D&D 5E Do You Prefer Sandbox or Party Level Areas In Your Game World?

So these are two approaches that campaigns can (and do) use. They have various names, but I'm using these names. I've used both approaches in the past.

Obviously there is more nuance than the definitions below, but these are two possible extreme ends of the poll when voting feel free to choose whichever end you tend towards, or embellish in the comments.

Sandbox -- each area on the world map has a set difficulty, and if you're a low level party and wander into a dangerous area, you're in trouble. The Shire is low level, Moria is high level. Those are 'absolute' values and aren't dependent on who's traveling through.

Party -- adventurers encounter challenges appropriate to their level wherever they are on the map. A low level party in Moria just meets a few goblins. A high level party meets a balrog!

Which do you prefer?

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Bogus. The "shared fiction" is just a theoretical construct. Maybe it has a central place in whatever table-centric model you're working with here to convey your idea of how RPGs work, but have you stopped to consider that this model does not adequately account for every possible play-style?

Not every play-style treats the "off-stage" elements of a campaign milieu as un-collapsed quantum wave-functions. Not every play-style gives supreme priority to whatever broad-strokes, high-level details are agreed upon by the DM and all those playing at a given moment.

There is a milieu-centric model, where the only fictional world that has any "reality" worth a hoot is the one that exists in its totality solely in the DM's imagination, notes, and maybe books or other apocrypha. The players get to glimpse a fraction of the whole at any given moment, but the milieu isn't "quantum," only extant when and where the players are looking at it. Rather, it's persistent.

The basic West Marches campaign setup provides a simple example. If a single DM is running a game for three separate parties (we'll call them A, B, and C) who never interact with each other directly, but whose actions upon the game-world can in turn be felt by the others, there is in no meaningful sense a "shared fiction" between parties A, B, and C—only three separate "shared fictions" during any given game session between the DM and A, the DM and B, and the DM and C. But the reality of the game world is held together by the DM, who is operating (for lack of a better analogy—I hate this one only slightly less than the abuse of quantum mechanics jargon these discussions always spawn) as the "CPU" and "RAM" of the ongoing "simulation." This does not work without the DM's reification of the entire milieu, including those setting-elements never directly encountered by any of the players. If, instead, the setting elements are treated as "quantum" (again: ugh), it's not really a persistent sandbox (which is not to discount the possibility of presenting a convincing illusion of one).

Okay so, would you at least agree then that these things, while not ACTUALLY observed by the party directly, were always right there to be observed if anyone had tried? Because that's the real line of demarcation here. It's not JUST "oh they saw it, now it's real," it's "oh, it has interacted with their environment in such a way that anyone at any time could ask, and an answer should, rationally, already exist."

But if (for instance) the party has never been to the Far Continent and never seen the long-abandoned Pyramid of the Five Suns and never interacted with any piece of the culture or heritage of the peoples that built it, is there any even POTENTIAL way for them to know what the true name of the Shattered Sun is? If not, then this is (to use your computer analogy) a potential new insert for the simulation, which has not yet been loaded in RAM. It still only exists on the hard drive. And as long as it has never been loaded--as long as no part of it enters RAM for any reason, whether or not the CPU ever touches those bits--then it is absolute free rein for me, as developer, to alter it as I see fit.

Or if you wish to push the comparison even further, prep work is pre-alpha internal testing before a patch goes out to installed games. Once the file is actually installed, even if the players never run those files, they exist, and save games COULD depend on those files. You as developer can no longer just willy-nilly modify them. But if you haven't released it yet, if no player could even potentially have a save file dependent on it, then what could possibly be wrong with changing it? It has absolutely zero effect on the simulation until it in fact interfaces with said simulation. Prior to that interface, it's nothing. After that interface, it cannot be changed without justification (again, even if no one ever actually asks, even if it never ends up mattering why it changed, because it COULD matter at any moment if someone thinks to ask.)

 

[Ovinomancer]

There is no fiction in the game that is unchangeable by the DM. I'm the absolute arbiter of the game. I can rewind time, I can undo anything, I and cause anything else to happen. Rule 0. So by your "strict" interpretation of "the fiction" then in my games nothing is the fiction. It's all changeable. And my unwillingness to do such things does not negate the fact they are possible. So being possible, then nothing is fiction by your definition.

