Sandbox Objectivity

[Nobby-W]

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?

It doesn't really matter - and TBH I've yet to see a convincing argument that the narrative-mechanics-as-boogeyman argument is anything more than a matter of personal taste.

 

[Fenris-77]

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

I tell you what, why dont you tell me all about what happens after the players bite on a hook, but with no teleos, no direction, and no solution. What does that look like? If you can manage that I might be willing to be convinced.

 

[TristramEvans]

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.

You can have linear adventures within a sandbox.

I wouldn't call that "plotted points", myself. And when I say can, I'm not agreeing with you that they must.

 

[under_score]

I tell you what, why dont you tell me all about what happens after the players bite on a hook, but with no teleos, no direction, and no solution. What does that look like? If you can manage that I might be willing to be convinced.

That's too open-ended for me to say. Which is the point, really. I don't have a plot there.

 

[robiswrong]

It doesn't really matter - and TBH I've yet to see a convincing argument that the narrative-mechanics-as-boogeyman argument is anything more than a matter of personal taste.

Specifically, I get that for some people, "narrative" mechanics completely ruin their experience. I 100% get that. I'm certainly not going to argue that people should find them immersive, or it's wrong of them if they don't, or that it's some kind of failure on their part.

But I know many many people, including a bunch of old-school types, that don't have that reaction. So I don't buy that they are objectively anti-RPG, or even anti-immersion. In this case "objective" meaning "does it for everyone".

In my case, specifically, I've gone from having them be fairly non-immersive (which I justified with "I'm learning a different style of play") to being immersive. So I've had to modify my theories on immersion to account for that (as well as account for everyone else's reported experiences)

 

[robiswrong]

I tell you what, why dont you tell me all about what happens after the players bite on a hook, but with no teleos, no direction, and no solution. What does that look like? If you can manage that I might be willing to be convinced.

They're not necessarily hooks. They're events.

I really hate the idea of "plot hooks" for all sorts of reasons.

 

[TristramEvans]

It doesn't really matter - and TBH I've yet to see a convincing argument that the narrative-mechanics-as-boogeyman argument is anything more than a matter of personal taste.

Of course it's personal taste.

The issues only come about in conversations when one person gets their panties in a wad that someone else's personal tastes aren't the same as theirs.

 

[Nobby-W]

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.

That's different to the approach I've taken. I'm trying to do competency porn and various related conceits about the characters so there is an element of emulating the fiction going on in the S&V games.

 

[Fenris-77]

You can have linear adventures within a sandbox.

I wouldn't call that "plotted points", myself. And when I say can, I'm not agreeing with you that they must.

Sure, maybe not must, I was being general. As a Gm who does sandboxes, my experience is that after players bite on a hook its no longer do what you like, it's work the hook, whatever the hell that looks like. That hook generally involves some minimum of thats there and this is here sort of planning. That's linear to some degree.

 

[robiswrong]

Sure, maybe not must, I was being general. As a Gm who does sandboxes, my experience is that after players bite on a hook its no longer do what you like, it's work the hook, whatever the hell that looks like. That hook generally involves some minimum of thats there and this is here sort of planning. That's linear to some degree.

Define "linear" as you use it. Because I don't think we're meaning the same thing.

If possible, get specific, especially about how the GM might plan things, and how the players interact with them.

 

[Fenris-77]

They're not necessarily hooks. They're events.

I really hate the idea of "plot hooks" for all sorts of reasons.

We can use another word if it will reduce your cremastic response. Lets say once the players pounce on a rumour, or a possibility. Once they have something particular that they're doing there's some element of linear play involved.

 

[robiswrong]

We can use another word if it will reduce your cremastic response. Lets say once the players pounce on a rumour, or a possibility. Once they have something particular that they're doing there's some element of linear play involved.

Again, please tell me how you're defining linear. Because, no, in my mind it's not linear by my definition.

And hook is exactly the right word, which is why I dislike them. Which is probably a subject for another thread.

