TheRPGSite

(Move if necessary to your feelings Mods, but see below.)

I played Dungeon World last night with my friend-gamers on Skype. We had Liam (Human Thief), Ceggus  (Dwarf Cleric), and me playing Thelir the Wild (Elf Druid.)

Playing the game felt like a traditional RPG to me, it didn't pop up any "uncomfortable" elements that felt deprotaganizing, or "move your playing piece." It felt pretty much like how most RPG's I run fall out in play. Giving players a choice to succeed for a price, making success give you more options (sometimes for a price) and so on. It feels very traditional, to me, despite being derived from Apocalypse World.


It also felt exciting, I mean I generally felt that some things wouldn't have happened in some other fantasy games without pulling teeth. Like our thief sliding off a roof after trying to knock the feet out under his foe and the foe grabbing his ankle on the way down. I know some GM's and some games do this, but it was nice the way this one handled it.

I haven't played it, but I've heard good things about it.

When getting a chance to succeed for a price, how is that decision arrived at from an in-character perspective?

Quote from: Exploderwizard;640715When getting a chance to succeed for a price, how is that decision arrived at from an in-character perspective?

Depends on the move, but for many, it's not.

Quote from: Exploderwizard;640715When getting a chance to succeed for a price, how is that decision arrived at from an in-character perspective?

I think he was just saying it wasn't deprotagonizing. But I think it would depend like CRK says. I could see if the individual move allowed you to succeed at a price by exposing yourself to more potential harm, it would still be an in character choice (for example if it was trying to simulate extending yourself recklessly to succeed). No idea how these work specifically in this game. I think in principle I wouldn't be opposed to such a mechanic. From how it is described it doesn't sound too different from things like bennies. But it probably wouldn't be my first choice either.

I played in this game as Geggus Copperpot, and he is a Dwarf Cleric of Moradin the Soul Forger. :)

I agree that, for the most part, it played like a regular RPG session.  It was my first playing the game as well, and I felt disconnect through the first fight.  The GM brought us into the game world in the middle of a fight, which was a great opportunity to highlight how combat worked in the game.  However, there was not a lot of structure to how the combat flowed from the perspective of traditional mechanics like initiative or a turn order.  After speaking with the GM after the game session, I learned that the combat is suppose to be more descriptive and reactive so next time I'll be better equipped with knowing how it's suppose to go down.

Quote from: Exploderwizard;640715When getting a chance to succeed for a price, how is that decision arrived at from an in-character perspective?

This was the most interesting point of the game for me, especially how it affected the dynamic of combat.  So my guy is a cleric with chain mail, a shield, and a warhammer and I think that he can probably stand up in a fight with the guards we were fighting in our introduction to the game world.  The seemed like 'typical' low-level guards so I figured that I could help the thief and fight them off.  It turns out that combat is fairly serious in this game because of the partial success thing...

On my cleric's first strike on a guard, he rolled a partial success which meant that I hit the dude but also exposed my cleric to the guard's retaliatory strike.  So I rolled my cleric's damage die of 1d6 and another player rolled the guard's damage die of 1d8, and I rolled a '1' and guard rolled a '7' for damage.  My cleric as 2-points of armor and takes 5 damage, which knocks him down from 21 HPs (max) to 16 HPs.  

This immediately caused me, the player, to realize that the mechanics of combat could quickly get my character killed if I pressed him full-bore into combat.  So I played it 'safe' after that and my cleric decided to flee and avoid these guys would be a good bet.  The party starts to bug out of the building, and thief takes to the roofs and the druid turns into a squirrel.  My dwarf cleric decides to climb on the roof tops and follow the thief.  We are spotted by the dudes chasing us, and the group gets separated.  The thief continues on the roof top with bad guys chasing him, and my cleric gets back down into the streets of the market area.  

A new bad guy, all in black with TWO daggers, comes after Geggus (my cleric), and tries to capture him.  My cleric resists and flees through the crowd trying to get away from the bad guys and the new all-black bad guy.  He fails to escape detection, so he stops in a doorway and casts Magic Weapon on his warhammer and gets a partial success.  I choose to loose the spell for the success.  The all-black dude shows up and talks with my cleric and tells him to surrender without getting hurt.  The all-black dude's swagger tells me that he's not really scared to square-off alone against my dwarf cleric.  

Suddenly, Thelir the elf Druid, as a fox, rushes in and attacks the all-black dude with the Defend Move and stops him from hitting my cleric.  I rolled a full success for my cleric's warhammer attack and rolled 7 damage with the extra d4 of spell damage.  This knocked out and/or dazed the dude so my cleric just took off running and Thelir came with him.

