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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 4706035" data-attributes="member: 4937">People... people... people... context, let's stay in context.The original thread revolved around, "Should the game world conform to the player's out of character wishes?"  Specifically, "Should the PC's be able to tell the DM OOC what treasure they would like to find and have a reasonable expectation of recieving it?"  That largely morphed into a discussion of whether the DM should be designing the world so that it fit to the character's current abilities, or whether the DM should design a world without regard to the characters current abilities and then allow the character's to find their place in it.Some people have claimed that there is nothing semantic difference between the two things, which I find really odd given the context.  If there is nothing but a semantic difference between the two things, then there is for example, no difference between getting a 'wish list' from the player's and giving them exactly what they want, and not giving them exactly.  Clearly in practice, when we get down to specific details, the two different 'schools' of design are going to encourage different things.  Equally clearly, alot of us do a little of both, and that is hardly surprising and likewise there are going to be border cases in the middle where we can't clearly separate which principal is dominate.   As I said in my very first post in this whole tree of ideas, this isn't an either/or question.  "The DM is for the players, and the players are for the DM."  There is a mutuality going on here where neither is enslaved to the other, and on the other hand both depend on the other.  However, if I define some terms and list some attributes as opposites, attacking me that they aren't different is just kinda lame.  Sure, they share alot in common, and one of marks of a particularly experienced DM is that there is a seamlessness to his on the fly invented stuff and his heavily prepared and scripted stuff so that everything just feels like one living breathing emersive world.  But for crying out loud, I've played long enough that I can say that there is very definately a different feel to a DM that does alot of preparation, does a lot of high concept stuff, does lengthy 'adventure paths', and tends to put the party on rails, and a DM who does a more sandbox approach and allows narratives to arise naturally as a consequence of player actions.  It may all be 'adventurous', but if we are going to talk about it with any sort of precision you are going to have to cut me some slack.  I didn't create the freakin' terms, I'm just trying to help people see the distinction in a concrete way rather than talking about abstract things like 'the sure feel different when you experience them'. If people created a distinction between 'scenario' and 'adventure' it was probably because they were trying to do the same, probably because someone was insisting that there was no difference.Sure, player driven play may end up generating adventures in the sense that the DM may now have to flesh out the Tomb of Raxtor the Magnificent if the PC's decide to descecrate the place.  In that case, the DM is going to be creating a dungeon with the very same skills he'd probably have used if the DM had thrown the PC's and hook and dragged them to the place.  At that point, there might not in fact be alot of difference.  But, we can probably expect that the 'sandbox' DM may do things that we wouldn't expect the DM that tailor's the world to the PC's to do.  For example, if the PC's are 6th level, the 'sandbox' DM may be perfectly willing to have Roxtor be a 18th level Lich Wizard, which would not expect the DM's that lean more heavily toward tailoring the world to the PC's to do.  So, there will be a difference, both in the experience and the meta-game.  The 'sandbox' PC's have a different meta-game because their players don't know whether or not they are getting in over their head.  The 'scripted' PC's on the other hand know that they won't be getting in over their head because otherwise the DM wouldn't have thrown them a hook.That's a difference.  You can pretend that's not a difference, but I assure you that if you'd sat at both tables, you'd notice the difference both in the game and the way the player's play the game.  In order to be really successful at both tables, you have to adopt a different style of play.  With scripted play, generally the rule is, 'He who hesistates is lost'.  Parley is generally a waste unless the DM heavily hints otherwise because these encounters were planned as obstacles for you to overcome, and he probably imagined out how the battle would probably be fought.  Parleying gets in the way of the DM's plans, and probably simply isn't going to work.  The correct responce to most things in an 'adventure' is to try to ambush them and kill them before they get a chance to kill you.  This is often suicidal at the 'sand-box' DM's table.  In order of preference, in a scenario the solution to things is usually 'Evade', 'Run', 'Talk', and then 'Fight' because you generally have no idea what is going on until you've had time to research the matter.  He who goes in guns blazing is lost.  Always look before you leap.</blockquote>

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