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

[SableWyvern]

To me sandbox just means the players drive the direction of the game. Specifics on how that is handled will vary from one person to the next. On the other hand when there are a half dozen or more pages every time I glance at this thread so I don't feel confident commenting on other people's opinions.

I think @AnotherGuy the nail on the head with their previous comment. Dynamic power levels that match the PCs aren't incompatible with sandboxes, but they are contrary to living world sandboxes.

This is more in keeping with my conversation with @robertsconley. I agree with you to be honest. My sandboxes work pretty much the same way for the simple reason of that's how D&D works. He completely denies that the D&D system has any impact whatsoever on his design of a sandbox campaign. Which is largely what I'm pushing back against.

I don't think any of this is unique to D&D. You can have regions/threats of greater or lesser danger without any of the trappings of D&D, so I don't see any reason to jump from, "you have such regions in your world" to, "D&D made you do it".

Similarly, from the other side, you can have characters who grow in skill, power, wealth etc, without any D&D trappings.

 

[clearstream]

I’m dyslexic, so I can’t take notes, and have a poor short term memory (I find names particularly difficult). I really heavily on what I prepare beforehand, and notes between sessions.

For sure that counts too! On top of what could be established in sessions, there is disclosed prep, signalled or entrained prep, and undisclosed prep. Consistency with what you record before and between sessions would also limit.

This need only be to the standard that facilitates the group's play... it needn't withstand hostile cross-examination based on exhaustive production, where each participant's version is closely scrutinised for variation!

 

[TwoSix]

To me sandbox just means the players drive the direction of the game. Specifics on how that is handled will vary from one person to the next. On the other hand when there are a half dozen or more pages every time I glance at this thread so I don't feel confident commenting on other people's opinions.

To me, or at least how I've normally seen the term used (with the enormous caveat of my normal doesn't match anyone else's), "players drive the direction" is a bit too broad. It basically just divides games into 2 categories, sandbox and module/storypath (where the game is driven by the scripted plot). And I think there are plenty of games that are neither storypath nor sandbox.

To me, a sandbox implies a certain amount of pre-game encounter planning and location frame building. You need at least a loose matrix of a map with some "encounters" that are keyed to the map matrix and something to generate random encounters. If it doesn't have at least some kind of loose geographic framework, I would struggle to classify it as a sandbox.

 

[Umbran]

To me sandbox just means the players drive the direction of the game. Specifics on how that is handled will vary from one person to the next. On the other hand when there are a half dozen or more pages every time I glance at this thread so I don't feel confident commenting on other people's opinions.

I suppose it is a viable approach, so long as it doesn't violate established narrative. If the Great Dragon has been plaguing the lands for a century, or Stradh the Vampire Lord is making an appearance, and the power of these foes has been remarked upon, ratcheting down to not slaughter a 1st level party would not make much sense.

But, if the PCs go after the menacing Cult of Blargh that is hiding in the Foamy Hills... do I really care if they are powered up or down to be a challenge for a 6th or 10th level party? I don't think I do.

 

[robertsconley]

This is more in keeping with my conversation with @robertsconley. I agree with you to be honest. My sandboxes work pretty much the same way for the simple reason of that's how D&D works. He completely denies that the D&D system has any impact whatsoever on his design of a sandbox campaign. Which is largely what I'm pushing back against.

Because you're overlooking the fact that the settings I use were developed across multiple systems. They may have started with AD&D 1e in the early '80s, but I then ran several years of Fantasy Hero, followed by two decades of GURPS, and only returned to classic D&D about 15 years ago. This includes the handful of campaigns using other systems, such as Fantasy AGE.

Even then, the classes I used for my Majestic Fantasy RPG are reflections of common character packages people used in GURPS (later formalized as templates), and I treated levels as large bumps in a character’s “point total” (roughly 25 points per level). I chose OD&D via Swords & Wizardry because its survivability curve was in the ballpark of GURPS fantasy adventurers. Further tweaks to the combat system brought it even closer.

D&D 5e also works for me because if I avoid multiclassing and feats (both optional rules in the 2014 version), the “survivability curve” remains close to classic D&D.

These observations are based on multiple campaigns involving different groups of players. The consequences of using different systems show up in things like how customizable characters are or how long combat takes to resolve, but not in how players make their way through the setting. Not in how many orcs a highly experienced adventurer can handle, or what they need to say to persuade a court official.

In short, the system isn’t destiny. If you adopt a system as-is without critical thought, it will shape your setting into something else. But that’s not how I approach it. I tweak the system to fit the settings I run, not the other way around. And I study the system carefully so I can make only the tweaks that are necessary, because I want to use published resources created by others for that system.

Running campaigns this way has a long tradition in the hobby. It’s more common today to buy someone else’s system and follow the vision of the setting(s) it presents, which is fine. But that doesn’t mean it’s the only way to handle campaigns or RPG systems, just the most popular one right now.

 

[Micah Sweet]

It's not "constrained to their PCs" that I'm talking about here.

