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="The Shaman" data-source="post: 5124212" data-attributes="member: 26473">Hobo, you defined it thus:No game can, or should, actually attempt to emulate a sandbox? That's an argument, Hobo, and one based on a "true Scotsman" interpretation of a sandbox or status quo setting.You're defining it as something that cannot exist in actual play - a theoretical, a reference point - despite the fact that, as Ariosto has pointed out in multiple threads on the subject, gamers do, in fact, run wide-open sandbox style games and talk about their experiences on gaming forums.Sorry, but that last is the false analogy: you're equating the experience of playing a computer game with that of a tabletop roleplaying game, when the parameters, particularly for sandbox play, are quite different.If you could play a computer game where a programmer was actively creating new content in real-time in response to your in-character choices, then the analogy might hold. But that's not the case.And that's another misunderstanding about sandbox style games, in my experience.As any number of status quo referees on these boards have explained in the past, one of the elements of sandbox play is that stuff is going on around the adventurers all the time, from large-scale events like wars and plagues and famines to small-scale activities like a local merchant running for consul of an important port-city. The adventurers may be affected, directly or indirectly, by any of these, and they may choose to involve themselves, or not, as they please: flee from the plague, help the merchant get elected, et cetera. Whatever the players choose to do, the game-world moves on: the plague runs its course, the merchant does or doesn't get elected (or maybe dies from the plague!), and so on.You said something in that same quoted passage to which I can relate, Hobo: "I don't want to have to make my own game out of scratch." That's exactly how I feel when I'm behind the screen. All of us at the table are "making the game," which is one of the reasons I prefer to run status quo settings; in my experience, it maximizes player and character influence over the direction of the game.</blockquote>

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