We hooked up with Liam, the Thief, a little bit later and fled the city and our hunters therein.  He had his own harrowing experience with escaping from the guards via the rooftops of the city.

It was a cool first experience to game system and its dynamics.  Now that I know what to expect and how I am suppose to interact with the system and GM, I think that the initial disconnected and lost feeling will evaporate quickly.  I was genuinely concerned that these opponents were fully capable of killing our characters and/ or capturing us so I had that vicarious thrill and exhilaration of 'Oh shit!  We gotta flee!' moment and feeling that my character had.

I played a DW hack and also found it to be rather trad, as has been discussed elsewhere on these boards quite recently.

AP report here (http://www.ukroleplayers.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=63&t=14190#p152637).

Don't like the dissociated mechanic of choosing 7-9 results myself but fair to say it had minimal negative (or any) impact on session for me, as narration was down to GM.

I've read Dungeonworld, and it doesn't seem too far out there. I don't think my traditional-minded players would have a problem with it.

Regardless of the mechanics, they absolutely nail fantasy archetypes and the key features that make games like D&D fun. Whether or not I play it, I really enjoy how Dungeonworld evokes classic fantasy RPG adversary types, and I'm already using its advice on fronts and threats  in my D&D game.

DW felt pretty traditional to me. When I played it at gencon, my pc died in combat.

Sounds like this is a game similar to Old School Hack.  That is to say, if you just read the rules, it doesn't read like traditional D&D necessarily.  But when you actually play it, it plays like traditional D&D.

Why play this instead of the real thing?

Quote from: FASERIP;640771Why play this instead of the real thing?

Because I don't like D&D? Unless we're talking  BECMI/Cyclopedia. Plus this game was new and we wanted to try it.

 I felt it evoked a better flow of combat  because of the tradeoffs, they're made by putting your character at risk. The GM would take that "risk" and turn it into something (often damage.) So you open yourself up with a risky or poor attack and get hit in return.

It actually plays a little more "lively" than traditional D&D.

I didn't have to concede much, either rolling well or rolling poorly. I didn't do "average," so my choices were more limited but from a player view to me, its no different than any other mechanical RPG choice a tabletop game gives. (Like do I move up and attack with my best weapon and suffer Aoo in 3E, or stay ranged?)

In general it felt more fluid than any version of D&D I played, the combat felt risky and dynamic without a "one hit kill" mechanic built in--meaning I worried about being hit, but was still willing to jump in and take damage for a friend (and it mechanically supported that as a game result.)

Mind you, I love Cyclopedia D&D, but Dungeon World feels very solid and exciting to me.

Of course "Why play this instead of High Valor?" could be your question or insert any fantasy RPG of your choice. Some games do things better than others, and create a different feel.

Quote from: Silverlion;640782I felt it evoked a better flow of combat  because of the tradeoffs, they're made by putting your character at risk. The GM would take that "risk" and turn it into something (often damage.) So you open yourself up with a risky or poor attack and get hit in return.

If that's the height of the innovation, 2001 called and wants its ideas back.

Quote from: The Traveller;640785If that's the height of the innovation, 2001 called and wants its ideas back.

Of course. Most Indie ideas are a bit older. They took a while to to trickle down it seems.  For example my own High Valor offers concessions on a tie and it came our in 2010!

Quote from: Silverlion;640710Playing [Dungeon World] felt like a traditional RPG to me...

Did your session contain any of the hallmarks of a storygame? Dramatic, scene-editing by players and GM, alike? Focus on the development of a story in-play mutable by GM and players? Shared worldbuilding? Player-permission required for character death? Are these standards or options in the RPG?

Quote from: Silverlion;640782Because I don't like D&D?

Now THIS is an honest answer.

Quote from: Benoist;640802Now THIS is an honest answer.

It's ok. There's lots of people who don't like D&D. That's why they made 4E.

Quote from: Bobloblah;640831It's ok. There's lots of people who don't like D&D. That's why they made 4E.

Yes, I agree, it's totally okay to not like D&D and say "I played Dungeon World and I enjoy it. It's not like D&D and it's a cool narrative game of dungeon crawling in its own right to me".

What makes me roll my eyes is when I read stuff to the extent of "there's absolutely NO DIFFERENCE between Dungeon World and D&D! It totally is a traditional game! It's the same thing, but cooler!" That's nonsense.

Quote from: Silverlion;640782Because I don't like D&D?

Your answer in full (not quoted, obviously) is informative.

I thought Drohem's post and yours made the differences a little clearer, which are more interesting than the similarities.

