Pathfinder 1E Sandboxes? Forked from Paizo reinvents hexcrawling

[Ariosto]

The PCs stumble across a cult who are doing something. THAT IS A PLOT. Something is happening.

"Something happening" is not always a plot. Even in fiction, it may be nothing more than incident.

"Plot," according to Samuel L. Delaney, is "an illusion the writer ought to disabuse her- or himself of pretty quickly, too, at least if she or he ever wants to write anything of substance, ambition or literary richness. ... What there is, is narrative structure." Pick up a Delaney novel to see his theory in practice. Pick up a Thomas Disch novel for further disjunction.

One thing such thoroughly modern fictions have in common with the old "well crafted tale" is that they have been written down. What is to happen is what always happens. That narrative structure -- in the generic sense, as there are many specific structures -- is what we tend to be talking about here when we speak of 'plot' in a game.

Even more particularly, we are speaking of the program presented to players in what these days are commonly called 'adventures', the sequence of scenes leading to "the climactic showdown with the BBEG" and so on.

A hint: the article 'the' in place of 'a'.

A sequence of scenes that is just one of many possibilities, no more or less 'appropriate' than any other that does or does not lead to a person who may or may not be an enemy (may even be an ally) depending on how, if at all, the players choose to engage him or her ... that is not a plot.

"The Starship Enterprise encounters an alien with godlike powers" is not a plot. It's a premise (and also a cliché). Fill in the blanks that it seems to be _______, but is really _________ and trying to ___________ -- and that is still not a plot, except in the sense of what the godlike alien is 'plotting' (which is not the same thing).

If the alien with godlike powers is an author -- or game master -- forcing the character-players into conformity with a narrative structure, then that is a plot in the sense we mean.

 

[Ariosto]

I have no idea what you're talking about. I made no reference to any game, especially not OD&D, and neither has anyone else except for you.

The words I quoted were posted by someone using your account, so you may assume that the reply was directed to whomever that was -- just as this is directed at whichever 'Hobo' posted what I quote here.

The original Ariosto post #65 was a reply to Hobo post #37 , which responded to Ariosto post #29:

Quote:
Originally Posted by Ariosto
Some people keep insisting on such an ideal of "purity" or "truth". From what I have seen, they are not the ones actually running campaigns in the old style.

(The "grand" old style, with dozens of participants engaged in high-level strategy as well as in role-playing, does indeed seem vanishingly rare.)

Hobo in post #1 referred to "a 'pure' sandbox". Rechan in post #14 , and AmerigoV in post #21, referred to "a 'true' sandbox".

When someone propose that the OD&D mode is not really 'sandbox', then his or her exclusionary definition of 'sandbox' is indeed what we are wanting. The definition I quoted most definitely does not exclude it, so far as I can see.

That some folks are so hung up on contriving such a "true and pure" sandbox -- which they insist cannot actually be played -- is curious, in any case.

Would it have advanced the art to have insisted that there is in fact nothing practical for Robin Laws to address in DMG2, and that at any rate he is allowed no words he may find convenient for the expression of his thoughts?

 

[Desdichado]

Umbran said earlier that Sandboxes have no plot. And I am arguing that if a sandbox has a plot hook, then there's a plot attached to that hook! Thus, a sandbox has plots. If it doesn't, then there are no plot hooks and it's a series of random encounters and monster lairs with monsters waiting for the PCs to walk in their front door.

But that's not necessarily true. Plot hooks can be misnomers. They could merely be "potentially interesting scenarios" with no plot attached to them. Plot, by definition, means that once the PC's bite on a hook, then the general course of how they handle that is predetermined. It's already written. That's why they call it a plot.

I don't play that way. Sandbox specifically eschews that mentality. Hence my contention that sandbox is the opposite of a railroad.

Are there any other formats orthogonal to the "sandbox <--> adventure path" line?

Adventure path is a bit of a misnomer in this regard, I think. An adventure path could have quite a bit of flexibility baked into it. It isn't necessarily a railroad.

Plus, these descriptions more accurately describe the game at the table and the style of the people running and playing them, not the published source material that they're using in game.

Although certainly playing an adventure path as written is going to be a less sandboxy game than one that isnt' a predetermined adventure path.

Not to mention that each Quest in the video game sandbox is fairly linear. You can pick up each quest at your leisure, and abandon it and come back, but the way you resolve it is fairly linear and it has a distinct path.

Did you read the wikipedia links I posted above? They specifically contrasted the sandbox with the quests.

"Plot," according to Samuel L. Delaney, is "an illusion the writer ought to disabuse her- or himself of pretty quickly, too, at least if she or he ever wants to write anything of substance, ambition or literary richness. ... What there is, is narrative structure." Pick up a Delaney novel to see his theory in practice. Pick up a Thomas Disch novel for further disjunction.

Ugh. Not only does Samuel L. Delaney attempt to create a new term for something that already has a well-established and common usage term in place, he does so in a manner that is pretentious. No thanks.

