Quote from: LordVreeg;627610But this example does not mean that all sandbox goals are trivial.  I have a many long-term, overarching plotlines that are purely Sandboxy, but are major if the PCs delve in and connect up the dots.

I beg to differ.

If those plot were meaningful, i.e. if the players ignore them the campaign would end (to pick the most extreme but clearest example, i.e. the one from Lord of the Rings)- you're not running a sandbox. The world hasn't granted them the interdependence a Sandbox requires.

Lesser bad results still have this characteristic, until the bad result become insignificant- and when they do, so does your 'sandbox goal'. This is what I mean by trivial- it's required that the players are able to ignore them without significant harm and if they can't, the Sandbox has ended.

Quote from: LordVreeg;627610And BTW, I consider player-determined and created goals to be very, very important and fulfilling.  And consistent with Sandbox play.

I'm of a very different opinion.

Sam getting the girl and becoming major is all nice and fine. But boring and trivial- I wouldn't read that book. Now Sam getting the girl after escorting the Ring to Mount Doom, that's interesting and worthwhile.

Quote from: gleichman;627634I beg to differ.

If those plot were meaningful, i.e. if the players ignore them the campaign would end (to pick the most extreme but clearest example, i.e. the one from Lord of the Rings)- you're not running a sandbox. The world hasn't granted them the interdependence a Sandbox requires.

Lesser bad results still have this characteristic, until the bad result become insignificant- and when they do, so does your 'sandbox goal'. This is what I mean by trivial- it's required that the players are able to ignore them without significant harm and if they can't, the Sandbox has ended.



I'm of a very different opinion.

Sam getting the girl and becoming major is all nice and fine. But boring and trivial- I wouldn't read that book. Now Sam getting the girl after escorting the Ring to Mount Doom, that's interesting and worthwhile.

You DO know you can't seem to have a disagreement without going into fallacy, right?  
Reductio ad absurdum, here, not to mention the propositional idiocy of "You can't have meaninful choices in a sandbox, because if it were meaningful it wouldn't be in a sandbox".

To do something crazy that I like to do, let's go with an example, one that might be useful to other GMS.
I set up a number of long term situations, plotines, going on in my setting, from the beginning.  At all sorts of levels, and many intersect.

One of them is the search for the lost god, Amerer.  It's a pretty good example of a sandbox plotline, that if the PCs don't pick it up, things don't change dramatically, but since the PCs have started to discover pieces and bits of how he was actually placed in Durance and can be set free.  At this point, they have not said a word to an NPC about it, so there are zero outide forces pushing or influencing.
Yet if they decide to make this a long-term goal, one of the original planars, an architect of the Waking Dream will be returned to the void and able to influence events, churches and whole religions will probably need to change, be shaken to the core, or crumble absolutely.
Or if it is discovered whet they have found, then I must play the rest of the world logically, and forces will array for and against this outcome.

Now, if you say that in playing the response of the rest of the setting I am creating non-sandbox conditions, then you truly prove to me that you don't belong posting in a thread about sandboxes.  The players are free to go where they will and do as they will, and the world reacts accordingly.  But the longer a big sandbox goes the more the players have to deal with the consequences of their own actions.

And similarly, if you tell me that the sacrifice of other goals and needs to bring back an original god back into the Waking Dream is insignificant, i'd ...be surprised.

Quote from: LordVreeg;627647You DO know you can't seem to have a disagreement without going into fallacy, right?  
Reductio ad absurdum, here, not to mention the propositional idiocy of "You can't have meaninful choices in a sandbox, because if it were meaningful it wouldn't be in a sandbox".

Sigh, you say such things... and then say:

Quote from: LordVreeg;627647It's a pretty good example of a sandbox plotline, that if the PCs don't pick it up, things don't change dramatically, but since the PCs have started to discover pieces and bits of how he was actually placed in Durance and can be set free.

I put in bold that part which is exactly what I said was a requirement for a Sandbox (as commonly defined here), and is exactly why I said it was meaningless.

How that whips around instead your head and comes out as a 'fallacy' is beyond me. Tunnel Vision perhaps. You're so focused on the what happens if the players act that you ignore everything else.

