Maybe it's "Authored" vs. "Emergent"

[Easy e]

(RNG again, not DM Fiat).

It could have been 70 orcs, but the RNG didn't provide that.

I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but RNG is DM Fiat. Who makes the RNG table? How do they do it? Even if they just decide to use a basic encounter/exploration table from a pre-made book it is the DM choosing by Fiat what encounter tables to use.

Also, in the Golden Sky stories example; I think you are right that it is an example of emergent play. However, it was still ultimately up to the DM how the child reacts to any given Kami's action. Sure, as players you were all building off of each other, which seems to fit the definition of emergent; but ultimately it was still up to DM Fiat how the child reacted to your actions.

Therefore, any GM led RPG is based on the premise of illusion of choice. "You can do anything you want in an RPG!" Except you really can't. However, many people feel that "illusionism is bad" and do not realize that the entire GM led RPG experience is premised off this thing they consider bad. I am not saying this is you Korvin, it is something I see and read on forums about RPGs a lot.




That being said Korvin, I am 100% with you when you talk about "The Play is the thing".

I am also 100% aligned with you that there is a continuum/spectrum in GM led RPGs from authored to emergent and back again during every game. The play evolves and swings from these two poles as it progresses. Therefore, categorization of a "game" and telling players "what kind of game it is" can't really happen, since every interaction swings between these two poles.

[Tanarii]

Player agency is the ability of players to make meaningful decisions, "meaningful" meaning decisions that cause mutually exclusive game states.

You left out "for what their characters want to try and do".

Player agency is only about what their characters are going to try to do, not content or narrative controls. And it's only about attempting, not fiat resolution by the player to their satisfaction.

I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but RNG is DM Fiat.

No, it is not. One of the entire purposes of using RNG is that it's NOT GM Fiat.

[Quertus]

Then perhaps it was all pre poisoned by the railroad/sandbox dichotomy, since that is a related topic.

Sigh. If there was a dichotomy, it would be between "Sandbox" and "Linear", not "Sandbox" and "Railroad". At least as I understand the usage of the terms.

From past discussions, I thought you were one of the people who equated "authored" games with railroads.

Not gonna lie, I did equate "Linear" with "Railroad" when I joined the playground.

I'd like to think I've learned and grown since then.

Kyoru sure seems to as well, the OP stats "We keep talking about sandbox and railroad/linear games," so it seems only natural that people are going to want to hammer out what those terms mean before redefining them.

Unfortunately, that last bit about what people will try to do is true, despite it being exactly what I believe @Kyoryu is attempting to avoid.

Personally, I disagree with the entire premise, because IMO sandbox games present no choices that "matter". If I want to wander around aimlessly, I can do that in real life. And that is what an actual, fairly run, sandbox is; wandering around hoping to stumble into something important. And most GM's will oblige you in that matter; the PCs always happen to arrive at just the right place and or time to stumble onto something big, but 99/100 times that isn't natural, its the GM forcing an authored element into an emergent experience.

Spoiler: And more Talakeal quotes, for reference

Show

And how are the players to become involved in said conflicts?

Do you have a third path besides wander around aimlessly and hope to stumble into something or allowing the DM to insert authored content?

Closest I can recall ever seeing are villain games, but those always leave a bad taste in my mouth as players get really salty about reactive antagonists.

This may be getting a bit off track; my point was that sandbox's inhibit the ability to make meaningful decisions, and that the extra ability to make trivial decisions is not worth the extra effort that everyone at the table has to put in to get anything back.

If you could give me some examples of RPG modules or even video games which allow you to make meaningful decisions without authorial insertions, I would genuinely love to hear about them.




It isn't about destroying vs. building up; its that reactive conflicts tend to be perceived by the players as coming out of left field to spoil their fun. In my experience, it doesn't matter what the players are doing, if an enemy shows up to stop them, they read it as a screw job that the DM pulled out of his or her behind.

Minecraft takes it one step further than I did; it has no lore, no plot, no story, no meaningful decisions whatsoever. So yeah, perfect example of what I am talking about.

Europa is a bit different in that you are playing as a nation rather than an individual, so its kind of an apples to oranges comparison.

I really was more talking about games that are like somewhat like an RPG in structure; where you are an individual or small group of individuals exploring a world and having adventures of one sort or another.

For me, its not about which side is better or how it should be done.

I just disagree with the OP saying that "But fans of emergent games want different things - they want their decisions to matter." because in my experience sandbox games have a lot more trivial decisions, but linear games undoubtedly have more decisions that matter.



Its not that I don't like EU, its that games that simulate running a nation are fundamentally different and not really relevant to running an NPC, just like racing games or sports games or fishing games aren't really applicable.

Wow. OK. Whew. Um... Hmmm...

Harry Potter. Everyone knows Harry Potter, right?

So, suppose a GM were to run Harry Potter as a Linear ("Authored") game. All the beats from the movies are already set in stone; nothing the PCs do can change them. The actions the PCs take "matter" (in universe) to "stop Voldy from taking over the world", but don't really matter OOC, as Voldy will be stopped in the end no matter what they do. Now, in a "Branching Linear" game, then the actions might matter OOC, too, as "victory" might not be guaranteed.

In a Harry Potter Sandbox ("Emergent" game)? Well, the default end, if the PCs weren't there, is "Voldy takes over the world". Thus, if the PCs / players so choose, the extent that their actions matter might well be an equal "stop Voldy from taking over the world". Or it might be "Join forces with Voldy, share the world". Or it might be "destroy the date rape society of magical Britain". Or the PCs actions might have importance on the level of "get Snape (and Filch) fired". Or "collect, study, and reproduce the Deathly Hallows, to create new age of Empowerment for Magical Britain". There's a lot more that the PCs could do in a Harry Potter Sandbox (some of which might be more important than what little the Linear "stop Voldy from taking over the world" truly matters).

So, Imagine that you were given the power of a D&D 20th level Wizard. And before you stood portals into all your favorite shows / books / fiction - Harry Potter, Star Wars, Lord of the Rings, whatever. You got to choose one to enter as a self-insert powerhouse, to change the story.

Total Sandbox.

Your choices could matter a lot, no?

So I'm... not sure where your idea that your choices don't matter in a Sandbox.

Now, sometimes, *you* don't matter - your GM has forced you to be a level 1 nobody in the middle of an epic tale that is above your character's pay grade. And that's just dumb. So look at a Sandbox from the PoV of a 20th level D&D Wizard, and see if you can still tell me with a straight face that your choices don't matter. And that you can't have more of these meaningful choices than were presented by a Linear plot.

(And, yes, I think Minecraft is a bad example, because there aren't "plots" to interact with - or even the ability to really create "plots" of your own. Actions in Minecraft matter about as much as in "Cookie Clicker", IMO. Doesn't keep me from loving Minecraft, btw, but it's not exactly my go-to for talking about making actions "matter".)

I still think the planned/unplanned dichotomy is the most significant new idea about this stuff (noting this is about the pre-planning of decisions about what will happen, not 'any form of game prep') The player vs GM control of direction doesn't seem particularly different than other older terminology, neither does any of the agency stuff.

But the idea that one might want a game where people intentionally avoid thinking about 'what is likely to happen' or 'what am I going to do' in advance is interesting, and it resonates with my experience that the gameplay of planning and then executing a plan feels fundamentally different than decision-making under surprise conditions.

I also like that in that framing, it's not a GM vs players thing - anyone at the table can contribute to an authored or emergent mindset. The paranoid divination wizard for example is an archetype that basically pushes (this sense of) authored mindset hard, requiring things to be predetermined far in advance of when they demand a reaction. So taking it that way, you can apply this to GM-less games too. I mentioned Microscope before as pushing what I felt was characteristic of emergence, but we could design an authored mindset version of that game that does encourage discussion and negotiation in advance before players define their events and scenes and such.

Huh. I guess, since the only value I find in being a GM, is that the players will take the story places that I didn't plan (otherwise, I may as well just be writing single-author fiction), that piece is kinda "meh" to me. Old Hat.

