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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Ovinomancer" data-source="post: 8435417" data-attributes="member: 16814">Okay, but this seems a distinction that isn't teasing out a real difference -- it's still a menu, it's just whether or not the players feel bound to pick from the printed menu or if they make choices that are checked against the hidden menu.  You still aren't going to be doing anything the GM hasn't prepped in these games, yes?I'm not sure this is useful unless there's an analysis of what off adventure choices are actually available to the players.  You seem to be comparing two things, either follow the GM's breadcrumbs OR do whatever you want the GM will oblige.  I'm not sure this is realistic, or that a good sandbox has a high percentage of the latter as a matter of course.  If I pull out a setting book with lots of details, for instance, and let players pick which things they want to go engage with, then I'm not really letting them do anything, I'm providing exposition based on the menu from the setting book.  But, if I'm running a game like Dungeon World, where the game is entirely reactive to what the players are doing, I don't think this actually qualifies as even more sandboxy.  But it does under your criteria. So, I think there's something lacking in the evaluation, here, and that this missing part is actually 1) quite important and 2) kinda disables the evaluation you're trying to make.<img class="smilie smilie--emoji" alt="👍" src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f44d.png" title="Thumbs up    :thumbsup:" data-shortname=":thumbsup:" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" />I think many games will be in the middle, though, so a tool that only effectively categorizes the extremes is -- well, not a very good spectrum.</blockquote>

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