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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Manbearcat" data-source="post: 7558472" data-attributes="member: 6696971">1)  I don't dislike the style.  I have run sandbox campaigns repeatedly in my life in multiple systems (as I said above..did you miss that?).2)  On refugees:  The overwhelming majority of players in my games (70+ for sure) over the last 35 years have been refugees from games of the precise style we're speaking about that have failed due to GM issues (of which I've spoken a bit about).  I've probably introduced 30ish people to TTRPGing, so the significant majority of players I've GMed for have been refugees that fled failed games (for the reasons I spoke to...and some I haven't).3)  I mentioned above and then in (1) above that I don't dislike the style.  I run it.  Hopefully, we can move beyond that at this point.  Of the GMs I'm familiar with in my personal life (myself included), only 4 have been successful (myself included) in running long-term campaigns of the variety we're talking about where (a) it hasn't fizzled out due to overwhelming overhead or (b) disgruntled/revolting players.  The number of GMs who have failed/fizzled is 30+.  That % is extremely poor and begs analysis.4)  We hear all of the time from users on these boards about users personal struggles/failures at GMing (or outright horror stories...yes horror...and you've been in some of these conversations) or their dissatisfaction with their home game's GM.5)  Following from 3 and 4 above, I think you suffer from a serious selection bias issue (I don't know if you've been lucky enough to not run into refugee players or if you've had a stable homegame of mates for decades and/or you've just ignored the amount of evidence we have available that pushes back against your hypothesis that the sort of functional game you're describing is normative).  It is extremely difficult to run these sorts of games and have longterm satisfied players.  It requires a seriously talented GM who possesses significant creativity, humility, a forensic knowledge-base, the ability to read social cues and empathize, and the ability to convey information and mood cogently and to a wide array of mental frameworks (as players vary widely in the way they process information).6)  Regarding our "conceptual Bill", my point is two-fold:a)  Whether you like it or not, you are playing a game of "Bill, I would like to do this thing x and it would certainly be preferable if your mental model of the gamestate/fictional positioning matched up with my own conception....therefore x happens" (I'm dispensing with "Mother May I"...I'm just trying to break down the machinery at work in any player action declaration).  That is basically the order of operations; ingest Bill's information regarding the shared imagined space, propose a change to the shared imagined space, find out if Bill's mental model matches up to your own and/or consult the dice if Bill decides that is the best arbiter.b)  Bill, no matter how super awesome Bill is, will suffer from various cognitive biases and other human-driven-problems that will lend themselves toward some measure of tension between how Bill perceives the gamestate and how player x, y, and z (each with their own individual perception due to their own biases and human-driven-problems) perceive the gamestate.c)  Hopefully, all players at the table are humble, understanding, and mature enough to sort through that tension and arrive at some equitable solution when those moments arise.</blockquote>

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