Why 'Sandbox' is a meaningless phrase

[jayem]

Ok. The non-hostile Razortusk orc tribe is fleeing their ancestral lands and head out towards Port Wander, following the vision of their shaman, to seek refuge there. Their starting position is hex A11 and they will follow the road along 5 different hexes, which will take one month. Once in Port Wander, they will settle in the tent camp outside the city. That is their path.

1) If you don't meet them in A11, the whole thing is moot because it doesn't make sense to track "invisible" things (except maybe the main plot, see example above).
2) If you meet them at A11, they will enter the "game world" and start following their path, i.e. if you are in Port Wander in exactly one month, you can notice the tribe arriving and settle in the tent city.
3) If you interact with them, this interaction will set them on a new path, i.e. convince the shaman that Fort Brave will need some capable mercenaries, which is a better living then the tent city, will alter the path so that they now start at A11, will take the road halfway over to Port Wander and then take the side road down to the fort, where they will start as mercenaries in 3 weeks.
3)
And if these branches are sufficiently: numerous, viable, meaningful then that sounds like it fails to meet the requirements of a linear game/element. It might have been a linear game if the players were ghosts, and if your aunt was a man they'd be your uncle, but as neither of these are the case it seems pointless discussing them.

Regarding meaning. If the fort could get mercenaries anyway and the tent city existed anyway, then the choice wouldn't have any long term consequences. Both paths could effectively converge back to the 'main line' of a linear game.
If the immigrants make their choice regardless of player action, it's an even more simple linear game/element.

Regarding viability. If the GM can't predict which of the branches will be going, it's clearly looking sandboxy. If the choice is ridiculously loaded then a linear game and sandbox game would be indistinguishable at that point (unless the players have decided to test things out, more generally they can only be distinguished if players make the unwanted/unplanned choice).

Regarding numerousness. One meaningful, viable choice does not make a sandbox. Red alert is 2 linear games (on the campaign scale) despite the fact you get to chose if you work for the reds or blues.


Note of course this is not necessarily a problem at the right scale.
I loved the computer game red-baron, you had absolutely no effect on the grand scale, it was just one factory you'd help bomb/save. Just one patrol you'd survived. WW1 happened regardless. But to your character, you could get him promoted (which meant you led some flights), injured, imprisoned, court-martialed, dead in 1914,15,16,17,18.
I also loved the game tie-fighter, this was a bit more explicitly linear on your development, but it had a good story.


1&2) Sounds like they are waiting for you. Which is a bit of a linear and non-sandbox trait. By the time you're in the Port Wander area I'd expect them to be pseudo-tracked (albeit in vague terms that allows a bit of fudging and refinement if you want). And similarly once the player leaves, I'd expect them to be taken into account if they'd make a difference to anything affecting the player.

[Frozen_Feet]

This is just a style thing. I ask the the players play the game and not be disruptive; you give then freedom to do whatever and love when they disrupt things and ruin the game.

Let me guess, when you were a kid, the bigger kids always came along and knocked down your sand castle? 'Cause that would explain SO MUCH.


Seems like a so called sandbox game can be anything, or nothing, kind of like the phrase 'sandbox' is meaningless.

Variability isn't the same as meaningless. Go play in real sandboxes for a while and see how much they differ, based on size, quality of sand, number of toys and whether I'm present to hit you with a stick if you're being naughty. :smalltongue:

[Darth Ultron]

There seem to be some typos in that post. Let me clean it up.

Except I don't have a script?

Maybe more like: I expect a role playing game experience where play an exiting adventure game.

You: Just do anything anything at all and we will call it a game after.


3) If you interact with them, this interaction will set them on a new path, i.e. convince the shaman that Fort Brave will need some capable mercenaries, which is a better living then the tent city, will alter the path so that they now start at A11, will take the road halfway over to Port Wander and then take the side road down to the fort, where they will start as mercenaries in 3 weeks.


I would note, like I have always said, this takes more then just some vague and random interaction. IF the characters wish to effect the world in any sort of meaningful way, they must invest time, effort and resources into it. They can't just do the roll play stumble of ''oh, whatever my character talks to the orc" and then the DM rolls over with the "Wow, after only hearing one word from your character reality alters that the orcs do exactly what you want".

Generally, for anything that matters, it should take at least a half hour of game time...often more like an hour. After all, if your going to have things just alter reality with like one roll of the dice, you might as well just not even do it.

[Max_Killjoy]

@Max:

Do you know the movie "11:14"? Consider this as a very complex plot that tracks the actions of 13 characters and how that will lead up to what happens at 11:14, with multiple crossing paths and intersections on the way there.
Ignore it, be only a spectator or engage in any non-intrusive action ("I go to the McDonalds and eat some burgers", with the McD having nothing to do with any of it) and it will turn out exactly as written.
Start interacting with it in a meaningful way, everything changes.


That seems vaguely solipsistic.

The other people involved are all interacting with each other, and none of the course of events is set in stone until the events actually happen, and the outcome is based on what all those people do, not a set series of events that will play out in a predetermined course unless someone new comes along to disrupt it.

[Florian]

none of the course of events is set in stone until the events actually happen, and the outcome is based on what all those people do

Yes, it is based on what those people do, that is why at 11:14 something happens that is the result of what they do.

[Max_Killjoy]

Yes, it is based on what those people do, that is why at 11:14 something happens that is the result of what they do.

Your description made it sound like it was all predetermined to play out a certain way unless a "special person" (the PCs in a game, for example) got involved.

[Cluedrew]

As I see it, Darth Ultron is just incapable of seeing meaningful contributions by the players. By contributions I mean actively improving the game. He can only see passive maintenance of the status quo (what he calls a good player, I would describe them as passible) or active destructive action to the game (I think we all agree that these are bad players).

Why I'm not sure. He might of had a compilation of passable and bad players, assumed that the passable players where as good as it gets and started planning around that. There by creating a self-fulfilling prophecy in the form of highly linear games with no room for player- contributions. And/or shutting down enough attempts to cut off anything that would break the pattern (that is, not allowing player- contributions out of fear that they will be destructive).

Combine this with a couple of unsuccessful attempts at a sandbox (if he even tried) and you get a personal experience that does explain a lot of what he says. Not the purple duck comment, I still have no idea what that was supposed to mean.

Anyways, the point is if you don't factor in player initiative and positive contributions, sandbox don't make sense as a style of game. So really the issue isn't the game, its that he has bad notions about players. In fact from past conversations more closely related to the topic, he seems to be in denial that a good player, not merely a passable one, could actually exist.

Finally, this is all just a theory. A theory backed by a lot of what I have seen in these threads mind you.

[Segev]

Right, the DM only has to have the environments, NPCs and lots of notes/thoughts that link it all together.....or, to put it another way: Scenes."Scenes" are what happens when all these things come together. Which combination of such things will come together depends strongly on when and how the players approach the persons or environments they're seeking out.

A linear game already establishes these combinations, a priori. "When the players go HERE, they will encounter THEM; if the players seek out THEM, they will encounter THEM HERE." The scenes are planned out ahead of time, with specific plot beats that will be hit in each of them.

A sandbox game doesn't have "plot beats" that are pre-planned. When the players seek out THEM, they will have the opportunity to encounter THEM at various LOCATIONs depending on THEIR schedule and what is going on at the time. When the players go THERE, they will encounter whoever makes sense to be there at the time they chose to go THERE.

"Plot beats" occur based on what the players discover about others' plans or about the locations they visit, and two different groups might learn very different things at the same locations or from the same people based on when and where they encounter them and what else they already know.

In a linear game, that is not the case: when the players go to Scene Twelve, they will have achieved Plot Tokens 1-11 and will get specific plot beats and Plot Token 12 to move onwards.


I grasp the general concept....but no one can give any good RPG ones. Demonstrate that you grasp the concept. Give an example, even if it's not an RPG one. For bonus points, give an RPG example.

I do not believe that you actually grasp it; you're claiming you do, but nothing you've said backs up this claim.

[jayem]

Your description made it sound like it was all predetermined to play out a certain way unless a "special person" (the PCs in a game, for example) got involved.

Obviously there is a difference between the PC's and NPC's in that the NPC's are under the GM's control.

So if there are only NPC's the GM can commit to making the same choices (and with same random influences) on the non-players behalf. And it would be just as much a plausible outcome the second time as the first (although depending on the level of determinism and inherent randomness in the world the actual chances of things happening the same time may very from almost 0 to almost 1, the first run doesn't really exist so regardless things are perfectly fine*).

It's not as weird as going "Hey Max what would you do in situation A, I need to plan it", and then during the game going "But that's not fair you said you'd turn to the Left". Or the NPC's flat out if ignoring the PC's actions.

*provided the NPC's don't act on the 'prediction' in which case things get messy.

But it still depends on the characters choices (again subject to the amount of internal determinism, but at any feasible level things are chaotic enough that we can safely assume theoretical free will)

[Florian]

@jayem:

Beyond that, there're still other considerations to take into account. "Simulation" can have a lot of different detailed meanings, including "genre" and the tools to help you with it, like creating random charts, will also possibly force you to include the "unknown" or "alien" as a way to get results that expressively don't fit the "mundane".

@DU:

While I basically understand you on this, the challenged party being the player and the pure rules level is not really important for this, I do use a lot of systems that emphasis different styles and "weighting" of how you handle a situation. So while I understand you there, the thing is that "I roll Diplomacy" can have a very different meaning. (Example: Diplomacy is nearly stupidly cheap and powerful in 3E, but in L5R 4th or Splittermond, it needs a very long and arduous roleplaying and prep phase to bring it up to the power that you don't have a problem allowing a player to clear a scene with "just one roll")

[Darth Ultron]

.
Demonstrate that you grasp the concept. Give an example, even if it's not an RPG one. For bonus points, give an RPG example.

A chapter is a subset of a novel?

The concept others are talking about is the mini adventure. A normal adventure is big, and you break it up into smaller parts: scenes, encounters, and such.

For the mini encounter, you are taking a a single small thing and making just it, the whole adventure. So in a normal game the adventure The Dragon of Far Hill, has the Encounter: the bandits of Low Rock. In the Other game, the Bandits of Low Rock IS the whole adventure.

So while the normal game has all sorts of interconnected bits as PART of the adventure, the other game is a whole bunch of unconnected mini adventures.

Like in a normal game with an Adventure a single event or encounter or such is just part of the adventure; and after it's done the players will say, ''ok, lets continue on with the adventure''.

The other game, with the mini adventure has everything totally separate from each other. So that after any encounter or such is over, the players are saying ''ok, lets go on another adventure".

So in the normal game, the players take a good month of real time gaming each week to go through an adventure. Then at week five they have that ''wacky so called sandbox time'' where they can do whatever they want until the pick the next adventure to go on (and for good players this will only be a couple minutes, if not seconds.)

The other game has the short mini adventure bit, and then immediately goes back to the so called sandbox where the players can ''do anything'' or endless hours...until they pick another mini adventure to do for a couple minutes, then back to the so called sandbox...



While I basically understand you on this,

Well, I'm not really talking about mechanics. It's more like if the character can alter the world with just a word it's pointless to even have that in the game.

Like the king is ready to go to war, and the player has their character stumble into the throne room and say "Don't do it, give peace a chance!" and the king disbands his army and makes his whole kingdom all about peace.

[jayem]

A chapter is a subset of a novel?

The concept others are talking about is the mini adventure. A normal adventure is big, and you break it up into smaller parts: scenes, encounters, and such.

Arguably, but the reader needs to do a fair bit of charitable interpretation.

If you describe the novel (and indirectly) the chapter as a set of words it would kind of work. Except that would be a bit weird easily, if you ignore the placement "the quick brown", "brown the quick" would be the same 'novel', and if you ignore the content you basically get 1,2,3,4... which is even more pointless. You'd need to have novel made up of words and places (1,"the").
Making the Novel out of an ordered set of Chapters would be a lot easier. But then a chapter is not a subset, a chapter is an element of a novel. You'd need to say the "set that only contains Chapter 1" for a subset, "Chapters 3,7 and 12" would already clearly be a set* so not need such clarification.

*That is the set that contains Chapter 3 and also contains Chapter 7 and also contains chapter 12. Not to be confused with Chapter 3 is a subset, 7 is a subset... (which would clearly have the same issues as Chapter 1)

As it is it is not a good example as it leads a lot of opportunities for underlying confusion to hide. Which you immediately seem to show.

For the rest of it not (directly) when we've been talking about subsets.

[Floret]

A chapter is a subset of a novel?

Alright, that explains some misunderstanding. Element =/= Subset, at least not as used here. Maybe a clearer term would be subcategory? As in, Sandbox and linear adventures are both a subcategory of Normal RPG games.

Sandbox and linear stuff are not however both elements that together form a normal game, as the different chapters of a novel would.


Like the king is ready to go to war, and the player has their character stumble into the throne room and say "Don't do it, give peace a chance!" and the king disbands his army and makes his whole kingdom all about peace.

Not that I would play it this way, but why would that be pointless? If the goal of the game is, at least partially, for the players to have an impact on the setting (as especially some sandbox settings tend towards), making things easy might be many things, but pointless? Why?

I guess you say that because it lacks challenge? The thing is, though, while challenge can make impact feel more meaningful (Which is why I personally would refrain from things being quite so easy), if your goal is not challenge, but impact, it absolutely is not without point.

[Lorsa]

@Lorsa: a sanbox can easily contain linear parts - play any of the named examples I've given earlier in this thread (Exile 3, Star Control 2, Betrayal at Krondor).

"Sanbox" is not a discreet thing which sits on the other end of a spectrum from "linear" - sanbox is a catch-all term for any game designed to support a free-roaming player driven playstyle. The actual structure of a sandbox could be linear with loops (=one linear main quest with optional sidequest taken in any order), multi-linear (many linear plots engaged parallel or in any order), branching (one plot with mutually exclusive choices), branching convergent (as before but some branches combine, leading to the same result), or any combination.

We've had an equivalent discussion before, just in terms of player agency.

I do remember the previous discussion in player agency.

And while you do have a point and open up for a discussion that is interesting (just how much linearity can be part of a sandbox), the problem that faces me right now is that one person can not understand at all how games can be differentiated in terms of "sandbox" or "linear" and bunches together all games into "normal games" or "bad games".

Still, in my mind, what constitutes a "sandbox" in a computer game and what constitutes one in a TRPG does not need to overlap completely. That is, the acceptable amount of linear adventures would be smaller for a TRPG sandbox than a CG one.

I believe someone (whose name I now forgot) came up with the phrase "party-driven quasi-linear", which seems to describe fairly well the type of game you are talking about.



This is just a style thing. I ask the the players play the game and not be disruptive; you give then freedom to do whatever and love when they disrupt things and ruin the game.

You have said, in the past, that you allow your players to try and solve the adventures in any way they like.

Now you accuse them of being disruptive when they do exactly that.

Which way do you want it? You can't have both.



Yes, Good Dm don't run Linear Adventures, of the type where you give the word linear a wacky definition that you like.

But all Good DMs run Linear Adventures of the type using the dictionary definition of the word linear.

What if the players come asking for a wacky definition linear adventure?



Oh, sorry, I thought I had answered that, but this discussion is moving pretty fast and the topics are getting broader.

I´d call that "limited" (or limiting) adventure design.

Take classic Dragonlance and compare two statements:
1) This is how the heroes of the lance are going to stop Takhisis.
2) This is how Takhisis will win the war of the lance unless stopped by the heroes.

Both have something in common, as they have a past (backstory), a starting point (game begins) and the future is already plotted out. But there the similarities end.

(1) is "limited", because it sets the path that the heroes have got to follow along the plot to get the desired outcome. (2) sets the path for all the elements in the game world that are under gm control, with a predetermined future that will constantly change based on how and why the heroes act and interact with it.

For (1), Krynn is just a backdrop giving context. It is not there to be interacted with and that can lead to railroading, when players want to leave the path set for them. For (2), Krynn is the game world and you can do whatever you want.

Alright, I'm glad we have cleared out some confusion. You want to call it "limited adventures" or "limiting adventures". Of those two, I think the second is the best, as "limited" doesn't really help you understand what, exactly, is limited.

So, to the next question. Why is it that you find "limiting" to be a better term than "linear"? I mean, I can certainly go with it and translate between our respective chosen terminology, but you seem to have such a distaste for phrasing it linear that I get curious.

Oh, and before I forget, I noticed a bit of a contradiction in one of your statements.


(2) sets the path for all the elements in the game world that are under gm control, with a predetermined future that will constantly change based on how and why the heroes act and interact with it.

If the future will constantly change based on how and why the heroes act and interact with the game world, it's not really predetermined is it?



A chapter is a subset of a novel?

Is it? I disagree a bit with that.

I think a "propeller plane" is a subset of "airplanes". Or perhaps "chair" is a subset of "furniture". Or "D&D" being a subset of "TRPG systems", and "D&D 3.5" being a subset of "D&D".

For something to be a subset, it has to be able to be described with the word it is a subset of. Sort of like how "novel" is a subset of "literature", so when you say "literature", you automatically include all novels. But when you say "a novel", you don't really include "a chapter" the way "D&D 3.5" is included when you talk about "D&D". I mean, this is why you have to say "this is a chapter of a novel", to specify.

[Mordaedil]

Darth Ultron being unable to comprehend English does explain a few things.

[Darth Ultron]

For the rest of it not (directly) when we've been talking about subsets.

It has been established that I don't have a Collective Codebook, with all the Alternative Definitions to Common Words that everyone else has and uses.


Alright, that explains some misunderstanding. Element =/= Subset, at least not as used here. Maybe a clearer term would be subcategory? As in, Sandbox and linear adventures are both a subcategory of Normal RPG games.

Sandbox and linear stuff are not however both elements that together form a normal game, as the different chapters of a novel would.

All I see is you made a word jumble: This is that or this or that or not.

And like most you jump to the hostile adversarial response to the word ''normal''. You think the word ''normal'' is an insult: you and everyone else are ''special''. So there is no ''normal'' and ''normal only means ''wrong''. I'm using the dictionary definition of normal: what everyone does. Go to any TRPG worldwide (except of course to any game with any poster to this thread, of course) and see what ''kind'' of game you see. You will see a normal game(for a game like D&D): DM makes the setting, players make their characters, DM is in charge, DM makes an adventure, players run through the adventure and so on. For a look, you can even just head over to the play by post section.

Now this is in no way saying the normal way is the only way to play the game, there are other ways to play the game: that are by definition Not Normal. For example having each player be a side table DM and have utter and total control over everything is not a normal way to run a game. To have the DM ask the players for permission before they do anything, is not a normal way to run a game.



Not that I would play it this way, but why would that be pointless? If the goal of the game is, at least partially, for the players to have an impact on the setting (as especially some sandbox settings tend towards), making things easy might be many things, but pointless? Why?

I guess you say that because it lacks challenge? The thing is, though, while challenge can make impact feel more meaningful (Which is why I personally would refrain from things being quite so easy), if your goal is not challenge, but impact, it absolutely is not without point.

Well, challenge is a bit of a different topic. I'm talking about more effort. To do anything meaningful must take effort, or it's pointless. If the characters are just altering reality on a whim, why even bother doing that activity?



Which way do you want it? You can't have both.

I'm fine with the players trying anything, but crying and ruining away is not trying something: it is giving up. And I don't go for that. Even more so when it is the sneaky plan of the players all along.





What if the players come asking for a wacky definition linear adventure?

I tell them no and that they should go find another DM.


Darth Ultron being unable to comprehend English does explain a few things.

It IS a hard language. And if people can stick to dictionary definitions it would be a big help. Word X means 'this definition' per say Dictionary.com. Yet people her say word X means 'whatever they want it to mean at the moment so they can be right'.

[Cluedrew]

It has been established that I don't have a Collective Codebook, with all the Alternative Definitions to Common Words that everyone else has and uses.You should consider picking up a copy. Even if you don't agree with everything in it (I know I don't) the so called "alternative definitions" are the ones everyone uses. That is to say, the non-alternative definitions, the main ones.

[Darth Ultron]

You should consider picking up a copy. Even if you don't agree with everything in it (I know I don't) the so called "alternative definitions" are the ones everyone uses. That is to say, the non-alternative definitions, the main ones.

I just wish I knew where it was. I've tried Goggle and can't find it. It has to be very well known and popular, after all everyone has not only read it, but 100% unthinkingly follow whatever it says.

But I can't find it. Oh, well, guess I will just be my own free thinking non conforming self that can make up my own mind.

[Pleh]

It has been established that I don't have a Collective Codebook, with all the Alternative Definitions to Common Words that everyone else has and uses.


You should consider picking up a copy. Even if you don't agree with everything in it (I know I don't) the so called "alternative definitions" are the ones everyone uses. That is to say, the non-alternative definitions, the main ones.

Additionally, this is exactly the problem here. DU rejects ideas without understanding them and tries to propose we all change to more reflect his own ideas when he can't represent the opposing side well enough to be in any way convincing.

All the while, the rest of us, very justifiably, doubt his claims until he can at least demonstrate an understanding of both sides of the argument (which he has rather confessed to being unable to do because the opposing arguments make no sense to him).

DU, if you ever want to win this argument, you have to buy, read, and comprehend a copy of the Collective Codebook (note that you don't have to wind up agreeing with anything inside the book). Anything less demostrates a lack of good faith in the argument and will be, correctly, dismissed out of hand.

[Cluedrew]

But I can't find it. Oh, well, guess I will just be my own free thinking non conforming self that can make up my own mind.Its here, in this thread, when people are trying to explain what words means, you are looking at it.

Also what Pleh said, you can't really disagree with a thing unless you first understand it. Without that, you may be "non conforming" but you aren't free thinking. Your thoughts and opinions as dependant on others as a blind conformist.

On a different note: I noticed you never showed up in the rule-books thread. Why not? You said you would if I made it.

[Koo Rehtorb]

https://pics.me.me/just-because-youre-unique-doesnt-mean-youre-useful-19585701.png

[Segev]

A chapter is a subset of a novel?

As others have indicated, this is not what we're meaning when we say that "sandbox" and "linear adventure" are subsets of "normal games."

This does explain a fair bit of your own misunderstanding, however. A chapter is a segment of a novel. It is not a subset. It is a portion of one. A chapter is incomplete on its own, almost by definition.

A subset is not inherently incomplete. It is a category of things which is completely described, but is also part of a larger category.

"Parrots" and "Sparrows" are both subsets of "birds." If I discuss "sparrows," we can have a complete conversation about them, and the concept of the "sparrow" is complete on its own. I can rightfully state that parrots are not sparrows.

However, if I am discussing birds, I cannot (correctly and truthfully) say that parrots are not birds, nor that sparrows are not birds.

Sparrows and parrots have certain things in common due to both being birds. If Jedi Jarvis were to show up and start a thread talking about how "sparrow" is a meaningless term, and went on to say that nobody can define what a "sparrow" is, I could come into the conversation and start describing what distinguishes sparrows from other birds.

Meanwhile, Jedi Jarvis keeps talking about how individual aspects of sparrows are things that parrots also have, and that parrots are birds. And every time I discuss sparrows' distinguishing characteristics, Jedi Jarvis rejects this, and insists that since sparrows have feathers and beaks, they're just normal birds, and I'm making things up about how if it can magically make certain tones it's somehow superior to parrots, when I've said no such thing.

Sparrows and parrots are subsets of the category "bird." They are meaningful terms in their own right, but if one focuses on the elements in common with all birds, one can insist that sparrows are "just birds." This inherently denies the distinction between parrots and sparrows. Worse, if Jedi Jarvis then tries to say that, since sparrows are birds, and he can describe a bird with the properties of a parrot, all sparrows are parrots, and the only reason that anybody pretends otherwise is because they hate parrots and want to pretend to be better ornithologists than he is, when he is the best ornithologist.


This is what arguing with you about "Sandbox," "Linear," and "Normal" games is like, Darth Ultron.


Sandbox games are a subset of normal games, just as sparrows are a subset of birds. Linear games are a subset of normal games, just as parrots are a subset of birds. You don't take multiple sparrows to make up "a bird." You don't dissect sparrows to discover that they're all really parrots and that thus all birds are parrots no matter how you dress them up.

[Florian]

@Lorsa:

D&D is nor really important outside of the USA, often not even making any of the top 5 lists. In Germany, the 800pt. gorilla in the room is DSA, which dominated and shaped the local RPG scene on a level that D&D didn't manage in the USA. If you know the Witchfire trilogy, that'd count as an example for "light railroading for beginners" when compared to how DSA works.

So, a good number of players around here suffer from a kind of "DSA PTSD", play systems like Pathfinder for the player empowerment that's part of the rules and will suffer extreme stress when confronted with anything they deem to be "railroading", even if it´s actually not.

The local scene had to wade thru a decade of discussions what makes up "real railroading", "feeling railroaded", "natural and causal linearity" and "linear design". That was not particularly funny and reached the point when even having a regular 24h day/night cycle in the game and things conforming to that was suspected as a means to force the players on the railroad (ex: "What? The shop is closed at night? It´s past midnight? No, no, you just don't want me to buy the medicine, you want to railroad me! *slams fist on table*")

That's basically why we split the terms up into "linear causality" and "linear design", because they're really different things, even when often looking alike. Contextually important, because in discussions like this, empty phrase like "sandboxed contain no linear elements!" are thrown around, often without being able to make the destination what is actually meant.

To answer your question: Think empty space and a billiard ball. You throw it, it will travel on its trajectory forever (because theoretical no friction and such) or until it hits something (transferring kinetic mass and such). Time and space make this a linear affair, so you can track and possibly predict when the ball will be where, at what speed and what the next point in space/time should be, so on.

Any form of non-intrusive interaction doesn't matter (Don´t notice the ball, just watch the ball, thinking about the ball, imagining the ball with a smiley face, trying to hit the ball and missing), because it doesn't alter the trajectory in any way (Not even missing it. No air, no currents to be disturbed that could alter the vector).

That leaves intrusive interaction as the only forms that are "meaningful" when dealing with the ball. Build a wall in the path and see how it holds up against the kinetic mass. It´s either stopped or breaks thru, traveling on, albeit as reduced speed, and so on. Use a U-pipe to not stop it, but divert it - original goal accomplished, but then you have to look at where the ball travels next, so on.

[Segev]

If you know the Witchfire trilogy, that'd count as an example for "light railroading for beginners" when compared to how DSA works.

...How do you get MORE railroading than the Witchfire trilogy? I mean, I suppose I can think of a few ways, but they all involve handing the players a script and directing them like they're actors in a play. It stops being an RPG and becomes, well, acting.

To make this clear, the Witchfire Trilogy has literally no meaningful choices the player characters can make. The PCs have absolutely no impact on how the game goes. The most meaningful choice they can make has as its only impact whether the BBEG likes them enough to invite them to have ring-side seats while the evil plan unfolds, or they have to watch from the cheap seats.

No matter what they do, the NPCs entirely drive the plot. The plot unfolds exactly the same way, no matter their choices. Their successes and failures in exploring dungeons, achieving quest objectives, or even fighting monsters are utterly meaningless, because the only question is whether they'll do well enough to be present at the next cut scene, or they'll fail and the module continues where they don't get to watch it. Their presence or absence doesn't influence the cut scenes, nor their outcomes, in any way.

The Witchfire Blade is the macguffin of most of the module, and there's an evil lich and an evil sorceress who're both out to get it. The evil sorceress is the mary sue villain protagonist of the story. There is a point in the module where the PCs, if they did well enough, have the blade and have the lich and the sorceress both demanding they give it to them. The party must choose - refusing to give it over just gets them killed and then the lich and sorceress fight over it. If the party gives it to the sorceress, she likes them enough to basically invite them to those ring-side seats as her undead army overruns the main city. If the party gives it to the lich, the sorceress kills the lich and takes it from him in the space of a few sentences of boxed text, and hates the PCs so doesn't invite them to her take-over-the-city party, and they have to fight their way through more stuff to get the cheap seats to watch it happen anyway.

[PhoenixPhyre]

Do these analogies make sense?

Open Iterative Game (avoiding the "sandbox" term here)
The state of the world minus the PCs actions has a trajectory that includes all the NPC/NPC interactions. They're averaged in already, so to speak. That's purely for ease of DMing--simulating any reasonable fraction in real-time is prohibitive. How the trajectory is generated varies--some will choose what "makes sense", others will run internal simulations, other will make random tables, or whatever.

An important point is that this trajectory is continuous, but not smooth. It's often segmented--I know it reasonably well for the next month (in game), less so for the next year, and only broad strokes after that. Once we hit the end of a well-known segment, we can recalculate/re-assess the trajectory for the next segment. Different games may have widely-varying segment lengths. In a physical sense, this is the initial state of the world, S[0].

The PCs periodically perturb this trajectory. That means that in the time between actions (which may be small or large) the world's state deviates from its prior path. The state is now S[1]--how things change depends on the perturbation and the DM's method of figuring the response. Most of the time, those perturbations are limited in scope--things rarely snowball. Rarely is not never--some actions have huge ramifications that make S[N] almost unrecognizable in comparison to S[0].

But each new state S is "computed" from state S[i-1], the actions of the PCs, and the rules of the setting (which may or may not include the rules of the game).

Pre-computed Game (I'm avoiding "linear" here on purpose)
This style doesn't bother re-computing the state of the world after perturbation by the PCs--in the extreme case all states S[i] are pre-generated and the path formed is smooth. The PCs actions are already "baked into the cake" so to speak. This requires that the PCs only have a small set of possible actions (or requires that the response of the world to their actions is at least partially unconnected to those actions).

A branching version of this has a sequence of possible states for each time interval--S[1] in {S1[1], S2[1], ...,SN[1]}--with pre-determined transition points. Generally, although you can visit many of the branches, you can't really affect the overall direction you're going because you can't make your own branch. All the branches merge back down for the final scene (or restricted set of scenes).

Both of these styles are extremes--many games have portions that are open and iterative and others that are pre-computed. Neither is [I]inherently good, neither is inherently bad. But they're different and suited for different purposes.

[Max_Killjoy]

To answer your question: Think empty space and a billiard ball. You throw it, it will travel on its trajectory forever (because theoretical no friction and such) or until it hits something (transferring kinetic mass and such). Time and space make this a linear affair, so you can track and possibly predict when the ball will be where, at what speed and what the next point in space/time should be, so on.

Any form of non-intrusive interaction doesn't matter (Don´t notice the ball, just watch the ball, thinking about the ball, imagining the ball with a smiley face, trying to hit the ball and missing), because it doesn't alter the trajectory in any way (Not even missing it. No air, no currents to be disturbed that could alter the vector).

That leaves intrusive interaction as the only forms that are "meaningful" when dealing with the ball. Build a wall in the path and see how it holds up against the kinetic mass. It´s either stopped or breaks thru, traveling on, albeit as reduced speed, and so on. Use a U-pipe to not stop it, but divert it - original goal accomplished, but then you have to look at where the ball travels next, so on.


The "spherical chicken (https://scepticalprophet.wordpress.com/2012/11/21/spherical-chickens-in-a-vacuum/) or cow (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spherical_cow) in a vacuum" doesn't actually exist.

More importantly, in the case of your metaphor, there exists no vacuum devoid of other balls. There is always "air" and "gravity", and myriad "other balls" moving around. Any particular ball moving through the space doesn't maintain a constant predictable velocity (speed and direction) for the same reason that the molecules making up the air in a room don't maintain constant velocity until you move your hand or take a breath. All the air molecules are interacting with each other, and with the objects in the room, and the motes of dust floating around. In your metaphor, all the balls keep changing direction because they're running into each other, and other stuff, inside the conceptual space.

It's a room full of "intrusive interactions" whether the PCs are there or not.

(Reminds me of what happened when postmodernists and "new agers" found quantum physics, and the strange term-of-art usage of "observed" lead them to mistakenly conclude that physics supported their wackadoodle belief that perception creates reality. Only in this case, it's "Nothing changes unless the players interact with it".)

[PhoenixPhyre]

Only in this case, it's "Nothing changes unless the players interact with it".)

It's not that nothing changes, its that the changes are already calculated in by the designer for that time segment. If my players are all on the continent of Noefra at level 1, their effects on the high elven kingdom of Soefra are de minimus (at that point). So I can predict/prescribe what will happen there for a decently long segment (maybe a month or two, maybe a season, maybe a year, maybe a decade). They're moving in an average field, so to speak.

The region right around the PCs is much less predictable unless the PCs have a fixed path that they can't deviate from. Those need much more frequent recalculation, possibly on the minute-by-minute basis if they're directly interacting with the PCs.

[Florian]

...How do you get MORE railroading than the Witchfire trilogy? I mean, I suppose I can think of a few ways, but they all involve handing the players a script and directing them like they're actors in a play. It stops being an RPG and becomes, well, acting.

Aventurien is an extremely detailed game world with a meta-plot that is now ongoing for 30 years. The book output and detail level makes D&D 3E and 3.5E combined look pretty small and the entire run of the Forgotten Realms amateurish and lacking in details. We tend to joke that each and every pebble in the game world has been detailed, you just have to do some serious book diving to find it.

So even the smallest adventure will use the same detail level and touch upon the meta-plot somehow.

Now imagine how a whole campaign looks like. That puts Paizo APs to shame, but as GM, you should better rope in your players in helping you carry and finance all the necessary stuff, like the whole 30 or so books you need to run the "year of dragon fire" campaign.

So, as the whole thing has to happen and play out as the script demands, else you'll get continuity breaks (and all books build upon each other) and as a method to don't force the GM to railroad, they came up with the conclusion that the player characters should never, ever, under no circumstances come near the main plot line, so they can´t "mess it up" (*). Now having a main quest and a lot of side quests that are vaguely connected is a lot of fun - imagine that without the main quests, side quests only.... hurray!

(*) A curious side note: There's a famous campaign from the early 80s that had the characters find an artifact sword and later have an archmage, Nahema, show up and take the sword away. Wizards in DSA can´t cast in armor, under no circumstances. The designers back then feared that the players maybe don't want to hand the sword over or even attack, so they outfitted Nahema with a chainmail. My first and most literal instance of "plot armor".


doesn't actually exist.

I am god. It does. Spherical Chicken > See Chicken entry, only perfectly spherical. Absolute Vacuum > See Dark Tapestry entry. ;)

More seriously, this is what you have gm tools for. For example, Stars Without Number and Mongoose Traveler have very good and easy to use "polity" rules to generate results how nations/organizations behave and interact, so on. Take the major powers in a region, set a time frame (I generally use one month) and generate the rolls for how they will interact for the next year. Simple matter.

[Max_Killjoy]

D&D is nor really important outside of the USA, often not even making any of the top 5 lists. In Germany, the 800pt. gorilla in the room is DSA, which dominated and shaped the local RPG scene on a level that D&D didn't manage in the USA. If you know the Witchfire trilogy, that'd count as an example for "light railroading for beginners" when compared to how DSA works.

So, a good number of players around here suffer from a kind of "DSA PTSD", play systems like Pathfinder for the player empowerment that's part of the rules and will suffer extreme stress when confronted with anything they deem to be "railroading", even if it´s actually not.

The local scene had to wade thru a decade of discussions what makes up "real railroading", "feeling railroaded", "natural and causal linearity" and "linear design". That was not particularly funny and reached the point when even having a regular 24h day/night cycle in the game and things conforming to that was suspected as a means to force the players on the railroad (ex: "What? The shop is closed at night? It´s past midnight? No, no, you just don't want me to buy the medicine, you want to railroad me! *slams fist on table*")


I think it was said at one point that DU's first language is not English. Does anyone know where DU is actually from?

Could DU's entirely skewed, one-size-fits-none view of gaming come down to being from a place where DSA's hamfisted railroading (as described in your post) was the norm? Could his belief about what railroading means (that anything the GM does other than sit there and say "yes" is "railroading") somehow come from the "DSA PTSD" reaction of calling simple setting details like shops being closed at 3am "railroading"?

[Scripten]

I think it was said at one point that DU's first language is not English. Does anyone know where DU is actually from?

Could DU's entirely skewed, one-size-fits-none view of gaming come down to being from a place where DSA's hamfisted railroading (as described in your post) was the norm? Could his belief about what railroading means (that anything the GM does other than sit there and say "yes" is "railroading") somehow come from the "DSA PTSD" reaction of calling simple setting details like shops being closed at 3am "railroading"?

