Pathfinder 1E Sandboxes? Forked from Paizo reinvents hexcrawling

[Umbran]

Why would the sandbox ever be non-reactive, except as the result of limitations in the programming code* for a CRPG? I understand why linear campaigns may need to negate player choice to reach a desired, prescripted end point on the adventure path, but why would a sandbox setting ever not be allowed to develop/change in response to player activity?

Because the GM isn't interested in changing it? Maybe because despite being given a chance the change things, the players don't choose to or simply haven't done things that change it? Maybe because the players are having a grand old time kicking in doors, killing monsters, and taking their stuff, and aren't interested in what happens after they've left the dungeon behind, so why bother? I'm sure there are other reasons - some good for the group as a whole, others not.

My experience is that the nature of the campaign experience has less to do with what model you're theoretically following, and has more to do with how the GM and players choose to work within the model.

 

[S'mon]

Because the GM isn't interested in changing it? Maybe because despite being given a chance the change things, the players don't choose to or simply haven't done things that change it?

By "non reactive" I meant non-reactive to player input of course, so your second point doesn't apply. On your first point, I guess the GM can choose not to cross off the 4 orcs in the room when the PCs kill them, so they are there again next time the PCs visit, but it takes the same, possibly less, work to cross them out - ie, to have the sandbox react.

So I can't understand why anyone would ever want to GM a truly non-reactive sandbox in a tabletop game (ie not a CRPG). It rather feels to me like a fictitious straw man created by those who dislike the style.

 

[Ariosto]

Once again the game world is open at the start and in theory, and once again it is narrowed later and in pratice. But now it's the players who narrow it by focusing the campaign on a particular NPC or location using their characters' goals.

I can't speak for Melan, but I'm pretty sure we're on the same page here:

The world is no narrower for any given inhabitant's choice of location within it.

There is No "The" in This Player Driven Game
There is no "the" party; there are only parties.
There is no "the" adventure; there are only adventures.
There is no "the" campaign; there are only campaigns.
All of the above share a world in a game. They begin and end, but the world and the game go on.

Really, the term 'campaign' from the start (the foreword to Volume 1) was used in a wargame sense encompassing all adventures, by all parties in Blackmoor or Greyhawk or any other "game-world". However, it may be a helpful reorientation exercise to try using it in a sense more like the military, as referring to a series of operations by a given group of players (or an individual player). It is what those players plan and do, toward the objectives they choose.

Read 'adventure' not as "events prepared by a GM" but as "an undertaking of uncertain outcome, a hazardous enterprise" prepared by players.

Read 'party' as any association of characters formed for a particular adventure.

 

[Hussar]

Why would the sandbox ever be non-reactive, except as the result of limitations in the programming code* for a CRPG? I understand why linear campaigns may need to negate player choice to reach a desired, prescripted end point on the adventure path, but why would a sandbox setting ever not be allowed to develop/change in response to player activity?

*Or for MMORPGs the similar need to keep re-using 'instances'. Personally I don't understand why MMORPGs don't use randomly generated dungeons, but there's a lot about those games that makes no sense to me.

I think you're perhaps being a bit too specific here. It's not that the four orcs reappear in the room (how would anyone know after all, unless the PC's for some reason went back?) but that the world doesn't particularly change regardless of what the PC's do.

A good example of this would be a "local heroes" style campaign where the players are only dealing with local threats and never deal with bigger issues. They never become kings, or lords and the option is never really presented. The players touch the campaign world only very lightly.

Or it could easily be that the DM has walled off certain parts of the sandbox. You cannot become the Emperor because that isn't part of the sandbox. You will never marry the king's daughter because that isn't part of the sandbox.

There are any number of ways you could have a sandbox that is non-reactive in a larger sense. Obviously when you kill those four orcs, they stay dead, but, in the broader sense, your characters will never substantially change the campaign sandbox.

 

[Haffrung Helleyes]

nonreactive sandboxes?

I don't understand all this talk about nonreactive sandboxes.

Has anyone claimed that a nonreactive sandbox would be a good thing? Has anyone run one, or seen one run? I certainly haven't.

Honestly, it seems like a strawman to me.

And I would put in my two cents on sandboxes, but Melan said what I thought much more eloquently than I could, already.

Ken

 

[Hussar]

I don't understand all this talk about nonreactive sandboxes.

Has anyone claimed that a nonreactive sandbox would be a good thing? Has anyone run one, or seen one run? I certainly haven't.

Honestly, it seems like a strawman to me.

And I would put in my two cents on sandboxes, but Melan said what I thought much more eloquently than I could, already.

Ken

Then could not the same thing be said that railroading is a bad form of a linear campaign?

Just because it's bad doesn't make it not a sandbox. It just makes it a bad sandbox. Being a sandbox does not preclude it from being bad, just like being linear does not preclude it from being good.

