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<blockquote data-quote="Ovinomancer" data-source="post: 8236279" data-attributes="member: 16814">I agree, this is a different play agenda from sandbox -- one doesn't require the other.&nbsp; I think, though, the reason you see them together is that &quot;playing through your character's viewpoint&quot; has an element of the GM adjudicating what's allowable for a character to now.&nbsp; This goes to being able to have elements of the game be a &quot;mystery&quot; to the PCs, when it isn't really a mystery to the players and also to controlling the flow of information so that planned challenges remain challenging and don't get trivialized by having too much info too soon.&nbsp; These seem to align to the notions of heavy prep.Now, this isn't a dig at this approach -- I use info portioning when I run 5e, although I'm can be very loose with it.&nbsp; I've adopted a stance of overproviding info and just making my design not be sensitive in challenge to having knowledge of it.&nbsp; To give an example from last weekend's session, the tiefling ranger was confronted by a horned devil, which I gave a visual description of.&nbsp; However, I didn't know, given this PCs background of wanting to end their family's devilish origin curse, what the PC actually knew about devils -- it makes sense to me that they may know things, so, I asked the player, &quot;Does Orianna know anything about devils?&quot;&nbsp; The player thought about this, and said, &quot;you know, I don't think she knows much at all, just that one cursed her family.&quot;&nbsp; Okey-dokey, play proceeded without any additional info on the horned devil.&nbsp; Had the player answered otherwise, then she could tell me what she knows and add it to her backstory, and I'd have provided some details based on that.&nbsp; I don't see any need to hide such things behind dice -- I'm excited to talk about the horrible monsters that the PCs face!</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Ovinomancer, post: 8236279, member: 16814"] I agree, this is a different play agenda from sandbox -- one doesn't require the other. I think, though, the reason you see them together is that "playing through your character's viewpoint" has an element of the GM adjudicating what's allowable for a character to now. This goes to being able to have elements of the game be a "mystery" to the PCs, when it isn't really a mystery to the players and also to controlling the flow of information so that planned challenges remain challenging and don't get trivialized by having too much info too soon. These seem to align to the notions of heavy prep. Now, this isn't a dig at this approach -- I use info portioning when I run 5e, although I'm can be very loose with it. I've adopted a stance of overproviding info and just making my design not be sensitive in challenge to having knowledge of it. To give an example from last weekend's session, the tiefling ranger was confronted by a horned devil, which I gave a visual description of. However, I didn't know, given this PCs background of wanting to end their family's devilish origin curse, what the PC actually knew about devils -- it makes sense to me that they may know things, so, I asked the player, "Does Orianna know anything about devils?" The player thought about this, and said, "you know, I don't think she knows much at all, just that one cursed her family." Okey-dokey, play proceeded without any additional info on the horned devil. Had the player answered otherwise, then she could tell me what she knows and add it to her backstory, and I'd have provided some details based on that. I don't see any need to hide such things behind dice -- I'm excited to talk about the horrible monsters that the PCs face! [/QUOTE]

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