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But they only get to see things the DM has prepared, or things the DM generates when it's requested of them. Everything comes from the DM. The players are merely getting the opportunity to find out what is going to come from them.

It really isn't as hard as you think--especially when GMs in this very thread, self-professed "sandbox" GMs, are perfectly comfortable inserting "hooks" if they feel things have bogged down or the like. It's much easier than you give credit for for a person to think what they are doing is right...

And I've seen this from all of two distinct DMs. Out of about...seven...at this point? Absolutely not. I've never, not once, seen a DM who gives their players the choice of whether the group starts at 1st or 3rd or whatever else. And in my experience, that position is rarer than hens' teeth...

Yes. Which is prep based on player interest, not based on what the world "objectively" contains. Which has been repeatedly cited as one of the most important elements here, that it is utterly and completely independent of the PCs. People have brought that up more times than I could count, that...

But the point--very very specifically, made repeatedly in this thread--is that the world is never created "in response to" the PCs. The specific terms used for this have been "objectivity", "independence"/"independent" (from the PCs and from player preferences), and "extrapolation". I find none...

This. Precisely exactly this. It's the GM's world. You're just getting the chance to witness it.

Then it would be nice if folks on "your side" of this particular discussion would stop doing that to styles you aren't advocating for.

I have yet to see daylight between them. Yes...I literally said that a ways upthread, with an example of how (for example) having a merchant with fancy clothes implies a whole bunch of things about tailoring shops and their employees, expecting that essentially no DM (sandbox or otherwise)...

There only are four or five sites. When players look anywhere else, then and only then is something else produced. At which point, you have--as has been explicitly rejected by several posters in this thread--parts of the world being created in response to the PCs, rather than existing...

But we have had several people in this very discussion give such examples--and that any time players go somewhere else, things are generated in response to player action, which has been explicitly held up as an unacceptable standard of the world only occurring because the players are playing!

... I genuinely don't understand what we're arguing about here then. You recognize that the only things that are getting details...are the ones the GM filter is allowing through. Everything else gets blocked out for, I cannot stress this enough, purely subjective reasons.

My point wasn't that it has to be as realized as the real world. My point was that if the GM is placing three or four points of interest...and those are the only meaningful places to go, with everything else being mostly pointless dithering...then there isn't really that much in the way of...

And I'm saying there are other ways to create the feeling of objectivity. Your way isn't the only way; it's but one among many. Yet folks here, including yourself, even in this post, have argued that it IS the only way to get objectivity.

Cartographers don't place things on maps. They draw maps which correspond to a literal, physical location. Presuming they aren't intentionally making bad maps, I mean. Which means we are right back at the problem of "objectivity" allegedly not being about any physical reality....and yet as...

I never said it was physical. I said that it was created by the GM for subjective reasons, subject to subjective filtering of what is or isn't important, relevant, or interesting. In other words, exactly like the things you and others have tried to claim your approach differs from. I wasn't...

Can someone be in the driver's seat when the only positions on the map are those the GM creates for them to go to?

Except that what @pemerton said is that most settings are objective--meaning, there's nothing particularly special about the objectivity you and others have laid claim to, despite the fact that you (collectively) have asserted that that is a special thing of your approach and not other approaches.

Well, if I may, an example loosely inspired by (part of) the journey we took to get something done in that Ironsworn game. Might goof up some details, it's been a hot minute. Abraxus (my char), Magnus, Alvis (pronounced "all-vis"!), and Harald are Ironsworn--Viking-inspired, oath-swearing...

I'm not necessarily saying we should reduce complexity (I find that that is an easy design trap to fall into, mistaking the removal of crufty or unproductive intricacy for the removal of all texture and expected engagement). Just saying that if the current situation means half to two-thirds of...

Let us not be hyperbolic. Few if any builds "come online" at 17, unless artificially constructed specifically to be builds that only come online at that point. But if most games end before level 10 and a plurality end before level 7....the fact that in 5e you don't really come into your own...