Playground Adventure Environments

[Reynard]

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?

 

[The Firebird]

I think I see the distinction. In some of the sandbox threads sandboxes were described the way you use "playground". I'd wonder whether common sandbox environments are ever really what you mean by sandbox rather than playground? Skyrim, for example, has fixed dungeons and questlines, and so is playground?

 

[Reynard]

I think I see the distinction. In some of the sandbox threads sandboxes were described the way you use "playground". I'd wonder whether common sandbox environments are ever really what you mean by sandbox rather than playground? Skyrim, for example, has fixed dungeons and questlines, and so is playground?

I think Skyrim is closer to a theme park, since most of those experiences are so simple or linear.

 

[The Soloist]

Hum... I've never done a real sandbox or a real theme park. I guess my campaigns have always been playground adventure environments. Everything is 'skeletal' at best, and becomes fleshed out as the characters interact with it, during play. I take notes afterwards and then it becomes canon. I never reuse a campaign. I don't have a 45 year old world I've been refining. Once a campaign is done, it's archived. I prepare a new campaign skeleton, for the new characters.

 

[The Firebird]

I think Skyrim is closer to a theme park, since most of those experiences are so simple or linear.

In that case I wonder to what extent it is a useful distinction. I think it is real--but most games are more linear than Skyrim, so it is subcategorizing a niche.

 

[Tonguez]

I'm not sure the distinction between sandbox and playground is really that meaningful. Unless you are being very extreme with defining sandbox as complete tabula rasa.

Using your definition "an open play zone where the crafted content is just bones and players are still meant to make their own fun with that content" - does me laying out a map where open grasslands roll into rocky hills then give way to deep forests cut through by winding rivers, lakes and bogs, populated by bandits, fey and small humanoid tribes make it a sandbox or a playground?.

Theres no inherent plot except a map and telling the PCs you start at Olegs Trading Post and can venture out from there...

 

[Reynard]

In that case I wonder to what extent it is a useful distinction. I think it is real--but most games are more linear than Skyrim, so it is subcategorizing a niche.

If it is linear, it isn't any of these things.

 

[Reynard]

I'm not sure the distinction between sandbox and playground is really that meaningful. Unless you are being very extreme with defining sandbox as complete tabula rasa.

Using your definition "an open play zone where the crafted content is just bones and players are still meant to make their own fun with that content" - does me laying out a map where open grasslands roll into rocky hills then give way to deep forests cut through by winding rivers, lakes and bogs, populated by bandits, fey and small humanoid tribes make it a sandbox or a playground?.

Theres no inherent plot except a map and telling the PCs you start at Olegs Trading Post and can venture out from there...

The distinction I was imagining -- again, this is just spitballing, to see if there is some there there -- was sort of focused on the platonic ideal of the player motivated sandbox combined with player setting input, versus a map with a bunch of points of interest but still player generated goals, versus a map with a bunch of modules tacked into hexes.

The more I type it out, the less distinction I feel though. The "pure sandbox" is not really a thing in practical play, I don't think.

And I am not sure how randomly generated hexcrawling would fit into the paradigm at all.

 

[TaranTheWanderer]

While I see where you are going, playgrounds are notorious for impeding children’s creativity. Lots of static activities that can only be interacted with in a certain way. Which is why modern playgrounds have been going through a bit of a evolution to make them more ‘creative’.

Really it’s just an aside to your point. When I hear “playground”, I think of “railroad”.

I do think this(your playground metaphor) is how most sandboxes are built. A whole bunch of adventures waiting to be discovered by the PCs. In which case, a true sandbox is totally off the cuff then?

 

[Reynard]

While I see where you are going, playgrounds are notorious for impeding children’s creativity. Lots of static activities that can only be interacted with in a certain way. Which is why modern playgrounds have been going through a bit of a evolution to make them more ‘creative’.

Really it’s just an aside to your point. When I hear “playground”, I think of “railroad”.

I do think this(your playground metaphor) is how most sandboxes are built. A whole bunch of adventures waiting to be discovered by the PCs. In which case, a true sandbox is totally off the cuff then?

I have never regarded or even heard of playgrounds impeding children's creativity. It seems ridiculous on its face, based if nothing else on personal experience on the monkey bars 40 years ago.