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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Bedrockgames" data-source="post: 9077278" data-attributes="member: 85555">Something that is really crucial to understand is how different sandbox play is from linear adventure paths and similar structures (even different from Monster of the Week) because it fully embraces the player's ability to not engage what has been planned, to strike out in completely new and unexpected directions. In a sense this can exist in any RPG in any RPG adventure structure but it tends not to. So a sandbox in my view is a full commitment to honor the players desire to do what they want. One substantive difference in this argument is this concept of authorship. I think sandbox GMs would reject the label of author, and that is one of the reasons this kind of conversation can break down. There are a couple of reasons for this (and probably more that aren't coming to mind right now). First we may be planning material, we may create NPCs, etc but we don't see ourselves as the authors of the PCs experience in the way we might if we had a clear adventure in our mind that we were imagining the players would go through (for example an adventure where you can easily imagine the players start at point A, go to point B, even Y happens, players go to either point C or D, maybe even E, etc). In sandbox it is more likely you are preparing some basic elements that will become live at some point (and certainly you would establish and map out locations but those are rarely thought of as static). I tend to see a good sandbox campaign as the GM designs a setting, establishes NPCs, their connections, their goals, ongoing situations, etc but once the rubber hits the road, the PCs are like a catalyst for a chemical reaction that could go anywhere and lead to anything. Second reason is more semantic. Author implies you are simply writing an adventure the way an author might a novel and to a lot of us it harkens back to GM as story teller from the 90s (which I would say is one of the things most current day sandbox GMs are reacting against). I know for me, thinking of myself as an author seems very counterproductive to what I am trying to achieve at the table (and I get the term high shave broader or more narrow usage than that, but I do find it hard for my mind to escape that meaning, especially do much of what my time in the wilderness as a GM was about was finding ways to not be "GM as storyteller" and to avoid things like structured adventure paths.</blockquote>

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