Actually, I don't even view that as different from the old terminology. But, then again, I don't take "Authored vs Emergent" to care about being fundamentally different from the old terminology, except with regard to being new terms, untainted by previous association. Like how they rebranded... uh... things (darn senility). Like "Hate" to "Patriotism" or "Rebels" to "Freedom Fighters" or whatnot.

Still, if the notion of "where the PCs actions take us" is something novel for you to discuss, by all means, discuss it. But I don't feel like there's a significant difference in how that plays out in "Authored vs Emergent" than in "Linear vs Sandbox".

Now, discussing how divinations about the future affect planned/unplanned pathing could be interesting. Because it's not quite as... trivial a relationship as you've drawn.

For example, I could run an unplanned game where divinations could return things like, "(unless you act to change the outcome) the Cult of Barney will successfully summon the daemon dinosaur in 3 weeks time" or "(unless you change from your current course) Assassin Dragons will find you in 17 hours". Obviously, divinations about the present would be trivially easy even in an unplanned game.

[Easy e]

No, it is not. One of the entire purposes of using RNG is that it's NOT GM Fiat.

Oh, than perhaps you can explain to me who decides what tables you roll on for that RNG?

Who interprets what a result on a RNG chart means in a game that is a GM led RPG?

If it is an encounter, who plays the NPCs in the encounter?



RNG is a thinly disguised GM Fiat with just enough smoke and mirrors for players to believe the illusion of RPGs in the first place. RNG, Rules, Statblocks are all there to facilitate the idea that the game is fair to the players, and to obscure the fact that they are all run on GM Fiat.

And that is what makes RPGs great! It is their strength, not a weakness! It is a feature and not a bug!
The GM Fiat is what allows the game to move with the needs of the players at any given moment.

[PhoenixPhyre]

Oh, than perhaps you can explain to me who decides what tables you roll on for that RNG?

Who interprets what a result on a RNG chart means in a game that is a GM led RPG?

If it is an encounter, who plays the NPCs in the encounter?



RNG is a thinly disguised GM Fiat with just enough smoke and mirrors for players to believe the illusion of RPGs in the first place. RNG, Rules, Statblocks are all there to facilitate the idea that the game is fair to the players, and to obscure the fact that they are all run on GM Fiat.

And that is what makes RPGs great! It is their strength, not a weakness! It is a feature and not a bug!
The GM Fiat is what allows the game to move with the needs of the players at any given moment.

Fiat doesn't mean "any decision a GM makes". It means things that happen only because the GM decides they do, without reference to anything else. Fiat literally means "a decree", and has strong implications of not depending on the facts on the ground (it may or may not). It's basically "because I said so". So NPCs following pre-established characterization? Not fiat at all. Deciding what happens in the world based on extrapolation from current events? Not fiat at all. Deciding that an NPC who should (by all prior characterization) is going to be a stickler about this one thing because doing otherwise would break the plot? Fiat. DM breaking a logjam/player deadlock by arbitrarily picking one side? Fiat (although sometimes necessary fiat). Deciding that something that ignores all established facts happens? Fiat.

Fiat isn't necessarily bad, but saying that every decision a DM makes is pure fiat is stretching the word into meaninglessness due to overinclusion. For example, sticking with a pre-established/pre-committed decision such as "we'll use random encounters" is not fiat. Violating that pre-committment because they felt like it? That would be fiat.

D&D-likes run on DM decisions, but not all decisions are fiat. Some are, but not all. And in a game where people are mostly in the Emergent mindset, fiat decisions are kept to a minimum.

As a side note, most of what players do is arbitrary in the same sort of way. There's nothing forcing them to stick to their established characterizations or to play their characters in a particular way (at least in D&D). So they do get to make arbitrary, "because I said so" decisions. They can react with suspicion despite rolling very low on their Wisdom (Insight) or Sense Motive check. That's the right of the players. So players use fiat as much as a (n emergent-mindset) DM does.

[OldTrees1]

Oh, than perhaps you can explain to me who decides what tables you roll on for that RNG?

Who interprets what a result on a RNG chart means in a game that is a GM led RPG?

If it is an encounter, who plays the NPCs in the encounter?



RNG is a thinly disguised GM Fiat with just enough smoke and mirrors for players to believe the illusion of RPGs in the first place. RNG, Rules, Statblocks are all there to facilitate the idea that the game is fair to the players, and to obscure the fact that they are all run on GM Fiat.

And that is what makes RPGs great! It is their strength, not a weakness! It is a feature and not a bug!
The GM Fiat is what allows the game to move with the needs of the players at any given moment.

The GM does not have control over the RNG. (I don't have telekinesis to control the die in motion)
The GM does have control over deciding which outputs from the RNG would result in which results in the game. (I can choose which chart or even make my own)

As a result the GM can choose how much control to retain vs how much to grant to the RNG.

If we accept the GM can create a "rock" they won't let themselves be able to "lift", then we can differentiate between what the GM can control in practice (every "rock" they let themselves be able to "lift") from what the GM can't control in practice (every "rock" they won't let themselves be able to "lift"). The term "GM Fiat" is often used in this narrower context and thus often only refers to what the GM allows themselves to Fiat.

Given that context, the RNG is not GM Fiat, but GM Fiat can be used to tune how much or little the RNG impacts the game.

[Thrudd]

It almost feels like trolling is happening here. How are we continually talking past each other, when many people have very clearly defined the relevant terms and supported their positions, only to have someone go back and disagree with the definition of the core terms again, instead of adopting a broadly agreed on definition so that the debate can move forward productively? Seemingly in order to make a bad-faith argument in favor of certain practices that many people complain about, by continually trying to equate those practices with ones people don't complain about via intentionally overbroad definitions of terms that nobody else agrees with...

Of course, not everyone is doing this, just a couple people, but still...
thou dost protest too much, me thinks.

[Composer99]

Apropos of meaningful-ness:
It is a poor line of attack on the concept of emergent play or sandbox game styles, frankly.

A game such as Minecraft would not have such enduring popularity if players didn't find the gameplay experience to be meaningful - or use mods to continue to do so when they get bored of the base gameplay experience. The fact that any given player doesn't find Minecraft gameplay to be meaningful is frankly neither here nor there for the people who do, and vice-versa.

So it is with sandbox play in a table-top RPG.

Apropos of GM fiat:
Again, I am going to appeal to the idea of emergent play as having to do with "playing to find out what happens next".

Without disagreeing that the DM/GM chooses what random encounter tables to use (whether in a DMG, in a third-party publication, in an adventure, or one of their own devising) and how to interpret the results - both of which I'll agree fall comfortably within the realm of "GM fiat" - the point of using such resources is that they make the gameplay experience more emergent, because the DM/GM - just like the players - is playing to find out what happens next.

The players are exploring a dungeon and the DM rolls once every hour to see if there's an encounter.
- Does the DM know there will be an encounter? No. They're playing to find out what happens next.
- If an encounter is rolled, the DM rolls on a random encounter table. Does the DM know what will be encountered before rolling? No - only the set of things that can be encountered and the probability of each thing.
- Unless the previously-established fiction dictates an obvious reaction of the thing encountered to the player characters (a patrol of goblins in a base the PCs are raiding are going to be hostile, for instance), the DM might roll a reaction roll to find out how the thing reacts - another unknown.
- Depending on the situation, the way the PCs react is also unknown (even if the DM can make educated guesses).

The players are exploring a wilderness, and at the start of the adventuring day, the DM rolls to see how many encounters there are (which could be encounters with creatures, obstacles, or hazards). If the number is more than zero, the DM rolls to see what is encountered and when during the day that the encounter takes place.
- Does the DM know what will be encountered before rolling? No - only the set of things that can be encountered and the probability of each thing.
- Likewise, how the thing that is encountered reacts to the player characters (if it is capable of doing so) is unknown - requiring a reaction roll - if it isn't dictated by the fiction that is already established.
- Likewise, how the player characters choose to proceed is unknown.

