TSR How Did I Survive AD&D? Fudging and Railroads, Apparently

[GrimCo]

Yes - sandboxes take GM work! Relying purely on random generation sucks. But most of the work can be done during play, as you develop the setting, which I find pretty easy and fun if the starting conditions are good (I have abandoned sandboxes that weren't working well).

It takes both GM work, but also takes proactive players who have formed ideas what they want to do. Both sides need to put some work to make sandbox game run well.

 

[S'mon]

EzekielRaiden:

>Anticlimax is not nearly the horror that so many make it out to be. Sometimes, it is good for a seeming massive threat to end up being a cakewalk. Those are things great memories are made of, so long as it isn't too frequent.<<

Absolutely! Joss Whedon did this very effectively in Buffy etc. Players (unlike many scenario authors) absolutely love it when they occasionally get a kerbstomp victory over the BBEG. I remember with running Curse of the Crimson Throne in Pathfinder 1e, the players absolutely annihilated poor Queen Ileosa and her minions. Since two of them were heavy charoppers, for them an easy win resulting from their PC build designs was exactly what they wanted. Judith in particular had put huge effort into making a Ranger PC who could outdo the spellcasters, her archer PC vs my devils strongly resembled the MG42 gunner on Omaha Beach in the opening scene of Saving Private Ryan...

 

[S'mon]

It takes both GM work, but also takes proactive players who have formed ideas what they want to do. Both sides need to put some work to make sandbox game run well.

Yes, IME it takes at least one proactive & engaged player in the group for a really cool campaign. Too many can actually be a problem as it encourages intra-party conflict and splintering. And the players need to be proactively engaged with the sandbox & form plans based on what they discover. Far worse than the passive player is the novel writer who ignores the setting & hands over an 80 page backstory "So, when do I get my Duchy?"

 

[EzekielRaiden]

I stand by what I said before.

This is all well and good, until the players catch on. A computer can hide its lies and cheating a lot better than a human can, and can be rigorously tested for how well it preserves its deceptions during a standard runtime. But, as an example, pretty much everybody these days knows that RTS and TBS "AI" players are cheating bastards. This does, indeed, have significant effects on how people view such games. It means that casual players don't bother with higher difficulties, because they know that difficulty is almost purely artificial anyway. Hardcore players, on the other hand, see it as (more or less) just a handicap to be overcome, an "are you a bad enough dude to save the president" kind of thing, because they know it's not actually outsmarting or outplaying the AI, it's merely playing so well that even a cheating idiot can't beat you. The "strategy" is no longer present because you actually did better, but rather that you can beat a pretty weak player juiced up with cheats.

Some games have addressed this by shifting to asymmetrical play, where the computer players have fundamentally different goals. That means you don't have to have computers that cheat; they just have a different victory condition and thus can win by being better at their condition than the players are at theirs. Others use very careful scenario editing, scripted events, and bite-sized missions so the players' advantages can never accrue too much, etc.

But there are a rare few games that at least try to make the AI smarter, not just cheating. (To be clear, even the best ones still usually include some of that, but they lean much less on it than others.) Galactic Civilizations is a great example of artificial brilliance, where the AI is smart enough to take subtle steps to prevent other civs from reaching victory conditions by playing them off one another, even if that results in short-term problems.

I'd also like to draw a line between what I'll call misdirections and outright lies. AIs getting huge buffs or secret cheat mechanics are lies; they make it seem like the opponent is playing by the same rules when they aren't. But logarithmic health bars? That's not really a lie, it's not presenting something as true when it's not. Instead, it's presenting information in ways that differ from typical experience, with the goal of shaping the emotional response to that information. The logarithmic health bar is still telling you whether your HP are high or low. But it does so while actually giving the character more durability than the player realizes. The game never said the bar was linear. People just assume it must be. Judicious use of such things, which promote a particular emotional response over others, all of which can arise from identical data, is not so much "lying" as...theater. Fiction is not lying, but it is unreal. Same sort of thing.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

It takes both GM work, but also takes proactive players who have formed ideas what they want to do. Both sides need to put some work to make sandbox game run well.

Yeah, my players are great, but the do suffer from terrible decision paralysis if they don't have a clear objective.

 

[Zardnaar]

I wouldn't mind it, so long as the tax is laid out in advance and properly authorized. A sudden, spontaneous "tax" levied only because the PCs have very suddenly become wealthy, and which is only levied on the PCs....that would be another story. But you resist illegitimate authority by proving yourself more legitimate, not by behaving in illegitimate ways yourself.