 

[Fenris-77]

Define "linear" as you use it. Because I don't think we're meaning the same thing.

If possible, get specific, especially about how the GM might plan things, and how the players interact with them.

Jesus. Sure. Linear, in this instance means that there is a problem and solution set. Lots of wiggle room on how to solve the problem, but generally there are specific places to go, people to see, or things to do, and often the order you do those things in probably matters.

 

[Nobby-W]

We can use another word if it will reduce your cremastic response. Lets say once the players pounce on a rumour, or a possibility. Once they have something particular that they're doing there's some element of linear play involved.

In unrelated news -

The Cremaster Cycle - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

CREMASTER BUILD

 

[under_score]

I think this is the most I've ever bothered engaging in these debates. It's kind of exhausting. Some of you have been good sports, some of you take this way too seriously. But I'm gonna step away now cause it's unproductive. I'm gonna go hiking for the weekend.
Try to get along now.

 

[Fenris-77]

Enjoy your hike!

 

[Ravenswing]

Something that could be interesting is some discussion about what various people here do for prep levels with their sandboxes. There's obviously a spectrum of huge prep to very minimal, completely populated hexes to nothing but random tables and a post with scribbled notes, bespoke maps to ones stolen from modules. Where do you guys fall on that spectrum and what about your prep style really works for you? I have my own style, but I'm always interested to talk to other veteran GMs about what they do because there's always something I can steal to make my games better.

I'd put myself on the "huge prep" scale. Over the past two months, for instance, I've been doing a vast renovation of the main city out of which I've been running most of my parties the last 18 years. (This follows the last renovation, only six years ago). There are over eleven hundred businesses and other locations set out with at least a paragraph apiece, and a dozen of those each have a standalone write up of a few pages, the largest a 14 pager. I've an Io groups site full of character portraits, flags, maps. Those city districts have player redactions for those with specific Area Knowledges. And I've writeups for every city in the kingdom, running from a couple dozen to a hundred locations in each of those, as well as smaller writeups for several small towns on strategic trade routes and highways.

But I've also been doing this for decades; part of the renovation for Warwik City is in scanning the deteriorating paper maps dating from the mid-80s and redoing them in paint.net.

And all this gives me a framework. I have to invent far less on the fly (which is good, because while I'm as glib as I ever was, my ability to remember those details I toss off, as early as the next gaming session, is significantly less), and be more consistent.

When it comes to session work, I put together a 3-5 page printout, mostly bulletpoints of where I have a mind things might go. (The players might well have other ideas.) I use a superb format invented by Steve Darlington for the base framework of the adventure. I have a cheat sheet telling me what the PCs can do. I put together a cheat sheet telling what the MOOKS can do.

But beyond all that, being nimble is the key. I have a favorite anecdote. It was an adventure that required a lot of detective work and skull work. And at one point, one of the players -- speaking for the group -- put together a summation of what they thought was going on and how they thought they might deal with it. It was brilliant, concise, incisive ... and totally wrong. He had made just one key mistake, and from that, the house of cards came a-tumblin' down. They were going face first into disaster.

Only I thought that the adventure as Andrew had spelled it out was really cool. And I thought the one I'd actually designed was somewhat pedestrian. So on the spot, and without telling anyone, I shifted everything in my head to Andrew's premise. They came, they saw, they kicked ass, and left my house that day in a babble of excitement. And I looked out the window at them, smiled benevolently, and decided it was good.

 

[Justin Alexander]

It doesn't really matter - and TBH I've yet to see a convincing argument that the narrative-mechanics-as-boogeyman argument is anything more than a matter of personal taste.

I think it's useful to play a game that's entirely based around narrative control mechanics (and without any associated roleplaying mechanics). For example, Once Upon a Time.

Then reflect on why that game is clearly not an RPG.

