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

[robertsconley]

Just to be clear because it came up, none of are saying sandbox or living world sandbox is a new innovation. The conversations we point to occurred in largely OSR circles where people were looking back to earlier days of the hobby to find solutions to problems they were encountering in more current forms of play. Is it is very much about going back and seeing if there are approaches that were used that might have become less popular or fallen by the wayside but prove useful today.

That’s accurate, but not the whole story.

Some of us never stopped using those methods. Over time, we gained experience both in applying those techniques and in creating or adapting new ones. The 2006 release of OSRIC and Basic Fantasy was a tipping point, people like myself began going the extra mile to polish our work for public release or sharing. That moment helped crystallize an emerging movement, and from there, the ideas continued to evolve.

New contributors brought in their own takes, which in turn inspired further development. The result is the diverse landscape we have today.

You could almost call it an alternate history of RPGs, except thanks to OSRIC and Basic Fantasy, we did more than speculate. We published, played, and built on those foundations. Why some of us call it a Renaissance, not a Revival.

I’ve been running sandbox campaigns since the early ’80s. The living world sandbox I describe in this thread represents how I run them today.

 

[AlViking]

A 750-page thread built around arguing that GM-led sandboxing circa 1983 is some new or revelatory cutting edge rpg tech.

I see where the OP is coming from - the conservatism of D&D fans is exhausting!

I don't see anyone arguing that traditional games are anything new. But the idea that the game could have tasks that are resolved using three basic systems, simple, opposed, or resistance rolls? Truly game changing ideas from Runequest in 1975! All of the games we play are just evolutions of games that started back in the 70s which were just based on games from far earlier.

 

[zakael19]

Every system cited in this thread illustrates different creative priorities. Something always has the focus, then other elements fall into place. In Blades in the Dark, that focus is the crew’s development and score structure. In Burning Wheel, it’s testing beliefs and traits. In PbtA games, it’s building drama and narrative based on moves. None of these emphasize consistency with an external setting first.

I mean, the focus of play in your game is still the character’s actions, right? The goals they set, how they influence the world, and how other elements of the world reveal themselves in turn?

Like, Blades emphasizes its setting and making it feel real extremely deeply as I’ve pointed out many times - including in one of the 3 core GM Goals of play. Factions have desires and goals they’re pursuing with or without player involvement. The framing of how play evolves from a mechanics and scene building perspective is different, but in play the moment to moment action doesn’t feel in a different world from 5e.

 

[AlViking]

Just to be clear because it came up, none of are saying sandbox or living world sandbox is a new innovation. The conversations we point to occurred in largely OSR circles where people were looking back to earlier days of the hobby to find solutions to problems they were encountering in more current forms of play. Is it is very much about going back and seeing if there are approaches that were used that might have become less popular or fallen by the wayside but prove useful today. This is why for example when I talk about NPCs as living, I refer back to the description of Strahd in the original Ravenloft module and then to the elaboration of the concept in the Feast of Goblyns adventure (these books are like over 30 and 40 years old)

I've been running my games basically the same way since the late 20th century once I outgrew the dungeon of the week. It's nothing new.

 

[CreamCloud0]

Which, frankly, is pretty much in keeping with most of the descriptions of sandboxing. Pretentious presentiments pretending portentous play.

always nice to have a civil discussion with someone who respects your views.

 

[thefutilist]

My feeling is that all, or most, of this is negotiable. Much like @robertsconley and @Bedrockgames both say there are 'many flavors' of living world (and I have no reason to disagree) there are equally many flavors of Narrativist play, maybe more. Some of them I probably don't like! In the end I'm not one to die on the hill of this or that game deserves a specific label. I have opinions about what is what, but sticking to narrow definitions is generally counterproductive when taken too far.

I've got a low bar. The thing is, if someone does have Narrativist priorities then I can talk with them about living world stuff as it relates to a more impactful gameable space and how you don't have to throw the baby out with the bathwater. If they don't then I won't. In the case of bedrock and sable, I no longer think they have those priorities because of the whole player skill thing.

The actual similarity of technique between between some Narrativist play and living world exponents is in the disregard for the players. You're not (always) making choices that will make the game state more interesting or fun or challenging for them, then why are you making those choices?

As @pemerton pointed out, plausibility as the living word advocates frame it, is an exclusion criteria. They're not thinking about fun or interesting. In Roberts case there's a lot of disclaiming responsibility via dice rolls. We get a kind of emergence for emergences sake, what is @Campbell who made the Grand Strategy games comparison?

 

[robertsconley]

That’s why I keep returning to the, like, actual outcome of play from a “living world” perspective being most analogous to Blades, because the latter is the first broadly used product I’ve seen that sets up and executes a city in motion around the players once the game goes.

