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Message: <blockquote data-quote="howandwhy99" data-source="post: 5044300" data-attributes="member: 3192">Collectively creating the world as a group around the PCs is something I foresee happening, at least minimally, every game session.  However, my players do not know when they are adding to the world and when they are not during actual play.  That is part of nature of playing the game IMO.  Creating a background out of game is more to the heart of truly collaborative creation given my understanding of the word because the players know definitively these things exist.  I still work with them to incorporate those elements into the hidden rules, but they are the creator.  I do this on a descriptive level with the players until they are satisfied and consider it part of playing the game because it often leads to revealing aspects of the hidden rules.An exploration game must have hidden elements, unknowns, kept from the players.  If it doesn't, then exploration is not really what the group or game is about (barring the introversive game of self exploration of one's own wants and desires). A game of exploring something exterior to one's self means both the players and PCs are strangers to whatever parts of the world not created in the backgrounds.  Backgrounds can have a big impact on the configuration of the world, but they still require most details to be unknowns for the players to discover via exploration.I think a good primary characteristic to add to the definition of sandbox is the spatial world exists in every direction for the PCs to explore.  Like drawing a maze and starting those on the other side of a screen in the middle, the maze continues in every direction with enough drawn to last the length of a game session.  More may drawn between sessions depending on the endpoint of the last.  More than just the spatial aspect can be predetermined and enlarged in this manner, but I think the above is what most folks think of as a sandbox campaign.  And I'm not pressing to make it any more than that: a nonlinear exploration of a fictional world.  Can G1-3 or another adventure path exist within this world?  Sure, I don't see why not.  But if the "maze" is in front of a screen being drawn up by players together, than I do not believe the game is a sandbox game.  That's just my honest opinion.  I see the other as a game of making a maze together and not solving one, a necessary component to external discovery.  Are the players discovering their own wants and desires in such a collaborative game where they jointly draw up the maze?  Sure, but there are no unknowns about the fiction to explore.  In fact, unknowns would be detrimental to play because one cannot explore their own feelings toward a concept never presented to be addressed.</blockquote>

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