Sandbox Objectivity

[under_score]

Well, other than them being very different systems? With, like, different mechanics and shit? In short no, no we're not.

Well now I'm confused, is Black Hack an OSR game?

 

[Fenris-77]

Well now I'm confused, is Black Hack an OSR game?

You're a bad person and should feel terrible about yourself.

 

[Nobby-W]

I could do that if it would help. But honestly, despite many of my comments in this thread being about BitD, I'd love to see the conversation move on.

But if people thought that actual play examples of Blades would be useful, I'd do it in another thread.

Not Blades strictly, but here are two examples of Scum and Villainy, which is based on the same core mechanics and is pretty much the same system:

Scum and Villainy in-character (IC) thread.

This is the thread for in-character postings on the Scum and Villany game.

www.rpgpub.com

S&V - The Outfit (IC thread)

In-character thread for Scum and Villainy: The Outfit. Welcome to Shenobi, your home turf. Shenobi is one of the rougher parts of startown, near Lovell-Darko field (casually: Darko Field). Industry, vice, cheap, shabby hotels and bars catering to freighter crews and warehousing mix with the...

www.rpgpub.com

 

[Nobby-W]

I’ve read it.

Blades in the Dark is an RPG.

I'm playing Scum and Villainy now, and on the basis that it has the features one would expect to find in an RPG (characters, task resolution, experience etc.), it is most definitely an RPG and I'm using it as an RPG - quacks like a duck and all that.

I have a tiny bit of sympathy for the not-a-sandbox argument, but I think that interpretation can only be made under a very pedantic definition of sandbox.

I don't really know what to make of the arguments about meta-currency and flashbacks vs. immersion. That feels pretty subjective, but I'm not really that hung up on in-character vs. out-of-character play. If that makes me a bad DM then I guess I'll just have to live with that.

 

[Fenris-77]

If a duck quacks in a sandbox, does anyone say he's playing an RPG?

 

[under_score]

Not Blades strictly, but here are two examples of Scum and Villainy, which is based on the same core mechanics and is pretty much the same system:

Scum and Villainy in-character (IC) thread.

This is the thread for in-character postings on the Scum and Villany game.

www.rpgpub.com

S&V - The Outfit (IC thread)

In-character thread for Scum and Villainy: The Outfit. Welcome to Shenobi, your home turf. Shenobi is one of the rougher parts of startown, near Lovell-Darko field (casually: Darko Field). Industry, vice, cheap, shabby hotels and bars catering to freighter crews and warehousing mix with the...

www.rpgpub.com

Can you point to a section of these threads that deals with the flashback mechanic? I'd be interested to read how that plays out.

 

[Endless Flight]

And now: Deep Thoughts by Jack Handey...

“If you lay railroad tracks in a sandbox, can’t you say you are doing both at the same time?”

 

[Nobby-W]

Can you point to a section of these threads that deals with the flashback mechanic? I'd be interested to read how that plays out.

These are a few examples. None of them resulted in anything terribly earth-shaking except for the first one, but that was more a function of a success-with-complications on actually deploying the device. Note that the flashbacks can come with a cost in stress, which is one of two metacurrency pools in the system, although for trivial ones like "I remembered to bring gizmo X" one wouldn't generally charge as there is also an encumbrance system that places limits on how much you can retcon that sort of thing.

I don't think we ever had a flashback that went into a significant amount of playing time to role-play it out.

Here's one where one of the players retcons having built an EMP device. Using it still has consequences -

Scum and Villainy in-character (IC) thread.

Twitch takes a pot shot at the Rover as it clips the bike! Scrap = 5

www.rpgpub.com

Here's an example of a trivial one where somebody retcons a minor bit of Ocean's-11 style prep

Scum and Villainy in-character (IC) thread.

Ida gets a bit nervous. She tries to project "WE TAKE SPHERE. PROBLEM?" After a few floundering exchanges you think you think you've explained it. From the responses it seems to be OK with that.

www.rpgpub.com

And another one where the player rigged something up beforehand.

Scum and Villainy in-character (IC) thread.

ooc: sway to convince guard we're legit. 1D,+1d for teamwork. roll: 6,2

www.rpgpub.com

Here's someone doing a flashback of having procured some untraceable burner phones

S&V - The Outfit (IC thread)

OOC: Groovy, back at'cha this evening, a bit more adulting to do today ...

www.rpgpub.com

 

[Endless Flight]

I don’t see how flashbacks invalidate a sandbox, but maybe somebody can illuminate my blind spots.

 

[tenbones]

The problem is, the assertion that one style of play is objectively better than all others is what bothers me. Saying you like a particular approach is fine. Saying all others suck, and that's a provable fact. That's where I tune out.

