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<blockquote data-quote="EzekielRaiden" data-source="post: 8223732" data-attributes="member: 6790260">Again, this is not actually using this style of play effectively. And it's really NOT hard to do it effectively! It is, in fact, rather more similar to the &quot;curated randomness&quot; of randomly-generated hexcrawls, or the dynamically-evolving &quot;naturalism&quot; of a sandbox where things aren't perfectly static until the player characters show up.The key difference is that, with what's being called &quot;sandbox&quot; play here, there's much more emphasis put on the players personally figuring out what's doable and how powerful things are, and opportunities arising more due to random chance and the slow accretion of incidental choices. Whereas with the actually effective and appreciated alternative--what I would call &quot;tale-building&quot; since &quot;narrative&quot; is a bit loaded these days--the emphasis is more on the DM presuming the characters know what they're doing, and thus presenting options that make sense within the fiction pre-filtered for what the party would see as worth doing. (And, again, these filters can come from the environment, from the PCs' own knowledge/backgrounds/interests, or from the knowledge and behavior of other people/organizations in the world.)Both things end up caring about what makes sense within the world. Both things care about groundedness. One puts more onus on the players personally, reducing the character to little more than a vehicle or avatar, while the other puts more onus on the DM personally, treating characters more as persons that the players get to control. Neither is okay with &quot;Skyrim&quot; play.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="EzekielRaiden, post: 8223732, member: 6790260"] Again, [I]this is not actually using this style of play effectively[/I]. And it's really NOT hard to do it effectively! It is, in fact, rather more similar to the "curated randomness" of randomly-generated hexcrawls, or the dynamically-evolving "naturalism" of a sandbox where things [I]aren't[/I] perfectly static until the player characters show up. The key difference is that, with what's being called "sandbox" play here, there's much more emphasis put on the players [I]personally[/I] figuring out what's doable and how powerful things are, and opportunities arising more due to random chance and the slow accretion of incidental choices. Whereas with the [I]actually effective and appreciated[/I] alternative--what I would call "tale-building" since "narrative" is a bit loaded these days--the emphasis is more on the DM presuming the [I]characters[/I] know what they're doing, and thus presenting options that make sense within the fiction [I]pre-filtered[/I] for what the party would see as worth doing. (And, again, these filters can come from the environment, from the PCs' own knowledge/backgrounds/interests, or from the knowledge and behavior of other people/organizations in the world.) Both things end up caring about what makes sense within the world. Both things care about groundedness. One puts more onus on the players personally, reducing the character to little more than a vehicle or avatar, while the other puts more onus on the DM personally, treating characters more as persons that the players get to control. Neither is okay with "Skyrim" play. [/QUOTE]

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