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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Ovinomancer" data-source="post: 8437097" data-attributes="member: 16814">So, then, there's no difference to you between a high-sandbox game like a hexcrawl where the GM has extensively detailed setting notes that the players discover and a game where the GM just makes things up as they go?This doesn't seem like it's useful to do, though, because those things are pretty different in play.  The former, provided strong adherence to prep, is much less likely to produce Forced play, while the latter is overly ripe for it.  In other words, an Improv heavy game can be one where the GM improvs to keep the players on the rails but hides this, and could be even more controlled than a game that rates much lower on the sandbox scale.  At which point, given the intent is to determine the level of player choice, I'm not sure you're doing useful work here with this.Huh.  So, I can have a high sandbox score if I, occasionally, ask the players to make a choice about the direction of play they want, and then railroad the heck out of them through that, and then repeat?  That's... not at all what I expected.Actually, the part that was hidden is how "strategic decisions" was being handled.  It appears that play in your sandbox spectrum is just about how often the GM checks in and asks for input on what the game is about.  I mean, technically, an AP qualifies if the strategery is narrowed down to "do we play this AP or not."  If you classify the rest as tactic decisions to pursue this, then we're in high sandbox territory, yes?  I feel the answer to this is no, though, and that there's quite a lot to unpack about the difference between a strategic and tactical decision and who decides which is which -- which goes directly to my point that there's a huge set of unstated assumptions undergirding the spectrum.  You've just done a think where you think that you can clearly define a spectrum using "strategic decisions" and than bury the assumptions in the strategic decisions, thereby keeping the spectrum clean and obvious.  It's not, though, it's just got one more layer of obfuscation.</blockquote>

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