I tend to be of the philosophy that adding one cube of ice to a bucket of water doesn't mean it's not a bucket of water any more, but there's certainly a point where there's enough ice to make the water noticeably cold and another where it's definitely a bucket of ice now and not a bucket of water at all.

 

[hawkeyefan]

The issues only come about in conversations when one person gets their panties in a wad that someone else's personal tastes aren't the same as theirs.

Geez man he's been gone for pages. Talk about not letting things go.

 

[robiswrong]

Jesus. Sure. Linear, in this instance means that there is a problem and solution set. Lots of wiggle room on how to solve the problem, but generally there are specific places to go, people to see, or things to do, and often the order you do those things in probably matters.

Okay, then I totally disagree with you. But I agree on the definition of linear!

You can have events and problems to solve without designing the solution for them, leaving room for multiple solutions, and for the situation to develop in ways that nobody could have predicted up front.

 

[TristramEvans]

Sure, maybe not must, I was being general. As a Gm who does sandboxes, my experience is that after players bite on a hook its no longer do what you like, it's work the hook, whatever the hell that looks like. That hook generally involves some minimum of thats there and this is here sort of planning. That's linear to some degree.

I think it's just too complex to make blanket statements about. I mean, say the PC's come across a rumour that sheep in the area are being found mutilated. The go out to investigate, but in the course of this they stumble upon a smuggling ring. They decide to confront the smugglers and lose the combat to them, are captured and sold to slavers who load them on a ship. The ship takes them to the private island of an Ogre who buys them to use as gladiators. Among the other gladiotors they meet a fellow who turns out to be the young prince of a kingdom betrayed and sold into slavery by political rivals. They decide to help him escape and restore him to the crown and dispose the usurper.

Maybe at some point they go back to looking into the sheep mutilations. Maybe they get their revenge on the smugglers. Maybe they never do any of that because other stuff happens or they simply decide to go somewhere else in the world.

 

[TristramEvans]

Geez man he's been gone for pages. Talk about not letting things go.

I'm not talking about one person. I'm talking about 20 years of forum debates.

It's rule #1 about RPG arguments - it always comes down to badwrongfun: someone, somewhere, is having fun differently than me

 

[robiswrong]

Sure, maybe not must, I was being general. As a Gm who does sandboxes, my experience is that after players bite on a hook its no longer do what you like, it's work the hook, whatever the hell that looks like. That hook generally involves some minimum of thats there and this is here sort of planning. That's linear to some degree.

I mean, sure, once players decide "we're going to deal with this problem", then they're probably going to chew on that. That doesn't mean it's linear.

Ideally, the people behind the problem are also active. So the players take a certain angle on the problem... which causes ripples. Which causes reactions. All of a sudden the situation changes. Do this four or five times, and there's no way to determine the state of the world from the original state.

Which to me sounds pretty non-linear. It's only "linear" in the extremely pedantic sense that "yeah, things happened in an order that they actually happened in".

Now, if that's not how you run things, cool, maybe they're linear for you. But they don't have to be.

I'm not talking about one person. I'm talking about 20 years of forum debates.

It's rule #1 about RPG arguments - it always comes down to badwrongfun: someone, somewhere, is having fun differently than me

I try so very hard to dodge this.

 

[Nobby-W]

I think it's useful to play a game that's entirely based around narrative control mechanics (and without any associated roleplaying mechanics). For example, Once Upon a Time.

Then reflect on why that game is clearly not an RPG.

I tend to be of the philosophy that adding one cube of ice to a bucket of water doesn't mean it's not a bucket of water any more, but there's certainly a point where there's enough ice to make the water noticeably cold and another where it's definitely a bucket of ice now and not a bucket of water at all.

I haven't played a full-fat story game like Microscope or Once Upon A Time, although I get that they're something different from role playing games. However, I don't think that Scum and Villainy (BITD by extension) or FATE, which I have played, could reasonably be characterised as anything but a role playing game. In the two S&V games that I'm running I don't think any of the players are viewing the games as anything but a RPG.