So again, it seems needlessly and un-constructively reductionist to lump all forms of GM conduct into a single "GM fiat" bucket: there's plenty of daylight between "inviting the players to participate in the shared construction of the fictional adventures of the protagonist PCs even when you as GM have principal responsibility and authority over such construction" (regardless of how emergent or not the gameplay is) and "the players are effectively actors reading from a script or an audience who occasionally participate in your story by rolling dice", and there's daylight still between "the players are effectively actors/audience and they know and agree to taking part in this way" and "the players are effectively actors/audience and you the GM have deceived them into thinking otherwise".

[kyoryu]

I'll probably repsond to more of the thread later.

Wow. OK. Whew. Um... Hmmm...

Harry Potter. Everyone knows Harry Potter, right?

So, suppose a GM were to run Harry Potter as a Linear ("Authored") game. All the beats from the movies are already set in stone; nothing the PCs do can change them. The actions the PCs take "matter" (in universe) to "stop Voldy from taking over the world", but don't really matter OOC, as Voldy will be stopped in the end no matter what they do. Now, in a "Branching Linear" game, then the actions might matter OOC, too, as "victory" might not be guaranteed.

In a Harry Potter Sandbox ("Emergent" game)? Well, the default end, if the PCs weren't there, is "Voldy takes over the world". Thus, if the PCs / players so choose, the extent that their actions matter might well be an equal "stop Voldy from taking over the world". Or it might be "Join forces with Voldy, share the world". Or it might be "destroy the date rape society of magical Britain". Or the PCs actions might have importance on the level of "get Snape (and Filch) fired". Or "collect, study, and reproduce the Deathly Hallows, to create new age of Empowerment for Magical Britain". There's a lot more that the PCs could do in a Harry Potter Sandbox (some of which might be more important than what little the Linear "stop Voldy from taking over the world" truly matters).

A good analogy. Even if the game was really "about" stopping Voldy (I think an Emergent game can have a goal/direction, provided everybody buys into it), how they do it would likely be very different than in the books.

Now, sometimes, *you* don't matter - your GM has forced you to be a level 1 nobody in the middle of an epic tale that is above your character's pay grade.

Generally poor GMing, I'd argue. Players should be dealing with events of a scope they can influence, as a general rule. Even if they're caught up in larger events, there should be smaller scope items in those events that they can influence.

(And, yes, I think Minecraft is a bad example, because there aren't "plots" to interact with - or even the ability to really create "plots" of your own. Actions in Minecraft matter about as much as in "Cookie Clicker", IMO. Doesn't keep me from loving Minecraft, btw, but it's not exactly my go-to for talking about making actions "matter".)

I get what you're saying. The world in Minecraft doesn't really react to what you're doing.

Actually, I don't even view that as different from the old terminology. But, then again, I don't take "Authored vs Emergent" to care about being fundamentally different from the old terminology, except with regard to being new terms, untainted by previous association. Like how they rebranded... uh... things (darn senility). Like "Hate" to "Patriotism" or "Rebels" to "Freedom Fighters" or whatnot.

Well, there's a few reasons:

1. The old terms are poisoned
2. Linear isn't actually right - you can have a heavily authored game that isn't linear at all. All linear games are authored, but not all authored games are linear
3. Sandbox isn't right - it contains a lot of implications of "no inherent goal, nothing occurs without PCs" that isn't accurate. That style of game exists, but not all emergent games are that style
4. Authored speaks to the value of the style - specifically, the ability to have carefully crafted, bespoke content.
5. Emergent speaks to the value of the style - the ability to have an impact on the world, and see the world react and change as a result

Fiat doesn't mean "any decision a GM makes". It means things that happen only because the GM decides they do, without reference to anything else. Fiat literally means "a decree", and has strong implications of not depending on the facts on the ground (it may or may not). It's basically "because I said so". So NPCs following pre-established characterization? Not fiat at all. Deciding what happens in the world based on extrapolation from current events? Not fiat at all. Deciding that an NPC who should (by all prior characterization) is going to be a stickler about this one thing because doing otherwise would break the plot? Fiat. DM breaking a logjam/player deadlock by arbitrarily picking one side? Fiat (although sometimes necessary fiat). Deciding that something that ignores all established facts happens? Fiat.

The GM has input into all events. That does not make all events fiat. If only the GM has input into the events, then they are fiat.

(It's fairly common for GMs to put their thumb on the scale more heavily than they realize - how to avoid that is an interesting topic in and of itself.

Fiat isn't necessarily bad, but saying that every decision a DM makes is pure fiat is stretching the word into meaninglessness due to overinclusion. For example, sticking with a pre-established/pre-committed decision such as "we'll use random encounters" is not fiat. Violating that pre-committment because they felt like it? That would be fiat.

D&D-likes run on DM decisions, but not all decisions are fiat. Some are, but not all. And in a game where people are mostly in the Emergent mindset, fiat decisions are kept to a minimum.

Exactly. The argument also seems to be "well, GMs technically have unlimited power, so if they have any input in a decision, nothing is stopping them from completely ignoring all other input". Which is technically true. But it's also technically true that they could just randomly punch everyone at the table. But they don't, so saying that GMs just all punch people at the table is false. So is saying that GMs run everything by fiat just because they technically could

As a side note, most of what players do is arbitrary in the same sort of way. There's nothing forcing them to stick to their established characterizations or to play their characters in a particular way (at least in D&D). So they do get to make arbitrary, "because I said so" decisions. They can react with suspicion despite rolling very low on their Wisdom (Insight) or Sense Motive check. That's the right of the players. So players use fiat as much as a (n emergent-mindset) DM does.

Probably a side topic, but rolls shouldn't dictate behavior unless it's literal mind control. And even that I prefer to be more soft-control stuff rather than Dominate-level.

A "Sense Motive" failure shouldn't indicate that you're an idiot. You can still be suspicious. It just indicates that you didn't get any tells/etc. from them.

[KorvinStarmast]

Again, I am going to appeal to the idea of emergent play as having to do with "playing to find out what happens next".

While I agree with this, I find once again the term GM Fiat (which you included inaccurately as I see it) to be loaded, badly defined/understood, and not productive. I think Phoenix did a bit better of a job handling that area of what a GM/DM does.
kyoryu's summary was IMO helpful:

The GM has input into all events. That does not make all events fiat.

Put more bluntly: just because a GM does it does not make that choice GM fiat. GM fiat is a subset (and in my experience an edge case) of all GM activity.

[Vahnavoi]

You left out "for what their characters want to try and do".

Because that is not in fact part of definition of player agency. No, not even for a roleplaying game. All meaningful decision a player can make are part of their agency, regardless of format or what is being decided.

---

@Easy E:

Going back to the design phase to argue everything is fiat achieves nothing. It boils down to repeating the trivial observation that games are designed to obfuscate the fact that how they are designed makes a difference.

[NichG]

Huh. I guess, since the only value I find in being a GM, is that the players will take the story places that I didn't plan (otherwise, I may as well just be writing single-author fiction), that piece is kinda "meh" to me. Old Hat.

Actually, I don't even view that as different from the old terminology. But, then again, I don't take "Authored vs Emergent" to care about being fundamentally different from the old terminology, except with regard to being new terms, untainted by previous association. Like how they rebranded... uh... things (darn senility). Like "Hate" to "Patriotism" or "Rebels" to "Freedom Fighters" or whatnot.

Still, if the notion of "where the PCs actions take us" is something novel for you to discuss, by all means, discuss it. But I don't feel like there's a significant difference in how that plays out in "Authored vs Emergent" than in "Linear vs Sandbox".

Now, discussing how divinations about the future affect planned/unplanned pathing could be interesting. Because it's not quite as... trivial a relationship as you've drawn.

For example, I could run an unplanned game where divinations could return things like, "(unless you act to change the outcome) the Cult of Barney will successfully summon the daemon dinosaur in 3 weeks time" or "(unless you change from your current course) Assassin Dragons will find you in 17 hours". Obviously, divinations about the present would be trivially easy even in an unplanned game.

I think the understanding of player-authored play style as a thing that can happen is useful. If what you value as a GM is being surprised, think about situations like:

- A player joins your table on the basis of 'wanting to play this Paladin/Monk/Bard build' before hearing about the setting, campaign, other PCs, etc. They ask you in advance to run a fall from grace arc for them at Lv8 so they can get the chaotic alignment they need for Bard. They'd also like to die dramatically in the penultimate battle and be avenged by the party against the BBEG, to return as a ghost at the last moment.