DU has indicated that he is likely in the United States by way of reference to the (American) Civil War and the statues he claims to put up in front of players to "send them crying".

[Max_Killjoy]

DU has indicated that he is likely in the United States by way of reference to the (American) Civil War and the statues he claims to put up in front of players to "send them crying".


Yeah, there is that -- guess that's one semi-coherent explanation out the window.

On the other hand, he could just be making half that crap up.

[Floret]

And like most you jump to the hostile adversarial response to the word ''normal''. You think the word ''normal'' is an insult: you and everyone else are ''special''. So there is no ''normal'' and ''normal only means ''wrong''. I'm using the dictionary definition of normal: what everyone does. Go to any TRPG worldwide (except of course to any game with any poster to this thread, of course) and see what ''kind'' of game you see. You will see a normal game(for a game like D&D): DM makes the setting, players make their characters, DM is in charge, DM makes an adventure, players run through the adventure and so on. For a look, you can even just head over to the play by post section.

Now this is in no way saying the normal way is the only way to play the game, there are other ways to play the game: that are by definition Not Normal. For example having each player be a side table DM and have utter and total control over everything is not a normal way to run a game. To have the DM ask the players for permission before they do anything, is not a normal way to run a game.

On the topic of Subset Segev has said about what I'd have said to clarify. (Though I'd have used Music Genres as an example (Subsets of music) and mentioned the possibility of blending subsets, e.g. Bohemian Rhapsody. I digress.)

I will point out that I have nothing against normalcy, and would agree with you that what you describe is a rather average game. And the two things you describe would be unusual playstiles indeed.

But what you talk about in your definition of abnormal games is interesting, and I'd like to have a definition on some terms: Namely, where do you draw the line after which players become "side table GMs"?

Maybe to illustrate, four examples (All of games I have played):

1. Reflections: A game of dueling Samurai. A GM-less storytelling game for two players - Both are on equal footing, taking turns describing the world, and the actions of their character, though notably "no takebacks" and "no controlling the other PC" apply as restrictions.

2. Shadowrun: Anarchy in its base form. There is a GM, and they do write an adventure (A run), establish core facts, and the goal of the session. But, after their introduction, they give over narrative control to the next player, who describes his character's reactions, but can also contribute world elements - up to and defining surroundings, and the strength of the opposition the PCs face.

3. FATE. The game has a GM, who makes up story, and controls the world. However, at the cost of the metacurrency of Fatepoints, the players can establish facts, even sometimes external to their character, with the DM (and other players) keeping veto rights. Notably, adjucation of if certain aspects apply is also not purely GM fiat, but group consensus with the GM as deciding vote.

4. My own groups. I, as the GM, prep a scenario, lead the game, call for rulings and rolls, describe the world, etc.; run the scenario, basically. However, my players are the creative sort, and tend to have ideas that would introduce new elements - Do the neighbours of the conspiracy hideout have a ladder; and are they willing to lend it? One could argue it was the player's act of going over and asking that put the ladder there, since I hadn't spared a thought before. Is there an Irish pub in Hong Kong? Probably, but since I had not planned it, in some ways it was the player who created the fact that there was one by saying he'd go there. The fact that I could have vetoed it, and was the one to describe the pub does not change the fact the location was introduced to the game through player action.

Now, which of these have side-table GMs? All of them? Just the first? The first two, or three?


Well, challenge is a bit of a different topic. I'm talking about more effort. To do anything meaningful must take effort, or it's pointless. If the characters are just altering reality on a whim, why even bother doing that activity?

You gave the answer yourself: To alter the world. One can find meaning in that. I suppose you might as well ask why an author writes a story if they can write whatever they want without complication.

And I disagree that anything meaningful must take effort. It is a nice notion for tales about the importance of the hardships the characters face... Only that is not how reality works. Unless you use a different definition of "meaningful" than I do.


But I can't find it. Oh, well, guess I will just be my own free thinking non conforming self that can make up my own mind.

Wait, a free thinking nonconformist? The person who just told me proudly of running normal games, the way the majority does, and calls into question examination of how games work, rather taking the way of the majority at a face value to be followed?

Nah, that Darth Ultron fellow sound like an utter conformist to me...


D&D is nor really important outside of the USA, often not even making any of the top 5 lists. In Germany, the 800pt. gorilla in the room is DSA, which dominated and shaped the local RPG scene on a level that D&D didn't manage in the USA. If you know the Witchfire trilogy, that'd count as an example for "light railroading for beginners" when compared to how DSA works.

So, a good number of players around here suffer from a kind of "DSA PTSD", play systems like Pathfinder for the player empowerment that's part of the rules and will suffer extreme stress when confronted with anything they deem to be "railroading", even if it´s actually not.

The local scene had to wade thru a decade of discussions what makes up "real railroading", "feeling railroaded", "natural and causal linearity" and "linear design". That was not particularly funny and reached the point when even having a regular 24h day/night cycle in the game and things conforming to that was suspected as a means to force the players on the railroad (ex: "What? The shop is closed at night? It´s past midnight? No, no, you just don't want me to buy the medicine, you want to railroad me! *slams fist on table*")

While I do agree the average adventure in DSA is linear to say the least - and adventures that change stuff in the setting very much so - I will disagree on quite how much of a problem you see. Abd disagree they are any worse, on average, than a typical adventure path. (Now, there are... examples. But let's not talk about die Attentäter. Or Tal des Grauens. They are Worst of DSA for a reason... But yes, Segev, it is possible to be worse than that. Think "actual loss of attribute points for deviating from *the path* because magic, and "you have to assassinate the emperor. No, no poison. No hiding with crossbows. A knife in the back. Your magic curse compels you." ...you don't even get to kill the emperor afterwards, because of a phrasing issue. ...I wish i was making that up...)

Also, from years in German RPG forums and game stores... I am rather curious where you see Dark Eye PTSD and an utter aversion to railroading? Was this more than 10 years ago? Cause all I have come across in my time was... Pretty much the usual definitions of railroading (and pointing it out somewhat peecisely in official Dark Eye stuff). You may just have run into weirdos...

(Also lemme tell you from my experiences of Larping in Aventuria, they didn't describe **** they did. *Nothin*! Unplayable mess if you don't headcanon wildly... :smallannoyed: )

[jayem]

Arguably, but the reader needs to do a fair bit of charitable interpretation.

As it is it is not a good example as it leads a lot of opportunities for underlying confusion to hide. Which you immediately seem to show.

For the rest of it not (directly) when we've been talking about subsets.



It has been established that I don't have a Collective Codebook, with all the Alternative Definitions to Common Words that everyone else has and uses.
...
Word X means 'this definition' per say Dictionary.com



Sets are really useful (Groups, Rings and Fields are properly cool)

Here is the definition of subset on Dictionary.com
1. a set that is a part of a larger set.
2. Mathematics. a set consisting of elements of a given set that can be the same as the given set or smaller.

You can see how the chapter/novel is stretching it,
While e.g. chapters in the novel, and introductory chapters as the subset works a lot more simply.

When subsets have been mentioned each time it has not been a segment of a game adding together making a game.
In the times that I've been concerned about, some times element is in theory a full intact game, and the set contains many (hypothetical) games. There has also been discussion of subsets of rules, toys and other things...




I said it wasn't directly related to what you described. Alas I have to do work in addition to writing here, and the quest for understanding had to go on hold while I tried to sort some graphs out.

In practice, I know I've focused on games that differ on a small decision (in a segment) because even if I focused on a segment with 10 binary choices. I'd need 1024 sets (each containing one game playthrough) to describe the possible linear games (which would be a set of sets), and while there would only be one set on sandbox games this would contain 1024 elements. This would be tedious to list, and read

Worse arguably, between the interplay of player decision and gm decision, for the purely linear game you end up with 1024 playthroughs and for the purely sandbox version I can't even begin to work it out, let alone for games that combine both types.

So arguably the elements of the sets we were discussing were in fact segments of larger games or mini-adventures, but they weren't all different segments of the same larger playthough (or mini-adventures from different points of the same TimeLine). And that definitely wasn't the key point

[Darth Ultron]

On a different note: I noticed you never showed up in the rule-books thread. Why not? You said you would if I made it.

I tried :( But I just had nothing to add to the conversation.




Sandbox games are a subset of normal games and Linear games are a subset of normal games

I'm not sure what the point of this is though. Ok what everyone calls ''sandbox'' and ''linear'' games are different types of games. OK? So, moving on.....


Namely, where do you draw the line after which players become "side table GMs"?Maybe to illustrate, four examples (All of games I have played):

1. Reflections: A game of dueling Samurai. A GM-less storytelling game for two players - Both are on equal footing, taking turns describing the world, and the actions of their character, though notably "no takebacks" and "no controlling the other PC" apply as restrictions.

Well, in a Storytelling game with no GM, you can't have a side table GM.



2. Shadowrun: Anarchy in its base form. There is a GM, and they do write an adventure (A run), establish core facts, and the goal of the session. But, after their introduction, they give over narrative control to the next player, who describes his character's reactions, but can also contribute world elements - up to and defining surroundings, and the strength of the opposition the PCs face.

Well, again, if it's part of the game play...then there is no side table anything.



3. FATE. The game has a GM, who makes up story, and controls the world. However, at the cost of the metacurrency of Fatepoints, the players can establish facts, even sometimes external to their character, with the DM (and other players) keeping veto rights. Notably, adjucation of if certain aspects apply is also not purely GM fiat, but group consensus with the GM as deciding vote.

Yet, again, you are talking about a game system and it's rules..so no side table anything again.



4. My own groups. I, as the GM, prep a scenario, lead the game, call for rulings and rolls, describe the world, etc.; run the scenario, basically. However, my players are the creative sort, and tend to have ideas that would introduce new elements - Do the neighbours of the conspiracy hideout have a ladder; and are they willing to lend it? One could argue it was the player's act of going over and asking that put the ladder there, since I hadn't spared a thought before. Is there an Irish pub in Hong Kong? Probably, but since I had not planned it, in some ways it was the player who created the fact that there was one by saying he'd go there. The fact that I could have vetoed it, and was the one to describe the pub does not change the fact the location was introduced to the game through player action.

If you are talking here about the players asking the DM to add something to the game, then no, this is no side table anything.

There are two big types of RPGs: The ones like D&D(with a Gm, players, and such) and The Others. There are a bunch of games made specifically to ''not be like D&D''. Side Table Dming/GMing can only happen in a D&D like game.

[Quertus]

Anyways, the point is if you don't factor in player initiative and positive contributions, sandbox don't make sense as a style of game.

This is so true. In fact, I think that a variant of this is why one of my games... didn't work out as well as I'd hoped. There's more "flavors", more vectors of player contribution than I currently perceive, I think.


That's basically why we split the terms up into "linear causality" and "linear design", because they're really different things, even when often looking alike. Contextually important, because in discussions like this, empty phrase like "sandboxed contain no linear elements!" are thrown around, often without being able to make the destination what is actually meant.

To answer your question: Think empty space and a billiard ball. You throw it, it will travel on its trajectory forever (because theoretical no friction and such) or until it hits something (transferring kinetic mass and such). Time and space make this a linear affair, so you can track and possibly predict when the ball will be where, at what speed and what the next point in space/time should be, so on.

Any form of non-intrusive interaction doesn't matter (Don´t notice the ball, just watch the ball, thinking about the ball, imagining the ball with a smiley face, trying to hit the ball and missing), because it doesn't alter the trajectory in any way (Not even missing it. No air, no currents to be disturbed that could alter the vector).

That leaves intrusive interaction as the only forms that are "meaningful" when dealing with the ball. Build a wall in the path and see how it holds up against the kinetic mass. It´s either stopped or breaks thru, traveling on, albeit as reduced speed, and so on. Use a U-pipe to not stop it, but divert it - original goal accomplished, but then you have to look at where the ball travels next, so on.

Predictable physics is, IMO, good for both linear and sandbox game play. So, personally, I already make a huge distinction between these two things, and expect the predictability of the physics engine to be considered separately from whether the plot requires you to hit the ball through the professor's window vs whether the plot will survive contact with more diverse input (such as missing the ball).

Sandboxes contain no elements which must follow a Linear preset path lest the game/module/plot break. (But every element in the sandbox may very well follow completely predictable paths unless/until influenced by the PCs.)

[Floret]

If you are talking here about the players asking the DM to add something to the game, then no, this is no side table anything.

There are two big types of RPGs: The ones like D&D(with a Gm, players, and such) and The Others. There are a bunch of games made specifically to ''not be like D&D''. Side Table Dming/GMing can only happen in a D&D like game.

Alright. So if it is hardcoded in the games structure, players taking over part of the planning/worldbuilding/worldcontrol is an acceptable thing, yes? (You don't have to like or play these games, ofc).

What about if, in a DnD-like, the players and GM agreed to play it in a way where the GM granted the players such power? That would still not be side-table GMing, right? Because there is an agreement that this can happen, despite the game played being a DnD-like?

And one other question: What, for you, qualifies a game as a DnD-like? Because I suspect you do not mean retroclones or Pathfinder, but use the term in a way that encompasses more.

Because three of the four games I described above have a GM. Despite that, I get the feeling the games from my examples wouldn't count as DnD-likes in the way you use the term?

[Florian]

And one other question: What, for you, qualifies a game as a DnD-like? Because I suspect you do not mean retroclones or Pathfinder, but use the term in a way that encompasses more.

Classic narrative and creative control distribution, divide between player and gm, rule zero.

[Darth Ultron]

What about if, in a DnD-like, the players and GM agreed to play it in a way where the GM granted the players such power? That would still not be side-table GMing, right? Because there is an agreement that this can happen, despite the game played being a DnD-like?

And one other question: What, for you, qualifies a game as a DnD-like? Because I suspect you do not mean retroclones or Pathfinder, but use the term in a way that encompasses more.

Because three of the four games I described above have a GM. Despite that, I get the feeling the games from my examples wouldn't count as DnD-likes in the way you use the term?

If everyone in the group agrees to ''whatever'', then it's fine as that is what the group wants. And this would not be side table anything.

Well, Pathfinder, all editions of D&D, and (most) D&D retro clones are all D&D like, as are most of the D20 based games. I can add the ye old D6 Star Wars. I'm not an expert on all the many RPGs, so I'm not 100% sure what to add to the list. But I'm talking about games where: the DM is all powerful (in the game) and the players only have characters can can (maybe) make suggestions.

And it's not just a game has a GM, as after all terms change from game to game....and in some games GM means ''meaningless clown to do the almighty players bidding''.

So in a game where(everyone agrees or at least lies and says they agree): The DM is all powerful and controls everything in the game without question, and the players only control a single character, and the game has an adventure that the group will run through together, side table DMing is :

Player 1: "What is the DC to do my action?"
DM: "It is 20"
Player 2(side table DM) "NO it is not, it is DC 10! This I Command!"
DM:"What?"
Player 1 *rolls* "I got a 13!"
Player 2(side table DM) "You do your action!"

OR

DM-"Up ahead you see five goblins and two orcs standing by the back door."
Player 2(side table DM)- "NO, we see five goblins and two Hobgoblins, This I Command!"
DM: "What? No..."
Player 2(side table DM) -"I know more about the game then you and I Demand you do as I say!"

[Florian]

@DU:

Before I forget to answer your previous question: When gm´íng, what it takes to make "meaningful" alterations to the game world is very dependent on system used, style and pacing.

For example, L5R is really about the power of rank and station in the social caste. A character can easily order around anyone below his rank and has a brutally hard time affecting anything of equal or higher rank. To use your example, you can simply order "pace!" to anyone that is forced to obey your commands, but trying it directly on your superiors simply gets you punished/killed, even when succeeding at a spell or diplomacy roll. It will take a lot of work to build up clout, connections and standing to even try it.

Other systems, different way of handling it. Using Pathfinder, I've no problem to allow a simple Diplomacy or Charm Person for stuff I deem irrelevant. Same as simply going from hex to hex and declaring to explore it. For stuff I deem relevant, I use the rules from Ultimate Intrigue (Influence) and Ultimate Wilderness (Exploration and Survival) and I often use a modified version of the Ultimate Campaign Downtime rules when handling larger organizations or matters that are bigger than just a bunch of adventurers. That will change the game and how those situations play out.

[Cluedrew]

I tried :( But I just had nothing to add to the conversation.Fair enough. I could only keep it going a few pages myself.

[JNAProductions]

I was honestly more curious to see if he'd show up in the "Would You Play In Your Own Game?" thread.

[Xuc Xac]

To sum up:


'Sandbox' is a meaningless phrase when applied to TRPG. Really, the term is pointless.

Followed by a thousand posts of
Everyone else: "It's not meaningless. 'Sandbox' and 'linear' are two different styles of game."
DU: "Nuh-uh!"
EE: "How are you not getting this?"
DU: "lalalala! I can't hear you!"

And suddenly...


I'm not sure what the point of this is though. Ok what everyone calls ''sandbox'' and ''linear'' games are different types of games. OK? So, moving on.....


They are different types of games. We have two terms for those different types so we can distinguish between them because they function differently and people have preferences. The terms serve a useful purpose and are therefore not pointless.

We're done! Go, everyone! Be free!

[Kitten Champion]

We're done! Go, everyone! Be free!

What, already? I was half-way through writing up my 4-act didactic hand-puppet play on sandbox games.

Now who will I patronize?

[Satinavian]

Aventurien is an extremely detailed game world with a meta-plot that is now ongoing for 30 years. The book output and detail level makes D&D 3E and 3.5E combined look pretty small and the entire run of the Forgotten Realms amateurish and lacking in details. We tend to joke that each and every pebble in the game world has been detailed, you just have to do some serious book diving to find it.

So even the smallest adventure will use the same detail level and touch upon the meta-plot somehow.

Now imagine how a whole campaign looks like. That puts Paizo APs to shame, but as GM, you should better rope in your players in helping you carry and finance all the necessary stuff, like the whole 30 or so books you need to run the "year of dragon fire" campaign.

So, as the whole thing has to happen and play out as the script demands, else you'll get continuity breaks (and all books build upon each other) and as a method to don't force the GM to railroad, they came up with the conclusion that the player characters should never, ever, under no circumstances come near the main plot line, so they can´t "mess it up" (*). Now having a main quest and a lot of side quests that are vaguely connected is a lot of fun - imagine that without the main quests, side quests only.... hurray!

(*) A curious side note: There's a famous campaign from the early 80s that had the characters find an artifact sword and later have an archmage, Nahema, show up and take the sword away. Wizards in DSA can´t cast in armor, under no circumstances. The designers back then feared that the players maybe don't want to hand the sword over or even attack, so they outfitted Nahema with a chainmail. My first and most literal instance of "plot armor".

You are vastly overexeggerating.

It is true that DSA, while originally intended to mimick D&D soon became quite different. None of the authors had anything to do with wargaming, neither did the players come from that direction. Fairness or challenge was not particularly valued and an open ending was seen as far less important than a good story conclusion. Authors saw themselves more as storytellers. This is why railroading was more prevalent.
But things changed. The most involved of the founding authors died in 1995. Already the second and third author generations did things differently (e.g. getting rid of the silly humor of the early stuff) and influences from other systems were not exactly unknown. There were always more railroday and less railroady modules and authors, but railroading was seen as a matter of taste and still acceptable until some very epic campaign from 2004-2005 which was again as railroady as some of the early stuff. Players complained. A lot. And the internet age had started. It became obvious that the player base would not accept being treated the same way as in the 80s and early 90s. Because it was an epic campaign with wordchanging consequences, it could hardly be ignored by players with different taste. And because of the epicness and thus extremely powerful PCs which would have many tools at their disposal the railroading was extremely obvious and annoying. It didn't help that the story to be told was not that good or convincing either.
This brought the next big change for DSA. Since then authors aimed to stick better to RAW and avoid railroading. Not all of them were always successfull and we have some ... things that are obviously meant to be sandboxes but are so badly executed that they could as well be called a collection of scenarios around a common theme.

But at least since 2005 DSA has on average less railroading then typical Pathfinder adventure paths. It is time to lay the myth of some prevalent Dark Eye PTSD to rest. That is a thing some idiot (whose name i won't mention) invented because most of the German RPG scene did not like his ideas of how an ideal game should look like. Obviously all those other gamers had to be somehow damaged in their taste and the most prevalent system had to be at fault.

[Max_Killjoy]

You are vastly overexeggerating.

It is true that DSA, while originally intended to mimick D&D soon became quite different. None of the authors had anything to do with wargaming, neither did the players come from that direction. Fairness or challenge was not particularly valued and an open ending was seen as far less important than a good story conclusion. Authors saw themselves more as storytellers. This is why railroading was more prevalent.

But things changed. The most involved of the founding authors died in 1995. Already the second and third author generations did things differently (e.g. getting rid of the silly humor of the early stuff) and influences from other systems were not exactly unknown. There were always more railroday and less railroady modules and authors, but railroading was seen as a matter of taste and still acceptable until some very epic campaign from 2004-2005 which was again as railroady as some of the early stuff. Players complained. A lot. And the internet age had started. It became obvious that the player base would not accept being treated the same way as in the 80s and early 90s. Because it was an epic campaign with wordchanging consequences, it could hardly be ignored by players with different taste. And because of the epicness and thus extremely powerful PCs which would have many tools at their disposal the railroading was extremely obvious and annoying. It didn't help that the story to be told was not that good or convincing either.

This brought the next big change for DSA. Since then authors aimed to stick better to RAW and avoid railroading. Not all of them were always successfull and we have some ... things that are obviously meant to be sandboxes but are so badly executed that they could as well be called a collection of scenarios around a common theme.

But at least since 2005 DSA has on average less railroading then typical Pathfinder adventure paths. It is time to lay the myth of some prevalent Dark Eye PTSD to rest. That is a thing some idiot (whose name i won't mention) invented because most of the German RPG scene did not like his ideas of how an ideal game should look like. Obviously all those other gamers had to be somehow damaged in their taste and the most prevalent system had to be at fault.


Interesting, interesting.

And no need to name that idiot. :smallbiggrin:

[Darth Ultron]

From everyone's answers, non-answers and what was not said, I have figured out what everyone is talking about when they say 'sandbox'. And my conclusion does show that saying 'sandbox' IS meaningless as it IS an Illusion.

A so called 'sandbox' game in a TRPG is: Reality Gaming.

With the basic idea behind Reality TV shows. Now a normal TV show, even more so an 'action adventure drama' like Star Trek(any) or Supernatural or Timeless, is 100% fake and fiction. Everything you see in the TV show is not real in any way: it is all created and made and edited. Why do thugs attack the main character in the alley: it's done to make in interesting and entreating scene. People know this, accept this and simply enjoy TV shows anyway. Reality TV shows on the other hand pretend to be real. They put forth the idea that the people on the show just 'do stuff' and randomly there is a camera there to record it all(with amazing professional angles, perfect lighting, and sound quality). The idea, the Illusion, is that the Reality TV show is REAL. And at least half of the reality show fans fall for this line and think that reality shows are 100% real; simply because they are told they are real. The rest of the fans know reality shows are not really real, but think they are very close to real and just foll themselves into in seeing it or thinking about it as they want it to be real.

Now take TRPGs(like D&D, with a setting, GM, Players and such). A Normal Typical Classic TRPG has the DM in control of the whole game universe (except the couple of PCs). So if it's raining on Monday, Orc bob likes chicken or the Black Bandits attack the PCs: it is ALL because the DM does it. The players and DMs in such games accept this as part of the game: anything that happens in the word is because the DM does it. And it's all part of the game; ''why'' does anything happen: IT IS A GAME.

Then you have the so called Sandbox gamers, that wrap the game up in many levels of illusion with the goal to trick, fool, convince or just willing accept that the TRPG is not in fact 'a game', but it 'is real'. This game puts for the illusion that the DM, is in fact, NOT doing things in the game. This illusion has some sort of third person or force or apparition who is not a player or dm that is sitting at the the gaming table, doing things. This makes the (false) illusion that all the power is taken away from the DM, the 'unknown third' is the one with the real power and control. Why does it rain or why do bandits attack in a 'sandbox' game: because the 'third force' tells the DM to do it. To many gamers this is a nice illusion as it makes the DM look super weak and less powerful then the players. And for many DM's having the 'third force' tell them what to do or not do lets them wash their hands of anything that happens in the game, as they ''did not do it". The DM can just point to the 'third force' and say ''they made me do it!".

It is a beautiful illusion of Reality Gaming: The Sandbox.

[Milo v3]

I don't think I'll ever understand why Darth Ultron thinks people hate GMs and think players to be almighty gods.

[SodaQueen]

From everyone's answers, non-answers and what was not said, I have figured out what everyone is talking about when they say 'sandbox'. And my conclusion does show that saying 'sandbox' IS meaningless as it IS an Illusion.

A so called 'sandbox' game in a TRPG is: Reality Gaming.

With the basic idea behind Reality TV shows. Now a normal TV show, even more so an 'action adventure drama' like Star Trek(any) or Supernatural or Timeless, is 100% fake and fiction. Everything you see in the TV show is not real in any way: it is all created and made and edited. Why do thugs attack the main character in the alley: it's done to make in interesting and entreating scene. People know this, accept this and simply enjoy TV shows anyway. Reality TV shows on the other hand pretend to be real. They put forth the idea that the people on the show just 'do stuff' and randomly there is a camera there to record it all(with amazing professional angles, perfect lighting, and sound quality). The idea, the Illusion, is that the Reality TV show is REAL. And at least half of the reality show fans fall for this line and think that reality shows are 100% real; simply because they are told they are real. The rest of the fans know reality shows are not really real, but think they are very close to real and just foll themselves into in seeing it or thinking about it as they want it to be real.

Now take TRPGs(like D&D, with a setting, GM, Players and such). A Normal Typical Classic TRPG has the DM in control of the whole game universe (except the couple of PCs). So if it's raining on Monday, Orc bob likes chicken or the Black Bandits attack the PCs: it is ALL because the DM does it. The players and DMs in such games accept this as part of the game: anything that happens in the word is because the DM does it. And it's all part of the game; ''why'' does anything happen: IT IS A GAME.

Then you have the so called Sandbox gamers, that wrap the game up in many levels of illusion with the goal to trick, fool, convince or just willing accept that the TRPG is not in fact 'a game', but it 'is real'. This game puts for the illusion that the DM, is in fact, NOT doing things in the game. This illusion has some sort of third person or force or apparition who is not a player or dm that is sitting at the the gaming table, doing things. This makes the (false) illusion that all the power is taken away from the DM, the 'unknown third' is the one with the real power and control. Why does it rain or why do bandits attack in a 'sandbox' game: because the 'third force' tells the DM to do it. To many gamers this is a nice illusion as it makes the DM look super weak and less powerful then the players. And for many DM's having the 'third force' tell them what to do or not do lets them wash their hands of anything that happens in the game, as they ''did not do it". The DM can just point to the 'third force' and say ''they made me do it!".

It is a beautiful illusion of Reality Gaming: The Sandbox.I finally made an account solely to respond to this (well, technically, I made it a little while ago but this got me to actually finish registration and post) so I guess at least one good thing came of this thread.

Either the misunderstandings are deliberate (maybe in a sort of comedy bit?) or...well, it's not and if so, it's frankly sort of unreal. I feel like this thread is some sort of out of body experience.

So, my response to the post above that I made an accout to post:

.................what?

[KorvinStarmast]

I finally made an account solely to respond to this (although I've been lurking for a while) so I guess at least one good thing came of this thread.

Either the misunderstandings are deliberate (maybe in a sort of comedy bit?) or...well, it's not and if so, it's frankly sort of unreal. I feel like this thread is some sort of out of body experience.

So, my response to the post above that I made an accout to post:

.................what? "Sandbox" and "Railroad" exist as the two extreme ends of a continuum in describing a given campaign/DM's world, just as in tennis "serve and volley" and "baseline" serve as descriptions of a pro player's game strategy as extreme ends of a continuum.

The actuality of a D&D campaign, for example, will usually be a blend of some sandbox and some railroad (Let's say a 60/40 split, or a 20/80 split depending upon the campaign) just as a pro tennis player will actually play a blend of the "serve and volley" game and the "baseline" game during a match. (A *roll for shoes* game can approximate raw sandbox due to its structure as a game)

This generator of this thread seems to have missed that point from the beginning post: taking "Sandbox" as something in isolation seems to be a category error.

[Max_Killjoy]

"Sandbox" and "Railroad" exist as the two extreme ends of a continuum in describing a given campaign/DM's world, just as in tennis "serve and volley" and "baseline" serve as descriptions of a pro player's game strategy as extreme ends of a continuum.

The actuality of a D&D campaign, for example, will usually be a blend of some sandbox and some railroad (Let's say a 60/40 split, or a 20/80 split depending upon the campaign) just as a pro tennis player will actually play a blend of the "serve and volley" game and the "baseline" game during a match. (A *roll for shoes* game can approximate raw sandbox due to its structure as a game)

This generator of this thread seems to have missed that point from the beginning post: taking "Sandbox" as something in isolation seems to be a category error.

"Railroad" is not the opposite extreme from "Sandbox". The closest thing to an "opposite" of a sandboxy setup is a linear setup.

"Railroad" is something a GM does that involves deceit and manipulation to prevent deviation from their desired campaign events and direction. It involves a shell-game or smoke-screen to make one sort of campaign look like another sort of campaign.

A campaign can be more or less linear without being a railroad, as long as there's honesty and buy-in by all persons involved.

[SodaQueen]

"Sandbox" and "Railroad" exist as the two extreme ends of a continuum in describing a given campaign/DM's world, just as in tennis "serve and volley" and "baseline" serve as descriptions of a pro player's game strategy as extreme ends of a continuum.

The actuality of a D&D campaign, for example, will usually be a blend of some sandbox and some railroad (Let's say a 60/40 split, or a 20/80 split depending upon the campaign) just as a pro tennis player will actually play a blend of the "serve and volley" game and the "baseline" game during a match. (A *roll for shoes* game can approximate raw sandbox due to its structure as a game)

This generator of this thread seems to have missed that point from the beginning post: taking "Sandbox" as something in isolation seems to be a category error.Thank you, that's very nice and I appreciate the explanation :)

I have been playing for years, I understand the terms, my bafflement is more directed toward the OP's responses.

[Floret]

If everyone in the group agrees to ''whatever'', then it's fine as that is what the group wants. And this would not be side table anything.

Alright, good, we are in agreeance on this.


Well, Pathfinder, all editions of D&D, and (most) D&D retro clones are all D&D like, as are most of the D20 based games. I can add the ye old D6 Star Wars. I'm not an expert on all the many RPGs, so I'm not 100% sure what to add to the list. But I'm talking about games where: the DM is all powerful (in the game) and the players only have characters can can (maybe) make suggestions.

I think searching for the definition of DnD-like by game system might just be a red herring. What you describe further on is just a playstyle, that may be more or less common in some system or another, and lend itself better to one system or another.


And it's not just a game has a GM, as after all terms change from game to game....and in some games GM means ''meaningless clown to do the almighty players bidding''.

So in a game where(everyone agrees or at least lies and says they agree): The DM is all powerful and controls everything in the game without question, and the players only control a single character, and the game has an adventure that the group will run through together

Alright, I think I understand your definition.

Though I have yet to encounter a game where the GM is reduced to doing the players' bidding. Maybe Warrior poet that reduces the GM to an arbiter of poem quality? (Though switches the position around each "round") Where do you get the impression that this is something that exists?



side table DMing is :

Player 1: "What is the DC to do my action?"
DM: "It is 20"
Player 2(side table DM) "NO it is not, it is DC 10! This I Command!"
DM:"What?"
Player 1 *rolls* "I got a 13!"
Player 2(side table DM) "You do your action!"

OR

DM-"Up ahead you see five goblins and two orcs standing by the back door."
Player 2(side table DM)- "NO, we see five goblins and two Hobgoblins, This I Command!"
DM: "What? No..."
Player 2(side table DM) -"I know more about the game then you and I Demand you do as I say!"

Now, this is just dysfunctional, and reeks of agreements being violates, and an out-game power struggle, independent of playstyle. Even in a narrative game, no-selling one players (GM-inclusive, this time) statements is generally a no-go.


It is a beautiful illusion of Reality Gaming: The Sandbox.

I think you are getting closer. Though I would argue that if "reality TV" is a rather concise term with a certain meaning attached, likening Sandbox games to them is not a strong argument that the term is meaningless.

But since we had a definition of a standard-DnD-like, maybe we can look at that and see how we can (and must) alter it to approach that of a sandbox? After all we did realise there are similarities.


So in a game where everyone agrees: The DM is all powerful and controls everything in the game without question, and the players only control a single character and can (maybe) make suggestions. and the game has an adventure that the group will run through together

Now, the first part is group consensus. Group consensus is always important.

Then: The GM is all powerful - a rather trivial assertion since, outside of game rules that explicitly limit them (See Apocalypse world for an example), this is inherent to the position - at threat of players leaving the game if overdrawn. Great power, great responsibility and stuff.

Said GM also controls everything in the game - sure, noone apart from the GM can classically - even in a sandbox - directly take control over elements external to their character except insofar as to that characters abilities (You can push people out of the way, for example, which moves them).

The game also has an adventure, that the group runs through together - only this really distinguishes, at base level, a sandbox game from a DnD-like. An adventure has a planned start, and end. A sandbox is a style of campaign. It has a laid-out setting, where things are happening, and the GM has the world respond to the decisions the players are making - and their actions, successfull or otherwise.

Maybe it is here where the comparison between a linear game and a sandbox game breaks down: At base level, linear describes an adventure, sandbox a campaign.

On the argument of control being illusory, because this seems like another area of misunderstanding:

The actual literal control in the moment might be illusory - the GM has any power to no-sell changes, or direct things along their will. But just like that, the players have any power to leave the game. If the group consensus is that the GM control the world in a ways to respond how they feel is realistic to whatever the players do, this leads, naturally, to the PCs impacting the setting through the decisions made by their players, since the GM controls the game in a way that responds to those decisions.

In that, walking away from the "adventure" -say, a dragon - would not be whining and giving up, as you described it would be in your games. It would be walking away from the dragon, with the associated consequences. Maybe the people that send you to kill the dragon are a bit pissed that you decided not to do it. And the Dragon will be free to terrorise its surroundings. This will meaningfully impact the game, and is a valid course of action. There *is* no way to throw the game in a sandbox, outside of walking away from the table.

And here, what you might call adventures, arise from the responses of the setting: maybe deciding to quit the "dragon adventure" early creates a "Deal with the order of dragon hunters" "adventure". (To which a solution might be "flee to the neighbouring country", leading to the "establish a new home" "adventure" as going back might be dangerous.)

You will notice that those "adventures" differ from normal ones - they come with no real "end". While you might be able to call out situations in a sandbox campaign as "starting points of adventure", this is harder to do when there is no set "goal" to any of those "adventures". Because, let's say after establishing themselves in the neighbouring country, the PCs decide to go kill the dragon after all - it threatens their homeland now - was then all of this, the flight from the dragon hunters, living in another country, rescuing a village from a gang, taking over that gangs position to terrorize the village themselves, quell a riot, help out a mage so that he agrees to help with protecting "your" village, petitioning the local lord to legitimize your rule... Was all of this part of "The dragon adventure"? Is it a second Dragon adventure? It's still the same dragon, in this position only because the players chose to abandon him all that while back...

At this point, describing what happens in terms of distinct adventures (that all have their ripples and decisions felt throughout subsequent ones) might be technically possible, but... what for? What benefit does it bring to partition a continuous chain of reactions to previous events into distinct chunks and call them adventures?
So I think this is my answer: The difference between adventures in linear games (where they chain after one another) and sandbox games is not in the way adventures start, necessarily, but more pronounced in where and how they *end*. At some point, the Linear game adventure is finished. The sandbox adventure... not so much.

So your comparison to a Reality show is right in some ways. Depending how you look on it, the GM still controls everything, and the players don't make any final decisions. True.

But if I suggest something, say told you to take a drink, and you then took the drink - while it was you who decided to take it, the idea was mine. You acted in response to my suggestion, just as the DM does in a Sandbox game. The fact that he still has the final say, and might twist your suggestion (Say you only drank half the drink); or react in an unexpected way (Say, throw the drink in my face); does not take away from the fact that there was a reaction to my suggestion. And *that* is what a player might desire in a sandbox game. Not control, but the feeling of impact.

