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

[EzekielRaiden]

I am not sure what is magical about this being explained when recruiting for the game, or at the very least in session 0? I would consider it a major fault on the GMs part if they failed to assure the player was happy with this kind of play before bringing them on board..

Well it could be straightforwardly plainly said.. But where is the fun in that? That is exactly one of the major the draw of the living world sandbox: Playing to try to reveal or deduce what is inside that black box. (Another big one being to make a mark on a world that is bigger than just this group) What would cluedo be if the contents of the envelope was revealed at the start of the game?

I'm not talking about the GM just announcing random information to the party without effort.

I'm talking about people discussing this style, who have more than once told me that it's simply, flatly, not possible to detail ANY kind of procedure or process or technique or what-have-you beyond (a) pure ineffable intuition, or (b) extremely abstract terms like "realism" and "plausibility" and the like. Yet here we are, with very little effort from either of us, and we've already pointed out two procedures that might make a very big difference, and which invite significant discussion about how it would be done, best practices, pitfalls to avoid, guidelines, codifiable principles, etc.

 

[Umbran]

The bottom line is there are risks running a sandbox. You learn over time how to best run them for yourself, and players learn whether sandbox or a particular GM’s sandbox is for them. I don’t think sandbox is going to be your cup of tea for this reason. While these are issues GMs have to think about and figure out: there isn’t one single best answer here. It seems like there is too much of an X factor with sandbox for you to be comfortable.

Do you realize that you just continued the stonewalling with a non-answer?

"It looks like this style as a problem, and nobody will tell me how it is handled!"
"Well, maybe this style isn't for you..."

This is deflection. EzekielRaiden didn't ask what style they'd like best! They asked how this situation is handled in the style. Even if there is no standard answer, one should be able to state some common practices clearly and concisely.

"In style A we do X..., In style B we do Y. In style C, we make it clear in session zero that..." and so on.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Yes, exactly this, this is what I mean when I say the world is inside the GM's black box unless-and-until the GM chooses to inform the players about it, under this approach, as I have understood it.

Informed decisions depend on already having a ton of GM work done. Anything that doesn't already have a ton of GM work done will necessarily be less detailed, and almost always on-the-fly improvised to a pretty heavy degree. That degree of improvisation is extremely difficult (I would argue nearly impossible in most cases) to separate from the GM defining what is possible as they go--at which point, they've made a menu of options, they just did so extemporaneously rather than in advance. That still places such an enormous amount of control over both what can be interacted with, and what players can ever be informed about.

It's extraordinarily difficult to attempt to do things you literally don't know are possible. I don't mean that in the sense of "you can try ANYTHING!", I mean it in the sense of it is outright hard to think of things where you just flat-out don't have information about them. Even very creative people easily miss that sort of stuff--which means both the things the GM does speak about and the things they DON'T speak about have enormous influence over what the players can or will do.

I've seen many, many, many times over people--both here and elsewhere--talk about how it is, for example, the PCs' fault for not asking the one-eyed man at the tavern about what monsters might lie ahead. Yet, for me, that would completely go over my head. I would understand that one-eyed man as simply demonstrative of the flavor of the world (e.g. "injuries are common here, take care!" or "you'll need to be a real badass to not end up like this guy!") Had I not had people explicitly tell me that the sight of a one-eyed man (or whatever else) at the tavern is very specifically a player-knowledge check, I simply would never consider it, and would then feel pretty cheated by suffering the consequences of not doing a thing I literally would not have known to do.