As I've mentioned before - I see it as taxonomic. Railroading as a methodology requires several tools/skills to run well. It is generally perceived that most of the old-school modules were Railroads (but this is not actually always true - it's just generally spoken of that way) and the ideas we call Railroads and Sandboxes emerged years later after many 1st and 2nd generation GM's that stuck it out, started seeing the demarcation. Railroads are valuable, in fact I might say they're *necessary* to learn how to Sandbox (this might be a side-discussion but totally interested in diving into that). I see Sandbox as something that emerged from GM's running those early adventures as Railroads. I SUSPECT it's because

1) Many of those early modules aren't really overt Railroads, and are mini-sandboxes in their own right. This led GM's to follow their natural inclinations of "what is beyond the borders of <X>".
2) Players being players pushing the envelopes of their GM's skillset and forcing them to create those "things beyond the borders of <X>". Or doing novel things with their characters in-setting that further pushed GM's to create more content for their table. House Rules etc. proliferate, patterns emerge that become normal, and with sharing of ideas via conventions, trade mags, old-school BBS's, etc. we can see the evolution of it.
3) I suspect that GM's that go the distance tend to become Sandbox GM's because of 1 and 2. I'm sure there are exceptions to this, but they may likely prove the rule.

Railroads proliferate because they're a developmental necessary and fundamental part of GMing. (Not to mention RPG game-design writ large).

 

[under_score]

These are a few examples. None of them resulted in anything terribly earth-shaking except for the first one, but that was more a function of a success-with-complications on actually deploying the device. Note that the flashbacks can come with a cost in stress, which is one of two metacurrency pools in the system, although for trivial ones like "I remembered to bring gizmo X" one wouldn't generally charge as there is also an encumbrance system that places limits on how much you can retcon that sort of thing.

Here's one where one of the players retcons having built an EMP device. Using it still has consequences -

Scum and Villainy in-character (IC) thread.

Twitch takes a pot shot at the Rover as it clips the bike! Scrap = 5

www.rpgpub.com

Here's an example of a trivial one where somebody retcons a minor bit of Ocean's-11 style prep

Scum and Villainy in-character (IC) thread.

Ida gets a bit nervous. She tries to project "WE TAKE SPHERE. PROBLEM?" After a few floundering exchanges you think you think you've explained it. From the responses it seems to be OK with that.

www.rpgpub.com

And another one where the player rigged something up beforehand.

Scum and Villainy in-character (IC) thread.

ooc: sway to convince guard we're legit. 1D,+1d for teamwork. roll: 6,2

www.rpgpub.com

Here's someone doing a flashback of having procured some untraceable burner phones

S&V - The Outfit (IC thread)

OOC: Groovy, back at'cha this evening, a bit more adulting to do today ...

www.rpgpub.com

Thanks for the examples.
Different from what I expected. Only the one with Theopholis interacting with Pete reads like it's played out in real time. I was under the impression that the flashbacks would work by stopping Present Day play, backing up to some previous time, and playing that out like everything else, but with the assumption of all the necessary restrictions to bring flashback time back to Present Day without changing anything that is established. Which seems so obviously incompatible with sandbox play that it seemed bizarre to even argue about.
This generally reads more like activating a Retcon Ability. Very on the fly. It's weirdly OOC to me, which I'm pretty low tolerance for, and looks like Theopholis made up an NPC, so there's some GMing authority that has been passed to players.

So I might shift opinions a little. This might work in sandbox play, depending on the level of authority to change the setting players have. I'm not sure. It is pretty storygamey though.

 

[robiswrong]

As I've mentioned before - I see it as taxonomic. Railroading as a methodology requires several tools/skills to run well. It is generally perceived that most of the old-school modules were Railroads (but this is not actually always true - it's just generally spoken of that way) and the ideas we call Railroads and Sandboxes emerged years later after many 1st and 2nd generation GM's that stuck it out, started seeing the demarcation.

I think that depends on which modules. B1 and B2 are hard to view as railroads. The Dragonlance modules tend towards that very heavily. The Giants stuff? Eh, still not really.

There's a clear difference between Keep on the Borderlands and the Dragonlance modules, even if that's not easily defined in a totally concrete way (and, of course, there's modules that combine the two, blah blah blah").

I generally agree with Justin Alexander 's view on the difference being predicated on "who determines what we do next", although I slightly differ on the scope of that.

Railroads are valuable, in fact I might say they're *necessary* to learn how to Sandbox (this might be a side-discussion but totally interested in diving into that). I see Sandbox as something that emerged from GM's running those early adventures as Railroads.

I kinda disagree with this, just because the early adventures tended more towards sandbox than they did railroads (at least as most people seem to be using the terms). Isle of Dread? You're on an island. Go do stuff. Not very railroady, unless the players were shoved on teh island by fiat, and even then what they do from that point is hard to call a railroad.