[Scripten]

"Railroad" is not the opposite extreme from "Sandbox". The closest thing to an "opposite" of a sandboxy setup is a linear setup.

"Railroad" is something a GM does that involves deceit and manipulation to prevent deviation from their desired campaign events and direction. It involves a shell-game or smoke-screen to make one sort of campaign look like another sort of campaign.

A campaign can be more or less linear without being a railroad, as long as there's honesty buy-in by all persons involved.

This is honestly something that could do with some discussion and determination by the hobby at large. Separating Railroading (the RPG term) from linear adventure/campaign design seems like something that would make RPG conversations much easier.

[SodaQueen]

This is honestly something that could do with some discussion and determination by the hobby at large. Separating Railroading (the RPG term) from linear adventure/campaign design seems like something that would make RPG conversations much easier.Are the terms not already divorced, albeit not mutually exclusive? The folks in my groups have always known that a campaign/adventure can be linear without being a railroad.

[Scripten]

Are the terms not already divorced, albeit not mutually exclusive? The folks in my groups have always known that a campaign/adventure can be linear without being a railroad.

To some extent, but the conflation does crop up a lot, and not necessarily in an intellectually dishonest way.

[PhoenixPhyre]

To some extent, but the conflation does crop up a lot, and not necessarily in an intellectually dishonest way.

And there are some people who (due to prior experience) have pseudo-allergic reactions to "railroading"--these reactions suffer from false positives frequently. Often this might be because they had a DM/table that confused the two (maliciously or not) and are now sensitive to it.

[Florian]

Though I have yet to encounter a game where the GM is reduced to doing the players' bidding. Maybe Warrior poet that reduces the GM to an arbiter of poem quality? (Though switches the position around each "round") Where do you get the impression that this is something that exists?

Now, this is just dysfunctional, and reeks of agreements being violates, and an out-game power struggle, independent of playstyle. Even in a narrative game, no-selling one players (GM-inclusive, this time) statements is generally a no-go.

Oh, it actually can describe two very concrete scenarios:

(1) A game system with self-contained and self-resolving mechanics. For example, when the relevant data to resolve an actions doesn't have anything to do with the involved object, but instead is complete handled by the skill involved. That means if you have the skill and you make the check, the result is immediately incorporated in the game world, no matter what. A good example here would be 3E Diplomacy, because it deals in absolutes, or Craft skills, because you jump straight from roll to in game object. (This has a lot to do with expectations how the game works. If you expect to, say, have a conversation with an NPC and the matter will resolve itself in this way, then Charm Person followed by Diplomacy is certainly a deal-breaker - and vice versa.)

(2) Aggressive use of narrative/fact creation powers, without understanding the boundaries of using such rules. Anecdotally, that's something I've seen happening using the Gumshoe system. You know, you can use your investigation points during a scene to get more information - but the information has to be there in the first place. I had a fellow player who didn't grok this and aggressively tried to use the points to create facts that will lead him to solving the case (which is mood, you always have the spine and core clues to follow).

@Satinavian:

Let´s talk about a swamp and a crocodile, shall we? A lot of SLs have taken that to heart.

[Max_Killjoy]

Are the terms not already divorced, albeit not mutually exclusive? The folks in my groups have always known that a campaign/adventure can be linear without being a railroad.



To some extent, but the conflation does crop up a lot, and not necessarily in an intellectually dishonest way.



And there are some people who (due to prior experience) have pseudo-allergic reactions to "railroading"--these reactions suffer from false positives frequently. Often this might be because they had a DM/table that confused the two (maliciously or not) and are now sensitive to it.


When it is intellectually dishonest, it's ironically a tactic shared by two extremes.

1) "GM as God". Those who wish to "normalize" actual railroading. They attempt to conflate railroading with honest linear campaign structures, and more widely broaden the definition of railroading to include many GMing techniques and practices that are typically used without any intent to deceive or manipulate. They hope to get others to agree that really all those things are "railroading" so that "railroading" becomes acceptable, and their own actual railroading then has a smokescreen or figleaf, and they can dismiss complaints of about their actual railroading as "spoiled" or "entitled" players. I've seen it happen in other venues of discussion, and one particular poster here is apparently deeply invested in this rhetorical move.

2) "GM as Demon". Those who wish to paint systems or campaigns that have a singular GM as badwrongfun. They attempt to broad-brush any GM decision or predetermination as "railroading", because "everyone knows railroading is bad".


So, there have been these two relatively small groups, who kinda hate each other, who've accidentally cooperating in muddying the waters on what railroading actually is and is not.


(This has been laid out in other threads, but thought it bore repeating here.)

[Satinavian]

@ Florian
sure.

A bit of GM advice written by the guy i mentioned earlier who died in 1995, published by him under pseudonym where he tries to paint players who don't follow a railroad as disruptive, showing that he himself already encountered resistance to his railroading ideas.

Yes, i know that short description of a game session part. Even in this text, where the actions of players who want to leave the rails are deliberate absurd, the GM does come over as quite unreasonable. It the text aimed at promoting railroading, it fails and it failed even then.


But how is this even remotely relevant to what happened the last 20 years?

[Max_Killjoy]

@ Florian

sure.

A bit of GM advice written by the guy i mentioned earlier who died in 1995, published by him under pseudonym where he tries to paint players who don't follow a railroad as disruptive, showing that he himself already encountered resistance to his railroading ideas.

Yes, i know that short description of a game session part. Even in this text, where the actions of players who want to leave the rails are deliberate absurd, the GM does come over as quite unreasonable. It the text aimed at promoting railroading, it fails and it failed even then.


But how is this even remotely relevant to what happened the last 20 years?



Oddly, it sounds like one of our "participants" here.

Paints players who object to being railroaded as "disruptive"? CHECK.

Uses absurd examples of "disruptive" players' behavior? CHECK.

[Satinavian]

Well, it was a better read.

Maybe i should look if i can find it somewhere on the internet to translate it. It is kind of the go-to example for people trying to illustrate how railroady and bad DSA is. (That they tend to go that far back should also tell you something.) For such a worst case text it is actually quite tame.

[Florian]

Well, it was a better read. Maybe i should look if i can find it somewhere on the internet to translate it. It is kind of the go-to example for people trying to illustrate how railroady and bad DSA is. For that it is actually quite tame.

The real example are the two old "realms-shattering campaigns" from the early nineties. That was pretty heavy. The newer stuff is pretty tame in comparison, they even did try their best impression of kingdom management with stuff like "Von Eugene Gnaden". But than again we have recent stuff like the one module where you play a team of humans and a team of orcs having a race against the same objectives, which is basically a cool idea but is back again at brutal forms of railroading.

Ah, well, the 90s, no wonder that White Wolf stuff became so popular.

[SodaQueen]

Well, it was a better read. Maybe i should look if i can find it somewhere on the internet to translate it. It is kind of the go-to example for people trying to illustrate how railroady and bad DSA is. For that it is actually quite tame.If you can find it, please share; I'd quite like to read it.

I've run both fairly open sandboxes and more linear campaigns. They're both fun and serve their respective narrative purposes. A deliberate murder hobo campaign can work very well as a sandbox whereas a "stop the big bad, save the world" campaign can be better narratively suited to linearity simply because the scope of the campaign naturally pushed the PC's towards an ultimate singular goal.

[Florian]

If you can find it, please share; I'd quite like to read it.

The long and short of it is that Kiesow, one of the main designers behind DSA, had a similar strict view of how the game should be played and how characters should act as Gygax at his worst times. In short, he never shied away from making "teaching them how to play" a constant task of the SL.

First part of the essay is about the difference between roll play and role play and he makes use of a swamp, crocodile and the equivalent to the Handle Animal skill and the results that it can provide to showcase that the players more or less shouldn't know the rules, else they will automatically start to roll play and rely on mechanical results, ie. even when the skill should allow the taming of the crocodile, it´s not fitting to the scenario, so the SL should ignore it.

Second part of the essay is still in the same swamp and deals with how to use railroading techniques to "teach" the players how to handle "proper heroes", why the rule book never uses "SC" but "heroes" instead and how the players should be made to understand how a "proper hero" has to act, engage in combat, so on. Railroad them until they learn it. Yay!

[Segev]

Aventurien is an extremely detailed game world with a meta-plot that is now ongoing for 30 years. The book output and detail level makes D&D 3E and 3.5E combined look pretty small and the entire run of the Forgotten Realms amateurish and lacking in details. We tend to joke that each and every pebble in the game world has been detailed, you just have to do some serious book diving to find it.

So even the smallest adventure will use the same detail level and touch upon the meta-plot somehow.

Now imagine how a whole campaign looks like. That puts Paizo APs to shame, but as GM, you should better rope in your players in helping you carry and finance all the necessary stuff, like the whole 30 or so books you need to run the "year of dragon fire" campaign.

So, as the whole thing has to happen and play out as the script demands, else you'll get continuity breaks (and all books build upon each other) and as a method to don't force the GM to railroad, they came up with the conclusion that the player characters should never, ever, under no circumstances come near the main plot line, so they can´t "mess it up" (*). Now having a main quest and a lot of side quests that are vaguely connected is a lot of fun - imagine that without the main quests, side quests only.... hurray!
This sounds a lot more like old World of Darkness than Witchfire Trilogy. There was a problem with the metaplot metastasizing to the point where any group that didn't play as you describe here couldn't use later books in any of the games, because even the new mechanics tended to be deeply immersed in the way the metaplot had evolved.

This still doesn't approach the level of railroading the Witchfire Trilogy represents, however. At least, here, players can impact the module in ways that aren't metaplot-dominant, insofar as any module can be impacted. This is more like a Living Campaign or oWoD.

The Witchfire Trilogy was only not a railroad if literally all you cared about was finding the next room with the next group of monsters. It's practically a rail shooter, otherwise.


I'm not sure what the point of this is though. Ok what everyone calls ''sandbox'' and ''linear'' games are different types of games. OK? So, moving on.....Yes! So "sandbox" is not meaningless, since it describes a specific kind of game--


From everyone's answers, non-answers and what was not said, I have figured out what everyone is talking about when they say 'sandbox'. And my conclusion does show that saying 'sandbox' IS meaningless as it IS an Illusion.--drat. you were so close.


A so called 'sandbox' game in a TRPG is: Reality Gaming.

With the basic idea behind Reality TV shows. Now a normal TV show, even more so an 'action adventure drama' like Star Trek(any) or Supernatural or Timeless, is 100% fake and fiction. Everything you see in the TV show is not real in any way: it is all created and made and edited. Why do thugs attack the main character in the alley: it's done to make in interesting and entreating scene. People know this, accept this and simply enjoy TV shows anyway. Reality TV shows on the other hand pretend to be real. They put forth the idea that the people on the show just 'do stuff' and randomly there is a camera there to record it all(with amazing professional angles, perfect lighting, and sound quality). The idea, the Illusion, is that the Reality TV show is REAL. And at least half of the reality show fans fall for this line and think that reality shows are 100% real; simply because they are told they are real. The rest of the fans know reality shows are not really real, but think they are very close to real and just foll themselves into in seeing it or thinking about it as they want it to be real.

Now take TRPGs(like D&D, with a setting, GM, Players and such). A Normal Typical Classic TRPG has the DM in control of the whole game universe (except the couple of PCs). So if it's raining on Monday, Orc bob likes chicken or the Black Bandits attack the PCs: it is ALL because the DM does it. The players and DMs in such games accept this as part of the game: anything that happens in the word is because the DM does it. And it's all part of the game; ''why'' does anything happen: IT IS A GAME.

Then you have the so called Sandbox gamers, that wrap the game up in many levels of illusion with the goal to trick, fool, convince or just willing accept that the TRPG is not in fact 'a game', but it 'is real'. This game puts for the illusion that the DM, is in fact, NOT doing things in the game. This illusion has some sort of third person or force or apparition who is not a player or dm that is sitting at the the gaming table, doing things. This makes the (false) illusion that all the power is taken away from the DM, the 'unknown third' is the one with the real power and control. Why does it rain or why do bandits attack in a 'sandbox' game: because the 'third force' tells the DM to do it. To many gamers this is a nice illusion as it makes the DM look super weak and less powerful then the players. And for many DM's having the 'third force' tell them what to do or not do lets them wash their hands of anything that happens in the game, as they ''did not do it". The DM can just point to the 'third force' and say ''they made me do it!".

It is a beautiful illusion of Reality Gaming: The Sandbox.This...is an interesting take, but is still wrong. Reality TV, even if we take it as it's presented to the audience and ignore the myriad accounts of how it's actually much more thoroughly manipulated, edited, and even scripted than the presentation lets on, is much more akin to linear gaming. Each challenge is, essentially, a set piece "room" in a "dungeon crawl" with specified challenges the players must overcome.

Reality TV would be closer to an RPG sandbox if the challenges were not "Today's Challenge" but instead were set across the map of the play space, and players could find and interact with them in any order and in any way they desired. Essentially, the (original) Legend of Zelda approach to challenges.

Reality TV built that way, and with enough player factions that each can establish their own advancement paths and build their own goals and methods such that you could set the same "board" of challenges and tools and have two different groups of players wind up going entirely different directions, would actually be a pretty good representation of a sandbox.

I'm not sure that such would make for very good television, though, which is one case where the linear set-up empowering a carefully-designed "three act" structure is probably better than a sandbox approach. There are strengths to linear adventure design, and there are weaknesses to sandbox play. It's largely a matter of taste and what kind of game you want in your ttRPG.


"Railroad" is not the opposite extreme from "Sandbox". The closest thing to an "opposite" of a sandboxy setup is a linear setup.

"Railroad" is something a GM does that involves deceit and manipulation to prevent deviation from their desired campaign events and direction. It involves a shell-game or smoke-screen to make one sort of campaign look like another sort of campaign.

A campaign can be more or less linear without being a railroad, as long as there's honesty and buy-in by all persons involved.To be fair, it's a lot harder to arrange a "railroad" while really running a sandbox, rather than running a linear game disguised as a sandbox (which is what Darth Ultron tends to be unable to see a sandbox as anything but). A linear game disguised as a sandbox is often much more railroad-heavy than an honest linear game, in fact, because the GM has to use railroading techniques to make it look like the players are exploring an open world, while guiding them to specific plot events on his linear adventure.

The DSA described before, or any metaplot-dominated game (e.g. an old WoD game that wanted to be able to use later materials), is probably as railroad-like as a sandbox can get, with the players unable to change the way the metaplot advances even if they get involved, but perfectly able to play over here in the sand beside the tracks, letting the larger metaplot's tentacles create challenges they have to deal with to maintain or get ahead in their chosen field of play...as long as their actions never hinder the metaplot.

[Satinavian]

If you can find it, please share; I'd quite like to read it.

I've run both fairly open sandboxes and more linear campaigns. They're both fun and serve their respective narrative purposes. A deliberate murder hobo campaign can work very well as a sandbox whereas a "stop the big bad, save the world" campaign can be better narratively suited to linearity simply because the scope of the campaign naturally pushed the PC's towards an ultimate singular goal.



"Dead grey treetrunks rise like beardy demons out of the fog which moves in hip high billows through the marshland. You strike away the dripping wet lichens and grope your way step by step. Under your feet it blobs suspiciously and the mossy ground gives in under your soles. If you look back, you can see how your foodsteps fill with black smelly water. You still have the picture of Jorindiel, your companion before your eyes, who only hours ago submerged in the oily water, dragged down by some unknown monster. Never will you forget the moment when the pitch-black fluid closed over Jorindiels blonde hair with a faint burble... Since then your only thought is : get out of here. Out of this land which obviously only houses vicious evil creatures and which taints everyone possessing a heart and a soul. The gold of the Wihani-Pau which is supposed to be hidden in this swamp has lost its allure to you and you don't care any longer if the legends about Torkoschur, the nine-tailed lizard are true or not. Now only saving your life counts. Your armor weights heavily on your shoulders and stretches like steel braces around your ribs, You decide to throw them away to get faster."

"Wait a Moment. I am not retarded and throw away my RS4-armor piece! How is it, are there any crocodiles here ?"

"Yes, you have seen recently two yellow eyes which might be from a croco-"

"Nice! I catch one, make an animal handling test and tie my armor on its back!"

"Well, ehh, at the moment none is nearby. You continue to look for your way through the murderous swamp, thinking of the warnings which you ignored, fighting rising despair..."

"Well, i don't think it is nice that you don't hand me a crocodile."

"At this location are no crocodiles. And regarding the animal handling..."

"What is with it ? Animal handling 16, my dear !*"

"Let's see. Where did i stop? Ah, you carefully plant one foot beyond the other when slowly dusk sets in and the fog gets denser."

"I can see where that leads to. In the night there won't be any crocodiles active."

"gets denser. You remembr that you are quite close to Torkoschurs hunting ground. Indeed from a tree group further away a cold wind rises. In the branches of the old willow you can see a huge number of black birds. The big animals climb sluggishly through the branchwood while suddenly staring in your direction. You remember the dreadful things, the peat cutter told you about Torkoschur's swarm."

"How much damage does such a bird do ?"

"Do i get my crocodile now ?"

"I would like to do my third stave enchanting ritual** now. Could we do that just now?"

"No, not now. Now all the birds attack, their damage is D6 each. And after that Torkoschur comes, that is a thing with nine tales, each does 2D6. At the front there is also someting to bite, doing D20. And now let's just roll through the fight fast, i want to catch the late film. Oh, and another thing, please mark it next to your attack values on your sheet to always see it : Every group gets the GM it deserves."


*That is high, but not maximum. In a skill system not really allowing superhuman feats. With detailed animal handling rules modelled on real world professionals.

** That is a night long ritual that gives the implement stave of a wizard the ability to be transformed into a rope at will, but consumes so much magic power that it takes weeks to recover it.

Yes, it is bad. But it is also from the late eighties/early nineties.

[Max_Killjoy]

That's... maybe so bad it comes around to somewhat amusing.

[PhoenixPhyre]

That's... maybe so bad it comes around to somewhat amusing.

Yeah. I'd expect to see something like that as a horror story told around the forum fire, not presented as a "this is the right way to deal with those stupid players" example. The players are caricatures, the narration is super heavy-handed (telling the players what they think and how they act), and the DM's response is...something else.

[Satinavian]

I expected that it would amuse some people and am glad it did. This flowery language was a bit challanging for me as foreign speaker.

And yes, i did not miss Kiesow, his 'advice' or his modules one bit. And considering how near instantly a tone shift could be seen from 1995 on, it seems, most of the other authors did not really share his views that much.

There is actually one GM advice piece from him i find worse but that never made it into a publication of the system, it was just a reader's letter to a general RPG magazine. There he even complains about players who actually pay attention to background and exposition and dare to demand consistency when the GM has long forgotten the stuff he doen't need for his current plot.

[Max_Killjoy]

Yeah. I'd expect to see something like that as a horror story told around the forum fire, not presented as a "this is the right way to deal with those stupid players" example. The players are caricatures, the narration is super heavy-handed (telling the players what they think and how they act), and the DM's response is...something else.



I expected that it would amuse some people and am glad it did. This flowery language was a bit challanging for me as foreign speaker.

And yes, i did not miss Kiesow, his 'advice' or his modules one bit. And considering how near instantly a tone shift could be seen from 1995 on, it seems, most of the other authors did not really share his views that much.


The "this is how your character feels, this is how your character reacts" thing is... just completely over the top, like a caricature of bad GMing.

I can think of exactly one time I've done that sort of thing as a GM, and it was a dream sequence for a PC who'd walked into it by taking part in a ritual he didn't understand with people he didn't know. It was specifically supposed to convey a sense of helplessness and foreboding and being unable to stop himself.

[Quertus]

So, my response to the post above that I made an accout to post:

.................what?

Well, thank you for joining, and giving me that "omg I can't stop laughing" moment. :smallbiggrin:

May your future on (in?) the Playground repeatedly bring you the fun you've brought me.

Even if you have to ask me "what??" from time to time. :smallwink:

[Satinavian]

The "this is how your character feels, this is how your character reacts" thing is... just completely over the top, like a caricature of bad GMing.There are similar things in his modules. And things like "using quantum ogres (well, Yetis) to rob the PCs all their stuff without them being able to do anything against it and then explaining as GM to the players that they should have choosen the other way".
But the rules did never actually allow the GM to dictate feelings or acts (outside of drawback like character traits which could be rolled against). And even when he was still alive, modules from other autors were in general different. Still often railroady but respecting certain boundaries and with less condescation towards players.

[Quertus]

A deliberate murder hobo campaign can work very well as a sandbox whereas a "stop the big bad, save the world" campaign can be better narratively suited to linearity simply because the scope of the campaign naturally pushed the PC's towards an ultimate singular goal.

Well... there can well be a dozen or more "end of the world" plots going on in the background of any given sandbox I create. Whether the PCs actually touch on any of them (or even find out anything about any of them) is entirely up to them.


Yeah. I'd expect to see something like that as a horror story told around the forum fire, not presented as a "this is the right way to deal with those stupid players" example. The players are caricatures, the narration is super heavy-handed (telling the players what they think and how they act), and the DM's response is...something else.


The "this is how your character feels, this is how your character reacts" thing is... just completely over the top, like a caricature of bad GMing.

I have, sadly, seen more DMs than I can count tell the players what their PCs think and how they act. It's nice to know that toxic advice baked into the rule books isn't a side-effect of English as a native language, or American culture, or some such.

[Floret]

The "this is how your character feels, this is how your character reacts" thing is... just completely over the top, like a caricature of bad GMing.

It's surprisingly consistent in early DSA... (Which btw current editions have been translated as "The Dark Eye" if anyone is curious about the modern state of things.)
Most heavily used as "adventure intro", at times detailing the months before the adventure, complete with decisions (yes, waaaaay beyond "I went to the dungeon"), combats that you lost friends in, etc. ...Though ofc I only know of these precisely because the ridiculousness still gets talked about these days as a bad example that the game got over.


There are similar things in his modules. And things like "using quantum ogres (well, Yetis) to rob the PCs all their stuff without them being able to do anything against it and then explaining as GM to the players that they should have choosen the other way".

Don't forget "The riddle of the statue you need to answer to get access to the temple requires real world knowlege to do so (some band or such), which your character can't have. If he answers wrongly, a trapdoor opens. If the player answers the riddle correctly, he is a dirty metagamer, scold him while the trapdoor opens anyways". ...That wasn't even Kiesow. There were more than just him, and the game improved greatly by the fading of the old guard.

Which, to stress, this is all over 20 years old and the German scene remembers it only as basically injokes, and shaking your head at those silly ancients.

[KorvinStarmast]

"Railroad" is not the opposite extreme from "Sandbox". The closest thing to an "opposite" of a sandboxy setup is a linear setup. "Railroad" is something a GM does that involves deceit and manipulation to prevent deviation from their desired campaign events and direction. It involves a shell-game or smoke-screen to make one sort of campaign look like another sort of campaign. A campaign can be more or less linear without being a railroad, as long as there's honesty and buy-in by all persons involved. OK, I'll go along with the distinction you make, and will offer to you AngryGM's take on railroads (http://theangrygm.com/all-aboard-the-plot-train/)if you are interested.

[Segev]

OK, I'll go along with the distinction you make, and will offer to you AngryGM's take on railroads (http://theangrygm.com/all-aboard-the-plot-train/)if you are interested.

I'm going to disagree with AngryGM, here. I'd say "respectfully," but let's be honest, he doesn't care if I'm respectful or not.

Railroading is a thing, and his main logical flaw is where he asserts that it's "not railroading" when you deal with a contrarian jerk of a player via said rails. It's railroading any time you deliberately reconstruct the world and events in order to compel a certain choice from the players. This can happen a priori, so you're not "changing" anything, if you knew going in that your players might try to come up with a solution other than yours and deliberately set up the whole world so nothing but X would work.

What differentiates this from "Only the Sword of Clan MacGuffin can slay the Dark Lord Invulnerabolic!" - i.e. a goal-oriented adventure - is the acknowledgement of the goal.

The reason the AngryGM's "NPC who will betray the party" example is railroading is simply because it's trying to force a plot development that isn't part of the goal of the adventure.

His ultimate advice, however, is still good: recognize when it's an OOC problem. "Okay, DM? We know Carmellatrix D'arc'ness Bloodravenqueen is going to turn out to be a vampire. We don't trust her. We're not letting her backstab us. Please stop trying to force it; it's not happening." or "Hey, guys? We agreed I was running the 'Castle Ravenloft' adventure this month. Can you PLEASE actually pursue the "Defeat Lord Strahd" plot that is dangling out in front of you, rather than trying to set up a mercantile empire involving the romani trade caravans? I don't want to spend the time developing all the places you're trying to interact with; I have been working on preparing this module for your party."

That last one isn't railroading. It's also how you deal with disruptive players.

[PhoenixPhyre]

I'm going to disagree with AngryGM, here. I'd say "respectfully," but let's be honest, he doesn't care if I'm respectful or not.

Railroading is a thing, and his main logical flaw is where he asserts that it's "not railroading" when you deal with a contrarian jerk of a player via said rails. It's railroading any time you deliberately reconstruct the world and events in order to compel a certain choice from the players. This can happen a priori, so you're not "changing" anything, if you knew going in that your players might try to come up with a solution other than yours and deliberately set up the whole world so nothing but X would work.

What differentiates this from "Only the Sword of Clan MacGuffin can slay the Dark Lord Invulnerabolic!" - i.e. a goal-oriented adventure - is the acknowledgement of the goal.

The reason the AngryGM's "NPC who will betray the party" example is railroading is simply because it's trying to force a plot development that isn't part of the goal of the adventure.

His ultimate advice, however, is still good: recognize when it's an OOC problem. "Okay, DM? We know Carmellatrix D'arc'ness Bloodravenqueen is going to turn out to be a vampire. We don't trust her. We're not letting her backstab us. Please stop trying to force it; it's not happening." or "Hey, guys? We agreed I was running the 'Castle Ravenloft' adventure this month. Can you PLEASE actually pursue the "Defeat Lord Strahd" plot that is dangling out in front of you, rather than trying to set up a mercantile empire involving the romani trade caravans? I don't want to spend the time developing all the places you're trying to interact with; I have been working on preparing this module for your party."

That last one isn't railroading. It's also how you deal with disruptive players.

I read that article too, and have most of the same concerns. I don't agree (with him) that taking away agency to enact a plot point is appropriate--better to get the players to voluntarily agree. Giving away agency voluntarily is very different than having it taken from you (especially through deception).

That doesn't mean that all channeled adventures (where there is an in-universe, pre-existing reason why only a limited set of approaches will work) are railroads. It's when the adventures grow new roadblocks to keep an otherwise reasonable approach from working because it's not the favored one.

[Max_Killjoy]

I'm going to disagree with AngryGM, here. I'd say "respectfully," but let's be honest, he doesn't care if I'm respectful or not.

Railroading is a thing, and his main logical flaw is where he asserts that it's "not railroading" when you deal with a contrarian jerk of a player via said rails. It's railroading any time you deliberately reconstruct the world and events in order to compel a certain choice from the players. This can happen a priori, so you're not "changing" anything, if you knew going in that your players might try to come up with a solution other than yours and deliberately set up the whole world so nothing but X would work.

What differentiates this from "Only the Sword of Clan MacGuffin can slay the Dark Lord Invulnerabolic!" - i.e. a goal-oriented adventure - is the acknowledgement of the goal.

The reason the AngryGM's "NPC who will betray the party" example is railroading is simply because it's trying to force a plot development that isn't part of the goal of the adventure.

His ultimate advice, however, is still good: recognize when it's an OOC problem. "Okay, DM? We know Carmellatrix D'arc'ness Bloodravenqueen is going to turn out to be a vampire. We don't trust her. We're not letting her backstab us. Please stop trying to force it; it's not happening." or "Hey, guys? We agreed I was running the 'Castle Ravenloft' adventure this month. Can you PLEASE actually pursue the "Defeat Lord Strahd" plot that is dangling out in front of you, rather than trying to set up a mercantile empire involving the romani trade caravans? I don't want to spend the time developing all the places you're trying to interact with; I have been working on preparing this module for your party."

That last one isn't railroading. It's also how you deal with disruptive players.


I read that article too, and have most of the same concerns. I don't agree (with him) that taking away agency to enact a plot point is appropriate--better to get the players to voluntarily agree. Giving away agency voluntarily is very different than having it taken from you (especially through deception).

That doesn't mean that all channeled adventures (where there is an in-universe, pre-existing reason why only a limited set of approaches will work) are railroads. It's when the adventures grow new roadblocks to keep an otherwise reasonable approach from working because it's not the favored one.

By the time I waded through AngryGM's bloviating egotism, found the actual meat of his position, and forced myself to react to just that content... you both beat me to what I was going to say and probably said it more civilly than I would have.

[Segev]

That doesn't mean that all channeled adventures (where there is an in-universe, pre-existing reason why only a limited set of approaches will work) are railroads. It's when the adventures grow new roadblocks to keep an otherwise reasonable approach from working because it's not the favored one.Right. I will even go a little further: it's a railroad if you construct it with road blocks specifically set up to prevent any action other than the "approved" ones from succeeding.

One well-intentioned example appeared on this forum, with a GM who genuinely, I'm sure, meant it when he said, "If my players come up with something that could work, I'll definitely let it be tried," but he had reasons why anything and everything that they came up with that wasn't the path he'd set out just couldn't work. This form of railroading is insidious because the GM himself may not realize he's doing it. But it's still railroading.

I suppose a good way of putting it is that a goal-oriented game, or an adventure with one or two nodes it must pass through just by nature of what's going on ("To get the Rod of Seven Parts, the PCs have to actually go to each of the places the seven parts are hidden") is not a railroad; that's just how the world is set up. But if the world is set up so that there is only one navigable path from start to finish, it's a railroad. All roads can pass through Rome without it being a railroad. But if the only way through is to head to Rome, and only this one road exists, and there's no way to do anything but take this road...


By the time I waded through AngryGM's bloviating egotism, found the actual meat of his position, and forced myself to react to just that content... you both beat me to what I was going to say and probably said it more civilly than I would have.I suspect his bloviation is character acting at least as much as it's serious, but it is one reason I don't make a regular habit of reading his work, despite him having some interesting mechanical and GM-trick innovations from time to time. I don't find his character endearing, and it often gets in the way of actually finding the thesis and point of his articles.

[PhoenixPhyre]

For me, the warning sign is when I find myself searching for valid-seeming reasons to deny an otherwise reasonable action. If I can't just give the player a look like "huh? That makes no sense" AND haven't at least foreshadowed an in-universe reason why the character wouldn't think it would work, I should probably just let them try and adjust to the consequences.

I'm too lazy to plan out detailed plots, so the pre-rigged railroad isn't one of my flaws. That'd require knowing where the storyline is headed too far in advance.

[Mordaedil]

When you advertise your persona as an "angry" anything, I tend to view it with a tad of derision. But his advice from most articles I've seen linked here are things I really disagree with.

Everybody plays D&D differently, but I think I'd rather take advice from the Spoony One, Matt Mercer or Matthew Colville. They have years of experience both good and bad and don't perform a persona that gets in the way when they offer advice (albeit Spoony is incredibly rambly, which I personally find charming, but I've seen people get turned off by)

[Lorsa]

@Lorsa:

D&D is nor really important outside of the USA, often not even making any of the top 5 lists. In Germany, the 800pt. gorilla in the room is DSA, which dominated and shaped the local RPG scene on a level that D&D didn't manage in the USA. If you know the Witchfire trilogy, that'd count as an example for "light railroading for beginners" when compared to how DSA works.

As you can tell, I am not from the USA either, and grew up playing such things as "Drakar & Demoner" (which, by no coincidence whatsoever, also abbreviates to D&D), "Eon" (though very little as I dislike the system) and "Mutant".

I actually don't know the Witchfire trilogy, but I don't see how discussion on adventure/campaign design is system dependent?



So, a good number of players around here suffer from a kind of "DSA PTSD", play systems like Pathfinder for the player empowerment that's part of the rules and will suffer extreme stress when confronted with anything they deem to be "railroading", even if it´s actually not.

The local scene had to wade thru a decade of discussions what makes up "real railroading", "feeling railroaded", "natural and causal linearity" and "linear design". That was not particularly funny and reached the point when even having a regular 24h day/night cycle in the game and things conforming to that was suspected as a means to force the players on the railroad (ex: "What? The shop is closed at night? It´s past midnight? No, no, you just don't want me to buy the medicine, you want to railroad me! *slams fist on table*")

I can understand how this historical context is important. What I don't quite understand is how so many people put up with such obvious railroading for such a long period of time?



That's basically why we split the terms up into "linear causality" and "linear design", because they're really different things, even when often looking alike. Contextually important, because in discussions like this, empty phrase like "sandboxed contain no linear elements!" are thrown around, often without being able to make the destination what is actually meant.

I'm not even sure how "linear causality" differs from normal causality, you might have to explain that one, but I think it's fairly obvious that here we are discussing linear adventure design?



To answer your question: Think empty space and a billiard ball. You throw it, it will travel on its trajectory forever (because theoretical no friction and such) or until it hits something (transferring kinetic mass and such). Time and space make this a linear affair, so you can track and possibly predict when the ball will be where, at what speed and what the next point in space/time should be, so on.

Any form of non-intrusive interaction doesn't matter (Don´t notice the ball, just watch the ball, thinking about the ball, imagining the ball with a smiley face, trying to hit the ball and missing), because it doesn't alter the trajectory in any way (Not even missing it. No air, no currents to be disturbed that could alter the vector).

That leaves intrusive interaction as the only forms that are "meaningful" when dealing with the ball. Build a wall in the path and see how it holds up against the kinetic mass. It´s either stopped or breaks thru, traveling on, albeit as reduced speed, and so on. Use a U-pipe to not stop it, but divert it - original goal accomplished, but then you have to look at where the ball travels next, so on.

The way I've understood "linear adventures", is that they don't allow the object (most often the plot) to diverge from it's path even when meaningfully interacted with. Or, alternatively, giving it such high momentum that it can't be meaningfully interacted with or never allowing the players to acquire the necessary tools to interact with it. The object will always follow the line, regardless of interaction. If the adventure indeed does allow meaningful interaction and the object (for example, the plot) can indeed be stopped, steered or otherwise changed, then it is NOT a linear adventure.

[Darth Ultron]

Though I have yet to encounter a game where the GM is reduced to doing the players' bidding. Maybe Warrior poet that reduces the GM to an arbiter of poem quality? (Though switches the position around each "round") Where do you get the impression that this is something that exists?

It is rare to find a DM all unhappy in put in the corner by the players and forced to run their game for them; BUT it's very common for a ''guilty DM'' to put themselves in the corner and let the players control them. It's very common in the round table games where the group switches DMs all the time, for example: Each DM puts themselves in the corner and lets the players control the game with the hope that when the next person is DM and they are a player they will do the same thing. It's also common where the person does not ''want'' to be DM, but ''has to'' for some silly reason.



Maybe it is here where the comparison between a linear game and a sandbox game breaks down: At base level, linear describes an adventure, sandbox a campaign.

This the: Sandbox-is the casual relaxing do whatever time, the Adventure-an focused directed game play.



In that, walking away from the "adventure" -say, a dragon - would not be whining and giving up, as you described it would be in your games.

It is. A great many players, the immature ones, will ''play'' something for a couple minutes then ''suddenly'' decide to switch. And, yes, a great many DMs think this is the ''best thing ever''. But for more normal people, it's just a jerk move.



You will notice that those "adventures" differ from normal ones - they come with no real "end".

An adventure, by it's nature has an end. The same way any activity has and end. If your stuck on a ''open-end activity'', you need to break it down a bit to get to the Adventure. Like you have a character that is a Royal Ranger so they work for the kingdom doing things open ended; BUT the Werewolves of Dark Hill is a set Adventure that has an ending of ''doing something about the evil werewolves''.



Was all of this part of "The dragon adventure"? Is it a second Dragon adventure? It's still the same dragon, in this position only because the players chose to abandon him all that while back...

It is the DM's job to separate all this and have it make sense and not be a random mess.

[Quertus]

This the: Sandbox-is the casual relaxing do whatever time, the Adventure-an focused directed game play.

Yes, when I casually take over the world, slaughter the gods, and create a new plane of existence filled with custom creatures of my own creation, that is a sandbox. But when I focus on retrieving the Orb of Significance from the Bog of Eternal Stench, that is an adventure.

