Pathfinder 1E Sandboxes? Forked from Paizo reinvents hexcrawling

[Umbran]

Meanwhile, the other - I don't even understand how something can have "no plot" and be a game. So it's just a series of 'here be monster lair, enter and kill monster'?

Why not? That's a description of old school, "kick in the door" kind of play. Lots of "beer and pretzels" games go that way, don't they? Heck, sometimes I want to screw the motivations, and just have some cool fights.

I mean, in a Sandbox game there are missions everywhere, but those missions ARE MISSIONS, implying therefore, plot.

I think the point is that there is nothing inherent to sandbox that makes it so. For most folks, it is probably reasonable to say that a good sandbox game has many active elements. But you can have bad sandbox that is still technically sandbox. That isn't dependent on the sandbox style, but instead on the GM.

Lots of things are not inherent to the style you choose, but instead on the GM.

 

[Rechan]

Why not? That's a description of old school, "kick in the door" kind of play. Lots of "beer and pretzels" games go that way, don't they? Heck, sometimes I want to screw the motivations, and just have some cool fights.

So a sandbox is just a map with doors tha tlead to monster lairs, and the decision is 'which monster lair do we want to go to'? That's all a sandbox is?

Because if it's just 'here there's a dungeon, here there's a dungeon, here there's a dungeon', I don't see how that differs from a plot game. The only difference is that players have a reason to go to one beyond "That one looks pretty"?

How does that differ from all the other "Old school" adventures which were just dungeons that people kicked the door in, beer and pretzel style?

I think the point is that there is nothing inherent to sandbox that makes it so. For most folks, it is probably reasonable to say that a good sandbox game has many active elements. But you can have bad sandbox that is still technically sandbox. That isn't dependent on the sandbox style, but instead on the GM.

Lots of things are not inherent to the style you choose, but instead on the GM.

See, this all just seems like circular logic. It's not explaining anything or beign definite about anything.

So what the hell are we talking about?!

 

[Umbran]

So a sandbox is just a map with doors tha tlead to monster lairs, and the decision is 'which monster lair do we want to go to'? That's all a sandbox is?

I'm not saying what it always is or is not. I'm stating that it can be this, in some hands.

That's an important point. No play style guarantees good results - not just because "good" is thoroughly subjective, but because you can technically match a playstyle, and still do things badly. The play style is just a rough framework, not a detailed implementation.

See, this all just seems like circular logic. It's not explaining anything or beign definite about anything.

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).

 

[Rechan]

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).

If you must be vague to even talk about it, then what's the point of even using the term?

Being utterly vague and not being able to say anything definite means that it's so subjective, there's no baseline. There's no way to agree, and no real meaning to it.

If the sandbox is ineffable, then what is the point of this thread?

 

[Ariosto]

Old style and sandbox style are not the same thing. ... I'm interested in talking about sandboxes, not old style D&D.

Then you'll have to define 'sandbox' -- and in a way that leaves out the OD&D instructions. If you are going with

Railroad means that there's one plot, and one way to roll out the plot, and the train only makes stops at specific predetermined points. Sandbox means that theres no plot, and player characters just wander all over the landscape interacting with elements of it as they please.

then that is what you've got in the OD&D game. There are premises, but no plot. There is not even the set sequence of sub-games often found in video games (whether or not they have any plot in a literary sense). The countless board games with more limited scenarios did not have plot.

I don't think it's the case, but I suppose one driver of interest could come from people who have very little exposure to the broader field of board and card cames. Maybe what is really normative in the wider context is a startling novelty to them. The timing could be just a matter of how long it took to develop such an insular demographic, coupled with whenever someone happened to stumble on this "cool thing" and send a "Hey, guys! Look at this!" out on the Internet.

Again, I don't think that has much, if anything, to do with it. It must take some doing to be unaware of how so many games work. The freedom to do anything, rather than being limited to a menu of moves, is still the basic assumption even in a 'railroad' (human-moderated) RPG -- the exceptions kick in only when players try to jump the rails. Computer programs with 'tactically' limited menus often offer wide open strategic options, allowing the player to roam freely across the game-world and select his or her objectives.