"Railroads are necessary to learn to sandbox" doesn't really hold up for me when the early days were more about sandboxes than they were railroads. Now, they tended to be premise-driven railroads (you're adventurers exploring a dungeon, go! was pretty much the earliest campaign structure), but I'd say they still fall on the sandbox side of that divide.

 

[Nobby-W]

Thanks for the examples.
Different from what I expected. Only the one with Theopholis interacting with Pete reads like it's played out in real time. I was under the impression that the flashbacks would work by stopping Present Day play, backing up to some previous time, and playing that out like everything else, but with the assumption of all the necessary restrictions to bring flashback time back to Present Day without changing anything that is established. Which seems so obviously incompatible with sandbox play that it seemed bizarre to even argue about.
This generally reads more like activating a Retcon Ability. Very on the fly. It's weirdly OOC to me, which I'm pretty low tolerance for, and looks like Theopholis made up an NPC, so there's some GMing authority that has been passed to players.

So I might shift opinions a little. This might work in sandbox play, depending on the level of authority to change the setting players have. I'm not sure. It is pretty storygamey though.

You can have more complex flashbacks, which could go up to the complexity of a small scenario in theory. The rule is that what's given in the adventure so far isn't affected. You can add to that by (for example) getting guards drunk or bribing them but the golden rule is you can't do something that changes the nature of the events in the game to date. There's certainly plenty of scope to make more use of flashbacks than we have so far.

You can see the characters in the OOC thread - I asked the players to come up with a few NPC contacts and enemies, and IIRC the one Theo mentioned was someone from his background. The setting is pretty much mine as it's a part of an ongoing world building project but I've flexed it a bit to fit with what the players came up with. By and large they understood it enough to come up with something reasonably appropriate.

You can see some stuff about the evolution of the Moseli Startown setting here:

Diary of creating a city

Building a mega-city from Open Street Map data "A wretched hive of scum and villainy - you'll be right at home." Some of you will have seen the modified Tataouine map I did a few months ago. Now, we're looking to scale the process. The Tataouine map was quite fun to name all the streets for...

www.rpgpub.com

Note also the OOC threads for the games:

Scum and Villainy out-of-character (OOC) thread.

This is the thread for out-of-character discussion of the Scum and Villany game. Link farm: Tannhauser sector (new) https://www.rpgpub.com/threads/scum-and-villainy-out-of-character-ooc-thread.3696/post-310109 Isinor sector (new)...

www.rpgpub.com

S&V - The Outfit (OOC thread)

Out of character thread This thread has background materials, character sheets and links. This post will be the major link farm to basic materials. Links to character sheets, cheat sheets and resources Playbooks: Fixer, Muscle, Hacker, Sneak. Personal equipment Character background (start...

www.rpgpub.com

 

[under_score]

You can have more complex flashbacks, which could go up to the complexity of a small scenario in theory. The rule is that what's given in the adventure so far isn't affected. You can add to that by (for example) getting guards drunk or bribing them but the golden rule is you can't do something that changes the nature of the events in the game to date.

You can see the characters in the OOC thread - I asked the players to come up with a few NPC contacts and enemies, and IIRC the one Theo mentioned was someone from his background. The setting is pretty much mine as it's a part of an ongoing world building project but I've flexed it a bit to fit with what the players came up with. By and large they understood it enough to come up with something reasonably appropriate.

You can see some stuff about the evolution of the Moseli Startown setting here:

Diary of creating a city

Building a mega-city from Open Street Map data "A wretched hive of scum and villainy - you'll be right at home." Some of you will have seen the modified Tataouine map I did a few months ago. Now, we're looking to scale the process. The Tataouine map was quite fun to name all the streets for...

www.rpgpub.com

Note also the OOC threads for the games:

Scum and Villainy out-of-character (OOC) thread.

This is the thread for out-of-character discussion of the Scum and Villany game. Link farm: Tannhauser sector (new) https://www.rpgpub.com/threads/scum-and-villainy-out-of-character-ooc-thread.3696/post-310109 Isinor sector (new)...

www.rpgpub.com

S&V - The Outfit (OOC thread)

Out of character thread This thread has background materials, character sheets and links. This post will be the major link farm to basic materials. Links to character sheets, cheat sheets and resources Playbooks: Fixer, Muscle, Hacker, Sneak. Personal equipment Character background (start...

www.rpgpub.com

Yeah, I still think that actually playing a flashback scenario, with the predetermined outcome of the origin point, really isn't compatible with sandbox play. There's just too much restriction. I'm not saying there's some exact binary point of sandbox or not, but you could easily spend an entire session shooting down ideas for dealing with those guards just because of what is already established in the future.
And the alternative of not actually playing the flashback scenario is engaging with the mechanic in an OOC way, which ups the game's narrativist level.