Quote from: Benoist;640838What makes me roll my eyes is when I read stuff to the extent of "there's absolutely NO DIFFERENCE between Dungeon World and D&D! It totally is a traditional game! It's the same thing, but cooler!" That's nonsense.

Don't think I've heard anyone say quite that, although I've heard a lot of people say they found the game felt very "old-school" in play. Not sure what to make of that, myself. Maybe it just depends on what portion of the experience of playing an RPG one focuses/has always focused on?

What I mean by that is that a lot of the posters here focus very heavily on making every decision from an in-character perspective. Not everyone does that, though, even amongst long time, so-called old-school players. If that was never your thing, you're unlikely to find it jarring when a game like this has OOC tradeoffs in its decision making, and hence, still find the gameplay (portions that you focus on) matches up with your gameplay experiences (that you focus on) in more traditional games.

Silverlion, have you played AW before ?

Do you feel the nature of the mechanics in DW also makes the game flow in full-speed / "go, go, go!" most of times ? (even making it too frantic at some points) ?

Im a AW fan, but didnt play Dungeon World yet. Im curious.

Quote from: Drohem;640723I played in this game as Geggus Copperpot, and he is a Dwarf Cleric of Moradin the Soul Forger. :)

I agree that, for the most part, it played like a regular RPG session.  It was my first playing the game as well, and I felt disconnect through the first fight.  The GM brought us into the game world in the middle of a fight, which was a great opportunity to highlight how combat worked in the game.  However, there was not a lot of structure to how the combat flowed from the perspective of traditional mechanics like initiative or a turn order.  After speaking with the GM after the game session, I learned that the combat is suppose to be more descriptive and reactive so next time I'll be better equipped with knowing how it's suppose to go down.



This was the most interesting point of the game for me, especially how it affected the dynamic of combat.  So my guy is a cleric with chain mail, a shield, and a warhammer and I think that he can probably stand up in a fight with the guards we were fighting in our introduction to the game world.  The seemed like 'typical' low-level guards so I figured that I could help the thief and fight them off.  It turns out that combat is fairly serious in this game because of the partial success thing...

On my cleric's first strike on a guard, he rolled a partial success which meant that I hit the dude but also exposed my cleric to the guard's retaliatory strike.  So I rolled my cleric's damage die of 1d6 and another player rolled the guard's damage die of 1d8, and I rolled a '1' and guard rolled a '7' for damage.  My cleric as 2-points of armor and takes 5 damage, which knocks him down from 21 HPs (max) to 16 HPs.  

This immediately caused me, the player, to realize that the mechanics of combat could quickly get my character killed if I pressed him full-bore into combat.  So I played it 'safe' after that and my cleric decided to flee and avoid these guys would be a good bet.  The party starts to bug out of the building, and thief takes to the roofs and the druid turns into a squirrel.  My dwarf cleric decides to climb on the roof tops and follow the thief.  We are spotted by the dudes chasing us, and the group gets separated.  The thief continues on the roof top with bad guys chasing him, and my cleric gets back down into the streets of the market area.  

A new bad guy, all in black with TWO daggers, comes after Geggus (my cleric), and tries to capture him.  My cleric resists and flees through the crowd trying to get away from the bad guys and the new all-black bad guy.  He fails to escape detection, so he stops in a doorway and casts Magic Weapon on his warhammer and gets a partial success.  I choose to loose the spell for the success.  The all-black dude shows up and talks with my cleric and tells him to surrender without getting hurt.  The all-black dude's swagger tells me that he's not really scared to square-off alone against my dwarf cleric.  

Suddenly, Thelir the elf Druid, as a fox, rushes in and attacks the all-black dude with the Defend Move and stops him from hitting my cleric.  I rolled a full success for my cleric's warhammer attack and rolled 7 damage with the extra d4 of spell damage.  This knocked out and/or dazed the dude so my cleric just took off running and Thelir came with him.

We hooked up with Liam, the Thief, a little bit later and fled the city and our hunters therein.  He had his own harrowing experience with escaping from the guards via the rooftops of the city.

It was a cool first experience to game system and its dynamics.  Now that I know what to expect and how I am suppose to interact with the system and GM, I think that the initial disconnected and lost feeling will evaporate quickly.  I was genuinely concerned that these opponents were fully capable of killing our characters and/ or capturing us so I had that vicarious thrill and exhilaration of 'Oh shit!  We gotta flee!' moment and feeling that my character had.

Fucking great action you had there. I wish I was in it. ;)

And I agree the "weak-sucess" (hard choice) is the real gem here.