I think it would be more accurate to say that you have been trying to run a game of that type, while using the tools designed for the other type, and thus feeling frustrated by the failure of the tools to achieve the desired end. I can say that my campaign has been pretty fulfilling for my players, and I have played in a pretty fulfilling campaign with a completely different set of people that was also fulfilling. But it does take some real effort along lines that are often ignored or not seen for how important they are, compared to the more linear approach. (As stated, linearity is not bad, it is the false pretense of nonlinearity in a timely linear experience that is the problem.)


In order:
1. Three campaigns as a player, one as DM.
2. I mean, technically like 5 or 6 before? But been fairly consistent since the first time. I'm in a play drought for it, I admit, but I'm not having an issue running it.
3. Er... technically none?
4. Technically two dead ends, but both happened because real life got in the way, not because the game failed.
5. Oh, a handful. Anticlimax is not nearly the horror that so many make it out to be. Sometimes, it is good for a seeming massive threat to end up being a cakewalk. Those are things great memories are made of, so long as it isn't too frequent.



Not really. You just need to play with your cards face up as GM, explain to your players what you want out of the game and ask them to tell you want they want out of it, and set boundaries for what makes sense and what is warranted at your table.

My players do not fear random, permanent, irrevocable death, because I've told them that isn't a thing at my table. That doesn't mean they don't fear. Far from it! They've been extremely cautious nearly their whole campaign, with a few shining moments of throwing caution to the wind. But they are willing to act boldly when they care about things, because they know that I don't punish caring, I reward it—not necessarily with perfect success, but with new and interesting developments.

A willing, noble sacrifice to end a character's career? You're speaking my language. A desperate trip through the bowels of Hell to save a friend's soul, while they fight from the inside? O sweet Muse, sing to me! A ticking timer to resurrection, where you bring back knowledge from behind the veil of death, but cannot aid your allies in their darkest hour, and cannot know what costs they might pay for your absence? Sign me the hell up right this second.

That's how you address the problem of unresolved arcs. Don't let them remain unresolved! But also don't just hand them victory on a silver platter, because a pointless ending and an unearned ending are about equally disappointing. Instead, make every failure push things closer to a Dark Ending, and every success push things closer to a Golden Ending, no matter how small a push it might be. And every little, focused ending, a scene, a session, an adventure, forms another brick on the road to the ultimate conclusion. But the bricks will matter, because they'll be there due to the players' choices. They'll be there because the players decided what mattered to them, and gave it their all to seek it. The PCs will almost surely suffer and weep and bleed and swear rash oaths and do unwise deeds along the way. But they will also triumph and laugh and forge lasting bonds and save the day.

And together, you'll tell a story worth remembering.

It was basically a not Egypt game. Loot the tombs we want a cut. First adventure anyway.

 

[Lanefan]

Anticlimax is not nearly the horror that so many make it out to be. Sometimes, it is good for a seeming massive threat to end up being a cakewalk. Those are things great memories are made of, so long as it isn't too frequent.

I second this motion. All in favour?

Flip side: it's also fun when sometimes (but not too often) a seeming cakewalk somehow ends up proving to be a major headache for them.

That's how you address the problem of unresolved arcs. Don't let them remain unresolved! But also don't just hand them victory on a silver platter, because a pointless ending and an unearned ending are about equally disappointing. Instead, make every failure push things closer to a Dark Ending, and every success push things closer to a Golden Ending, no matter how small a push it might be. And every little, focused ending, a scene, a session, an adventure, forms another brick on the road to the ultimate conclusion. But the bricks will matter, because they'll be there due to the players' choices. They'll be there because the players decided what mattered to them, and gave it their all to seek it. The PCs will almost surely suffer and weep and bleed and swear rash oaths and do unwise deeds along the way. But they will also triumph and laugh and forge lasting bonds and save the day.

And together, you'll tell a story worth remembering.

The key (and IME close-to-unachievable) piece here is "together"; that the players decided in-character that the same thing mattered to all of them rather than the more usual where each decides that a different thing matters and they end up trying to pull the party in five directions at once (or, taken to the extreme, the party splits up to pursue different goals; I've seen this a few times).

That, and my goal is rarely if ever to get things to either a Dark Ending or a Golden Ending, mostly because I'm not looking for any kind of ending. Better for me would be a Dark Continuation or a Golden Continuation; as one arc finishes another one or two or three arcs that have been lurking in the background for a while rise to take its place.

 

[Lanefan]

It takes both GM work, but also takes proactive players who have formed ideas what they want to do.

Or who are at least willing to engage with the setting material enough to look at the maps, listen to the rumours, pick a mission or decide on a place to explore, and get after it.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

But you resist illegitimate authority by proving yourself more legitimate, not by behaving in illegitimate ways yourself.

That would be up to the players.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

That would be up to the players.

Sure, but I was speaking as a player there, not as a DM.