Reply to thread

Message

<blockquote data-quote="Ariosto" data-source="post: 5404765" data-attributes="member: 80487">Perhaps it would be more accurate to say that the sandbox is simply not a great campaign for a certain sort of player, one with a certain definition of what a &quot;great campaign&quot; is.When your &quot;reluctant hero&quot; gets driven by events out onto the road of Destiny, it is not necessarily the case that the game has ceased even locally to be one of free player choice. It is not necessarily the case that Destiny is any more than illusion, that there is truly a Story to which all in the end shall conform.There was once a PC in one of my games who was anything but reluctant, and &quot;heroic&quot; only in being recklessly ambitious. However, the effects of his delusions could as well have been produced in a humbler figure by the machinations of a mysterious Druid come to Shady Vale, or a Wizard frequenting the Shire.He imagined himself also to be &quot;heroic&quot; in capability after absconding with a sword of legend, and found out the hard way that he in fact could not defeat a horde of Chaos-spawned monsters. His demise (by his own hand) was really rather anti-climactic.What I mean to suggest here is that none of the possible histories of plotted scenarios magically disappear from a &quot;sandbox&quot;. The fact of the matter is really quite the opposite: it is by culling possibilities that one reduces a &quot;sandbox&quot; to a plotted scenario.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Ariosto, post: 5404765, member: 80487"] Perhaps it would be more accurate to say that the sandbox is simply not a great campaign for a certain sort of player, one with a certain definition of what a "great campaign" is. When your "reluctant hero" gets driven by events out onto the road of Destiny, it is not necessarily the case that the game has ceased even locally to be one of free player choice. It is not necessarily the case that Destiny is any more than illusion, that there is truly a Story to which all in the end shall conform. There was once a PC in one of my games who was anything but reluctant, and "heroic" only in being recklessly ambitious. However, the effects of his delusions could as well have been produced in a humbler figure by the machinations of a mysterious Druid come to Shady Vale, or a Wizard frequenting the Shire. He imagined himself also to be "heroic" in capability after absconding with a sword of legend, and found out the hard way that he in fact could not defeat a horde of Chaos-spawned monsters. His demise (by his own hand) was really rather anti-climactic. What I mean to suggest here is that none of the possible histories of plotted scenarios magically disappear from a "sandbox". The fact of the matter is really quite the opposite: it is by culling possibilities that one reduces a "sandbox" to a plotted scenario. [/QUOTE]

Verification