Plot, in the context we're talking about here, is where the GM already knows what needs to happen in order to play the game. He may allow the PC's to wiggle around for a bit trying to find it, but they can't "advance" until they do.

Plots in RPGs are a contentious issue, and a playstyle that adheres to strictly to a plot, so that the players feel like they're being unjustly, unfairly or unrealistically stifled in their choices of action, have been saddled with the pejorative of railroad.

That's it.

Ironically, railway locomotives have a sandbox, which they use to spray sand on the rails to improve traction.

But that's neither here nor there.

 

[Celebrim]

A classic example of a railroad is the classic 'A' series of AD&D modules, the Slaver series. Either at the end of A3 or the beginning of A4, the party is captured, robbed of all their equipment and then traps them in a prison beneath a volcano. If the DM uses the scenario as written (these were originally tournament modules), they have no say in the matter. The railroad removes all freedom.

I agree that the transition from A3-A4 is a classic railroad moment, but I think you can provide even more extreme examples of 'railroad'.

The worst case I can think of is there is a published Chaosium 'Call of Cthullu' adventure based off 'The Shadow out of Time'...

Spoiler

...where the Great Race of Yith arranges to have the PC party sent forward in time to a point where humanity is extinct and the Great Race is once again the dominate species on Earth (this time inhabiting insectile swarms). After vivasecting the PC's and putting them back together, the PC's are sent forward in time in a space capsule again, this time to the end of the universe and along the way are allowed to observe the unfolding of the end of history. At not point whatsoever in any of this do the PC's have any control over events. The entire adventure is essentially one long DM monologue interrupted only by the quite optional improv theater of the player.

Dragonlance was similarly targeted for modules that not only used pre-set stories, but used pre-set characters who HAD to follow the novel's plot...their fates entirely pre-ordained.

Unlike the above CoC scenario were oppurtunity to influence events seems carefully scripted out do to the disparity between player power and NPC power, I believe that its possible to adapt Dragonlance to a more open game, but yes, as written you are on the railroad.

If the Railroad is a novel and the sandbox is a 'choose your own adventure' book...

I agree that the 'railroad' is analogous to a novel, but a 'choose your own adventure' book is only in fact a better designed plot-driven adventure. The players have some choice, but most of the choice that they have is illusionary. Instead of one possible outcome to each scene, there are 2 or 3, and quite often, different threads of story when successfully negotiated simply converge back together.

The whole idea in a sandbox is that it doesn't converge. No two groups playing in the sandbox build the same thing. If the 'railroad' is a novel, the the 'sandbox' is well, 'a sandbox'.

I agree however that most campaigns fall somewhere in the middle between two possible extremes.

 

[Umbran]

Except that you can define a genre, go over its tenets, say what it is and isn't, etc etc. Same with business process. I can tell you all the qualities of the "Noir" genre, define it, explain how it's been used, different ways it's been used, etc etc.

I think you'd actually find some difficulty in stating *all* the qualities of Noir, such that nobody disagrees with your assessment - that you aren't including things that aren't really Noir, and haven't left out anything.

But you're saying it's too vague to define.

I did? Where? I can't find where I said that. In fact, I think I just took a stab at a definition!

I think it's a gross mischaracterization to reply to "Everything is in stasis" with "You can't have every single person active!"

There may have been some loss of context, here. The point is that since having it all be active is not possible in a practical sense, then there must be some that is not active. Once there is allowance for some, and there is no objective or definitive authority, we get to quibble over how much.

I mean, do you have a definitive percentage of how much content must be active for it to be "sandbox"? I know I don't. If neither of us do, how can we say that "all" does not fit? It may be a crummy sandbox, but being good isn't part of the definition

There's an impression I'm getting from a few posters is that there's a dichotomy. "If it ain't a sandbox, it's a railroad". A poster upthread said that the Sandbox is the repudiation of the railroad. But if the Railroad is the extreme, "viewed as a bad thing by most people" as you say, then it's not an 'either/or' issue, and that most people (even those who aren't running Sandboxes) aren't running a Railroad.

People on the internet tend to speak as if things were dichotomies, when the actuality is more like a spectrum, yes. It is not usually good for understanding to do so, imho.

Augh. That's not what I'm saying. Please, go back and Umbran's posts, and read my responses to him.

Umbran said earlier that Sandboxes have no plot.

Again, I'm not at all sure I said that. I said that you could run a sandbox game with no plot to speak of, but that's not the same as "all sandbox has no plot".


Moving onwards...

I have seen a common argument that sandbox games have no predetermined plot - that the plot of sandbox play is an emergent thing, seen only after it has happened. I'm not sure how fully I agree with it, but there's at least some wisdom in there.

 

[Desdichado]

The words I quoted were posted by someone using your account, so you may assume that the reply was directed to whomever that was -- just as this is directed at whichever 'Hobo' posted what I quote here.

The original Hobo post # responded to Ariosto post #29.