I don't really agree that you can do this and still have a game. It's a theoretical position that says that the GM has authority over everything, including player action declarations, albeit in a retroactive sense. I mean, if this is the position you're staking, then the game is really Mother May I with a side of "pray I don't alter the deal further."

There's a pretty notable difference between changing what's in the GM's notes, which requires only the GM, and changing what happened at the table, in the shared fiction, which requires checking with everyone. I mean, if you don't, then you're one of those stories.

I strive to always assume good faith gaming. Don't make your argument contingent on bad faith just to make a point.

Vibrant, consistent, and believable are all subjective. I absolutely agree that some people can feel that something is all those things when I would absolutely not think they are. I suspect in these games you mention that dissociative mechanics are rampant and that alone would make me not feel the world is vibrant, consistent or believable. It's why I don't play 5e to begin with. I can't stomach the HD and the second wind, etc...

Yup, and you don't really know, do you? What's a dissociative mechanic if not hitpoints and character levels? These seem fine. Every complaint I've seen that throws mechanics under the bus because they're "dissociative" is usually ignoring massive "dissociative" mechanics all around, just because they're used to those mechanics, so of course they're not a problem.

For me though, my long experience of gaming is that DMs who do no prep provide very little in the way of immersion. Now I totally agree that is my anecdotal and subjective experience. Meaning some might find such games immersive and others might agree they are not but can be immersed with a better version of that style. Now, we can argue fun vs immersion. I might have some fun playing a game that is not immersive. But with my limited gaming time, I prefer immersive games. I don't think most board games are immersive and yet I could play them. Typically in such situations though it's a two or three hour one time experience and not a years long commitment.

I don't doubt your experience. There are plenty of GMs not good a improv. I've played in prepped campaigns that were a mess, too. Does that mean I can dismiss prep? Nope, it's a great way to do things. I'd appreciate some reciprocity (<-- favorite word) on this.

So you can't really say that any game is guaranteed immersive. You can say it is immersive for you. You can also not say that any style of gaming is immersive. You can say it is for you. And the same holds true for me. I can't say any game or style is not immersive. I can say it is not immersive for me.

Shrug, I guess a position where no one can actually say anything is something? It certainly insulates everyone from actually looking at their play in any critical way.

Also, let me break down the other style a bit for you.

I like to think of the Pathfinder Adventure Paths, when used as the primary vehicle for the group, as the party approach. The party still likely finds a hook and picks up the clues and begins the adventure path. The DM provides the connective tissue between adventures and he provides a small modicum of underlying world info to the group as needed. The NPCs for example all exist to support the adventure path. If they do not support it then they are essentially "extras" that the DM can just randomly choose.
Often a third party world, like Pathfinders, is used because that enables the DM to provide the information without a lot of extra effort. This approach is very popular no matter what the above poll says. Not everyone comes here and those who do are more invested in roleplaying than the average gamer.

In a sandbox, that adventure path could exist. It's not the only thing that exists though. It's probably not the only or even the primary set of adventures. It's just one possible choice and it's far more likely the group might quit the path early and lunge off in another direction. It's kind of like the DM has to have many adventure threads available and the party can choose to follow whichever one they want to follow. A lot of the NPCs in a sandbox are important and are part of something that is happening. Lots of them are plotting. You know as DM how it all interconnects. Adventures might lead back and forth from one thread to another. It's kind of like you are bobbling the plots of a dozen novels. If the group interferes then that novel turns out differently but if the group doesn't then the novel runs to completion with whatever consequences. I also tend to think you develop stronger relationships between PCs and NPCs. The NPCs have real personalities and are up to their own agendas.

Thanks for this, but you're in error if you think I'm not extremely aware of your approach -- I just got done responding to you that I've used it, recently. So, try to reconcile that I 1) know your approach, 2) think it's a good approach to use for at least some of my own gaming, and 3) am still saying what I am saying.

I addressed the "changing your mind" in a previous post. Nothing in the game world is unchangeable to a DM. So the past, present, and future are malleable by your rules. The only limit to change is the DM choosing not to change something. We very much play by rule 0 in my games.

