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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Bedrockgames" data-source="post: 8235644" data-attributes="member: 85555"><p>One problem I've encountered anytime we talk about styles in gaming (and it honestly doesn't matter if one is coming from the perspective of things like  story now or pure sandbox) is most groups don't have a style. Just like most groups of diners don't have a shared palate. GMing, in my opinion is like preparing a red sauce for a family of five: you are going to either have to force feed them your idea of what red sauce should be or you are going to have to adjust the recipe to fit everyone (if Michael doesn't like onions, you might have to lower the amount of onion; if Alexa doesn't like the bitter taste of tomato paste in the sauce, you might have to use no or little tomato paste or balance it out with sugar, honey or shredded carrot, etc). It is great to talk about styles in their platonic ideal. But my experience at the table is a lot of heartache can arise trying to take platonic ideals acquired in forums and bring them to a table of five people with very different tastes. For me, I always adapt to the group I have. If two players really want adventures with structure to them, even though this is a sandbox campaign that doesn't normally feature those, I am going to bring them in to help balance things out. I will say one thing I do like about sandbox in this respect, is it is often a great baseline for a mixed group which you can evolve as you go. By the same token if I have players who desperately love having dramatic things going on with their characters and NPCs, I can accommodate that. It isn't going to kill me to do these things, and I don't think it is wise to get too precious about the underlying structure when different needs are emerging at the table. In terms of how well one has to understand the tools one is using: sure probably. But a lot of this is stuff people do without having a language for and just grasp intuitively at the table. You an learn music theory to make music, but it isn't the only way (and I don't think gaming has anything close to music theory)</p></blockquote><p></p>

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