D&D General [rant]The conservatism of D&D fans is exhausting.

[TwoSix]

The players drive the game. If they are passive, literally nothing happens. They sit there and stare at the DM who stares back. The sandbox is over and the DM has to start putting in all kinds of hooks and set them on adventures, etc. Not a bad way to play, but that's not a sandbox. If they are proactive, they set their own goals and desires and start taking action to reach those goals and desires. The DM is entirely reactive to their declarations, even when the world around them is doing stuff.

I think the sticking point is "the world around them is doing stuff". I think that's really a critical difference between the orientations of play.

What the "world around them is doing stuff" means, from my perspective (and from reading various sandbox games oriented books, like Kevin Crawford's X without Number series), is this.

The GM has created a model of a setting. This model is mostly mental, but often supported by physical notes and tools (campaign wikis, encounter tables, gazetteers, maps, etc.). This model is generally focused on important factions, nations, NPCs, etc.

The living world GM is taking this model and then running an objective (although there are differences in opinion in how much objectivity is possible) SimCity/Paradox strategy style set of mental heuristics, possibly supplemented by physical tools, to determine what these various factions and NPCs are doing, how they're interacting, and crucially, what impact the PC actions will have on these interactions and how these interactions will possibly impact the fictional space the PCs currently inhabit.

What this means at the table is that this process will result in new encounters or scenes, and critically these encounters/scenes are NOT generated as a direct result of PC's desires or actions. They can of course be an indirect result, but they are not being generated as directly pursuant/focused on PC goals.

They are the needs of the setting to invoke its own agency on the shared narrative. Because if the setting doesn't have its own demonstrated agency, then how else do you demonstrate at the table that the world is really living and operating under its own heuristics?

 

[Maxperson]

What I'm attempting to say is you've reduced player driven to player participation.

No. Player driven is who drives the action/story/narrative/whatever else you want to call it.

In a sandbox, the players decide the goals. They can choose to be pirates and work to make that happen. They can choose to be kings of a country and work to make that happen. They can choose to be mercenaries and work to make that happen. If they want to go into the hinterlands that no country claims and forge a new nation, they can work to make that happen. They are the driving force behind where the game goes. The DM is reactive.

In a linear game, they do mostly the same stuff, but within the confines of the social contract they agreed to and stay on the line.

In a railroad they drive nothing.

Those are not all the same, and only a railroad is reduced to player participation.

 

[robertsconley]

The background is just that, though. Background. In a living world where events happen, it's just stuff the players hear. Often it will just be that the baker and his wife split up, or the Duke had a stroke and his son took over. It's not all world shattering events. And the players are not intended or expected to go investigate these things.

If they hear the duke had a sudden heart attack, they might go see if it was natural, or they might open up a shop to sell the wares they find while adventuring, or they might go investigate the Forest of Endless Boredom to see if it's as dull as its reputation indicates, or...

Just a personal note: I’ve found through trial and error that the only things necessary to prepare are those that affect how the characters in the player's immediate social circle are roleplayed. However, campaigns are supposed to be fun for the referee, so if making King Lists brings you joy, as it does me, go for it. It probably won’t come up in play much, but it will be a heck of a lot of fun to make.

Take for example, the duke's heart attack. How do the players know this? Because some other character did something that informed the party. Maybe a town crier, or gossiping guards, or a friend chatting with the PC about what happen at the ducal court.

While natural events are a thing, most of what happens in a campaign is a result of some character, a creature, an NPC, or a PC doing something. Becoming aware of this effect really has helped me when I had limited time to prepare things. Or working on a big project and have to narrow the scope to get it done.

Hope this is useful.

 

[TwoSix]

When it comes to creativity and system design, the personal perspective always matters. Many folks in this thread do not get that and insist on doing analysis, critiques, and criticism as if there is an absolute scale of agency.

But there is an absolute scale of agency. That was my point. We, as limited humans, often tend to ignore larger scales when we're focused on a limited subset of activity.

If your focus is on trad-style DM-arbitrated gaming, then sure, sandboxes are high agency.

 

[Maxperson]

I think the sticking point is "the world around them is doing stuff". I think that's really a critical difference between the orientations of play.

