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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Wolf1066" data-source="post: 5184953" data-attributes="member: 88680">The setting/world and the character's place in it also dictates a lot about how much scope there is for different styles of play and GMing as well.Some settings/teams lend more towards sandboxes or linear adventures or train trips or combinations of these than others do.  And each is appropriate in their place.Consider the differences between a fantasy Middle Earth setting where the players can be random adventurers seeking fortune where they find it (something that has occurred very rarely in real life and usually outside the boundary of known "civilisation") compared with a more realistic Medieval setting where the players are constrained by laws and their place in society.  Or a Traveller campaign with thousands of different worlds with different law levels and technologies.  Or a Cyberpunk dystopia or lawless freebooters on the high seas.All those settings vary the scope of the game and the concept behind the team also plays a part.  In a Traveller campaign, there would be a difference in the styles of adventure between the crew of an independent Free Trader and the crew of an Imperial Police Cruiser.The former would have a lot more player-driven freedom in a sandbox setting, deciding where to go to ply their trade - constrained only by their jump engines, fuel and money - while the latter would be more likely to be responding to scenarios dreamed up by the GM - more linear train trips.  "OK, there's a Vargr Corsair operating in sector ZZ-nine-plural-Z-alpha.  Go and deal with it."And then there's the scope for mixing - the players are buzzing around in the sandbox and elect to chase up a plot hook dangled by the GM, which sets them on a course, a train trip, that they may be able to abandon if they desire (or not: once you have that tiger by the tail...) but in order to resolve it, they have to run the gauntlet. All styles of play are possible in any setting, given the appropriate team, but some settings seem to lend themselves more easily to some styles than others do.It's far easier to play sandbox style in freer, looser universes than in ones where there are rigid laws or social constraints in place.A Traveller campaign in which I played, we were a Free Trader crew, we looked at what we could buy on any given world and what nearby systems had a market for it and travelled accordingly, having various adventures along the way.Interestingly, The GM was quite upset that we didn't elect to go to a particular world (where he had an unpleasant surprise waiting) but instead elected to go to another world where we could buy something that would make us a bigger profit than whatever was on that other world.  One of the players, when it was revealed why the GM wanted us to go to that world, deemed him to be a "unimaginative GM" for not forcing us to go to that world by claiming we'd rolled a "misjump" - the player advocated blatant Illusionism!Contrariwise, we played a number of AD&D games in which the adventures were a series of train trips - you went into the dungeon or cave system and you kept going until you'd killed all the monsters, gotten all the boodle and achieved whatever goals were in place.  Then you came out again all levelled up and hit the next dungeon/cave system - in which all the monsters were (surprise, surprise) at an appropriate level to be a challenge to the party...The GM wrote modules in which we would meet certain challenges and if we didn't go where the "stranger with the map" suggested, there would be no adventure...In the last nWoD game I played, the characters were employed as Paranormal Investigators - more "train trips" but at least there was no pretence at us having a choice.  The boss said "there's this house I want you guys to look at..." and we went.And, this not being a "level based" game, the "monsters" (effing-great DEMONS, usually) were not pitched at the players' levels.  Some were downright "crap your pants and run away" adventures.Frankly, I enjoyed all of them - even the train trips.  If there hadn't been appropriately interesting scenery on those trips, I'd've had cause to complain.</blockquote>

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