[Darth Ultron]

Yes, when I casually take over the world, slaughter the gods, and create a new plane of existence filled with custom creatures of my own creation, that is a sandbox. But when I focus on retrieving the Orb of Significance from the Bog of Eternal Stench, that is an adventure.

Well, your comparing like a whole Campaign vs One action. So yes.

Like the ''Take over the world" was something like 1,000 adventures....as you had to do a lot. To slay a god is at least one adventure per god.

And if you jus make it all easy, then it's pointless....Like "OK, my super duper character kills all the gods with one sneeze! Pwe pew!"

[Quertus]

Well, your comparing like a whole Campaign vs One action. So yes.

Like the ''Take over the world" was something like 1,000 adventures....as you had to do a lot. To slay a god is at least one adventure per god.

And if you jus make it all easy, then it's pointless....Like "OK, my super duper character kills all the gods with one sneeze! Pwe pew!"

That's not the point. The point is, suppose one GM wrote the content that includes the gods, then dies. A second GM picks up the game, and never writes content or adventures. All they do is arbitrate the rules of the game (you want to jump to the moon? Ok, can you make a DC 5.044 billion jump check?). The sandbox content happened to include a world with gods. The PCs take over said world and kill said gods. This is a sandbox.

In a linear adventure, if the GM hadn't written a "take over the world" or "kill the gods" adventure, it couldn't happen. "For everything that happens, first, there must be a dream". In a sandbox, it can.

[Pelle]

I read that article too, and have most of the same concerns. I don't agree (with him) that taking away agency to enact a plot point is appropriate--better to get the players to voluntarily agree. Giving away agency voluntarily is very different than having it taken from you (especially through deception).


From reading it, I didn't get that that was what he meant. At least to me, introducing an obstacle is not reducing agency, it is just a part of scenario design. And you include obstacles that will potentially lead to interesting situations, like for example a traitor.



That doesn't mean that all channeled adventures (where there is an in-universe, pre-existing reason why only a limited set of approaches will work) are railroads. It's when the adventures grow new roadblocks to keep an otherwise reasonable approach from working because it's not the favored one.

Wasn't his point that growing new roadblocks is indeed railroading, but it doesn't matter, because if so your communication has already broken down?

[Frozen_Feet]

I'm not even sure how "linear causality" differs from normal causality...

"Normal" is an useless qualifier here. The actual contrast points are branching causality, non-linear causality etc.

Under linear causality, a thing causes an effect. The final outcome is proportional to cause.

Under branching causality, a thing could cause several mutually exclusive effects. The most common form in gaming is probabilistic causality, based on random number generation (such as rolling a die). For each possible effect, a number is issued, and the random number generator decides which effect is actualized.

Under non-linear causality, causation is bidirectional, meaning an effect can lead to its own cause. This creates feedback loops which may amplify or weaken the final outcome so that it is disproportionate to the initial cause.

Further discussion would involve acausal and anticausal systems and cause me a migraine.

[Lorsa]

"Normal" is an useless qualifier here. The actual contrast points are branching causality, non-linear causality etc.

Yes, I knew that "normal" was, in the strictest sense, useless when writing it. I guess my point was more "I am not aware of the subsets of causality (nor how it ties into adventure design)".

But let's see if I understand this correctly.



Under linear causality, a thing causes an effect. The final outcome is proportional to cause.

So basically like the example above. I exert force on an object, and its momentum change is proportional to the force exerted (and its mass)?



Under branching causality, a thing could cause several mutually exclusive effects. The most common form in gaming is probabilistic causality, based on random number generation (such as rolling a die). For each possible effect, a number is issued, and the random number generator decides which effect is actualized.

This would be "which opening does the photon travel through in a double-slit experiment"? It appears to me that very few things in the world actually functions under branching causality.



Under non-linear causality, causation is bidirectional, meaning an effect can lead to its own cause. This creates feedback loops which may amplify or weaken the final outcome so that it is disproportionate to the initial cause.

I think I am a little bit lost here. I understand feedback loops, but generally speaking, isn't it just a linear causality connected back into the cause? It seems to me like an example would be that ice reflects light from the sun, as to cool down the Earth, but if ice starts to melt, less light is reflected and therefore the Earth will warm faster leading to more ice being melted? Did I get it right?

Are you saying that the concept of an effect leading to a cause of more of the effect has the name "non-linear causality"?



Further discussion would involve acausal and anticausal systems and cause me a migraine.

Well, we wouldn't want that. I guess I can google it myself.

I still don't quite understand how the concept "linear causality" can be mixed up with that of linear adventure design which is what we discuss here.

[PhoenixPhyre]

From reading it, I didn't get that that was what he meant. At least to me, introducing an obstacle is not reducing agency, it is just a part of scenario design. And you include obstacles that will potentially lead to interesting situations, like for example a traitor.



Wasn't his point that growing new roadblocks is indeed railroading, but it doesn't matter, because if so your communication has already broken down?

Obstacles are fine. Mandating that the obstacles be overcome, or especially overcome in a particular way is a denial of agency. Saying "this person will betray the party, and you can't not have them along" is a denial of agency. He specifically said that denying agency to set up plot points can be a good thing. I disagree--denial of agency is a bad thing. Convincing the players to surrender a portion of their agency can be a good thing (depending on how its used). The issue is one of knowing consent.

Adding in an obstacle to prevent an "off-rails" solution from working is also a denial of agency and that's bad.

Railroading sometimes results from a breakdown in communications. But sometimes it's the result of things like wanting to not throw out prepared material, pride at being out-witted, or other internal DM issues. So reducing it to "talk OOC" isn't always enough--DMs have to watch out for signs of it in themselves to prevent the issue from every happening.

[Segev]

Railroading sometimes results from a breakdown in communications. But sometimes it's the result of things like wanting to not throw out prepared material, pride at being out-witted, or other internal DM issues. So reducing it to "talk OOC" isn't always enough--DMs have to watch out for signs of it in themselves to prevent the issue from every happening.

Well, if the DM is doing it potentially unwittingly, "talk OOC" can be something the players do, too. A level of trust in each others' integrity is required, of course, so that if the DM says, "No, really, I'm not railroading you. Things you don't know about are making this the case," the players are willing to extend trust. Conversely, the DM needs to be willing to listen to those warnings from his players; he keeps that trust only if he doesn't break it. And very few DMs can break that trust without being discovered. Especially if he's already had to lean on it to say, "No, really, this is just how things are, no rails, guys."

[PhoenixPhyre]

Well, if the DM is doing it potentially unwittingly, "talk OOC" can be something the players do, too. A level of trust in each others' integrity is required, of course, so that if the DM says, "No, really, I'm not railroading you. Things you don't know about are making this the case," the players are willing to extend trust. Conversely, the DM needs to be willing to listen to those warnings from his players; he keeps that trust only if he doesn't break it. And very few DMs can break that trust without being discovered. Especially if he's already had to lean on it to say, "No, really, this is just how things are, no rails, guys."

Full agreement here. Hearing the mutters from the players is often a warning sign that either

a) you need to stop leaning on their agency (inadvertently or not)
and/or
b) you need to show your hand a bit more and trust the players not to meta-game.

But even if they don't see it, taking away agency isn't cool in my book. Same as skimming off fractions of cents due to "creative" rounding. It's still theft even if no one notices.

[Florian]

@Lorsa:

Linear causality is simple. You look at the starting conditions, identify the probabilities involved and trace a vector based on the most likely conditions.

Branching causality is a bit more complex. Beyond what you do with linear causality, you also try to anticipate and calculate outside interference and at which point what force is needed to change the vector and how the new vector could look (and in turn be altered again).

(There's a wonderful example for this. There's actually a map for one of the old Lone Wolf adventure books that maps out the whole branching process)

Non-linear causality can also be called "self-fulfilling prophecy". Your expectation inform your actions and your actions lead to an reaction that is based on your initial action and expectations, not how things would have developed without it.

Acausal is interesting because we are hardwired towards a certain level of pattern recognition and our minds automatically connect dots where there is no connection.

Now, the thing is, as an outside observer, all of this and railroading, using force, look the same. We see the vector it moves along and unless we try interacting with it and find out the right force that is needed to create a branch, we don't know what we're dealing with.

[Florian]

Yes, when I casually take over the world, slaughter the gods, and create a new plane of existence filled with custom creatures of my own creation, that is a sandbox. But when I focus on retrieving the Orb of Significance from the Bog of Eternal Stench, that is an adventure.

You know the funny thing that happens when the RAW says "yes" and the sitting says "no"? Exactly this and you will deem the game "railroad" or not, based on the choice the GM made.

[Segev]

You know the funny thing that happens when the RAW says "yes" and the sitting says "no"? Exactly this and you will deem the game "railroad" or not, based on the choice the GM made.

Er... I don't follow this, even in context of what you quoted for it to respond to. Can you elaborate?

[Darth Ultron]

That's not the point. The point is, suppose one GM wrote the content that includes the gods, then dies. A second GM picks up the game, and never writes content or adventures. All they do is arbitrate the rules of the game (you want to jump to the moon? Ok, can you make a DC 5.044 billion jump check?). The sandbox content happened to include a world with gods. The PCs take over said world and kill said gods. This is a sandbox.

Except that makes no sense.

OK, so the DM will never write or make content or adventures, and will do nothing but arbitrate the game rules.

And no game can ever have like lets say 100 trillion things pre made. Like even if a normal DM in a normal game was to make a small city they would at most only make roughly a third of the city and it's not like they have a 100,000 word write up on all 20,000 npcs in the city.

So how does this sandbox game work.

Player 1: My character walks into the shop what does he see for say.

DM: *does and says nothing* (no rules are being used)

So a sandbox is just a random mess like a free form game, except the DM can randomly mention a rule every so often?




In a linear adventure, if the GM hadn't written a "take over the world" or "kill the gods" adventure, it couldn't happen. "For everything that happens, first, there must be a dream". In a sandbox, it can.

Right, in ANY TRPG(like D&D) nothing can happen unless the DM does it, creates it and controls it.

Now it sounds like your saying a Sandbox is just silly free form gaming.

Player one: "My super duper character wants to killz all the gods!"

DM, leaves and goes and finds a normal game.

Player one: "Pew, pew, all the gods are dead and my character is the super super duper now"


Obstacles are fine. Mandating that the obstacles be overcome, or especially overcome in a particular way is a denial of agency. Saying "this person will betray the party, and you can't not have them along" is a denial of agency. He specifically said that denying agency to set up plot points can be a good thing. I disagree--denial of agency is a bad thing. Convincing the players to surrender a portion of their agency can be a good thing (depending on how its used). The issue is one of knowing consent.

But with this Wacky Player Worshiping Attitude, you can't even have a game. The DM just sits there and says ''whatever you players want to happen happens, all hail you great players." So it's not a game, just a Player Wish Fulfillment Activity.

Like, really, ANY time the DM wants to do ANYTHING at all, they have to crawl on the floor over to the players and be like ''I know it will effect your all powerful player agency, but can I please have goblin Bob sneak away with the scroll? Please, pretty please?"

But then Player Agency is a meaningless phrase too...watch for a future thread....

[Xuc Xac]

Except that makes no sense.

OK, so the DM will never write or make content or adventures, and will do nothing but arbitrate the game rules.

And no game can ever have like lets say 100 trillion things pre made. Like even if a normal DM in a normal game was to make a small city they would at most only make roughly a third of the city and it's not like they have a 100,000 word write up on all 20,000 npcs in the city.

So how does this sandbox game work.

Player 1: My character walks into the shop what does he see for say.

DM: *does and says nothing* (no rules are being used) *consults the map, demographics, and encounter tables made by the DM that created the sandbox* *rolls a handful of dice and references the tables* It's a noodle shop. Several customers are sitting at tables eating bowls of spicy noodles in venison broth. The proprietor is a matronly old dwarf woman who is busily filling bowls from a stockpot as tall as she is. According to the sandwich board standing by the entrance, her name is Rhoda Whitlock.

So a sandbox is just a random mess like a free form game, except the DM can randomly mention a rule every so often?


If you go to San Francisco and walk into a random shop, it might be an Apple Store or a Chinese restaurant or something else. If you're on Grant Street, the odds of it being a Chinese restaurant are much higher because it's in Chinatown. That's how you detail a city without specifying each individual building: determine the distributions and roll for percentages. If you want to pick a random human from Earth, he's probably a farmer named Wang. If you pick a random human from Manhattan, you might still get a guy named Wang, but the odds of him being a rice farmer are slim.

[Frozen_Feet]

So basically like the example above. I exert force on an object, and its momentum change is proportional to the force exerted (and its mass)?

Correct.


This would be "which opening does the photon travel through in a double-slit experiment"? It appears to me that very few things in the world actually functions under branching causality.

It's better not to try finding real world parallels because they get headachy. Stick to games: a player decides to attack (cause). On a roll of five, they hit (effect1), on a roll of six+, they miss (effect2). If you make a flowchart of the course of events, there will be a branch where the die is rolled.


I think I am a little bit lost here. I understand feedback loops, but generally speaking, isn't it just a linear causality connected back into the cause? It seems to me like an example would be that ice reflects light from the sun, as to cool down the Earth, but if ice starts to melt, less light is reflected and therefore the Earth will warm faster leading to more ice being melted? Did I get it right?

Physical feedback loops are an example, yes, but the concept expands to temporal loops. Provided time is linear and there are no branches, then yes, you can potentially reduce a physical case of non-linear causality to a linear causal chain. But if they're not...


Are you saying that the concept of an effect leading to a cause of more of the effect has the name "non-linear causality"?

That's an example, yes. An effect eliminating its own cause would be another. Again, if time itself is linear and there are no branches, these may be reducible to linear chains. I say "may" because the actual process might run to other obstacles (such as whether P = NP).


I still don't quite understand how the concept "linear causality" can be mixed up with that of linear adventure design which is what we discuss here.

Because of idiots. But more specifically:

Under linear causality, if X, then Y. The corollary is that if no X, then no Y. Now, in a game with a game master, who decides how causality works? The game master.

In a linear game sequence, players must do X in order to proceed to Y. If players don't do X, then they don't reach Y. Now, in a game with a game master, who decides if such sequences are present? The game master...

If you never think of it too hard, these will appear identical, and after-the-fact they are indistinquishable.

And if you fixate on the one common element they have ("the game master decides") and apply a bit on insane troll logic, you will become like Darth_Ultron and proclaim everything the GM does is railroading and that player agency is a lie. If you also have bad faith issues with your GM, you will become like Florian's "people suffering from Dark Eye post-trauma" and proclaim that GM's position is illegitimate, the GM should stick to the written rules, or that the game would really be better with none of those naughty power-abusing GMs to begin with...

[Pelle]

Obstacles are fine. Mandating that the obstacles be overcome, or especially overcome in a particular way is a denial of agency. Saying "this person will betray the party, and you can't not have them along" is a denial of agency. He specifically said that denying agency to set up plot points can be a good thing. I disagree--denial of agency is a bad thing. Convincing the players to surrender a portion of their agency can be a good thing (depending on how its used). The issue is one of knowing consent.


I can't speak for the author, but he more or less explicitly say that "you can't not have them along" is bad railroading. I notice he actually writes that it's nothing inherently wrong in diminishing player agency to set up a good game or story element, but he also follows that up with well-intentioned GMs let players veer away from it.

However, his latest article is quite illusionism positive (although the intent there is to make a fun explicitly low agency game).



Adding in an obstacle to prevent an "off-rails" solution from working is also a denial of agency and that's bad.


Adding walls to a dungeon is then denial of agency, fair enough, but I don't think that matters in scenario design. When you consider the scenario as a whole, including that preventing obstacle should be done with the intent to increase the total amount of potential interesting situations/choices. Trying to engineer interesting situations and choices in the design is fine to me, as long as they are not forced through in play.

[Lorsa]

@Lorsa:

Linear causality is simple. You look at the starting conditions, identify the probabilities involved and trace a vector based on the most likely conditions.

Yeah, it seems simply enough. Why would it get mixed up with linear adventure design though?



Branching causality is a bit more complex. Beyond what you do with linear causality, you also try to anticipate and calculate outside interference and at which point what force is needed to change the vector and how the new vector could look (and in turn be altered again).

Isn't this just linear causality with multiple causes? I mean, if I set an object in motion and, at a later time, you exert force on this object, both our actions function under "linear causality".

If we're talking about objects in a RPG (which could be story objects), they can, just as with physical objects, usually be altered in an infinity of ways. Therefore, I don't see much point in trying to "anticipate" what might happen, rather be clear on the rules of the world so that when a force occurs that interacts with the object, you can easily recalculate the vector at that moment. What additional benefit does this "thinking in advance" generate?



(There's a wonderful example for this. There's actually a map for one of the old Lone Wolf adventure books that maps out the whole branching process)

Without reading it I can't really comment much unfortunately.



Non-linear causality can also be called "self-fulfilling prophecy". Your expectation inform your actions and your actions lead to an reaction that is based on your initial action and expectations, not how things would have developed without it.

This seem quite different from Frozen_feet's definition. Isn't this still just linear causality but in two steps? That is, my expectation is a cause for my actions and my actions are a cause for the effect that was in line with my expectation? Which is, quite often, how most of our actions work. I have an expectation that drinking water when dehydrated will make me feel better, so I drink water and therefore I feel better. If I didn't have the expectation, as you say, I might not drink the water and then I would still be dehydrated.



Acausal is interesting because we are hardwired towards a certain level of pattern recognition and our minds automatically connect dots where there is no connection.

I had some trouble finding a real definition for acausal. It seems as though it is simply when two events do not share any causal relationship. So events being random would be acausal, and so would any other two unconnected events.

That we might see causal relationships where there are none is another story entirely.



Now, the thing is, as an outside observer, all of this and railroading, using force, look the same. We see the vector it moves along and unless we try interacting with it and find out the right force that is needed to create a branch, we don't know what we're dealing with.

A single occurrence might look the same (but it's not guaranteed), but over the course of many sessions you can usually tell the difference between causality and railroading. You seem to claim that it is impossible for an outside observer to look at an object and figure out what is necessary to create a branch and calculate the likely vector. It may be difficult in some cases, but it is hardly impossible for all.



Correct.

Hurray! Go me!



It's better not to try finding real world parallels because they get headachy. Stick to games: a player decides to attack (cause). On a roll of five, they hit (effect1), on a roll of six+, they miss (effect2). If you make a flowchart of the course of events, there will be a branch where the die is rolled.

Well, this is where it gets interesting to be a bit more technical I think. What does the die roll represent? Is it truly a random effect for a single cause or is it a random determination of if you succeed with your cause or not? I tend to view it as the latter. That is, the die roll represents whether or not you managed to create the cause of [hit enemy X], which would then lead to the effect of [damage to enemy X].

The way you described branching causality seemed to me single cause -> multiple possible effects. But often in games, the die roll does not enter after the cause, instead it occurs before it.

I guess one could look at it as "I swing my sword at enemy X" being the cause which then leads to multiple effects. There is an argument for that.

However, how is that important for, or get mixed up with, adventure design?



Physical feedback loops are an example, yes, but the concept expands to temporal loops. Provided time is linear and there are no branches, then yes, you can potentially reduce a physical case of non-linear causality to a linear causal chain. But if they're not...

If time is not linear then headache begins. Do you have any examples where this actually happens, or alternatively can explain how this concept is important to gaming?



That's an example, yes. An effect eliminating its own cause would be another. Again, if time itself is linear and there are no branches, these may be reducible to linear chains. I say "may" because the actual process might run to other obstacles (such as whether P = NP).

I can enjoy theoretical concepts as much as the other guy, but it seems that the concept of "non-linear causality" (the part that can not be reduced to linear chains) has such a small impact that it's not really necessary to understand adventure design. Do you have an example where it is necessary, and where it may be confused with linear adventure design and/or railroading?



Because of idiots. But more specifically:

Because of idiots was really all the answer I needed. :smallsmile:



Under linear causality, if X, then Y. The corollary is that if no X, then no Y. Now, in a game with a game master, who decides how causality works? The game master.

I thought an effect could have multiple causes? So that you can still have Y even if no X, but if no Y you can be certain there is no X? That's how the logic goes right? If X -> Y, then you can know that not Y -> not X, but not X != not Y.

And yes, the GM decides how causality works. That's obvious?



In a linear game sequence, players must do X in order to proceed to Y. If players don't do X, then they don't reach Y. Now, in a game with a game master, who decides if such sequences are present? The game master...

Again true.



If you never think of it too hard, these will appear identical, and after-the-fact they are indistinquishable.

Well, that's why one shouldn't listen to people that do not think of things hard. Sure, some people may think that they appear identical, but they are not identical, and quite often one can tell one from the other. I know you're merely trying to explain things to me, so I am not trying to argue with you.

I find it fascinating though, as in my experience, a GM who insist on a linear game sequence often fails to uphold linear causality.



And if you fixate on the one common element they have ("the game master decides") and apply a bit on insane troll logic, you will become like Darth_Ultron and proclaim everything the GM does is railroading and that player agency is a lie. If you also have bad faith issues with your GM, you will become like Florian's "people suffering from Dark Eye post-trauma" and proclaim that GM's position is illegitimate, the GM should stick to the written rules, or that the game would really be better with none of those naughty power-abusing GMs to begin with...

And the answer to both is so simple.

For the insane troll logic case; start to use actual, real logic.

For the bad faith issues; play with GMs who you trust.

[Darth Ultron]

If you go to San Francisco and walk into a random shop, it might be an Apple Store or a Chinese restaurant or something else. If you're on Grant Street, the odds of it being a Chinese restaurant are much higher because it's in Chinatown. That's how you detail a city without specifying each individual building: determine the distributions and roll for percentages. If you want to pick a random human from Earth, he's probably a farmer named Wang. If you pick a random human from Manhattan, you might still get a guy named Wang, but the odds of him being a rice farmer are slim.

Sure, I guess this would work for some sort of One Person Game. Like:

The Only Person Around Playing the Game Says to Themselves: "My character Zom walks down Grant Street and enters a shop"
**Words eacho in the otherwise empty room**
The Only Person Around Playing the Game Says to Themselves: "Um, ok, my notes say it's a good chance of being an orc ship...um, so, I just say it's an orc shop selling..um..sporks."
The Only Person Around Playing the Game Says to Themselves: "My character Zom buys a spork"
The Only Person Around Playing the Game Says to Themselves: "Wow, this is the best sandbox game 4Ever!"



Adding walls to a dungeon is then denial of agency, fair enough, but I don't think that matters in scenario design. When you consider the scenario as a whole, including that preventing obstacle should be done with the intent to increase the total amount of potential interesting situations/choices. Trying to engineer interesting situations and choices in the design is fine to me, as long as they are not forced through in play.

One of the BIG Problems with Player Agency (see the upcoming thread Why Player Agency is a Meaningless Phrase, coming to a Forum near you soon) is that even the Wacky Player Agency Anarchist, will say it's ''ok'' to take away/lessen the ''agency'' sometimes....and ''sometimes'' is like ''all the time'', so it's meaningless.

[Mordaedil]

Sure, I guess this would work for some sort of One Person Game. Like:

The Only Person Around Playing the Game Says to Themselves: "My character Zom walks down Grant Street and enters a shop"
**Words eacho in the otherwise empty room**
The Only Person Around Playing the Game Says to Themselves: "Um, ok, my notes say it's a good chance of being an orc ship...um, so, I just say it's an orc shop selling..um..sporks."
The Only Person Around Playing the Game Says to Themselves: "My character Zom buys a spork"
The Only Person Around Playing the Game Says to Themselves: "Wow, this is the best sandbox game 4Ever!"
You literally are so dense, you have no idea how to even play a single person at a game? Do you read books by flipping to the last page? Do you cheat in choose your own adventure novels?

Do you just move your piece to the center in Ludo?

[Darth Ultron]

You literally are so dense, you have no idea how to even play a single person at a game? Do you read books by flipping to the last page? Do you cheat in choose your own adventure novels?

I have never played a one person only TRPG. I do SOLO Player games (one DM, me, and a Player) all the time. And I have ''played'' a couple Lone Wolf Adventure books, and the AD&D copies......and that solo game back in the Basic set("I'll get you Bargle!")

[Mordaedil]

Usually you play those games by referencing a series of tables and rolling a percentile die to determine what challenge you are facing. Of course you could cheat and give yourself whatever you want, but usually they are written with the idea that you play according to the recipe as printed for you.

[Frozen_Feet]

This seem quite different from Frozen_feet's definition. Isn't this still just linear causality but in two steps? That is, my expectation is a cause for my actions and my actions are a cause for the effect that was in line with my expectation? Which is, quite often, how most of our actions work. I have an expectation that drinking water when dehydrated will make me feel better, so I drink water and therefore I feel better. If I didn't have the expectation, as you say, I might not drink the water and then I would still be dehydrated.

A self-fullfilling prophecy is an example of non-linear causality, yes. The reason why is: knowledge of an effect which does not exist yet causes the effect. Your ability to reconcile a self-fullfilling prophecy with linear causality depends on your ability to explain how knowledge of a thing that does not exist yet was available. In your example of thirst and dehydration, this happens via assuming the future is like the past ("Drinking water before has made me feel better when dehydrated, therefore drinking water now will make me feel better.") This is not possible for all cases of self-fullfilling prophecy - some require honest-to-god time travel (either mental or physical) and a stable time loop to happen.


I had some trouble finding a real definition for acausal. It seems as though it is simply when two events do not share any causal relationship. So events being random would be acausal, and so would any other two unconnected events.

Random events and independent origination (=things that "just happen") are examples of acausality, yes, but where it gets complex is in prediction of hypothetical or future entities.

For example, in acausal trade, two (or more) parties benefit from each other by making and acting on correct hypotheses they made of each other, despite not being able to communicate with or even confirm existence of each other. This is acausal because a causal interaction which would explain or confirm correctness of the hypotheses is obscure or does not exist.

There's also acausal signal processing which is done after-the-fact. In this case, once a timeline (such as an audio record) is obtained, one point on it is arbitrarily defined as the present, and going forward, output values in the present take input values from both past and the future. You might notice a similarity to self-fullfilling prophecy above: in both cases, a thing is reliant on something that "does not exist yet".

Finally, there is the hypothetical notion of anticausality: a thing with present internal state and output solely reliant on inputs from the future, and none from the past or present.


Well, this is where it gets interesting to be a bit more technical I think. What does the die roll represent? Is it truly a random effect for a single cause or is it a random determination of if you succeed with your cause or not? I tend to view it as the latter. That is, the die roll represents whether or not you managed to create the cause of [hit enemy X], which would then lead to the effect of [damage to enemy X].

Hoo boy.

For purposes of this discussion, you can entirely disregard "what does the die roll represent?" The cause for the die roll is a player's prompt for rolling dice. Within the game fiction, you can come up with after-the-fact explanations to create the illusion of linear causality, but provided the die is truly random, the branch always appears. At most, you're moving the branch up or down the causal chain.

The thornier question is "is the die truly random?" There are three possibilities:

1) yes it is. This assumption is necessary for real discussion about branching causality. Without true randomness, the branches on your flowchart are just if-then-predictions based on incomplete information.
2) the die is high chaos pseudorandom. In theory, the output of the die is purely deterministic effect of physical laws, but there are too many variables involved to predict it before rolling the die. Some branches on your flowchart were never going to be actualized, but you couldn't know this beforehand.
3) the die is low chaos pseudorandom. In theory, its output is purely deterministic effect of physical laws, and in practice, it's possible to predict what the outputs from the dice are. This makes the branches on the flowchart pointless - anyone who knows how the pseudorandom generator works can either predict or force the game to work in entirely linear fashion.

It's worth noting that all computer games with seemingly random elements rely on pseudorandomity.


The way you described branching causality seemed to me single cause -> multiple possible effects. But often in games, the die roll does not enter after the cause, instead it occurs before it.

False. The actual cause for the die roll is a player prompting for it. The in-game explanation for what the die roll represents does not matter. Whether the branching happens depends solely on whether the die roll is true random or pseudorandom.


I guess one could look at it as "I swing my sword at enemy X" being the cause which then leads to multiple effects. There is an argument for that.

However, how is that important for, or get mixed up with, adventure design?

Because you can obviously design games with branching causality, or at least games which appear to have such, if you have access to truly random or high chaos pseudorandom number generators. It is an easy way to add elements of risk, uncertainty and surprise into a game. All games of chance rely on this.


If time is not linear then headache begins. Do you have any examples where this actually happens, or alternatively can explain how this concept is important to gaming?

Ever played a game focused on time travel or prophecy? Or, for added hilarity, one with multiple types of both?

If not, thank the gods and never do it.


I can enjoy theoretical concepts as much as the other guy, but it seems that the concept of "non-linear causality" (the part that can not be reduced to linear chains) has such a small impact that it's not really necessary to understand adventure design. Do you have an example where it is necessary, and where it may be confused with linear adventure design and/or railroading?

1) Non-linear causality is necessary for complex games with feedback loops. It's not necessary for your average game.
2) Understanding branching causality is necessary for games with notable elements of chance - in practice, this means ability to draw if-then-flowcharts.
3) Acausality and anticausality only really have utility for games about prophecy and time travel.
4) All of these are just confusing, period. I would not expect your average games to be able to recognize or meaningfully discuss complex forms of causality. Especially self-fullfilling prophecies are easy to see as the GM baiting or railroading players.


I thought an effect could have multiple causes? So that you can still have Y even if no X, but if no Y you can be certain there is no X? That's how the logic goes right? If X -> Y, then you can know that not Y -> not X, but not X != not Y.

An effect truly having multiple causes would actually be a form of branching causality, just reversed in time (going from present to past instead of present to future). In true linear causality, only one set of causes is allowed for particular a effect; multiple causes can contribute to the same effect, but in those cases all of them must be present for that particular effect, and the effect will be different if any of them are absent. No mutually exclusive causes can ever contribute to an effect. You can, however, have incomplete information or high chaos, in which case reverse-engineering cause from effect may be impossible, leading to the impression thata particular effects could be result from multiple different sets of causes.

A more down to Earth way to explain the same: there are many possible causes of my death, but in examining each possible death closely you'd find that they're all different. If there are multiple causes which could have caused my death in exactly identical way, you are dealing with some esoteric form of causality.


Sure, some people may think that they appear identical, but they are not identical, and quite often one can tell one from the other. I know you're merely trying to explain things to me, so I am not trying to argue with you.

The important part is "after the fact". The only way you can know if something was linear or not is if you can return the game to exact same state as it was before the action, and then repeating the action. This is impossible to do with most tabletop roleplaying games. With a computerized game, you can approximate this if you can figure out what the pseudorandom generator uses as a seed - if you know the seed, you can indeed replicate a supposedly random event. Or, for a linear game sequence, simply reload an earlier saved game and replay the game.

For a tabletop game, you must be able to observe the process of play as it happens. And possibly have peeked into the GM's notes beforehand.


I find it fascinating though, as in my experience, a GM who insist on a linear game sequence often fails to uphold linear causality.

There's an actual reason for that. It's because the GM in effect has acausal knowledge of game events - future knowledge of things which don't yet exist. They might be using input from those events in addition to past and present actions of players to decide what the output of the game should be. ("So the player is moving the rock, but if the rock is moved, the players will find a sword that they're not supposed to find untill later, so moving the rock fails...")


And the answer to both is so simple.

For the insane troll logic case; start to use actual, real logic.

For the bad faith issues; play with GMs who you trust.

For the first, people suck at logic. Insane troll logic, sad as it is, often is the result of people trying to apply "real logic" and failing. Even Darth_Ultron manages to sound reasonable from time to time before they suddenly make a leap to an absurd conclusion.

For the second, there is a sad metagame reality which complicates the issue. Basically, once upon a time, there were players who didn't know what a "GM who you can trust" is like. Because of this, some of them ended up playing with GMs they really shouldn't have trusted. Due to assuming the future is like the past (sound familiar?), they carried their trust issues from one game to the next, and even taught others to assume the worst of their GMs. The end result of this is people who believe "GM who you can trust" is an oxymoron: GM is in a position of power, power always gets abused, hence no GM is trustworthy.

[Florian]

@Lorsa:


The difference between "linear adventure/game design" and "linear causality" is that the former needs a specific end point that the whole vector is mapped towards, while the later only ever has a starting position and is mapped based on causality and probability, with no specific goal in mind.

The Self-Fulfilling Prophecy is a good example because the knowledge you base your actions upon and the actual situation don't have to share a direct relation but is still resolved.

[Segev]

Technically you don't need foreknowledge for a self-fulfilling prophecy. All you need is for people to believe in it, and their belief to lead to its fulfillment.

"I predict that there will be a war next year! Prepare, O my people!"

"We hear you! We prepare! ... It is now eleven months later! The nations around us are growing belligerent about our preparations! Lead us to war, O Prophet!"

[Max_Killjoy]

@Lorsa:


The difference between "linear adventure/game design" and "linear causality" is that the former needs a specific end point that the whole vector is mapped towards, while the later only ever has a starting position and is mapped based on causality and probability, with no specific goal in mind.

The Self-Fulfilling Prophecy is a good example because the knowledge you base your actions upon and the actual situation don't have to share a direct relation but is still resolved.

So what's the difference between "linear causality", and "non-linear causality", or just "causality"?

[Lorsa]

I will answer the longer posts later (when time is given).


Technically you don't need foreknowledge for a self-fulfilling prophecy. All you need is for people to believe in it, and their belief to lead to its fulfillment.

"I predict that there will be a war next year! Prepare, O my people!"

"We hear you! We prepare! ... It is now eleven months later! The nations around us are growing belligerent about our preparations! Lead us to war, O Prophet!"

I don't quite see how this is not linear causality. It is basically [One nation prepares for war] (cause) -> Other nations prepare for war (effect). Seems clearly linear to me?

[Frozen_Feet]

To answer whether it's linear or non-linear, you have to explain why people believe a war is coming and why this leads them to behave in the way that causes the war. Like in Lorsa's thirst example, one way to reconcile a self-fullfilling prophecy with linear causality is that people are projecting past events into the future: "last time things were like this, a war was about to start, so war must be starting". It's still non-linear in the sense that people are reacting to something that does not exist yet.

[Segev]

I will answer the longer posts later (when time is given).



I don't quite see how this is not linear causality. It is basically [One nation prepares for war] (cause) -> Other nations prepare for war (effect). Seems clearly linear to me?
Sorry, I should have been clearer. I was very carefully not touching the (non)linear causality arguments and just pointing out that a self-fulfilling prophecy can come in the form of somebody stating something and convincing people it will be true, so they make it come true, at LEAST as easily as it can be a literal prophecy that only comes true because people know of it.



I confess that I'm not sure who's arguing what for what meaning of "linear causality." I could try to comment on linear games again, but I don't think that's what's being addressed.

[jayem]

So what's the difference between "linear causality", and "non-linear causality", or just "causality"?
The way I understand it from the thread (and this is partially put so people can correct).
Firstly while there is a link between branching causality and a branching game, and non branching causality and a linear game. A Game with Linear Causality is not the same as a Linear Game. This is important.

You can draw a timeline with state at 1900, 1910, 1920, 1930, 1940... In a causal system you can draw connections between them, but...
In Linear Causality Retrospectively any connections go forward a small distance in time (longer distances via intermediary states). So you can draw the little arrows on the line, because there's nothing getting in the way. WW1 only happens because of the state in 1913 which depends on 1912. If you had an axis for location, then things would get messy on any non-trivial scale.
In Non-Linear Causality the connections can go backwards or skip. Even if you ignore the location the traces get messy and you can't draw a nice line. Maybe WW1 happened because Hitler tried to take out Caesar in 60BC, and Caesar's (via some time relay) arranged an assassination of that significant Austrian in 1914. Or if you try to draw the events in "All you zombies"

In a Non-Causality situation, there is no connection.

With 'sufficient information' (any of these) become a linear game or deterministic universe.

In Branching Causality (FF), there are some uncertain variables that have an impact at the appropriate scale (in an RPG this includes significant decisions of the players and significant results of future die roles), this means that depending on that unknown the next state could be slightly different (Roy lands on something soft and doesn't die). This means that there are at least 2 different hypothetical 1914's coming from the same 1913 so you need to draw them branching out. Retrospectively it becomes linear.

[Xuc Xac]

Sure, I guess this would work for some sort of One Person Game.