 

[Endless Flight]

I think it's just too complex to make blanket statements about. I mean, say the PC's come across a rumour that sheep in the area are being found mutilated. The go out to investigate, but in the course of this they stumble upon a smuggling ring. They decide to confront the smugglers and lose the combat to them, are captured and sold to slavers who load them on a ship. The ship takes them to the private island of an Ogre who buys them to use as gladiators. Among the other gladiotors they meet a fellow who turns out to be the young prince of a kingdom betrayed and sold into slavery by political rivals. They decide to help him escape and restore him to the crown and dispose the usurper.

Maybe at some point they go back to looking into the sheep mutilations. Maybe they get their revenge on the smugglers. Maybe they never do any of that because other stuff happens or they simply decide to go somewhere else in the world.

I was so sure UFOs were going to show up in this story...

 

[Nobby-W]

I was so sure UFOs were going to show up in this story...

View attachment 27666

For the last time WE DO NOT MOLEST SHEEP!
Much

 

[Ravenswing]

Also known as the "From AsenRG to Ravenswing spectrum"!

Hint: he has binders and binders of setting data.

Asen, who has a hell of a memory, knows my style better than anyone on earth who's never met me in person. From the bookshelf at my right as I type this, twenty such binders even: two with my house rule magic spells, one with charts and tables and stuff, one for my setting's religions, one for its price lists, one for cultural info of the dominant regional culture, one for my wife's wizard's estates (!), one of various regional cultural tidbits (cuisine, naming conventions, regional institutions, customs, the like), five for major cities, and seven for particular notable realms.

I swear, Asen, one of these days I'll get you into my Discord campaign ... or I would, if I hadn't the gnawing sense that it would burst my bubble.

 

[Baulderstone]

You can have linear adventures within a sandbox.

I wouldn't call that "plotted points", myself. And when I say can, I'm not agreeing with you that they must.

I'd say the crucial difference is that players can leave the path at any point. I might place a clue in location A that leads to location B. I place a clue in location B that leads to location C.

In a sandbox game, they may go to location A and follow the clue to location B. They find the clue to location C, but decide doing something else is more important. It's not really a railroad because you can leave the tracks at any point.

 

[hawkeyefan]

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.

So I absolutely get what you're saying here, and I understand the preference. But it made me think of something that may be relevant in conjunction with the other thread about Character Backgrounds.

You provided a bunch of character backgrounds in that thread that were all pretty much one to three sentences. They were simple yet evocative. But none of them were a complete picture in the same way an actual person would be. I think you intentionally left plenty of details to learn about in play.

I think this is a really common approach to RPGs, and its one that I know my group uses in plenty of games. We're about to start a sandbox campaign when our current wraps up in a week or two, and PC backgrounds are being kept to a similar simple sketch.

So how do you then establish things in play? Are you limited to what you used as description of your character's background? Are they unable to know anything beyond what you disclose at the very start of play?

If you do establish things during play, are you retconning?

I feel like establishing things that happened in characters' pasts during play is such a common part of play that the idea of a Flashback being problematic is very surprising to me.

Do you only have an issue with it if it somehow creates an advantage? So if a game includes a cattle drive from Texas to Montana and you say that your character used to work on a cattle ranch, is that a problem? But if you said that without the cattle drive coming up, it'd be fine?

Genuinely asking here. It seems to me something that is just accepted in some ways, and then actively resisted in others, but they all seem similar to me. Though certainly not identical.

 

[David Johansen]

I tend to run worlds as if they are in motion. There are events going on, there are people with plans, there are places of note. When I'm winging it I mostly make this stuff up on the fly. So the mafia owned strip club, Hasidic Jewish vampire hunters Shadrach, Meshack, and Abendigo, and the possessed car mob boss tend to show up in my horror games. I steal, re-use, and recycle ideas all the time. My favorite is still introducing Elric of planet Melnibone into a Star Wars campaign after a player complained about my wanting them cross paths with the Battle Star Galactica.