So I think it's easy to see why this game is some weird hybrid thing that potentially could be played sandbox and could be played traditional but I don't think it can be entirely both and will easily drift too much into railroading for a lot of players and too much into storygame territory for a lot of players.
It's like this monstrosity was expertly designed for forum wars.

 

[Nobby-W]

I don’t see how flashbacks invalidate a sandbox, but maybe somebody can illuminate my blind spots.

TBH I don't really get this either. Although the games I'm running wouldn't meet the strict definition of a sandbox, and I don't think I've ever run a pure sandbox game, or played in one, for that matter.

 

[Justin Alexander]

You (and Justin) insinuate *I* am saying *I* am superior to other GM's.

You have repeatedly posted in this thread that sandbox GMs are objectively more skilled and superior to non-sandbox GMs while self-identifying as a sandbox GM. Your attempt to claim that you have not done this is objectively laughable.

But if you have some insight I find useful, like I've found in the others here, I can learn to respect you for your opinions based on your honest engagement.

Honest engagement requires you to not tell absurd lies about the things you've said.

If you actually wanted to have a meaningful discussion, you'd stop clowning.

 

[Nobby-W]

Yeah, I still think that actually playing a flashback scenario, with the predetermined outcome of the origin point, really isn't compatible with sandbox play. There's just too much restriction. I'm not saying there's some exact binary point of sandbox or not, but you could easily spend an entire session shooting down ideas for dealing with those guards just because of what is already established in the future.
And the alternative of not actually playing the flashback scenario is engaging with the mechanic in an OOC way, which ups the game's narrativist level.

So I think it's easy to see why this game is some weird hybrid thing that potentially could be played sandbox and could be played traditional but I don't think it can be entirely both and will easily drift too much into railroading for a lot of players and too much into storygame territory for a lot of players.
It's like this monstrosity was expertly designed for forum wars.

I just run a couple of games of Scum and Villainy and we seem to be enjoying it. The players are basically playing characters and we're approaching this and using it as a role playing game. Nobody is viewing this as collaborative story-telling and I've never had that vibe while playing FATE either.

 

[Justin Alexander]

This, of course, is also why you can't run sandbox campaigns in D&D: There's a whole chapter devoted to Combat and a whole chapter devoted to Spells. But social interactions are only mentioned in passing. And if your characters can't interact with NPCs except by fighting them or casting spells at them, how can it be called a sandbox?

I have criticized OD&D's 3 LLB presentation as being an incomplete description of what Gygax and his players did with the rules.

Right, right. Any time a D&D rulebook has explicitly contradicted your preferred style of play in the past 50 years, it's just an accident and it's okay because Rob C. is in the house to tell us what Gygax REALLY meant.

After the discussion in other threads, I can see how people are using BitD to run campaigns with different styles emphasizing different things particular campaigns very similar to what I would consider to be traditional roleplaying. However I understand what they are doing with the rules and in come cases how the rules inspired them. I disagree those account is what Harper intended when writing Blades in the Dark. Not just what he wrote in the rules but what he talked about what he wrote in interviews.

And, of course, when John Harper explicitly writes in the rulebook that BitD is intended for sandbox play:



or spends an hour explicitly talking about how he designed Blades in the Dark to run sandbox campaigns he's a liar and that's not what he was trying to do, but it's STILL okay because Rob C. is in the house to tell us what Harper REALLY meant.

Thing is though, people earlier in the thread seemed to be saying that it's still a sandbox even if the central premise requires buy-in.

...but then in the case of Blades in the Dark it's not a sandbox because the central premise requires buy in.

Or at least that's what it looked like to me.

Absolutely. Multiple people talked earlier in the thread about characters being retired from their sandbox if they chose to leave the career of "fantasy adventurer," only to later declare that a BitD campaign couldn't be called a sandbox if characters who chose to stop being part of a criminal crew would similarly be retired.

As far as I can tell there's a theory about sandbox games that should have been possible to articulate in an essay of no more than 500 words. I don't owe it to anybody to troll through 2,000 postings if they don't feel it's worth their time to give me a straight answer when asked a direct question.

The argument is that a single meta-mechanic (bennie points, player-initiated flashback scene, etc.) disqualifies a game from being an RPG and/or used to run a sandbox campaign.

(Yes, this does mean that it's supposedly impossible to run a sandbox campaign in D&D 5th Edition.)

Some people also feel that this applies to preparedness mechanics (roll to randomly determine if there's a flashlight in the trunk of your car) because a sandbox is apparently only possible in games where you're micromanaging equipment lists. It's unclear whether abstract wealth mechanics would also prevent a sandbox campaign from existing, but presumably if you don't know your character's exact bank account information it would be similarly disqualifying.

