Reynard
aka Ian Eller
As a separate thing from sandboxes or theme parks.
This is one of those threadss where I am literally just thinking on the keyborad, so I am excited to see what other folks think of the idea. In other words, we're just spitballing here.
So you oftne here "open" play environments described as sandboxes (the most open) and theme parks (the most curated) and it occurred to me (while watching teh trailer for the newest No man's Sky update VOYAGERS) there there might be something distinct that I am calling a Playground.
So a sandbox is a place where the players are supposed to make their own fun almost entirely. A theme park is a place where players are meant to experience well crafted content in whatever order they like.
I think a Playground, then, is a open play zone where the crafted content is just bones and players are still meant to make their own fun with that crafted content. So, a sandbox becomes a theme park when you place fully crafted adventures in it, it is a Playground if you put, say, a dungeon in it that has no adventure built into it. Am I making sense? Is the distinction clear?
If you are your buddies go to a theme park, you all get on the rollercoaster together and ride it and have a grat time and get off the rollercoaster and talk about what a good time you had and then head off toward the tilt-a-whirl.
If you play in the sandbox, you all dig together and build castles and moats and roads for your tonkas, and make up stories about this place you have created out of essentially nothing.
In the playground, you all go over to the monkey bars. While climbing around on the monkey bars, you pretend to be heroic monkeys versus evil monkeys and tell a story based on, built around, but not constrained by the monkey bars. You might spend all day on the monkey bars, or you might decide to take your game to the merry go round where you plan to gauge your intestinal fortitude.
In TTRPG terms, the Playground has elements built in to give something for players to hook onto to create stories and play, rather than giving them an experience (theme park) or asking them to do all the work themselves (sandbox).
Thoughts?
This is one of those threadss where I am literally just thinking on the keyborad, so I am excited to see what other folks think of the idea. In other words, we're just spitballing here.
So you oftne here "open" play environments described as sandboxes (the most open) and theme parks (the most curated) and it occurred to me (while watching teh trailer for the newest No man's Sky update VOYAGERS) there there might be something distinct that I am calling a Playground.
So a sandbox is a place where the players are supposed to make their own fun almost entirely. A theme park is a place where players are meant to experience well crafted content in whatever order they like.
I think a Playground, then, is a open play zone where the crafted content is just bones and players are still meant to make their own fun with that crafted content. So, a sandbox becomes a theme park when you place fully crafted adventures in it, it is a Playground if you put, say, a dungeon in it that has no adventure built into it. Am I making sense? Is the distinction clear?
If you are your buddies go to a theme park, you all get on the rollercoaster together and ride it and have a grat time and get off the rollercoaster and talk about what a good time you had and then head off toward the tilt-a-whirl.
If you play in the sandbox, you all dig together and build castles and moats and roads for your tonkas, and make up stories about this place you have created out of essentially nothing.
In the playground, you all go over to the monkey bars. While climbing around on the monkey bars, you pretend to be heroic monkeys versus evil monkeys and tell a story based on, built around, but not constrained by the monkey bars. You might spend all day on the monkey bars, or you might decide to take your game to the merry go round where you plan to gauge your intestinal fortitude.
In TTRPG terms, the Playground has elements built in to give something for players to hook onto to create stories and play, rather than giving them an experience (theme park) or asking them to do all the work themselves (sandbox).
Thoughts?
