Quote from: Pierce InverarityThe funny part re. Paizo: Most responses (but not Clark's) to a recent thread on the subject on the Necro boards are indistinguishable from the Paizo fans' reaction. That one did surprise me.

Link?

WRT fan comments on the Paizo boards, I really found interesting how acceptable illusionism (hidden railroading, a.k.a. "All roads lead to Rome") is among the posters. This technique was mentioned multiple times in response to the railroad problem, and went completely unchallenged.

Also: Settembrini, whatever I said about your posts, the comments on strategic/tactical depth are sound ideas. Have you explored the concept more thoroughly outside the Paizo posts?

In German, I did.
We also had some discussions about this and I have some undiscussed observations on DMin technique, we should talk about this sometime.

Link it! I can read German (but can't speak/write it anymore).

Quote from: MelanLink?

http://p208.ezboard.com/Paizo-Necro-and-oldschool-adventures/fnecromancergamesfrm9.showMessage?topicID=631.topic

Didn't you post in that thread yourself? :confused:

Quote from: Elliot WilenI think that targeting them "too directly" (note: subjective measure) can be railroady in effect if not intent. E.g. if the player's become highly attached/invested in some game world element, then endangering/destroying it may leave the PC with nothing interesting--all options look like one (crappy) path.

Sure, but there are a variety of approaches that can be railroady in effect.  For example, one approach is not targetting the PCs, but everywhere they go except for the GM's plot is boring.  The GM may even say to himself that he's letting the PCs do whatever they want, but since he doesn't make any creative effort except in his own corner, the choice is empty.  

A lot of techniques can be used in service of railroading or railroad-like behavior -- but can also be used for other styles.  

Quote from: Elliot WilenBut in general, deliberately poking at the PCs just to see what they'll do, when they aren't asking for it is something I'd like to avoid. I'd rather if possible be looking at the big picture and then see how it impacts the PCs.

My approach varies depending on the campaign and the genre.  Obviously if they don't want to have stuff happen to them, I won't do it as GM - or at least not more than once (since I might do it before they express such).  However, in a lot of campaigns, I won't wait to be specifically asked for such to do it.  In a superhero campaign or in my Buffy campaign, say, bad stuff would happen to the PCs all the time.  

Quote from: Elliot WilenAs for R-maps, I think the difference is that I'm looking for them on several scales (campaign wide down to the local) and with a lot of persistence, so you can leave one and return to it later in the campaign. Another thing that may differ from Sorcerer's Soul is that I expect time to be a factor; the R-map doesn't sit around waiting for the PCs to come and disturb it. I can dig episodic games but the sandbox is ideally something different.

I think you're stretching here to find differences.  I disagree with a lot of what Ron says, but that doesn't mean that I'm going to do the opposite of whatever he says.  

Sorcerer's Soul doesn't suggest that NPCs attitudes towards each other stay fixed.  They will have betrayals, seductions, revelations, and so forth among themselves -- as fits with modern detective fiction.  Actually, one of its suggestions is to sometimes only map the most primal relations -- blood and sex.  NPCs friendships or hatreds may change, but a brother is a brother and a husband will at least still be an ex-husband.

John, I am not talking about those other approaches that can be "railroady in effect." They may exist or not but I don't see how it relates. What I am saying however is that character-focused "Bangs" aren't part of the sandbox repertoire, as far as I'm concerned.

As for the second quote above, I misspoke: I don't mean to say that I hate all games where the GM pokes the PCs, just that when there's an understanding that this will occur, it (again) nudges the game away from the sandbox ideal. How far does it nudge? Depends on how frequent, how hard, and how direct the nudges are.

Finally, I'm not "stretching to find differences". I really don't know what exactly Sorcerer's Soul says, though I've read two of the other Sorcerer books; all I can say is that from an example I've seen by Ron, plus knowledge of DitV, which I believe is somewhat related conceptually, the approach seems to be aimed at compact, episodic scenarios linked mainly by PC continuity, rather than larger-scale games with world-continuity as an ongoing element.

(never mind, just wrote a huge response amplifying this post and the computer ate it, grump)

Quote from: Elliot WilenJohn, I am not talking about those other approaches that can be "railroady in effect." They may exist or not but I don't see how it relates. What I am saying however is that character-focused "Bangs" aren't part of the sandbox repertoire, as far as I'm concerned.

It relates to the original topic, I think.  In the original post, Savage Tides author James Jacob contrasted "strict rails" adventures like Sea Wyvern with "sandboxes" like Tides, Scuttlecove, or Enemies of My Enemy.  However, it seems that you have a much more restrictive definition of "sandbox" than simply being not "strict rails".  

My point is just that conflict webs, relationship maps (whether or not they include the PCs), and character-focused "Bangs" don't necessarily put a game any closer to "strict rails".  They are all still compatible with a lot of real player choice over direction of the game.  (Also, these have been talked about on the Forge, but they are not restricted to Forge-related games.)  

