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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Umbran" data-source="post: 5122863" data-attributes="member: 177">I think that's a fair assessment.I would guess that those who are speaking as you've seen are not talking about the actual endpoint.  As you say, the endpoint is not a practical play style.  Consider, instead, that they're talking about games that seem, to them, to be close enough to the endpoint - a region of the spectrum that's towards one end.Why has it become suddenly popular and ubiquitous?  I would guess you are seeing one of the basic dynamics of fandom.  In general, once something reaches a certain level of visibility (which seems correlated to, but not the same as, popularity) the thing will develop some fans.  And fans will talk a thing to death. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />This is not entirely a bad thing.  All that talk can surface some useful stuff for analysis.Sandbox play is by no means new, but I think the language and discussion frameworks that allow people to readily engage in collaborative analysis are relatively new.I also wouldn't be surprised if the edition wars are a bit to blame - they have led folks into thinking about gaming more in terms of dividing things up into sides.  3e/4e -> New/Old school -> Sandbox/Railroad.</blockquote>