 

[Umbran]

If you must be vague to even talk about it, then what's the point of even using the term?

What's the point of naming fictional genres? Or business processes? People still seem to manage to have discussions about them.

Being utterly vague and not being able to say anything definite means that it's so subjective, there's no baseline. There's no way to agree, and no real meaning to it.

I don't think we've been quite that vague, though.

Honestly, to me part of the issue is that the essence of what is really "sandbox" isn't really deep, and it isn't complicated.

The GM makes up a sandbox, and populates it. The PCs are dropped into it, and told they can go where they want, and try to do what they want. The GM takes no particular pains to get the PCs to go in any particular direction. When they choose to go somewhere or do something, the GM does not alter what he'd prepared to meet the PC's abilities.

That, really, is the core of it. All the rest is variable:

How much space? You can have a sandbox town, nation, continent, world, or multiverse...

How much content is pre-populated, and to what level of detail? Well, I doubt anyone's going to pre-populate every house on every street of every town on a planet. There may be some things that are generated on the spot (say, by wandering monster tables, or wandering townsfolk tables, or what have you).

Are all of the pre-populated elements active? Again, doing that for every single person and critter on a planet isn't practical. Some of the elements are not going to be specified and active - many are apt to be assumed and/or in a holding "status quo" state. Could all of them be like that? Well, I wouldn't do it that way, but it isn't like there's some official "minimum active content" or something - and it is not as if anyone has the authority to designate such.

 

[Umbran]

Then you'll have to define 'sandbox' -- and in a way that leaves out the OD&D instructions.

Or, you'll have to accept that "old style" may be more than "OD&D instructions".

 

[Ariosto]

Quote:
You don't follow a specific plot line that is handed to you - you can choose any thread you find, or create your own.
This doesn't quite make sense to me.

Isn't that how RPGs work, not just sandboxes?

Watch out! That's rather a 'grognard' thought, and moreover treads dangerously close to having a conception of what an RPG is (making it possible for some things to be not RPGs).

I'm going to assume that Railroad (in this context) = Plot.

If that's the case, then I'm saying that a sandbox is nothing more than a web of railroads. The PCs just see a lot of trains and choose which one to get on.

In a Railroad game, the PCs can get off the train. But then the GM has to scramble to drop new trains in front of the PCs.

Fine. Y'all go ahead and define 'sandbox' any which way you like. Just don't be surprised if folks more interested in talking about how their campaigns actually work refuse to take the bait of accepting your 'sandbox' label.

 

[Bedrockgames]

I chalk it up to some people wanting to go back to the basics. And I think the old school renaissance is a factor here.

It really is just a new word for an old play style, like the OP points out. I have always looks at games as linear, non linear or a combination of both. But sandbox seems to be the updated term for non linear adventures now. In a way I think it is a good thing, because it sounds a lot better than non linear does.

 

[Desdichado]

I have no clue what is going on in sandbox sessions, because after people get to "You go where you want", it all sounds like the description of Seinfeld - "It's a game about nothing!"

Yup. Hence my confusion on why there's a lot of talk about how it's some kind of Holy Grail of gaming.

I don't think these definitions are realistic to how people play RPGs. Either the terms need to be better defined, or it's like saying "There's two flavors of ice cream: Vanilla, which is only ice cream harvested by blind virgin nuns who churn the icecream by hand and ship it by pigeons to your grocery store, or Chocolate, which is only ice cream harvested from cocoa plants in southwestern Brazil and churned by monkeys and delivered by a guy named Fred". The definitions are so narrow and extreme that the terms lose any real practical meaning in usage.

First of all, 1) your analogy is much more extremely narrow than the reality. There are people who play really close to the endpoints to both railroad and sandbox in the spectrum. It's not so unrealistic to gaming "in the field" as you infer. Also, 2) even if it was, there's value in defining endpoints that can only be theoretical. Games can approach or emulate a certain condition even without literally being that condition, but that doesn't reduce the value of the definition.