I think you may have just coined a useful term: Light Rail. A lot of campaigns, probably most, take this format - GM comes up with an adventure for the evening (whether by themselves or from a module), players do the adventure. There is not necessarily an overarching fixed plot, or it may only have a few key points like a BBEG. Sometimes players do something that affects the course of the campaign, which gets reflected in next week's adventure or some other adventure down the track, giving the process some sandbox-ish elements. Rinse. Repeat.

I tend to describe those campaigns as episodic. It doesn't explicitly state that the GM is the one predetermining the premise of each episode, but it seems to be generally understood in common usage. (And is relatively easy to explicitly clarify/specify if necessary.)

 

[under_score]

I just run a couple of games of Scum and Villainy and we seem to be enjoying it. The players are basically playing characters and we're approaching this and using it as a role playing game. Nobody is viewing this as collaborative story-telling and I've never had that vibe while playing FATE either.

I'm not knocking your game at all and I mean it when I say I appreciate you providing real examples. It is enlightening. I do think the game has enough of X and Y to make people allergic to either X or Y recoil, but it seems like you guys are having a good time with it, so what's it matter that it doesn't suit everyone's definitions?

 

[Séadna]

Just from playing Nobby's game I would have thought you could do a sandbox with BitD and S&V simply by laying out the city (steampunk or futuristic respectively), various factions and wealthy mansions, fixers, etc. It's just that on heists/missions you can do flashbacks.

 

[Black Vulmea]

I don’t see how flashbacks invalidate a sandbox, but maybe somebody can illuminate my blind spots.

In the same way I can't change my present by revisiting my past, most sandbox play is about using the resources you have on hand, without retconning to create resources you don't.

 

[TristramEvans]

2000+ postings across two threads and I still have no idea why people claim Blades In the Dark isn't a role playing game, or have the goal posts shifted away from this now it's merely not a sandbox ?

I don’t see how flashbacks invalidate a sandbox, but maybe somebody can illuminate my blind spots.

OK a recap for everyone...


I haven't seen anyone claiming BiTD isn't an RPG. Maybe in another thread, in another time. Maybe on another forum, where those sorts of proclamations get made more often.

There was three arguments about BiTD not being a sandbox.

Mine, which is basically that games aren't sandboxes. That seems self-evident to me. A sandbox is an approach to running a game. Thus, any RPG could be run as a sandbox by a GM (except for PbtA games of course). So, to me the question is the same as asking "Is Dungeons & Dragons a railroad?" or "Is Vampire: The Masquerade a one shot?" It's kinda nonsensical.

The two other statements against BitD being a suitable game system for Sandboxes were...

CRK's claim about the narrative aspects of the system:


which is somewhat akin to Rob's statement here:


But it's worth noting Rob also qualified this opinion by saying:


Now, personally, I don't conflate the Sandbox approach vs other types of gameplay to the "Narrative vs Immersion" divide. I considered those different categories entirely. But if one considers 3rd-person authorial view mechanics to be contrary to running a Sandbox, or to put it another way, one part of the definition of sandbox play is players only engage in first person in-character choices, then from that PoV, it is correct that BitD cannot, as written, be used to play a sandbox game. So really it all depends on if that's part of your personal definition of a Sandbox or not. If not, there's nothing about the Flashback mechanic, or any other mechanic I've heard about regarding BiTD that prevents a GM from runnig it as a sandbox.

OTOH, some people claim that the game as written is specifically set up for Sandbox play, or especiallysuited for it. I'd say, from everythng that's been revealed about the game on this forum, that's probably false.

But the important thing to take away here, is that in the end, BitD doesn't matter to the thread's conversation. It was a red herring. The question of whether or not it was an RPG or a Sandbox was introduced into the thread to refocus the entire conversation around one poster's need for the thread to be all about validating their insecurities.

 

[Endless Flight]

In the same way I can't change my present by revisiting my past, most sandbox play is about using the resources you have on hand, without retconning to create resources you don't.

Im not sure I can agree with that but I’m not going to argue over it. It seems to me that flashbacks just emulate certain kinds of “fiction” in some genre RPGs. It would actually work in supers, but I don’t recall a game that uses it.

 

[johnmarron]

Someone (Fenris?) asked about prep levels in sandbox play.

For my upcoming game, we'll do the following prep.