You see, if a player asked me ten years later if I remember a campaign where he rescued a young maiden, I might say yes. He might then ask whatever happened to that maiden. Now if I wrote it down what happened then I'd answer. I would answer to the degree that I'd established it as a campaign fact. If I say she married the prince or that her brother killed her then those things happened in that campaign. Now obviously under normal circumstances I don't work out things beyond the end of the campaign but that was an example. Perhaps a better question. What if a player asks "Was old otho a traitor? Was he working for the enemy?" I can answer emphatically "yes" or "no". It would be a fact. Even though the group never found out I knew that fact. I knew that when the group told otho they were going north that he'd report to the enemy. It impacted what they might meet going north as well. And I had Otho in place from the start as a traitor because if I just imagined him at that moment I'd feel like it was cheating.

What you seem to be missing in my posts is that I'm not arguing that prep isn't an excellent framework from which to provide consistent fiction, even across years, but rather that it is not at the same level of "real" as what's entered into the game. This is because you can change it without repercussions, permission, or issue at any time. You can add to it. You can subtract from it. I mean, your story about the traitor, it's possible that you wrote yourself a nice bit of fiction in the intervening years and changed what you conceived for that character during that time, so maybe it was prepped he was a traitor, but you've changed it. The player reads your fictional piece, and that's the truth now.

Until someone else knows it, it's not fixed.

I was thinking the "story of the characters" as opposed to the truth of the campaign. The story of the characters is a subset of the truth of the campaign.

Is it a fictional story?

I don't know how anything you said indicates you have a regard for campaign truth. I am sure there are preppers who change things all the time on the fly without regard for the truth of their campaign. Being a prepper doesn't mean you respect campaign truth. Even being an improver, you can respect campaign truth I suppose but it's only what you establish as rules with the PCs and what happens during play. So you choose to limit campaign truth to those things.

So my rules are a DM will create a campaign sandbox and play it straight. He won't change the underlying truth. Now I will concede that you only have as much truth as you have established as DM. So if I have written down info about an Inn and it's inhabitants but no map, I might add a map at some point. Once the map is added I don't change it wholesale.

I think one issue Ovid is you take something that is mostly true but not always and you want to make it absolutely true 100% of the time. That is at least how I'm seeing it. No offense intended in that assessment.

Ovi, thanks. No d.

The only "truth" is what's shared. Prior to this, it is, at best, a framework to present the shared fiction, and can be changed. You've locked in on "but I don't change it" and that's cool, but it doesn't change the fact that it can be easily changed. If things are true because I choose them to be true, then this is not a useful definition of true. Your argument here suggests that a thing is true if it isn't changed, and somehow not true if it is changed, when it's occupying the same space. I mean, I might make some notes for a game a year in advance, and then, a week before a game, drag those out, review them, and decided I don't like how they work out and make some changes. Accordingly, I've now rendered them not true? Yeah, I can't get behind this at all. Instead, I present a clean, clear boundary -- it becomes true in the shared fiction only when it's shared. Prior to that, it's only the GM's notes.

The GM establishes it as a truth of his campaign. Of course the process of creating an adventure does not lock it down room by room. Once it has been created full and put into the campaign world then it's established. Adventures are a bad example anyway. A better example would be the inhabitants and businesses in a town.

And, again, I ask when it is created full? At what point does the draft become the not-draft and thus truth? I mean, you pointed out an inn above, with no map. Then you add a map, and perhaps, because you like the map, made a change to prior prep to accommodate the map. Is this not possible? How can this truth change?

What would an error be though? The GM saved the wrong version of work? Would not the fact he recoiled at the idea that what he had actually established was not there that he was correcting? So sure if I create adventure A and accidentally overwrite adventure B instead of putting it where A goes then I will try to get A where it belongs and restore B.

You look and realize you wrote down 80 goblins live in this cave, but the map you added later can only hold 20, if you pack them in. What gives here?

Nothing is fixed but what you choose to fix. You've arbitrarily decided that what the players see is fixed, it's not by the way, and what hasn't been seen is not. That is your "rule" and that is fine. It's not my rule though and you keep wanting me to see your rule as an absolute truth.

If it's shared to the players, and it's changed without discussing it with them, then you'll likely have some problems at your table because you're negating the one thing they can control -- what their characters do. This is the only thing that the GM has no control over, but your assertion that you can just changed the shared fiction does exactly this -- the players made choices and actions based on situation A, and now you've retconned that to situation B. You've violated the only thing that Rule 0 doesn't actually cover.

And Rule 0, IMNSHO, is a terrible rule. It's talking about how the rules can be changed to suit the game (ie, they're not locked and inviolable), it's not establishing the GM as dictator, empowered to change anything anytime.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

@Emerikol
So...do you actually do this to your players on the regular? "No, those events you remember never happened." "Actually, the monster is now 100 feet tall and covered in chainsaws." "I've decided that you actually have a million gold instead of twelve." "The whole party is now mice. We're playing Mouse Guard now."

