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

[AnotherGuy]

To me, this seems a description of GM-centred play.

I've never shied away that the setting is the GMPC. I'm the one who selected which APs/modules as well as homebrew content exists.

The PCs drive play in so far as directing me what to prep from the above GM content. Intermixed in all of that are their character goals which I prep for only when they seek an opportunity from the party goal. As they've increased in levels more and more they gain a greater say in the play that exists.

I don’t believe we've reached a 50/50 split yet but that's my goal for the start to the final act of the campaign.

 

[zakael19]

'm not sure that can be avoided completely. Strandberg's Blinding Light sessions do sometimes roll through a number of low-stakes scenes (or we could call them "demi-scenes"?)

I can't speak for what Strandberg does, and I guess it depends how you define "low vs high stakes." When my players want to explore quiet moments with their potential romantic partners, centered around the question "should I stay here, or is it too dangerous for everyone" I think that's a scene with pretty high stakes. When I frame the Blessed into a meeting of the local "knitting circle" who have heavy expectations of this new chosen of Danu to be a spiritual center for town, that feels like pretty high stakes - with her authenticity and reputation at question. When I stick the Marshal in a scene with his estranged sister and niblings to levy the competing questions of a trade expedition with the kids & answer what really happened to his brother, that feels pretty high stakes.

What I was trying to indicate here is that, at least for how I run my games, we tend to frame pretty directly into a scene to start exploring a question - sometimes brought by the players directly with confrontations with other PCs; usually by drawing that frame with some establishing questions and making provocative moves. I know others do even harder scene framing, but I tend to establish and then build.

 

[AnotherGuy]

@Faolyn says its primarily combat, when used in D&D. @Maxperson disagrees. Which is correct?

You seem to agree with @Faolyn. @Paul Farquhar agrees with @Maxperson.

To me, this is making it all the more difficult to work out what is meant by "bypassing an encounter".

I agree that it's not in-fiction conversation between characters.
As a GM I may say after a session to the players while recounting the game, that they were smart/fortunate as they bypassed x encounters by doing x. We may discuss what impact bypassing those encounters had on their resources, the direction the storyline went etc.

Encounters definitionally is more than just combat (@Maxperson is right on this) but the majority of the time when one uses bypassed and SPECIFICALLY because of the word bypassed, its in relation to combat encounters. Sadly I don't see @Faolyn's posts as she has me blocked.

Anyways that's my take on it.

 

[zakael19]

That's similar to what is achieved when a GM extensively preps setting. It can leave room for extemporising while the cognitive load is prepaid, so to speak; productive of consistency.

One difference in Stonetop is overtly flagging open questions and in various ways drawing players into answering some of them. I suppose there is a definitional decision as to whether "sandbox" ought to include that. To me it can so long as an experience of exploration is retained.

Whether or not that's right, designer prep of something like Griffin Mountain can certainly support sandbox. Where designer fabricates setting, what is left for sandbox GM to do?

Right, I've played in a lot of extensive settings previously. I've run APs that have moment by moment play mapped out, I've played in the FR; or Exandria; and other such stuff that has quite a bit of reference material. I've run an OSE sandbox hexccrawl using Dolmenwood - which has tons of stuff provided.

What I've never seen before is a) a setting that gives you so much detail for each "zone" but never fills it in completely: Oh, you're going into the Great Wood? Cool, here's touchstones for what it looks/sounds/feels like for each season; here's the sorts of questions you might want to ask the players as you explore to dig into their characters and invite them to add to the world; here's some ideas of why they might go into the Great Wood; and here's the terrain/discoveries/dangers/etc that you can put together to make an Expedition. and b) has players so engaged in the world itself from session zero (where your character creation questions define a fair bit unique about the world and get your specific character invested) that they are actively itching to get out there and uncover those tantalizing hints + bits of lore. A lot of the latter of course we'll establish together (my two groups have very different ideas of what the Forest Folk look like, and why they vanished a decade ago for instance).