Which, again, is why I talk so much about the GM having enormous control over both the inputs into decisions (what exists at all; of what exists, what the PCs can observe; of what the PCs observe, what they truly get informed about; of what they get informed about, what among those things is actually possible to do/use/interact with/benefit from/etc.) and the results that come from those decisions (consequences, ripple effects, opportunity costs, reputation, etc.) I'm just...not really sure how I can make informed choices (not perfectly informed, but sufficiently informed) in such an environment, and in the absence of informed choice, I don't really think it's possible to have meaningful agency. Insufficiently informed choices don't support meaningful agency--but in order to inform choice, the GM must do much more work to build the world, thereby nailing down options. I'm not saying it's an insoluble dilemma, the tension between "enough prep that players choices are sufficiently informed to be meaningful" and "enough openness that players truly have freedom to choose regardless of GM desire/effort/interest/bias/etc." But it is a tension; to inform, the GM must know; to know, the GM must define; to define, the GM must necessarily fix parts of the world, lock them in place. But to pursue player freedom, the GM must avoid fixing as many things as they can; to fix as few things as possible, the GM must leave things undefined; by leaving things undefined, the GM cannot know what they are in advance; but the GM cannot inform the players of something they themselves don't know, because GM knowledge IS the world, there is nothing of the world BUT what the GM knows of it.

I am, however, generally trying to hold my peace right now, to give robertsconley time to reply, so I'll leave that there--I suspect there will be a response to these thoughts, directly or indirectly.

I'm still wondering how you can make meaningful choices in real life when those same conditions exist (you don't know all that is, of what you observe, you can only be truly informed about part of it, of that part, you don't know how much can be used/interacted with/etc).

 

[AlViking]

Alright. Let's take this example and run with it, shall we?

You decide to go to the store. But before you enter, the store has you blinfolded, puts noise-cancelling earphones over your ears, and puts mandatory boxing gloves on your hands. Functionally, while you are inside, you are in sensory deprivation--except for what your Guide Merchant tells you through those earphones. If you bring other shoppers with you, they'll be able to hear your questions and your Guide Merchant's answers, but everyone has to wear the same blindfold+earphones+gloves setup. Your Guide Merchant is legally required to never lie to you about prices, so you'll always know exactly how much you're spending (no trickery on that front), but beyond that it is their discretion what products they decide to mention and what descriptions or judgments they might make.

Would you say you still have full autonomy in this situation? I can certainly say that, at the very least, even if I were perfectly confident that my Guide Merchant would never for any reason lie to me nor hide anything I would want to know nor even exercise any judgment whatsoever that I wouldn't exercise myself, I'd feel like I'd lost a lot of my autonomy simply because I'm not allowed to observe myself. I am exclusively dependent on second-hand information through the Guide Merchant. But that situation is what players necessarily go through when playing a game of this kind with its radical dependence on GM-world-knowledge.

So, no, I don't accept that there's an analogy here. When you go to the store, you are in full control over what (if any) information you might receive, assuming it's there to be received. There is nothing second-hand, and you make all of your choices for yourself, directly knowing the consequences as much as it is possible to know them. That is what makes it such that you have autonomy. Those things are not, and cannot be, present at the game-table. That doesn't mean that some kind of autonomy can be present. I am not in any way denying or even questioning that here. I'm simply saying that the analogy you've used is not even remotely applicable because of the fundamental, and dramatic, differences between "I went to the store to shop" and "I played in a traditional-GM-sandbox game".

LOL. No, they don't blindfold anyone. They even have handy signs at the end of the aisles. What they don't do is give you a detailed map of the entire store, you have to look down the aisles to find what you want. If you get really, really stuck perhaps you can find someone to help you.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Thank you! This nicely captures my concerns here.

That is, there seems to be a trilemma here:

• GM doesn't give detailed info unless prompted by players, which risks "guessing-game" territory
• GM only gives detailed info about the things she's prepped, which risks "pick your option from the menu" territory
• GM always gives detailed info about everything, well-prepped or not, which risks over-saturation and player interest fatigue

Finding the right balance between the three, not just once, but every single time the GM prepares stuff seems like a tall order. Doing so in a 100% purely intuitionist way, where it's not even possible to talk further about it than "I just work to present a realistic world" (or similar), seems like a Herculean task, and worse, one that's essentially impossible to teach!

