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Message: <blockquote data-quote="bert1000" data-source="post: 5415552" data-attributes="member: 29013">This always trips me up in these discussions.  It seems to me that most people associate sandbox play with pre-determined (or randomly determined) places, NPCs, etc.    The "ultimate sandbox DM" would then have the entire world mapped out before hand in every detail, large and small.  In reality, however, no one can do this.  At some point a DM has to make up details that were not pre-determined or there isn't a random table for.   And many of these times, there are a multitude of choices that would not, in fact, be at odds with ingame causal logic.  It's just a choice. So, does using prior details of the play up until then to choose these elements that need to be made up on the spot somehow make it less sandboxy?  I guess so, but it's unavoidable at some level so not sure it should count against sandboxing. For example, what if the PCs decide to see if there are any unplundered tombs in an unexplored hex far to the north and the DM hasn't really pre-populated that hex yet.  There is nothing that has been revealed to the players up to now that would indicate that there is or isn't a tomb there.  They are playing in a world with lots of old ruins, so there certainly could be a tomb there  -- it isn't at odds with the inworld logic.  The DM needs to make a choice.  Or even if rolling randomly, has to assign a percentage (a choice).   Back to the snake example above.  The PCs seek out a tomb to plunder.  The DM didn't flesh out this tomb before the PCs made their characters.   In fact, the DM is creating this tomb now for the next session since he didn't expect the PCs to go there.  One PC is afraid of snakes.  It is perfectly within the inworld logic that there could be snakes in a tomb (or spiders, or undead, etc.).  Unless the DM creates a completely random dungeon, then how can the DM populate the dungeon without being effected by the knowledge (one way or the other) that the PC is afraid of snakes?</blockquote>

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