Quote from: gleichman;627651Sigh, you say such things... and then say:




I put in bold that part which is exactly what I said was a requirement for a Sandbox (as commonly defined here), and is exactly why I said it was meaningless.

How that whips around instead your head and comes out as a 'fallacy' is beyond me. Tunnel Vision perhaps. You're so focused on the what happens if the players act that you ignore everything else.

Nyet.
A) any requirement you have for a Sandbox I'd want to see.  I am still looking for evidence that you understand what you hate.

B) My comment about things not changing dramatically means that things will continue on the path they are going.  The world is actualy somewhat unaware that the Lost God is actually imprisoned; they think he is gone.  Are you trying to postulate that without a narrative railroad (take the ring or the world ends), there is no meaningful goals by the players?  And because a narrative railroad is opposite of a sandbox, therefor a sandbox cannot have a meaningful goal?
 That seems to be the meat of your circuitous argument, which is one reason why I call it fallacious and why it meets ther criterion of fallacy.

c) nota bene, you don't even try to talk about the real argument, the effects of the players actions in the setting as meaningful or not.  I provided an example of a very meaningful (even taking into account your personal requirment of large-scale, world shaking games, which is, BTW a preference or vaule judgement, not part of the definition for everyone, sad to say) plotline the players have entered into of their own accord which they may or may not continue, but if they sacrifice other goals and decide to follow will profoundly change the makeup and cosmic balance of the entire setting.

d) I apologize, Elliott.

Quote from: LordVreeg;627654Are you trying to postulate that without a narrative railroad (take the ring or the world ends), there is no meaningful goals by the players?

You are so invested that you refuse to understand a simple point, simply stated. I really don't think there's any way for us to communicate.

I will try once more.

A Sandbox requires that the players are able to avoid any plot hook by its definition. As you stated "if the PCs don't pick it up, things don't change dramatically". That is the freedom a Sandbox requires, the ability to ignore what they don't want to interact with, and pick other things to do instead.

The problem with that is that it reduces any and all possible events in the Sandbox to something trivial. "Here Frodo is the Ring of Power, now you must... hey you just dropped on the ground and walked away... Frodo? Frodo? Oh well, it wasn't important anyway".

To me, that is not an acceptable way of playing. I'm not interested in what mess Conan is dealing with this week because he was looking for money, power or whatever tickled his fancy, nor what old dead gods he woke up while doing so. It means nothing to me.

I'm interested in things like this: "So do all who live to see such times, but that is not for them to decide"

Quote from: gleichman;627661You are so invested that you refuse to understand a simple point, simply stated. I really don't think there's any way for us to communicate.

I will try once more.

A Sandbox requires that the players are able to avoid any plot hook by its definition. As you stated "if the PCs don't pick it up, things don't change dramatically". That is the freedom a Sandbox requires, the ability to ignore what they don't want to interact with, and pick other things to do instead.

The problem with that is that it reduces any and all possible events in the Sandbox to something trivial. "Here Frodo is the Ring of Power, now you must... hey you just dropped on the ground and walked away... Frodo? Frodo? Oh well, it wasn't important anyway".

To me, that is not an acceptable way of playing. I'm not interested in what mess Conan is dealing with this week because he was looking for money, power or whatever tickled his fancy, nor what old dead gods he woke up while doing so. It means nothing to me.

I'm interested in things like this: "So do all who live to see such times, but that is not for them to decide"

There you have it, folks: Sandboxes require players determined to suck (and a GM who'll double down on that suck) in order for them to match up with the strawman version presented here.  (Should we start calling this hypothetical beast the strawbox?)

Well there's consequences for avoiding hooks in every game I call a sandbox.

But it isn't all Christian so it may still suck.

Quote from: gleichman;627661You are so invested that you refuse to understand a simple point, simply stated. I really don't think there's any way for us to communicate.

I will try once more.

A Sandbox requires that the players are able to avoid any plot hook by its definition. As you stated "if the PCs don't pick it up, things don't change dramatically". That is the freedom a Sandbox requires, the ability to ignore what they don't want to interact with, and pick other things to do instead.

The problem with that is that it reduces any and all possible events in the Sandbox to something trivial. "Here Frodo is the Ring of Power, now you must... hey you just dropped on the ground and walked away... Frodo? Frodo? Oh well, it wasn't important anyway".