Like...do you really treat every part of the game experience as though it can be unilaterally changed with no more than a declaration from yourself?

Because I honestly do find it a little difficult to believe that you have happy players if you do this sort of thing to them more than "once in a blue moon." And if you DON'T just declare these things...if you actually take time, even if only a moment, to try to get the players on board for a change like this....you aren't actually acting unilaterally. You're getting consensus first. And that consensus-establishing step is EXACTLY the difference between modifying not-yet-part-of-the-simulation prep work, vs literally anything else.

 

[tetrasodium]

@Emerikol
So...do you actually do this to your players on the regular? "No, those events you remember never happened." "Actually, the monster is now 100 feet tall and covered in chainsaws." "I've decided that you actually have a million gold instead of twelve." "The whole party is now mice. We're playing Mouse Guard now."

Like...do you really treat every part of the game experience as though it can be unilaterally changed with no more than a declaration from yourself?

Because I honestly do find it a little difficult to believe that you have happy players if you do this sort of thing to them more than "once in a blue moon." And if you DON'T just declare these things...if you actually take time, even if only a moment, to try to get the players on board for a change like this....you aren't actually acting unilaterally. You're getting consensus first. And that consensus-establishing step is EXACTLY the difference between modifying not-yet-part-of-the-simulation prep work, vs literally anything else.

I think it's more thought experiment than actual thing put into play.

 

[Ovinomancer]

Bogus. The "shared fiction" is just a theoretical construct. Maybe it has a central place in whatever table-centric model you're working with here to convey your idea of how RPGs work, but have you stopped to consider that this model does not adequately account for every possible play-style?

It's not theoretical at all. I can absolutely tell you what it is in any given game. It is the fiction at the table, known to the GM and the players. Maybe one player, but still, it's what's shared. If it isn't shared, it's not shared fiction. There's nothing theoretical about this -- it's concrete and defined and exists in any RPG I'm aware of.

Not every play-style treats the "off-stage" elements of a campaign milieu as un-collapsed quantum wave-functions. Not every play-style gives supreme priority to whatever broad-strokes, high-level details are agreed upon by the DM and all those playing at a given moment.'

Sure, a lot of the games I run don't either. My points about the difference between prep and shared fiction don't rely on any argument involving quantum wave functions. They hold valid if I'm talking about a 100% prep game (which is cool!) or an improv game. It's an argument based on the difference in how and when things can be changed, and this is never a function of GM choices to not change things.

There is a milieu-centric model, where the only fictional world that has any "reality" worth a hoot is the one that exists in its totality solely in the DM's imagination, notes, and maybe books or other apocrypha. The players get to glimpse a fraction of the whole at any given moment, but the milieu isn't "quantum," only extant when and where the players are looking at it. Rather, it's persistent.

I... okay. Look, you may not have meant it this way, but this really reads terribly. It looks like you're saying that only the GM matters, that there's this massive fiction that the players are only graced with fractions that the GM wishes them to appreciate. It's... not a good look, and certainly suggests that the players are very unimportant to the game. If that's your intent, okay, but I think any useful discussion would be at an end.

As for persistent, if the persistence is up to the GM's whim, it's not actually persistent.

The basic West Marches campaign setup provides a simple example. If a single DM is running a game for three separate parties (we'll call them A, B, and C) who never interact with each other directly, but whose actions upon the game-world can in turn be felt by the others, there is in no meaningful sense a "shared fiction" between parties A, B, and C—only three separate "shared fictions" during any given game session between the DM and A, the DM and B, and the DM and C. But the reality of the game world is held together by the DM, who is operating (for lack of a better analogy—I hate this one only slightly less than the abuse of quantum mechanics jargon these discussions always spawn) as the "CPU" and "RAM" of the ongoing "simulation." This does not work without the DM's reification of the entire milieu, including those setting-elements never directly encountered by any of the players. If, instead, the setting elements are treated as "quantum" (again: ugh), it's not really a persistent sandbox (which is not to discount the possibility of presenting a convincing illusion of one).

