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

[EzekielRaiden]

What you wrote before and after that is appreciated. But the quote above illustrates why there’s strong pushback from myself and others in this thread.

The different variations of agency serve different creative goals. They promote different kinds of change, and they rely on different expectations for how information is presented and used in play.

There’s no universal scale to measure “real change” or “decent information quality.” These concepts aren’t absolutes, they’re shaped by the purpose of the campaign and the procedures that support it. There are always trade-offs. Doing one thing a certain way will naturally emphasize some aspects of play over others. They are RELATIVE to the creative goals the group, or designer set for themselves.

That’s why the quote is a problem: it assumes a singular, idealized form of agency, rather than recognizing that different games pursue different goals and structure agency accordingly.

And this ties back to what I said to Old Fezziwig: the hobby is already expansive. We’re not stuck waiting on permission from some central authority. Anyone with a vision can build the campaign structure or system they want and get it into the hands of players who want that experience. Whether it's a living world sandbox, a narrative-first framework, or something in between, the tools are there.

So instead of framing certain approaches as failing some ideal model of design, the better question is: does it do what it set out to do, and for whom?

I mean, I kind of already addressed this...multiple times.

Sandbox-y games work to maximize agency in both amount and kind. The more kinds of agency, and the greater the quantities thereof, the more sandbox-y the game is. Hence why I said a game like Ironsworn is so well-suited to nearly maximal sandbox-y play, because it puts nearly all kinds of agency front and center, at pretty dang high levels. Someone who wants less agency may not necessarily want an outright non-sandbox game. But they may want a less sandbox-y game than Ironsworn generally provides. There's nothing wrong with that: there are degrees of sandbox, it's one broad side of a spectrum.

And, likewise, there are games that are more or less railroad-y, and I gave clear examples thereof. E.g. playing truly metaplot-focused, pregen-character-based Dragonlance adventures is about as close as it gets to a "perfect" railroad. There is a prewritten plot that neither can nor should be deviated from, and the players basically only have agency over the spoken dialogue and specific combat actions of their characters; otherwise, everything else is either fixed or very close to fixed. Whereas something like a branching-path game, where the DM prepares (say) 2-4 branches at any given juncture, where a specific set of events will follow from that choice and not much other than the specific things the DM has prepared will occur, there's rather more agency, and while the DM is still rather heavily "writing" what is going to happen, it's got a degree of flexibility--I'd put such a game only very slightly on the railroad-y side of neutral. (Conversely, a game where the party moves from one medium-large open area to another, with the order of those open areas firmly fixed but the party able to interact or not interact with nearly anything within each of those areas, would be just barely on the "sandbox" side of neutral in my book. Hence why video games that use that sort of style may be referred to as "sandbox" games even though they're only lightly so, because even "lightly sandbox-y" is hard for video games to do!)

 

[robertsconley]

I mean, I kind of already addressed this...multiple times.

Sandbox-y games work to maximize agency in both amount and kind. The more kinds of agency, and the greater the quantities thereof, the more sandbox-y the game is. Hence why I said a game like Ironsworn is so well-suited to nearly maximal sandbox-y play, because it puts nearly all kinds of agency front and center, at pretty dang high levels. Someone who wants less agency may not necessarily want an outright non-sandbox game. But they may want a less sandbox-y game than Ironsworn generally provides. There's nothing wrong with that: there are degrees of sandbox, it's one broad side of a spectrum.

And, likewise, there are games that are more or less railroad-y, and I gave clear examples thereof. E.g. playing truly metaplot-focused, pregen-character-based Dragonlance adventures is about as close as it gets to a "perfect" railroad. There is a prewritten plot that neither can nor should be deviated from, and the players basically only have agency over the spoken dialogue and specific combat actions of their characters; otherwise, everything else is either fixed or very close to fixed. Whereas something like a branching-path game, where the DM prepares (say) 2-4 branches at any given juncture, where a specific set of events will follow from that choice and not much other than the specific things the DM has prepared will occur, there's rather more agency, and while the DM is still rather heavily "writing" what is going to happen, it's got a degree of flexibility--I'd put such a game only very slightly on the railroad-y side of neutral. (Conversely, a game where the party moves from one medium-large open area to another, with the order of those open areas firmly fixed but the party able to interact or not interact with nearly anything within each of those areas, would be just barely on the "sandbox" side of neutral in my book. Hence why video games that use that sort of style may be referred to as "sandbox" games even though they're only lightly so, because even "lightly sandbox-y" is hard for video games to do!)