1) Roll up characters as a group.
2) As a group, we'll use random tables to generate the home base, the names and types of terrain regions in the nearby wilderness, and the names of some points of interest in the area (potential adventure sites/dungeons). We'll also generate some hints about the history of the region (using random tables) that give me some thematic hooks to design dungeons/discoveries/dangers around.
3) I'll use random tables to generate a big list of discoveries and dangers they might encounter while traveling (usualy takes about an hour, and lasts me for several sessions. I cross them off as I use them, and add to the list as needed).
4) The players will choose a destination, and we'll use the travel rules from the game to get to the location, using discoveries and dangers from my pre-generated list as needed.
5) I'll snag a map from the internet or my file of maps, and use random tables to generate a dungeon/adventure that is thematic, based on the name of the location. if I have time before the session (i.e., the players let me know at the end of the last session where they want to go next) I'll do this ahead of time (it normally takes me about an hour). If not, I'll do it while they play out their travel to the site.
6) We'll play out the dungeon, with the players deciding if and when they have enough treasure or want to leave.
7) We'll use the travel rules to get them back to their home base.
8) We'll use the downtime rules from the game to play out some in town events, heal up, buy gear, carouse, work on personal projects, interact with NPCs, etc.
9) The player's will choose another target, either based on names on the map, rumors they hear in town, or personal goals, and we'll start the process again.

Pretty much my entire prep is collecting some dungeon maps, randomly generating a bunch of things for them to find, and randomly generating dungeons as they decide to investigate them. If any larger "plot" develops, it develops out of the actions and interactions of the PCs and the setting/NPCs. In one of my previous sandbox games, the PCs were jumped by a powerful group of bandits on their way back from the first dungeon (a random encounter), who took their hard-won treasure. The rest of the campaign consisted of them trying to get powerful enough to get revenge on their new nemeses.

John

 

[Fenris-77]

Im not sure I can agree with that but I’m not going to argue over it. It seems to me that flashbacks just emulate certain kinds of “fiction” in some genre RPGs. It would actually work in supers, but I don’t recall a game that uses it.

There is a FitD game by Sage LaTorra that's supers and also (obviously) has flashbacks, but other that that ...

 

[Nobby-W]

[ . . . ]
I haven't seen anyone claiming BiTD isn't an RPG. Maybe in another thread, in another time. Maybe on another forum, where those sorts of proclamations get made more often.

There was some discussion of it on the Storygame thread, but I couldn't find the original source of the claim and the folks I asked for an explanation didn't answer. It's possible that the claim was never made, but there was discussion on the thread that implied it had, under_score certainly seems to think it has. Now there's so much sewage on the thread I can't be arsed going through it.

 

[BedrockBrendan]

Right, but I'm not talking about agency. I mean "PCs changing the setting by in-game actions", and that's it.

I realize that. Your post just prompted that thought about agency. I have seen the issue of agency come up in similar ways. Often with one side emphasizing the agency of the player, the other the agency of the character (i.e. how much impact does the player, regardless of character, have on the course of play, versus how much impact does the player, through their character, have on the course of play). The fault lines around this one seemed quite similar. And it is usually related to discussions around things like sandboxes

 

[Nobby-W]

Im not sure I can agree with that but I’m not going to argue over it. It seems to me that flashbacks just emulate certain kinds of “fiction” in some genre RPGs. It would actually work in supers, but I don’t recall a game that uses it.

Flashbacks are largely a mechanism for doing competency porn and speeding up the resolution of heist adventures by abstracting unnecessary detail about planning, although this isn't the only thing that can be done with them. The best known example of this Ocean's 11 but there are certainly plenty of examples elsewhere in the media.

One could see flashbacks working in stuff like James Bond or cyberpunk, really any genre where the protagonists are getting by on wits and mcguffins their players might not have. It might be less of a big deal in a traditional dungeon crawl, which is more about epic struggle.

 

[TJS]

One could see flashbacks working in stuff like James Bond or cyberpunk, really any genre where the protagonists are getting by on wits and mcguffins their players might not have. It might be less of a big deal in a traditional dungeon crawl, which is more about epic struggle.

5th Edition D&D sort of does it by changing the way magic works. It's just that, because it's 'magic', it doesn't need any additional explanation.

Eg. In the old days you had to choose you're entire loadout of spells in advance. Nowadays you have a lot more flexibility.

 

[Nobby-W]

Just from playing Nobby's game I would have thought you could do a sandbox with BitD and S&V simply by laying out the city (steampunk or futuristic respectively), various factions and wealthy mansions, fixers, etc. It's just that on heists/missions you can do flashbacks.

I think the claim revolves around a fairly pedantic definition of sandbox. Just this evening I've learned a couple of things about how folks define the term that I wasn't aware of and wouldn't have considered important.

Having said this, I don't think either of the S&V games I'm running would really qualify as a pure sandbox but they're not a purely plotted adventure either. Both have adventures with plot points, although the first S&V game has deviated quite wildly from what I originally had in mind. For example the entire sojourn to Freeside and back via the Dries, the hospital heist, Sutra Mishra, the sneaking around the bar, the sphere and Apparition where all pretty much made up on the fly so the practice was still quite sandboxy if not wholly so. The Apparition changed quite a few times before I finally decided what to do with it at the last minute.

 

[Black Vulmea]

It seems to me that flashbacks just emulate certain kinds of “fiction” in some genre RPGs.