It would. It works quite well with any number of players. It also has the benefit of being reusable so you don't need to worry about the players "knowing the ending".

[Lorsa]

A self-fullfilling prophecy is an example of non-linear causality, yes. The reason why is: knowledge of an effect which does not exist yet causes the effect. Your ability to reconcile a self-fullfilling prophecy with linear causality depends on your ability to explain how knowledge of a thing that does not exist yet was available. In your example of thirst and dehydration, this happens via assuming the future is like the past ("Drinking water before has made me feel better when dehydrated, therefore drinking water now will make me feel better.") This is not possible for all cases of self-fullfilling prophecy - some require honest-to-god time travel (either mental or physical) and a stable time loop to happen.

I think examples would be good to help me understand how self-fulfilling prophecies are non-linear causality and how it differs from linear type causality.

What type of self-fulfilling prophecies are we talking about? Is it the type where a person has a "revelation" that they will die by drowning and as such takes actions to avoid water, but in the end those actions has the cause of the person eventually drowning?

I feel as such a thing only qualifies as "non-linear causality" in a fictional narrative, as any real world examples would involve, well, linear causality (as in, one action leads to one effect etc). Where is my understanding flawed?




Random events and independent origination (=things that "just happen") are examples of acausality, yes, but where it gets complex is in prediction of hypothetical or future entities.

I'll try to wrap my head around it, but I feel as though I might misunderstand some of the examples.



For example, in acausal trade, two (or more) parties benefit from each other by making and acting on correct hypotheses they made of each other, despite not being able to communicate with or even confirm existence of each other. This is acausal because a causal interaction which would explain or confirm correctness of the hypotheses is obscure or does not exist.

Do you mean that two parties both act on prediction of acausal events in fact being causal and as they act on this prediction they both benefit in the way they assumed? So to them, it may seem as if there is a causal relationship but indeed there is none?



There's also acausal signal processing which is done after-the-fact. In this case, once a timeline (such as an audio record) is obtained, one point on it is arbitrarily defined as the present, and going forward, output values in the present take input values from both past and the future. You might notice a similarity to self-fullfilling prophecy above: in both cases, a thing is reliant on something that "does not exist yet".

This one I tried to understand, but had some difficulties with. It seems as though you said that there is a complete set of data, and that an arbitrary time T=0 is set somewhere in this data range and then the output from T=0 uses an algorithm which takes input from both negative and positive T.

But, as the data set already exists, it doesn't actually take data "from the future". Otherwise you have to explain how, physically, something can take data which does not exist yet (as I can't quite understand it). Since the data set exists, isn't the output dependent on linear causality based on the data set in question and the time chosen as T=0?



Finally, there is the hypothetical notion of anticausality: a thing with present internal state and output solely reliant on inputs from the future, and none from the past or present.

Which seems to only show up in RPGs with railroading?



Hoo boy.

For purposes of this discussion, you can entirely disregard "what does the die roll represent?" The cause for the die roll is a player's prompt for rolling dice. Within the game fiction, you can come up with after-the-fact explanations to create the illusion of linear causality, but provided the die is truly random, the branch always appears. At most, you're moving the branch up or down the causal chain.

The thornier question is "is the die truly random?" There are three possibilities:

1) yes it is. This assumption is necessary for real discussion about branching causality. Without true randomness, the branches on your flowchart are just if-then-predictions based on incomplete information.
2) the die is high chaos pseudorandom. In theory, the output of the die is purely deterministic effect of physical laws, but there are too many variables involved to predict it before rolling the die. Some branches on your flowchart were never going to be actualized, but you couldn't know this beforehand.
3) the die is low chaos pseudorandom. In theory, its output is purely deterministic effect of physical laws, and in practice, it's possible to predict what the outputs from the dice are. This makes the branches on the flowchart pointless - anyone who knows how the pseudorandom generator works can either predict or force the game to work in entirely linear fashion.

It's worth noting that all computer games with seemingly random elements rely on pseudorandomity.



False. The actual cause for the die roll is a player prompting for it. The in-game explanation for what the die roll represents does not matter. Whether the branching happens depends solely on whether the die roll is true random or pseudorandom.

Well, I guess we both know that normal RPG dice are high-chaos pseudorandom. I've always been a bit upset why lectures in probability uses dice as examples, when we know that dice are not truly random.

In any case, it seems as though we have two sets of causality in play.

Real world (RW) and in-world (IW). And that RW branching causality can map to IW linear causality. The branching happens in the real world, whereas the in.game world still upholds linear causality, if a fictional world can be claimed to have causality in the first place (perhaps the semblance thereof).



Because you can obviously design games with branching causality, or at least games which appear to have such, if you have access to truly random or high chaos pseudorandom number generators. It is an easy way to add elements of risk, uncertainty and surprise into a game. All games of chance rely on this.

True enough. Truly random or high-chaos pseudorandom generators can prompt a branching type causality. Probability is a thing.



Ever played a game focused on time travel or prophecy? Or, for added hilarity, one with multiple types of both?

If not, thank the gods and never do it.

Actually, I have not. And I don't think I ever will.

I have had games where PCs have the power to see into the future, and it always turned out to be a headache for me (the GM). But I managed to fix it with them only seeing the most probable future based on the current state, and therefore could take actions to change or avoid it.



1) Non-linear causality is necessary for complex games with feedback loops. It's not necessary for your average game.
2) Understanding branching causality is necessary for games with notable elements of chance - in practice, this means ability to draw if-then-flowcharts.
3) Acausality and anticausality only really have utility for games about prophecy and time travel.
4) All of these are just confusing, period. I would not expect your average games to be able to recognize or meaningfully discuss complex forms of causality. Especially self-fullfilling prophecies are easy to see as the GM baiting or railroading players.

I guess one can say though that the semblance of causality in games is important, and that all players understand which type is in effect. In order for a player to have reasonable agency in a RPG, there has to be some form of continuity in the cause-and-effect between past and future states.



An effect truly having multiple causes would actually be a form of branching causality, just reversed in time (going from present to past instead of present to future). In true linear causality, only one set of causes is allowed for particular a effect; multiple causes can contribute to the same effect, but in those cases all of them must be present for that particular effect, and the effect will be different if any of them are absent. No mutually exclusive causes can ever contribute to an effect. You can, however, have incomplete information or high chaos, in which case reverse-engineering cause from effect may be impossible, leading to the impression thata particular effects could be result from multiple different sets of causes.

A more down to Earth way to explain the same: there are many possible causes of my death, but in examining each possible death closely you'd find that they're all different. If there are multiple causes which could have caused my death in exactly identical way, you are dealing with some esoteric form of causality.

Isn't the latter just a matter of scale? If you simply think of the effect being your death, then it can certainly have multiple causes. Therefore, you can not say "if I'm not decapitated, I am not dead", since you could also have been poisoned. But you can say "if I'm not dead, I'm certainly not decapitated".

I thought that's why logic invented the "if and only if" statement, to differentiate between cases where multiple causes leading to the same effect and where only one cause can have the effect. Why is the linear causality depending on being "if and only if", and what type would then be only "if"?



The important part is "after the fact". The only way you can know if something was linear or not is if you can return the game to exact same state as it was before the action, and then repeating the action. This is impossible to do with most tabletop roleplaying games. With a computerized game, you can approximate this if you can figure out what the pseudorandom generator uses as a seed - if you know the seed, you can indeed replicate a supposedly random event. Or, for a linear game sequence, simply reload an earlier saved game and replay the game.

For a tabletop game, you must be able to observe the process of play as it happens. And possibly have peeked into the GM's notes beforehand.

Yes indeed, in a RPG you have to observe it during play. Which often becomes "I just did this action, which should logically have this effect (and has in the past), but for some reason it didn't... why did you break linear causality dear GM?" Ultimately it's a matter of trust, as the GM might have knowledge of things the other players do not, but sometimes it is obvious.



There's an actual reason for that. It's because the GM in effect has acausal knowledge of game events - future knowledge of things which don't yet exist. They might be using input from those events in addition to past and present actions of players to decide what the output of the game should be. ("So the player is moving the rock, but if the rock is moved, the players will find a sword that they're not supposed to find untill later, so moving the rock fails...")

I didn't think of it in those terms before, but it makes sense. And, when explained like that, makes it obvious why the practice is bad (well, why I think it's bad anyway).



For the first, people suck at logic. Insane troll logic, sad as it is, often is the result of people trying to apply "real logic" and failing. Even Darth_Ultron manages to sound reasonable from time to time before they suddenly make a leap to an absurd conclusion.

Failing isn't so bad. What is bad is refusal to accept the failure when given proof of such. I fail at logic as well at times, but I usually alter my opinion when given sufficient proof of my error.



For the second, there is a sad metagame reality which complicates the issue. Basically, once upon a time, there were players who didn't know what a "GM who you can trust" is like. Because of this, some of them ended up playing with GMs they really shouldn't have trusted. Due to assuming the future is like the past (sound familiar?), they carried their trust issues from one game to the next, and even taught others to assume the worst of their GMs. The end result of this is people who believe "GM who you can trust" is an oxymoron: GM is in a position of power, power always gets abused, hence no GM is trustworthy.

Seems to be a bit a case of over-stereotyping, of assuming that all GMs are the same (which seems incredibly stupid given that people generally are different from one another). I can understand how you might assume the future with the same GM would be like the past, unless given evidence of the contrary (say, the GM admitting their faults and promising to change).

[Max_Killjoy]

Failing isn't so bad. What is bad is refusal to accept the failure when given proof of such. I fail at logic as well at times, but I usually alter my opinion when given sufficient proof of my error.


It's not uncommon in certain circles for people to present unfalsifiable theories and then accuse anyone who questions the lack of empirical grounding of "bad logic" -- to create the theory based on presumption and then hammer any square pegs that show up into the round holes of their philosophy.

[jayem]

I think examples would be good to help me understand how self-fulfilling prophecies are non-linear causality and how it differs from linear type causality.

In any case, it seems as though we have two sets of causality in play.

Real world (RW) and in-world (IW). And that RW branching causality can map to IW linear causality. The branching happens in the real world, whereas the in.game world still upholds linear causality, if a fictional world can be claimed to have causality in the first place (perhaps the semblance thereof).

I don't see how you can have meaningful RW branching situations (reliably) mapping onto IW linear ones.

If regardless of the RW choice the same RW&IW outcome happens then the real world branch wasn't a cause of anything. The players rolled dice while the GM (or perhaps player) told his awesome story.

I mean you could argue that your switching IW universes for the one in which the premises gave the right outcome, and sometimes that would make sense (random encounters being an easy example).

But where the PC's decisions and outcomes are involved that seems a bit ugly. If to the player and GM it could have gone either way, it seems so much easier to make that the default case for the character and world too, rather than having a double disconnect, "well sure the character knows how much his foot is hurting but you the player don't till you fail to make the jump" (whereas the fact that the Orc always knew where he was IW but the GM didn't OW is not quite so bad).

[Darth Ultron]

It would. It works quite well with any number of players. It also has the benefit of being reusable so you don't need to worry about the players "knowing the ending".

I'm sure it works great in the Other All Player games too. Where everyone just sits around and says ''and then''.

[Frozen_Feet]

@Lorsa: you seem to have grokked most of what I said, I'm replying only to parts which still seem confusing.


I think examples would be good to help me understand how self-fulfilling prophecies are non-linear causality and how it differs from linear type causality.

What type of self-fulfilling prophecies are we talking about? Is it the type where a person has a "revelation" that they will die by drowning and as such takes actions to avoid water, but in the end those actions has the cause of the person eventually drowning?

A self-fullfilling prophecy is any case where knowledge of effect which does not yet exist leads to cause of effect. Type of action is irrelevant, it does not matter if you tried to avert or fullfill the prophecy.

The non-linear part was and still is the fact that the effect that is being reacted to does not exist yet. There is loop from effect to cause, and then from cause back to effect.

Again, you can reconcile this type of non-linear causality with linear causality, provided you can explain how knowledge of a thing that does not exist yet could arise solely from past causes. If you can't - if, for example, the knowledge randomly appeared (acausal information) - then you're dealing with non-linear causality.


I feel as such a thing only qualifies as "non-linear causality" in a fictional narrative, as any real world examples would involve, well, linear causality (as in, one action leads to one effect etc). Where is my understanding flawed?

In the assumption that causality is linear in the real world. But examining that would require in-depth discussion of the nature of time and many worlds interpretation of Quantum mechanics. All of the more bizarre versions of causality are chiefly hypothetical, that's why asked you to not try to find real world parallels.


Do you mean that two parties both act on prediction of acausal events in fact being causal and as they act on this prediction they both benefit in the way they assumed? So to them, it may seem as if there is a causal relationship but indeed there is none?

Yes. The concept is derived from concept of Superrationality, which is a constructed strategy for Prisoner's Dilemma.



This one I tried to understand, but had some difficulties with. It seems as though you said that there is a complete set of data, and that an arbitrary time T=0 is set somewhere in this data range and then the output from T=0 uses an algorithm which takes input from both negative and positive T.

But, as the data set already exists, it doesn't actually take data "from the future". Otherwise you have to explain how, physically, something can take data which does not exist yet (as I can't quite understand it). Since the data set exists, isn't the output dependent on linear causality based on the data set in question and the time chosen as T=0?

You are correct insofar that in the real world, we can only do acausal processing on an existing record, because we don't have time travel. That is, we are not physically taking data from the future, we are replaying past data and modifying it as we go.

However, if dimensionality of time and eternalism hold true, then a timeline already exist (possibly in a loop) and future events inform present ones. General Relativity would imply this, and several hypotheses exist solely to patch away the uncomfortable implications. One of these is the Timeline protection conjecture, which suggests that anything travelling backwards in time would have to pass through a singularity. This would preserve linear causality by preventing any paradoxes which would violate it.

For the record, we do not know if the timeline protection conjecture holds, but neither do we know if the interpretation of relativity which would allow for time travel holds. Try not to think too hard about it.



[Anticausality] seems to only show up in RPGs with railroading?

Technically not, but the spirit of your statement is correct. A railroaded game is anticausal in the sense that current game events are determined by the GM's knowledge of future game events, and not by past and present actions of player characters.


In any case, it seems as though we have two sets of causality in play.

Real world (RW) and in-world (IW). And that RW branching causality can map to IW linear causality. The branching happens in the real world, whereas the in.game world still upholds linear causality, if a fictional world can be claimed to have causality in the first place (perhaps the semblance thereof).

Fictional world causality is always technically subset of real world causality. What you say is still practically correct. However, the more interesting application of this division is that a fictional world can have events with arbitrary causality when viewed from within that world, and they can only be reconciled with linear causality when real world knowledge is used.

Or, simply, IW causality can at least appear any of non-linear, branching, acausal etc. even if the real world is subject to fully deterministic linear causality.


Isn't the latter just a matter of scale? If you simply think of the effect being your death, then it can certainly have multiple causes. Therefore, you can not say "if I'm not decapitated, I am not dead", since you could also have been poisoned. But you can say "if I'm not dead, I'm certainly not decapitated".

Linear causality is deterministic. That is, I will only die once, in one specific manner. The idea that I could possibly die in other, mutually exclusive ways is an illusion created by incomplete information. I only appear to have multiple possible ways of dying because the world is too high chaos to predict the single correct one.


I thought that's why logic invented the "if and only if" statement, to differentiate between cases where multiple causes leading to the same effect and where only one cause can have the effect. Why is the linear causality depending on being "if and only if", and what type would then be only "if"?

No, logic invented such phrases because of incomplete information and because logic has to be able to deal with other forms of causality than just linear. Also, vagueness of natural language. The set "possible deaths of Frozen_Feet" is a largely arbitary collection of mutually exclusive hypothetical events. There isn't a single, discreet effect that is the same across all of them, that is an illusion caused by natural language abstracting away details to lump roughly similar things into one word.


Seems to be a bit a case of over-stereotyping, of assuming that all GMs are the same (which seems incredibly stupid given that people generally are different from one another).

There is a reason why I prefaced this line of discussion with "because idiots".

Also, authority is always illegitimate. Row row fight the power!

[Xuc Xac]

I'm sure it works great in the Other All Player games too. Where everyone just sits around and says ''and then''.

I don't know what those games are, but it worked very well for D&D for the past 44 years. It's a rather popular game. I'm surprised you haven't heard of it.

[Florian]

So what's the difference between "linear causality", and "non-linear causality", or just "causality"?

Basically, different prediction methods that lead to different outcomes.

"Linear Causality" has a very concrete start/stop condition, but will either not start, start and move along a certain vector or just stop at some point along the vector.

In typical D&D discussion, that would be a "Bodak Apocalypse" that needs one Bodak and one victim to start and will only end when all Bodaks are eliminated. Or it can also frequently be observed when people try to extrapolate how a setting would look like when then actual game rules are used as a basis, like Teleport Circles being the start state for the Tippyverse.

"Non-linear Causality" doesn't use "A follows B" as the temporal basis, but rather uses an assumption of how A look that shapes B, which then in turn has A as an outcome (as one example for it, as this is more about the temporal axis, more variations are possible)

You invited to a new D&D group that you don't know and you haven't had a session zero yet. Now you and your fellow players don't know each other and the gm, but you read this forum. So all of you assume that "Fighters suck, wizard rock, everybody plays wizards anyway" is true, so everyone creates a Wizard and shows up with that character four the session, making "everybody plays a wizard" true. The initial cause has nothing to do with the actual game, but the assumed outcome will happen anyways.

"Just Causality" is more an observation that "A follows B" than a reduction method.

[Xuc Xac]

You invited to a new D&D group that you don't know and you haven't had a session zero yet. Now you and your fellow players don't know each other and the gm, but you read this forum. So all of you assume that "Fighters suck, wizard rock, everybody plays wizards anyway" is true, so everyone creates a Wizard and shows up with that character four the session, making "everybody plays a wizard" true. The initial cause has nothing to do with the actual game, but the assumed outcome will happen anyways.


That's just another example of the same thing. "Fighters suck, Wizards rock" therefore everyone chooses to play a wizard, including in this example of a new group where the players don't know each other yet. The fact that they are strangers is a red herring. They didn't choose to play wizards because they think "everyone plays Wizards anyway". They chose to play Wizards because "fighters suck, Wizards rock", just like they would have chosen if they weren't strangers because "fighters suck, Wizards rock" is the reason "everyone plays Wizards anyway".

[Max_Killjoy]

Basically, different prediction methods that lead to different outcomes.

"Linear Causality" has a very concrete start/stop condition, but will either not start, start and move along a certain vector or just stop at some point along the vector.

In typical D&D discussion, that would be a "Bodak Apocalypse" that needs one Bodak and one victim to start and will only end when all Bodaks are eliminated. Or it can also frequently be observed when people try to extrapolate how a setting would look like when then actual game rules are used as a basis, like Teleport Circles being the start state for the Tippyverse.

"Non-linear Causality" doesn't use "A follows B" as the temporal basis, but rather uses an assumption of how A look that shapes B, which then in turn has A as an outcome (as one example for it, as this is more about the temporal axis, more variations are possible)

You invited to a new D&D group that you don't know and you haven't had a session zero yet. Now you and your fellow players don't know each other and the gm, but you read this forum. So all of you assume that "Fighters suck, wizard rock, everybody plays wizards anyway" is true, so everyone creates a Wizard and shows up with that character four the session, making "everybody plays a wizard" true. The initial cause has nothing to do with the actual game, but the assumed outcome will happen anyways.

"Just Causality" is more an observation that "A follows B" than a reduction method.


Makes sense, I think I was just lost in the terminology / language gap.

Simple or direct causality, "A always causes B", like pushing a lamp off the table will cause it to hit the floor.

"Complex causality", where any single decision or event cannot be said to certainly lead to a specific outcome in the future, and it's all probabilities. Statements about this seem to often come down to untestable philosophical positions, such as a yes or no answer to the question "Given all the same exact conditions in 1910, does World War One still happen?"

And "strange causality", where the actual cause is often the belief or prediction that the event would happen.

[Darth Ultron]

I don't know what those games are, but it worked very well for D&D for the past 44 years. It's a rather popular game. I'm surprised you haven't heard of it.

I think you have the wrong game. You really want one of them Storytelling Activities with All Players that just Say Stuff and Tell a Story After.




For the second, there is a sad metagame reality which complicates the issue. Basically, once upon a time, there were players who didn't know what a "GM who you can trust" is like. Because of this, some of them ended up playing with GMs they really shouldn't have trusted. Due to assuming the future is like the past (sound familiar?), they carried their trust issues from one game to the next, and even taught others to assume the worst of their GMs. The end result of this is people who believe "GM who you can trust" is an oxymoron: GM is in a position of power, power always gets abused, hence no GM is trustworthy.

Very true. A couple players had a game with a bad DM, or worse just heard about such a game, and now they go with the idea that ALL Dm's are like that.

[1337 b4k4]

I think you have the wrong game. You really want one of them Storytelling Activities with All Players that just Say Stuff and Tell a Story After.


Right, D&D.

[Xuc Xac]

I think you have the wrong game. You really want one of them Storytelling Activities with All Players that just Say Stuff and Tell a Story After.


And you call them "steamed hams" despite the fact they are obviously grilled?

[Darth Ultron]

And you call them "steamed hams" despite the fact they are obviously grilled?

I was sitting there, with my fork in hand
Staring at my lousy ravioli can
As she walked right in and said to me
Is there any way that I can make your day complete
I told her if there's anyway you can
Could you grease up that old metal roasting pan
And bake me a country ham
Honey glazed with a side of yams
Leave it in till it's golden brown
Pineapples all the way around
Let the sweet smell fill the air
Serve it to me in my underwear
I'm tired of eating imitation Spam
Could you bake me a country ham

[Florian]

Makes sense, I think I was just lost in the terminology / language gap.

The important factors to keep in mind here is the difference between linear/branching causality and linear/branching game.

- Linear Game is basically "a story already told", because it progresses from start (past) to present (starting position) to the future (end of story) as an end-point and can´t diverge or branch.

- Branching Game has the same start and present, but has different possible branching paths for reaching the future, but still with a certain end-point in mind. (ie. for a game that features factions, you're free to align with one faction, which causes the vector to branch at that point but will ultimately still towards a goal).

Please notice that we tend to cross into acausal territory when a gm starts to railroad, because ignoring agency and using force to steer towards the end-point is a purely external and disconnected cause.

Managing game objects based on some sort of predictive causality is different from designing a "game" element around them. Ok, that sounds totally dry, what it means is that those object are not created and managed with "a story already told" in mind, as they lack the "end-point" and basically can´t be railroaded, because the gm can´t really be sure where all of that is heading, just prep something based on predictions, like 3 or 4 branches in advance.

The same concepts are also true and very important when we talk about the players and their game objects, the characters and their agency. Quite a lot of the examples given in this discussion are either non-linear causality or raw acausality and sometimes even anti-causality, because they purely deal with the player and some notions and preferences how to play that particular game, totally disconnected from the in-game reality (ie. coming to a new table with an already finished and flashed-out character with wants and needs, a gaming style already set in place, without ever asking how the goal, like "kill the gods and ascent yourself" will fit with what is actually going on in a) that table and b) that world)

The perception of this matters causes the constant hick-ups in this discussion. If the GM uses a causality-driven setup for a sandbox, the expectation is that player will act upon causal development. If the players expect a "living world" and the GM doesn't map causal development, things will look static.
Being clear how things are handled will be the deciding factor whether actions are "meaningless" or not. Players not expecting a GM to map causality might often "feel railroaded" (instead of actually "being railroaded"), because things can potentially escalate fast and they feel forced into stepping in to prevent the development, instead being able to do what they want (it is always an option to just let things go to hell in a hand basket).

Edit: Musings about causality and how deep the actual chain can be are quite interesting. This is because we can only ever analyze the past and by talking to Zeitzeugen, gleam something from their decision-making process at the time. While I can be fairly certain to state "I only exists because Germany lost WW2", I could not state the probability and path of my parents meeting and conceiving me, because I lack the fundamental knowledge to recalculate the chances. A butterfly might be to blame, or not. Who knows? A little game world is different, because we have the free choice to opt who to follow and which predictive model to chose.

[Florian]

Second post, because the other would get to long.

I wouldn't even call it "insane troll logic". Fact is that we're talking about a very concrete situation, one gm and a group of players. We could go beyond this and examine a purely hypothetical framework of "what role-playing games are capable of?", maybe even "in what fields is role-playing used and what purpose for?", but what exact knowledge gain do we get out of the hypothetical discussion instead of dealing with the actual situation?

Regarding the term "Sandbox", the whole discussion hasn't really move forward. Is it a distinct play style with it´s own rules or is it a method how to play and what considerations to take into account?
Now the former would be pretty acceptable if someone would move forward and point out the concrete rules and framework how a "sandbox" should be handled on both sides, gm and players, which so far didn't happen beyond some anecdotal evidence.

That still has to deal with the nebulous concept of "normal game".

[jayem]

Agree I thin with the first.



Regarding the term "Sandbox", the whole discussion hasn't really move forward. Is it a distinct play style with it´s own rules or is it a method how to play and what considerations to take into account?
Now the former would be pretty acceptable if someone would move forward and point out the concrete rules and framework how a "sandbox" should be handled on both sides, gm and players, which so far didn't happen beyond some anecdotal evidence.

Both? Definitely "descriptive" (as well as proscriptive).

Max page5
And in either case, pre-seeded or emergent, the thing [retrospectively the plot]can come from, or not come from, PC actions -- or lack of actions.

Associated rule...Players actions can have long term consequences

XucXuc page 5
A sandbox is like the real world. There are a lot of great stories and adventures, but they aren't plotted in advance. They happen and then people look back at what happened and tell the story. Sandboxes can be a lot of fun if you want to inhabit and explore another world or trod their jeweled thrones under your sandaled feet to become king by your own hand. Linear adventures are good if you want to be given various cool missions to do for a patron.

Associated rule...the Sandbox-GM shall not have determined a future plot. As GM he shall take no direct action to ensure a given future event happens.

That is "the GM shall have a determined plot" and "player actions have no long term consequences." is a linear game
while "the GM shall have a determined plot" and "player actions have long term consequences." is (to an extent) a contradiction
and "the GM shall not have a determined plot" and "player actions have no long term consequences." is just a bit rubbish

Which isn't quite the same as the logical terms used, but in any case the two pairs of statements are very much linked. My use of corollary is a bit suspect too, 1&5 are more comments on exceptions.


Corollary 1, The GM may in his role as controller of NPCx, within the bounds of NPCx's knowledge and abilities, decide they want to see an event happen and take into account their actions.
Corollary 2, PC success/failure does not depend on a future planned outcome, but on their actions, the world state (and the dice and GM's best impatial judgement)
Corollary 3, The GM must know the current state well enough to enact the consequences sensibly.
Corollary 4, A PC's failure at an action is an opportunity for the game, not a failure of the game.
Corollary 5, This doesn't stop him guessing, and for some situations a guess could be quite accurate (indeed even when thinking as NPCx)

[Florian]

@Jayem:

I'm playing the game for a while now, since Kindergarten some 40 years ago, if you want to know, including not knowing how to deal with the wood grained box when you don't have chainmail, including every group I've ever participated in having to find their own way to play the game, since the "rules" didn't provide nothing - unless you played with Gary.

"Sandbox" is pretty much a self-propagating thing, which each group having an own definition of how it should work and look like, but it´s a play style that was never really supported by later rules and never really codified at times that it was.

[Max_Killjoy]

That would seem to presume that it's just a set of presumptions if the rules (the mechanical part of the game) don't codify and support it.

[Florian]

That would seem to presume that it's just a set of presumptions if the rules (the mechanical part of the game) don't codify and support it.

Huh, Max, you actually sound like you want to partake in a theory discussion and want to propose something based on your personal theory and/or observation. Oh My!

Edit:You will wind out that growing "heritage" tomatoes is a silly concept when those are the standard in other areas,

[jayem]

@Jayem:
"Sandbox" is pretty much a self-propagating thing, which each group having an own definition of how it should work and look like, but it´s a play style that was never really supported by later rules and never really codified at times that it was.

Could you give a couple of examples of the definition? I'm not sure if you're talking a completely different meaning (which is possible, the computing term sandbox is completely different, when you allow for translation as well...), different edge cases but with a common core (NB I'mNotTrevor included hex crawls, which I'd treat differently), expecting all sandboxes to be the same, expecting the base ruleset to say 'sandbox' in every sentence.

What sort of rules are you expecting, what rules don't support it?

Most basic explicit rules (for any system) by definition will work as well in a sandbox as a linear game (in fact arguably marginally better). There isn't a pre-written plot for them to be built round. Of course they also, unsurprisingly, work quite well for a linear game, there isn't a pre-written setting for them to be built round (you do have the issue of 2 potential outcomes).
While rules of the form "The DM decides the outcome [based on the plot/setting]" can be altered fairly easily.

Some modules (for any system) don't support it so well. Especially those that have a fixed plot, that is kind of the point. Curse Of Xanathon doesn't have any options if the players take the wrong action and has Eric to nudge them one way. The Isle of Dread is a bit disconnected but (on landing) is potentially more sandboxy.

[Darth Ultron]

Regarding the term "Sandbox", the whole discussion hasn't really move forward. Is it a distinct play style with it´s own rules or is it a method how to play and what considerations to take into account?
Now the former would be pretty acceptable if someone would move forward and point out the concrete rules and framework how a "sandbox" should be handled on both sides, gm and players, which so far didn't happen beyond some anecdotal evidence.

The closest might be my Reality Gaming: sandbox is the code word for pretending to not be playing a TRPG while playing a TRPG.



That still has to deal with the nebulous concept of "normal game".

It's not so nebulous if you can except things are normal.




XucXuc page 5
A sandbox is like the real world. There are a lot of great stories and adventures, but they aren't plotted in advance. They happen and then people look back at what happened and tell the story.

This is my conclusion of sandboxing is Reality Gaming. It is people, sitting down to play a TRPG but what to believe the illusion that they are doing something else that is REAL.

[1337 b4k4]

The closest might be my Reality Gaming: sandbox is the code word for pretending to not be playing a TRPG while playing a TRPG.

...

This is my conclusion of sandboxing is Reality Gaming. It is people, sitting down to play a TRPG but what to believe the illusion that they are doing something else that is REAL.

10+ pages later and still no progress:


100% of your issues in this thread with understanding have been because rather than listening to what other people are saying, you just assume they're saying something you made up in your own head. Here's a proposal, the next time you start thinking or saying "i guess when you say X you really mean Y" you should stop, realize you're more likely than not wrong and go back and re-read.

[Max_Killjoy]

Huh, Max, you actually sound like you want to partake in a theory discussion and want to propose something based on your personal theory and/or observation. Oh My!


No, I just don't want to presume that's what you're actually saying -- I want to be sure before I scoff at the notion that styles are "undefined" until they have hardcore mechanical support.




Edit:You will wind out that growing "heritage" tomatoes is a silly concept when those are the standard in other areas,


????

[Darth Ultron]

That still has to deal with the nebulous concept of "normal game".

For an example of a game that is not normal: The Solo Activity with the Forced Audience. So for this activity the GM railroads all the characters to stay in a small area, often by making the whole setting just a small area. Then the GM runs a solo game for each players character, while the other players serve as an audience. Each player gets a set amount of time, and then just sits around and watches someone else.

Now there is nothing wrong with this type of game, and many players do love to just sit around and watch someone else play the activity. But a normal TRPG is a group acitivity, and this is not, so it is not normal.

[Segev]

Causality is, at its core, the notion that causes precede effects.

Looping causality allows for either time travel or precognition to have a cause that happens after its effect in a linear timeline, by allowing for that causal event to reach "back" in time to impact the past. Whether that's a prophet seeing the end of the world if Bob is allowed to eat pancakes on the 4th of June, so the prophet bends all his resources to thwarting Bob's pancake-eating plans for that day, or it's a recognition that the local star is going to go supernova in the next thousand years, causing the world to prepare star travel to evacuate thus causing the local populace to found colonies in other systems before the "causal" event - the destruction of their homeworld - actually happens, or it's because Fred sees Julie die in a car crash and goes back in time to make sure he keeps her from getting into that car at that time...this is a time loop of some sort. These are preventative and considered paradoxical if one considers the future event to be essential to prompt the past action, but you can also have self-fulfilling. (El Hazard is an anime that begins with a mysterious girl sending the cast from modern Japan to a fantasy magic world, where the main character meets and falls in love with that mysterious girl, and then time shenanigans happen.)

Branching "causality" is...really just a sort of cop-out that says "everything happens." It still is causal.

Is "linear causality" anything other than saying, "there is only one timeline, and nothing else happened?" Does it mean the timeline was pre-defined, or does it mean that the timeline is merely the only one, with the future yet undetermined, but we can still tell what the causes of all events were by looking back?

[Satinavian]

Branching "causality" is...really just a sort of cop-out that says "everything happens." It still is causal.Branching causality is something else. It is the statement that timelines are not actually lines and instead things that can split and merge all the time.
That would contradict a couple of pretty central and useful assumptions in real world physics but does allow to solve some other pressing problems of cosmology and quantum mechanics and thus is still an interesting idea that gets thrown around occasionally and quite seriously.

For RPGs it has hardly any impact as long as you don't mix it with any devices that would otherwise allow what you call looping causality. Or for ways to transfer information from one timeline to another. But if you do it will become instantly obvious that branching causality is something very different from the more traditional causality. (You usually can ignore all the mathematical implications about symmetry, time direction, conservation laws, entropy etc that would also change based on the used kind of causality )



Is "linear causality" anything other than saying, "there is only one timeline, and nothing else happened?" Does it mean the timeline was pre-defined, or does it mean that the timeline is merely the only one, with the future yet undetermined, but we can still tell what the causes of all events were by looking back? It is usually understood as "Different timelines, if they exist, never mix or cross, there will never be a way to know if other timelines exist, but if they do they belong to a universe that never shares any states with the one this timeline belongs to. There is only one set past and one set future."

But he really important thing is to realize that any description of causality that is not selfcontradicting any universally applyable can never have any spacetime points that are fundamentally different than the rest. And that means that the relation between present and past must be in essence the same as the relation between present and future.

Which means it is stupid to treat the past as an immutable thing set in stone and at the same time ask if the future is open.

[Max_Killjoy]

IMO, only the past is truly linear, while the future quickly becomes a completely uncertain blur looking at all ahead.

Of course, I sometimes doubt that the past or the future exist at all -- it's possible that there is only the present.

[PhoenixPhyre]

For me, discussions of causality in fiction depends strongly on the point of view.

Are we looking in universe? Then there's only either linear causality or looping causality (in the case of time travel). I'd say that prophesies (unless they're actually enforced by cosmic laws) are still linear--they predict the future but people act to bring them about. Branching causality is meaningless within one universe. Because none of those other branches are followed, there's no observable difference between that and linear causality.


No, branching causality doesn't fix anything from a quantum perspective. Because it's completely unmeasurable (by definition). It's a transparent fig leaf at best.


Looking from the author's perspective (or the players'), there is a big difference between the types of causality.

Linear causality usually translates to linear games. X -> Y -> Z, no deviations allowed. The trajectory is infinitely computable given initial conditions.

Branching causality (depending on how the branches recombine, if at all) is the norm for more open games: X -> Y OR Z OR ... which each lead to new things. We're recomputing the forward state of the world based on the actions taken at each time-step. Even though we only follow one branch at each juncture, all the branches are meaningful and we can see them because we're outside, looking in.

Non-linear causality can be either because of railroading (They have to do Y at some future time so they had to have done X right now) or because of temporal shenanigans (which often devolve into branched cosmologies once you change something in the past).

[Florian]

@Satinavian:

Staying with an RPG context, using branching causality as basis to design a dynamically involving scenario without wanting to set the outcome straight away should be the goal.

Let´s say we're going for a "mass warfare" system that still centers on the "heroic deeds" of the characters instead of using straight wargaming rules.

So we set up the starting positioned and method how to resolve the conflict, then identify which "heroic deeds" would have enough impact to straight up create a branch and change how the conflict would resolve. A rather good example for this is found in Necropolis 2350 and the "war flowchart" it provides.