Your analysis focuses on degrees of sandbox, but this kind of quantification, “more kinds of agency = more sandbox”, is a fallacy. It treats sandbox play as if it’s about turning up the volume or increasing the number of inputs players have, like it’s a matter of dialing in maximum agency. But that misses the point entirely. It ignores creative goals and procedural structure, which are what actually define how a campaign plays. And it certainly doesn’t move us any closer to the more expansive hobby folks like Old Fezziwig say they want.

What creates real diversity in play isn’t stacking types of agency, it’s how different games combine and apply them in service of distinct goals. My living world sandbox campaigns have one approach. Torchbearer has another. So does Burning Wheel, Fate, D&D, GURPS, Traveller, and Ironsworn. None of these can be sorted along a single axis from railroad to sandbox. They’re not entries on a spectrum, they’re expressions of different design priorities.

Even games with overlapping DNA, like Torchbearer and Burning Wheel, use agency differently to serve different ends. That makes them separate, coherent systems, not variations on a linear scale. Trying to rank them by “how sandbox-y” they are strips away what makes them interesting in the first place.

And yes, I saw the examples you gave, Ironsworn at one end, Dragonlance with pregens at the other. But again, the issue isn’t the placement, it’s the frame. Ironsworn isn’t more sandbox than Traveller just because it pushes more types of player-facing authorship. It’s doing something different. Traveller’s agency lives in how choices ripple through a consistent, referee-driven world. Ironsworn’s lives in how the player authors outcomes within tight narrative constraints. Both offer autonomy. Both offer impact. But the procedures that create those qualities aren’t remotely the same, and they’re not aiming at the same play experience.

That’s why I reject the idea of “degrees of sandbox.” You’re not measuring temperature. You’re looking at fundamentally different structures. Calling one “more sandbox” because it has more narrative dials to turn is like saying a hex crawl is more “simulationist” than a pointcrawl because it has more hexes. It’s the wrong standard for what matters.

If we want an expansive view of the hobby, we need to treat systems as reflections of creative goals, not as coordinates on a graph.

 

[Old Fezziwig]

I appreciate the clarification, and I get your Wynton Marsalis example.

In the 21st century, that kind of fandom pressure just doesn’t matter.

Anyone who wants to build something, sandbox, narrative, shared authority, whatever, can do it at a professional level in the time they have for a hobby and find their audience directly. If you have a vision for what a campaign should look like, there’s no need to ask permission from fans or worry what is popular or not-popular at the moment. Just do the work and put it out there.

Back in the mid-2000s, when The Forge was at its peak, all of this was still in its infancy. Indie creators were competing for limited warehouse space, limited shelf space in stores, and often had to invest significant capital just to bring a product to market. Angry, frustrated, and feeling marginalized, figures like Ron Edwards, Vincent Baker, and others lashed out, not by selling their ideas on their merits, but by leaning into rhetoric designed to inflame: “stick it to the man,” “rage against the system,” and so on.

So when the conversation starts focusing on what “fandom” likes or doesn’t like, or whether one preference is stagnating the hobby, It is missing the point. Those debates don’t stop creative work anymore. They don’t gatekeep access. They don’t define the boundaries of what’s possible. The limiting factor isn’t fandom, it’s whether someone actually builds the thing they want to see.

The OSR had its share of loud voices, but it thrived because people focused on building the things they wanted, then used tools like Lulu, PDFs, and blogs to get them out there. They embraced the tech, ignored the gatekeepers and criticism, and let the work speak for itself.