Just because you responded to my post doesn't mean that your response addresses my post in any way or isn't a non sequitur.

I'm not linking the sandbox discussion to OD&D or any game, for that matter. It's not a discussion that has anything to do with any specific game. It is a systemless discussion that applies equally to any and all roleplaying games.

If your response is to get all detailed about the "OD&D instructions", again, whatever those are exactly, then you haven't addressed my post at all, even if you've responded to it.

 

[Rechan]

I did? Where? I can't find where I said that. In fact, I think I just took a stab at a definition!

Describing a play style is like describing a genre of fiction - it is a vague thing, drawn only in broad strokes of tropes the thing has. If you go too far into the details, you aren't talking about the genre, you're talking about one implementation (like one novel).

So it wasn't define, but it was describe. Which is close to defining. I mean, if you can't describe something, how can you talk about it or define it?

I mean, do you have a definitive percentage of how much content must be active for it to be "sandbox"?

Hey now. I'm not the authority on sandboxes here. I am just making an observation that sandboxes seem to me to be very "static", with stuff in stasis.

Again, I'm not at all sure I said that. I said that you could run a sandbox game with no plot to speak of, but that's not the same as "all sandbox has no plot".

Ah. I see where I mixed up. I confused you with Hobo. Hobo said this:

Sandbox means that theres no plot, and player characters just wander all over the landscape interacting with elements of it as they please.

Emphasis mine. And I've been arguing that plot exists in sandboxes if there are any plothooks whatsoever.

 

[cildarith]

Umbran said earlier that Sandboxes have no plot. And I am arguing that if a sandbox has a plot hook, then there's a plot attached to that hook! Thus, a sandbox has plots. If it doesn't, then there are no plot hooks and it's a series of random encounters and monster lairs with monsters waiting for the PCs to walk in their front door.

When I think of "sandbox" the bolded part of your quote is precisely what a rudimentary sandbox is all about. It has (a) a map, (b) a wandering monster table, and (c) scattered lairs/dungeons/settlements/etc. That is all that is needed to start. A poor DM may simply leave it at that - and should not be terribly surprised if his players loose interest in fairly short order. A good DM will, once play commences, begin to spin webs of plot and intrigue in reaction to what the players do in that environment (actions have consequences). The difference here is that the plots are not hard-wired into the setting, but are generated in direct response to player actions.

Hope that helps...

 

[coyote6]

I don't play that way. Sandbox specifically eschews that mentality. Hence my contention that sandbox is the opposite of a railroad.

Adventure path is a bit of a misnomer in this regard, I think. An adventure path could have quite a bit of flexibility baked into it. It isn't necessarily a railroad.

"Railroad" generally has a strong negative connotation IME, when used with respect to RPGs. If one extreme on your continuum is "bad", then a lot of people will tend to infer that the other extreme is "good".

If that's the continuum -- "good sandbox" to "bad railroad", then any discussion of where someone's game falls on that continuum turns into a question of "how bad is your game?" That seems to be a good way to start a fairly pointless argument, IME.

I don't think it covers every type of campaign, either. So what's the point of that continuum?

Plus, these descriptions more accurately describe the game at the table and the style of the people running and playing them, not the published source material that they're using in game.

That seems to imply that if a self-described sandbox GM, who has laid out a plethora of plot hooks, and has locations all over a map set up, starts a game for a new group, and the players latch on to the first plot hook they find and doggedly follow it and all its consequences over the course of 15 levels, he is actually running a railroad game, because his campaign is indistinguishable from a game where the only plot hook was that one. Is that a valid conclusion? The players have to essentially wander around a lot, from adventure to adventure, otherwise it's not really a sandbox.

 

[Rechan]

Plot, by definition, means that once the PC's bite on a hook, then the general course of how they handle that is predetermined. It's already written. That's why they call it a plot.

I don't buy that definition.

You are saying that "Plot", in the case of "Here be cultists in the cave kidnapping locals for ritual", the Dm has pre-set how the PCs respond to the situation, and how the situation will be resolved. I am not.

Plot consists of:
Plot Hook
PCs Bite, follow up on hook.
Situation emerges.
PCs react to situation.
Resolution.

The DM doesn't have to define the ways the PCs must respond. If the DM is anticipating the players storm the cult's hideout and slaughter 'em all, but instead the PCs dress up as cultists, sneak in, and spike the Cultists punchbowl with roofies, and stab them all in their sleep, that's the plot. It's that the PCs bit the hook (Disappearing people), which lead to Cultists, and PCs dealt with it. That's plot.

Plot isn't a definition of how a scene must/should/will/can't be resolved, and what the resolution must be in response to how that works. Plot is merely the glue that links one scene to the next.

Plot changes as the PCs react. If the PCs react to the Cult situation by simply turning around and going "Bugger this", then the plot is that the Cult is unchecked, and whatever they are doing succeeds, with repercussions. The plot needn't follow a defiend script, it can easily be built off the PCs reactions to the situations. Action + Consequence = Plot.