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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Bedrockgames" data-source="post: 8235633" data-attributes="member: 85555"><p>Part of it is this isn't as black and white as 'referencing the notes or not referencing the notes'. I think if you are simply saying there are two types of games: ones where the players can contribute to the setting out of character and one where they cannot contribute to the setting out of character. Then I Suppose this is accurate. I don't know that calling it referencing the notes makes sense to me. But I would also point out this is a very limited example. We are talking about the character creation phase. In my experience almost every sandbox GM handles that part of the game differently. Some insult on using pure randomness to generate characters, some allow for back and forth, some allow for mild amounts of setting creation (for example it would be over the line I think in most typical sandboxes for the player to propose a kingdom and for that to now exist in the setting: but proposing a wealthy family of merchants that come from a city in the north, or proposing a neighborhood in one of the GMs cities where the children fought for copper coins in the streets and as a result it has produced a number of skilled pit fighters, those latter examples would probably be okay in a lot of sandbox campaigns, not everyone but a lot). Again this is a pretty organic, group dependent part of the game. I think no matter what style you are playing it is really going to vary. But once play begins, my point about the pit fighters is the players do get to shape the setting through their character, and the focus of play is largely around that energy that arises when the players take initiative. I wouldn't describe that as playing to discover what's in the GM's notes. Notes may be relevant and important. But a lot of it is going to be the GM having to come up with and extrapolate answers on the fly in response to the players prodding in different directions (and that is very different from referencing the notes alone because if you were just referencing the notes, your answer would be 'no you don't find anything like that' to anything that doesn't seem to have an answer in the notes. A living world sandbox GM is more likely to be taking the position of "let me think and decide if that is reasonable or fits with the world or campaign concept". Generally the world is coming from the GM, and that is an important distinction in most pure sandboxes. But the you can't just ignore the talk of 'living world' and the world being alive because that is so important to this playstyle.</p></blockquote><p></p>

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