Quote from: Glazer;680793Nice idea, but the problem I have with the stuff I've seen so far is that it all seems to be based on abstract concepts of how such a campaign shoud work, rather than on actual in-game experience of a playing or running a sand-box Mythos campaign (unlike Kevin's post, for example, which reads like it is based on the hard-earned lessons of actual sand-box play). I could be wrong on both counts of course, but that is the way it comes across.

Well, I think the assumption here is we already HAVE Kevin's excellent material on sandboxes. Like I said, that's been a major influence for Quentin.  So rather than assuming he somehow doesn't know about this, you could instead look at what he wrote from the point of view that everything Kevin has written about sandboxes is already taken as a given.

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Quote from: RPGPundit;681176Well, I think the assumption here is we already HAVE Kevin's excellent material on sandboxes. Like I said, that's been a major influence for Quentin.  So rather than assuming he somehow doesn't know about this, you could instead look at what he wrote from the point of view that everything Kevin has written about sandboxes is already taken as a given.

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No, I had assumed Quentin had read Kevin's work. However, the material written so far came across to me as theory based on that reading and how it might apply to a Mythos campaign, rather than a proposal for a game based on first-hand experience. This put me off a bit, because it made the proposals all seem a bit abstract. Your posts on your Dark Albion campaign have made me feel much more excited and interested in that game than this one, for example.

Fortunately, this is very easily fixed. You and Quentin just need to start running some Mythos sandbox campaigns!  All I'm saying is that I would have had done this before posting any material about the game, rather than after. Hope that makes sense.

Quote from: Glazer;681183No, I had assumed Quentin had read Kevin's work. However, the material written so far came across to me as theory based on that reading and how it might apply to a Mythos campaign, rather than a proposal for a game based on first-hand experience. This put me off a bit, because it made the proposals all seem a bit abstract. Your posts on your Dark Albion campaign have made me feel much more excited and interested in that game than this one, for example.

Fortunately, this is very easily fixed. You and Quentin just need to start running some Mythos sandbox campaigns!  All I'm saying is that I would have had done this before posting any material about the game, rather than after. Hope that makes sense.

It does make sense but I think you have to get that what Quentin was writing here was theory; this wasn't meant to be posts where he gives a bunch of practical material.

He's got a very long history of running CoC games of all kinds.  I have less so than him, though I've run quite a few one shots, short campaigns and a couple of long campaigns in my decades of using CoC, so I'm no novice either.  Not that it should matter because I'm not the one writing the game, just consulting.

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Unless you're playing a game like ToC, where there are the key clues of the story and players will find them, legwork Shadowrun Style is a sandbox.  You may find info out, or not, you may make things easier or make them harder based on what you uncover.  You're always blind about some aspect of a run, you don't know what you don't know.

No reason you can't run an Occult investigation the same way.  It doesn't have to be Hercule Poirot.

Again, I think "sandbox" isn't quite being used the way I think of it. Shadowrun legwork is placed inside a stablished mission/adventure. As such, I see it as completely orthogonal to a sandbox.

Sandbox, for me, is not how you complete a given mission/adventure - its how that mission/adventure showed up in the first place.

So if I have the freedom to choose mission or not, but once I choose I'm locked into completing it a certain way, that's a sandbox?  Of course not.  A sandbox means literally creative freedom within a framework.  Within the framework of the premise of the setting (for example Shadowrun and you're runners) a sandbox gives you freedom to choose your goals, or in the case of professional criminals - jobs/missions. Once you are within the smaller framework of the mission, a sandbox means having freedom to accomplish that mission how your group plans it, which includes legwork/research.

Yup. Sandbox macro means choose which hooks you like. Mission micro means choose how it resolves.

IN SJG has Superiors which give missions. And just like oWoD city campaigns, where princes give missions, you can resolve missions in both a sandbox macro and mission micro level. Basically all it is is upper management puts a priority upon a mission hook.

However, PCs are still free to select hooks in their own priority, and resolve them as they wish. Upper management prioritization does not stop a PC to accept the consequences of choosing missions in a different order, or skipping them entirely. Nor does it prevent PCs from resolving missions as they like either. You can have multiple missions opened at once, resolved piecemeal, even interconnected, and having timed consequences trigger as they are resolved according to PC choice.

