Quote from: Elliot Wilen;380049Yes, that brings up an even better example. Whether you use a more location-based, concrete prep (what I'm calling "sandbox", Benoist might disagree on terms), or a relational, situational setup, either way it might be obvious that Vincenzo will send his soldiers to the warehouse--but how does the GM know whether they'll be there at the same time as the PCs, and who got there first?

This is the kind of thing that's prime railroading material, depending on what the GM thinks is most fun. He can deny or feed the players clues this way, or he can force a fight, etc. By using the dice you reinforce verisimilitude and increase player agency.

Also, even the most detailed sandbox could be missing some details, not because the GM or setting designer intentionally thought "there is no widget at point X", but simply because they couldn't think of everything and note it down. Therefore, is there a baseball bat behind the counter at the bar? Could be--decide a probability and roll dice. (Again, I like how Mythic does this with a plain-English scale of likelihoods.)

I do like where this is going.  
I enjoy finding continuums describing how we make our games happen, and how the GM play affects game play, and vice versa.  


'Sandbox' normally does not have anything to do with the amount of prep.  It normally defines an openness for player option/objective.  Often described as 'Non-linear', 'Sandbox' is really the opposite of 'railroad'.  (But not on the other end of a continuum with "Situational', becasue you could certainly have a Situationally GM'd Sandbox game).  Sandbox RPG or CRPG games very oftendo have a lot of detail, however.

Now, when you start talking 'heavily detailed sandbox', if you do well, you end up with what we call an 'emergent-sandbox', where the detail and immersion is heavy enough that the PCs start finding relationships and soulutions and storylines that the GM or designer did not even intend.

More later, I am at work.

Here's something I posted on another board.

Quote from: The ShamanI think of my prepration time as 'prepping to improvise.' I can't detail an entire game-world, or game-universe for some games, so I'll detail a few obvious locations then focus my preparation on what I need to know to differentiate the cultural and natural landscape the adventurers may discover in their travels. From this I can draw things like npc characterisations on the fly, and from there I'm simply reacting to whatever the adventurers do.

In my experience, successful improvisation comes from knowing the setting well, not in terms of where this city or that river is located, but how the inhabitants of this area differ from the inhabitants of another area, in their outlooks, lifestyles, and subsistence, then bringing that out in response to the actions of the adventurers. . . .  

The same is true in the game I'm prepping to run: how does the outlook of a noble with a small estate in Languedoc differ from one in Aunis? I don't need to know every valley of the Cévennes or beach of the île de Ré to create a (hopefully interesting and distinctive) characterisation of each.

I also prep random encounters in advance of actual play. For me random encounters are the 'living setting' - I spend time thinking about the origins of the encounter, identifying the motivations and methods of the antagonists, and so on.

For example, a randomly generated 'bandit' encounter becomes rebellious Huguenots in the Midi foraging for supplies for the duc de Rohan, or ragged, half-starved mercenaries returning from the Holy Roman Empire and resorting to brigandage in Picardy, or chauffeurs roaming the pays of Normandy looking for victims to capture and ransom. In this way there are no 'generic' random encounters; each is a reflection of the game-world where the adventurers are standing at the moment.

Wrt to the situational-sandbox axis, I tend to think of these as two sides of the same coin. The process of improvising the physical and cultural landscapes is the same as the process for improvising relationships of the figures who occupy that landscape.

Let's say the adventurers are travelling across Languedoc. They randomly encounter a member of the local gentry. Is he a Huguenot or a Catholic? If he's a Huguenot, is he loyal to the crown or is he a member of the rebellious faction of the Reformed Church? If he's Catholic, is he a native of the province or was he installed during the Wars of Religion to maintain control on behalf of the crown? Is he a sword noble, one of the traditional warrior elite of France, or is he a robe noble, one of the emerging bureaucratic elite?

Answering these questions allows me to determine something of the character's outlook as well as identify the character's natural allies and rivals, which of the major non-player characters in the setting he's likely to know, how he makes a living, what resources are available to him.

So for me, prep is not only to improvise the conditions of the box, but the interrelationship of the contents as well.