@PhoenixPhyre:

It´s easy to connect Linear Causality to Linear Game by thinking X > Y > Z is a) plot and/or b) the top-level event.
Take a look at a "Heist Diagram". You can find one in the Leverage RPG or in Pathfinder Ultimate Intrigue. Scroll down a bit here for an example http://gamingtrend.com/feature/reviews/silvered-tongues-and-gilded-blades-pathfinder-ultimate-intrigue-review/

Roughly speaking, each circle is a layer of defense/obstacles/misinformation that needs to be breached and you will need to find one or more ways for doing so.

@Max:

There is only the present. Forever.

[Satinavian]

That depends what you do with it.
It questions unitary time evolution and thus also removes conservation of phase space volume. Both are very fine, even esssential, locally but a tad difficult globally so it is fine to regularly question them.
Unfortunately we don't have anything even remotely working to replace it with and quantum mechanics is just too useful which is why we basically handwave our phase space problem and model them phenomenologically instead of insisting on an all encompassing theoretical model. It works well enough for practical applications but is not really satisfying. And yes, i am aware that there are other, far more promising attempts to solve this problem that still keep traditional causality.

But "not measurable" would not strictly be true. While one would not be able to measure anything from any other timeline, there should be effects based on the statistics over all timelines that should influence each of them.

Personally i don't think it is the right idea, but it certainly is more than a 'fig leaf'.


@ Florian
That is still linear causality. PCs are just a part of the dynamic. They are part of the universe. The past causes the PC actions, the PC actions cause future events ->causality is linear.

Just because the GM does not know the result in advance and can only guess possible outcomes it does not become any form of nonlinear causality. It becomes just a nonlinear game. But as long as cause happens before the effect, the causality remains linear.

[Darth Ultron]

10+ pages later and still no progress:

I think my Sandbox = Reality Gaming is huge progress.

[Milo v3]

I think my Sandbox = Reality Gaming is huge progress.

I love how your view on progress is to take a concept everyone but you apparently understands, and then say it's better explained by a random term that you made up yourself.

[Xuc Xac]

I love how your view on progress is to take a concept everyone but you apparently understands, and then say it's better explained by a random term that you made up yourself.

Me too! Wait, no. Not "love". The other thing.

[Darth Ultron]

I love how your view on progress is to take a concept everyone but you apparently understands, and then say it's better explained by a random term that you made up yourself.


I did ask everyone what a sandbox game was, and all I got was a bunch of confused non answers that boiled down to ''it is whatever I personally like in a game." The few who did not respond like that, just said a sandbox game is exactly like all other games, so the word is meaningless.

So the Reality Gaming fits all of that: sandbox is the word used for the Illusion of a reality game.

[Milo v3]

I did ask everyone what a sandbox game was, and all I got was a bunch of confused non answers that boiled down to ''it is whatever I personally like in a game."
*Looks at the thread*
No.


The few who did not respond like that, just said a sandbox game is exactly like all other games, so the word is meaningless.
*Looks at the thread*
No.

[Darth Ultron]

*Looks at the thread*
No.


*Looks at the thread*
No.

Try reading the thread and not just looking at it.

Or, if you can, tell me exactly what a sandbox game is with a definition that applies to everyone, not just what you like. If it is even possible for you to do that.

[Earthwalker]

Try reading the thread and not just looking at it.

Or, if you can, tell me exactly what a sandbox game is with a definition that applies to everyone, not just what you like. If it is even possible for you to do that.

Thought I would dip back in.

Any definition I have of a sandbox game requires an understanding of player agency. You have admitted you don't thing player agency exists.

This makes it impossible to define anything "to your satisfaction". Oddly not impossible for a definition to be accepted by the majority, just not EVERYONE.

[Segev]

Try reading the thread and not just looking at it.

Or, if you can, tell me exactly what a sandbox game is with a definition that applies to everyone, not just what you like. If it is even possible for you to do that.

As one of those whose repeatedly provided you with just that, only to have you entirely misrepresent it, I don't think it is a valuable use of my time to try again.

When you can demonstrate that you are able to restate in your own words what I have said a "sandbox" is, and have me agree that that is, in fact, what I said it is, then I will be happy to continue discussing it. As long as you persist in pretending others have said what you want them to have said, rather than actually engaging your imaginative mind in an effort to comprehend them, it is useless to have a conversation with you.

It is what I imagine it must be like to have a conversation with a Beholder: the reality the cognitive portion of the mind perceives is filtered through a distorted, made-up lens of what the perceptive part of the mind wishes was reality, so the Beholder can never really make coherent thoughts regarding what's actually happening. He can only flail about in an imaginary world of his own devising, and wonder why nobody else seems to "get" it.

[Frozen_Feet]

Quoting myself from the 20th page, quoting inexorable truth from the 1st page, quoting technopedia:


Once again, Darth Ultron proves he is just a highly sophisticated troll and no-one should listen to him when it comes to anything dealing with player agency, railroading or anything of the sort.

From the first page, courtesy of inexorable truth, quoting technopedia: "A sandbox is a style of game in which minimal character limitations are placed on the gamer, allowing the gamer to roam and change a virtual world at will. In contrast to a progression-style game, a sandbox game emphasizes roaming and allows a gamer to select tasks."

The whole term is, obviously, an analogy of children playing in the sandbox: rather than strict rules of play, they are given a bunch of toys and a lots of sand to do whatever the Hell they want to with. Video games contain plenty of examples, Terraria and Minecraft just being few of the more literal ones.

Showing that nothing really happened regarding the supposed topic in 12 pages. The tangent about causality was amusing, though.

[Scripten]

Quoting myself from the 20th page, quoting inexorable truth from the 1st page, quoting technopedia:

Showing that nothing really happened regarding the supposed topic in 12 pages. The tangent about causality was amusing, though.

Darth Ultron is where good threads go to die; a kind of Thread Purgatory. Once the majority of posters engage him, the actual topic is lost and the value of discussion is capped.

[Milo v3]

Try reading the thread and not just looking at it.

Or, if you can, tell me exactly what a sandbox game is with a definition that applies to everyone, not just what you like. If it is even possible for you to do that.
I literally was the person who first sent you the definition of Sandbox in a thread soon before you made this one, and have been posting in this thread since the first page :smalltongue:

[Darth Ultron]

Any definition I have of a sandbox game requires an understanding of player agency. You have admitted you don't thing player agency exists.


Odd, that has not been mentioned much. So you are saying it is a requirement? Like a big one? Wonder why it does not get mentioned more?

You can't even say a Sandbox game is, for example, a wacky game where player agency runs wild(even if player agency is a myth you can still think and type that).




When you can demonstrate that you are able to restate in your own words what I have said a "sandbox" is, and have me agree that that is, in fact, what I said it is, then I will be happy to continue discussing it. As long as you persist in pretending others have said what you want them to have said, rather than actually engaging your imaginative mind in an effort to comprehend them, it is useless to have a conversation with you.

To search through 40 pages and lots of posts to try and find the one post where you said something? But not the other posts where you said something else?

Or you could just type it out....


Quoting myself from the 20th page, quoting inexorable truth from the 1st page, quoting technopedia:


Your definition is the sandbox game is the reality type before game introduction. You have the players (''the kids'') just sitting around at the table and doing ''whatever they want'', while the DM just watches and waits.

And yes, some people think the reality type game is the end all and be all of gaming. But most gamers want a bit more from the game: To go on an adventure and do adventurous things.

But in any case, it's odd to describe the whole game as a ''sandbox'' game, when you are only talking about the pre game. As once the adventure starts, it is no longer a ''sandbox'' game....

[jayem]

Wonder why it does not get mentioned more?

Well looking at the first 15
1 doesn't mention it because the writer wasn't paying attention.
2,13,14,15 are all short relating to other aspects of the thread.
3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11,12 do of course mention it.



Darth Ultron is where good threads go to die; a kind of Thread Purgatory. Once the majority of posters engage him, the actual topic is lost and the value of discussion is capped.

There was a bit of a debate about the relationship between linear causality and linear gameplay.

Anyhow it would be much more fun actually building a sandbox, and seeing what actually happens in practice. I tried to start a thread but IE crashed. And in any case not sure where it would belong (I tried worldbuilding) as the interplay and theoretical discussion would also be useful. (And if we wanted to have test players we'd have to discuss that too, as some people might find it confusing if they weren't genuine players and the thread had to deal with them ignoring metaknowledge).

[EGplay]

Let's try this again, on a non broken phone :-/


Try reading the thread and not just looking at it.

Or, if you can, tell me exactly what a sandbox game is with a definition that applies to everyone, not just what you like. If it is even possible for you to do that.

Ok, I'll bite this once. Let's see if we can consolidate the various ideas about sandboxes in a way that's, hopefully, clearer.

You can view RPGs as an exchange of dramatic questions and answers, whether drama or story are involved or not.

Usually, the DM poses the questions and the players attempt to provide the answers.

DM: *explains the world as relevant*
DM: gambling is becoming more and more prevalent and problematic, and people seem to be losing more than their shirt
Players: we start with investigating
Ect.
This way, a DM can make sure he/she always has something fitting prepared, so that the players always have something fun to do. It can, however, feel creatively restricting to some.

In a sandbox game however, this dynamic is reversed: now the players and the dramatic question an the DM gets to come up with the answers.

DM: *explains the world as relevant*
Players: how about we "procure" ownership of that empty building DM mentioned, make it a casino and use it as a base of operations for increasingly daring scams
DM: *has the world react to this as he/she see logical, given the NPC personalities involved as per prep work
Players: *pose new question, taking the new situation into account*
Ect.
This way requires the players to be able to ask dramatic questions that continue to lead to interesting developments, without planning for them, and it requires the DM to give dramatic answers on the spot.
It asks a lot of both sides, but if done well rewards accordingly.

It's about the approach, not about how it plays out

[GreatKaiserNui]

Let's try this again, on a non broken phone :-/



Ok, I'll bite this once. Let's see if we can consolidate the various ideas about sandboxes in a way that's, hopefully, clearer.

You can view RPGs as an exchange of dramatic questions and answers, whether drama or story are involved or not.

Usually, the DM poses the questions and the players attempt to provide the answers.

This way, a DM can make sure he/she always has something fitting prepared, so that the players always have something fun to do. It can, however, feel creatively restricting to some.

In a sandbox game however, this dynamic is reversed: now the players and the dramatic question an the DM gets to come up with the answers.

This way requires the players to be able to ask dramatic questions that continue to lead to interesting developments, without planning for them, and it requires the DM to give dramatic answers on the spot.
It asks a lot of both sides, but if done well rewards accordingly.

It's about the approach, not about how it plays out

The above is all perfectly valid, DU, if you don't like it then you can make your own forum.
Their is no point being 'right' if you are all alone so you can start your own stupid, empty club Darth Ultron.

[Mr Beer]

I love how your view on progress is to take a concept everyone but you apparently understands, and then say it's better explained by a random term that you made up yourself.


Me too! Wait, no. Not "love". The other thing.

Dipped back into the thread out of morbid curiosity, this made me laugh.

[comk59]

I love how your view on progress is to take a concept everyone but you apparently understands, and then say it's better explained by a random term that you made up yourself.

I don't even think this is the first time he's done that. Ultron likes making up his own terms.

[Frozen_Feet]

Your definition is the sandbox game is the reality type before game introduction. You have the players (''the kids'') just sitting around at the table and doing ''whatever they want'', while the DM just watches and waits.

1) It has **** all to do with reality.
2) ever play sports? What does the referee do in most of those? That's right, waits and watches, only interfering when a point is scored or someone breaks the rules. You're describing the GM as a referee, not pointing out any flaw in the definition.


And yes, some people think the reality type game is the end all and be all of gaming. But most gamers want a bit more from the game: To go on an adventure and do adventurous things.

1) Again, it has **** all to do with "reality gaming", only with player ability to roam and select tasks.
2) players who are not gormless lackwits can come up with adventurous things to do on their own without the referee's help. They could (shock and horror!) do the simplest thing and play against each other, as one of many examples.


But in any case, it's odd to describe the whole game as a ''sandbox'' game, when you are only talking about the pre game. As once the adventure starts, it is no longer a ''sandbox'' game....

It's not odd at all; what is odd is that you clearly recognize the difference between free-roaming and progression-based gaming, calling the former "pre-game" and the latter "adventure" or "game", yet somehow fail to grok that "sandbox" has meaning when referring to the former.

[Darth Ultron]

It's about the approach, not about how it plays out

I don't see why the tiny difference is a big deal and have a hard time even seeing the difference.

*DM: *explains the world as relevant*
*Players: *Pick something to do*

The above is exactly the same in ''both'' games. DM describes, players pick.


The above is all perfectly valid, DU, if you don't like it then you can make your own forum.
Their is no point being 'right' if you are all alone so you can start your own stupid, empty club Darth Ultron.

I did make my own thread.....


I don't even think this is the first time he's done that. Ultron likes making up his own terms.

The terms of the Everyone Group don't fit everything, so yes, I'm creative.


1) It has **** all to do with reality.
2) ever play sports? What does the referee do in most of those? That's right, waits and watches, only interfering when a point is scored or someone breaks the rules. You're describing the GM as a referee, not pointing out any flaw in the definition.

Referee is just one of the jobs a DM does.




1) Again, it has **** all to do with "reality gaming", only with player ability to roam and select tasks.
2) players who are not gormless lackwits can come up with adventurous things to do on their own without the referee's help. They could (shock and horror!) do the simplest thing and play against each other, as one of many examples.

1)In a typical game, a player knows and accepts that they are in fact playing a game. So if their character sees or hears about *anything* nearby, they will check it out as that is part of the gameplay.

In the other game, the wacky player is over pretending that the game is really real(and it's not) so they have their character act like a real world person...otherwise known as ''do nothing''.

It's the difference between:

A)Reality- A hostile army invades a nearby town. People run away from the area as fast as they can.
B)Game-A hostile army invades a nearby town. The fictional characters head for the town to see what they can do to help or hurt or otherwise do something that will be fun and exciting and interesting for the players.

2)I guess your talking about an Arena type game where the players just mindlessly fight each other?



It's not odd at all; what is odd is that you clearly recognize the difference between free-roaming and progression-based gaming, calling the former "pre-game" and the latter "adventure" or "game", yet somehow fail to grok that "sandbox" has meaning when referring to the former.

Well, people are also jumping around with the definitions too. Look at most game adds and they say something like a ''sandbox with a plot and story, but not this or that, but this or that but this sometimes and maybe this too, but not that." So...the game is ''kind of'' everything? Ok...so what is the ''sandbox'' part.

It does seem that when talking about a normal game, the ''sandbox'' is just tagged on to the front in the pre game introduction. So why call the whole game a ''sandbox'' game if it's only going to be a ''sandbox'' for a small part of the pre game activity?

[Pleh]

I don't see why the tiny difference is a big deal and have a hard time even seeing the difference.

*DM: *explains the world as relevant*
*Players: *Pick something to do*

The above is exactly the same in ''both'' games. DM describes, players pick.

This is exactly the oversimplification that is wrong.

In a restaurant, the chef makes available a variety of dishes, then the customer picks from the choices offered.

Some restaurants offer a menu, some a buffet, some the choice to either, some have a drive thru.

All these are "normal" restaurants but not equivalent experiences for the customer. "Buffet" doesn't become meaningless.

[Milo v3]

If someone says their campaign is "only sandbox for the pregame early-game activity" then the campaign isn't sandbox. Sandbox-ness is an on-going trait, not just the start.

[EGplay]

I don't see why the tiny difference is a big deal and have a hard time even seeing the difference.

*DM: *explains the world as relevant*
*Players: *Pick something to do*

The above is exactly the same in ''both'' games. DM describes, players pick.

It may play out the same, but the approach differs. In a sandbox, the players are pro-active and the DM is reactive. The players don't pick a goal from a DM-provided list. They play ambitious, visionary characters who invent their own goals.


In a typical game, a player knows and accepts that they are in fact playing a game. So if their character sees or hears about *anything* nearby, they will check it out as that is part of the gameplay.

And sandbox-characters, and by extension their players, do not wait for things to see or hear about, but initiate action themselves. This makes it distinct from a 'typical' game and therefore a useful term😉.

This is why I call it a reversal of the usual 'dramatic question - dramatic answer' dynamic: usually, the DM's NPC's and in particular BBEG's already behave like this. Something you, as a DM, must be able to recognize.

[Rhedyn]

I think playing a Sandbox necessitates your characters not starting off important and it doesn't matter if they die.

Even if they become important, a player needs to never assume their character is immune to death for plot reasons.

Therefore, the mechanics of the game need to support this. Savage Worlds with it's PC Wild Cards are out, you can set up a game like a Sandbox, but really it's just an episodic adventure.
5e with it's special PC death save system is also out. PCs also don't even work like NPCs, they are inherently special.
3.x could be used this way. PCs aren't that special in the system and the game supports non-adventure activities to an extent. But the game only lets players advance by killing things, which the NPCs don't always do and that manage to get high level.
Now in BECMI / RC D&D, PCs are like NPCs, the only major difference is PCs have max morale when a player is controlling them (game rules don't force players to run away). The best ways to advance is to loot treasure, collect taxes, and make magic items. Combat gives some xp, but the game has a reason for a wizard to sit in their tower studying and getting stronger for it. Wizards don't have to run around killing things to learn more magic. Out of what I played it seemed to support Sandbox the most and also really incentives to play multiple characters and for the narrative to branch out, since the dungeon crawls don't stop when your now Lord fighter is building a castle.

[Max_Killjoy]

I think playing a Sandbox necessitates your characters not starting off important and it doesn't matter if they die.

Even if they become important, a player needs to never assume their character is immune to death for plot reasons.


Which is a perfectly workable way to approach things, IF the system and setting and players DO NOT make the common mistake of conflating "important" and "competent", or "competent" with "important".

I've seen too many instances of the assumption that if a character is not of "narrative importance", then they also cannot be competent, let alone special (in setting / secondary world ways).

[Scripten]

5e with it's special PC death save system is also out. PCs also don't even work like NPCs, they are inherently special.


Death saving throws aren't reserved for PCs. MM pg. 7 states that "A monster usually dies or is destroyed when it drops to 0 Hit Points." It's a contrivance for making combat more fluid. In a really heavy sandbox campaign, adding death saving throws to NPCs might be preferable.

[1337 b4k4]

I think playing a Sandbox necessitates your characters not starting off important and it doesn't matter if they die.

Even if they become important, a player needs to never assume their character is immune to death for plot reasons.

Therefore, the mechanics of the game need to support this. Savage Worlds with it's PC Wild Cards are out, you can set up a game like a Sandbox, but really it's just an episodic adventure.
5e with it's special PC death save system is also out. PCs also don't even work like NPCs, they are inherently special.
3.x could be used this way. PCs aren't that special in the system and the game supports non-adventure activities to an extent. But the game only lets players advance by killing things, which the NPCs don't always do and that manage to get high level.
Now in BECMI / RC D&D, PCs are like NPCs, the only major difference is PCs have max morale when a player is controlling them (game rules don't force players to run away). The best ways to advance is to loot treasure, collect taxes, and make magic items. Combat gives some xp, but the game has a reason for a wizard to sit in their tower studying and getting stronger for it. Wizards don't have to run around killing things to learn more magic. Out of what I played it seemed to support Sandbox the most and also really incentives to play multiple characters and for the narrative to branch out, since the dungeon crawls don't stop when your now Lord fighter is building a castle.

I don’t think giving PCs narrative weight is necessarily incompatible with sandbox, the only thing I would say is incompatible is if you or an npc can avoid the consequences of their actions because “the plot” demands it. If they’re given mechanics that make them extra lucky I think that’s fine as long as it’s a consumable or otherwise unreliable resource. If it’s an at will “lol nope” then yes I would say that moves away from sandbox (although even then you could be closer to a pure sandbox than pure linear on the continuum)

[Floret]

I think playing a Sandbox necessitates your characters not starting off important and it doesn't matter if they die.

I halfway agree with the part about "characters shouldn't be immortal" - because in a game based around the consequences for the PCs choices, crossing off a big chunk as impossible would be odd, though depending on tone, definitely not a nail in the coffin.

I vehemently disagree that how special the PCs are or whether they use the same rules as NPCs has anything whatsoever to do sith sandbox play. Are you saying that one cannot do a superhero sandbox because the characters beat out the average citizen by miles?

Are you saying it is impossible to do a sandbox in apokalypse world, a game where
A) PCs and NPCs are treated so insanely different rules-wise there is hardly any resemblance and
B) The game tells the GM to play to see what happens, let the story unfold, and actually forbids them from making their moves outside of player-prompted conditions?

(And no, this does not mean asking the players for permission, quite the opposite: The goal is to screw with the players as much as possible, you are just restricted by rules as much as they are, if different ones.)

[Frozen_Feet]

Referee is just one of the jobs a DM does.

Yeah, and? That doesn't point out a flaw in the definition either.

I won't even bother with your tangent about reality gaming, it has no relevance to the topic at all.


2)I guess your talking about an Arena type game where the players just mindlessly fight each other?

1) No, I'm talking of a sandbox game where the players choose to play against each other. There is no separate arena from the wider game world and the antagonism can take any form, not just combat.
2) If you think PvP is mindless, you are a boring person who doesn't play enough games. :smalltongue:


Well, people are also jumping around with the definitions too. Look at most game adds and they say something like a ''sandbox with a plot and story, but not this or that, but this or that but this sometimes and maybe this too, but not that." So...the game is ''kind of'' everything? Ok...so what is the ''sandbox'' part.

Blah, blah, blah. We already answered what is the sandbox part: the part where the player is allowed to roam the game world at will and select tasks. What other kinds of parts the game has are irrelevant to the discussion.


It does seem that when talking about a normal game, the ''sandbox'' is just tagged on to the front in the pre game introduction. So why call the whole game a ''sandbox'' game if it's only going to be a ''sandbox'' for a small part of the pre game activity?

Because it doesn't have to be "small part of the pre-game activity". It can be a large part, or a reoccurring part, or last through the whole game. Free-roaming parts don't need to seque into progression-based ones, it can just as well be the other way around. For example, BECMI was meant to work like this: you started out in small, location-based adventures, then after 4th level went to explore wide-open outdoor areas.

Now, you are actually right for once in that it would make no sense to call a game with only small sandbox parts a sandbox game as a whole. But nearly no-one is doing that, except in your imagination.

What is "normal" in games is a red herring.

[Segev]

To search through 40 pages and lots of posts to try and find the one post where you said something? But not the other posts where you said something else?

Or you could just type it out....

I've done so, repeatedly. You have repeatedly failed to demonstrate that you understood what I wrote.

But here, let me take away all your attempts to dodge by moving to another goal post. I am going to write out what a sandbox game is. your task is to then rephrase what I wrote, in your own words, in a manner that you think I will agree gets across what I said. You don't have to agree with me, but you do have to be able to tell me what my position is in a fashion that I will agree it is, in fact, my position. This is a bare minimum necessary to demonstrate that you understand what I'm saying, and have a place to start discussing from. Once you can demonstrate that, you can start building an argument against it.

Here we go:

A sandbox game is one wherein the DM sets up the world, fills it with NPCs and environments and cultures and locations, and has an idea of what will happen if there are no PCs in the world. The PCs then enter the world, and take the DM's description of what they can see and what they know, and decide to get involved in one or more things. They may wish to seek a quest from an NPC, or they may wish to set out to build their own adventure by starting a business, exploring a ruin, getting together a trade caravan, robbing a wealthy home, or anything else that they can see in the world as a thing to do.

The DM then gives them more detail as they investigate and look closer, and knows what the situation is that will present obstacles and opportunities along the way.

This differs from a more linear adventure because the DM has only planned the current state, and while he might have predictions of how things will go, the interference of the PCs changes it wherever they make ripples. The DM knows the site of the adventure. He knows the NPCs involved. He does not, however, have specific scenes planned. In a linear adventure, specific scenes are planned, and a particular plot is being followed. The less linear it is, the more PCs can branch out and change their own goals. The more linear it is, the more goal-oriented it will remain and the more dependent it is on the players having particular goals to move forward. But also, the less improvisation is required and the more thoroughly the intricate twists of plot can be planned.

Both linear games and sandbox games are "normal." They're about whether the world is focused on unfolding a story, or just on simulating a world.



Okay, Darth Ultron, your task is to explain in your own words what I just described a "sandbox" to be, and how it differs from a linear game. You need to do so in a fashion that I will agree that, yes, that is what I believe a sandbox to be. If you cannot do this, then you are demonstrating that you do not understand what I am saying. I would normally take the fault for this, but you have so far demonstrated such inability to understand anybody's positions other than your own that I will assume you simply fail at reading comprehension if you fail at this task.

[Rhedyn]

I halfway agree with the part about "characters shouldn't be immortal" - because in a game based around the consequences for the PCs choices, crossing off a big chunk as impossible would be odd, though depending on tone, definitely not a nail in the coffin.

I vehemently disagree that how special the PCs are or whether they use the same rules as NPCs has anything whatsoever to do sith sandbox play. Are you saying that one cannot do a superhero sandbox because the characters beat out the average citizen by miles?

Are you saying it is impossible to do a sandbox in apokalypse world, a game where
A) PCs and NPCs are treated so insanely different rules-wise there is hardly any resemblance and
B) The game tells the GM to play to see what happens, let the story unfold, and actually forbids them from making their moves outside of player-prompted conditions?

(And no, this does not mean asking the players for permission, quite the opposite: The goal is to screw with the players as much as possible, you are just restricted by rules as much as they are, if different ones.)
If the players are special little creatures that no one else in the universe is, then the universe revolves around them from a mechanical level.

I don't consider the adventures of Marvel comic characters sandbox, its more episodic.

Complex narrative and cool stories can happen in a Sandbox rpg, but I'm saying it should be organic. And it's not organic if the PCs are intrinsically different than NPCs. The players didn't earn their coolness, the system gives it to them by virtue of not being NPCs.
So I think a Sandbox necessitates PCs and NPCs following the same rules the same way. Monsters can work differently, like a wolf can't gain wizard levels, but it's also not a person.

[Frozen_Feet]

Character power and specialness is utterly irrelevant to whether a game is a sandbox or not.

[PhoenixPhyre]

Character power and specialness is utterly irrelevant to whether a game is a sandbox or not.

I agree. Sandbox vs non-sandbox is almost entirely a meta question--it's about who decides what goals are pursued and how, not about the characters themselves and their larger narrative role.

[Quertus]

Referee is just one of the jobs a DM does.

Which jobs the GM has is core to the definition of a sandbox.

In a linear game, the GM has the task of creating the plot. In a sandbox, they do not have this job - that is the players' responsibility to interface with the GM's content to create a plot.

Although... if the GM is running a module, they created neither content nor plot - their only job is referee.


Character power and specialness is utterly irrelevant to whether a game is a sandbox or not.

Just wanted to agree with this.

[Floret]

If the players are special little creatures that no one else in the universe is, then the universe revolves around them from a mechanical level.

I don't consider the adventures of Marvel comic characters sandbox, its more episodic.

Complex narrative and cool stories can happen in a Sandbox rpg, but I'm saying it should be organic. And it's not organic if the PCs are intrinsically different than NPCs. The players didn't earn their coolness, the system gives it to them by virtue of not being NPCs.
So I think a Sandbox necessitates PCs and NPCs following the same rules the same way. Monsters can work differently, like a wolf can't gain wizard levels, but it's also not a person.

1. So what if the universe revolves around the characters? (From a meta-perspective, it does anyways, by virtue of being a game) How does that take away the question of how much freedom the PCs have in pursuing their own goals and making decisions?

2. I was not talking about the events of a marvel comic. I was talking about superheroes, as an example of characters removed in power level from the average joe in their setting.

3. Yes, can happen, should organically grow from the story. Sure.
How does that connect to power level? "It's not organic if PCs are intrinsically different from NPCs"? Why? Justify that assertion, please.

Besides, a sandbox is not about earning or developing coolness. And i disagree that players having a certain base level ability above NPCs negates them having plans. I would actually argue that the goal of a sandbox - developing your own "story", forging your own path - might in fact benefit from characters with not only motivations, but also abilities giving them a good chance at shaping stuff from the get-go.

It sounds like you have a certain simulationist sensibility - the rules serving as a model of a "realistic" world - that would be inherently damaged by fiction-wise similar entities (humans) working differently based on purely meta concerns (PC/NPC). And, that you have a certain opinion about "earning" your powers.

Those are both fine motivations to have, however much I don't share them, but they don't actually relate to sandbox play.

In other words, I agree with Frozen_Feet and PhoenixPhyre.

[Rhedyn]

I'd argue that the useful definition of the word Sandbox, includes simulation-ist aspects in the sense that the PCs shouldn't feel like the center of the universe.

The immersion and appeal of a Sandbox should come from players getting into the role of them being just like everyone else in the world and success/power/victory doesn't just get handed to them.

Otherwise, I think you are just playing an improvised narrative game, or a directionless campaign, or an episodic format.

I don't think you have a good Sandbox without some PC/NPC symmetry. You might have a good game and a good story but it's not really a Sandbox because the GM needs to prepare entirely different material to make it work than one that's player driven by the virtue of the players able/wanting to do what NPCs do because everyone is using the same rules.
An example would be how MMOs treat sandbox vs normal. Like in a lot of Sandbox MMOs, you can run a inn and have a reason to want to do that. Even though that would normally be a hand waved NPC role with no real mechanics behind it.

[PhoenixPhyre]

I'd argue that the useful definition of the word Sandbox, includes simulation-ist aspects in the sense that the PCs shouldn't feel like the center of the universe.

The immersion and appeal of a Sandbox should come from players getting into the role of them being just like everyone else in the world and success/power/victory doesn't just get handed to them.


That's entirely a matter of prefered aesthetics. You can have a sandbox where you are a literal God. You can have a sandbox where you're utterly powerless and dodging things that could squish you without a thought. You can have a sandbox in a narrative game. You can have a sandbox in a completely simulationist thing. The game mechanics and the style are almost entirely orthogonal.

Sandbox isn't about the characters at all. It's about the player/DM relationship--specifically who decides what goals are pursued and what means are employed. It's not about whether those work (that's decided by the mechanics, mostly), but about what's tried.

[Rhedyn]

That's entirely a matter of prefered aesthetics. You can have a sandbox where you are a literal God. You can have a sandbox where you're utterly powerless and dodging things that could squish you without a thought. You can have a sandbox in a narrative game. You can have a sandbox in a completely simulationist thing. The game mechanics and the style are almost entirely orthogonal.

Sandbox isn't about the characters at all. It's about the player/DM relationship--specifically who decides what goals are pursued and what means are employed. It's not about whether those work (that's decided by the mechanics, mostly), but about what's tried.
I disagree because what I would need to prep for those campaigns are different.

Player-driven goals and campaign direction doesn't change how I need to prep. That's just me letting players do what they want.

An actual sandbox like I'm talking about doesn't work that way. "My character is going to try to be a Lord"
"Well great but the rest of the party wants to finish the dungeon so roll up a new character"
And then he does without complaint or trying to get the party to come along because the players are acting like regular people in the world who will go separate ways without much qualms.
If the PCs are different then NPCs then having a bunch of PCs running around as the narrative branches causes problems when two PCs try to fight each other and the game can't handle PC vs PC. So if the armies of 2 halves of table are fighting and only one Lord will survive the duel, you end up with a terrible scene because the game meant for PCs to be mechanically different from NPCs and not fight each other.

[PhoenixPhyre]

I disagree because what I would need to prep for those campaigns are different.

Player-driven goals and campaign direction doesn't change how I need to prep. That's just me letting players do what they want.

An actual sandbox like I'm talking about doesn't work that way. "My character is going to try to be a Lord"
"Well great but the rest of the party wants to finish the dungeon so roll up a new character"
And then he does without complaint or trying to get the party to come along because the players are acting like regular people in the world who will go separate ways without much qualms.
If the PCs are different then NPCs then having a bunch of PCs running around as the narrative branches causes problems when two PCs try to fight each other and the game can't handle PC vs PC. So if the armies of 2 halves of table are fighting and only one Lord will survive the duel, you end up with a terrible scene because the game meant for PCs to be mechanically different from NPCs and not fight each other.

<Facepalm> If that's your idea of a sandbox...that explains a whole lot.

[Floret]

And now you are conflating even more stuff.

Just because a system treats PCs and NPCs as mechanically fully distinct does not in any way preclude it from containing PvP mechanics. They're just gonna be at least slightly different from the PvNPC mechanics.

Seriously. Look at Apokalypse world (Especially the rules relating to generating threats, when to use MC moves, and the threat map). I would consider the system lending itself far more to sandbox games than to Linear games; and it does precisely what you claim precludes a sandbox from becoming sandbox.

Your idea does, however, provide a rather apt example of the kind of outlier sandbox where I'd feel DUs "reality gaming" moniker to be surprisingly well-fitting.

[Rhedyn]

<Facepalm> If that's your idea of a sandbox...that explains a whole lot.
Well I would agree with the thread title if you want a Sandbox to just mean player agency or the illusion of agency and perhaps the absence of the game having a clear quest arch to finish it.

I've played in a campaign like that and it wasn't meaningfully different from a normal campaign. I started a bank in it.

The word Sandbox needs a useful definition to be worth a distinction.

[Max_Killjoy]

When it comes to discussing "rules" for PCs vs NPCs, I do think there's some need to keep in mind whether you're discussing character creation, or interaction mechanics. I've seen more than once when people are talking about different "rules" for characters, and one is talking about how characters are built, and the other is talking about things like combat or whatever.

[Max_Killjoy]

I disagree because what I would need to prep for those campaigns are different.

Player-driven goals and campaign direction doesn't change how I need to prep. That's just me letting players do what they want.

An actual sandbox like I'm talking about doesn't work that way. "My character is going to try to be a Lord"
"Well great but the rest of the party wants to finish the dungeon so roll up a new character"
And then he does without complaint or trying to get the party to come along because the players are acting like regular people in the world who will go separate ways without much qualms.

If the PCs are different then NPCs then having a bunch of PCs running around as the narrative branches causes problems when two PCs try to fight each other and the game can't handle PC vs PC. So if the armies of 2 halves of table are fighting and only one Lord will survive the duel, you end up with a terrible scene because the game meant for PCs to be mechanically different from NPCs and not fight each other.


The wording of this post makes it unclear exactly what you are talking about as a "sandbox" -- are you talking about how you think a sandbox works, or who you think a sandbox does not work?

[Rhedyn]

When it comes to discussing "rules" for PCs vs NPCs, I do think there's some need to keep in mind whether you're discussing character creation, or interaction mechanics. I've seen more than once when people are talking about different "rules" for characters, and one is talking about how characters are built, and the other is talking about things like combat or whatever.
You need both*

Creation gets some wiggle room. Like in Savage Worlds, you just give NPCs abilities you don't but them, but a player could build whatever NPC you just made with enough experience. The difficulty of the PC and the NPC are measured the same.

But I don't think Savage Worlds works well for a Sandbox rpg because Wild card (what PCs and special villains are) are special. Playing an Extra would be a miserable experience. The difference between a Wild Card and an Extra is only certain general rules (wild die and wounds). They are built the same.

The PCs being overly unique beings, I believe runs counter to what a Sandbox rpg needs to be for the term Sandbox rpg to be a useful distinction.

[Quertus]

You need both*

Creation gets some wiggle room. Like in Savage Worlds, you just give NPCs abilities you don't but them, but a player could build whatever NPC you just made with enough experience. The difficulty of the PC and the NPC are measured the same.

But I don't think Savage Worlds works well for a Sandbox rpg because Wild card (what PCs and special villains are) are special. Playing an Extra would be a miserable experience. The difference between a Wild Card and an Extra is only certain general rules (wild die and wounds). They are built the same.

The PCs being overly unique beings, I believe runs counter to what a Sandbox rpg needs to be for the term Sandbox rpg to be a useful distinction.

... What does this have to do with whether the game is a sandbox or not? What does this have to do with what the GM is driving you through a Linear adventure, vs whether the players are choosing the plot?

How are you defining sandbox?

[Max_Killjoy]

IMO, you could have a campaign where the PCs are only known characters in the world with superpowers, and the GM could start the campaign by asking "OK, now, what are you going to do, as the only superhumans in the world?", and go from there... and that could be a sandbox.


(NOTE that this is NOT "the PCs can do whatever the players want" or "the players tell the GM what happens". The PCs actions are still constrained by the nature of their powers and basic cause-and-effect. The players can still only assert what their characters are trying to do, the rules and the GM still decide whether they are successful.)