All I can tell you is that many people play and run RPGs successfully (as in, to all appearances a good time was had by all) without agonizing over all these worries about ultimate GM power but also without playing a game or a style preferred by @EzekielRaiden . It happens. I do it twice a week.

 

[AnotherGuy]

(1) No prompting at all. This leaves the players constantly having to guess what is relevant or useful or more than just set-dressing, hence my reference to the (pejorative) term for needing to hunt down a single-pixel item in classic adventure games (for computers), aka "needle in a haystack" issues

Can you please provide an example of this in play?

(2) Only prompting about things the GM has heavily prepared. Since the things the GM speaks of are, inherently, boosted above things they didn't speak of, this puts a massive bias towards prep and away from unprepped, which looks like loss of agency to me (the "menu of choices")

Open dialogue between GM and players.
GM: I haven't thought this all through or how it may pertain, I will have to get back to you; OR
GM: I'd like to make this work x way, can we quickly brainstorm on how this may work and importantly to ensure it follows abc restrains so its internally consistent for our campaign?

(3) Prompting about a ton of things, whether all prepped or a mix of prepped and unprepped. A zillion different bits of information...liable to either create analysis paralysis (too many options to pick from) or interest fatigue (too many options to cognitively engage with)

Encourage Q&A at the table, provide the menu visually, repeat menu of choices, encourage dialogue at the table, correct players at the table while they're conversing with each other...
I just imparted a lot of options on the PCs in the session before last, the conversation in and out of-fiction were thorough, I had an excel spreadsheet up with the options via my monitor available for everyone to see.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Lets use the example I provided upthread.
PCs teleport in, steal the mcguffin and teleport out.
How have they interacted with the all the encounters they did not engage with?

Depends. Did they still need to avoid being heard? Are there truly no guards who ever look at the vault? Did they not need to consider shifts or timing? Seems to me that they'd need to do at least these three things:

1. Thoroughly case the joint, to determine the ideal timing for the heist, and to confirm that it isn't warded against teleportation
2. Examine the layout of the building, presumably including guard postings/locations, to make sure they could "teleport in, steal the mcguffin and teleport out" as you say
3. Acquire such a powerful spell (presuming something D&D-like, teleport is a 7th-level spell) so that it can be used to evade the physical barriers in the way--all without having ever visited the teleport location, which would be a difficulty...unless they somehow did visit it, at which point they've interacted with all the stuff you've said they weren't supposed to have interacted with

At the very least, points 1 and 2 would seem to be an interaction with those physical and/or watchman barriers between themselves and their prize. As I said above, it's not the boneheaded ultra-direct way--but it's still an interaction because they are consciously dancing around the fight.

Above, I gave an example of a "bypass" that required ignorance, but I don't necessarily think that's the case. I could also see one where (for example) the GM forgot that one of the players (say the party Rogue) had already received a carte blanche from the Queen. So the GM prepares a complicated fight and/or chase sequence and/or a need to sneak around etc., but the Rogue spends his token of the Queen's favor to request an immediate audience. The whole foundation of the encounter--the need to attack, evade, flee from, bribe, etc. the guards--has been outright negated, not simply addressed in a way that isn't the maximally straightforward approach. There is, I admit, some interaction here--but it's genuinely in an outright no-sale, "nope, NOTHING happens" kind of way, rather than a "solved by diplomacy instead of violence" or "snuck past rather than ploughed through".

Point being, at least to me, a bypassed encounter isn't just "we solved it in a nuanced way". It's "we negated the encounter completely".

As a GM, I don't think I would award XP for the party using the carte blanche to negate any possible encounter with the guards. That doesn't seem like an action which results in putting one's abilities to the test, nor one that develops the characters' motives. Perhaps specific contextual details could persuade me differently (e.g. the Rogue is legitimately trying to romance the widowed Queen, so spending this token of affection this way is super meaningful for him), but on its face, without further complicating detail, I don't think I'd award XP for it--and that's pretty tightly linked to it being bypassed. Conversely, sneaking past stuff, bluffing past stuff, navigating sewers, performing a teleport-based heist rather than a B&E heist--all of those things still strike me as earning XP, at least in the way I would expect those actions to play out at most tables (almost regardless of the GM's style.)