The expensive hobby you want is already here. I can be seen at places like DriveThruRPG with nearly 170,000 titles. It can be seen in the rapidly expanding catalog of Itch.io. But if your goal is an even more expansive hobby, then let’s talk about procedures. What works. What fails. Because that’s where growth actually comes from.

Last things first, can I just say that this -- "The expensive hobby you want is already here." -- is kind of a hilarious typo. I can't say I disagree. Mrs Fezziwig would certainly agree.

I appreciate your optimism, but I have a hard time sharing in it, beyond acknowledging that, although the conditions on the ground would suggest it's possible, it doesn't seem true when I go out into the world, look in gaming stores, or register for convention games. From where I'm sitting, I see a handful of systems and games dominating the space (D&D, OSR/retroclones, PbtA, FitD, BRP), and a really difficult marketplace for anything else. I like some of those systems a lot, but I have almost everything I could possibly use, possibly more than, in any of those categories.

I think I mentioned obliquely earlier in the thread that I was an occasional visitor to The Forge and The Burning Wheel forums in the mid-00s, though not a participant in either, so I'm aware of the broad strokes of those conversations. I'm not sure that I entirely agree with your characterization of things, but I also don't rethink rehashing any of it's particularly useful? When I say that we shouldn't be overly deferential to historical figures in the industry, to be clear, I do mean to include all of them equally.

Finally, I'm not sure that I'm missing the point mentioning fandom, not entirely. I agree that the debates don't stop creative work and don't have a categorical idea about fandom and gatekeeping, but they definitely exert pressure on the boundaries of what's possible. We might not be as far along as other industries or arts, but I feel like I can smell it sometimes. I've already mentioned my experiences with shelf space and con games above, and I can't help but see retroclones and some of the more cynical OSR releases, for instance, as jukebox musicals preying on the nostalgia of GenX nerds (I include myself in that demographic and characterization). I don't want to get too far out over my skis here, as I don't have broad or special knowledge such that I can do more than guess at trends and try and parse the vibes. Things don't feel healthy from where I'm sitting, notwithstanding the catalog size of DTRPG, but I'd be happy to be wrong.

As far as procedures and what works or doesn't work, I'm happy to have that conversation or participate in it as it comes up here. Indeed, I thought I had been, though mostly through how BW approaches some of these issues.

Edit: changed "From what I can see" to "From where I'm sitting."

 

[Thomas Shey]

They are, however, what differentiates one game from another.

This is hardly an example of that (the idea of the authority of the GM has sprawled across many games) and even if it were distinct that doesn't make it something that is intrinsically a good idea immune to criticism.

 

[zakael19]

Last things first, can I just say that this -- "The expensive hobby you want is already here." -- is kind of a hilarious typo. I can't say I disagree. Mrs Fezziwig would certainly agree.

I appreciate your optimism, but I have a hard time sharing in it, beyond acknowledging that, although the conditions on the ground would suggest it's possible, it doesn't seem true when I go out into the world, look in gaming stores, or register for convention games. From where I'm sitting, but I see a handful of systems and games dominating the space (D&D, OSR/retroclones, PbtA, FitD, BRP), and a really difficult marketplace for anything else. I like some of those systems a lot, but I have almost everything I could possibly use, possibly more than, in any of those categories.

I think I mentioned obliquely earlier in the thread that I was an occasional visitor to The Forge and The Burning Wheel forums in the mid-00s, though not a participant in either, so I'm aware of the broad strokes of those conversations. I'm not sure that I entirely agree with your characterization of things, but I also don't rethink rehashing any of it's particularly useful? When I say that we shouldn't be overly deferential to historical figures in the industry, to be clear, I do mean to include all of them equally.