If an authored style is okay/desired, players coming with specific plans like this in mind is helpful. It gives material to work into the game, prearranged certain choices so everyone can plan around them or decide in advance whether they think it's interesting or annoying or whatever.

If emergent style is desired, even though it's a player making these decisions, the fact that they're made in advance goes against the desired gaming feel.

- The party has decided to alpha-strike an enemy force. Extreme authored style: they plan for 3 hours real time how each part of the strike will be executed, using divinations to iterate and refine their plans. Most of the gameplay is in the planning phase. When the actual strike takes place, it's maybe only 30 minutes to play out and mostly goes according to plan. Extreme emergent style: they initiate the attack run and everyone decides on their actions as things play out, communicating or not as actions taking place in rounds rather than as OOC negotiation. It takes the same three and a half hours to resolve their attack run, but thinking/planning is done on the fly.

Neither of those is really about the GM, but they definitely have an impact on the degree to which the GM can be surprised. Whereas the traditional linear/sandbox terms make everything about the GM rather than about the table culture as a whole.

[PhoenixPhyre]

I think the understanding of player-authored play style as a thing that can happen is useful. If what you value as a GM is being surprised, think about situations like:

- A player joins your table on the basis of 'wanting to play this Paladin/Monk/Bard build' before hearing about the setting, campaign, other PCs, etc. They ask you in advance to run a fall from grace arc for them at Lv8 so they can get the chaotic alignment they need for Bard. They'd also like to die dramatically in the penultimate battle and be avenged by the party against the BBEG, to return as a ghost at the last moment.

If an authored style is okay/desired, players coming with specific plans like this in mind is helpful. It gives material to work into the game, prearranged certain choices so everyone can plan around them or decide in advance whether they think it's interesting or annoying or whatever.

If emergent style is desired, even though it's a player making these decisions, the fact that they're made in advance goes against the desired gaming feel.

- The party has decided to alpha-strike an enemy force. Extreme authored style: they plan for 3 hours real time how each part of the strike will be executed, using divinations to iterate and refine their plans. Most of the gameplay is in the planning phase. When the actual strike takes place, it's maybe only 30 minutes to play out and mostly goes according to plan. Extreme emergent style: they initiate the attack run and everyone decides on their actions as things play out, communicating or not as actions taking place in rounds rather than as OOC negotiation. It takes the same three and a half hours to resolve their attack run, but thinking/planning is done on the fly.

Neither of those is really about the GM, but they definitely have an impact on the degree to which the GM can be surprised. Whereas the traditional linear/sandbox terms make everything about the GM rather than about the table culture as a whole.

Personally, I'm very much (both as a player and a character) on the "prefers the emergent style" on both of those. I mean, some planning is ok. But I'd much rather do things rather than talk about how we're going to do things. When players start doing the full heist mode, I love to throw in plot grenades. Get them doing something. But that's my personal style, not some definition of what it means to be good.

[Quertus]

Apropos of meaningful-ness:
It is a poor line of attack on the concept of emergent play or sandbox game styles, frankly.

A game such as Minecraft would not have such enduring popularity if players didn't find the gameplay experience to be meaningful - or use mods to continue to do so when they get bored of the base gameplay experience. The fact that any given player doesn't find Minecraft gameplay to be meaningful is frankly neither here nor there for the people who do, and vice-versa.

So it is with sandbox play in a table-top RPG.

I get what you're saying. The world in Minecraft doesn't really react to what you're doing.

Yeah, that's probably a better way of looking at it.

Huh. The world reacting to the PCs actions === meaning?

I'm not sure, but I think that the subject of "what makes meaning in a game?" isn't just black and white; that is, that at least *certain* definitions of "meaning" don't exist in Minecraft, just like different games have different sources of "Fun" (insert link to Angry's "8 types of fun").

I think it's valid to say that Minecraft doesn't engage the type of fun that involves the world "reacting" to the player (outside some very basic game-physics, literal "rocks fall" reactions).

I don't think it's fair to say that Sandboxes / Emergent games inherently and definitionally lack that same flavor of Fun / Engagement.

A good analogy. Even if the game was really "about" stopping Voldy (I think an Emergent game can have a goal/direction, provided everybody buys into it), how they do it would likely be very different than in the books.

I did something right? Yay!

And, yes, you're right, Emergent / Sandbox games can have... an agreed-upon goal, like "stop Voldy". But not only is the path there dynamic, inherent to it being Emergent, it's not guaranteed that the PCs will succeed at their goal.

This is one place where, IMO, discussing macro / super-macro agency seems easier than discussing Emergent/Sandbox or Linear/Authored.

Well, there's a few reasons:

1. The old terms are poisoned
2. Linear isn't actually right - you can have a heavily authored game that isn't linear at all. All linear games are authored, but not all authored games are linear
3. Sandbox isn't right - it contains a lot of implications of "no inherent goal, nothing occurs without PCs" that isn't accurate. That style of game exists, but not all emergent games are that style
4. Authored speaks to the value of the style - specifically, the ability to have carefully crafted, bespoke content.
5. Emergent speaks to the value of the style - the ability to have an impact on the world, and see the world react and change as a result

The old terms are poisoned? Agreed. But we're not gonna get people to ignore those preconceptions just via obvious rebranding, I don't think. No, not even me. Happily, I've already... purged *most* of the poison from my own use of the labels.

Linear isn't right? Yeah, strongly agree. It feels like "pure linear", "branching linear", etc, all are subsets of some unnamed superset. Oh, wait, it's not unnamed any more - they're all subsets of "Authored"? All Linear games are Authored, not all Authored games are Linear. Might be more to that than I understand, but agreed.

Sandbox isn't right? I... don't have those implications inherent to my definition of Sandbox. So... other people aren't right, and they need to download the copy of Sandbox that lives in my brain.

Authored & Emergent speak to the value of style? Eh... "Authored points out how valuable it is to spend time carefully crafting content that you know you'll get to use". OK. "Emergent points out how valuable it is for the PCs to have an impact on the world, for the world to react to and change as a result of their actions". Yeah, definitely.

But... that helps me see how easy it could be to define them such that they... aren't mutually-exclusive opposites, aren't a modal check-box.

Dang.

Can Authored and Emergent be defined such that they are modal (everything is either one or the other), and also carry a 1:1 relationship to crafted and reactive, respectively?

I think that the answer is "no".

So, one of the bits you talked about wrt "crafted" sounded like CaS talk of a "fair fight". Imma add that into this example, too.

So, suppose that there was an alternate reality where the CR system in 3e just worked. And, in that reality, someone built a module with a dungeon. And in that dungeon was the Multiverse Room.

The Module Writer spent a great deal of time very carefully crafting the Multiverse Room, complete with cool scenery to interact with, a color play-mat that ships with the module, and round-by-round "multiverse" effects generated via a deck of cards to draw from.

And the Multiverse Room is rather central to the dungeon, say, at a crossroads between several sections, so the PCs are all but certain to encounter it repeatedly. Or it could actually be required to transition between them, if those "sections" lived in different universes, even. Yeah, let's go with that - activating the "Multiverse Bridge" to access those other sections is what triggers this encounter (maybe the bridge is powered by the dead souls of the defeated creatures?).

However, what is actually encountered in the Multiverse Room is not pre-set, and is even largely under the PCs' control. The room sends out a pulse, to locate the closest monster, and draws copies of that monster from across the multiverse, up to a particular ECL encounter. Various factors - from the obvious pulse, to the way that the monsters appear (1 being that splits) to the monsters being identical, plus other clues (if this were a modern room, there'd be text on monitors from the program's actions) - can make this behavior obvious to the players, and things like which rooms the PCs cleared, or what captives they brought with them, allow them to control the room even before they realize that they are doing so.

This room has all the value of an Authored room, yet has Emergent PC control of what is encountered.