It's tons upon tons of hard rules about what players emphatically are not permitted to do--hard restrictions all over the place. You can't attempt things you don't have training for. You can't get training except in XYZ ways. You can't have a species other than the species options hard-coded into the world by the GM. You can't have a class the GM doesn't feel like permitting. You can't have a background (in both the formal and the casual sense) unless it gets meticulously approved by the GM. You can't have--as someone once asked me, when trying to put together a character for 5e--someone who is very wise, but really bad at observing their surroundings. (She was trying to model her now-husband, who can be deeply oblivious about things right in front of his face, but who is a practicing psychiatrist that really does do a very good job at helping his patients understand what complications they're dealing with.)

Players need to be constantly constrained lest they do something Unacceptable. But GMs? Oh, no no no. GMs can never be limited. That would be the worst thing ever.

Yeah, all those things may be true because they are features of the setting and the game rules. And guess what? All the players and the GM agreed to play under those rules, as hard it that seems to be for you to believe. You want to play under a different setting and ruleset? Great! Play that game.

 

[Micah Sweet]

I'm not "letting" anything. It's simply my nature.


I literally cannot mentally do that. I am not cognitively capable of doing that. I will always know that it is just as you say, a pretense.

I also don't see the game as gambling, as I've already said--and I hate gambling anyway. There is a reason you have (almost certainly) seen me say, "If I were a gambling man (which I'm not)" or some variation thereof. I don't do gambling. Gambling messes me up on multiple fronts. Those who wish to participate, more power to them, but for me it's an emphatic Big No, Do Not Want.


Nnnnnnope. Even if I could somehow white-knuckle my way through it and not have it have some kind of negative effect in the moment, it would, guaranteed, 100% never be something I would laugh about later. Frankly, even just imagining something like that happening is stressful. If the story were told at all, it wouldn't be by me, and I'd be taking steps to stay calm and not let the emotions overcome my better judgment.


Doing this as one post since it's a related thing.

When I roleplay, I am investing part of my self into the character. That's why, for example, I genuinely find it impossible to play a truly unrepentant evil character for anything but a very brief time (maybe a single session at most). I can get away with it with NPCs, because even the most vile NPC isn't going to be getting spotlight time for most of a given session, let alone session after session after session. I can keep my distance. But anything I'm actually playing most of the time, long-term? Yeah, I'm putting some of what I am into that character.

If I don't do that, I can't meaningfully roleplay them. That level of investment, of "immersion" (knowing that word is often over-used), for me, requires that I remove some of the barrier between "myself" and "the character". Running an utterly divorced mental model of the character would be cold, sterile, mechanical. Like trying to pilot one of those "made to look like a real human" robots that sets off all sorts of uncanny-valley stuff--it just wouldn't work, not for me. Or if that analogy doesn't work for you, it would be like asking an author to craft a novel about a concept they feel nothing about and have no knowledge of nor connection to, other than academic journal articles on the subject--sure, they might be able to produce a string of words that follows English grammar and is printed on bound pages of paper, but it wouldn't be "a novel" in any of the ways that actually matter.

(Incidentally, the same goes for all of my creative work. I can't make things I don't feel at least a little inspired about, and if I'm inspired, I'm putting some of myself into them. I cannot not invest when I am creating, not if the created product is to have any quality whatsoever. This primarily applies to prose and poetry, but it affects anything I create.)

I certainly understand that not everyone will approach things that way. I don't understand how, but my understanding is irrelevant to whether it works for others. But telling me to divest is...like telling an artist to stop caring about the work they make. That you could make anything at all if you just stopped caring about what you create. I can't do that; it's not an unwillingness to make the choice, it is that that simply isn't a choice I am capable of making.

Ok, I understand where you're coming from even if I don't work that way myself. I'm a little ruffled by the idea that you apparently believe creative work is impossible unless you are so emotionally invested that you can't separate yourself from the work...kinda flies in the face of the entire entertainment industry IMO.

One more reason why you and I would probably be a bad fit for the same table, I guess.

 

[Micah Sweet]

So why do you continually impute a different, abuse-preventative motivation to those who enjoy a different procedure of play from that which you prefer?

Not sure what you mean. Please untangle and re-phrase this statement so I understand how I'm being characterized.

 

[TwoSix]

Yeah, all those things may be true because they are features of the setting and the game rules. And guess what? All the players and the GM agreed to play under those rules, as hard it that seems to be for you to believe. You want to play under a different setting and ruleset? Great! Play that game.

Yea, I agree with this. If the players and DMs agree to a campaign framework, then the players should be able AND willing to make characters to strengthen that framework. If the campaign framework is just "standard D&D", then sure, I can understand (and I share) the desire to play a concept that pushes against the boundaries of the framework.

But if you agree to a specific framing (like "we're all Vikings"), then being like "Yea, but I want my Viking to also be a silver dragonborn from Persia" is a violation of the social contract to support the game's specific framework. If you don't like the framework, don't agree to it. If the DM twists the framework after the game starts, then walk away, because the DM is also violating the social contract.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Did you, perhaps, consider the possibility that that meant your players weren't that excited about playing vikings?

Because I would take that as an indication that the game I offered wasn't really what the players wanted to play.

I believe they suggested just that in the post to which you responded.