Regarding the original topic...  In my opinion, a well-prepared non-linear dungeon is no harder to run than a linear dungeon.  It can be difficult to run world-spanning and/or long-term play completely non-linearly.  It can also be difficult to run completely off the cuff.  However, there are a lot of options for well-supported play besides linearly preplotted adventures.  

I'm also skeptical about their popularity, though I don't have any solid basis for this.  It seems to me that it is at least extremely common for players to dislike strict rails in an adventure.

Can someone remind me what a "Bang" is.

Bloody Forgespeak. :rolleyes:

"A bang is a situation that requires a choice from the player as how the character will respond to the situation. "

That's hilarious. :haw:

Quote from: CalithenaThis is true of DitV and Trollbabe, but it is not true of Sorcerer.

Well, I popped into the game store on my way to lunch, had a peek in the R-Map section of Sorcerer's Soul, and it affirmed what I wrote above about compact scenarios. If Ron also describes something more like a sandbox in Sex & Sorcery, then...good for him!

QuoteBangs are not part of the 'core' sandbox repertoire, but they can IMO be a useful technique to add to it - that was related to the #3 in my previous response to Pierce.

Sure, and the concerns I voiced about #3 are pretty much that it can be too Bang-y.

Stuart, a Bang is when the GM inserts an event that necessitates a response from the player. In the narrow sense it's supposed to evoke a response that's "thematically significant" and so, in the narrow sense of that, it creates an opportunity for a moral choice of interest to the player. The idea has been informally applied to general RPG play; to make the repurposing explicit, I'd say it's when the GM "throws something out" which is designed to grab the players' interest and kick them into action, without narrowly forcing a particular action.

The reason I think they should be handled cautiously in a sandbox game has to do with the idea of the sandbox game-world serving as an opportunity and backdrop to character action--a dynamic backdrop, sure, but still a backdrop.

Quote from: Calithena(never mind, just wrote a huge response amplifying this post and the computer ate it, grump)

That'd be the one I partly quoted above, in case anyone's wondering.

John, I think the disconnect in our "railroady" back & forth is that several of us had been on a digression regarding sandbox play, which places a premium on freedom within the setting as opposed to compact but open-ended scenarios.

In fact in my current alternating-GM Basic D&D game, I think we have pretty much of necessity given up the idea of extensive player choice WRT the next scenario (though I'm trying to solicit a little input that I can use to riff off of on my turn), but within each scenario things are pretty wide-open.

No, actually I extended that one out to like a page because I felt more needed to be said, and then the comp ate it. The parts you quoted are OK though.

Sorcerer doesn't have a default 'sandbox' model in any iteration. But, it does have the thing where the GM 'plays the setting' according to its own logic in pretty much one traditional RPG mode, which has a lot in common with sandboxes. Kickers, bangs, and humanity checks serve in this model as 'filters' which focus that kind of play on character-relevant elements.

Which works like a revelation for a subset of gamers but tends to confuse or frustrate others. (I fall into the latter group, FWIW. I have a play mode that is a lot like 'narrativism' but as Clash said in another thread, I tend to use informal social techniques to reinforce it rather than game mechanics, and in general game mechanics for it fuck up my focus on playing the setting. I tend to hold the theory that that's just a matter of the systems I was trained on than anything intrinsically screwed about using mechanics to support that stuff.)

I had some other fine distinctions that I thought might be useful here, but basically it boiled down to the assertion that while Sorcerer is not a sandbox-GM game, it's not quite on the Trollbabe/DitV GM-model either.

Elliot -

Sandbox - inchoate wandering, snapping into form as stuff of interest to the players comes over the horizon. (The wandering is less inchoate when it includes fixed sites and lethal wandering monster tables, but I'd still argue that those things are part of the medium in sandbox play.)

Open-Ended Scenario - Leave out the wandering, and with it the snapping into form; the meaningful decisions are within broader structures imposed by the parameters of the scenario.

Kickers in Sorcerer let the players set major aspects of the scenario themselves, but just because of the kickers it's in this respect more like the second model than the first.

So - damn I hate that I'm thinking this thought on this board, but here it is - kickers are really a technique to let players 'railroad' themselves, which might be more satisfying content-wise than a GM railroad, but can't deliver the experience of spontaneous discovery through play in the same way the sandbox can. Even if you don't know how it's going to come out you know what it's going to be about.

Of course, opponents will point out that wandering for a long time to get to the good stuff has a cost of its own, in time and the danger that you never really get there. Which is true, but at least now we can compare relative merits.

"A bang is a situation that requires a choice from the player as how the character will respond to the situation."

As opposed to the the situations where no choice is required.  The players just stare back at you slack jawed and wait for you to say something else.

So the GM introduces a situation and... wait for it... the player has their character RESPOND?

That sounds like what people have been doing with RPGs since day one.  Calling it a "bang" just makes it that much less straightforward than something like... "situation"... or "encounter"...

Could we all please try and express our ideas in commonly understood english and avoid using any of these made up terms?  :raise:

Thanks!