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What if you don’t have to spend a substantial amount of time exploring or learning about the setting, yet the campaign is still managed using my Living World sandbox approach? Would that partially address the concern you're raising? As for "conflicts that are external to the characters’...

Yeah, we’ll have to agree to disagree on that one. I’m more interested in seeing how the players “trash” my setting on their terms. I don’t want to tell them how to do it through rules incentives. The only time I include mechanics like that is when it reflects how the setting actually works...

It’s the “devoid of any consideration or input” part that doesn’t reflect how I run things. Player-first RPGs often start with a light touch when describing the setting. Most of what exists is tightly tied to the characters, important locations, people, and situations exist because they matter...

I understand your frustration. I’ve been thinking about this too, and as folks have probably noticed, I like to dig into what assumptions are actually driving our different playstyles. Way back in the thread, we touched on some of these clashes, but I don’t think we ever really addressed what...

Looks like a good approach to me. One further detail about Joe and his character Max is that after the campaign’s he never got into who he was and what he was about. Outside of working with the group he was always talking to NPCs and building up a web of contacts and collecting rumors...

Always viewed it more as acting as my players’ travel agent, with the wrinkle that if a location isn’t detailed in my notes, I flesh it out as needed. The test, in my view, is this: can your style support running a campaign where the players tell you nothing about their goals, motivations, or...

There is no contradiction. To put it simply, as I am not acting as a storyteller.

First, I want to say I appreciate the way you wrote your response. I think it advances the conversation and raises some good points. While I wouldn’t characterize what we’re doing as fundamentally different, because there’s considerable overlap in techniques, I will agree that BW, PbtA, FitD...

This is correct. If folks weren't clear, my living world approach is only one type of sandbox campaign. There are others like Ben Robbins West Marches, Hexcrawl, etc.

Let me make sure I’m following. You said individual actual play isn’t a reliable testbed, that we only get useful information in aggregate across many groups. So I responded with four decades of experience running campaigns across dozens of groups in home games, stores, conventions, and...

That really depends on the campaign context. To get at the heart of this question, I'd first suggest thinking about how you arrived at that observation. What kind of campaigns were they? What was the dynamic between prep and player direction? You don’t have to answer me, but it’s worth...

Your contention is that one home game is not meaningful, that is reasonable However, my experience isn’t limited to a single group or a narrow context. Over the past four decades, I’ve run sandbox campaigns across home groups, virtual tables, store games, and convention events. I’ve...

Just in time Worldbuilding.

This is incorrect. While nothing is specifically created by the referee for the players as their characters. During the pre game and the campaign detailed locations and NPCs are created because of the players choices either for their characters or as their characters.

It started because I am partially deaf, and it was just easier for me to have the player point at the map and show me what their character was about to do. But over the decades, I found that, used judicially, it really enhanced play. Of course, I did the occasional elaborate set piece like the...