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Judgement calls vs "railroading"

pemerton

Legend
So the players being able to choose any of the things the DM brought up is not the players being able to choose which elements of the sandbox to engage?
As described, it's not a sandbox. It's a collection of "event-sequences" being authored and narrated to the table by the GM.

There is also the option for players to just decide to have their PCs become barbarian kings and head north to the barbarian lands.
That wasn't mentioned. [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION] said "Player: So there's orcs and-or lizardmen, or spies, or Dumont tower. Got it."

The PCs asked because nothing was on their plate
I feel that this in itself is enough to tell me that it's not a player-driven game: rather, the players are waiting to be led by the GM, who seems to be the dominant figure in establishing the content of the shared fiction.
 

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Ovinomancer

No flips for you!
So the players being able to choose any of the things the DM brought up is not the players being able to choose which elements of the sandbox to engage? There is also the option for players to just decide to have their PCs become barbarian kings and head north to the barbarian lands. The PCs asked because nothing was on their plate, putting that example into the DM's hands. It doesn't mean that they are constrained to only the DM's ideas.

I think permerton is using 'sandbox' in an unexpected way. Might help to ask what he means when he says 'sandbox.'
[MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION], what do you mean when you say 'sandbox'?
 

seebs

Adventurer
There's a remark in an old scifi novel referring to a culture which distinguishes between "bias" and "prejudgment" in judges. "Bias" is "I will rule for this side if I can", while prejudgment is "I will rule for this side regardless." Bias is permitted.

I think there's three things that can be involved here. One is a pure ruling based on "what I think the situation is like". One is that the situation will always be adjusted or retconned or redefined to prevent or require a specific course of action. And in the middle, there's nudging things a bit because you have a notion of intent but you're willing to be persuaded.

Think about it this way: If you're running a fairly typical D&D game, and a player decides to look for a Porsche 911 fully fueled with the keys in the ignition because they want to bypass your cleverly designed travel adventure, you're not really "railroading" them to say "uh, no, there's no such thing". You're just following the setting.
 

pemerton

Legend
If you're running a fairly typical D&D game, and a player decides to look for a Porsche 911 fully fueled with the keys in the ignition because they want to bypass your cleverly designed travel adventure, you're not really "railroading" them to say "uh, no, there's no such thing". You're just following the setting.
I don't think issues of genre fidelity have much to do with the question of GM- vs player-driven RPGing.
 

Lanefan

Victoria Rules
This is something like saying: with a halfway competent card shark, who can tell whether s/he's dealing off the top or the bottom? But to some extent the meaning of the experience depends upon the way in which it is generated.
Doesn't matter if the card shark is dealing off the top or bottom: if the resulting hand is fair for all involved the experience is exactly the same.

I think this is part of what [MENTION=16586]Campbell[/MENTION] is trying to get at in repeatedly emphasising the significance of motives, expectations, etc. What counts as good faith vs (at the extreme, say) cheating depends heavily on these facts about the participants.

Well, matters to whom? Presumably not you. But that sort of thing matters to me in respect of the games that I'm part of. And some posters seemed to care when I expressed a preference in the OP.
Maybe I'm misreading this, but how can something matter to you if you don't know what it is?

If you're the DM what goes on behind your screen - or how, or why - is none of my business as a player. I'd expect the same courtesy in return were the positions reversed. Therefore, you in theory have no way of knowing any processes that go into the game you're playing other than those I-as-DM might reveal.

Just in passing - there is already quite a bit of assumption built into this. For instance, it already presents the PCs as "A-Team"-types who "go on missions" and then take time off between them. I have not GMed a game that has that sort of underlying structure since around 1986.
So characters in your games never find themselves with nothing pressing? Never get a chance to take some downtime and then decide what to do next? Never get a chance to step back and look at the big picture? Hell, that all sounds way more DM-driven than anything I run.

But if we're asking whether the game just described is player- or GM-driven, I find it very hard to conceive of that as anything but a GM-driven game. It doesn't seem to have the somewhat static, reactive nature of a classic sandbox - which nature is part of what enables the players to drive the play of such a campaign, by choosing which elements of the sandbox to engage.
Er...in order to choose which elements to engage don't they first need to find out what elements might be out there awaiting engagement? And the only way to do that is to...wait for it...ask!

