Pathfinder 1E Sandboxes? Forked from Paizo reinvents hexcrawling

[cildarith]

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?

I would argue no.

In a well-designed railroad, the players at best have the illusion of choice.

In a sandbox the choice is real - they follow that one plot hook for 15 levels of their own volition and can drop it at any time.

The end result will certainly be similar, though if they do as you suggest.

 

[Haltherrion]

Let's make it a Lego difference:
- On the one hand, you have the Lego Star Destroyer. Countless of Lego pieces, all to be used to create one giant Star Destroyer.
- On the other hand, you have several Lego parts from countless of Lego sets - trains, castles, houses, space ships.

If you want a Star Destroyer, the first set is awesome, and the second set might not allow you to build one, or at least not one of that size and with that level of detail. But, maybe you rather want to build a city and a castle? Maybe you use some fo the city parts to build a larger space ship.
You will probably be able to use the Star Destroyer for that, too, but there might be a few useless pieces, or the colors don't match your expectations (why is everything in this city gray?).

To extend the analogy, you are much more likely to get a complete assembly like a star destroyer on the non-sandbox path. On the other path, you are more likely to get a small castle, a half finished train, a barely started house, and a stupid looking space ship

My kids have a grand old time on either approach: they love building a set and having a finished product that is larger and more asethetically pleasing than they would have created on their own. They also love cobbling together their own things, sometimes completing it, some times not, often rather bizarre. Both can work, depends what you want at the time.

 

[Ariosto]

*sigh* Ariosto, is it possible for you to engage in a discussion about RPGs in general without forcing the discussion down paths of OD&D in particular?

I referred to sandbox as being perhaps more prevalent before the so-called Hickman revolution, and therefore "old" in that sense, but I'm interested in talking about sandboxes, not old style D&D.

That was you "forcing the discussion down paths of OD&D in particular". You named it. You arbitrarily excluded it.

Unless, that is, you're attempting to put forth the hypothesis that sandbox spread as a recent fad because a bunch of people got a hold of the OD&D ruleset and swiped the idea from there. If that's in fact what you're trying to put forth, please do so clearly!

From what I saw, the brief availability of legal PDFs of the seminal work (not only of D&D but of the whole RPG hobby) inspired a lot of interest. The actual boxed set of little booklets -- even in the Original Collectors Edition "white box" printing -- had long been a somewhat rare and pricey collector's item. Many curious and fresh eyes encountered it for the first time.

The availability of many Judges Guild products in the same format, as well as in 3E reissues, fed that interest. So did James Ward's putting online the original (1976) edition of his Metamorphosis Alpha.

 

[Haltherrion]

Agreed and it is often put that way. One could just easily put it the other way:

"boring sandbox" to "exciting story"

There are good and bad executions of either extreme and all points in between. A good sandbox game can be a real treat but I've seen plenty of bad ones, too. Consciously choosing where you are on the spectruum and then executing that well is probably more important to a good campaign than being at any particular point on the spectruum.

 

[Haltherrion]

I don't buy that definition.

I think you two need to agree on a definition of plot to take this much farther. You can check the wikipedia definition as one possibility (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plot_(narrative)) which I don't think is an unreasonable one myself.

With such a definition, one might distinguish a sequence of player driven events from a plot by:

• It does not likely have rising tension or a denoument.
• There may or may not be a climax or conclusion to the thread as the players might abandon it

It is possible to have all the elements of this definitin of plot in a "sandbox"-ish game but unlikely without the ref intervening to make it happen which makes it less sandboxish to me. But I hardly quibble with that- that's pretty much how I run my games: figure out what appeals to the players, start working a story around it, let them abandon a path if they wish.

 

[Ariosto]

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

Plot consists of the game master having this sequence preconceived. A particular situation emerges, and however "PCs react to situation" leads to a particular subset of possible resolutions -- as opposed, for instance, to what a reviewer of fiction would call an "unresolved" state of affairs. Resolution in this case means dramatic resolution, and so the game master trims the decision tree of all "unsatisfying" branches.

 

[Desdichado]

"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".

Why would anyone infer that? I, in fact, earlier in this thread, specifically excluded any such inference from my post by stating, more than once, that both endpoints of the spectrum are equally undesireable.

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 have no idea what to say to that. If someone interprets my posts a certain way that are the complete opposite of what I actually said, no matter how clearly I emphasized and re-emphasized the point, then I might be starting a pointless argument?

There are no words...