Finally, I'm not sure that I'm missing the point mentioning fandom, not entirely. I agree that the debates don't stop creative work and don't have a categorical idea about fandom and gatekeeping, but they definitely exert pressure on the boundaries of what's possible. We might not be as far along as other industries or arts, but I feel like I can smell it sometimes. I've already mentioned my experiences with shelf space and con games above, and I can't help but see retroclones and some of the more cynical OSR releases, for instance, as jukebox musicals preying on the nostalgia of GenX nerds (I include myself in that demographic and characterization). I don't want to get too far out over my skis here, as I don't have broad or special knowledge such that I can do more than guess at trends and try and parse the vibes. Things don't feel healthy from where I'm sitting, notwithstanding the catalog size of DTRPG, but I'd be happy to be wrong.

As far as procedures and what works or doesn't work, I'm happy to have that conversation or participate in it as it comes up here. Indeed, I thought I had been, though mostly through how BW approaches some of these issues.

Edit: changed "From what I can see" to "From where I'm sitting."

The vast preponderance of r/lfg and my are local discord certainly are all looking for D&D, primarily “70% roleplaying 30% combat and to be part of a shared story.”

A huuuuge swathe of folks I see showing up as “new player looking for a group!” are coming from a) critical role and b) BG3 (my entire newby group a couple years back was both). They want their play to emulate the former, and aren’t really even aware that there’s other options out there! At the start, they’re squarely in the D&D cultural fandom, as filtered through broader media.

I haven’t had any issues filling my non-D&D games, but that’s mainly courtesy of Reddit LFG (even though about 30% of the applicants have thought an explicitly non-5e game was 5e still..), and bustling discord servers like the Blades in the Dark one.

 

[robertsconley]

Last things first, can I just say that this -- "The expensive hobby you want is already here." -- is kind of a hilarious typo. I can't say I disagree. Mrs Fezziwig would certainly agree.

I appreciate your optimism, but I have a hard time sharing in it, beyond acknowledging that, although the conditions on the ground would suggest it's possible, it doesn't seem true when I go out into the world, look in gaming stores, or register for convention games. From where I'm sitting, I see a handful of systems and games dominating the space (D&D, OSR/retroclones, PbtA, FitD, BRP), and a really difficult marketplace for anything else. I like some of those systems a lot, but I have almost everything I could possibly use, possibly more than, in any of those categories.

I think I mentioned obliquely earlier in the thread that I was an occasional visitor to The Forge and The Burning Wheel forums in the mid-00s, though not a participant in either, so I'm aware of the broad strokes of those conversations. I'm not sure that I entirely agree with your characterization of things, but I also don't rethink rehashing any of it's particularly useful? When I say that we shouldn't be overly deferential to historical figures in the industry, to be clear, I do mean to include all of them equally.

Finally, I'm not sure that I'm missing the point mentioning fandom, not entirely. I agree that the debates don't stop creative work and don't have a categorical idea about fandom and gatekeeping, but they definitely exert pressure on the boundaries of what's possible. We might not be as far along as other industries or arts, but I feel like I can smell it sometimes. I've already mentioned my experiences with shelf space and con games above, and I can't help but see retroclones and some of the more cynical OSR releases, for instance, as jukebox musicals preying on the nostalgia of GenX nerds (I include myself in that demographic and characterization). I don't want to get too far out over my skis here, as I don't have broad or special knowledge such that I can do more than guess at trends and try and parse the vibes. Things don't feel healthy from where I'm sitting, notwithstanding the catalog size of DTRPG, but I'd be happy to be wrong.

As far as procedures and what works or doesn't work, I'm happy to have that conversation or participate in it as it comes up here. Indeed, I thought I had been, though mostly through how BW approaches some of these issues.

Edit: changed "From what I can see" to "From where I'm sitting."

Mrs. Fezziwig has my sympathy. “Expensive” might actually be the more honest word some days.

You're right about the reality on the ground, D&D, retroclones, PbtA, and a few others dominate shelf space and con slots. But that’s a reflection of the old economy, where distribution channels had limited bandwidth. Whenever space is scarce, whatever’s popular in the moment will take up the most room and have the highest visibility.