The game seems vulnerable to a player deciding that his/her PC is no longer going to be a soldier of fortune, but instead wants to (say) become a local magistrate. It's not even clear what happens if a player wants his/her PC to become leader of the mercenaries' guild, or of the militia, or become advisor and confidant to Baron Larchwood.
Of course it's vulnerable to this sort of thing - that's what player agency is all about, which is the very thing you've been arguing for all the way along!

If a character's next logical in-character move is to do something that takes it out of the party, then out it goes. I've role-played myself out of many a party in the past.

If a single PC decides to pack it in and become a local magistrate, or take over the local mercenaries' guild, that's just fine - the PC retires from adventuring (and the player either already has a replacement or rolls one up, assuming she is staying in the game) and at some point we'll update it to see how its magisterial or mercenary career might be going.

If the party as a whole decide out of the blue to chuck in with Baron Larchwood then I've got to be ready to DM that, wherever it might go. In fact, one thing that separates a good DM from a bad one is the ability to hit those sort of curveballs.

Lan-"next man up"-efan
 

seebs

Adventurer
I don't think issues of genre fidelity have much to do with the question of GM- vs player-driven RPGing.

They sorta do, though, because there's games in which the accepted outcome would be "okay, we've just established that this is a world where you could find a Porsche, why didn't we know that before?"
 

Lanefan

Victoria Rules
As described, it's not a sandbox. It's a collection of "event-sequences" being authored and narrated to the table by the GM.

That wasn't mentioned. [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION] said "Player: So there's orcs and-or lizardmen, or spies, or Dumont tower. Got it."
As her way of summing up what she'd learned during her questioning that day. You didn't quote the next bit, where she reports back to the party and they then decide whether to go after any of those possible adventures or to just go on to another town.

I feel that this in itself is enough to tell me that it's not a player-driven game: rather, the players are waiting to be led by the GM, who seems to be the dominant figure in establishing the content of the shared fiction.
The DM establishes the content of the game world...which includes (among many other things) some of the adventuring possibilities. The PCs are only going to find out about them through one of these means:

1. Asking around in the game world (this is what I used as an example earlier)
2. Hearing about them without explicitly asking (e.g. other adventurers' tavern talk)
3. Being told about them in whatever information the DM gives out about the game world going in (e.g. the Southron Hills are known to be dangerous)
4. Running into them by sheer chance as the PCs wander around in the game world (the farmhouse goblin raid in B-10 is a not-great version of this)
4a. Running into them because the DM arbitrarily put them in the path of the PCs who are otherwise wandering around in the game world (usually out of sheer boredom)
5. Making an adventure out of nothing (the PCs suddenly decide to become a gang of street thieves; their adventures then become the "jobs" they do and the scrapes with authority they get into)

Lanefan
 

Lanefan

Victoria Rules
They sorta do, though, because there's games in which the accepted outcome would be "okay, we've just established that this is a world where you could find a Porsche, why didn't we know that before?"
Whether you get attacked by a wandering Porsche or not is irrelevant - the roads in most game worlds will tear it apart before it gets to its second tank of...oh, wait...
 

Maxperson

Morkus from Orkus
As described, it's not a sandbox. It's a collection of "event-sequences" being authored and narrated to the table by the GM

The only way that is possible is if the players have no input at all. You are describing a story, not a roleplaying game. He is describing a roleplaying game, and one with many ways for the players to choose to go.

That wasn't mentioned. [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION] said "Player: So there's orcs and-or lizardmen, or spies, or Dumont tower. Got it."

Why do you get to say things like, "Well, dozens of moons are not excluded." and "A third moon that is not mentioned is constent.", but when I say something that is consistent and not exluded, you bring up that it wasn't mentioned? Why is what's good for the goose, not good for the gander?

I feel that this in itself is enough to tell me that it's not a player-driven game: rather, the players are waiting to be led by the GM, who seems to be the dominant figure in establishing the content of the shared fiction.
You're assuming rather badly. I like to drive the game with my ideas, but sometimes I just don't feel like it and look for something the DM comes up with.
 

Maxperson

Morkus from Orkus
I think permerton is using 'sandbox' in an unexpected way. Might help to ask what he means when he says 'sandbox.'
[MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION], what do you mean when you say 'sandbox'?

If he has then I'm not going to engage it. I will do as I always do and use the common usage of the term.
 

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