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Message: <blockquote data-quote="The Shaman" data-source="post: 5402011" data-attributes="member: 26473">Good grief, this thread is moving too fast for me to keep up. <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" />Some interesting discussion, though.The difference, as BotE already noted upthread, is that Mr Gygax's advice is directed at introducing something to the campaign at a later time. My maladroit reply upthread did a poor job of conveying that.As others have already noted, a 'sandbox' setting doesn't need to be infinite to be a 'sandbox' - the 'sandbox' is as much about the style of play as it is the setting for play. Frex, when I ran a Traveller game a few years back, I asked the players to remain within the subsector for awhile, giving them something like twenty to thirty charted star systems (and some other stuff not on the regular merchant's nav files) to muck about in however they pleased.The "wing it" element of running a status quo setting may include going off the edges of the map, but more importantly, in my experience, it's about the setting reacting to what the adventurers are doing. Frex, if the adventurers take sides in a dispute, that should have ramifications; the referee responds in character- and institutionally-appropriate ways to the actions of the adventurers - it may attract new allies, it may earn them new enemies, it may bring them to the attention of the authorities, and so on. For me, that's where much of the "winging it" comes from, and that's what a good deal of my prep is geared toward, such as understanding the complex web of relationships and loyalties between npcs in the setting - if the adventurers tug a strand, who notices, and who's likely to tug back?To use an actual play example, I mentioned a chevalier npc, a knight of Malta, who was a possible random encounter; on Saturday night, one of his encounters came up - the adventurer, an off-duty King's Musketeer, came upon the aftermath of a duel involving the chevalier. I based the chevalier's reaction to the adventurer on a roll of the dice; the reaction was favorable, so I ruled out an immediate attack - instead, the chevalier decided that the time was right for him and his companion to leave their dead and dying opponents.Now the chevalier doesn't know the adventurer, but he knows that the musketeer could possibly identify him or his companion, and that dueling is agaisnt the royal edicts. The chevalier may want to know more about this particular musketeer, a tall, stocky fellow with a foreign accent, so I will determine what the chevalier is likely to do next with a little help from Mythic GME.When I set up this encounter, I knew who the combatants were, why they were dueling, and to whom they are connected. I created the encounter before I knew anything about the adventurer; the first time I saw the character sheet was when we sat down to play. Anything which may transpire subsequent to this encounter will do so because of what the musketeer said and did, informed by what I know of the personalities of the npcs and their connections.There is no 'story' in my mind, no 'three acts' or 'adventure' to which this is an opening. I can say with certainty however that there will be consequences that stem from this chance meeting because of how the adventurer handled it.That, to me, is "winging it."</blockquote>

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