What the "world around them is doing stuff" means, from my perspective (and from reading various sandbox games oriented books, like Kevin Crawford's X without Number series), is this.

The GM has created a model of a setting. This model is mostly mental, but often supported by physical notes and tools (campaign wikis, encounter tables, gazetteers, maps, etc.). This model is generally focused on important factions, nations, NPCs, etc.

The living world GM is taking this model and then running an objective (although there are differences in opinion in how much objectivity is possible) SimCity/Paradox strategy style set of mental heuristics, possibly supplemented by physical tools, to determine what these various factions and NPCs are doing, how they're interacting, and crucially, what impact the PC actions will have on these interactions and how these interactions will possibly impact the fictional space the PCs currently inhabit.

What this means at the table is that this process will result in new encounters or scenes, and critically these encounters/scenes are NOT generated as a direct result of PC's desires or actions. They can of course be an indirect result, but they are not being generated as directly pursuant/focused on PC goals.

They are the needs of the setting to invoke its own agency on the shared narrative. Because if the setting doesn't have its own demonstrated agency, then how else do you demonstrate at the table that the world is really living and operating under its own heuristics?

I disagree, because of the following.

1) The DM can't engage a billion details and interactions. There will be a few things generally happening at various points in the world, but it's not all(not even mostly) done outside the PCs actions. Unless the PCs happen to coincidentally be at a spot when an event was scheduled to happen, say an Earthquake hitting Baldur's Gate, no encounter happens to them by the DM.

2) The players will decide if they want to interact with anything they hear happening, so the 99% or more of the encounters are generates as a direct result of PC's desires or actions.

3) The vast majority of PC desires and actions have nothing to do with the events they hear about. They hear about the earthquake in Baldur's Gate, but since they've decided to overthrow Thay and are having encounters that way based on their desires and actions, the earthquake means nothing. The same if they hear that the Harpers are harassing Zhentil Keep.

Virtually all play in a sandbox game is driven by the players through the actions, goals and desires they set for their characters.

 

[TwoSix]

This is not true at all. And it is an example of the kind of flawed assumption driving so much of the debate. Rules can limit agency more than anything. An empowered GM enables the hand to go beyond the rules, addressing what the player is really trying to do. Setting fidelity can also be importantly to agency. Something that thwarts a rule in one case probably gives players greater freedom elsewhere by making them less constrained by rules. It is just a different way of playing the game. Agency isn’t some mathematical equation

It is true, man. Don't know what to tell you.

The point of rules isn't to limit agency, it's to codify who has the agency.

 

[Maxperson]

Just a personal note: I’ve found through trial and error that the only things necessary to prepare are those that affect how the characters in the player's immediate social circle are roleplayed. However, campaigns are supposed to be fun for the referee, so if making King Lists brings you joy, as it does me, go for it. It probably won’t come up in play much, but it will be a heck of a lot of fun to make.

Take for example, the duke's heart attack. How do the players know this? Because some other character did something that informed the party. Maybe a town crier, or gossiping guards, or a friend chatting with the PC about what happen at the ducal court.

While natural events are a thing, most of what happens in a campaign is a result of some character, a creature, an NPC, or a PC doing something. Becoming aware of this effect really has helped me when I had limited time to prepare things. Or working on a big project and have to narrow the scope to get it done.

Hope this is useful.

Yeah. That's in line with my last post where I told @TwoSix that the DM can't run a ton of details. Just a few things here and there and that most things are in response to what the players do.

 

[TwoSix]

I disagree, because of the following.

1) The DM can't engage a billion details and interactions. There will be a few things generally happening at various points in the world, but it's not all(not even mostly) done outside the PCs actions. Unless the PCs happen to coincidentally be at a spot when an event was scheduled to happen, say an Earthquake hitting Baldur's Gate, no encounter happens to them by the DM.

2) The players will decide if they want to interact with anything they hear happening, so the 99% or more of the encounters are generates as a direct result of PC's desires or actions.

