.

 

[mamba]

when the DM plonks a red dragon lair in location X, that's a big sign that says, "You must be this tall to ride". Again, the DM is very strongly influencing what the characters do.

as opposed to the players only seeking out a dragon lair and then finding it once they have leveled up enough when the players control the fiction? That does not appear to be a big difference…

 

[hawkeyefan]

Okay. That's fair. There are some circumstances under which it wouldn't be bad faith. I do that that these days those would be fairly rare, though.

I think the Adventure Path being a dominant element of play to this day says a lot about this. I don't think it's anywhere near as rare as you think.

I understand where your preferences are coming from, and I have no problem with your tastes. But I do not see where the term is coming from. I think it is overly expansive. It is like when people have been calling sandbox adventures linear or railroads. I think to most people, a GM driven campaign is something more like those storyteller sessions that used to be popular even in D&D in the 90s, or something heavily railroaded. I really don't get this particular usage

As I said, my tastes are not contrary to the kind of game you're describing. My recent Mothership campaign was, as far as I can tell, exactly like what you describe. I enjoyed it quite a bit. The players were free to kind of romp around in the playground I made for them. The world was pretty much indifferent to who the characters were.

Why I describe it as GM driven is because I designed the setting in its entirety (though I did use a published module called A Pound of Flesh). The players could choose where they wanted to go. At the start of play, we determined that their ship had been damaged, and they needed to get to a port quickly. I gave them three different locations to choose from, and told them some bits about each location. They chose the space station, and that then determined what was going to be available to them... based on what I had prepared and would make available to them.

I'm not saying that such a game is linear. I'm not saying such a game is a railroad. I am saying that the GM is clearly the primary driver of play. Yes, the players choose where to do... the characters have autonomy... they have a say. But what they have a say about is pretty much which of the GM's prep they interact with. The events of play are mostly based on the GM's prep. That's why I'd call it GM-driven.

I don't mean GM-driven to be in any way a negative.

Thanks!

However, I still don't see the implications behind the GM’s ideas being in the foreground. Is the same implication in the other post where you said "There’s nothing that speaks to what the players want out of play.”? Along with the other comment “It seems like a menu of GM options and the players get to choose from it."?

Once I understand that oart, I’ll also circle back to your point about exploration being the focus. I think it’s tied to the bigger question you're raising here.

Well, I posted an example of what I'd consider player-driven play in a campaign of Blades in the Dark that my group just started. Here it is below. I think the way the Score came together is sufficiently different from the GM preparing things ahead of play.

To respond to @Hussar ’s request not too far back for folks to share their ideas of sandbox prep… I’m about to run session two of a Blades in the Dark campaign tomorrow night. We had a session zero which consisted of crew and character creation, and then did our first Score and Downtime in session one last week.

So far, everything in play that has come up has been based on player choice. When you create your crew in Blades, you pick certain qualities that will shape play. One of these is Reputation. This is how other factions view yours. We went with “Daring”. Another thing you pick is your Hinting Grounds… this is the part of the city where the Crew does a lot of their work. We chose the district of Brightstone, specifically Bowmore Bridge. Brightstone is the most affluent district in the city, home to the wealthy and influential. Bowmore Bridge connects Brightstone to Whitecrown, which is the district of the government leaders and their homes and/or fortresses. Bowmore Bridge has residences and businesses built on top of it, and this is where our Crew wants to operate.

We chose Bravos as our Crew type, which is essentially hired muscle or mercenaries. Several of the characters are of marginalized groups of one sort or another, so that was the primary reason to target the wealthiest district in the city. So I asked the players what they wanted to do for their first Score. They wanted to do something Daring and they wanted to do it on Bowmore Bridge to send a message. One of the players looked at the Claim map on the Crew sheet… these are locations/situations you can target and use to grow your criminal organization. Each one also grants your Crew some benefit. One of the Claims was “Terrorized Citizens”. That seemed appropriate to everyone… so we started talking about what such a Score would look like. One of the job types listed for Bravos is “Smash and Grab”.

