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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 8429927" data-attributes="member: 42582">Adding to that: the phrase the GM determines the outcomes of actions declared by players for their PCs does not entail that the GM is not obliged to follow any rules or abide by any principles in making that determination.I mean, as an examiner I'm the one who determines my students' results, but that doesn't mean I just make them up!Yes. I didn't assert otherwise. In the post you quoted and replied to, I said I think this sort of approach is far more viable in D&D than threads like this current one seem to allow. The fact that you, or some others, prefer an approach of GM pre-authorship doesn't contradict or even speak against that claim.My understanding of a typical "sandbox" is that the GM authors a reasonably large amount of backstory; and that much of that backstory consists, at least implicitly, of potential situations: ie notes to the effect that, if the players declare actions that result in their PCs arriving at place X, then event Y will occur (where event Y might be anything from finding a dragon cave to seeing a battle in progress, if the sandbox includes "freeze frame" areas). For the sandbox to work at all, it has to be fairly easy for the players to succeed on their action declarations about moving from A to B. And for the sandbox to be fun, the potential events have to be interesting ones.Nothing about a sandbox involves giving the players authority over backstory. It does involve giving them authority over situation, because they can be expected to make action declarations about where their PCs go that reflect the sorts of events they want to occur (eg if they want events like fighting pirates) they will declare actions to move their PCs towards the sea rather than the mountains.I don't think it is at all essential to a sandbox that the GM, in their mind, be imagining all sorts of "story arcs" going on that involve NPCs. That's essentially the GM writing their own fan fiction. It may be fun for them, but is largely orthogonal to RPGing.The method of asking questions and building on the answers, which is used in Apocalypse World and which I said can be used in D&D more than is typically allowed in discussions like this, has nothing really to do with sandboxing. It's a technique for sharing authority over both backstory and situation. Of course those who use the ask questions approach are also playing in consistent campaign worlds. The way they avoid the inconsistency that [USER=6801845]@Oofta[/USER] alludes to is to not have all the pre-authored backstory with implicit situation that is typical of a sandbox. Ask questions and build on the answers fits better with "no myth" or "no myth"-ish approaches than approaches that lean heavily into pre-authored backstory. (With Apocalypse World and its offshoots - eg most people have heard the Dungeon World phrase "Draw maps, leave blanks" - probably being the best known examples of "no myth"-ish systems at the moment.)</blockquote>

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