3) The vast majority of PC desires and actions have nothing to do with the events they hear about. They hear about the earthquake in Baldur's Gate, but since they've decided to overthrow Thay and are having encounters that way based on their desires and actions, the earthquake means nothing. The same if they hear that the Harpers are harassing Zhentil Keep.

Virtually all play in a sandbox game is driven by the players through the actions, goals and desires they set for their characters.

That sounds like how I run a sandbox, not a "living world" sandbox.

I'm trying to drill down as to how my sandbox differs from @robertsconley's "majestic world of perpetual motion" sandbox.

And, the difference, to me, is that in a "living world" the world is allowed to "speak up" and put things into play when the GM's model says that should happen.

 

[AlViking]

Except that that is absolutely false about things like Dungeon World. I don't play Burning Wheel, so I can't comment on that.

It's also laughable to say that "everything ever done by the character leading up to a decision point should impact the chance of success". That's never been true of any edition of D&D--not with the extreme way it's phrased. Some things matter. A hell of a lot of things don't. That you have a +4 modifier does not in the slightest care about where that modifier came from. That you have Advantage does not in the slightest care where it came from--and, in particular, infinitely many sources of Disadvantage are cancelled out by even one singular source of Advantage (or vice-versa).

It would help your case to not state it in such radical terms.


Yeah, sorry, I just don't accept this. Hardcore relativism of all stripes has never made a compelling argument, and hardcore design relativism isn't any better.

We can still make comparisons. Those comparisons may require nuance or subtlety. That doesn't mean we should stop making them. Otherwise, every game is already perfectly itself. It can never be criticized. It can never be analyzed. It can never be understood or improved or studied. It just is, a whole, perfect, unassailable, undiscussable unit unto itself.

At which point, pack up the boards ladies and gentlemen, we've defined away any possible utility they could have other than "look at this cool thing", which Instagram is infinitely superior for.

Did I say everyone runs games like I do? No. Is possible to take everything relevant up to that point into consideration? I try my best to do so because I am not constrained by the rules of the game. Did I call out every single game other than D&D or say that they all work like BW? No. But even if your game is collaborative world building, it's not something I value so therefore to me it's irrelevant and even distracting from investing myself in my character.

Meanwhile in some games any move or action declaration is resolved by a roll. The player decides what challenge is going to be faced but the resolution? Even whether they can murder someone? The player loses all agency because the decision is made by a roll of the dice. Different games, even different groups using the same rules, have different goals and approaches to the game.

No approach is better or worse. I've never said my preferred version is better because I don't think there is any objective way to measure things as nebulous as agency. We can discuss the different approaches to gaming, and I can express my preferences that I don't care for a game you happen to like. But "nuance and subtlety" when it comes to valuation? It's almost always "My preferred game does X so it has more Y".

 

[AlViking]

It's just common sense.

If a player can't do something in the rules because the DM has made a setting decision, the player has less agency. Full stop.

If a player can't do something because they failed a "steel" roll the player has zero agency. Full stop.

In a standard 5e game, I can make a PC that is a tiefling. If the DM says his sandbox game only has 4 races (human, elf, orc, and dragonborn), then I as a player can't make a tiefling PC. I, as a player, have less agency.

As a player you knew what the GM's restrictions are and you still decided to play, you had full agency. You also can't decide to play a Kryptonian that has super powers and is effectively immune to damage and has super powers. All games have restrictions.

That loss of agency is not a good or bad thing, in and of itself. There are plenty of games that are improved by DM curation of setting to provide a more focused experience. But the restriction of player agency is an objective description of the state of play.

Player A wants to do something, player B chooses to stop that something and a roll is made. Player A has no agency. we could go on and on about this, my point is that it does not makes about as much sense to compare the speed of an airplane to the speed of my internet connection. They have nothing do do with each other even though they both use the term "speed".

It is true, man. Don't know what to tell you.

The point of rules isn't to limit agency, it's to codify who has the agency.

Declaring something to be true does not make it so. For me? It makes me less likely to be convinced of your argument. I could also say that in some games it sure seems to me that the only one who has agency would be the authors of the rules who decided what the restrictions were and what the predetermined target number is for significant decisions. Is that true, man? I honestly don't know, that's just my impression and interpretation.