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Worlds of Design: The Tyranny and Freedom of Player Agency
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<blockquote data-quote="Jay Verkuilen" data-source="post: 7788215" data-attributes="member: 6873517"><p>The sandbox style is indeed held up as <em>the</em> holy grail by a certain type of grognard, but for many groups I'm not sure it is.</p><p></p><p>I've run a much more sandbox-y game and played in several. I like it a lot but it <em>really</em> needs to be run by a DM and players for whom it is a good match. One of my favorite kinds of game is the relatively small group of players with an ensemble cast of PCs and henchfolk, which I think is actually very consistent with the way the Lake Geneva crowd actually ran. In a game like this there isn't necessarily a ton of level advancement and characters are often picked to suit the part of the sandbox that's being explored. This doesn't work too well for folks who want a zero-to-hero with one PC experience, though.</p><p></p><p>All that aside, I've played or run for groups where the players just seem to flail around without some clear external pull provided by the DM. This doesn't make these groups <em>bad, </em>but they clearly need a lot more structuring.</p><p></p><p>Likewise, there are DMs who don't do sandboxes well. I have played with two who are good in many ways but just can't or won't do a sandbox game. One is capable of writing a really excellent narrative and comes up with some very cool stories and concepts, but it's been a real stretch for him to allow more player agency, though he's definitely gotten better over time. Another one is capable of running a pretty good game when he's got a solid script which he often adapts quite a bit, but isn't so great at coming up with his own stuff. Even when he's running a game that's been written by someone else, if it's too sandboxed, he doesn't seem to be able to pull the players along. He shines much brighter running a more narratively structured game.</p><p></p><p>What I often find problematic is that there seems to be some kind of total divide between sandbox and narrative railroad when, in fact, there's a lot of room between the two. It's one of the reasons I think games like <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_Wars%3A_Knights_of_the_Old_Republic" target="_blank"><em>Knights of the Old Republic</em></a> were so well done. They combined an overall narrative structure but allow the player a lot of leeway in the mid-game to choose the pathway through it by giving the player the choice of four different planets to explore. There were some interactions between the different planets, too, and often reasons to return to ones you'd left. This same structure appeared in a lot of subsequent CPRGs, for good reason. Of course the hardcore "sanbox rulez!" folks don't like this but IMO it combines the best of both worlds and is very much how I tend to approach games now, although, again, it depends on the group of players.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Jay Verkuilen, post: 7788215, member: 6873517"] The sandbox style is indeed held up as [I]the[/I] holy grail by a certain type of grognard, but for many groups I'm not sure it is. I've run a much more sandbox-y game and played in several. I like it a lot but it [I]really[/I] needs to be run by a DM and players for whom it is a good match. One of my favorite kinds of game is the relatively small group of players with an ensemble cast of PCs and henchfolk, which I think is actually very consistent with the way the Lake Geneva crowd actually ran. In a game like this there isn't necessarily a ton of level advancement and characters are often picked to suit the part of the sandbox that's being explored. This doesn't work too well for folks who want a zero-to-hero with one PC experience, though. All that aside, I've played or run for groups where the players just seem to flail around without some clear external pull provided by the DM. This doesn't make these groups [I]bad, [/I]but they clearly need a lot more structuring. Likewise, there are DMs who don't do sandboxes well. I have played with two who are good in many ways but just can't or won't do a sandbox game. One is capable of writing a really excellent narrative and comes up with some very cool stories and concepts, but it's been a real stretch for him to allow more player agency, though he's definitely gotten better over time. Another one is capable of running a pretty good game when he's got a solid script which he often adapts quite a bit, but isn't so great at coming up with his own stuff. Even when he's running a game that's been written by someone else, if it's too sandboxed, he doesn't seem to be able to pull the players along. He shines much brighter running a more narratively structured game. What I often find problematic is that there seems to be some kind of total divide between sandbox and narrative railroad when, in fact, there's a lot of room between the two. It's one of the reasons I think games like [URL='https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_Wars%3A_Knights_of_the_Old_Republic'][I]Knights of the Old Republic[/I][/URL] were so well done. They combined an overall narrative structure but allow the player a lot of leeway in the mid-game to choose the pathway through it by giving the player the choice of four different planets to explore. There were some interactions between the different planets, too, and often reasons to return to ones you'd left. This same structure appeared in a lot of subsequent CPRGs, for good reason. Of course the hardcore "sanbox rulez!" folks don't like this but IMO it combines the best of both worlds and is very much how I tend to approach games now, although, again, it depends on the group of players. [/QUOTE]
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