The only stuff there for you to use straight up is the Dangers and like artifact discoveries, everything else is coherent outlines with space that asks you to take what your players havefed back as their input into the world building & their flags as priorities to take that possibility cloud from words into points of interest/ exploration moves / etc.

Contrasting to Dolmenwood, I'm told that in Hex XXX Y and Z are there, and if the PCs spend time searching they might find U. Some of Y and Z might be loose, but most of it is like moderately tightly defined but without full "pick up and play" so you still need to prep some thoughts, and since it's OSE you need to have enough stuff for the players to dig into, which I found a lot heavier lift.

Like many other sandbox folks here, I often just have my players roll on the random tables for Stonetop and extemporize something if they want to make a quick woods expedition due to something that happens in the session or whatever.

 

[zakael19]

Although the games I tend to prefer - BW, TB2e, Prince Valiant, MHRP and variants - aren't the same as Stonetop, speaking with a level of generality they are pretty similar to what you describe here.

The players have provided signals - formal and/or informal - about what is interesting to them, and how they want their PCs to be challenged. And I frame scenes that speak to those things.

This is why @Faolyn's example of the ignored hook is strange to me. If I frame a scene and it fizzes, that isn't about the players just making a choice: rather, it means that communication between player and GM has broken down (at least for the moment) and I as GM need to find a way to get my scene-framing back on track.

Ah yeah, that's a great point there. I've definitely had some moments where play felt like it was lagging out, and I realized I needed to get better at both helping wrap a scene; and ensure we had a "purpose" or question to address. I'm still working on that, but I can see those scenes that crackle because we're all focused in on the moment (which can vary between that tension of those chimeras stalking them, through to two PCs having an exasperated back and forth over how each did something in the others absence they would've never expected or 'allowed') and the interplay.

Asking for "stars" or as Stonetop puts it "Praise something about teh session (in the fiction or around the table) that you enjoyed or appreciated" at the end of session also helps, because when certain players highlight a moment of respite where they can just talk through events, or that fight against an undead creature, or the description of ominous dread and horror it's all little "tick" marks for me to bring stuff like that forward again in the future.

 

[AnotherGuy]

If it somehow is possible to generalize this concept to a different context like an improvised sandbox?

Bypassing encounters which would typically be improvised (i.e. not planned)? ...
So the encounters are created at random.
Technically that could happen I suppose (thinking through several RE examples).
Im of the opinion it's more common to use such term through for planned content but you would not be incorrect to use it for RE if they were avoided. Such as RE dragon passing far overhead (PCs haven't been spotted yet) and PCs take the necessary steps to avoid the dragon.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Most groups are not friends who have been gaming together for 30+ years.

That, alone, already puts Lanefan's group well outside the bounds of most TTRPG groups.

None of which has anything to do with the explicit claim that it's somehow totally okay to assume that players are dirty rotten swindlers who need to be constantly watched lest they get away with their chicanery, while GMs are pure as the driven snow and must be implicitly trusted until you can build an ironclad case that they've done something wrong.

All I can tell you is that @Lanefan is far from the only person who has suggested this view. It is definitely a thing.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

All I can tell you is that @Lanefan is far from the only person who has suggested this view. It is definitely a thing.

Then he is far from the only person with a stance I consider profoundly unfair and biased. It's simply not acceptable. "Rules for thee but not for me" isn't and never will be.

 

[Maxperson]

Which of these two propositions is correct?

I don't see two. Can you type out the other one since the person you are quoting has me blocked?

 

[Maxperson]

Technically encounter is all of that but in casual conversation when someone says "the PCs bypassed the encounter" we tend to think it's a combat encounter which was bypassed/avoided.

I think that's because most encounters tend to be combat encounters due to combat being the primary way to earn XP. However, in casual conversations here and in other places, I commonly hear talk about social encounters and exploration encounters. Interestingly, I'm not sure that I've ever seen trap encounter. Folks leave those simply as traps.