If we're caring about "value of crafting" vs "impact" as part of the definition, is there a way to define the terms such that this room is strictly Red, or strictly Blue?

Probably a side topic, but rolls shouldn't dictate behavior unless it's literal mind control. And even that I prefer to be more soft-control stuff rather than Dominate-level.

A "Sense Motive" failure shouldn't indicate that you're an idiot. You can still be suspicious. It just indicates that you didn't get any tells/etc. from them.

Agreed. Skills - even Sense Motive - should tell you what you know, not what you think about what you know.

[kyoryu]

I think the understanding of player-authored play style as a thing that can happen is useful. If what you value as a GM is being surprised, think about situations like:

- A player joins your table on the basis of 'wanting to play this Paladin/Monk/Bard build' before hearing about the setting, campaign, other PCs, etc. They ask you in advance to run a fall from grace arc for them at Lv8 so they can get the chaotic alignment they need for Bard. They'd also like to die dramatically in the penultimate battle and be avenged by the party against the BBEG, to return as a ghost at the last moment.

If an authored style is okay/desired, players coming with specific plans like this in mind is helpful. It gives material to work into the game, prearranged certain choices so everyone can plan around them or decide in advance whether they think it's interesting or annoying or whatever.

If emergent style is desired, even though it's a player making these decisions, the fact that they're made in advance goes against the desired gaming feel.

- The party has decided to alpha-strike an enemy force. Extreme authored style: they plan for 3 hours real time how each part of the strike will be executed, using divinations to iterate and refine their plans. Most of the gameplay is in the planning phase. When the actual strike takes place, it's maybe only 30 minutes to play out and mostly goes according to plan. Extreme emergent style: they initiate the attack run and everyone decides on their actions as things play out, communicating or not as actions taking place in rounds rather than as OOC negotiation. It takes the same three and a half hours to resolve their attack run, but thinking/planning is done on the fly.

Neither of those is really about the GM, but they definitely have an impact on the degree to which the GM can be surprised. Whereas the traditional linear/sandbox terms make everything about the GM rather than about the table culture as a whole.

It's interesting, because that starts looking like the difference between trad and neo-trad/OC play in the six cultures of play article: https://retiredadventurer.blogspot.c...s-of-play.html

(Note I don't entirely agree with this article, especially surrounding classic play, which present tournament play as standard for that era, and "storygames" which themselves are a collection of fairly different play cultures - one centering around emergent play in the "GM creates problems, players solve them" style, and the other which is more centered on "storygaming" in the "everyone is a GM, kinda" mode)

[PhoenixPhyre]

Agreed. Skills - even Sense Motive - should tell you what you know, not what you think about what you know.

I don't disagree. But it's a case where player fiat is not only common but accepted and even proper (in many minds). The player decides what the character thinks. Period. No outside source can (justly) gainsay that outside of hard mind control (which I also don't like). That's pure "action by decree" (aka fiat). The character thinks what they do solely and entirely because the player said so. And that's fine.

But it means that calling the entire game DM Fiat is false, on its face.

Fiat happens. But there's a lot of the game that isn't fiat at all, and an even larger chunk that isn't DM fiat. Which was the point.

[Quertus]

I don't disagree. But it's a case where player fiat is not only common but accepted and even proper (in many minds). The player decides what the character thinks. Period. No outside source can (justly) gainsay that outside of hard mind control (which I also don't like). That's pure "action by decree" (aka fiat). The character thinks what they do solely and entirely because the player said so. And that's fine.

But it means that calling the entire game DM Fiat is false, on its face.

Fiat happens. But there's a lot of the game that isn't fiat at all, and an even larger chunk that isn't DM fiat. Which was the point.

Hmmm... "matching existing characterization" was described as "not fiat" by a previous poster.

So decisions that are made which match existing characterization of a character are not fiat.

Which means that all choices of new characters are fiat; consistently roleplayed choices of existing characters are not.

I wonder if this is related to why I prefer to run existing characters? I just don't like (apparent) fiat.

And... it would match why I prefer hard mind control - it removes fiat from the interpretation of how to react. Huh. I seem to have found one of my core values, and found that I'm roleplaying having that value consistently.

[Composer99]

While I agree with this, I find once again the term GM Fiat (which you included inaccurately as I see it) to be loaded, badly defined/understood, and not productive. I think Phoenix did a bit better of a job handling that area of what a GM/DM does.
kyoryu's summary was IMO helpful:

Put more bluntly: just because a GM does it does not make that choice GM fiat. GM fiat is a subset (and in my experience an edge case) of all GM activity.

We are discussing a leisure time activity that amounts to a structured form of playing at make-believe. The entire enterprise an act of collaborative and consensual illusion requiring a heavy dose of fiat decision-making by all participants, not only the GM.

As far as I am concerned, then, trying to parse out what is or isn't "GM Fiat" in any sort of universally-objective sense amounts to debating how many angels can dance on the head of a pin. Not a constructive or useful activity to my mind. It plays right into Easy e's inevitable rejoinder. (*)

By contrast, to my mind it is useful and constructive to consider what GM techniques encourage different styles of gameplay (and how they do so), and what GM techniques will be stimulating and engaging for players with matching gameplay preferences or off-putting and disappointing for players with mismatched preferences.

kyoryu is expressing a preference for a particular style of gameplay, however well or poorly articulated one finds that expression to be. Isn't the best way forward for this thread to be discussing how like-minded DMs can learn to more easily facilitate that kind of gameplay?

---

(*) This is, I think, the heart of my disagreement with Easy e: if we can't get past "it's all an illusion and GM fiat!" (whether we agree with that sentiment or not) we can't sensibly discuss how a GM can facilitate an engaging and enjoyable gameplay experience according to their own lights and to the lights of the players at their table.

[kyoryu]

Yeah, that's probably a better way of looking at it.

Huh. The world reacting to the PCs actions === meaning?

I think that's not unreasonable. I still like my definitions, because they point pretty directly to what I'm looking for at the table. Otherwise we get some of what I might call "side-effect agency". "Okay, you made this decision, so these people a hundred miles away get to live." It's a change to the world, but it's not a change that really impacts what you do in a significant way.

I'm not sure, but I think that the subject of "what makes meaning in a game?" isn't just black and white; that is, that at least *certain* definitions of "meaning" don't exist in Minecraft, just like different games have different sources of "Fun" (insert link to Angry's "8 types of fun").

Sure. Different games do different things. People look for some things more than others, some people have different preferences.

Like, to me, the starting point about talking about styles of RPG games is three statements:

1. People play RPGs in significantly different ways
2. No way is best, just best for some people
3. Success defines success - if people are having fun, then the game is good, at least for them.

Like, I don't think you can have a productive conversation without acknowledging those things.

I think it's valid to say that Minecraft doesn't engage the type of fun that involves the world "reacting" to the player (outside some very basic game-physics, literal "rocks fall" reactions).

I don't think it's fair to say that Sandboxes / Emergent games inherently and definitionally lack that same flavor of Fun / Engagement.

I would say that emergent games definitionally do not. That world reactivity is kind of the point. However, that world reactivity makes pre-planning on an individual scene basis very difficult.

In fact, I'd say that a static sandbox is closer to Authored than it is emergent - all the scenes are there (even if via random table). The only things the players can really do is choose the order they engage in them with.

And, yes, you're right, Emergent / Sandbox games can have... an agreed-upon goal, like "stop Voldy". But not only is the path there dynamic, inherent to it being Emergent, it's not guaranteed that the PCs will succeed at their goal.

Correct.

This is one place where, IMO, discussing macro / super-macro agency seems easier than discussing Emergent/Sandbox or Linear/Authored.

I'm not entirely sure I agree, can you explain more?

The old terms are poisoned? Agreed. But we're not gonna get people to ignore those preconceptions just via obvious rebranding, I don't think. No, not even me. Happily, I've already... purged *most* of the poison from my own use of the labels.

Except I don't think it's that obvious of rebranding. I mean...... yeah, if you squint you can just substitute one for the other (as has been done in this thread), but since there is a difference (it's been talked about for decades) I don't see a way around that. And the point here is that it's not just a rebranding, it's a refocusing of the definition specifically to stop implying certain things that are false or strawman argument.

