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

[AbdulAlhazred]

This is starting to feel like banging one's head against a wall. That is exactly what is going on in people sandboxes.

No, it's not. The examples of play provided do not look much like Narrativist play I am familiar with. MUCH more is prepped, it's prepped with much less consideration of specific player interests, and decision making by players is far less likely to shape the action and fiction except at a pretty high level, or in minor tactical ways that apply in any RPG.

Your analysis of BitD seems a little off. Yes BitD has extensive lore/background. Consequently the agenda is not focused on that. Doskvol is a known quantity. The question the game asks is about how the PCs react to that, how it shapes them, and what they become. In Stonetop lore is looser, the players are more free to shape the world, or the village.

 

[TwoSix]

I second this motion.

All in favour?

Hells to the no. Analysis is interesting and fun.

 

[Lanefan]

Individual behavior is anecdote, not data. Individual actual play is not a meaningful testbed or metric. Only in aggregate over many groups do we much of anything reliable.

And how exactly is the typical DM supposed to acquire this aggregate data?

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Sounds just like what sandboxers are advocating.

But in AW all that exists is material created for the express purpose of addressing the PCs and things related to them or at the very least things the players drew in through answering questions or moves, etc.

In contrast 100% of the NPCs were either drawn up before the PCs existed and likely before the players were first engaged with. Even ones created later would, ideally, owe there existence and nature to nothing PC related (this could eventually be somewhat untrue in a campaign).

Super different. Without understanding of the nature of this difference one will not fully grasp the contrast of these styles. I may not share @robertsconley enthusiasm for sand boxes, but I am pretty sure we each understand this contrast. Heck, it forms a good bit of his reasoning for advocating that style of play!

 

[Bedrockgames]

In contrast 100% of the NPCs were either drawn up before the PCs existed and likely before the players were first engaged with. Even ones created later would, ideally, owe there existence and nature to nothing PC related (this could eventually be somewhat untrue in a campaign).

there is a very gray area here though. If my players start really pushing to explore a city I haven’t given much though to, and then start pushing for details about something rather specific like jade comb smugglers, it is becoming very likely I will start introducing NPCs related to jade comb smuggling (or at the very least give them more definitive answers on whether there are jade comb smugglers operating in the area).

 

[zakael19]

This is starting to feel like banging one's head against a wall. That is exactly what is going on in people sandboxes.

Not in the ones I've seen? Maybe I wasn't quite clear with what I meant:

- In most FITD games, you have a strong core premise of the game itself, what the macro "playing to find out" is (we're here to explore the success or failure of new criminal gangs in a victorian city filled with ghosts / we're here to see if Magical Girls can face the trouble of their emotions and the pressures put on them from their opposition / we're here to see if we can bring a disparate revolutionary coalition together to take down the Vampire overlords / etc).

- You generally have a secondary Playset / Crew / whatever, that has specific sub-goals and frames teh fiction (we're Hawkers, selling illicit substances; we're mecha pilots struggling against extinction; we're facing off agains the Vampire Lord X an embodiment of Y tropes about the real modern world).

These two alone start directing the overall thrust of play, before you even truly begin in a way that I think "we pick a spot on the map" doesnt quite do; you've already flagged to the GM what a huge amount of play is going to involve. From there, the players can pick directions they want to go to pursue the interests of their overarching umbrella - how do they want to find new turf to sell their drugs; where and how will they battle the leviathans; what faction do they want to try and bring into the revolution or where do they want to challenge the Vampire Lord's hold.

Once you've got that, you make an Engagement roll (or equivalent) and you're in the action; no intermediate space.

A good chunk of this thread has been people stridently saying that even though there's some core "sandbox-equivalent" to stuff like Blades I'm assured it doesnt look like "actual sandbox play" at all because the creative priorities are different due to everything above.

 

[Bedrockgames]

A good chunk of this thread has been people stridently saying that even though there's some core "sandbox-equivalent" to stuff like Blades I'm assured it doesnt look like "actual sandbox play" at all because the creative priorities are different due to everything above.

To be clear here, I am not saying that sandbox play is like BiTD. What most of us are doing is rejecting what seems like a false dichotomy of BitD being player driven and sandbox being GM driven. There just seems to be too much weigh being applied by people to the GM as storyteller in a sandbox campaign (when that is the very thing sandbox GMs are striving to avoid)

 

[Micah Sweet]

Hells to the no. Analysis is interesting and fun.

More fun for the folks demanding ever-more specific answers to their questions than for the questioned, I suspect. I really just want to have a casual conversation about gaming, but some folks seem to really want this to feel like an interrogation.

 

[robertsconley]

In contrast 100% of the NPCs were either drawn up before the PCs existed and likely before the players were first engaged with Even ones created later would, ideally, owe there existence and nature to nothing PC related (this could eventually be somewhat untrue in a campaign).

This is incorrect. While nothing is specifically created by the referee for the players as their characters. During the pre game and the campaign detailed locations and NPCs are created because of the players choices either for their characters or as their characters.

 

[Bedrockgames]

Not in the ones I've seen?

In sandbox play " the players to come up with a “quest” that may or may not exist at all yet; and then helping nudge play along if they don’t have anything in mind (or dangle some hooks)" is pretty close to how it plays out. I would imagine it looks very different in say a BitD game, but the whole point is for the players to come up with quests for themselves and to drive the campaign by pushing in whatever direction interests them

Maybe I wasn't quite clear with what I meant:

- In most FITD games, you have a strong core premise of the game itself, what the macro "playing to find out" is (we're here to explore the success or failure of new criminal gangs in a victorian city filled with ghosts / we're here to see if Magical Girls can face the trouble of their emotions and the pressures put on them from their opposition / we're here to see if we can bring a disparate revolutionary coalition together to take down the Vampire overlords / etc).

The premises may be a bit different, but lots of sandboxes have a focus. For example I've run a ton of games focused on the players as rising stars in a criminal organization or one where the point is to see if they can become the top fighters in the martial world. You can still have focus within a sandbox if you want.

Play to find out is very much the aim of a sandbox, though I suspect you guys are trying to do it in different ways than we would

- You generally have a secondary Playset / Crew / whatever, that has specific sub-goals and frames teh fiction (we're Hawkers, selling illicit substances; we're mecha pilots struggling against extinction; we're facing off agains the Vampire Lord X an embodiment of Y tropes about the real modern world).

Can you elaborate on this. I just want to make sure I understand.

These two alone start directing the overall thrust of play, before you even truly begin in a way that I think "we pick a spot on the map" doesnt quite do; you've already flagged to the GM what a huge amount of play is going to involve. From there, the players can pick directions they want to go to pursue the interests of their overarching umbrella - how do they want to find new turf to sell their drugs; where and how will they battle the leviathans; what faction do they want to try and bring into the revolution or where do they want to challenge the Vampire Lord's hold.

Something I do before most of my sessions is talk with the players about what they want the campaign to be about. I do control the campaign world itself, but before a campaign we discuss what everyone would be interested in and what type of campaign we want