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Message: <blockquote data-quote="prabe" data-source="post: 8165940" data-attributes="member: 7016699">I agree. I wouldn't describe my own campaigns as sandboxes, but there are points where the party can choose from numerous (in some cases innumerable) options. Heck, my Saturday campaign is kinda at a point like that, and they're high enough level that I'm probably going to ask them what they're thinking of doing, so I can be ready for it (or at least think about it before it happens).I definitely think it's possible for a game to be written so some GM-ish authority devolves to the players. I think it's possible for a game to constrain its GM tightly enough that it feels as though that's happening, even though it's not exactly (I think this is what PbtA games do, but I'm far from an expert and I'm more than willing to acknowledge error if need be). There are games that specifically call for the players to be involved from the start of the campaign in setting-building (Dresden Files and Fate Core come to mind). I think it's possible for a given GM to recognize that running a more collaborative-built world doesn't work as well in their brain (it me) without it meaning that the games or the GM are bad.Why? Because creative people are drawn to TRPGs, and it's a waste not to use all the creativity at a given table. Just because I didn't like the collaboratively built setting I ended up running (not to mention the process took my table way, way longer than advertised) doesn't mean I don't like the idea. It's why--though I've griped a little here and there about an instance of getting 11,000 words of backstory--I have blank spaces in my world and I explicitly ask for how people's characters came to be where they are at the start of the campaign; and, I specifically grab things from those backstories and use them to set up stories in the campaigns and tie the characters to the setting and the campaigns.Yeah. The guy who gave me 11,000 words of backstory has since acknowledged that he went at least a little overboard--as an example.</blockquote>

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