 

[BedrockBrendan]

I'd say the crucial difference is that players can leave the path at any point. I might place a clue in location A that leads to location B. I place a clue in location B that leads to location C.

In a sandbox game, they may go to location A and follow the clue to location B. They find the clue to location C, but decide doing something else is more important. It's not really a railroad because you can leave the tracks at any point.

I also think something to consider is how the living adventure/living world/world in motion concepts make situations too fluid to say there are always plotted points. Often I am dealing with NPCs reacting to players, reacting to NPCs, etc. People are moving around all over the place, people are changing direction all the time and there isn't always a clear "this is the path the players are on now". Just because players get involved in a situation, that doesn't mean they are on a linear path. This was one of the big arguments people used to make for why sandboxes were terrible or were impossible (that you really never had agency, just a series of tracks to choose from). I would very much reject this notion. There are just more dynamics in play that bring it to life than having a bunch of hooks that lead to paths or many-pronged paths because a lot of the adventure content in these games end up being about the relationships between characters and between groups.

 

[Fenris-77]

Well, with respect, any problem sution binary is, by its nature, linear to some extent. I'm being very general here, but it's not really something anyone can argue with.

 

[hawkeyefan]

I'm not talking about one person. I'm talking about 20 years of forum debates.

Oh, it's "The People" again.

 

[BedrockBrendan]

Well, with respect, any problem sution binary is, by its nature, linear to some extent. I'm being very general here, but it's not really something anyone can argue with.

How is a gang war linear? or binary?

 

[Fenris-77]

How is a gang war linear? or binary?

You're going to war, you have to deal with the other gang, which means dealing with specific NPCs and specific groups, no matter what the decision. There's a solid linear core to that no matter what the players decide to do.

 

[BedrockBrendan]

You're going to war, you have to deal with the other gang, which means dealing with specific NPCs and specific groups, no matter what the decision. There's a solid linear core to that no matter what the players decide to do.

That isn't linear and there could be 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 or gangs involved. If it is it is a definition that has almost no connection I can think of to linear pathways in games. All this means is if the players decide to engage a particular situation, they are going to be dealing with the people who are part of that situation. There is an enormous range here as well in terms of the who, the how, the when, etc. And everyone is reacting to one another. This just doesn't strike me as a 'linear core' (though I am honestly not quite sure what you mean by linear core).

 

[TristramEvans]

He's been gone for pages man, let it go.

 

[Fenris-77]

That isn't linear and there could be 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 or gangs involved. If it is it is a definition that has almost no connection I can think of to linear pathways in games. All this means is if the players decide to engage a particular situation, they are going to be dealing with the people who are part of that situation. There is an enormous range here as well in terms of the who, the how, the when, etc. And everyone is reacting to one another. This just doesn't strike me as a 'linear core' (though I am honestly not quite sure what you mean by linear core).

A range of some sort, sure. Maybe large, maybe no, it depends on the hook. But its not infinite. Problem solution is linear to some degree, period. Thers a gang, deal with the gang. Thers no opening a flower shop, or finding yourself at a retreat, or getting nuanced with your watercolor technique. To be very specific, I'm balancing this against the notion that, at least to start, players in a sandbox game can do anything they desire.

 

[TristramEvans]

A range of some sort, sure. Maybe large, maybe no, it depends on the hook. But its not infinite. Problem solution is linear to some degree, period. Thers a gang, deal with the gang. Thers no opening a flower shop, or finding yourself at a retreat, or getting nuanced with your watercolor technique. To be very specific, I'm balancing this against the notion that, at least to start, players in a sandbox game can do anything they desire.

I think the point players can't do anything they desire (within the confines of the realism of the game world and events), is the point the GM is no longer running a sandbox.

 

[TristramEvans]

If you do establish things during play, are you retconning?

"Retconning" means changing established events, not filling in unestablished deatils. Literally "Retroactive continuity".