[Quertus]

IMO, you could have a campaign where the PCs are only known characters in the world with superpowers, and the GM could start the campaign by asking "OK, now, what are you going to do, as the only superhumans in the world?", and go from there... and that could be a sandbox.


(NOTE that this is NOT "the PCs can do whatever the players want" or "the players tell the GM what happens". The PCs actions are still constrained by the nature of their powers and basic cause-and-effect. The players can still only assert what their characters are trying to do, the rules and the GM still decide whether they are successful.)

The game still has rules, the GM is still referee. Yup.

[Rhedyn]

The reason I am being more restrictive with the term Sandbox is because 'Sandbox' used in the video game sense tends to be what I can get out of any ttRPG. In general, railroading is bad. Sandbox doesn't seem to me a useful term if it only means "not railroading" because then we are equating "Sandbox" with good campaign. Video games get away with railroading because of technical constraints and that they can offer impressive visuals because of the railroading and can be experienced by yourself. ttRPGs need more freedom to even really be worth the time playing. Having a linear story arch, an episodic format, or a narrative wrapped about the PCs can be good and fun, but those campaign in video game terms, would be a Sandbox, unless you forced the players from one scene to the next without your narrative being all the direction they needed (aka railroading).

Every ttRPG session should be "player driven" the players drive the story. Even if you have a linear story arch, it's the players that drive it.

I think this more loose definition of the term "Sandbox" is why many sold as "Sandbox" campaigns end up poorly. You need a system that really supports "what do you do?" without direction from the GM for it to go well. Otherwise you are actually running an episodic campaign and "building the world" isn't good enough to make that campaign go well. You have to build "episodes".

So yeah. PC/NPC symmetry is critical. Multiple characters per player is critical. Branching Narrative is critical. Downtime activities are critical. There needs to be in-game ways for PCs to progress that isn't murderhoboing to incentives players playing their characters like sane NPCs.
Otherwise, I say you have a different kind campaign going on (and thus need to prepare more than just a world) or you are using the term "Sandbox" to mean "not railroading" aka "good" aka an extraneous term for your lexicon.

[1337 b4k4]

The reason I am being more restrictive with the term Sandbox is because 'Sandbox' used in the video game sense tends to be what I can get out of any ttRPG. In general, railroading is bad. Sandbox doesn't seem to me a useful term if it only means "not railroading" because then we are equating "Sandbox" with good campaign.

Not to be short, but we literally have 40 pages here of people trying to explain to DU that:
1) "sandbox" and "linear" describe different things.
2) "linear" and "railroad" are not equivalent
3) "good", "bad" and "normal" are orthogonal to "sandbox" and "linear" and you can have good sandboxes, bad sandboxed and normal sandboxes and that says nothing about how the sandbox relates to a linear game.

I obviously can't speak to the rest of the folks in this thread, but I'm honestly not interested in spending another 40 pages rehashing these points. Please read through the thread if you haven't so we can have a common ground to work from.


Video games get away with railroading because of technical constraints and that they can offer impressive visuals because of the railroading and can be experienced by yourself. ttRPGs need more freedom to even really be worth the time playing. Having a linear story arch, an episodic format, or a narrative wrapped about the PCs can be good and fun, but those campaign in video game terms, would be a Sandbox, unless you forced the players from one scene to the next without your narrative being all the direction they needed (aka railroading).

Every ttRPG session should be "player driven" the players drive the story. Even if you have a linear story arch, it's the players that drive it.

I think this more loose definition of the term "Sandbox" is why many sold as "Sandbox" campaigns end up poorly. You need a system that really supports "what do you do?" without direction from the GM for it to go well. Otherwise you are actually running an episodic campaign and "building the world" isn't good enough to make that campaign go well. You have to build "episodes".

How does any of this support the notion that your PCs can't be special in a sandbox? I mean let's take the current leader for sandbox computer game "Minecraft". Your character is literally the only one that can do certain things, the game is still a sandbox. Compare to say Lemmings, where all the characters are the same. But the game is not a sandbox.

[Rhedyn]

How does any of this support the notion that your PCs can't be special in a sandbox? I mean let's take the current leader for sandbox computer game "Minecraft". Your character is literally the only one that can do certain things, the game is still a sandbox. Compare to say Lemmings, where all the characters are the same. But the game is not a sandbox.I don't accept the video game use of "Sandbox" as useful.

The PC/NPC symmetry is something I say is required for a Sandbox ttRPG not the only quality.

[Koo Rehtorb]

So yeah. PC/NPC symmetry is critical. Multiple characters per player is critical. Branching Narrative is critical. Downtime activities are critical. There needs to be in-game ways for PCs to progress that isn't murderhoboing to incentives players playing their characters like sane NPCs.

None of these things are critical, or even relevant, except for possibly the bit about narrative.

A linear game is a game in which there is one path to follow.

A railroad is a linear game which the players don't agree to and every time they try to leave the path they're forced back onto it because the GM wants them to be on that one path.

A sandbox game is a game in which the GM just populates the world with "interesting stuff" and has no particular vested interest in what you do with the stuff.

As I'm writing this it becomes apparent that there is a middle of the road approach where the GM has certain storylines in mind but doesn't particularly care how they're resolved, will let them be resolved how they will be, and then will make new storylines based on the new situation. I think this is probably distinct from a sandbox in that there are problem which -have- to be solved and will be the focus of the game while they're active, but don't have a set resolution. Is there even a term for this?

[PhoenixPhyre]

As I'm writing this it becomes apparent that there is a middle of the road approach where the GM has certain storylines in mind but doesn't particularly care how they're resolved, will let them be resolved how they will be, and then will make new storylines based on the new situation. I think this is probably distinct from a sandbox in that there are problem which -have- to be solved and will be the focus of the game while they're active, but don't have a set resolution. Is there even a term for this?

The way I usually play? The thing I like best about TTRPGs is setting out a scenario and watching the players run with it in new and different directions. And then asking myself "and now what? What are the consequences of their actions?" I had a game turn from "protect this town and do quests for them" to "rally the local nations into defeating a returned evil (and forming a persistent alliance in the process)" to "keep invading parasitic borg-like thought creatures from destroying reality (including kicking a demon prince where it hurts, along with becoming an international drug lord for one character)."

Maybe "scaffolded sandbox"? Within the agreed-upon scenario and current "main quest" (which may be one of several pursued by those characters) there are many ways they could go, many resolutions possible. The journey is the important thing here.

[Max_Killjoy]

None of these things are critical, or even relevant, except for possibly the bit about narrative.

A linear game is a game in which there is one path to follow.

A railroad is a linear game which the players don't agree to and every time they try to leave the path they're forced back onto it because the GM wants them to be on that one path.

A sandbox game is a game in which the GM just populates the world with "interesting stuff" and has no particular vested interest in what you do with the stuff.

As I'm writing this it becomes apparent that there is a middle of the road approach where the GM has certain storylines in mind but doesn't particularly care how they're resolved, will let them be resolved how they will be, and then will make new storylines based on the new situation. I think this is probably distinct from a sandbox in that there are problem which -have- to be solved and will be the focus of the game while they're active, but don't have a set resolution. Is there even a term for this?


I don't think a "sandbox" precludes existing or even growing problems being part of the setting, the "secondary world" -- and they don't even have to be "storylines" as such. It's not as if there's some unavoidable choice between "storylines" and randomness/aimlessness, whether that's DU-style "look at how awesome my preplanned adventure to take the PCs on is" storylines, or Forge-style "we're all getting together to create a story through play" storylines, or any other option or blend.

[Koo Rehtorb]

I don't think a "sandbox" precludes existing or even growing problems being part of the setting, the "secondary world" -- and they don't even have to be "storylines" as such. It's not as if there's some unavoidable choice between "storylines" and randomness/aimlessness, whether that's DU-style "look at how awesome my preplanned adventure to take the PCs on is" storylines, or Forge-style "we're all getting together to create a story through play" storylines, or any other option or blend.

It doesn't. But it's also not really what I'm talking about. I do think a critical component of a sandbox is your ability to ignore a problem for however long you want to. Sure it'll keep growing and doing things, but you're not forced to engage with it.

I think that is distinct from a style of game where you are more or less "expected" to deal with certain things because otherwise there isn't a game. Like Doctor Malevolent is setting up his Tectonic Terror to destroy the Earth's crust. It would be wildly inappropriate to just give a collective shrug and ignore it and go look for some muggers to beat up instead in a superhero game. Which isn't to say there's any prescribed way of dealing with this problem, which is what a linear game would be.

[1337 b4k4]

I don't accept the video game use of "Sandbox" as useful.

The PC/NPC symmetry is something I say is required for a Sandbox ttRPG not the only quality.

Ok, even if you don't accept the video game definitions as useful, you still haven't explained how having "special" PCs precludes a sandbox. You're saying picking Dungeon World for your game system precludes having a sandbox campaign. But how does it preclude that?



As I'm writing this it becomes apparent that there is a middle of the road approach where the GM has certain storylines in mind but doesn't particularly care how they're resolved, will let them be resolved how they will be, and then will make new storylines based on the new situation. I think this is probably distinct from a sandbox in that there are problem which -have- to be solved and will be the focus of the game while they're active, but don't have a set resolution. Is there even a term for this?

I think this is why it's usually said that sandbox and linear fall on different ends of a continuum. Even in the most sandboxy of sandboxes it's rare to have a purely sandbox game with no linear adventures, if only because one night the GM might say "hey folks, I know you just managed to steal the access keys to the warp gate, but I honestly haven't mapped out whats on the other side of the gate so for the rest of the night can we just run a game of you trying to get away with the gate key safely or something and I'll have something mapped out later."

Likewise strongly linear campaigns can have degrees of sandbox. Red Markets comes to mind as a game that does this well, the overall theme of the game is you live in post-apocalypse-burg, life is awful and you want out or bigger and better things so we're going to play a game about how you make your way out of the frying pan by taking on a series of dangerous jobs in the wild world of zombies. There's a linear path of going from zero to retired the drives the whole game. Then each individual session you have a limited handful of jobs (read plot hooks) to pick from, each job can be roughly completed however you want but there are distinct phases for getting there and ultimately the job spells out the victory conditions, but you don't necessarily need to be victorious at jobs to succeed. Sometimes you score bigger along the way rather than by doing the job.

[Rhedyn]

As I'm writing this it becomes apparent that there is a middle of the road approach where the GM has certain storylines in mind but doesn't particularly care how they're resolved, will let them be resolved how they will be, and then will make new storylines based on the new situation. I think this is probably distinct from a sandbox in that there are problem which -have- to be solved and will be the focus of the game while they're active, but don't have a set resolution. Is there even a term for this?
I would call that an episodic narrative.

Sure the events can weave together, but the GM prepped interesting episodes and the player drive is to find and resolve these episodes.

To rephrase, I think a Sandbox requires that the players can just create interesting things with the bits the system/world give you. (And I am contending that PC/NPC symmetry is needed to have those bits).

An actual campaign will mix lots of elements. Because why limit yourself and your players fun for genre purity?


Ok, even if you don't accept the video game definitions as useful, you still haven't explained how having "special" PCs precludes a sandbox. You're saying picking Dungeon World for your game system precludes having a sandbox campaign. But how does it preclude that?
Whew. Last time I played Dungeon World was at gencon. I say those mechanics support improv. But overall the system seem too light for PC/NPC symmetry to even be a relevant concept. Nor would I say the system offers enough bits for a Sandbox. Fun improv? Sure.

[Max_Killjoy]

Every ttRPG session should be "player driven" the players drive the story. Even if you have a linear story arch, it's the players that drive it.


So if part or all of a session is driven by the PCs playing catch-up with an antagonists moves, such that the antagonist NPC is "driving" things... that's bad?




I think this more loose definition of the term "Sandbox" is why many sold as "Sandbox" campaigns end up poorly. You need a system that really supports "what do you do?" without direction from the GM for it to go well. Otherwise you are actually running an episodic campaign and "building the world" isn't good enough to make that campaign go well. You have to build "episodes".


It appears that you are not using "episodic" the way it's usually understood... whether a campaign is episodic or serial isn't linked directly with how linear or sandboxy that campaign is. It's harder for an episodic campaign to be highly sandboxy, but "episodic" and "sandboxy" aren't opposite ends of the same axis.

While this article uses the word "procedural" because of that term's use in crime fiction TV, it's similar to what it typically meant by "episodic" -- https://geekandsundry.com/procedural-versus-serialized-television/

https://fistfulofwits.com/2013/05/18/take-five-episodic-vs-serial-works/

https://complicationsensue.blogspot.com/2007/06/episodic-v-serial.html

https://observationdeck.kinja.com/why-i-prefer-episodic-shows-to-serialized-shows-1777583062

Etc.




So yeah. PC/NPC symmetry is critical. Multiple characters per player is critical. Branching Narrative is critical. Downtime activities are critical. There needs to be in-game ways for PCs to progress that isn't murderhoboing to incentives players playing their characters like sane NPCs.
Otherwise, I say you have a different kind campaign going on (and thus need to prepare more than just a world) or you are using the term "Sandbox" to mean "not railroading" aka "good" aka an extraneous term for your lexicon.


This looks more like you're reacting to a specific sort of campaign you've been exposed to, and using sandbox to mean "all the stuff that would make a campaign different than that".

But in particular, there's absolutely nothing about a "sandbox" campaign that even hints at a need for multiple PCs per player. How do you come to the conclusion that it somehow does?




I don't accept the video game use of "Sandbox" as useful.


By the TTRPG definition of "sandbox" that most are using in this thread, Minecraft is pretty "sandboxy".




The PC/NPC symmetry is something I say is required for a Sandbox ttRPG not the only quality.


Again, it depends on what you mean by "symmetry".

Do you mean that they're created the same, regardless of how the system handles character creation?

Do you mean that they interact with each other and the setting by the same rules?

Do you mean that they must be of the same general power level and that PCs can't be exceptional "people" in terms of competence or skill or efficacy?

[EGplay]

@Redhyn, PhoenixPhyre, Koo Retorb, Max_killjoy, Quertus, and 1337 b4k4:

This is why I, further upthread, formulated my view on sandbox as:


You can view RPGs as an exchange of dramatic questions and answers, whether drama or story are involved or not.

Usually, the DM poses the questions and the players attempt to provide the answers.
(snip)
In a sandbox game however, this dynamic is reversed: now the players *ask* the dramatic question an the DM gets to come up with the answers.
(snip)*correction

This seems to take into account most, if not all, functional usages of 'sandbox', without relying on specifics or, shall we say, contested terms of art. By that I mean that I can see the points you bring up as different ways to go forth from such a reversal.

(in fact, most if not all games can be seen as series of dramatic questions and answers.
Please note that dramatic here does not entail drama or story, but rather 'challenge that makes interesting things happen')

@Darth_Ultron:
I realize I have slightly misspoken in my examples, leading to a misinterpretation.

In the 2nd example, I said the players took a building the DM had introduced as empty to avoid you thinking the players would get to introduce said building.
Sadly, this let you to believe, wrongly since in this case the DM made no mention of gambling, that this was a plot hook left by him/her.

If I had said the characters look for and arrange to "procure" such a building, possibly illegally, would my intention have been clearer to you?

[1337 b4k4]

To rephrase, I think a Sandbox requires that the players can just create interesting things with the bits the system/world give you. (And I am contending that PC/NPC symmetry is needed to have those bits).


Maybe we're getting stuck on crossed definitions, so if you could please, without using PC/NPC symmetry or any synonyms for it, and preferably without using D&D as a reference system (if you have sufficient experience outside of D&D to use another as a reference) please provide a concrete example of the "players create interesting things with the bits the system gives you". I'll have more questions after, but let's start there.

[Max_Killjoy]

@Redhyn, PhoenixPhyre, Koo Retorb, Max_killjoy, Quertus, and 1337 b4k4:

This is why I, further upthread, formulated my view on sandbox as:



You can view RPGs as an exchange of dramatic questions and answers, whether drama or story are involved or not.

Usually, the DM poses the questions and the players attempt to provide the answers.
(snip)
In a sandbox game however, this dynamic is reversed: now the players *ask* the dramatic question an the DM gets to come up with the answers.
(snip)


*correction

This seems to take into account most, if not all, functional usages of 'sandbox', without relying on specifics or, shall we say, contested terms of art. By that I mean that I can see the points you bring up as different ways to go forth from such a reversal.

(in fact, most if not all games can be seen as series of dramatic questions and answers.
Please note that dramatic here does not entail drama or story, but rather 'challenge that makes interesting things happen')


First problem, this asserts a special role for "drama", one that I'm completely willing to give it.

Second problem, it asserts that "sandbox" is an all or nothing tag, rather than a descriptor that can apply to varying degrees to different campaigns or to the same campaign at different times.

[Quertus]

In general, railroading is bad. Sandbox doesn't seem to me a useful term if it only means "not railroading" because then we are equating "Sandbox" with good campaign.


Not to be short, but we literally have 40 pages here of people trying to explain to DU that:
1) "sandbox" and "linear" describe different things.
2) "linear" and "railroad" are not equivalent
3) "good", "bad" and "normal" are orthogonal to "sandbox" and "linear" and you can have good sandboxes, bad sandboxed and normal sandboxes and that says nothing about how the sandbox relates to a linear game.

I obviously can't speak to the rest of the folks in this thread, but I'm honestly not interested in spending another 40 pages rehashing these points. Please read through the thread if you haven't so we can have a common ground to work from.


A linear game is a game in which there is one path to follow.

A railroad is a linear game which the players don't agree to and every time they try to leave the path they're forced back onto it because the GM wants them to be on that one path.

A sandbox game is a game in which the GM just populates the world with "interesting stuff" and has no particular vested interest in what you do with the stuff.

This. Pure linear is one set path. Pure sandbox is open to go wherever. Railroading is when the GM forces a path on unwilling players (although I still like my definition better).


Every ttRPG session should be "player driven" the players drive the story. Even if you have a linear story arch, it's the players that drive it.

The Storyteller system obviously disagrees. :smalltongue:


I think this more loose definition of the term "Sandbox" is why many sold as "Sandbox" campaigns end up poorly. You need a system that really supports "what do you do?" without direction from the GM for it to go well. Otherwise you are actually running an episodic campaign and "building the world" isn't good enough to make that campaign go well. You have to build "episodes".

Um, what?

For a sandbox, you build content. Like Minecraft. There's stuff there - do something with it. There's rules - you can't just rub two sticks together and say you've made a tank. And... That's it. It's up to the players to decide what to do.


So yeah. PC/NPC symmetry is critical.

Why do you think this?


Multiple characters per player is critical.

Absolutely false.


Branching Narrative is critical.

"Branching" implies paths. A pure sandbox has no paths to begin with.


Downtime activities are critical.

Why do you think this?


There needs to be in-game ways for PCs to progress that isn't murderhoboing to incentives players playing their characters like sane NPCs.

Why do you... Never mind, this is just demonstrably false. Still, why do you think this?


Otherwise, I say you have a different kind campaign going on (and thus need to prepare more than just a world) or you are using the term "Sandbox" to mean "not railroading" aka "good" aka an extraneous term for your lexicon.

"not linear". The GM has abdicated responsibility for the plot to the players, the players can (and must) create the plot.


As I'm writing this it becomes apparent that there is a middle of the road approach where the GM has certain storylines in mind but doesn't particularly care how they're resolved, will let them be resolved how they will be, and then will make new storylines based on the new situation. I think this is probably distinct from a sandbox in that there are problem which -have- to be solved and will be the focus of the game while they're active, but don't have a set resolution. Is there even a term for this?

This is why I keep talking about "pure Linear", so that we can try to get everyone understanding that before we attempt to define / name various points on the spectrum and/or try to define what types of sandbox mixed with what other elements make for what types of games.


I don't think a "sandbox" precludes existing or even growing problems being part of the setting, the "secondary world" -- and they don't even have to be "storylines" as such. It's not as if there's some unavoidable choice between "storylines" and randomness/aimlessness, whether that's DU-style "look at how awesome my preplanned adventure to take the PCs on is" storylines, or Forge-style "we're all getting together to create a story through play" storylines, or any other option or blend.

Absolutely, you've got the right of it. In Fact, the content of a sandbox should be chosen in no small part because the GM thinks that the players will find it interesting.


@Redhyn, PhoenixPhyre, Koo Retorb, Max_killjoy, Quertus, and 1337 b4k4:

This is why I, further upthread, formulated my view on sandbox as:

(in fact, most if not all games can be seen as series of dramatic questions and answers.
Please note that dramatic here does not entail drama or story, but rather 'challenge that makes interesting things happen')

Although I think that I agree with you, I really don't look at things that way to be able to be sure.

So... I won't object to this description until you base some false assertion on it. Best I can do. :smalltongue:

[EGplay]

First problem, this asserts a special role for "drama", one that I'm completely willing to give it.

Second problem, it asserts that "sandbox" is an all or nothing tag, rather than a descriptor that can apply to varying degrees to different campaigns or to the same campaign at different times.

On the first, completely agree, it's just how the term has been taught to me. I have struggled but could not come up with a good replacement, which is the reason for my caveat.
Any suggestions for an alternative are welcome.

On the second, it does sort of do that, and I neglected to expand on the following(my bad):
Bear in mind this exchange usually involves counter-questions. This naturally creates a certain back-and-forth. The more this back-and-forth has the DM asking intermittent dramatic questions, the less sandboxy the game becomes.
Or, a sandboxy event is whenever the players pose the question. The more this happens, the more the game is a sandbox.

[EGplay]

Although I think that I agree with you, I really don't look at things that way to be able to be sure.

So... I won't object to this description until you base some false assertion on it. Best I can do. :smalltongue:

I used to sell boardgames for a living, we were trained to think this way (among others) about games😁.

But this is why in competitive games there is always talk of needing to have or find answers.

Competitive pvp: your moves pose questions to each other, to which the other needs to find answers to
Competitive non-pvp: the games' challenges are questions, you each try to give the better answer.
(Non competitive: as above, but now you collaborate on coming up with the best answers possible.)

You could use challenges instead of questions, but that doesn't map so well to 'answers'.

[Darth Ultron]

This is exactly the oversimplification that is wrong.


What?

People go to a place with food and pick a food to eat.
People go to a place with food and pick a food to eat.

Both of the above lines are exactly the same....you you somehow say they are different?


If someone says their campaign is "only sandbox for the pregame early-game activity" then the campaign isn't sandbox. Sandbox-ness is an on-going trait, not just the start.

Right, but once the normal adventure starts, with a story and plot and linear actions and all, you can't do the sandbox thing of ''the players just do whatever they want''. You either go on the adventure, or you just do whatever random stuff you want to do.


It may play out the same, but the approach differs. In a sandbox, the players are pro-active and the DM is reactive. The players don't pick a goal from a DM-provided list. They play ambitious, visionary characters who invent their own goals.

So....now your saying it is:

Game A:
*DM: *explains the world as relevant*
*Players: *Pick something to do*

Game B
*Players *Ignore the DM and do whatever they want..and drag the DM along*



Okay, Darth Ultron, your task is to explain in your own words what I just described a "sandbox" to be, and how it differs from a linear game. You need to do so in a fashion that I will agree that, yes, that is what I believe a sandbox to be. If you cannot do this, then you are demonstrating that you do not understand what I am saying. I would normally take the fault for this, but you have so far demonstrated such inability to understand anybody's positions other than your own that I will assume you simply fail at reading comprehension if you fail at this task.

Ok, I won't use normal, I will use the word Common.

YOU are saying a ''sandbox'' game is exactly like a common game: DM makes the setting and the players pick something to do in it. PERIOD. Every single common TRPG for the last couple decades has been this EXACT way:DM makes the setting and the players pick something to do in it. You description of a sandbox is EXACTLY the same way:DM makes the setting and the players pick something to do in it. So, there is NOTHING different at all in the sandbox game....and hence it is a meaningless word.

DM makes the setting and the players pick something to do in it. PERIOD. This, yet again, is the most fundamental basic point about a TRPG.

Ok, then you jump to ''linear adventure'', but you compare that to ''sandbox game''? It seems your And, as like many others, you are comparing apples and oranges.

So, are you using ''game'' and ''adventure'' interchangeably here: like, to you, do both words mean exactly the same thing?

OR are you using the more common usage of ''game'' = everything, and an ''adventure'' is a very, small and narrow focused tiny part of the game?

So both the ''sandbox'' and linear DMs BOTH make GAMES filled with NPCs and environments and cultures and locations.

And then next we come to the Adventure part. The linear DM(either by themselves OR at the players request) makes a very, small and narrow focused tiny thing to do: an adventure.

Ok, but, what does the ''sandbox'' box DM do? They don't make an adventure, right? They just have the massive mass of the game setting. But when a player narrows down what their character does to a single very small and narrowly focused action....the ''sandbox'' DM DOES NOT narrowly focus the game? AND, if you will say that they do...why is that not an adventure?



See it's the word jumping and mixing that gets me every time. It's like your saying that a DM that makes an adventure does not make a setting....but that makes no sense..or are you saying there ARE DMs like that?

So we really need to get on the same page....

So...

1.Do you agree all TRPG have this in common: DM makes the setting and the players pick something to do in it.?

This would seem to be a very good first step, AND it would eliminate you or anyone saying that this is somehow a special thing only found in spacial sandbox games. It is in every TRPG.

Then we can move on...

[1337 b4k4]

People go to a place with food and pick a food to eat.
People go to a place with food and pick a food to eat.

So when deciding on where to have a romantic dinner with a date, to you there is no difference between choosing Golden Coral (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_Corral) or Del Friscos (https://delfriscos.com)



1.Do you agree all TRPG have this in common: DM makes the setting and the players pick something to do in it.?


No. Not at all. Call of Cthulhu is often run as single shot adventures where what the players are going to do is already determined, they are going to investigate some cosmic horror. Fiasco provides a single individual scenario under which all the players establish a setup and then react to the resulting collapse. The Skeletons requires that the players play skeletons, and that they defend a tomb against interlopers until they are unable to defend anymore. There are also hundreds (https://www.drivethrurpg.com/browse.php?filters=0_44823_0_0_0&) of GM-less TTRPGs.

[jindra34]

What?

People go to a place with food and pick a food to eat.
People go to a place with food and pick a food to eat.

Both of the above lines are exactly the same....you you somehow say they are different?So... your saying Applebee's and McDonald's are the same. 'k.



Right, but once the normal adventure starts, with a story and plot and linear actions and all, you can't do the sandbox thing of ''the players just do whatever they want''. You either go on the adventure, or you just do whatever random stuff you want to do.

And why can't we? If lets say in the middle of a dungeon the players exhaust consumables and need to run back to town, who is to say I (as the GM) can't make the players at least attempt to RPG everything, keep track of time etc.


So....now your saying it is:

Game A:
*DM: *explains the world as relevant*
*Players: *Pick something to do*

Game B
*Players *Ignore the DM and do whatever they want..and drag the DM along*

I don't think anyone has said Game B.


Ok, I won't use normal, I will use the word Common.
I'm not sure that is better at clearing up confusion. In fact it may be worse.


YOU are saying a ''sandbox'' game is exactly like a common game: DM makes the setting and the players pick something to do in it. PERIOD. Every single common TRPG for the last couple decades has been this EXACT way:DM makes the setting and the players pick something to do in it. You description of a sandbox is EXACTLY the same way:DM makes the setting and the players pick something to do in it. So, there is NOTHING different at all in the sandbox game....and hence it is a meaningless word.

DM makes the setting and the players pick something to do in it. PERIOD. This, yet again, is the most fundamental basic point about a TRPG.
And I think here we are done with pointful (and pointy) responses.

So lets explain a linear game with letters representing PLANNED GAME states
A>B>C>D>E>F>G>H...
Every game state has a planned next step, like a dungeon of rooms with one way doors that you have to do something in them to open the door. There may be failure states but that doesn't change the fact that at heart the game is basically a planned line. And as long as the players don't break too much from it, it allows really fast play.

A SANDBOX however is more like:
A
As in at the start of each session there exists only one PLANNED state and its the current one. The GM instead of looking to the future and down (un)likely paths has spent the same amount of time and effort making the world click, whirr, hum and just plain work. It means they are far less likely to get caught completely off guard, and always have a response, but at the lower end (where the differences are accentuated) will result in a slower game as they have to either consult notes or pause to think often.

[Darth Ultron]

So when deciding on where to have a romantic dinner with a date, to you there is no difference between choosing Golden Coral (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_Corral) or Del Friscos (https://delfriscos.com)

I do, now describe how the two games are different.




So... your saying Applebee's and McDonald's are the same. 'k.

I'm say ''go to a place that serves food and get/eat food is the same".

If everyone wants to use food...give me the food examples.

Is a sandbox cheap, bad fast food? The Common game a expensive stake dinner?



And why can't we? If lets say in the middle of a dungeon the players exhaust consumables and need to run back to town, who is to say I (as the GM) can't make the players at least attempt to RPG everything, keep track of time etc.

To run out of something and need more is all Common game stuff. In the sandbox the players can just do whatever they want.



I don't think anyone has said Game B.

Are you sure?



A SANDBOX however is more like:
A
As in at the start of each session there exists only one PLANNED state and its the current one. The GM instead of looking to the future and down (un)likely paths has spent the same amount of time and effort making the world click, whirr, hum and just plain work. It means they are far less likely to get caught completely off guard, and always have a response, but at the lower end (where the differences are accentuated) will result in a slower game as they have to either consult notes or pause to think often.

Again, like most others you are not talking about comparing to things with the same base line.

Lets try:

1.The DM makes the setting. People, places, things, stories, and plot threads all about the game world.

So, can everyone agree the DM does this?

2.The players pick something to do. They can either follow a DM plot thread, or make their own (does not matter). This is the meta game plot

So, can everyone agree the players do this?

3.The players must break down whatever it is they want to do to a fairly focused action to a perspective of just the individual characters. This is a plot(the adventure plot): a single, directed course of actions with an end goal.

So, can everyone agree the players do this?

4.Ok, here is where it gets tricky. The DM MUST make up everything. If the players just happen to randomly follow and encounter only the things the DM made for the setting; then the DM can just sit back and react. However it is unlikely that the players will just randomly only follow and encounter things the DM has pre made in the setting. Even more so things made in gameplay detail. Most of the time, the DM will need to make things specific to whatever the characters are doing.

So can everyone agree the DM does this?

5.The DM needs to have at least a vague idea of where the plot is going to make things in front of it. Once the players pick a plot, the DM makes stuff just for that plot.

So can everyone agree the DM does this?

6.The DM intertwines all the focused people, places and things around the single plot, adds lots of fluff story and makes what is known as An Adventure: single, directed, focused collection of plot, character, and location details used by a DM to manage the plot story.

So can everyone agree the DM does this?

For Example, in a Common Game, it would go like this:

1.DM makes the setting.
2.Players want to build a big castle and rule the surrounding lands.
3.The players break down the above to the simple ''step one we will go get a lot of treasure to fund our needs" and (looking over the setting notes) to rob the Gold Bank in the city of Goldberg.
4.Now the DM has not specifically made any details about the Gold Bank, and only has a couple details about the city. But as the characters are going there: the DM must make up all the needed details about the city, and specifically the bank.
5.Knowing the players want to rob the bank, the DM makes a floor plan of the bank and details it's security features and details what is in the vault, plus a description of the bank and the area of the city it is in.
6.The DM now adds connecting details, fluff and story...who owns the bank, does a write up of bank NPCs and so forth.

As you can see, no where in any of the above are the characters ever forced to do anything...other then by the rules, game reality and common sense. The DM does make encounters, like the Gold Thief encounter: an evil dwarf that has been trying to rob the bank for years, for the characters to find and encounter or the Private Bank Thugs that guard the bank at night. But when and how they are used is ''floating'', for example if the characters hang around the bank at night more then a minute or two...they will have that Private Bank Thug encounter.

Now, all of the above is a Common game. The players are FREE to have their characters TRY to do (all most) anything to rob the bank and end the Gold Bank Heist adventure.

Now, SOMEHOW, a sandbox game is 100% different then what is described above. So..how?

[ImNotTrevor]

In the Far Future of the 41st Thread Page...
There is only BAIT.

That you idiots keep taking. Hence why we have 40 pages of this idiocy.

Staaaahp

[Kitten Champion]

In the Far Future of the 41st Thread Page...
There is only BAIT.

That you idiots keep taking. Hence why we have 40 pages of this idiocy.

Staaaahp

I figure by the time you get to "Why Sandbox is a meaningless phrase: The Revenge" people will finally lose interest.

You'll just need to sit through two more sequels.

[1337 b4k4]

I do, now describe how the two games are different.

It was covered in pretty extensive detail here (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?550178-Why-Sandbox-is-a-meaningless-phrase), here (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?550178-Why-Sandbox-is-a-meaningless-phrase/page10), here (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?550178-Why-Sandbox-is-a-meaningless-phrase/page20) and here (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?550178-Why-Sandbox-is-a-meaningless-phrase/page30)

[Mordaedil]

In the Far Future of the 41st Thread Page...
There is only BAIT.

That you idiots keep taking. Hence why we have 40 pages of this idiocy.

Staaaahp

I'm amazed this level of trolling is allowed at all. I got a warning for using a naughty word once.

[EGplay]

So....now your saying it is:

Game A:
*DM: *explains the world as relevant*
*Players: *Pick something to do*

Game B
*Players *Ignore the DM and do whatever they want..and drag the DM along*
The DM advertised the game as a sandbox and therefore agrees to letting the players determine the game. You can't very well drag someone along who is cooperating, now can you?
But yes, in a sandbox the DM does not take the lead.

I've indicated twice now that it is this approach that differs, and not necessarily how it plays out.
For the players, getting to do the dramatic question part without having a DM's control over the world is is a challenge a non-sandbox game doesn't offer.
For the DM, running the world and events (or adventures) in it as responses rather than prepared actions is also a challenge a non-sandbox game doesn't offer.


1.Do you agree all TRPG have this in common: DM makes the setting and the players pick something to do in it.?

This would seem to be a very good first step, AND it would eliminate you or anyone saying that this is somehow a special thing only found in spacial sandbox games. It is in every TRPG.

Then we can move on...
Only insofar that in a non-sandbox game, the players pick from a list provided by the DM (possibly having to search to find what items are on it), in a sandbox game the 'list' is created by the directions the characters (pro-actively, so not prompted by DM-provided hooks) take. This last part is the players asking the dramatic questions.

@ImNotTrevor saying "Staahp":
If his stance is a reflection of reality, he has changed from hardline, one answer to find - one place to find it in, railroad DM to one who allows a similar amount of freedom in his non-sandbox game to the kind you would expect of any well-run sandbox in only half a dozen or so threads.
I'd call that progress😎.

[Florian]

Only insofar that in a non-sandbox game, the players pick from a list provided by the DM (possibly having to search to find what items are on it), in a sandbox game the 'list' is created by the directions the characters (pro-actively, so not prompted by DM-provided hooks) take. This last part is the players asking the dramatic questions.

We´re still talking by each other, I think, because we´re talking about the practical vs. the theoretical aspects of it.

The practical aspects are that we´re starting the whole thing by picking rules system and genre, both already carrying a truck-load of information how the game itself will shape-up in actual play.

Further, we´re starting by selecting a size of the game world to play in and opt for a certain detail level and interconnectivity of and between the elements we chose to put in the game world.

Based on that, we chose if and how we want to run the simulation aspects of it, how the elements should react to and interact with the player characters.

So the fundament for the "List" is clearly defined by how and with what elements the game world is created by the gm in the first step. Using CoC "Arkham County", PF "Varisia" and AM "Mythic Europe" will generate vastly different "game worlds", elements and activities to engage with by default.

Now for the theoretical part, let me borrow two terms and use them here as a placeholder: Associated and Disassociated Activities by the players and their characters (and by extension, the gm). This comes with the question attached how we see the player/character divide.
One assumption is, that the world is unknown, a "fog of war" is in place and the game world has to be explored step by step by investigation and engaging with game elements, up to the point that the world is known enough that pro-active choices become possible because they're associated with the game world.
The other assumption is that the players themselves come with ideas, aims and goals for what they want their character(s) to achieve in-game and explore only as much as is needed so they can start their stuff, which is pretty unassociated to the game world.
Contrast the difference between the two assumptions, which both build upon full agency and being pro-active, but the first assumption is based on pure in-game knowledge, while the second assumption is based on pure out-game knowledge.