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.

You sure seem to enjoy making bizarre inferences from my posts.

Of course that's not a valid conclusion. As I've said multiple times in this thread, a railroad is a game where the PCs have no significant choice. If a game follows a single thread from beginning to end, but the PCs choose to follow that the entire time, and the reactions they are able to make with regards to that thread, then of course its not a railroad. I've never put forth any such definition, description or any material that in any ways could imply that I think otherwise.

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.

That's one valid definition of plot.

In the context of this discussion, it's obviously not the correct one.

That was you "forcing the discussion down paths of OD&D in particular". You named it. You arbitrarily excluded it.

No, really I didn't. I didn't name it at all, except in response to you. For the ... fourth time now, I made an off-hand reference to the fact that in the past a relatively more sandboxy style of running the game was perhaps more prevalent. That's it. Ese es todo. No hay mas.

 

[Ariosto]

I didn't name it at all, except in response to you.

"I didn't name it at all" is the false claim you made, with which I was taking issue. "Except in response to you" is not relevant, as I in fact did not name any game in the post to which you were replying -- which is plain enough to read for anyone who cares to do so.

Returning to the point of that post, I think it no coincidence who as a rule is pressing the claim of some unattainable "truth" or "purity" -- and who is not.

I'm trying to understand where this view came from, why it's become so suddenly very popular and ubiquitous on the internet, and... well, whatever else is going on with the idea of the sandbox.

That is not what your actual behavior suggests to me.

For many years, however, it's been "conventional wisdom" that some element of "sandbox" is fun, but that a "pure" sandbox is merely an endpoint on a spectrum of playstyles. A theoretical end point that no game could (or should) actually attempt to emulate.

That's no convention among anyone I know except a few people here at ENworld who keep doing just what you are doing here.

Where are the computer gamers talking about such a uselessly "pure" sandbox? I hear and read them talk about GTA, Fallout 3, Elder Scrolls, and Assassins Creed; Need for Speed: Most Wanted; Darklands, Elite ... a lot of actual games.

Likewise, I find RPG players talking about actual games, using the 'sandbox' term to distinguish those dungeons, wildernesses, towns, worlds, star sectors, etc., from ones that lock players into furthering "the storyline".

 

[coyote6]

Why would anyone infer that? I, in fact, earlier in this thread, specifically excluded any such inference from my post by stating, more than once, that both endpoints of the spectrum are equally undesireable.

My primary point is that one term is commonly meant negatively, and the other isn't. I can't think of a more neutral term for "railroad" or more negative term for "sandbox" at the moment. Any ideas?

I have no idea what to say to that. If someone interprets my posts a certain way that are the complete opposite of what I actually said, no matter how clearly I emphasized and re-emphasized the point, then I might be starting a pointless argument?

Sorry, I wasn't trying to say you were starting a pointless argument with this thread; this thread was originally just about "why all the sandbox discussion", was it not?

My point was that no matter how many disclaimers one applies, I think the terms being used to describe the continuum will lead to pointless arguing.

You sure seem to enjoy making bizarre inferences from my posts.

Yes, it was a lovely day.

Of course that's not a valid conclusion.

Eh, I just interpreted that bit more broadly than you meant it, I think. I took it as being of broad application -- you plot a campaign to a point on the SB....RR line based on what happens at the table. And, based solely on action at the table, I think there are plenty of campaigns that you couldn't really tell whether they were complete rail jobs or total sandboxes where the PCs were so deep in the sand that the GM was making it all up as they go along.

(I know I've ran games where I successfully guessed everything the players did -- but I've been gaming with them for years and years, so it wasn't that hard. Then there are the instances where the players came from left field and headed for outer Freedonia, and I just had to roll with it. I don't think the players or an observer could've told which was which without peaking at my notes or reading my mind.)

 

[The Shaman]

FWIW, in past threads, people have said that such a set up is not a sandbox. I never quite understood what their concept of a sandbox was, or how it worked, though, so I may be misunderstanding 'em.

In the games I run, the characters normally don't just 'stumble onto cultists' in the middle of a ritual; either they show up when the ritual is held (frex, on the new moon, on the spring tide, on Midsummer's Eve) or they don't encounter it at all. They are more likely to learn that a non-player character is a cultist, and to discover the ritual by tailing the npc, beating the information out of him, or what-have-you.

The only encounters in my game-world that begin in media res are random encounters, and they're not likely to be anything as secretive as cultists performing a ritual.