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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Janx" data-source="post: 5413760" data-attributes="member: 8835">good golly, this thread goes on for centuries.The OT was basically implying that if you don't railroad, nothing gets done.  I call BS.I'm certain that stuff can get done in a sandbox, and in a "quest" focussed game.  I really hate all these extra terms floating around.I write my adventures with an assumption that the party will pursue the goal I wrote my material for.  To Find the Murderer, for example.  Not a sandbox.  I take a chance on knowing the party will pursue the goal I wrote for, but in reality, I chose the goal based on what I think the player's/PC's goals are.  It's worked out thus far.The OT implied that a session in which the party didn't accomplish anything, was a waste of time, a bad session.  I think that can happen in my style, and in a sandbox style.  All that has to happen is for the party to refuse to pursue any activity of significance.  Sitting in the bar all night, shopping for clothes, etc.  Game style doesn't prevent time wasting by players...Talk about Status Quo or No Myth or Making It Up are just parameters to how a GM runs his game, not as to whether players dick around and get nothing done, to the detriment of their own goals.I don't like the term Status Quo, as it implies a game world that is unchanging and not PC oriented.  I suspect what it really means, a sandbox DM makes a game space with lots of stuff to do, without expectation of the PCs he'll be having.  Then the PCs show up and he makes the world react to them.  If the world does not react to the PCs, I'd say that's a lousy game style, as I can get that in Oblivion on my Xbox.The No Myth style, that seems like you'd have to be prepared to make up everything on the fly, and as Celebrim has discussed had tendencies to suffer from Shrodinger's Product Line due to the nature of having a human GM.  The gist is, the party gets what they look for, because the GM has so much he has to create, that ideas handed to him save him work, thus he bites them.The whole Making It Up thing is funny, because we're talking about a game where everything in it is made up. The GM is making up stuff before the game, some of it stays in his head, some of it gets written down.  Then the game starts.The PCs decide to go to an undocumented place (say a hat store).  The GM now has to invent a hat shop, on the fly.The PCs decide to go see the mayor, an NPC he has stats for, but wasn't expected to be involved in the game (because nothing presently going on is related to the mayor).  Now the GM has to make up dialog, and potential reactions to what the PCs do.Even the most documented game world has stuff the GM is making up, if not physical entities, their reactions, the causal outcomes of player actions, the present location relative to the players (are they at the bar the PCs go to when looking for them?).Making it up is just not definitive enough in a game where the GM is making all of it up.  The difference is whether there's a foundation of planned data the GM is working from, or is the whole thing spontaneously generated and decided.</blockquote>

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