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<blockquote data-quote="Yora" data-source="post: 8373311" data-attributes="member: 6670763">Well, a sandbox is simply a wooden box filed with sand thst you can shape into the terrain of various different battlefields to move your tin soldiers around. They are still used as visualization aids by militaries today. That's what wargames were invented for. (Though officers immediately started playing with them just for fun, and could tell their wives that they are &quot;totally working&quot; with their coworkers deespite the laughing coming through the door all night.)Player agency is a very simply comcept that really only matters in the context of railroading, which is when it's taken away. It's nothing more fancy than the simple ability of players to make decisions and take actions that have an impact on what will happen next. It's actions having consequences, players being able to chose the actions of their characters, and players being able to tell the difference between their options.It doesn't mean that the players get what they want. They still can misjudge their chances or suffer a bad roll. But when the players have agency, then they had a meaningful choice to do something else instead.I guess it wasn't given a name early on because it was simply assumed to be a given. But people found ways to make the players dance on their strings and still believe that they are playing a meaningful game.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Yora, post: 8373311, member: 6670763"] Well, a sandbox is simply a wooden box filed with sand thst you can shape into the terrain of various different battlefields to move your tin soldiers around. They are still used as visualization aids by militaries today. That's what wargames were invented for. (Though officers immediately started playing with them just for fun, and could tell their wives that they are "totally working" with their coworkers deespite the laughing coming through the door all night.) Player agency is a very simply comcept that really only matters in the context of railroading, which is when it's taken away. It's nothing more fancy than the simple ability of players to make decisions and take actions that have an impact on what will happen next. It's actions having consequences, players being able to chose the actions of their characters, and players being able to tell the difference between their options. It doesn't mean that the players get what they want. They still can misjudge their chances or suffer a bad roll. But when the players have agency, then they had a meaningful choice to do something else instead. I guess it wasn't given a name early on because it was simply assumed to be a given. But people found ways to make the players dance on their strings and still believe that they are playing a meaningful game. [/QUOTE]

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