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Agreed. I think a major part of the definition of a sandbox is not just the possibility, but the expectation, that the PCs will start in a place, and be presented with various options as to possible paths to follow, with various degrees of clarity. The most basic sandbox imaginable would be a...

Honestly, making up some exotic lore to justify weird results is one of my favorite parts of DMing. It's one of the main reasons I like to keep my campaign setting so loose.

I've 100% seen it play out in real life, most specifically in 3e. I remember vividly having two wizards and a cleric bring the warrior and rogue to a safe place for a tough fight because we didn't have the slots to spare to buff them to keep them upright. And this was at level 12.

You said it yourself. For a living world game to exist, the setting notes must occasionally thwart the PCs. Otherwise the notes don't actually mean anything! If a guard has been given the trait "Unbribable" in the notes, then the PC has to not be able to bribe the guard. That's the point of...

When a definition of something starts getting overly broad, I generally find it useful to try and define by exclusion. What sort of games are absolutely NOT a sandbox? Off the top of my head, a one-shot of something like Fiasco or Dread is not a sandbox. Pretty much any CoC game example I can...

I've said this in other threads on the topic, but I feel like that if you're interested in presenting the "living world" aesthetic, it's actually crucial that the DM will sometimes negate resolution based on pre-determined aspects of the campaign setting. A "living world" game that is...

Conservative and skeptical, not ignorant. We already established that yesterday. :) Mazel tov to you and your wife, by the way.

Fortunately, dice do a pretty good job preventing those sort of situations from occurring. Although it would be a little weird to bribe enough guards during a campaign to get a statistically significant sampling of guards’ openness to bribery. :)

If you don't view having a traditional monogamous long-term marriage as being temperamentally "conservative", then I agree that we're using the word very differently.

That's fine. I have no desire to argue definitions. I'm still going to continue to use the word, though, especially since it's the thread topic.

Sure, but they aren't being used to protect anyone from malevolent actions. They are there to prevent someone from tripping and falling into the Grand Canyon, or driving off the road while looking at your phone for a new podcast episode (example 100% not personal). :)

Sure. The former is "stubborn", the latter is "conservative".

Considering "guardrails" generally exist in the real world to prevent people from having accidents, that doesn't seem correct to me.

All you're doing is simply a defense of a conservative mindset when it comes to roleplaying game choices. Why not just embrace being who you are? If the label "temperamentally conservative" somehow offends you, I'm sorry for that. I'm temperamentally conservative about all sorts of things...

Honestly, this reminds me of the "player agency" thread from a few years back, in which everyone sort of assumed "player agency" (much like "player-driven) was an obvious virtue in play. It isn't. Plenty of games benefit from being less player-driven or having less player agency.

I don't think it's "anti-sandbox". I think it's anti-"player-driven". I've run (and am running) plenty of trad-style sandbox games. The players enjoy them. They have a good amount of autonomy to pursue leads and push their character in various directions. But ultimately events are happening...

Like any large topic, there's a multitude of factors and no clear evidence of any root cause. I just see enough evidence to suggest some correlation.

It doesn't have anything to do with not liking what I like. It's the lack of desire to continually try new things in favor of the familiar that makes one conservative. I would classify anyone who only plays PbtA games and doesn't want to branch out to new systems "conservative" as well.

Which would seem to be an argument for FKR play? The "worst of both worlds" would seem to me to be a ruleset with detailed character building options and then a bunch of DM guidelines that amount to "Eh, you'll figure it out! Good luck!" But that seems to be a pretty popular paradigm! My gut...

Fair. I, personally, don't like the assumption of challenge/success-driven play outside of games in the OSR/NSR paradigms. For 5e, as an example, I don't think challenge play is the right paradigm; its ruleset and procedures push it in more of a performative/thespian play direction.