I emulate the fictional world, not the "fiction" itself. You're not playing out a story set in 1920 New Mexico, or 1625 Paris; you're living in them, and as such your character can no more retcon her past than I can.

 

[Fenris-77]

I think the claim revolves around a fairly pedantic definition of sandbox. Just this evening I've learned a couple of things about how folks define the term that I wasn't aware of and wouldn't have considered important.

Having said this, I don't think either of the S&V games I'm running would really qualify as a pure sandbox but they're not a purely plotted adventure either. Both have adventures with plot points, although the first S&V game has deviated quite wildly from what I originally had in mind. For example the entire sojourn to Freeside and back via the Dries, the hospital heist, Sutra Mishra, the sneaking around the bar, the sphere and Apparition where all pretty much made up on the fly so the practice was still quite sandboxy if not wholly so. The Apparition changed quite a few times before I finally decided what to do with it at the last minute.

Every sandbox has plotted points to some degree, no matter how loudly some might shout the opposite. Once the players bite on a hook there is, in many if not most cases, some kind of linearity to the unfolding action. That's not a bad thing, its just how shit works. We present the players with problems and those problems have solutions. As soon as that's the case things get constrained to some extent. Problems assume teleos, i.e. solutions. You can describe a spectrum of agency about solving the problem, but it's not infinite.

 

[Ravenswing]

I always wonder why so many apparently amazing GMs with players that love their games are filled with either with bitter belligerence or an overcompensating need to chest beat about awesomness of their approach while insulting others. You'd think people who were actually running fun games on a regular basis would be in a better mood.

Hell yeah. Dungeons bore the shit out of me. I don't think gaming handles horror well, generally, even if I liked horror, which I never have. I do not appreciate silly slapstick campaigns, and have been baited and switched a couple times into them. (Both times I ditched it after the one session.) And so on and so forth.

Demonstrably, a great many players disagree with me. Why, they dare -- they dare! -- to play game styles despite my clearly stated preference, and furthermore they have the unmitigated gall to enjoy them.

Like Tenbones, my longterm players and I believe sandboxing to be a superior style of play. But that's us.

Is there a time limit where fixing mistakes is no longer sandbox? And if it's okay for fixing mistakes, why can't I flash back for effect?

As a devoted sandboxer, I don't think so. There've been times where after the play session, and as delayed as the beginning of the next one, where I've said, "Look guys, I screwed up, and here's how. Anyone object to me retconning this? Thanks, everyone, you're the best."

We should all be doing this to have fun. If we're not, then it needs fixing. That has nothing to do with sandbox vs railroad; I expect a railroad GM can likewise say "Look, guys, I screwed up. Anyone object to me retconning this?"

 

[Justin Alexander]

There was some discussion of it on the Storygame thread, but I couldn't find the original source of the claim and the folks I asked for an explanation didn't answer. It's possible that the claim was never made, but there was discussion on the thread that implied it had, under_score certainly seems to think it has. Now there's so much sewage on the thread I can't be arsed going through it.

Here. And also here.

But mostly the elision is happening because of the originally hidden premise (which has become more clearly stated in the last few pages) that you can't have sandbox play unless you're running an RPG, so the arguments that BitD can't be used to run sandbox campaigns are the exact same arguments that were just used a few weeks ago to argue that BitD isn't an RPG.

Flashbacks are largely a mechanism for doing competency porn and speeding up the resolution of heist adventures by abstracting unnecessary detail about planning, although this isn't the only thing that can be done with them. The best known example of this in media is Ocean's 11 but there are certainly plenty of examples elsewhere in the media.

The flashback mechanics are probably too contentious at this point, unfortunately, for valuable discussion to emerge. This happened in the previous thread, too. Attempts to move the conversation past the specific dissociation of the player-triggered flashback went nowhere because people had become completely tribalistic about the specific heresy of the flashback mechanic and simply could not move past it.

The interesting principle here, IMO, is the idea that sandbox campaigns are about players having specific lists of available resources, and any other approach to the question of "available resources" disqualifies the campaign from being a sandbox.

If you wanted to interrogate that idea, we could look at, for example, preparedness mechanics and abstract wealth mechanics: In both cases, the players make a mechanical check to see if their character has a particular resource which has not been explicitly established to either exist or not exist. To be honest, it seems ridiculous to me that such mechanics would be seen as precluding sandbox play, but CRKrueger explicitly said they did and Black Vulmea implied it.

I'm honestly curious about what the exact rationale is and what the full implications of it are perceived to be.

What if this check is moved to the GM? A player asks, "I check the trunk of the rental car. Does it have a spare tire?" Or maybe it's a spy game where there are supply caches and a system that the GM can use to randomly determine if a particular cache has a specific item. If it's the GM using the mechanics to determine whether or not a particular resources exists which has not been previously established to either exist or not exist, does that also preclude the campaign being a sandbox? Or is it different? (And, if so, what's the difference?)