The difference between those two positions is also what gets misidentified as "linear" in this discussion, while DU labels the other position as RL Play.

[EGplay]

We´re still talking by each other, I think, because we´re talking about the practical vs. the theoretical aspects of it.

The practical aspects are that we´re starting the whole thing by picking rules system and genre, both already carrying a truck-load of information how the game itself will shape-up in actual play.

Further, we´re starting by selecting a size of the game world to play in and opt for a certain detail level and interconnectivity of and between the elements we chose to put in the game world.

Based on that, we chose if and how we want to run the simulation aspects of it, how the elements should react to and interact with the player characters.

I view sandbox as a reversal of the dramatic question - answer dynamic. Choosing game & setting & scope collaborately does provide the players with more agency, but doesn't necessarily create a sandbox by itself. This can also be done for a game that then proceeds to be (mostly) non-sandbox.

Reversing the dynamic informs the DM how to let players use the game as a sandbox, and players how to do so effectively. Provided everyone is on board with what is meant by dramatic question, of course.

The 'what are we playing' process is largely unrelated to this, except that some games can struggle more with the concept.

I must admit being taught to view different games, sometimes radically so, with an eye on similarities (in order to transition your pitch from one to another). This can take some getting used to, and obviously colours my perception.



So the fundament for the "List" is clearly defined by how and with what elements the game world is created by the gm in the first step. Using CoC "Arkham County", PF "Varisia" and AM "Mythic Europe" will generate vastly different "game worlds", elements and activities to engage with by default.

Now for the theoretical part, let me borrow two terms and use them here as a placeholder: Associated and Disassociated Activities by the players and their characters (and by extension, the gm). This comes with the question attached how we see the player/character divide.
One assumption is, that the world is unknown, a "fog of war" is in place and the game world has to be explored step by step by investigation and engaging with game elements, up to the point that the world is known enough that pro-active choices become possible because they're associated with the game world.
The other assumption is that the players themselves come with ideas, aims and goals for what they want their character(s) to achieve in-game and explore only as much as is needed so they can start their stuff, which is pretty unassociated to the game world.
Contrast the difference between the two assumptions, which both build upon full agency and being pro-active, but the first assumption is based on pure in-game knowledge, while the second assumption is based on pure out-game knowledge.

The difference between those two positions is also what gets misidentified as "linear" in this discussion, while DU labels the other position as RL Play.

I agree (although that's certainly not the only misidentification of 'linear' I have seen here), but would posit that both approaches are sandbox, just done in different ways.

[Max_Killjoy]

I'm amazed this level of trolling is allowed at all. I got a warning for using a naughty word once.

Yeah, it's kinda amazing what sort of underbridge activities he gets away with compared to what gets nailed otherwise. Not going to say more than that on the general subject, given how one is more likely to get nailed for discussing it than others are for actually breaking the rules.

[Darth Ultron]

I figure by the time you get to "Why Sandbox is a meaningless phrase: The Revenge" people will finally lose interest.

You'll just need to sit through two more sequels.

II: The Wrath of Khan!
III:Revenge of the Sand!


The DM advertised the game as a sandbox and therefore agrees to letting the players determine the game. You can't very well drag someone along who is cooperating, now can you?
But yes, in a sandbox the DM does not take the lead.

See this is where you loose me. The DM ALLWAYS has the lead: they are the LEAD.

1.The DM sits back and waits.
2.The players pick something to do.
3. The DM takes the lead of that something to do.

So, yes, for a couple minutes the players can ''feel great'' or whatever they want to feel and pick something to do, and then go back to being common players .....and then the DM takes the lead and runs the game.



I've indicated twice now that it is this approach that differs, and not necessarily how it plays out.
For the players, getting to do the dramatic question part without having a DM's control over the world is is a challenge a non-sandbox game doesn't offer.
For the DM, running the world and events (or adventures) in it as responses rather than prepared actions is also a challenge a non-sandbox game doesn't offer.

Wait, what part of the game world does the DM not have control of? Are you talking about the players like playing a game by themselves with no DM or going to play in another game?
And what type of ''other'' game does a DM not respond to the players?

See your not making any sense here.



Only insofar that in a non-sandbox game, the players pick from a list provided by the DM (possibly having to search to find what items are on it), in a sandbox game the 'list' is created by the directions the characters (pro-actively, so not prompted by DM-provided hooks) take. This last part is the players asking the dramatic questions.


Ok, so you are finally saying: A sandbox is where the players pick something to do all on their own and ignore whatever the DM has prepared? So that couple of seconds of activity makes the whole game a ''sandbox"?

[Pleh]

What?

People go to a place with food and pick a food to eat.
People go to a place with food and pick a food to eat.

Both of the above lines are exactly the same....you you somehow say they are different?

Because you are deliberately ignoring what clearly makes them different.


"People go to a place with food and pick a food to eat." This is an accurate description of both, but it's an incomplete description of both.

If your friends want to do an all-you-can-eat buffet and you take them to a drive thru, the similarities in access to food will not be sufficient to satisfy their desire to control their portions and mixnmatch all the different options on the menu.

If your friends want take-out so they can eat wherever they like, the buffet is a poor choice (most buffets don't allow buffet food to be taken out of the establishment).

But you insist that any place you can get food is somehow exactly the same as any other.

If you can't see the distinction in how commonplace restaurants serve their customers, how do you expect to grok the abstract nuances of game theory?

Didn't we learn the skills necessary to distinguish a 5 star restaurant from McDonalds back when we were watching sesame street? "One of these things is not like the other."

[hamishspence]

A sandbox game is like Elite, whereas an extremely linear game is like Space Invaders.

[Darth Ultron]

Because you are deliberately ignoring what clearly makes them different.

Because no one ever offers anything different.

I lot of people say that in a sandbox the players can pick anything to do. Ok, but that is not unique to a sandbox: that is true of any common game.

Like it does not matter where you go to eat: A fast food place or a fancy place....you, the customer, get to pick what you order and what you eat.

No matter what though, you can only order food the place has and prepares..you can't just order ''anything'', but you can pick the place you go to in the first place. Rally's has no salad, so you can't order that there and if you do what to eat a taco it's a good idea to go to a Mexican restaurant as the Will have tacos there.

So where is the difference?

DM: Makes the setting and describes it to the players.
Players: Pick something to do.

This is true of all good, normal, common games.

The game everyone seems to be avoiding talking about is the monster nightmare jerk DM game: The DM makes(or buys) the module ''The Dark Tower" and then FORCES the players (somehow) to play trough the adventure (for weeks) as the players cry and complain endlessly. But, ok, everyone...even me..agrees this is a bad game.

So is there some other type of game where the players are FORCED to do something?

[Frozen_Feet]

A sandbox game is like Elite, whereas an extremely linear game is like Space Invaders.

I hope you're not talking to DU, he admitted pages ago that he's basically ignorant of videogames.

But yes, Elite and Space Invaders are two really old games which exemplify the differences very well.

[Pleh]

I lot of people say that in a sandbox the players can pick anything to do. Ok, but that is not unique to a sandbox: that is true of any common game.

But it is not true to the same extent or degree.

In my sandbox game, my players choose to be mercenaries, so I give them bounty boards where they can take some, none, or all of the jobs listed there. If they want more options, they can use gather information or ask a specific person (a local lord or the nearest innkeep). The players choose the course of the narrative.

In my branching linear game, they are hired mercenaries escorting a team of jedi. The mission is already chosen for them and they really only choose how to pursue it. If they choose to abandon it, then the game is essentially over. The players do not choose the course of the narrative, only what part they play in it (which can influence the narrative, but not control it directly).


Like it does not matter where you go to eat: A fast food place or a fancy place....you, the customer, get to pick what you order and what you eat.

This is only true if the only thing the customer cares about is getting food from a restaurant.

You deliberately ignored my point that buffets don't let you take the food to eat anywhere, so you shouldn't go for a buffet if you want to have a picnic elsewhere. Here, the distinction is in where you are allowed to eat your food. That is a meaningful distinction even if not every customer is concerned about it.

Getting food from a restaurant from a list of choices is overly simplified because it overlooks HOW the food is served.

Guests MAY not care about how it is served, but that doesn't mean NOBODY ever will. It only takes 1 paying customer that would care about the manner in which food is served to make that distinction meaningful, no matter how many other people don't care.


No matter what though, you can only order food the place has and prepares..you can't just order ''anything'', but you can pick the place you go to in the first place. Rally's has no salad, so you can't order that there and if you do what to eat a taco it's a good idea to go to a Mexican restaurant as the Will have tacos there.

That's not the parallel I'm trying to draw here, though your confusion is more understandable. Up to this point, my argument was that you were ignoring key distinctions, but I wasn't specifically tying it back to the subject yet. It was still a rhetorical metaphor: "this operates on the same set of functions and clearly does not work as you propose."

If we want to tighten the metaphor to relate it more closely to the subject of sandboxes in TTRPGs, it would likely look more like having friends over for dinner.

A "pure sandbox" dinner would be having your friends bring their favorite ingredients and everyone cooks the dinner together in the kitchen, with the host only supervising to help clean up messes, show guests where the culinary tools and pantry/fridge items are and optionally cooking some of the food themselves.

A "pure linear" dinner never has the guests in the kitchen. Instead, they have assigned seats at the table and never need to get up from their seat except for personal needs. The meals are chosen and prepared ahead of time so guests can simply be served the next course exactly at the right moment. No guest is forced to eat what they don't want (railroading), but in a "pure" linear game, there isn't an alternative: enjoy the meal or don't.

Most games are somewhere inbetween, but there are pure sandbox games that are good, bad, and normal and some pure linear games that are good, bad, and normal, so we can't simply say, "all normal games have both." That's an oversimplification, because while it tends ti be true, it's not enough information.

While there's nothing intrinsically wrong with a pure linear game (like a fragile adventure pack), being able to communicate the degree to which it is linear as opposed to sandbox helps players decide if they would like the game before they are forced to invest in joining.

Just like how if you and your friends were going out to eat together, they might say,

"I want to sit outside while I eat, so either take out or a place with outdoor seating." Now any restaurant that doesn't meet this criteria is insufficient despite how these other places let you choose your food from a list of options.

Or:
"Let's dress up and go some place fancy!" Now drive thrus, small diners, most buffets, a ton of other restaurants are insufficient, despite how these other places let you choose your food from a list of options.

If we dispense of the term, "sandbox" we lose the ability to communicate that we want the authority of the plot adbicated to the players along with all the varying degrees to which this can be true.

[Max_Killjoy]

Because you are deliberately ignoring what clearly makes them different.


That's par for the course. He only deals in absolutes. If two things have any similarity, then they are "SAME". The only choices are "IS" and "IS NOT". There are no degrees or distinctions or nuances.

[1337 b4k4]

That's par for the course. He only deals in absolutes

I mean, he is a Sith. It’s right there in the name.

[Rhedyn]

Maybe we're getting stuck on crossed definitions, so if you could please, without using PC/NPC symmetry or any synonyms for it, and preferably without using D&D as a reference system (if you have sufficient experience outside of D&D to use another as a reference) please provide a concrete example of the "players create interesting things with the bits the system gives you". I'll have more questions after, but let's start there.
Bits would mean the players can make interesting things with the mechanics of the system for the game world. Lots of possibilities with this but...
A wizard may create a dungeon under his tower for research purposes, or can create magic items of his own design following guidelines (even flying castles)
A character may become a Lord and manage his own domain and get wrapped up in politics or wilderness attacks on his lands.
A character may run a thieves guild and have to build that up.
A character may make their own starship and fleet to handle the situations around them.

Now most of these examples are material, but I consider things like retainers, crew, families, relationships, ect to also be "bits" aka bits of sand in the Sandbox. Most of the fun comes from playing with the bit. "Gathering bits" depends on what your "shoveling" mechanic is.

Plenty of games have these "bits" but plenty of games have Sandbox elements.
For something to be a "Sandbox campaign", I think it requires a solid "Sandbox ttRPG" and one of the additional requirements I put on that is PC / NPC symmetry as an immersion tool. Because without high amounts of immersion, I don't think a Sandbox campaign is fun. You can try a Sandbox campaign in any system, but I'm putting extra requirements on a good Sandbox campaign, which I believe is vastly different than a good episodic campaign where the GM prepares events depending on what the players want to do.
And I say they are different because what a GM needs to prep is different.

An actual game mixes elements. Genre purity shouldn't be a goal of any GM. The genre you sell is just the focus of the campaign.

[Segev]

Ok, I won't use normal, I will use the word Common.

YOU are saying a ''sandbox'' game is exactly like a common game:You're already off-track, here. you're still focusing on "proving me wrong" in your interpretation of what I said. I asked you to tell me what I said, not show me how what I said is incorrect.

I ask you to do this because, until you can tell me what I said, your efforts to tell me why what you think I said is incorrect keep having the issue of being wrong about what I actually said.


DM makes the setting and the players pick something to do in it. PERIOD. Every single common TRPG for the last couple decades has been this EXACT way:DM makes the setting and the players pick something to do in it. You description of a sandbox is EXACTLY the same way:DM makes the setting and the players pick something to do in it. So, there is NOTHING different at all in the sandbox game....and hence it is a meaningless word.

DM makes the setting and the players pick something to do in it. PERIOD. This, yet again, is the most fundamental basic point about a TRPG.I am willing to agree that campaigns generally are structured this way, linear or not. There are adventures that are much more structured than this, where the players make no such choice in-game and instead, by sitting down to play "The Mystery of the Murdered Maven," have agreed to use the provided PCs and accept the given motivations and goals. But I will not hold these against you, as the context of our discussion has generally been more long-form single-group campaigns.

This, however, is a great definition of a "normal home game" or just "normal game." It is still missing, entirely, what I was saying about a sandbox. This is why you keep failing, Darth Ultron. You cannot reframe what I'm saying in your own words, because you're too determined to construct a straw man that is based around your own misconceptions and assign it to me so that you can refute it.

Try again. I will not rewrite what I said before. It is now on you to go back, re-read it, and try again to state what I said in a manner that I will agree means the same thing as what I said. You don't have to agree with it, but you have to be able to restate it. Only once I have agreed that you have adequately restated what I said are you able to make arguments against my position, because without that, you're not actually arguing against my position. You're arguing against some made-up position and ignoring what I said.


Ok, then you jump to ''linear adventure'', but you compare that to ''sandbox game''? It seems your And, as like many others, you are comparing apples and oranges.

So, are you using ''game'' and ''adventure'' interchangeably here: like, to you, do both words mean exactly the same thing?I am willing to define them distinctly, though if I did so, I would need to be rather precise in de-overloading "game," as it currently means "system" and "activity of gathering around the table to play these characters in this campaign" and a few other things. I think "game" is a fairly generic term, and we'd be better off defining more specific terms for individual elements of it than trying to precisely define "game" itself.

In an RPG, the "adventure" is rather vague, as well. One could define it as the events that take place in the game, or as the planned module, or as the specific elements of the setting that are being interacted with.

Given that you're just attacking my terminology, here, and not trying to in any way demonstrate understanding of what I meant by it - nor are you providing enough context to what your question is (other than a hostile assertion that I'm not saying anything meaningful) - I can't really respond in a way designed to clarify. Please try again, this time to actually ask a specific question relating back to what I said.


OR are you using the more common usage of ''game'' = everything, and an ''adventure'' is a very, small and narrow focused tiny part of the game?We can go with this, though "small and narrow, focused, tiny" is probably overstating it. Both are contextually defined.


So both the ''sandbox'' and linear DMs BOTH make GAMES filled with NPCs and environments and cultures and locations.Not necessarily. It's possible, but not required, for this to be true in a linear adventure.

Here, I will use "adventure" to describe the way the game unfolds. Will that help? So a "linear adventure" is prescribed, to a degree, with specified events that the PCs will encounter. A "sandbox adventure" is generally going to be site-based, where the PCs can go find things that are going on and interact with them. A lot of dungeon crawls fall into this category. As do some mysteries, though often those wind up re-aligning into linearity due to assumption of party goals being important to writing out the detailed reactions the module expects.

A sandbox game requires more detail in the setting, because the players may well go do things not planned for in a linear adventure module. A linear adventure can get away with having only the parts the PCs are expected to interact with be particularly detailed. In the process, it can have a lot more detail on those parts, due to more time being available to spend on putting it together.


And then next we come to the Adventure part. The linear DM(either by themselves OR at the players request) makes a very, small and narrow focused tiny thing to do: an adventure.I wouldn't call it "small" or "tiny." What the linear adventure consists of is more planning and assumption as to what the PCs will do. Not necessarily how they'll do it, but the ultimate choices they'll make. The goals they'll set.

If the PCs can spoil the adventure by deciding to side with Lord McNasty of Villainia rather than trying to earn the trust of the various resistance cells and lead a strike team into his base to kill him, then it's a linear adventure because it assumed the PCs would want to fight him and work against him. If the PCs can spoil the adventure by choosing to set themselves up as infiltrators into the resistance cells and bilking their devoted followers of all their wealth, and then absconding to the next kingdom, then it was a linear adventure because there was, again, a plan for what the PCs' goals would be and what they would and would not do to achieve them. If the PCs can spoil the adventure by realizing that Nancy Niceness of the Blandvale Resistance Cell is actually Lady McNasty, and thus not trusting her to be their quest-giver until she inevitably betrays them after they have gathered the trust and resources of the other resistance cells, then it's a linear adventure because it assumed the PCs wouldn't figure that out and thus assumed what her role would be later on, well after the PCs got involved.

Essentially, if the PCs can "spoil the adventure" by failing to go along with its premise, or by "skipping" part of it or avoiding a pitfall or in any way not interacting with it as planned, it's linear.


Ok, but, what does the ''sandbox'' box DM do? They don't make an adventure, right? They just have the massive mass of the game setting. But when a player narrows down what their character does to a single very small and narrowly focused action....the ''sandbox'' DM DOES NOT narrowly focus the game? AND, if you will say that they do...why is that not an adventure?It's not a linear adventure, because the PCs can interact with it however they like. They can go in with the goal of killing everything in sight, looting it to the foundations, and running off to live the high life one County over. They can attempt to sign on with the powers-that-be - one or more factions, if more than one exist - and become part of the power structure there. They can offer to trade goods or information for other goods or information. Their entire reasons for being there need not be set up by the DM in advance. (I mean, yes, he set it up so that there are interesting things and reasons for the party to go there, but he may not have planned for the party to have a monk who hears about the Goblin King and his elite warrior-orcs...and the monk decides he wants to train with that elite order as his motivation for seeking them out. The DM came up with the elite order, and has neat stuff surrounding them, but it never occurred to him that this would fit in with a PC motivation to become "the best" or acquire new fighting techniques.) They can go there with the plan to negotiate a peaceful set of agreements for coexistence between the adventure site's powers that be and their friendly hometown. They can go there seeking to find a murderer and not really planning to sack the whole place.

In a linear adventure involving, say, a hunt for a murderer who ran to hide amongst the Goblin King's forces, the PCs have a set goal, and the linear adventure will generally assume certain aspects of how to achieve it. If the PCs can spoil the adventure by approaching the Goblin King and politely asking permission, and having sufficient social oomph to be permitted in, to surgically remove the murderer rather than having to dungeon-crawl and murderhobo their way through the wicked goblins' lair until they find him, then it's linear.

Essentially, there's nothing PCs can do to "spoil the adventure" in a sandbox game, except refuse to play.


See it's the word jumping and mixing that gets me every time. It's like your saying that a DM that makes an adventure does not make a setting....but that makes no sense..or are you saying there ARE DMs like that?Since that isn't what I said, you continue to demonstrate your failure at comprehending what I wrote. I blame your insistent straw men, since you have this narrowly defined "everyone who disagrees with me is saying this" that you attempt to force everything into in order to avoid having to deal with what they're actually saying.


So we really need to get on the same page....We do. Please do try to find mine.


So...

1.Do you agree all TRPG have this in common: DM makes the setting and the players pick something to do in it.?For the sake of argument, I can agree to that, because in context we're not discussing one-offs where the players make no such choice other than whether to sit down at the table or not.


This would seem to be a very good first step, AND it would eliminate you or anyone saying that this is somehow a special thing only found in spacial sandbox games. It is in every TRPG. That's already eliminated. Nobody except the straw men you construct say that. Please try again to actually state my position back to me in your own words, without trying to refute it. You can try to refute it after I agree that you have accurately represented my position/definition of "sandbox." Until you can do that, we can't move on, because you refuse to engage with any intellectual honesty.


I'm say ''go to a place that serves food and get/eat food is the same".

If everyone wants to use food...give me the food examples.

Is a sandbox cheap, bad fast food? The Common game a expensive stake dinner?
No. You're on entirely the wrong axis, here.

And "sandbox" games are "common." You're still trying to break the venn diagram.

The restaurant isn't a great analogy to begin with, honestly, but I'll see if I can use it anyway.

A linear game is more like a catered event or banquet, where you sign up for it and will be served the same 7-course meal as everybody else. You might get to choose a different entrée, between 2-3 options (meat or vegetarian, for example), and (since it isn't a hard railroad) you can specify some allergy/dietary requirements, but you can't order just anything you want. The meal will likely be higher quality than you could get at a buffet, due to a specialized focus on the particular dish, and everything in the meal's courses are designed to complement each other for a cohesive dining experience.

A sandbox game is more like a standard restaurant, where there is an extensive menu and you can choose whether you want appetizers, which appetizers you want, what entrée to have, what sides to have with it, what to drink out of a menu of items (rather than the water and iced tea served to everybody at the banquet), whether or not to have dessert, and even whether you want to treat an appetizer as your main course or have a side dish as an appetizer. You mix and match to build the meal you want. But, the quality may or may not be as high, and it will not be as perfectly designed to have all parts complement all other parts.



Now, again, this isn't a GREAT analogy. The holes are gaping. But if it helps, I'll put it out there for you.

[Max_Killjoy]

And -- some restaurants have bigger or smaller menus, or different specials, or different combos, or different prices at lunch or for weekend brunch, and so on, and so on. Different restaurants have different degrees and specifics of "sandboxiness".

And -- just because someone can't go into a vegan restaurant and order a steak, doesn't mean there's no difference between a vegan restaurant and a "here's your foodbox eat it or go hungry" precooked handout.

Similarly, just because a player can't declare "my PC can fly by flapping his arms now!" in a gritty WW2-era OSS / partisans based sandboxy campaign, that doesn't mean there's no difference between that game and a linear "assassinate the Nazi of the week" campaign.

[Koo Rehtorb]

If the PCs can spoil the adventure by deciding to side with Lord McNasty of Villainia rather than trying to earn the trust of the various resistance cells and lead a strike team into his base to kill him, then it's a linear adventure because it assumed the PCs would want to fight him and work against him.

I don't really agree with this. I think it is too broad a definition of linear. I think it is possible to start with a premise that this is a certain type of game, in which you won't side with arch villains, without it being a linear game. If you still have a choice about how and when you'll go after Lord McNasty I don't think it could be called linear. But it's also not a sandbox. There's a middle ground.

[JNAProductions]

I don't really agree with this. I think it is too broad a definition of linear. I think it is possible to start with a premise that this is a certain type of game, in which you won't side with arch villains, without it being a linear game. If you still have a choice about how and when you'll go after Lord McNasty I don't think it could be called linear. But it's also not a sandbox. There's a middle ground.

It's a spectrum. A pure sandbox is pretty much the opposite of a pure linear, but there are definitely shades in between. You can have a linear OVERALL game (Lord McNasty must be defeated) but a sandboxy approach to it (join the resistance? gather an alliance of foreign nations? train like Goku and punch his shnozz in?) as well as a sandboxy overall game (pick a goal, any goal, do whatever you want!) that gets locked into linearity once you decide ("Hey guys, I can only prep so much each week-so once you decide what you want to do, you're gonna have to stick to it since that's all I can make stuff for and I'm no good at improv.").

[Segev]

I don't really agree with this. I think it is too broad a definition of linear. I think it is possible to start with a premise that this is a certain type of game, in which you won't side with arch villains, without it being a linear game. If you still have a choice about how and when you'll go after Lord McNasty I don't think it could be called linear. But it's also not a sandbox. There's a middle ground.

Fair enough. I should have said "it's not a sandbox if you can make choices that spoil the adventure."

Though defining where "truly linear" starts is harder, and gets more and more subjective.

[Koo Rehtorb]

It's a spectrum. A pure sandbox is pretty much the opposite of a pure linear, but there are definitely shades in between. You can have a linear OVERALL game (Lord McNasty must be defeated) but a sandboxy approach to it (join the resistance? gather an alliance of foreign nations? train like Goku and punch his shnozz in?) as well as a sandboxy overall game (pick a goal, any goal, do whatever you want!) that gets locked into linearity once you decide ("Hey guys, I can only prep so much each week-so once you decide what you want to do, you're gonna have to stick to it since that's all I can make stuff for and I'm no good at improv.").

It is a spectrum. I just think calling a game a linear game or a sandbox game implies that that game is fairly far down one end of the spectrum.

[EGplay]

See this is where you loose me. The DM ALLWAYS has the lead: they are the LEAD.

1.The DM sits back and waits.
2.The players pick something to do.
3. The DM takes the lead of that something to do.

So, yes, for a couple minutes the players can ''feel great'' or whatever they want to feel and pick something to do, and then go back to being common players .....and then the DM takes the lead and runs the game.
No, in a non-sandbox game the DM (most) always has the lead.
In a sandbox game, the players have the lead, without having DM powers. They explain what they try to make happen, the game rules determine what succeeds and what not, the DM merely has the world reacting to that.



Wait, what part of the game world does the DM not have control of? Are you talking about the players like playing a game by themselves with no DM or going to play in another game?
And what type of ''other'' game does a DM not respond to the players?

See your not making any sense here.
No, I wrote it correctly. You misread.

The DM has control of the game world.
In a non-sandbox game, he/she can use this when posing the dramatic questions.
In a sandbox, the players get to pose these questions, but have to do so without control of the game world.

Try and re-read, that's what the part you quoted says.


Ok, so you are finally saying: A sandbox is where the players pick something to do all on their own and ignore whatever the DM has prepared? So that couple of seconds of activity makes the whole game a ''sandbox"?
It's not a couple of seconds. Picking something to do on their own is what players continue to do. They drive the events, rather than having the events be driven to them.

The onus on the players is to come up with things to do that continue to lead to interesting developments.
The onus on the DM is to prepare enough stuff that is well-suited to reacting to player activity, and to be able to roll with most things the players come up with.

[Segev]

The onus on the players is to come up with things to do that continue to lead to interesting developments.
The onus on the DM is to prepare enough stuff that is well-suited to reacting to player activity, and to be able to roll with most things the players come up with.

I would go a little further, and this is what makes the GM's job difficult in a sandbox game: The GM needs to provide enough hook for the players to grab onto. Not in the sense of, "You're being given this quest," but in the sense that, if the players say, "We want to start a delivery company," the GM has to be able to tell them what their characters know about the world around them that would enable them to start doing so.

One mistake many would-be GMs of a sandbox game make is to have this stuff out there, then give the players no way to interact with it without guessing where to go to find it. "I have this whole village! Why aren't you going and talking to people?!" "We're IRL a bunch of socially awkward individuals, most of us are introverts, and we have no reason to go into town and really bother the NPCs deeply enough to learn anything."

ASk the players, "Okay, where do you want to go?" when they don't...really know anything about the town is not going to get you very far. It'll just get them paralyzed and confused as to what they're "supposed" to be doing, or even what they CAN do.

What is needed is some few mini-quests that send the players to interesting locations, or a helpful NPC or set thereof who can point them in the direction of opportunities. This will sound linear. But it isn't, because players abandoning the mini-quest part-way through for something they've latched onto as more interesting isn't ruining the quest; it's taking the training wheels off and getting into the game properly.

[EGplay]

Segev, I'm in complete agreement. I just wanted to, you know, keep it correct but simple for now (for obvious reasons).

[Koo Rehtorb]

"We're IRL a bunch of socially awkward individuals, most of us are introverts

This is a weird stereotype that needs to die.

[Segev]

This is a weird stereotype that needs to die.

*cough* I may be projecting from the most recent attempt at a sandbox game that I participated in. I loved the concept for it, we were all excited about it, but we a) didn't realize the DM meant for it to start off sandboxy, and b) were all exactly as I described, so we did nothing but stay in our base camp rather than going out and exploring the town and randomly approaching people to find out what was out there.

[Lorsa]

This is a weird stereotype that needs to die.

I just assumed Segev was speaking from his own experience. It's quite possible some groups have socially awkward introverts in them.

[Corneel]

Explaining sandbox to DU seems to me to have the same challenges as explaining snow to my children before they actually encountered it. Some of his disbelief is really in the category of 'so it's like frozen water, but not ice. Yeah, pull the other one.'

[Cluedrew]

If you want to pick a random human from Earth, he's probably a farmer named Wang.I think the most common name on earth is Muhammad actually. I don't have any numbers on that but it kind of makes sense.

[Darth Ultron]

No, in a non-sandbox game the DM (most) always has the lead.
In a sandbox game, the players have the lead, without having DM powers. They explain what they try to make happen, the game rules determine what succeeds and what not, the DM merely has the world reacting to that.

But no TRPG works like that? The vast majority of the rules only cover pure mechanical things, and even if the game has any other rules they are by there nature vague.

A player has their character walk up to guard, Joz, at a gate of the city of HighPort.

Now, somehow, you think you have a trillion page rule book that says on page 2756 exactly what the DM is to do. And that is just silly.

And even if you do the lame robotic roll playing, ''my character acts and I rolled a 30". That only tells the DM ''the guard will act 'friendly' "', and the DM SYILL gets to decide what happens.




In a sandbox, the players get to pose these questions, but have to do so without control of the game world.

What ''questions" are you even talking about?



It's not a couple of seconds. Picking something to do on their own is what players continue to do. They drive the events, rather than having the events be driven to them.

This is the Reality Game Illusion, like I said. You, somehow, think a player is altering reality with every blink their character makes...


!" "We're IRL a bunch of socially awkward individuals, most of us are introverts, and we have no reason to go into town and really bother the NPCs deeply enough to learn anything."


I agree the stereotype should die.....but I would also note that this is still a problem. It just needs to be wondered better:

The average player is clueless on how to role play in a TRPG.

It is simple: you are playing a GAME. Have fun.

But the average player, if just left on their own, will just sit there...both at the table and in the game. Very few grasp the concept of ''doing something''.

[EGplay]

But the average player, if just left on their own, will just sit there...both at the table and in the game. Very few grasp the concept of ''doing something''.

Irrelevant, this only implies sandbox isn't for average players. And even then, Segev gave gave some very good points on how a DM can help them take the lead.

Actions can change the course of reality in a game, if you take the right kind of actions.

I'm talking about 'dramatic questions', pro-active actions that prompt a response.
A character walking up to a guard is not such a question and completely too small a step to matter for this discussion. But even here, a DM is not providing the player with the action but is merely responding.

A dramatic question must be expansive enough that to resolve them game rules, or possibly house rules, will be involved, and that they can change the course of (future) reality within the game.
Examples of dramatic questions are:
_we start our own casino here, what are the reactions?
_we start up a delivery company, what happens?
_we'll hunt down dangerous creatures for ingredients in the exotic dishes we'll serve in our expensive restaurant, how do people respond?
_we try to find out how to become immortal/a deity/something more, what do we learn?

You will need to not have a preset course of future reality, though. Both for playing and understanding sandbox games.

[Rhedyn]

Irrelevant, this only implies sandbox isn't for average players.
It can also imply that the average system isn't good for a Sandbox.

[Florian]

You will need to not have a preset course of future reality, though. Both for playing and understanding sandbox games.

*loooong sigh*

Unless you go for pure improv, you will. Step one is prepping the game world, step two is working with your players once they've decided on a course of action, step three in fleshing-out the emergent scenario.

Theories aside, this is the point when most gms will have to say: "good, delivery service it is. We play PF, so grab the Downtime rules, I´ll prep something for next session".

Now do me a favor and contrast (1) and (2):

(1) Group of PF players meets for a sessions zero, the gm asks the players what they want to do and they ask for a "delivery service" campaign. Everyone agrees, builds characters and the gm starts fishing for some input. Looks like it´s going to be Aspis Consortium and in Cheliax.

(2) Group of PF players roams through Cheliax and encounters the Aspis Consortium. After two or three sessions of roaming, they decide on the "delivery service" idea and the gm preps stuff based on what happened so far.

Now, again, I don't care about the theory, because even in a set-up geared towards "emergent stuff/plot/activity", the game will change at the point when something emerges that switches the activity from roaming to engaging. Realistically speaking, the difference between using Cheliax and placing stuff to discovery and simply offering some different scenarios based on Chelix in non-existent. The only difference is a purely emotional one, between having "discovered an activity" and "chosen an activity".

[jayem]

*loooong sigh*

Unless you go for pure improv, you will. Step one is prepping the game world, step two is working with your players once they've decided on a course of action, step three in fleshing-out the emergent scenario.

Theories aside, this is the point when most gms will have to say: "good, delivery service it is. We play PF, so grab the Downtime rules, I´ll prep something for next session".



That's just asserting a "DU style sandbox", where the players "just wander till they start the plot". Although as mentioned it is possible for linear games to open out and sandbox games to close in.
If it's a sandbox step 2 and 3 have to be interleaved.

That's not to say you can't do prep or have to pause to do prep. And that things that are bigger or a long way from the players interactions are not going to be changed by players actions (or to put it another way things that the players can't change, can be planned without considering the players effect). And short term even local tiny things can be pretty near predictable. And yes it will involve improv in different places to a linear game.

And no they aren't the same.
Firstly the two things run in totally opposite directions (this is totally irrelevant to the actual point, although may be a consequence of the two styles). In situation 1 the planet has been chosen about the delivery service.In situation 2 the delivery service has been chosen about the planet

Going into the 2 situations aside. In situation 1 the game hasn't started, the players/gm can change things at whim and interaction is on the meta-game, in situation 2 the interaction is in the game. Note when player creation occurs.

Finally to repeat, no we can't "assume it's not a sandbox, see it's not a sandbox". Yes the GM preps stuff on what happens so far, but then more stuff happens (perhaps the players fluff a delivery to a certain Hutt), and then the GM takes that into account and preps more stuff (maybe said certain Hutt is angry). Though I do think talking about the theory is silly without seeing it in practice and did try to resolve that.

[Quertus]

Fair enough. I should have said "it's not a sandbox if you can make choices that spoil the adventure."

Though defining where "truly linear" starts is harder, and gets more and more subjective.


It is a spectrum. I just think calling a game a linear game or a sandbox game implies that that game is fairly far down one end of the spectrum.

This is why I keep trying to define "pure Linear" and "pure sandbox", because "all" real games are somewhere in the middle of the spectrum.

That having been said, are we ready to say that DU was right? "White Game" is a meaningless (and misleading) phrase, since all games are shades of grey?

[Koo Rehtorb]

That having been said, are we ready to say that DU was right? "White Game" is a meaningless (and misleading) phrase, since all games are shades of grey?

Saying "sandbox" or "linear" is far from meaningless as it implies that a game at least leans strongly in one of those two directions. It's just not a precise measurement. Which is fine, as a precise measurement of this is impossible anyway.

[jindra34]

Saying "sandbox" or "linear" is far from meaningless as it implies that a game at least leans strongly in one of those two directions. It's just not a precise measurement. Which is fine, as a precise measurement of this is impossible anyway.

More precisey to give meaning to what shade of grey something is we need to define white and black. And just because most Good (DU word might actually be common here.) games are central shades, doesn't mean games can't exist in the extremes or be good in the extremes.

[Florian]

This is why I keep trying to define "pure Linear" and "pure sandbox", because "all" real games are somewhere in the middle of the spectrum.

That having been said, are we ready to say that DU was right? "White Game" is a meaningless (and misleading) phrase, since all games are shades of grey?

"Pure" white and black are not even worth considering, because there's no RPG there. Either you don't play a role, or you don't play a game. As something that evolved as some kind of hybrid, both qualities must be present, rp and g.

[Lorsa]

I just wanted to say that this discussion has inspired me to start a sandbox campaign in D&D 5e. I haven't really run any "pure" sandboxes with this particular group, so we will see how it works out.