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

[Bedrockgames]

Thats not what sandbox means its...

..this. Almost ninja'd.

I realize. This is why I said I didn't disagree with it conceptually, just that the term seems to lock people into a static metaphor of hunting for goodies buried in the sandbox

 

[payn]

I realize. This is why I said I didn't disagree with it conceptually, just that the term seems to lock people into a static metaphor of hunting for goodies buried in the sandbox

You do point out a potential pitfall. Many GMs do make a static land of events in suspended animation that are released when, and only when, the PCs are ready to encounter them. The only thing separating an adventure module/path is the idea of sequence, which is spotty at best since its been proven over and over that modules/paths can be non-linear in execution.

In fact, im much much more trepidacious about a GM telling me they have a sandbox ready than them saying they have a module/path ready. Will it be suspended animation land? Will they have absolutely nothing prepped at all and its just a game of wing it weekly? Will the GM pretend the players have agency, but nothing happens until they engage the material as the GM intends?

I've had bad modules and sandbox experiences. They both can work well, its all in the execution. Again, I think you need to merge GM and player style, much more than you need to worry about sandbox or module as the right way to play. YMMV.

 

[niklinna]

Yeah. And that's sort of the indirect point of my post: have I been beating myself up over idealized ways games should be played at the expense of what I actually enjoyed in my earlier days in the hobby?

Now that you put it that way, then yes! If everybody in your group enjoyed that style of play, and feels they still would, then by gum try it again.

 

[niklinna]

I think that it hit me, after looking behind the curtain, that my core memories were all artificial. Every epic moment was scripted by some dude at TSR.
It might be a "no duh" moment for many of you, but it's really shattered my rose-colored glasses of nostalgia.
I've been asking myself for over 20 years, "why can't I run a good, memorable campaign?" Apparently, it's because I'm following standards of player agency, "playing to find out," etc.

Well that might be, but I would be careful to point out that it's the combination of you plus following a play style that you do not enjoy, and not the play style itself. Or, you know, you yourself.

 

[niklinna]

One thing about OSR games is that they tend to favour flexible thinking over rules knowledge and number crunching. My successful author & military veteran players do very well in Shadowdark compared to modern D&D editions, whereas my aspergery (even more than me) min-maxer player dislikes the lack of crunch and the high lethality. But in a different ruleset like 4e she's the dominant player.

What's that? Different games favor different styles of play? Imagine that!

 

[niklinna]

Well that was one cool thing. There have been many others. And there have been ignoble failures as well, of course. But I've seen very satisfying failures, indeed the catastrophic failure of Varek Tiger-Claw against the Necromancers of the Black Sun in 4e set the scene for the rise of Hakeem Godslayer ten (game) years later.

Certainly, if I were trying to ensure a satisfying story regardless of player ability & interest, the PCs would be either puppets or bystanders. Both of which were common in 2e era D&D.

Satisfying, for who?

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Both of those examples are lost on me; I've never done WoW and never watched Lost.

For the former:
The base game and the first two expansions dealt with foes from the strategy games, and were quite popular. But that meant that at the end of the second expansion, they had to write mostly new story. It was often amateurish writing at best, and it fell into a pattern...

BBEG X: "Hah! You thought you knew what you were facing. But those were just pawns in MY master plan!"
[The mortals squabble, but ultimately resolve their differences and unite against their common foe, mostly because it's an inarguable existential threat.]
BBEG X: "Fools! You know not what you've done. An even greater danger awaits you...that I tried to stop..." [they die.]
Mortal faction A: "Back to our regularly scheduled squabbling and war crimes?"
Mortal faction 1: "Obviously, I'm surprised you need to ask."
Ally NPC of the week: "Oh no! We are disunited in the face of the greatest peril the realm has ever known! Disaster is about to strike!"
Disaster: [Strikes!]
Both mortal factions: "How could we possibly have seen this coming when we were so focused on murdering the people we've allied with multiple times before!"
[Repeat from beginning.]

This cycle repeated something like four or five times. To the point that, by the time they hit the eighth expansion, Shadowlands, they had literally had multiple competing, contradictory "master planners" who were all, somehow, pawns of the same (allegedly) ultimate master planner...whose death simply passed the buck to something that was, somehow, even worse than having a tyrant reformat all of existence into his personal playpen.

Or, in brief, every single time people defeated the big bad enemy, Blizzard would then say, "but wait! This was just a prelude to the REAL fight!" in order to keep people going. Constantly delaying the conclusion. Constantly stringing the players along, promising that the real problem, the real solution, was just around the bend, Tune In Next Time.

This honestly worked for maybe a decade, give or take. But Shadowlands (8th expansion) broke the spell. Players were fed up and left the game in droves, because they finally got more sick of waiting for a real conclusion of some kind than they were eager to see what the next danger would be.

Lost is a bit simpler by comparison. They acted like there was a grand mystery to solve, but there wasn't. The writers just put in weird things, mysterious things, symbolic things with no clear explanation, and let the rumor mill and over-eager fan theorizing foot the bill. This escalated with every single season, adding new layers, new contradictions, new unexplained symbolism or the like. By the time they reached the sixth and final season, and thus had to pay the piper...it was too late. They had far too many mysteries and zero answers. Since the mystery was the compelling element for many fans, botching those answers or (more commonly) never giving an answer at all was...unpopular to say the least. I have heard that folks binge-watching it today have a better response because they don't have time to get strung along, but even they admit that multiple parts of the grand finale are disappointing at best.

In both cases, a necessary conclusion is deferred far, far too long, and that means that even if a decent conclusion does eventually arrive, it's already gone sour.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

I've been running my Wilderlands setting since 2006, off and on but mostly on. What I tend to do is run a "campaign" for a few years, maybe 1, maybe 3 or 7, then there's a break and a new campaign with new PCs. Usually in an adjacent area to the previous campaign, so that the effects of the old campaign are felt, but you're not sitting in someone else's dirty bathwater.

Personally, once I've finished my current game, I will want something truly new myself. Wipe the slate clean and do something genuinely novel, explore a completely different milieu and set of themes. Strongly considering a PbtA version of Shadowrun.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

My campaigns tend to taper off around level 7-10. Players or DM get bored or both.

Well...I can't speak for everyone. But I can definitely say my players aren't bored, nor am I. And we're 6 years in now. Probably five continuous years if you cut out the "no session this week, I'm sick/I have things to do/it's my birthday" type breaks.

 

[S'mon]

Satisfying, for who?

After the Altani barbarian Varek Tigerclaw had finally fallen in his doomed last stand holding the bridge at Bisgen, and Crowfinger had taken his soul, Varek's player Jasper shook my hand and told me what an awesome campaign it had been. So satisfying for him, anyway. He even learned some things about life and grew as a person during that game, I think - which is uncommon but I've seen it a few times. He saw how his own decisions, Varek's hubris and hatred of the Nerathi, had led him to that point.