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

[EzekielRaiden]

If you do that, you'll also have to write up the stats for the one in the closet and in your head. Oh, and don't forget to grip your pillow tight.

Exit light, enter night; take my hand, we're off to Never-Never Land.

But Never-Never Land does not exist any more than the Forgotten Realms do, or the current King of France, or unicorns, or my beloved dragons. We can hold beliefs about them, and those beliefs can matter quite a lot. The beliefs can cause many things. But the lands and kings and beasts themselves have no more existence than the number which is simultaneously greater than seven and less than four.

 

[TwoSix]

I, and others, have said time and time again that our sandboxes are not built around the desires of specific characters. There is no contradiction even if different people will have different approaches. I see diversity as a strength not a flaw.

If some sandboxes have DMs who shape aspects of the setting around player decisions, and other sandboxes have DMs who don’t do that, than the obvious conclusion is that “shaping the setting around player decisions” is not an intrinsic quality of sandboxes.

 

[AlViking]

I agree that it is something you can strive for, but that striving is the cause, not anything external to yourself. There is no world. There are no mountains. There is no rain shadow. There simply isn't anything here causing your choices. Your choices are yours. It is good--excellent, even--to have principles which you try to adhere to. It is good--excellent, even--to aim for a world that is well-considered, that is self-consistent, that accounts for many questions, even those well beyond what a player might consider asking.

But not one of those things causes your decision to include or not include something in the world. You do. You cause it--you and your beliefs.

E.g., the orc thing mentioned above. I only skimmed it, so I only have the gist. But the notion I got was that you had decided it wasn't possible to integrate an idea with the decisions you had already made. But another easily could have done so--and you yourself gave an example of a way a similar thing could be done. Doesn't that show that there isn't a causative factor outside yourself? You aren't somehow bound and gagged. This is why I've said, so may times, that "realism" and "impartiality" are not and cannot be the things that motivate one choice over another, because there are many (perhaps infinitely many) options that are "realistic" and "impartial" that can be radically different from one another.

The causative factor which chooses one realistic, impartial, plausible path over another is you.

There were no orcs because the reality of the fiction had been established long ago. Other than that, so what? If I'm creating an area for a game to take place I have to create it since i don'tuse a published setting. My approach when I create my world is that I do my best to make it logical, consistent and reactive to the characters, their actions and ripple effects. It will never be 100% but I'm tired of the extremist fallacy.

It's what works best for me, has worked well for players for decades. If you have a different approach that works for you feel free to share.

 

[AlViking]

If you do that, you'll also have to write up the stats for the one in the closet and in your head. Oh, and don't forget to grip your pillow tight.

The real question is whether or not blankets provide immunity when you leave a breathing hole so yo don't suffocate.

 

[Warpiglet-7]

Is this an either or scenario with sandboxes?

When it’s my turn to DM I run my homebrew world. I know ahead of time how different areas are set up—how likely the militia may come to help or hinder etc.

I have factions and maps etc

But I do not know everything that’s going to happen. There also is emergent happenings. I make a decision of “that would make sense” if this occurred.

So while I know part of this towns militia, I might not know exactly what would happen if they were all killed. I did not plan for that. I have to think about the relationship with the next settlement. Given that, how likely is help to come if someone asks?

How soon will it arrive? I don’t know as I type this. Might have to roll some dice and make calculations.

I have some dungeons but not every building ready.

I think sandboxes are cool but are not absolute. I think if we are honest we do want the players to bite the hook and uncover the cool parts of what we designed.

I think it’s just tendencies but not absolutes. How can it be unless it’s a railroad flip a coin a or b restricted binary choice or worse?

 

[AlViking]

If some sandboxes have DMs who shape aspects of the setting around player decisions, and other sandboxes have DMs who don’t do that, than the obvious conclusion is that “shaping the setting around player decisions” is not an intrinsic quality of sandboxes.

