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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 5122816" data-attributes="member: 4937">I don't agree with that as a description of the goals of sandbox play either, though on the other hand I'm not actually clear on whether that is an accurate description of Umbran's point. I will say that most sandbox DM's have as a guideline in their world creation, that, if you were in fact to flip a simulation switch and let the world run in simulation mode without player input that the world you created would 'make sense' and be self-perpetuating.  That is, the DM of a sandbox game tends to assume that in a well created world monsters in the dungeon wouldn't starve for lack of food, all the high level NPC's wouldn't die off faster than new ones would be made/trained, ecosystems wouldn't collapse do to unsustainable ratios of predators to prey, towns actually have sufficient industry to economically support their populations, the various enduring factions in the game space are reasonably able to defend themselves from competing factions, and so forth.  But while most DM's building sandbox games assume this and I myself would try to make my sandbox world have these simulationist characteristics, I wouldn't necessarily suggest that internally consistant simulation of this sort is an inherent aspect of all styles of play that we could call 'sandboxish' or even that this aspect is the critically important goal in sandbox world creation.  Personally, I think that the key aspect of sandbox style play is the willingness of the DM to improvise and shift the focus of his world building away from his preconcieved notions of what is important in response to player 'narrative' choices.  That doesn't necessarily have to happen in a way that creates an internally consistant and independent world.  For example, a 'infinite branching dungeon' which the DM is generating on the fly based on player choices is a form of sandbox play (and probably the oldest form) even if it means ancient red dragons in sealed 40'x40' rooms with 10' wide exits.  Sandbox play is really more about not saying 'no' and not putting arbitrary barriers to player choice than it is making a world that can run by itself.  You could say that the essential feature of a sandbox world is that all (or almost all) the walls in the dungeon, both real and metaphorical, are flagged 'DESTROYABLE' in a way thats really impossible for a cRPG or even an adventure path.Of course, where this gets really confusing is that in GNS theory, 'simulationist' doesn't mean 'realistic' in the way I've been using it to this point in this post.  Technically, in GNS a game is simulationist if the primary aspect of play is exploration of the imagined space, irregardless of whether that space is realistic or internally consistant.  So under GNS theory, most if not all sandbox play is 'simulationist' even if it doesn't meet the standard of being 'an internally consistant world'.</blockquote>

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