 

[Guest 85555]

Alright. Let's take this example and run with it, shall we?

You decide to go to the store. But before you enter, the store has you blinfolded, puts noise-cancelling earphones over your ears, and puts mandatory boxing gloves on your hands. Functionally, while you are inside, you are in sensory deprivation--except for what your Guide Merchant tells you through those earphones. If you bring other shoppers with you, they'll be able to hear your questions and your Guide Merchant's answers, but everyone has to wear the same blindfold+earphones+gloves setup. Your Guide Merchant is legally required to never lie to you about prices, so you'll always know exactly how much you're spending (no trickery on that front), but beyond that it is their discretion what products they decide to mention and what descriptions or judgments they might make.

Would you say you still have full autonomy in this situation? I can certainly say that, at the very least, even if I were perfectly confident that my Guide Merchant would never for any reason lie to me nor hide anything I would want to know nor even exercise any judgment whatsoever that I wouldn't exercise myself, I'd feel like I'd lost a lot of my autonomy simply because I'm not allowed to observe myself. I am exclusively dependent on second-hand information through the Guide Merchant. But that situation is what players necessarily go through when playing a game of this kind with its radical dependence on GM-world-knowledge.

So, no, I don't accept that there's an analogy here. When you go to the store, you are in full control over what (if any) information you might receive, assuming it's there to be received. There is nothing second-hand, and you make all of your choices for yourself, directly knowing the consequences as much as it is possible to know them. That is what makes it such that you have autonomy. Those things are not, and cannot be, present at the game-table. That doesn't mean that some kind of autonomy can be present. I am not in any way denying or even questioning that here. I'm simply saying that the analogy you've used is not even remotely applicable because of the fundamental, and dramatic, differences between "I went to the store to shop" and "I played in a traditional-GM-sandbox game".

Do you realize that you just continued the stonewalling with a non-answer?

"It looks like this style as a problem, and nobody will tell me how it is handled!"
"Well, maybe this style isn't for you..."

This is deflection. EzekielRaiden didn't ask what style they'd like best! They asked how this situation is handled in the style. Even if there is no standard answer, one should be able to state some common practices clearly and concisely.

"In style A we do X..., In style B we do Y. In style C, we make it clear in session zero that..." and so on.

I don’t think I am stove walking. I’ve been engaging his points now for the entire thread. I have offered up solutions to this problem in another post. My sense after hundreds of pages is sandboxes are just not a good fit for Ezekiel

 

[Maxperson]

If there's no prep, then how does the GM know that there is a "set encounter" at point X, which point the PCs have not visited?

Because the PCs can scout ahead unseen and come across an improvised goblin barricade, then decide to bypass it. Or avoid it if you want to use Gygax's favorite term that means bypass. No prep needs to have been done.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Okay. I'm not quite sure what that means, seeing as how I see the three horns as being...pretty clearly problems to be avoided. But I'm willing to listen.


Okay, but that...doesn't seem to have taken this horn of the trilemma at all? Like this is just saying "Exposition, and player participation in its development, is important and one of the critical parts of sandbox play". I completely agree with that. That's not controversial in the slightest. But does it address the risk (again, not the guarantee, just the risk) of a GM placing excessively high expectations on the players to provide the needed prompts/questions/etc. to trigger the reveal of critical information. I gave an example above of that problem, where I (in the absence of people explicitly telling me otherwise) would 100% guaranteed never have considered to ask the one-eyed man at the tavern about stuff, especially if the GM never says anything about the one-eyed man unless I specifically ask a question about the patrons of the tavern and what they look like. Which was the point of that horn of the trilemma: if you say too little and/or demand too-specific a question/prompt in order to divulge information, the game descends into what is derisively called "pixelb!+©#ing" and what might more charitably be called "inadequate prompting".