What if the system in question is a random table that, for example, generates the content of a spy agency's equipment cache? Obviously sandbox campaigns that use random treasure tables are OK, but is that only true in certain circumstances?

Is it sandbox-okay for the GM to use random treasure tables while stocking a dungeon room?

Is it sandbox-okay for the GM to roll on them during actual play?

Is it sandbox-okay if the GM only rolls on the treasure tables when the PCs actually loot the room and ask them what they've found?

We could also look at, for example, the principle in Feng Shui that gives permission to the players to assume the props which would reasonably be available in their current location are, in fact, available to them for describing the crazy martial arts stunts they want to perform (e.g., you're in a sporting goods store, so you can just grab a football and chuck it at somebody's head). Is this style of play also impossible in a sandbox campaign? And how far does this extend? If you're traveling through a forest in October in a D&D hexcrawl and you say, "I'm going to grab some of the dry leaves to serve as tinder" -- even though the GM has said nothing about dry leaves existing! -- did you suddenly ruin the sandbox?

 

[Endless Flight]

I emulate the fictional world, not the "fiction" itself. You're not playing out a story set in 1920 New Mexico, or 1625 Paris; you're living in them, and as such your character can no more retcon her past than I can.

I do it like you do, but I know that not everybody feels or does the same. I’m a “big tent” guy when it comes to RPGs.

 

[Nobby-W]

Every sandbox has plotted points to some degree, no matter how loudly some might shout the opposite. Once the players bite on a hook there is, in many if not most cases, some kind of linearity to the unfolding action. That's not a bad thing, its just how shit works. We present the players with problems and those problems have solutions. As soon as that's the case things get constrained to some extent. Problems assume teleos, i.e. solutions. You can describe a spectrum of agency about solving the problem, but it's not infinite.

While I'm sure some folks might regard that as heretical, I agree with you.

OTOH I only actually prepared one hook at the start of the Outfit campaign. If I had more hooks set up I'd have had the NPC open more boxes. There is a bit more of an extended arc in the other game that I've done some groundwork for, but it was started in media res for a particular adventure. While the party does have a fair bit of agency in the campaigns I still prepped the adventures and I wouldn't have characterised the games as purely sandboxes even by my pretty broad and non-specific definition of the term.

I will restart the games. Honest.

 

[Stevethulhu]

As I've mentioned before - I see it as taxonomic. Railroading as a methodology requires several tools/skills to run well. It is generally perceived that most of the old-school modules were Railroads (but this is not actually always true - it's just generally spoken of that way) and the ideas we call Railroads and Sandboxes emerged years later after many 1st and 2nd generation GM's that stuck it out, started seeing the demarcation. Railroads are valuable, in fact I might say they're *necessary* to learn how to Sandbox (this might be a side-discussion but totally interested in diving into that). I see Sandbox as something that emerged from GM's running those early adventures as Railroads. I SUSPECT it's because

1) Many of those early modules aren't really overt Railroads, and are mini-sandboxes in their own right. This led GM's to follow their natural inclinations of "what is beyond the borders of <X>".
2) Players being players pushing the envelopes of their GM's skillset and forcing them to create those "things beyond the borders of <X>". Or doing novel things with their characters in-setting that further pushed GM's to create more content for their table. House Rules etc. proliferate, patterns emerge that become normal, and with sharing of ideas via conventions, trade mags, old-school BBS's, etc. we can see the evolution of it.
3) I suspect that GM's that go the distance tend to become Sandbox GM's because of 1 and 2. I'm sure there are exceptions to this, but they may likely prove the rule.

Railroads proliferate because they're a developmental necessary and fundamental part of GMing. (Not to mention RPG game-design writ large).

You really are hammering that either railroad or sandbox. This thread has shown enough anecdotal evidence to put the lie to that.

RPG systems aren't one thing or another. And styles of play drift over time. Like the way towards a campaign ending, rather than fizzling like the majority I've been in did, naturally has less and less freedom.

Anyway, yours is a way that works for you. And that's great. But I really don't think for one second that it is the best way. ONE TRUE WAY is one of the banes of RPG discussion.

 

[Endless Flight]

Honestly I’ve always felt most of the objections on what constitutes an RPG to be flimsy at best.

 

[Stevethulhu]

Honestly I’ve always felt most of the objections on what constitutes an RPG to be flimsy at best.

RPGs are like porn. Hard to define, but you know it when you see it.

And I really don't get why BitD isn't an RPG. Sure, it has elements some people aren't keen on. But that doesn't exclude it from being an RPG.

 

[under_score]

Every sandbox has plotted points to some degree, no matter how loudly some might shout the opposite.

There you go trying to tell other people what their games are. No bueno man.