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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Sadrik" data-source="post: 5081598" data-attributes="member: 14506">A bone dry scenario is brought to life by the GM who adds a little charisma to the process. This is what all DMs should be doing. This has nothing to do with whether the game is linear or sandbox. Don't confuse descriptive tags, story flair, unique role-played personalities with being only in a linear rail roaded game. I think the idea here is that old-school play is reactive and this touted new school play is proactive. Proactive play is one where you are making decisions for your players and then force them to react to you. In many circles they would call that for what it is a bullet train to the land of not fun. Even if the DM has enough charisma to pull it off after the session you would be like, what the hell did I just participate in? I was an automaton on the train. If the game master was entertaining you may have had a nice trip on the train, just like a good storyteller can be entertaining. Take that same charismatic DM who is creative and can think on his feat and has a mastery of the rules and able to apply them fairly and consistently. Plug them into a sandbox game (reactive old-school game using the term in this thread) you still get the descriptive flair, neat RPed personalities and such. Players who are often jaded, who often see the train pulling up before it even arrives and who often resist getting on the train need more free form experience and that requires the GM to step in and react to the player.My point is that a good charismatic DM can make a linear game or railroad game fun. The question is how much linear fun can you take before you get tired of it. Whether you lean forward, sit back, sit down, or stand up it doesn't matter a good game is created by giving the players options, plenty of description to suspend their disbelief, a cool setting, great NPCs, role-playing those NPCs well, never shooting down your players outright and making sure you have fun because if you are having fun your players will too. So description with a lot of other things are important, it being a proactive, preemptive, linear or new-school game does not.Another point I would like to throw out there is that linear games excel in one area. Convention games and one-shot games. In fact they are quite good in this regard. You simply cannot run a sandbox adequately in a one-shot game. A one-shot or convention game has to be laser focused on getting the players to the plot, location or event so they can begin there investigation, eradication or discovery.</blockquote>

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