Sure, but folks have been highly insistent that they don't do that thing. That their job is never to "elevate the experience", but only to furnish a coherent world in which the players may participate. Putting too much emphasis on specific things A and B and not enough on the seven million other things that theoretically could permit interaction very easily becomes "the GM put her thumb on the scale" rather than "the GM merely provided inclusions and exclusions to improve the experience". Where the previous situation is a (potential) faltering by way of making it too difficult to know what things are of great importance and what things are not, this is a (potential) faltering by way of making it seem like only the "inclusions" matter, and everything else is simply set-dressing.


Really? I find that...a bit hard to swallow. Going into excessive detail on too many things (especially if one is attempting to avoid, as I would term it, "privileging" some answers over others and thus inducing player choice) seems like quite an easy pitfall to fall into.

There's a useful analogy to draw here with classic adventure games, which are the original source of the term "pixelb!+©#ing" and thus (I should hope) reasonably non-controversial to use analogically here. That is, classic adventure games often did fall, repeatedly, into a similar trap:

• The items, entities, or locations you need to interact with are so small, they can only be found by tedious fine-toothed-comb analysis of the world. Where a reasonable search can be fun, an unreasonable one becomes unpleasant--and a clear boundary between the two is functionally impossible.
• The items, entities, or locations in the world you need to interact with are conspicuously different from everything else. You see this problem in a lot of old cartoons too--objects that are usable, or which will/can do something, are a noticeably different color from those that aren't, making everything else just backdrop, flavor-text, necessary filler but not actually meaningful, even if the creator's intent is that no such things be viewed that way.
• The items, entities, or locations you interact with are mixed in amongst an enormous number of irrelevant things that won't actually provide any benefit and don't actually lead anywhere, so it becomes easy to go down irrelevant rabbit-holes or get caught up doing something genuinely unproductive to one's goals. (This was rarer in adventure games, but DreamWeb had this problem for example.)

All of these are real problems that actually do crop up in other media--hence, it is reasonable to at least ask how one would go about consistently averting them. Hence why I said the bit you responded to below. One cannot simply declare that these issues never ultimately matter; such a bald assertion isn't enough. There needs to be something more beyond just "well it always(/nearly always) works for me so your concern is irrelevant"--okay, HOW does it (nearly) always work? What do you do when it doesn't? How do you learn from times where it didn't work so you can prevent that type of mistake from occurring again in the future?


It is not a philosophically skeptical view of GMing in general. It is an unconvinced view that this very specific type of GMing, where the GM is committed to populating and iterating on a world, but simultaneously consistently avoiding anything that (for lack of a better term) "incorrectly" induces player action, is workable in practice without any process or procedure beyond intuition--which is what I have been repeatedly told is the case for many, if not most, GMs of this style. That there simply, flatly ISN'T any kind of process or procedure, and thus it is flatly impossible for someone to explain any part of their process or procedure because such a thing just doesn't exist.

Above I said "(for lack of a better term) 'incorrectly' induces player action", which I think warrants a bit of explanation. There are some things that induce player action which I am confident are acceptable to GMs of this style. For example, a provocateur NPC getting up in a PC's face is pretty clearly an inducement to action, but I suspect that would be generally acceptable to players of this style (and I would not see it as an issue in general, only if overused). But, conversely, a GM that put too much emphasis on only a single pathway forward would be seen as inducing player action "incorrectly"--the inducement doesn't arise (or at least seem to arise) from logical conclusions and known entities, but rather seems to arise from "well I know this HAS to happen in order for THAT to happen" or the like.

It seems quite clear to me that avoiding this "incorrect" type of inducement is of overwhelming concern for GMs of this style. But doing so in a way that avoids all three of (a) providing insufficient information, (b) privileges only the well-detailed options above any others, and (c) overwhelming the players with too much information, does not seem to be the trivial task you have painted it to be.

I have to ask: do you just think people are lying about how they run games, or that their players enjoy what they do? Because that's what seems "inescapable" as a conclusion from what you're saying.