The Crew then went about Gathering Information. First, we learned of a jeweler who fashions his pieces from the bones of demons. These are very popular among the elite of the city. The Crew decided he would be a good target. Another Gather Info move to determine his defenses revealed that due to the high presence of Bluecoat (police) patrols in the area, he doesn’t need as much defense as one may think. He has two bodyguards, swordsmen who are members of the Red Sashes, a gang based out of a school for swordsmanship. However, these two guards are not particularly capable… it was deemed an easy job and so went to newer members. Finally, a last gather information roll to determine any other ways into the building revealed an entrance under the bridge, and a staircase down to a small dock on the river. This info was paired with the fact that the jeweler was also handling human trafficking in the lower portion of his shop.

That was the basis for our first Score. Generated entirely as a group, within the sandbox that is Doskvol, the setting for Blades.

 

[AlViking]

How can it not? The players won't go to places the DM doesn't put in front of them. They would have no reason to travel to place X unless the DM provides place X. And, specfically within a level based system like D&D, many areas are more or less walled off by level. Yes, sure, you can wander into the red dragon's lair, but, since that's suicidal for 1st level characters, either that red dragon's lair will be in a location that the PC's can't reach due to lack of resources, or they will be strongly warned off by the DM through the use of NPC's.

Now, true, the players could choose suicide by dragon, but, by and large, they aren't going to. So, when the DM plonks a red dragon lair in location X, that's a big sign that says, "You must be this tall to ride". Again, the DM is very strongly influencing what the characters do.

So some people insist that if the players are not making informed decisions it's not really a sandbox. Now, if they are making informed decisions because they know they stand no chance against a dragon it's also not a sandbox?

If the level 1 characters find out there's a dragon somewhere and they chose to confront it I may RP a scene where they realize they're totally over their heads before the dragon eats them but I'm not going to stop them. I won't have that dragon attack the inn while they're killing the rats in the basement either because I know they won't stand a chance. GMs are rarely 100% objective because it's not fun for most people. That doesn't mean they don't have plenty of other options to choose from, most of which they will have at least a bit of knowledge on risk and reward.

 

[TwoSix]

So some people insist that if the players are not making informed decisions it's not really a sandbox. Now, if they are making informed decisions because they know they stand no chance against a dragon it's also not a sandbox?

If the level 1 characters find out there's a dragon somewhere and they chose to confront it I may RP a scene where they realize they're totally over their heads before the dragon eats them but I'm not going to stop them. I won't have that dragon attack the inn while they're killing the rats in the basement either because I know they won't stand a chance. GMs are rarely 100% objective because it's not fun for most people. That doesn't mean they don't have plenty of other options to choose from, most of which they will have at least a bit of knowledge on risk and reward.

No one ever said it wasn't a sandbox. (And I followed the chain of quotes to be sure.) @Hussar even said it was a great idea!

It's simply not a case of a game that is player directed. "Players having agency to explore" is not "player-directed".

 

[hawkeyefan]

When I craft new regions in my world or decide how they've changed over time, or create new worlds I'm not really thinking about specific players or their characters. I'm just setting up what I think is a sandbox with some interesting toys. If and when the players gravitate towards a specific toy, or the idea of a toy comes up in play, that's when I'll start adding more detail.

We're always building worlds we think will be interesting, that doesn't mean they're built with challenging specific characters in mind. I don't see an issue if we do, but unlike other games the goal isn't to have a specific design or goal for a specific individual.

I don't think that's an issue at all! As I posted recently, that's how I ran my Mothership campaign.

I think the term "more authority" is nebulous and doesn't have a lot of meaning. If I'm playing D&D in most games I have little or no authority over the world but I have 100% authority over my character. Because the authority that we have in our role is so different "more" or "less" authority doesn't have a lot of meaning to me.

There are some people (I'm not saying you do, sorry if that wasn't clear) who use this idea of GM authority as a cudgel to reinforce their idea that a different approach to gaming is superior.

Well, I disagree a bit about how much authority you have as a player in D&D. You likely have a little bit over the world (assuming some amount of GM leeway) in the form of backstory or details about your character... NPC friends and families and the like.

