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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Xetheral" data-source="post: 8437183" data-attributes="member: 6802765">There's quite a bit of difference! Just not necessarily a difference regarding where the two campaigns fall on the sandbox spectrum. I don't know how to emphasize more clearly than I already have that the sandbox spectrum measures one aspect of play style in isolation.If it's an entirely improvised campaign high on the sandbox spectrum, then use of Force to determine direction of play would create a contradiction. So I can't agree that a GM making everything up as they go is ripe for Force in terms of negating the players' strategic decisions. The more frequently the DM uses Force to override players' strategic choices, the lower that campaign fall on the sandbox spectrum. Note that the GM could still use Force in other ways (e.g. altering enemy stats to cut short a battle for pacing purposes) equally well in either a pre-written or heavy-improv game. That wouldn't affect a campaigns's place on the spectrum.No. Strategic decisions exist at all levels of play. Giving the players occasional high-level open-ended decisions would make the campaign more sandboxy than an othererwise-identical campaign that didn't offer that choice, but it would still rate low on the sandbox spectrum unless somehow the high-level decisions outnumber the low-level decisions. (With a caveat again to the calibration issues I've flagged from the start.)For purposes of the specification of the sandbox spectrum, I would consider tactical decisions to be those relating to resolution of the immediate scene. Strategic decisions, by contrast, would be those that determine the PCs plans and goals (both high-level and low-level), which influence future scenes and thus the direction of the campaign. I thought this distinction was evident based on how I was connecting the sandbox spectrum to player authority over campaign direction, but apparently it was not. I apologize for any confusion, and hope the definition of the sandbox spectrum is now more clear to you.If it helps, here's an illustrative example of how I see strategic decisions at multiple levels in comprison to a tactical decision in relation to a PC assault on a fortress. A high-level strategic decision would be to try to breach the fortress in order to achieve high-level goal X. A lower-level strategic decision would be what resources to gather and prepare to enable a breach of the fortress. An even-lower level strategic decision would be devising the attack plan for how, where, and when to employ those resources to breach the fortress. Once at the chosen time and place to attempt the breach, a tactical decision would be what ability to use now to surmount any immediate obstacles and enable the desired breach.All of these levels of strategic decisions determine the direction of the campaign (at correspondingly different scales). And all of these levels of strategic decisions are potentially constrained by table expectations to pick from a list of GM-provided options, or alternatively may be unconstrained. Thus, the spectrum takes all such decisions into account. (By contrast, tactical decisions are often constrained primarily by the ruleset being employed, with table expectations being a secondary parameter.)</blockquote>

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