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

[Umbran]

I am not saying his intentions are bad. I saying, I think I have an understanding now of what his concerns are, and while I have solutions to those concerns that work for me, I have to concede, they likely won't work for him.

Wow. You keep returning to that, no matter how often I say this: How well it would fit wasn't the question!

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

In short, I do not agree with the vision you laid out. It doesn’t reflect how I view this hobby, or why I value it. I disagree with many in this thread. Others may feel differently, but to me, the heart of TTRPGs is collaboration.

That doesn’t mean every player gets to dictate world lore, or that the GM has to yield authorship of their prep. It means we treat each other with mutual respect. The GM builds a world, but they build it for us. Players make choices, but they do so in a world that deserves care and consistency. The game works because we trust each other to be good stewards of one another’s contributions.

If a GM wants to completely shut the door on player input; never taking cues, never responding to interest, I think something gets lost. And the same is true for players who treat the GM’s work as disposable. My mother once told my brothers and I, "play nice" and I think that applies here. We’re telling a story together, not competing to see whose vision "wins."

We should work together, respect each other, and have a great time doing it. Open communication and a mindset centered on shared fun are, in my view, the only path to a healthy table culture.

So yes, the table is a shared creative space, where communication and mutual respect are vital.

Right, but this is basically not connected to who can say what, it's true regardless. Also, as you articulate it, what would be the harm in a game being a little more specific about the kinds of stuff it expects to be about?

 

[Guest 85555]

So, I think I see part of the issue: The players don't know what they don't know.

There is typically some minimum of information a player needs to have in order to make informed decisions and have wants and desires. Before they have that minimum information, they cannot generally be expected to know what they are looking for to ask for it!

Again, POV helps the GM establish what information they would initially have. I think there is an art to this, and I don't think there is one technique that will work great for people across the board because all players and groups are different (you have to scale your communication style here to the people you are playing with). And passive roll is useful for things that may not be immediately obvious. Also players saying what they are looking for and asking you questions definitely helps shape out this initial presentation of information. I wouldn't call it the trilemma problem myself, but it is certain a 'forest from the trees' problem. And the GM needs to decide what they genuinely think the player character could see in that moment from their point of view. Once they state that, the players still have time to Q&A and ask for more details if they feel they aren't being given enough (and the GM can provide them or not depending on whether that information would be visible in his opinion).

I think with physical spaces this is actually quite easy. The scenario in the tavern is trickier because if anyone has ever had the experience of being at a social event, there is a sea of people and the logic of who would stand out is not always clear or logical (which is one reason I might defer to rolls, unless players are saying "Do I see anyone who looks X" or otherwise looking for something specific. But my inclination is to describe the sea of people, not the individuals and let the players feel it out from there.

So, while you feel like that answers the question, it doesn't really address the initialization. And it gets worse when you start talking about "passive rolls" - because in this context, failure to make a roll (passive or otherwise) is failure to even find adventure!

There is no adventure to find is the point. The purpose of the living sandbox is not for the players to stumble onto a hook that leads to a path, but for the players to seek out and find their own adventure. The information they have to make that kind of choice, will flow from the initial POV the GM provides, follow-up Q&A, a certain amount of randomness through rolls, etc. Passive rolls are handled in all kinds of ways. I look at it this way, sometimes when I am in my kitchen, my eyes pick up an odd shape moving in a corner and I see the spider, sometimes I don't. If I specially am looking for one, or look in that area, I am much more likely to see it. So a passive roll just represents the 'happening to catch it' aspect. Once the players give me more specific questions or tell me they are looking in a more specific way, then I give them more specific information. Again, I get this won't work for everyone, but that kind of approach is generally how these sorts of sandboxes operate. So if these tools are not providing answers the poster is looking for, the style may not be the best fit. And if other people have different ways of handling this problem, they can certainly advance them. I am just providing the answers that work for me

I think the "VR" thing is an overshoot. It is also aside the point - what ER would like and why or why not, is not the question. They didn't ask anyone's opinion on what they'd like! So, inserting that is not an answer.

I am not saying it as a criticism. But I am just pointing out, his bar is much higher here than mine, in terms of what would be adequate.

I also think this is very much the point. We are debating the merit of agency in a sandbox. And we have given the poster hundreds of answers to these kinds of questions and they always fall short. After a certain point, it becomes clear the style may not be to the poster's taste.

You're not being asked to be a salesman. Nobody is buying from you here.

Yeah, I get that. I was using it as a metaphor. A lot of what we are doing here is fighting over the merit of a style. After a while that gets very tiresome, and we need to look at why this style isn't seeming to work for this poster (I think underlying most of these criticisms of specifics, there is a dislike or frustration with the style itself). My point about being a salesman, was we have already wasted so much time trying to sell the poster on trad living world sandboxes. But it is clear that is not what he wants.

I can understand some of ER's frustration, though, because I think the way folks talk about it is... over glamorizing it a bit? There's a simple practical answer (between my own experience running traditional sandboxes, and how folks talk here) that covers most of the ground:

Do we? I have said it isn't a style for everyone, and it has its limits. I may use language that doesn't feel technical enough for him, but that is how I talk about everything. And I have made a point of cautioning against being overly idealistic about sandboxes. So it isn't like I don't see how they can fall apart or get dull, or just not be for some people. What I like about them, is I feel like they give me a lot of freedom. What is bad about them is they often have a lack of focus and they can meander or fall apart. They also rely heavily on the GM's skills and the chemistry between the GM and players.

This is largely a Skilled Play issue.

