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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 8437580" data-attributes="member: 42582">I think I'm pretty familiar with what you call a "living sandbox". I've run that sort of game, though not in the past 25 or so years.There doesn't need to be a "well-defined process". All I'm asking is for you to describe how things actually happen at the table. Eg when you say "the PCs move around in the GM's world" what is actually happening at the table. I've offered my account of this - the GM has notes on a setting/backstory - geography, NPCs, factions, possible timelines of events, etc - and the players declare actions for their PCs, some of which "activate" the situations implicit or latent in that backstory/setting material. Eg the GM has a note that The clerics of Pholtus hate Cuthbertians and then the player of the cleric of Cuthbert declares I go down to the temple of Pholtus, wearing my full regalia and symbol, and the GM then extrapolates how the Pholtus clerics respond by a mixture of intuition, reaction rolls, etc.I'm not sure whether or not you are accepting or rejecting this account of how it works.It would help me if you would describe the actual process of play at the table. Who says what? How are action declarations resolved?As it is, I'm drawing on my own conception, based on my own play experience together with conjecture as to what you have in mind.This all seems consistent with my account of how a sandbox works - NPC conduits are either an example of setting that is waiting to be "activated" by an appropriate action declaration (eg I ask the tavernkeeper what the news is in these parts), or a situation/scene that the GM frames independently of player action declarations (eg A stranger comes towards you. It seems that she has something to say). Witnessing a battle could be mere colour - if it just described to the players with a presupposition that they are spectators - or (a bit like the approach from a NPC) could be a scene framed independently of player action declarations.This all seems to be talking about how it is that the players, in play, learn about and engage with material established by the GM as setting/backstory material.I'm saying that the world "going on" without the characters is the GM authoring material - setting/backstory material (eg that such-and-such a faction leader does such-and-such a thing with such-and-such a result on the faction's relationship with the temple of Pholtus). And the players learn about this material either as colour - ie it informs the GM's narration as "background" or "flavour" or "depth/verisimilitude" but not actually mattering to any action resolution - or else uses it to frame a scene/situation (eg when the PCs go to the temple of Pholtus, the relationship between the temple and the faction feeds into the way the situation is framed and unfolds).I think what I'm describing here is pretty standard "living sandbox" stuff.I guess it's all a matter of degree. In some sense, the Doctor in some of the early Dr Who series is trying to return from his exile on Earth (I think I'm thinking of Jon Pertwee's Doctor) - but that's not really what most of the episodes were about.In the classic Monkey TV show, ostensibly the goal of the protagonists is to travel to India and collect the sutras, but again that's not really what most of the episodes are about.You can't prioritise setting, character and situation all at once.In a sandbox, setting/backstory generally takes priority - the factions, the locations, the NPCs, etc - that figure in the GM's prep work, and then situation flows out of that (eg the PCs go to the temple of Pholtus, and the clerics there ask them to help deal with the faction that is pressuring them). Sometimes the GM might frame a situation independently of the players' action declarations for their PCs (eg the faction war breaks out in front of the PCs) but typically that should still flow from the backstory/setting - that's where the "depth" of the world resides.A contrasting approach to play is one in which situation is prioritised. And then backstory flows from that. To frame situations without drawing on setting/backstory requires other ways of establishing the situation. One way to do this is to lean heavily on genre conceits/tropes - Prince Valiant and The Dying Earth are two RPGs that take this approach. Another way is to draw on elements built into the PCs. This is how Burning Wheel works.Here we have story before. That is, the pre-authorship of material that bears directly upon the protagonist's dramatic/thematic trajectory.But the resolution of those declared actions is via map-and-key. It is backstory/setting first, and those notes already determine what the story will be vis-a-vis the abandoning of the homestead and Thurgon and Aramina's engagement with it.The episode of Burning Wheel that I described was situatin first - ie there is an abandoned homestead in the area that Thurgon is committed to guarding (in virtue of being a Knight of the Iron Tower). The backstory/setting detail flows out of the resolution of that situation.Here we see some more story before.Well, in all RPGing that I'm familiar with the players declare actions for their PCs, and hence can choose what elements of a situation to engage with. What distinguishes various approaches - such as "story before" and "story now" is the basis on which those elements are being authored, and how the consequences of declared actions are resolved.The GM made up the Elves. He likes Elves, and brought them onto the stage - a bit like your faction war.The situation was all about what I as a player brought into it - the question of whether or not the Elves would travel with me (Thurgon) to Auxol. It wasn't about the Elves' motives (ie fighting the Orcs). Or the Orcs' motives (ie raiding the homesteads).I see very few actual play examples posted of D&D play where this sort of thing happens - ie where a successful CHA check or extended resolution process generates a fundamental change in a NPC's trajectory (eg in this case, from leading the warband against the Orcs to joining the PCs in liberating their homeland). What I do hear very often is that, in D&D, the GM has to decide whether or not it is uncertain that the NPC might be influenced at all.I'd be interested to hear more about examples of social resolution that put the player's goals for their PCs front-and-centre.My point was that, as you presented the scenario, the PC could either strike a deal with the factoin to raid the outpost in return for the information (which might include a bidding war), or else walk away - and perhaps eg try and assassinate faction heads. But neither in that earlier post nor in this one do you canvass that the PC might get the faction to help hunt down the brother's killer.The whole way you have spoken about the faction gives me the impression that the GM is deciding what it is doing and aspiring to by reference to their own conception of what motivates the faction. So as I said, if you have actual play examples that resemble the exchange between Thurgon and the Elven captain - in which all the action is centred not on the Elves's goals (as conceived of by the GM) but the PC's goal (as conceived of by the player) I'd be interested to hear about them.I started the thread that I quoted from: <a href="https://www.enworld.org/threads/player-authored-plot-in-rpging.681631/" target="_blank">Player-authored plot in RPGing</a> and that thread had a predecessor: <a href="https://www.enworld.org/threads/who-authors-the-shared-fiction-in-rpging.681491/" target="_blank">Who authors the shared fiction in RPGing?</a>No one posted any "living sandbox" example of play in these threads.My own experience is that the more one, as a GM, looks to the players' priorities - as evinced in the play of their PCs - to frame situations, the less important it is to have prepared backstory of the sandbox sort. Backstory starts to be an output rather than an input.Why is this Force? What action declarations are being thwarted or having their outcomes manipulated?To put it another way: the idea that proactive scene-framing requires Force rests on a premise, that the "proper" way to frame scenes is to have them emerge out of the players' action declarations which then "activate" the situations latent in the pre-authored backstory ie that th game is a sandbox. Of course that is one way to play a RPG, but not the only way. Proactive scene-framing is consistent with prioritising situation over backstory/setting.</blockquote>

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