Linear isn't right? Yeah, strongly agree. It feels like "pure linear", "branching linear", etc, all are subsets of some unnamed superset. Oh, wait, it's not unnamed any more - they're all subsets of "Authored"? All Linear games are Authored, not all Authored games are Linear. Might be more to that than I understand, but agreed.

Exactly. In previous threads I've talked about linear games, but had to say things like "but some branches or ordering or optional scenes don't make it not linear". But by naive definition, it does. So that term (though better than railroad) has some issues.

Sandbox isn't right? I... don't have those implications inherent to my definition of Sandbox. So... other people aren't right, and they need to download the copy of Sandbox that lives in my brain.

I've heard sandbox used to mean:

1. Any emergent game
2. Living worlds, where the players can do things, but the world goes on
3. Static worlds, where the players do things, and nothing happens that they don't initiate.

So it's not surprising that your definition of sandbox is unclear.

Authored & Emergent speak to the value of style? Eh... "Authored points out how valuable it is to spend time carefully crafting content that you know you'll get to use". OK. "Emergent points out how valuable it is for the PCs to have an impact on the world, for the world to react to and change as a result of their actions". Yeah, definitely.

But... that helps me see how easy it could be to define them such that they... aren't mutually-exclusive opposites, aren't a modal check-box.

Dang.

I mean, are they fundamentally mutually exclusive? I dunno. In practical terms, they tend to be, simply due to practical constraints - see arguments about "game have to be railroaded becuase GMs don't have time to create infinite branches" in other threads.

So, one of the bits you talked about wrt "crafted" sounded like CaS talk of a "fair fight". Imma add that into this example, too.

Not necessarily. You could totally have a CaW authored setup as well.

This room has all the value of an Authored room, yet has Emergent PC control of what is encountered.

Ehhhhh not really sure I agree with that. Like, that doesn't really feel emergent to me. I think mostly because the challenge is just in isolation. It's the contents of a path, and doesn't impact the path itself after that.

Like, my example of megadungeons - if the rooms don't interact, if it's just a series of combat encounters, then it's authored (non-linear authored). If you can start making alliances, or the various tribes react to invaders in ways that have an impact on the larger megadungeon, to me it's emergent.

I mean, billiards is a highly emergent game, right?

And... it would match why I prefer hard mind control - it removes fiat from the interpretation of how to react. Huh. I seem to have found one of my core values, and found that I'm roleplaying having that value consistently.

To be clear, by "soft control" I mean things like "for x period of time (or x number of uses, or whatever), if you do something against the implanted goal, you suffer <penalty>." The PC still has an incentive to comply with the directive, but the choice hasn't been completely removed. It makes an interesting set of decisions about how counter to their own goals you want to make the control. So it's not really "fiat" - you can accept the penalty (be it a penalty on actions, damage, whatever). But it's not hard control in that you still have the choice.

[NichG]

It's interesting, because that starts looking like the difference between trad and neo-trad/OC play in the six cultures of play article: https://retiredadventurer.blogspot.c...s-of-play.html

(Note I don't entirely agree with this article, especially surrounding classic play, which present tournament play as standard for that era, and "storygames" which themselves are a collection of fairly different play cultures - one centering around emergent play in the "GM creates problems, players solve them" style, and the other which is more centered on "storygaming" in the "everyone is a GM, kinda" mode)

The 'Nordic LARP' category from that article also seems relevant here, in the sense that both Trad and Neo-Trad focus on an emotionally satisfying story (which may involve planning in order to hit story beats, whether its planning by the GM or planning by the players), while the article describes Nordic LARP as being primarily experience and immersion focused. So I think it would be easier to hit high a level of emergence in the Nordic LARP culture of play than either Trad or Neo-trad, at least as the article defines those things, because there wouldn't be a preconception that there has to be a story in mind at all - so decisions can sit more freely in the moment, rather than in the future.

[Tanarii]

It's interesting, because that starts looking like the difference between trad and neo-trad/OC play in the six cultures of play article: https://retiredadventurer.blogspot.c...s-of-play.html

Interesting. I didn't know we had Tracy Hickman to blame for the switch of TSR and the rise of "roleplaying" elitism by changing it over to what this article calls Trad. Makes sense though, Dragonlance is traditionally deemed the marking point for that switch.

[kyoryu]

So I think it would be easier to hit high a level of emergence in the Nordic LARP culture of play than either Trad or Neo-trad, at least as the article defines those things, because there wouldn't be a preconception that there has to be a story in mind at all - so decisions can sit more freely in the moment, rather than in the future.

For sure. As well as "storygames". Trad tends to be the antithesis of emergent play.

Neotrad is still fairly authored from what I can tell, one of the big differences being that the individual players give a lot of instruction to the GM on how they want it authored. It's not a thing I've experienced, but it seemed like a fairly common style here a few years ago.

[Cheesegear]

I'm sorry that you are incapable of running or even fathoming a sandbox game, but your experience is not universal.

I run the kinds of games this thread describes:

I plonk my players in a setting and I let them do whatever they want - I don't like furries, and I'm not going to roleplay a sex scene, but that's about it. I give my players a bunch of hooks that I've prepared, I let them introduce their own elements because I don't want DMing to be work, so I don't actually prepare that much ahead of time so some of my content is introduced ad hoc, and the players more or less act however they want. If they treat people nicely and fairly, NPCs will like them. If they act like a*holes and clownshoes, lawdogs will be called.

I have a feeling that I am running my game exactly how a lot of people in this thread are describing what a 'good DM' does.

What I don't do, is define what I'm doing as a sandbox; Because I have fixed locations, with many fixed scenarios - some of which do have fixed solutions (e.g; You do need the magical key to open the magical door. That's just how this works.) I shatter my players' meaningful agency by giving them false information. I shatter my players' agency, in general, by placing them into events they don't want to be in and have to find a way out of. I introduce 'rails' in to my 'sandbox' almost all the time...Because that's the DM's job.

What I don't do, is define what I'm doing in regards to player agency. Because I can shatter their agency at any time I choose - and no, I absolutely don't need to tell them about traps and lying NPCs. I absolutely don't need to give them information - accurate or otherwise - so that they can make good choices. I give them information, so that they can make choices. End. Sometimes they're aware of the consequences of those choices, sometimes they aren't. Sometimes their agency is meaningful, sometimes it isn't...Sometimes they don't have agency at all.

All the time? **** no, that's not what I said. But when I want to remove or reduce their agency, I will. I just will.

My players will always make the best decisions for the narrative or for their character with the information that I choose to give them. I'm not going to define what I do vis a vis sandboxes, railroads authored or emergent content. Those labels feel stupid and fuzzy and very poorly defined - at least in regards TTRPGs with an arbitrary DM. I'm a pretty smart guy. If we've gone through this many threads with this many pages, it's clear that the definitions that have been described to me have significant holes in them. If the DM was a computer, and forced to make fixed decisions, I could see it. But the DM can do anything they want, whenever they want, and the players just kind of have to hope that the DM uses that power sparingly...But they still have that power, and they do still use it, and the players don't get a say, when that happens.

Because I believe that players - and DMs - are making choices even before character creation. Your player agency - and DM control - is literally the entire game. Player agency, is everything that player does, at any time, which is affected by what they can see, hear and experience...Which is all controlled at the whims of the DM. Even how the world reacts to what the players do, is sill controlled by the DM.

The DM can control what the players can do. You can't have peppermint ice-cream if the DM didn't give you that choice, even if you want it. The DM gets to choose, what choices you can make.
The players can't ever really control what the DM does. The dice can, to some extent. But not the players.

In short; Labels are stupid. Do whatever you want. Don't define what you do via labels 'cause at some point you're going to want to do something different. Planning a session is a short section of authored railroad. Here's a building and several traps, and multiple hostiles - once you enter you can't leave (easily). But your players can choose to be on it, which makes it a sandbox. But your players did the session in a way that the DM didn't totally expect, causing emergent scenarios. But all the reactions and the scenarios - b0rked as it got - was still controlled by the DM, and the session's main hostile still had at least two direct authored counters to the players' abilities so it was still a challenge.

