NOW LIVE! Today's the day you meet your new best friend. You don’t have to leave Wolfy behind... In 'Pets & Sidekicks' your companions level up with you!

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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Desdichado" data-source="post: 5123208" data-attributes="member: 2205">But that's not necessarily true.  Plot hooks can be misnomers.  They could merely be "potentially interesting scenarios" with no plot attached to them.  Plot, by definition, means that once the PC's bite on a hook, then the general course of how they handle that is predetermined.  It's already written.  That's why they call it a plot.I don't play that way.  Sandbox specifically eschews that mentality.  Hence my contention that sandbox is the opposite of a railroad.Adventure path is a bit of a misnomer in this regard, I think.  An adventure path could have quite a bit of flexibility baked into it.  It isn't necessarily a railroad.  Plus, these descriptions more accurately describe the game at the table and the style of the people running and playing them, not the published source material that they're using in game.Although certainly playing an adventure path as written is going to be a less sandboxy game than one that isnt' a predetermined adventure path.Did you read the wikipedia links I posted above?  They specifically contrasted the sandbox with the quests.Ugh.  Not only does Samuel L. Delaney attempt to create a new term for something that already has a well-established and common usage term in place, he does so in a manner that is pretentious.  No thanks.Plot, in the context we're talking about here, is where the GM already knows what needs to happen in order to play the game.  He may allow the PC's to wiggle around for a bit trying to find it, but they can't "advance" until they do.Plots in RPGs are a contentious issue, and a playstyle that adheres to strictly to a plot, so that the players feel like they're being unjustly, unfairly or unrealistically stifled in their choices of action, have been saddled with the pejorative of railroad.That's it.Ironically, railway locomotives have a sandbox, which they use to spray sand on the rails to improve traction.But that's neither here nor there.</blockquote>

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