Which is why good-faith discussions about different approaches are invaluable. While I may not share the same creative goals as Blades in the Dark, the mechanics, tools, and aids developed to handle the dynamics of Doskvol, and other BitD settings, have applications in other systems and approaches, including mine.

Even when I don’t find an element, like clocks, directly applicable, they often prompt me to reevaluate my own methods. For example, one aspect of the clock mechanic is that it’s player-facing. That’s a useful feature in a campaign with a lot of moving parts, like one centered on Doskvol. So now I’m considering how I might make that aspect more explicit in my own approach.

I think the degree/scale of potential moving pieces within @robertsconley’s sandbox work is probably fairly distinctive, along with established procedures for evolving the world state while maintaining broad consistency. That’s years of creative vision and effort.

I appreciate the compliment.

Like, Dolmenwood is a fairly huge sandbox (from a hex/content/detail perspective), but it doesn’t have a lot of set guidelines for putting things “in motion” beyond the random encounter tables and whatever the GM brings.

I agree, there’s still work to be done. I’m well aware that parts of my living world sandbox approach currently rely on the fact that "Rob Conley" is the referee. That’s one reason that, while I have written blog posts and published things like How to Make a Fantasy Sandbox. But I haven’t consolidated everything into one essay or book.

This thread has helped crystallize my thoughts, and in the words of Winston Churchill, I feel I’ve reached “the end of the beginning” when it comes to writing up what I do. There’s still a lot of development ahead before I feel it’s useful enough to present in a complete form.

 

[Faolyn]

See, here's my question. That's a plausible result. Sure. But, why a 5 way civil war? An equally plausible result is minor skirmishes as the 5 way groups shuffle for position that results in a stalemate that lasts for years. In other words, nothing really changes in the setting. But, that would be largely pretty boring to be honest. A 5 way civil war is a LOT more fun. So, did you choose the most plausible result or the one that would be the most fun and interesting.

Because if it was fun and interesting, then the whole notion of "choosing what makes the most logical sense" kinda goes out the window.

As I said in a post elsewhere, it's ridiculous to assume the GM will think of every possible result of an Impiricide or similarly large action. It's completely impossible. So in this case, a return to warring states--a five-way civil war--was the first plausible, naturally-flowing idea that came to my mind. A bunch of minor skirmishes that result in a stalemate may simply never occurred to me.

 

[Campbell]

When it comes to finding meaning in a given moment of play in games like Apocalypse World, the reason I don't like taking a mechanic outside of its context and applying it to another set of conventions, is because the meaning comes from the whole process. We start by investing in the premise of these characters, caring about them, being curious about them. We then put them in situations that help us to apply that pressure to it and then we go to the dice not because finding out in the moment how they respond is the part that brings meaning, but because the dice bring the unwelcome. The meaning comes from what you do once you commit to having been convinced or your character being angry despite themselves.

As a player it's important to me that this attraction despite myself or being convinced to do something despite it not aligning with my ethos not be something I choose, that I author because that takes me from being the skin of my character and instead puts me into either a detached perspective where I'm evaluating and not embodying or where I'm essentially making storytelling decisions about my character.

To be fair this sort of experience does happen at the table in absence of mechanics when we hold each other to established fictional positioning, where we expect follow through on if it should make sense for your character to be upset in this moment and they seem to be acting normal, ask why. If we all commit to the emotional stakes of these moments.

I get that for some people that taking direction from game mechanics or even prompting from their fellow players and GMs about this stuff feels off to them. I would ask people to at least try to consider the holistic experience of play and not the mechanic in a vacuum in a single moment of play. Also to be mindful to not assume inartful use - that many of us have gotten quite good at integrating these mechanics into our roleplaying in a very seamless way.

I think we all could probably benefit from remembering that we are speaking to people with decades of real practice, who take a good deal of pride in what they do.

 

[Pedantic]

As long as the following four things apply:

Drama and group interest in it

Emergence (Even if it's done through secret backstory and GM fiat)

Character decisions aren't based on genre recreation.

Important stuff isn't decided by player skill

This caught me off-guard, particularly the last point, but I found it quite clarifying. I would have inverted that when discussing what I found valuable in play; if it isn't affected meaningfully by player skill, then it can't be important. Your formulation helped unravel some other language I keep struggling with, in general, particularly around discovery, or "learning" about the characters; information that was created in response to a randomizer is not, to my mind, learnable. That's for meta analysis of systems and building heuristics about how they interact, not for their direct outputs.

I'm a little uncomfortable with "skill" here, I'd want to lean more on "agency" but that's semantically loaded and it seems like the stuff I think is essentially to agency keeps getting classified as "skill" instead.