Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Ilbranteloth" data-source="post: 7166614" data-attributes="member: 6778044">Trust me, the terminology that people use is extremely confusing, and I don't get most of it either. But what you're describing in your prior post is not a sandbox at all. It has nothing to do with a sandbox (and most players that prefer sandboxes would agree that they don't like the technique you're describing).Adventure Design: Sandbox vs. LinearYou have two extremes - a railroad and a sandbox. The far extremes would be a totally randomly generated on the spot sandbox vs. an adventure that's entirely predetermined (like playing through The Fellowship of the Ring). Everything else is someplace in the middle.I refer to my campaign as a "living sandbox," where you can go anywhere you want, anytime you want, but I also have dozens of plots going on behind the scenes, essentially every NPC has some sort of plot. That doesn't mean that I know what everybody is doing all the time. But there are plots that have a trajectory, and that trajectory changes if the PCs intervene, otherwise it continues as is. They can have good or bad consequences in the world.In addition, I listen to the players, and many plots and ideas are developed based on things they say, and also the characters and what they say, do, etc. So I have "linear plots" but as soon as the PCs engage in one, they are no longer linear. So I don't know where you stand on the linear plot vs. sandbox continuum, but your post was objecting to something that has nothing to do with a sandbox or linear design. False ChoicesYou were objecting to a false choice, where the DM presents a choice, but the result of that choice is predetermined, regardless of which of the two "choices" the players decide. In fact, it's a technique more likely to be hated by players who prefer a sandbox, and usually more commonly used (and useful) in a more linear plot.The classic example of a false choice is something like this:The DM creates and encounter with an ogre, and wants to use it.You come to a fork in the road, and make a choice to go left. You meet the ogre.If you had chosen right. You would have met the ogre. A false choice. And evil, right?The problem is, it places the expectation that the DM will have pre-planned everything ahead of time. Not only do I not consider that reasonable after 35+ years of DMing, I also consider it virtually impossible, because no matter how many scenarios I consider, the players always think of something else.So you learn to improvise. One of the tools that I use to improvise is that I do have lots of little hooks, scenes, short encounters, and such that I can drop in at any time. I can also attach them to a random encounter table, which have categories like: predator, unusual terrain, ruin, etc. Ruin has a subtable that has things like tomb, which can be a a body recently killed by orcs, or a long lost crypt that's suddenly discovered when a sinkhole opens under your feet.So when a choice is presented, there are many times when I don't have any idea of what's down the left or right road. Sometimes I have something that's appropriate either way (the ogre), and sometimes a real choice.So the question is, from a player/character perspective, what's the qualitative difference between:1. A choice with no solutions known to the DM, and the result is randomly determined after you select a choice. The second choice remains undetermined, unless you choose to go back and select it. In which case it's randomly determined, or improvised.2. A choice with no solutions known to the DM, and the result is improvised after you select a choice. The second choice remains undetermined, unless you choose to go back and select it. In which case it's randomly determined, or improvised.3. A choice with one solution known to the DM, which is the result for the first path you take. The second choice remains undetermined, unless you choose to go back and select it. In which case it's randomly determined or improvised.4. A choice with both solutions known to the DM, and he knows which path they are on before you make a decision. The other choice (prepared ahead of time) is unused unless you go back and take the second path.Of course, there are variations of this, such as both solutions being known by the DM, but still selecting one of them as the solution for the first choice no matter which direction you take, and the second prepared solution is always option 2.From the characters' (and really the players' perspective) the choice is always "real." The result in option 3 is predetermined, but you still have two choices. If you go the other direction, there still has to be something different. So really, the only thing that's predetermined is the result of the first choice.Furthermore, if I were to run four different scenarios, each using one of these techniques, I would bet that you would be unable to determine which was which. They would play identically. In addition, players seem to be inherently OK with option 1 or 2, but not option 3, since the DM is deciding the result ahead of time. Of course, the DM is predetermining the result for option 4 as well.While there's some part of me that wants to say there's a problem with one of these or another (people think #3 is somehow dishonest for example), the real problem in my mind is the skill of the DM. If the DM relies heavily on option 3 (which I don't recommend), and they aren't good at improvising the other option if they go there too, then you'll have a qualitative difference in the game itself (prewritten material works better for that DM). If you're that type of DM, then make sure you have plenty of prepared bits to drop in at any time.A false choice can have real choices nested in it. This is frequently used in adventure design. SKT is a good example of this. In SKT, you have lots of freedom to explore, but from Chapter 2 you're eventually going to go to at least one of three places. It doesn't matter which you select, everyone leads to chapter 3. From Chapter 4, you can choose Chapter 5, 6, 7, 8, or 9, but ultimately, no matter which one you choose, you will move on to Chapter 10.The adventure has a very sandboxy feel. And there isn't anything that prevents you from going to more than one of those chapters (it's been a while since I've read it, so there may be a time element). But in the end, you really have only one result - Chapter 10.</blockquote>

Verification