How players and GMs manage in a traditional sandbox is established over time by learning how each other work, and playing to it - so it is kind of idiosyncratic, and sometimes difficult to clearly articulate, as it isn't a clear process-based solution. And, those skills don't work perfectly all the time, nor do they work instantaneously. Compared to some other forms of play, there is, especially early in a campaign, a certain amount of "muddling about" in traditional sandbox play before players find a solid direction they want to go in.

Sure. This is definitely the case. I do think there are lots of clear procedures many Sandbox GMs use, but there is also a learning curve and things are often handled rather intuitively .

If we go into the trilemma with the understanding that the players and GM already know a lot about how each other works, then how they can stay out of the failure modes is more understandable. And it also describes how many sandboxes fail - early, before that shared knowledge is established, those failure modes are much more likely to appear.

So, for example, my own players have low tolerance for "muddling about" looking for elements they want to engage in - we only play about twice a month, weekday evening sessions, so they have a high desire to get to clear action. As a group, they also tend to suffer from option paralysis and over-analysis. Thus, they don't ask me to run traditional sandboxes.

Sure, I wouldn't suggest running such a structure for that group. I don't think sandboxes are the best or for everyone. For me, I am quite used to running them and find it pretty easy to keep a campaign going week to week using the traditional sandbox structure (and I am much more comfortable than some people with sessions not playing out towards a climax, with there being meandering and figuring things out, etc).

But I will say, if the concern is the trilemma, POV explanation of what the GM thinks the players see, followed by Q&A and a perhaps some rolls, can do wonders here. But there is an art to learning how to describe what they see. I used to be a lot more verbose and try to pin down every detail, now I lean on broader impressions and work my way towards finer details through Q&A. Also I do think this style requires a certain level of comfort with ambiguity and people imagining things a little differently, then trying to reconcile those differences

 

[Guest 85555]

Wow. You keep returning to that, no matter how often I say this: How well it would fit wasn't the question!

Can you stop telling me how to answer his post please? I think it is relevant. If he thinks it isn't he can tell me

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Someone just mentioned a 'steering wheel' and my natural reaction is "no steering at all!" That's where really interesting story emerges, where play 'in the zone' is. Nobody is steering, nobody knows where anything can go. Now, VB I believe, said to "drive it like a stolen car" but that may imply some control, though certainly players have some directional control.

 

[Maxperson]

The three-prongs:
1) The players are not given prompts by the GM - players have no clue what to choose to do, and "anything they want" is not a sufficient answer, as one cannot make an informed choice without information.
2) The GM prompts everything in existence in the sandbox - the players are overwhelmed with choices/information.
3) The GM prompts some manageable sublist of everything - the players end up assuming those are the only things available, and the sandbox reduces to "pick a mission I prepare for you" play.

"Q&A" is also not a sufficient answer, as without information, you cannot frame useful questions. The GM is the player's eyes and ears, and so must prime the pump, and that leads to the three prongs, above.

The question is then how to manage to keep focus on player choice, while avoiding the three failure modes above. What are the techniques used?

These aren't really techniques, but I've found the following really helps with sandbox play.

1. Proactive players. Proactive players will often find something that looks interesting on the map and start researching what's there or even just pick up and go to see. That gets the ball rolling and once the ball is in motion, it's like a snowball rolling downhill. More and more gets added to the game and gives the players branches to explore.

2. Backgrounds. Players who write backgrounds for their PCs often tie those backgrounds into the game, which gives them avenues to get information and potential goals to go after. It's a smaller snowball than being proactive, but it can work.

3. This is the biggest one. Goals. My players create characters with goals, desires, flaws, etc. and those kickstart things in a big way. If the player has a goal set for his PC, then as soon as session 1 starts, he can begin working his way towards that goal and the interaction with the game world begins. The more PCs that have goals like that, the faster things get going.

 

[Enrahim]

But I will say, if the concern is the trilemma, POV explanation of what the GM thinks the players see, followed by Q&A and a perhaps some rolls, can do wonders here. But there is an art to learning how to describe what they see. I used to be a lot more verbose and try to pin down every detail, now I lean on broader impressions and work my way towards finer details through Q&A. Also I do think this style requires a certain level of comfort with ambiguity and people imagining things a little differently, then trying to reconcile those differences

I really like you sharing that you have found broader impressions work better than detail for you! Do you think you can try to give an example as to approximately how broad strokes you use now? Even better if you manage to compare it to what you might have done before?

 

[Umbran]

I think this “trilemma” presumes the GM’s role is a mechanical; input-output, like a flawed algorithm that needs debugging.

Yep. The original question was framed a bit in terms of the processes and procedures used to avoid some things that would be considered failures in the context of a sandbox.

But in truth, the GM is a participant in the fiction, the primary interface to the world, and a co-creator with the players. Trying to remove collaboration with the GM in the name of increased agency is deeply flawed.

1) When I got to framing the answer in terms of Skilled Play, I believe I took it off that particular line of thinking.

2) A bit of an aside: It is neither flawed, nor unflawed, in an objective sense. Approaches to play can only be evaluated in the context of some set of desires or expectations. Not all games even use the GM/Player(s) model, for example.

 

[Maxperson]

Do players earn XP for "bypassed" encounters?

I give a smaller award if they are aware of and planned the bypass.

I would argue that those they do not earn XP for are bypassed. Those they do earn XP for--regardless of the method by which they obtained that experience, assuming it is commensurate with other approaches--were not bypassed.

I don't agree with that. If they go around an ambush that they scouted out and avoid the fight completely, that's still bypassing the encounter even if they get XP for it. The award is for the avoidance, not actually encountering the enemies.

 

[Deset Gled]

Someone just mentioned a 'steering wheel' and my natural reaction is "no steering at all!"