But that’s not the same as saying the hobby lacks room to try new ideas. Not anymore. With Kickstarter, DriveThruRPG, Itch, PDFs, and print-on-demand, creators can publish whatever they want at a professional level and get it into the hands of players who care. That’s not optimism, that’s the landscape we’re actually living in.

Take Shadowdark, a minimalist, OSR-inspired game that’s in many ways the philosophical opposite of 5e. It leans into time pressure, referee rulings, and deadly exploration. No big brand. No legacy IP. Yet it pulled in over a million dollars. That didn’t happen because the fandom collectively blessed it, it happened because it had a clear vision and delivered a play experience that resonated. You don’t need shelf or warehouse space to do that anymore.

You mentioned shelf presence and con games feeling the same. I live in a rural area where it's rare to see anything stocked beyond D&D 5e. But that’s not a structural barrier to a more expansive hobby; it’s just a relic of how physical goods are handled. Stores stock what moves. Cons run what fits the schedule. That used to mean a lot of great material never got seen. But today? Creators across every style, trad, narrative-first, OSR, and experimental are getting generously supported. $100K–$200K Kickstarters for narrative-focused games are common. That’s real money. That’s real success.

Add to that VTTs making it easy to run online campaigns with the same materials as face-to-face, and social media making it easier for local gamers to find each other and organize, and the constraints are gone. What’s left is execution and clarity of vision.

So, if diversity and experimentation are the goals, I’d argue we’re already seeing them, just not always in the places people expect, or in spaces still constrained by the same limitations of twenty years ago.

 

[Lanefan]

This makes sense to me -- I'm a big fan of just-in-time prep. When you hit that until/unless moment, what sort of prep might you do?

Clarify to myself what makes the town tick*, how much magic might be available to buy (close to 100% odds I'll be asked for a "shopping list" of what if anything happens to be available at the moment), what temples and Clerical power the place has, and anything else related to their reason(s) for visiting if not covered either by the above or by something else e.g. a module or adventure they're in. If relevant, I'll figure out who rules the place e.g. mayor, nobility, etc. and what makes them tick, but it's surprisingly rare that I have to do this.

Unless it's already been done for me by a module or something, I won't usually map the town until-unless they look like they want to make it their base of operations.

* - depending on the specific place, I might already have a very good idea of what makes it tick and thus don't need to do much fleshing out, or I might have little-to-no clue and be starting almost from scratch.

 

[Lanefan]

Take Shadowdark, a minimalist, OSR-inspired game that’s in many ways the philosophical opposite of 5e. It leans into time pressure, referee rulings, and deadly exploration. No big brand. No legacy IP. Yet it pulled in over a million dollars. That didn’t happen because the fandom collectively blessed it, it happened because it had a clear vision and delivered a play experience that resonated. You don’t need shelf or warehouse space to do that anymore.

Which is truly sad for those of us who want to look at a real physical product and only then decide whether or not to buy it, and - if that decision is "yes" - to buy it then and there from an actual person in a real store.

 

[pemerton]

They are opting to get on the rails, yes. Opting to get on the train does not make the train anything other than a railroad. They still have no ability to change their minds like players can do in linear and sandbox games. The force is still there, even though they volunteered to be subjected to it.

But the player in the "sandbox" game is locked into playing in that sandbox. If you're running them in (say) Forgotten Realms, then they can't just have their PCs jump on board a starship and head for the Spinward Marches (a part of the GDW setting for Classic Traveller).

When you turn up to play a game you turn up to play a game. That's not being railroaded!

 

[pemerton]

I could run games in a mitre.

Related, I dated a girl in graduate school that thought I dressed up like a wizard when I ran D&D games. She had seen my apartment. I don't know where she thought I was hiding the robes and hat.

A friend of mine at work used to talk about me going off "swordfighting" on weekends.

One time I cut my arm doing something-or-other around the house. I remember showing the injury to my friend as a sword-fighting scar. I can't remember now if she bought it at all.