No-one complained about the building.
No-one complained about the collapsing floor trap.
No-one complained when the NPCs shouted 'Alarm! Intruders!' and boxed the players to specific rooms, and herded them like cattle.
No-one complained when the PCs did a thing to the boss and it had no effect because reasons.

It's a sandbox, do what you want. You can leave if you want...You wont though. I've already influenced your decision by making this location narratively important, and also...You're players; This building is full of loot and XP. You don't want to leave.
It's a railroad. It's a fixed location with fixed content that you are forced to encounter, especially once you're in it.
It's emergent because the players did a thing that wasn't totally accounted for in the DM's notes, and the DM allowed it because the solution was neat. And the DM had to compensate for the fact that the thing happened, which slightly changes some things in the next few rooms.
It's authored because the players did exactly the thing that the DM expected them to do and had already countered three days ago when they were defining what's in the building.

[Satinavian]

I run the kinds of games this thread describes:

I really don't think you do. Because :

Because I have fixed locations, with many fixed scenarios - some of which do have fixed solutions (e.g; You do need the magical key to open the magical door. That's just how this works.) I shatter my players' meaningful agency by giving them false information. I shatter my players' agency, in general, by placing them into events they don't want to be in and have to find a way out of. I introduce 'rails' in to my 'sandbox' almost all the time

Also

...Because that's the DM's job.

And other DMs disagree and run games differently.

[Talakeal]

I have a question; how do people feel about temporal ogres?

They are like quantum ogres, but travel through time as well as space, and I think a lot of GM's use them without even realizing it.

For example, something scripted to occur so that the players arrive just in time to witness and/or get involved in an important event?

Or an encounter that occurs the first time the players enter a hex regardless of what time of day they arrive and how long it took them to get there?

Or an NPC who just so happens to have a quest then urgently needs doing right as the PCs enter town?

Now it's clear you don't know what a meaningful choice is.

In a game, a meaningful choice is one that selects between two mutually exclusive game states. And it should be bloody obvious how this applies to building a hut versus a castle versus a working redstone computer. On a more human level, the reason to build a hut versus a castle versus a working redstone computer stems from internal motivation, imagination and skill of a player: the player's desire to do these things is what gives meaning to specific actions they take to achieve these goals.

By that logic I can say that the railroadiest of linear games is also full of meaningful choices. You choose what class you play, how you allocate your stats, what gear to buy, what actions to take round by round, what spells to memorize, etc.

It still has zero impact on the larger "plot" or "setting".

Minecraft does not need externally dictated lore, plot or story, because the game engine is lenient enough to allow for players to create their own lore, plot and story. Same as a real sandbox. You don't walk to a pile of sand expecting someone to have hidden meaning in the grains. You walk to a pile of sand and build a sand castle because the idea of making one feels meaningful to you.

The same goes a long way to explaining why players, in a sandbox game, might get upset at overt external interference. How would you feel, in a real sandbox, if after hours of building an intricate castle, some mofo came and knocked it over without a warning? It's not that you can't bake adversarial elements into a sandbox game - you can, and most such games do. It just changes the metagame quite a bit, because then it's no longer sufficient for a player to set and follow their own goals, they need to understand goals of other players and how those influence theirs. The more players there are, the more complex it gets.

Without conflict or opposition, you don't really have a game or a story. Its just "playing", and while there isn't anything wrong with that, tabletop RPGs are just about the worst medium to do that in.

Honestly, this kind of seems like the opposite of the railroad DM who is told to just write a novel; these players would probably be better served creating art of some sort.

Now, in my case I am not talking about surprising players in a sandbox with conflict; generally my problem in sandboxes is players who are simply aimless and bored. I am more talking about how when playing heroes (sandbox or linear) the players are normally reactive and on the offensive; raiding monster lairs or foiling villain's schemes. When they are evil, though, they are more often on the defensive, which makes conflict seem more random and, well, aggressive for lack of a better term.

No, it's not all DM Fiat.

My experience with any number of old school campaigns (as in, Original D&D game and filling in the hexes as you explored the wilderness away from the old ruins and frontier town where we started) includes us going to hexes (we didn't use the Outdoor Survival map, it was a blank map that got filled in as we explored, the DM wasn't into world building so much) and encountering things (since a d6 said that we did - that's RNG, not DM Fiat) and a table roll created an encounter with a large number of pilgrims. (RNG again, not DM Fiat).
It could have been 70 orcs, but the RNG didn't provide that.

How much is really RNG though?

Even when rolling a random encounter, most of the details are completely up to the DM; the monsters personalities, description, history, motivation, tactics, positions, layout, etc.

Harry Potter. Everyone knows Harry Potter, right?

So, suppose a GM were to run Harry Potter as a Linear ("Authored") game. All the beats from the movies are already set in stone; nothing the PCs do can change them. The actions the PCs take "matter" (in universe) to "stop Voldy from taking over the world", but don't really matter OOC, as Voldy will be stopped in the end no matter what they do. Now, in a "Branching Linear" game, then the actions might matter OOC, too, as "victory" might not be guaranteed.

In a Harry Potter Sandbox ("Emergent" game)? Well, the default end, if the PCs weren't there, is "Voldy takes over the world". Thus, if the PCs / players so choose, the extent that their actions matter might well be an equal "stop Voldy from taking over the world". Or it might be "Join forces with Voldy, share the world". Or it might be "destroy the date rape society of magical Britain". Or the PCs actions might have importance on the level of "get Snape (and Filch) fired". Or "collect, study, and reproduce the Deathly Hallows, to create new age of Empowerment for Magical Britain". There's a lot more that the PCs could do in a Harry Potter Sandbox (some of which might be more important than what little the Linear "stop Voldy from taking over the world" truly matters).

Hmmm.

So your "emergent" game has as much freedom as any "linear" game that I have ever run.

I can't imagine stopping the players from doing any of those things in a linear game, and indeed I quite expect that to be the sort of thing they get up to.

Joining with the bad guys is explicitly always on the table, although I can't recall if the PCs have ever taken me up on it (at least with the main villain, side villains often get allied with).

There is only going to be a problem if the players somehow forget about Voldemort; if they do nothing to address him IC (or have a talk about the direction of the game OOC) their plans to reform magical Britain are probably going to run into some real problems when He Who Must Not be Named takes over the ministry.

So I'm... not sure where your idea that your choices don't matter in a Sandbox.

Now, sometimes, *you* don't matter - your GM has forced you to be a level 1 nobody in the middle of an epic tale that is above your character's pay grade. And that's just dumb. So look at a Sandbox from the PoV of a 20th level D&D Wizard, and see if you can still tell me with a straight face that your choices don't matter. And that you can't have more of these meaningful choices than were presented by a Linear plot.

Yeah, I suppose if you are "punching down" you can always make an impact on the world. I don't tend to enjoy that sort of game though, as I have said in the past, it feels like bullying.

And of course, my players would get mad if I challenged their perception of omnipotence by having the world react logically to a super powered newcomer trying to overthrow the order by, say, uniting against them or finding champions of their own.

Now, I tend to start games at level 1 because I like the complete experience, from both a mechanical and narrative level. My players tend to be very advancement motivated and retire once they hit max level, and so I start at low levels so that the game can last a long time and I can use a wide variety of plots and challenges.

Although... I imagine characters who start at level 20 still need to come from somewhere in the fiction, and I wonder... if you actually mapped out their entire backstory if it wouldn't have just as much authorial FIAT as any linear game... just something to think about.

Generally poor GMing, I'd argue. Players should be dealing with events of a scope they can influence, as a general rule. Even if they're caught up in larger events, there should be smaller scope items in those events that they can influence.

This gets at the heart of what I was saying, much more succinctly put.

Linear games allow you to "punch up" on the level of scope you can influence, simply by being in the right place at the right time. The players are more likely to save the lives of royalty, thwart villains, find forgotten artifacts, witness events that change history, etc. Whereas in a fairly run sandbox game, you have to get lucky enough to find these, or at the very least lucky enough to learn of them and decide to go out looking.