To me, that is not an acceptable way of playing. I'm not interested in what mess Conan is dealing with this week because he was looking for money, power or whatever tickled his fancy, nor what old dead gods he woke up while doing so. It means nothing to me.

I'm interested in things like this: "So do all who live to see such times, but that is not for them to decide"

right.
So I got it both times.  For you, it has to be a railroad to be significant, no matter the affect the setting or the campaign. It's not that I did not get it, it is just as as I said.  Circuitous logic.  

"that without a narrative railroad (take the ring or the world ends), there is no meaningful goals by the players? And because a narrative railroad is opposite of a sandbox, therefor a sandbox cannot have a meaningful goal"

And wrong.  A Sandbox still has cause and effect, it just can contain many important plotlines, not just one railroad.  Just because the players have real  choice does not make it trivial, in fact, the player who chooses to act and possibly sacrifice can be seen as more meaningful than those who are railroaded.  See 'C' above.  

(and Strawbox seems about right)

No, problem,  Vreeg.

I think once all the shouting is over, there's just a plain difference in taste. If someone (likely Gleichman) wants to assert beyond that, that the other taste is morally inferior, it's just static as far as I'm concerned.

For example, if personal interests are trivial, oh well. The myth of the Trojan War (and the Iliad) is about personal interests, not people trying to prevent the end of the world. Depending on the telling, there are some characters whose personal interests are wealth & power (Agamemnon), but others who are motivated by love, hate, pure ego, devotion... To me it makes a good story; so does the Odyssey; so does actual history at scales running from small communities to entire nations.

Admittedly, few of these offered moral absolutes (these days, I still think few people would shy from talking about WWII as a fight against evil--on some level--but YMMV) and so, perhaps in the long run, they're all "trivial". Yes, everything from Henry IV part I  to The Godfather--all trivial, and rather vain. That is, I can understand the logic, in terms of how things get sorted in that outlook, but it doesn't affect my own preferences.

Quote from: gleichman;627584If expressing a opinion different than others is a troll, I suppose I'll just have to live with it.

What I don't have to do is talk to someone who believes such a silly thing.

I have no issue with someone expressing a difference of opinion about a subject matter being discussed. That's not trolling. But coming into a thread entitled "Actual examples of starting a sandbox campaign" to tell us that sandboxes are boring IS trolling, because *that's not the topic being discussed.*

It's no different than if you started a thread called "Building characters in Champions" and I came in and said Champions sucks. I'd be trolling you.

And, since I read your blog regularly, I know you are a very smart man, so your reply above is merely meta-trolling at this point.

Quote from: Zak S;627668Well there's consequences for avoiding hooks in every game I call a sandbox.

If you punish your PCs for turning down your plot hooks, I don't see how you can in any meaningful call your campaign a sandbox.

A field of tar babies perhaps. Sandbox, no.

Quote from: LordVreeg;627669right.
So I got it both times.  For you, it has to be a railroad to be significant, no matter the affect the setting or the campaign. It's not that I did not get it, it is just as as I said.  Circuitous logic.  

No, you don't get it.

I think that you're so interested in self-justification that you've reached the point where you don't even try to get it. Anything you disagree with must in your view be wrong, and you'll pick whatever term that's handy to call it wrong no matter how poorly it fits.

You're extremely consistent in this, and have never been worth the time I spent talking to you as a result. I will spend waste no more time on you.

Quote from: amacris;627681But coming into a thread entitled "Actual examples of starting a sandbox campaign" to tell us that sandboxes are boring IS trolling, because *that's not the topic being discussed.*

It's no different than if you started a thread called "Building characters in Champions" and I came in and said Champions sucks. I'd be trolling you.

And, since I read your blog regularly, I know you are a very smart man, so your reply above is merely meta-trolling at this point.

Thread-crapping actually.

We get a lot of that.

Quote from: Elliot Wilen;627678That is, I can understand the logic, in terms of how things get sorted in that outlook, but it doesn't affect my own preferences.

I liked your examples, they do indeed fit what I'm talking about.

Quote from: One Horse Town;627686Thread-crapping actually.

We get a lot of that.

So much so (and by Pundit himself I may add) that I thought it accepted practice here.

Please feel free to move my post to it's own thread if that would help (if such is possible).