You likely don't have 100% authority over your character in the sense that you are bound by the constraints placed on you during play. You can't necessarily "go anywhere" since the GM can block your means in any number of ways. Want to travel to the north port? Oh, sorry... weather prevents it. Want to enter the southern kingdom? Oh sorry a magical barrier created by the god of thwarting surrounds the kingdom. And so on.

This is why I think the amount of GM authority matters quite a bit... it impacts play quite a bit. It determines what is available and what the players are allowed to do.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

I disagree. I think the GM doing their best to make objective decisions based on established lore along with the decisions being made by the players means it will virtually never be a railroad. There are other factors of course but it is an important one.

Situations where there is only one sensible option are common in real life. It would be pretty unrealistic for there to always be a wide range of viable options.

 

[mamba]

So, how many rumours are required?

If the DM brought up (note that it's the DM bringing up, as in entirely sourced by the DM without any input or reaction to the players) only 2 rumours, does that make it not a sandbox? Three? Four?

not sure there is one answer everyone agrees on, you seem to say that even 100 aren’t as long it is the DM that brings them up. Is that correct?

 

[thefutilist]

Before I reply, can you clarify what it is you mean by thematically relevant? It might explain the difference between our viewpoints.

Also, and this isn’t a challenge or anything like that, did you read the PDF I attached? I’d like to know whether you felt I covered NPC priorities adequately. NPCs do have priorities that I use when running the adventure, but now I’m concerned I didn’t explain them well enough. This will be important when I work on the second edition.

I suspect this may be a broader issue with the writing I did in the current version. One reviewer commented on a character’s motivation, which led me to create this supplemental PDF to clarify something I had already planned to address in the second edition:

https://www.batintheattic.com/downloads/Scourge_Design_Notes_Rev01.pdf

Hah yeah we both noted that Arbela needed to be fleshed out more.

So by thematically relevant I mean you've got a lot of really great thematic setting, the Beggars, the war, the ethnic divisions and so on. Yet it becomes kind of 'generic fantasy mush' when you get to the actual encounters. Which is also why I wouldn't actually have encounters, just list the npc's, their various priorities and resources and maybe have clocks or the equivalent to give them impetus.

It's hard to give brief examples because stuff is interconnected. If I have time I'll try and do a write up of, Locus maybe, later tonight.


You also wrote:

Often times for my NPCs I am faced with several equally probable (in terms of agenda, motivations, and resources) choices for a given situations. In this case the action I take for the NPC is one I feel will generate the most opportunities for adventure.

We probably diverge strongly here as well. Although my actual process for deciding an NPC's priorities is dependant upon the game, when the priorities are decided (in prep v in play) and a load of other stuff.


One thing I want to strongly convey. This is really player dependant. If I have a group that is going to seize on all the ethical tensions then writing up the tensions is appropriate. That's probably fairly rare for the average D&D group though. They very often make tactical choices as kind of cyphers AND as it relates to the scenario, what are the consequences of the choices?

Say the confrontation between the beggars and the villagers. If the immediate confrontation is solved without bloodshed then how has the relationship between the villages and the beggars changed? that's always an open question based on what the players do but it's also going to have potential knock on effects for the relationship with everyone else.

As a very brief illustration. Say one of the players decides to join Locus in his quest to fight the demon wolf. They slay it and that character now has a bond with Locus. Do they then go and kill Anselm thinking it will sort a lot of problems out? Is there even a possibility of this happening on the player end? people criticize the GM but it takes two to tango. A scenario is only as strong as it's players.

If the group is determined to remain a party, they tend to make tactical decisions together and any given player characters priorities tend to be subservient to 'keeping the party together' or stuff of that nature.

Does this make sense? Anyway I'll try and do more through write up later.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

as opposed to the players only seeking out a dragon lair and then finding it once they have leveled up enough when the players control the fiction? That does not appear to be a big difference…

If a 1st level party wants to seek out a dragon’s lair, I wouldn’t stand in their way.