There's no reality of that game world, only the reality established in the shared fiction, between the players and the GM. Everything else is, at best, a framework the GM uses to help present that world. The interactions you're talking about only matter because they were entered into the shared fiction. If you perturb group B because of something group A did, then the perturbation is entered into the shared fiction, and that matters. But if group C is never perturbed by this, then it just doesn't exist for them, despite however many pages the GM has devoted in their notes. And, the GM can change it for group C because of this. A preference to not to, for whatever reason, doesn't reify the notes.

 

[Maxperson]

Does changing prep require use of Rule 0?

No, but then neither does changing what happened in the shared fiction. Nothing is truly permanent in D&D.

 

[Maxperson]

Hard disagree. Anything that isn't actually established yet--anything for which the players have neither evidence nor even opportunity to acquire evidence--doesn't exist.

Says who? The DM makes the world for the players and PCs to wander in. It exists before they ever get there.

Once something is actually part of play, it is significantly different. Before something enters play, it's not just "well I could change it...but I won't." It's "I as DM am still ALLOWED to change it pretty much as I like."

You can after it enters play as well. The DM is allowed to change anything as he likes. Nothing in D&D is truly permanent.

Once something is actually part of the shared experience, even if only to the smallest degree, DM freedom is significantly curtailed if that DM actually values player agency and choices.

This is true. He voluntarily curtails himself just like he voluntarily decides not to alter the game world fiction he created.

I know many DMs think it's totally fine to rewrite the world beneath the players' feet and preventing the players from knowing this, but plenty of DMs also thought that it was a great idea to give a 3.5e-or-earlier Paladin a "choice" to be either good OR lawful, and thus guaranteed to fall no matter what they do. (That is, "if everybody were jumping off a bridge, would you do it too???" applies here. Just because a lot of people do a thing doesn't make that thing good, wise, or right.)

Bad DMs have no place in a discussion like this. They're relatively rare and so the discussion should revolve around average or better DMs.

Something that still exists EXCLUSIVELY as prep work is not just malleable, it is absolutely so, literally all parts of it are 100% free rein to modify, delete, replace, or intensify.

Again, this is a distinction without a difference if the DM has made the commitment not to alter things.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

No, but then neither does changing what happened in the shared fiction. Nothing is truly permanent in D&D.

Agreed. But surely there's a difference between the following two things?
"The true name of the Shattered Sun is not permanent, because the players couldn't even potentially know what it is. There's no difference between it being Tlacalique and Cipactomoco."

"The true name of the Shattered Sun is not permanent, because the players can discover the reason it used to be Tlacalique and is now Cipactomoco."

Edit; Yeah okay not getting into this fight again. You have your tyrant-DM attitude, I don't. I cannot even imagine having fun in a game where the DM decides "nope, all those events you remember happening never happened, I don't care what you players think."

 

[Maxperson]

Agreed. But surely there's a difference between the following two things?
"The true name of the Shattered Sun is not permanent, because the players couldn't even potentially know what it is. There's no difference between it being Tlacalique and Cipactomoco."

There's no difference to the players, but there is a difference to the game and fiction. If I have called a place in my world the Shattered Sun, it exists in the world where Tlacalique Cipactomoco never has and never will. One has been created for my fiction and the other hasn't. That's a difference, even if the players don't know about it until they find it, if they ever do.

There are three fictions involved in D&D. The DM's fiction, which is the game setting. The players' fictions, which are their PCs and associated backgrounds and experiences. And the shared fiction which merges the two.

"The true name of the Shattered Sun is not permanent, because the players can discover the reason it used to be Tlacalique and is now Cipactomoco."

If I have decided not to change things once placed into the world, it's as permanent as the PCs are. Moreso, because it's pretty easy within the fiction to remove a PC from the world, but not so easy to remove a place.

You have your tyrant-DM attitude, I don't. I cannot even imagine having fun in a game where the DM decides "nope, all those events you remember happening never happened, I don't care what you players think."

I have no such attitude and never have. I understand that the DM wields all of the power, but the reality is that the vast majority of DMs, myself included, take the players into consideration and don't beat them over the head with it. We want the game to be enjoyable for everyone.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

Hybrid - large area the characters can wander about with, some areas that might be too tough for them ATM, but a thread running through the whole thing [that's level appropriate] if they're stumped and don't know where to go next, or if they want to follow a story thread.

Yeah my big campaigns are a bit like this. There ar threads they can follow that will eventually lead to a somewhat linear story arc, but it’s an open world otherwise.