Its kind of like the whole idea IRL of the "great man" theory of history or the self-made industrialist. The deeper you look, it appears less that they were super great and special, but more that they just happened to luck into a lot of opportunities and be at the right place and time where a big change in the world was imminent.

I really don't think you do. Because :


Also
And other DMs disagree and run games differently.

That's also "life," a DM doing otherwise would really hurt my sense of immersion, and thus my enjoyment of the game.

[Vahnavoi]

I have a question; how do people feel about temporal ogres?

Quantum ogre was already a bad term and following it up with "temporal ogre" helps no-one. There's plain English term for what you're describing: scripted event. It's a basic building block for scenario design and the discussion is just how and why to use it.

For example, something scripted to occur so that the players arrive just in time to witness and/or get involved in an important event?

Or an encounter that occurs the first time the players enter a hex regardless of what time of day they arrive and how long it took them to get there?

Or an NPC who just so happens to have a quest then urgently needs doing right as the PCs enter town?

These are all attempts at constructive laziness. "When player characters arrive" is a start condition that's easy to remember and easy to tell when it applies, and it gets players engaged with the meat of the situation immediately. Alternatives involve randomizing when events happen or processing how events are progressing on the background where player characters can't perceive them. The last two allow for more emergent behaviours, but require more resources from a game master.

The first and simplest step to evolve a game design beyond this is just to put time conditionals on events flags. Instead of happening when player characters arrive, game begins at timestamp X scripts are initialized at timestamp Y. This is out of fashion for chiefly two reasons:

1) a lot of game masters apparently can't count time and can't keep a calendar.
2) sunk cost fallacy: a lot of game masters get upset at wasting their time if players miss an event they scripted. Solution? Don't give players a chance to miss the script.

By that logic I can say that the railroadiest of linear games is also full of meaningful choices. You choose what class you play, how you allocate your stats, what gear to buy, what actions to take round by round, what spells to memorize, etc.

It still has zero impact on the larger "plot" or "setting"

In a game like Minecraft, you can dig up most of the visible game world and turn it into your dream city, or a giant computer, or whatever, creating large scale and visible differences in the game's setting. This should be obviously different from a game where you can spend hours customizing your character, but can't open a door if the game master doesn't think it's time yet. Linear scenario design naturally and demonstrably limits meaning of character creation choices in a different way from a sandbox game. Saying both are "full" of choices means nothing, there are both quantative (amount of choices) and qualitive (what is chosen) differences between game structures.

Without conflict or opposition, you don't really have a game or a story. Its just "playing", and while there isn't anything wrong with that, tabletop RPGs are just about the worst medium to do that in.

Games like Minecraft don't lack conflict or opposition. Even a real, literal sandbox doesn't. The conflict and opposition is between what a player desires to do versus their skill to do it in the environment they are in. But hey, if that isn't enough, introducing conflict and opposition into a sandbox is trivial: all it takes is one player who wants your sand for something other than what you want to use it for.

Considering it is again possible to take a roleplaying game to a literal sandbox and use it as tabletop, I don't think your opinion of what the medium is good or bad for holds much merit.

Honestly, this kind of seems like the opposite of the railroad DM who is told to just write a novel; these players would probably be better served creating art of some sort.

Creating art is not the opposite of playing a game. See all other games where players are creating art in competition with each other.

lNow, in my case I am not talking about surprising players in a sandbox with conflict; generally my problem in sandboxes is players who are simply aimless and bored. I am more talking about how when playing heroes (sandbox or linear) the players are normally reactive and on the offensive; raiding monster lairs or foiling villain's schemes. When they are evil, though, they are more often on the defensive, which makes conflict seem more random and, well, aggressive for lack of a better term.

Do you know what causes aimlesness? Lack of internal motivation. Do you know what causes lack of internal motivation? Experience of being harried by external rewards and punishments to make one act according to someone else's whims and wishes.

If you take a real kid who had helicopter parents or restrictive living conditions and place that kid in a real sandbox, chances are they won't have an idea what to do. They will stare at the sand. They will get bored. The actual correct choice, for an outside observer, is to wait that out. Let the kid get bored. They actually need the experience of no-one else coming to save them from boredom, to save themselves from it.

As for the rest, it still falls in line with what I just said about sandbox games: of course a game feels more aggressive and unpredictable when one has to deal with some mofo knocking over one's castle, as opposed to simply building a castle in peace or going around knocking over castles of other without retaliation. Wrapping the discussion in terms of genre tropes (heroes reactive, villains proactive etc.) isn't helpful or even required for understanding dynamics of play and what is happening in minds of your players.

[icefractal]

I have a question; how do people feel about temporal ogres?

They are like quantum ogres, but travel through time as well as space, and I think a lot of GM's use them without even realizing it.

For example, something scripted to occur so that the players arrive just in time to witness and/or get involved in an important event?

Or an encounter that occurs the first time the players enter a hex regardless of what time of day they arrive and how long it took them to get there?

Or an NPC who just so happens to have a quest then urgently needs doing right as the PCs enter town?

Personally, I'm fine with it if there isn't the pretense of objective timing, but I dislike fake time pressure.

Like, I'm fine with:
"Go check on the old fort near Devil Lake, nobody's been there in a few years, but there are reports of strange lights."
* There are cultists at the fort, and right as the PCs arrive is when they're summoning Godzilla. *

But not:
"The cultists are planning to summon Godzilla very soon, you'd better get to the old fort ASAP!"
* PCs scramble and do everything possible to get there faster *
* Get there right as the ritual is happening. *
* In fact, no matter what they do they'd always get there right as the ritual is happening. *

[PhoenixPhyre]

Personally, I'm fine with it if there isn't the pretense of objective timing, but I dislike fake time pressure.

But not:
"The cultists are planning to summon Godzilla very soon, you'd better get to the old fort ASAP!"
* PCs scramble and do everything possible to get there faster *
* Get there right as the ritual is happening. *
* In fact, no matter what they do they'd always get there right as the ritual is happening. *

I just finished an arc that was full of these "always arriving at the right time" incidents. But that was because they were entering frozen "bubbles" of time sparked by notable events. Effectively, the gateway to these bubbles was pinned to a particular time and place.

But yes, in general these sorts of "Sandbox Video Game" quests/narrative (no matter how long you wait or derp around doing side quests, the main quest never progresses without you; no matter how you rush, you're never in time to <do thing that would prevent the issue from arising>) conventions are annoying in a TTRPG. Easy to run, certainly. And easy to fall back on, certainly.

[Easy e]

Like, to me, the starting point about talking about styles of RPG games is three statements:

1. People play RPGs in significantly different ways
2. No way is best, just best for some people
3. Success defines success - if people are having fun, then the game is good, at least for them.

Like, I don't think you can have a productive conversation without acknowledging those things.

Yeah, this is the key to all of these discussions. Frequently, the threads tone loses this aspect.


That said Kyoryu I still "feel" that the Authored vs Emergent is more of a continuum or spectrum as opposed to stand alone boxes. The players and GM shift between these two poles as needed for the scene and event he moment. Therefore, the Authored vs Emergent parts of the game can be very fluid.

[Thrudd]

Personally, I'm fine with it if there isn't the pretense of objective timing, but I dislike fake time pressure.

Like, I'm fine with:
"Go check on the old fort near Devil Lake, nobody's been there in a few years, but there are reports of strange lights."
* There are cultists at the fort, and right as the PCs arrive is when they're summoning Godzilla. *

But not:
"The cultists are planning to summon Godzilla very soon, you'd better get to the old fort ASAP!"
* PCs scramble and do everything possible to get there faster *
* Get there right as the ritual is happening. *
* In fact, no matter what they do they'd always get there right as the ritual is happening. *

Yes. If you're going to use time pressure, you need to actually be keeping track of time, which very few GMs seem to want to do anymore. Keeping track of the passage of time was an important point of advice in 1e DMG from Gygax.
You need to track the days, the hours, that pass in-game. Decide when the ritual will happen on the in-world calendar, give the players sufficient warning, so if they hustle and sacrifice they can get there early enough to prevent it.