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Message: <blockquote data-quote="CardinalXimenes" data-source="post: 4784557" data-attributes="member: 58259">I think it's worth reminding people that sandboxing and a simulationist viewpoint do not automatically get paired together. There is no law that says that the moment you tell your PCs to just do whatever they want to do in your world, you must then have a formalized system for simulating the effects of their actions on the world.Ultimately, having any system more formalized than a DM's best spot judgment as to outcomes just pushes the resolution back a step. The system created is nothing more than a generalized expression of the DM's judgment, and hasn't got any more inherent value because it's indifferent to ideas of story progression or DM-aided character development. If the goal of your game is to operate in a world explicitly devoid of any DM-directed story development, then that's fine, but there's no reason why _every_ sandbox has to share that zeitgeist.In my own experience, a sandbox is much more satisfying for my players when I take steps to cater to their own particular playstyles and game goals in how I adjudicate outcomes. A sandbox under those circumstances is simply a convenient framing device for giving the players a lot more control over what kind of stories get told and what elements of the world get pulled in. If I were running an Exalted game, for example, there's no reason why I wouldn't make sure that the combat fiends of the group get lots of combat. Their sandboxing choices just tell me what kind of enemies they want to fight and what kind of reasons they want to fight for. I don't think such a style is less a sandbox simply because I'm not dicing out Mandate of Heaven domain turns every in-character season that passes.</blockquote>

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