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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Crazy Jerome" data-source="post: 5747380" data-attributes="member: 54877">Your model may not be commercially viable, but add pure hack and slash (whether via the "core" or drifted 1E), and you have stated, I think, all the major ways that D&D has historically been played. Now granted, the "Legends", "Lore", and "Pathfinder" versions where not as obvious as now, because the ruleset didn't really support any of them at the start. But I'd say those are roughly what people were trying to do. I did say that I thought the sandbox default should be in the core, and I still think that from a marketing/sales perspective, but note that this is an aside from the other points I was making. That is, I think: 1. There is an untapped market for good sandbox materials, because groups keep trying it, with relatively little to work with. And unlike selling adventure after adventure, there are potentially some "source" materials for sandbox that would appeal to others. 2. It is a lot easier to modify sandbox source material to be something else than it is to modify something else into a sandbox. If you've got, say, 128 pages of pure sandbox source material (maps, locations, NPCs, items, etc.), then it is not terribly difficult to spend 4-8 pages setting up an event-based plot for those that want it, and not impossible even to spend 32 pages or so setting up a pre-plotted story for those that want that. You'll have to make a few compromises in the pre-plotted stuff, but not killer ones for many people. Moreover, I think the sandbox default moves to the Core, because I think it applies to the "Legends" piece as well. The same way that D&D will never be purist simulation, it is not going to be purist narrative, either. If nothing else, the strong gamist element limits how pure it can be otherwise. You might say that if D&D sandbox simulation is exploring the world, then D&D sandbox narrative is exploring the characters (PC and NPC). Then you have the strange mix of all three, which is as if Dickens characters were playing D&D, and the sandbox is explored in a pretend simulation, which reveals the characters. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f61b.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":p" title="Stick out tongue    :p"  data-smilie="7"data-shortname=":p" /> So I'm saying make it all default to sandbox styles, but that leaves openings for each option to drift into a more comfortable fit. Some of those fits won't be truly sandbox.</blockquote>

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