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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Guest&nbsp; 85555" data-source="post: 8164006"><p>I don't know how else I can phrase this and make it clear: in a sandbox, the player is only able to say he wants to search for his brother. It wouldn't be considered reasonable to say I want to have a campaign where I search for my brother and then explore our shattered relationship or something. Once the player says I am going to search for my brother, then the GM needs to seriously consider what happened to the brother. I don't know the details here. He may decide the brother is a live in port town somewhere, he may decide he is dead, he may decide he is dying and has thirty days to live, there are countless possibilities. But settling on any one of them just wouldn't be considered not taking the request seriously in a sandbox. It would be. I think you are looking at this from the perspective of another style of play, which is fine. And in that style of play, this wouldn't be considered a fair consideration (because the player has an expectation that they are able to set out some of the things that are going to be explored with the brother). I get that. I play in a savage worlds group where we do that often. Someone might say I want to look for my father who abandoned us when we were young and have a kind of "girl named sue" relationship with him. We'd all be fine with that, and if I was running the game, and said "Sure thing". Then at the very start of the game handed the player a letter saying his father died of lung cancer, that would be a crappy move I think (honestly though I can't imagine players in my group getting angry if I did that, I think they would see it as an attempt at humor, and roll with it, but it would certainly deviate from the spirit of play and what the player was fairly expecting, so it wouldn't be a good GM judgement). But that isn't the kind of play I am talking about in a sandbox. You typically are not doing that kind of thing in a  sandbox. It is almost always, whatever is going on with your brother, that is for the GM to decide. You only have control of what your character does. It is a valid style of play. And agency is considered to be your freedom to explore the setting through your character. That has been the standard understanding of agency in this context. It isn't even controversial I think. I am genuinely surprised to encounter the view I am encountering in this thread.</p></blockquote><p></p>

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