Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Mark CMG" data-source="post: 5828032" data-attributes="member: 10479">I took a second look at the OP and realized one of the misconceptions bothering me was the association of "sandbox" style play strictly with one end of the continuum between hack-and-slash and games including narrative goals.  H&S is a player's playstyle (not always a roleplaying style) and achieving narrative goals is also part of a player's roleplaying style.On a separate continuum, sandbox play is a GM's presentation style which requires certain setting considerations and can be used to house a game anywhere along the players' playstyle continuum for hack-and-slash and games including narrative goals.  The more "sandboxy" the presentation, however, the fewer plotted lifelines a GM will throw to the players while they attempt to introduce their narrative druthers into gameplay.At the other end of the GM's presentation style continuum is full narrative control by the GM, sometimes referred to as linear plot progression.  It's a mistake, though, to think of it as linear plot progression because a GM need not have decided upon a plot in advance to maintain full narrative control, the GM need only be the deciding factor in how gameplay will produce story with or without taking player narrative goals and choices into consideration.  A railroad need not be built with a destination in mind or in regard to who will be riding the train, nor need that railroad be built straight or without forks.  And even if the GM has a destination in mind, it is impossible to know all the details of a story produced through gameplay until the game is over because just by virtue of players being at the table and being allowed any input whatsoever, the story is being affected.I like to refer to this phenomenon as Schrodinger's Plot.  There is a box into which many elements are throw during gameplay but until the game is done and the box is open, there's no telling the form of the story.But these continuums (or continua) have always existed and continue to exist.  The important thing to remember, IMO, for recognizing Old School and New School styles of play is how much the guidelines/rules affect play.  Once again in this area, we find there is no clear line drawn but games where the GM is the final arbiter of consequences within the game as opposed to the rules as written tend to cleave closer to old school gaming.  New school gaming is marked more often by the rules as written rather than thinking of the game as supplying merely guidelines.  It is rare for any game to be played at the far extreme of either of these philosophies as almost all GM's make provision for the rules to carry some the burden of arbitration of consequences and likewise will make some judgement calls that set aside the rules in certain circumstances.  What you will generally see, though, is old school style games tend to skew toward rules as guidelines and new school style games tend to rely more heavily on rules as written.And let's not confuse randomness with who makes the call, for if the GM allows for all judgement calls to rely on the dice that alone doesn't tell us if this is old or new school gaming.  It might seem as if a GM is abdicating his position if he let's the dice fall where they may but that is actually a very strong choice.  In these circumstances, to detemine if this is more so old or new school, one has to look at how the GM is allowing those dice rolls to interact with the game.  Does the GM think of the game in terms of guidelines and go to the dice often or does the GM utilize the rules as written and go to the dice when the rules call upon them?It should be noted, perhaps most importatly, that published games can adopt mainly one style or the other (or something in between) and it is possible to take rules written primarily for one style and run them as GM in a fundamentally different manner but doing so is likely to also frustrate player expectations unless there has been a discussion of gaming philosophies prior to play among all involved.  This conflict can sometimes be mischaracterized as a player entitlement issue.  Although such issues do exist in other situations, there is no reason why a player who reads a rulebook geared toward rules as written shouldn't expect such a game to be played in that manner unless the above mentioned discussion takes place.So, old school or new school?  First look to how the game is written and then to how the game is being played.  When these two factors are in synch, it's fairly easy to make the call.  Otherwise, use your best judgement. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f609.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=";)" title="Wink    ;)"  data-smilie="2"data-shortname=";)" /></blockquote>

Verification