It seems complicated, but it is far more open (and approachable) than assumed.

If you have a set objective that the players cant refuse or ignore - which is the case of any preset adventure - its not a sandbox.

YMMV and all that.

Define that. Because it sounds like your ideas of 'preset adventure' are ridiculously narrow. Not every mission is 'we have 4 minutes to save the world.'

Quote from: Opaopajr;681989Define that. Because it sounds like your ideas of 'preset adventure' are ridiculously narrow. Not every mission is 'we have 4 minutes to save the world.'

There's not a single game theory definition or term Silva doesn't have a ridiculous interpretation of.

If a player can choose whether to engage with the preset adventure or not, it can easily be plugged into a sandbox as one of the options.  That should be obvious.

I think that this thread, like most he's involved with, generally works better if you assume Silva isn't posting in good faith.

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Quote from: CRKrueger;682139There's not a single game theory definition or term Silva doesn't have a ridiculous interpretation of.

If a player can choose whether to engage with the preset adventure or not, it can easily be plugged into a sandbox as one of the options.  That should be obvious.

yeah, this.  It sounds like Silva's idea of a sandbox is a game where the DM creates everything randomly on the fly based on the last choice the players made - which to me sounds like a clusterfuck, not a sandbox.

Quote from: RPGPundit;682598I think that this thread, like most he's involved with, generally works better if you assume Silva isn't posting in good faith.

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Funny how the same applies to you, no ?

Quote from: Zevious Zoquisyeah, this. It sounds like Silva's idea of a sandbox is a game where the DM creates everything randomly on the fly based on the last choice the players made - which to me sounds like a clusterfuck, not a sandbox.

Not at all. I dont see a problem in the preparation of plots and adventures beforehand, if its informed by players input and can be ignored if they choose so. My point is that the quality of "sandboxness" can only be applied to a macro-level, because its the only level that allows a gamestate fully open to creative player input ( = player-agency).

When you have an "adventure" - specially the ones in investigative games like CoC - the tendency is that the creative player-input gets capped by the adventure closed environment of small variables as subjected to its pre-planned plot and micro-premise. And no matter how big its "fluxogram" or how many branches each decision-point has, the player-agency is already capped. If all the players can do is to choose which entry point and which branching they will pick for each decision-point in the adventures fluxogram, then its not a sandbox, its a branching/non-linear plot.

I understand though, that this could be seen as a matter of scale. I just dont like to use the label "sandbox" for the micro-scale - I prefer "non-linear adventure", or "branching-plot adventure" - as I think the resulting experience has enough differences as to result in a significant different gaming experience. In other words: the "sandbox experience" one can have from a pre-plotted non-linear adventure is significantly different from the one from an open macro-scale environment like Griffin Mountain or Wilderlands of High Fantasy.

Does it make sense ? (Im a non-native speaker and Im lazy today )

Why should the "game state" be open to "player agency?"  Oh wait, story gamer...never mind.  Lol...

The only player agency I want for my character is whether or not I choose to enter that dungeon over there or go back to town and find something else to do.  It's up to the DM to tell me if there's a town or city nearby or if there's a castle or wizard tower beyond yonder hill...or in the case of the mythos, is there a strange dude trying to withdraw forbidden tomes from the local library or stories of bizarre dead "things" washing up on shore after a huge storm...

Quote from: Zevious ZoquisWhy should the "game state" be open to "player agency?" Oh wait, story gamer...never mind. Lol...

Player-agency can be manifested regardless of in-character or out-of-character stances. So its perfectly valid both to trad games or otherwise.

QuoteThe only player agency I want for my character is whether or not I choose to enter that dungeon over there or go back to town and find something else to do.

And how will you do that in a environment where the clock is ticking for you to complete an investigation or the world ends ?

Thats my point.

The more micro- the scale, the less player-agency. The less player-agency, the less sandbox. To the point where all the players can do is choose entry through points A or B, follow routes C or D, and reach endings E or F. Non-linear ? Yes. A Sandbox? No. Definitely no.