I think that's what Hobo was getting at in the OP. Sandboxing has been held up as this perfect form of gaming and anything that makes it less good is brushed off as a "strawman" or "people just don't understand what sandboxes are".

Yes, sandboxes can be great. No arguments here. But, being a sandbox does not automatically make it great any more than being a plot driven campaign makes it a railroad.

 

[S'mon]

I think you're perhaps being a bit too specific here. It's not that the four orcs reappear in the room (how would anyone know after all, unless the PC's for some reason went back?) but that the world doesn't particularly change regardless of what the PC's do.

A good example of this would be a "local heroes" style campaign where the players are only dealing with local threats and never deal with bigger issues. They never become kings, or lords and the option is never really presented. The players touch the campaign world only very lightly.

Or it could easily be that the DM has walled off certain parts of the sandbox. You cannot become the Emperor because that isn't part of the sandbox. You will never marry the king's daughter because that isn't part of the sandbox.

There are any number of ways you could have a sandbox that is non-reactive in a larger sense. Obviously when you kill those four orcs, they stay dead, but, in the broader sense, your characters will never substantially change the campaign sandbox.

So you can have a sandbox of limited scope. You can equally well have a linear campaign of limited scope. I don't see any distinction here. It seems to me that 'reactive vs non-reactive' is at most irrelevant to 'sandbox vs linear'. And arguably linear design encourages non-reactive (to non-anticipated/non-scripted player input) design in order to maintain the pre-written linear path. Whereas nothing about sandbox encourages non-reactive design, more the reverse.

 

[S'mon]

Then could not the same thing be said that railroading is a bad form of a linear campaign?

Just because it's bad doesn't make it not a sandbox. It just makes it a bad sandbox. Being a sandbox does not preclude it from being bad, just like being linear does not preclude it from being good.

I think that's what Hobo was getting at in the OP. Sandboxing has been held up as this perfect form of gaming and anything that makes it less good is brushed off as a "strawman" or "people just don't understand what sandboxes are".

Yes, sandboxes can be great. No arguments here. But, being a sandbox does not automatically make it great any more than being a plot driven campaign makes it a railroad.

The OP went well beyond that though to claim that 'pure' sandbox gaming was impossible/undesirable/bad per se, and dismissed explanations of why people like the style. Admittedly at least one other poster was equally dismissive of non-sandbox play.

I think it depends on your goals with the campaign. If you want something that will feel like Lord of the Rings - or Dragonlance - then the sandbox approach is unlikely to give you it. You need a more structured format. The difficulty with the more linear approach is to avoid de-protagonising the PCs. With sandbox play the PCs are constantly making choices, no danger of deprotagonising them. OTOH if the players are looking to participate in something which feels like a high fantasy novel trilogy, rather than to experience _being in_ a world of monsters and magic with maximum freedom of action, then sandbox may not be the best approach.

 

[Hussar]

The OP went well beyond that though to claim that 'pure' sandbox gaming was impossible/undesirable/bad per se, and dismissed explanations of why people like the style. Admittedly at least one other poster was equally dismissive of non-sandbox play.

I think it depends on your goals with the campaign. If you want something that will feel like Lord of the Rings - or Dragonlance - then the sandbox approach is unlikely to give you it. You need a more structured format. The difficulty with the more linear approach is to avoid de-protagonising the PCs. With sandbox play the PCs are constantly making choices, no danger of deprotagonising them. OTOH if the players are looking to participate in something which feels like a high fantasy novel trilogy, rather than to experience _being in_ a world of monsters and magic with maximum freedom of action, then sandbox may not be the best approach.

Totally agree. 100%. I think Sandboxing and Linear are simply two tools in the box, not really antagonistic approaches that must be adhered to.

Heck, currently I'm designing a campaign for my group that will hopefully feature both. At the micro level, the sort of day to day events of the PC's, it will be a fairly linear campaign. However, there will be a second level where the PC's will have some degree of political/economic power in the setting and can use that to not only affect the direction of their PC, but the entire campaign as well. I'm rather hopeful that I can sort of create a Frankenstein's Monster mishmash of both approaches.

 

[Bluenose]

The OP went well beyond that though to claim that 'pure' sandbox gaming was impossible/undesirable/bad per se, and dismissed explanations of why people like the style. Admittedly at least one other poster was equally dismissive of non-sandbox play.

Possibly the OP was thinking of some sort of Platonic Ideal of Sandbox play, where the GM was expected to keep track of everything that was happening in the world or at last part of it? As a thought experiment, you could create a world which has certain things happening, and those events get resolved regardless of player involvement. And then of course other characters/groups within the world react to that, again whether the players are involved or interested. If that's the 'pure' sandbox in question, then I'm not surprised it's considered impossible.