The obvious conclusion to me is that there's no one true way. Sandboxes can take many forms, mine follows the living world paradigm which is common for sandboxes but otherwise are unrelated.

 

[TwoSix]

There were no orcs because the reality of the fiction had been established long ago. Other than that, so what? If I'm creating an area for a game to take place I have to create it since i don'tuse a published setting. My approach when I create my world is that I do my best to make it logical, consistent and reactive to the characters, their actions and ripple effects. It will never be 100% but I'm tired of the extremist fallacy.

It's what works best for me, has worked well for players for decades. If you have a different approach that works for you feel free to share.

You made the decision to not have orcs in your fantasy setting.

That’s not a judgment. It’s not a normative statement. It’s just a trivially obvious statement of truth.

 

[TwoSix]

The obvious conclusion to me is that there's no one true way. Sandboxes can take many forms, mine follows the living world paradigm which is common for sandboxes but otherwise are unrelated.

There’s never one true way. But it’s there’s no sense of boundary as to what a “sandbox” is, then it’s a fairly useless term.

 

[Bedrockgames]

Striving for impartiality - play to find out what happens

Pinning down details before choices are made - clocks

Letting players trash the scenery - there are no status quo's in Apocalypse World

Playing NPC's with their own goals and agency - clocks and pass decision making to NPC's

Are you sure you guys aren't playing PbtA games?

I suspect there is some cross-over some things, but also a lot of things are probably very different due to game philosophy issues (there are some things I see people do in Blades in the Dark, I think would be rare or non-existent in most living world sandboxes: doesn't make them bad, just means the crossover you are observing may be more murky if we really look into them. Also the descriptions you guys have provided of your approaches with PbTA generally hasn't lined up in my mind with these ideas (but it is possible we are talking passed one another)

Can you explain clocks to me again, because when I read about them in I remembered them being something different. My understanding was it was a way of tracking progress on things (and I do think many sandbox GMs do use things similar to clocks, but pinning it down is a different concept if I understand clocks correctly (which I might not). Pinning it down is my phrasing. I don't believe it is a unique concept to my sandboxes but it is a principle I think is shared by many, even if it is talked about in different ways. Here is my explanation

Impartiality would include play to find out I suppose. I would want this explained again though because my impression is it is a technical term that might have specific meaning (whereas I am just taking the literal meaning of the phrase here). But impartiality isn't just about that. It is about fairness, about not taking sides, not wanting the game to go in a particular direction, letting the dice fall where they may, it is about running your NPCs honestly, and applying the rules as justly as you can, etc. For example, it isn't just play to find out, but also it is about being even-handed if two players come into conflict and trying to make sure both are treated fairly.

I suspect the trash the scenery thing might be different from there is no status quo. I would need an explanation of that principle. But trashing the scenery means, you aren't precious about things, the players can go into Long Ma Hall and try to burn it down if they want (even if long ma hall is a very important setting feature).

You are going to have got explain how clocks pertain to NPCs having their own goals and I need to know what pass decision onto NPCs is. When I say this, I mean it in the sense of living NPCs. NPCs function similar to PCs, not in the sense of being protagonists in the campaign, but in the senes of the GM runs them freely, they are trying to do things, they are pursuing their goals and agendas. They aren't stuck in one place. They don't just show up because it is cool or convenient. They aren't just there to be antagonists. If the players interact with an NPC one way, he might befriend them, another, he might be their enemy. And it isn't like you have a list of 'ifs', you simply extrapolate from what you know about the NPCs personality how they would respond. I think it also tends to emphasize that NPCs are people who can be reasoned with.

 

[Bedrockgames]

If some sandboxes have DMs who shape aspects of the setting around player decisions, and other sandboxes have DMs who don’t do that, than the obvious conclusion is that “shaping the setting around player decisions” is not an intrinsic quality of sandboxes.

I think with Sandbox play, it is useful to have a sense of what the norms are. I find it useful for setting expectations, and letting people know how my approach might be different from what they are used to.