The many types of Sandboxes and Open-World Campaigns

[Thomas Shey]

The issue is that you're not rewarding anything, nor are you incentivizing anything. Characters level up regardless of the risks they take or the things they accomplish.

Not to put to fine a point on it, but I don't consider that an issue. What I was addressing is that it ties advancement to a more precise realtime element (how many hours someone plays) than I think is particularly warranted.

 

[payn]

but this can be very in keeping with an open sandbox. I don't use the approach for XP personally. I can see how it would be beneficial though if what you really want is a long term open sandbox campaign. The only real reward mechanism is people get rewarded for keeping the game going I suppose. But then they are free to choose to do what they want to do in the campaign itself, without having XP as a pressure to guide those choices. Which I think is about as open sandbox as you can get. They go on the adventure because they want to, or because the in setting rewards are worth the risk, but not because of a meta thing the player knows about that the character doesn't. Again I use XP that rewards things for the kinds of campaigns I like to run, but I see nothing wrong with not taking the XP as reward approach.

Absolutely. The idea that XP is required to move the game or incentivize correct play, seems like a stealth railroad to me.

 

[Thomas Shey]

I've been thinking about this a lot lately. I'm playing a number of survival video games at the moment, including the early access V Rising game. My brain has been mulling over how to translate a lot of the survival game feel to TTRPGs. Survival Games, IMHO, provide a wide range of carrots for player goals.

Note one of the differences here is that these are almost all in-world rewards. They're carrots offered as much to the character as the player (in the case of the basic survival yields, maybe moreso).

 

[Thomas Shey]

Except it's not a problem as it works well IME

How often have you played with groups that have to have rather different time-to-play? I suspect you might feel differently if you had.

 

[Thomas Shey]

Absolutely. The idea that XP is required to move the game or incentivize correct play, seems like a stealth railroad to me.

I think that's a little uncharitable. As I noted, some groups and players while, in theory, onboard a given campaign will tend to drift into play that is really kind of foreign to the campaign out of habit or natural tendency. Having something that actively and in an ongoing way brings their focus back to what the campaign is about can be a useful tool that isn't a railroad in any meaningful way, anymore than having in-game rewards that dragged you towards that would be.

Where I'm left behind is the idea you can't get that sort of game without those sorts of incentives. You absolutely can, but as I noted everyone involved has to be honest with themselves and others about what they're there for.

 

[payn]

I think that's a little uncharitable. As I noted, some groups and players while, in theory, onboard a given campaign will tend to drift into play that is really kind of foreign to the campaign out of habit or natural tendency. Having something that actively and in an ongoing way brings their focus back to what the campaign is about can be a useful tool that isn't a railroad in any meaningful way, anymore than having in-game rewards that dragged you towards that would be.

Where I'm left behind is the idea you can't get that sort of game without those sorts of incentives. You absolutely can, but as I noted everyone involved has to be honest with themselves and others about what they're there for.

Im still curious about the guiderails here. What does rulebook XP have to do to keep the game in check? Talk to people, disarm traps find secret doors, kill stuff. It's all generic. The only conclusion I can come to is to make sure players stay in the dungeon, doing some things over others, which feels a bit railroady. I'm not saying it is be default, I'm just curious what folks mean by this?

 

[dragoner]

Then why have XP at all?

You mean like have a game without any rewards?

 

[Reynard]

You mean like have a game without any rewards?

Those aren't the same thing.

 

[Aldarc]

Note one of the differences here is that these are almost all in-world rewards. They're carrots offered as much to the character as the player (in the case of the basic survival yields, maybe moreso).

Most definitely, which is part of the appeal for me when it comes to the idea of running a potential Survival TTRPG.

 

[Malmuria]

Im still curious about the guiderails here. What does rulebook XP have to do to keep the game in check? Talk to people, disarm traps find secret doors, kill stuff. It's all generic. The only conclusion I can come to is to make sure players stay in the dungeon, doing some things over others, which feels a bit railroady. I'm not saying it is be default, I'm just curious what folks mean by this?

Compare a dungeon crawl in a dnd game where XP is for a) gold piece, b) killing monsters, or c) milestone. None of them are better than the others nor wholly determinative of what actually happens in the game. But (a) and (b), for example, can lead to a very different approach by players. Gold for xp implies a game where monsters can (or should) be avoided but treasure sought out, so the game becomes about that risk/reward trade off. Do you risk spending a turn trying to find a secret door that may lead to hidden treasure, knowing than an (unbalanced) group of monsters might be right around the corner? Whereas, if you get xp for killing monsters, the goal might be to "clear" the dungeon, going to every room and killing everything; even if there is no treasure, it was still worthwhile. If it's milestone, my question would be what constitutes the milestone. It might be solving whatever plot-related problem the dungeon provides (maybe it's being used as a secret base for an evil cult, so the goal is defeating the cult, etc). Or maybe the dm just decides at an arbitrary point when everyone levels up. To me, milestone implies that there is a central plot, and PC's advance as they complete aspects of the story. Which is not a railroad, but does lend itself to the DM just presenting the next bit of content and the players sort of agreeing to match their character's motivations to that content, IME.

A very different example is Blades in the Dark. One of the ways you get XP is by making a "desperate" roll, basically attempting to do something when you are not in a good position to have a great effect. So, normally players might want to avoid that kind of situation because they are playing it safe. And that's mostly the case, but one of the pieces of advice for players is to "fall in love with trouble," because BitD is a game about characters who do not play it safe--that's where the drama comes in. So basically it's a way to reward doing a sub-optimal thing for the sake of the story. This isn't the only way to get xp, but for a storygame there is a very tight advancement system that my players quite like.