Quote from: FASERIP;640839I thought Drohem's post and yours made the differences a little clearer, which are more interesting than the similarities.

Particularly since those are the key things that turn a lot of more trad-minded players off.

1) "Hallmarks?" Well we were given a map and allowed to name stuff, and we were given a choice as to why we got together in the first place.*

There were some questions about the backgrounds of the characters we filled in and such.

As for "shared narrative?" not really, it flowed like a most games in terms of content/play structure, but in terms of how that content moved from point to point it transitioned far more readily. PC/NPC does A others react and make rolls to resolve that, for good or ill. There was no redirecting the scene or anything like that.


2) I've not played Apocalypse World. I have looked at it, read some bits on it, but the sex moves/party interaction elements didn't work for me when reading about them so I skipped it--despite being a fan of Post-Apocalyptic gaming. From reading AW elements online compared to reading the actual book of DW and actual play of DW it looks like DW takes a step more traditional in handling of things than AW. At no time were our characters expected to have sex to recharge anything. Nor were our characters driven to have truly opposing action.

Mind you we have a Thief, and like many classic D&D esque Thieves he gets himself in trouble for things the other two characters facepalm at.

As for frantic? I think it picks the pace up quite a bit, but not quite too frantic. Perhaps in more sessions it may be the case, but in this instance (a running fight and escape from a city.) It didn't feel that way.

 On the other hand it doesn't feel like the game will have "downtime" sinks like some versions of A/D&D.

Mind you, I happen to like downtime sinks. Tonight I played in a Pathfinder game and we spent time decompressing from last adventure by working together to make a sword--for a commission for the PC blacksmith/rogue , before going to a tavern sing-along, and then stopping a serial killer. Add to that several PC's spent several "out of game months" making magic items for ourselves and our party members. (Minor things like scrolls, potions, pearls of power.)

Dungeon World doesn't cover such things of course other than moves like "Recover" and "Make camp" and those things do need a little more time to feel out in play. Sometimes its fun to go to the next adventure, and sometimes you want to enjoy the ill-gotten gain.

Quote from: K Peterson;640797Did your session contain any of the hallmarks of a storygame? Dramatic, scene-editing by players and GM, alike? Focus on the development of a story in-play mutable by GM and players? Shared worldbuilding? Player-permission required for character death? Are these standards or options in the RPG?

None of those are part of either AW or DW. GM has the usual attributions there, and the players control PCs actions, just that.

The part of selecting consequences from a partial success may be the most "out there" thing, but is no big deal, and is not a dissociated mechanic, as it is a description of the PCs action and its consequences.

Quote from: Benoist;640838Yes, I agree, it's totally okay to not like D&D and say "I played Dungeon World and I enjoy it. It's not like D&D and it's a cool narrative game of dungeon crawling in its own right to me".

What makes me roll my eyes is when I read stuff to the extent of "there's absolutely NO DIFFERENCE between Dungeon World and D&D! It totally is a traditional game! It's the same thing, but cooler!" That's nonsense.

Well, of course it's nonsense to pretend it is the same thing, because nothing but D&D (or maybe a retroclone) can be the same thing. Just like you cannot say that an adventure played in RQ feels the same as in D&D.

But what it has is a completely trad feeling. You do the exact same things you would be doing in any trad game, with identical procedures. It is just a light-rules trad game with a very good set of GMing advice, that you can port to other games. It's not the first game where the GM makes no rolls, also.

I have the feeling that the enthusiasm with AW and DW is more related with the indie community giving themselves permission to like a trad game because it has been designed by the right person. The same that happens with Sorcerer, Dogs in the Vineyard, Burning Wheel and so on.

Actually, it's quite funny: I'm prepping a Sorcerer game to play 1-1 with the wife and I cannot for the life of me figure how anyone can pretend that this game plays so differently from any other game as to pretend it's a new kind of game. Again, good GMing advice doesn't make a whole new game.

On the other hand, I am reading Fiasco because one of my players wanted to give it a try and asked me to help him get a game running, and it's definitely not a roleplaying game in the traditional sense. No one can pretend that Fiasco is a game like D&D or Vampire or Cthulhu.

Actually, it doesn't look like very fun to me, but that is an entirely different matter, based mostly on tastes (I love to see movies about low-life people ending in disasters, but I am not interested in playing them).

Quote from: Silverlion;640789Of course. Most Indie ideas are a bit older. They took a while to to trickle down it seems.  For example my own High Valor offers concessions on a tie and it came our in 2010!

Yeah, I really must check that out, it sounds interesting.

As far as I can see AW's main quirk is the partial failure table and that players (or the GM) get to narrate the results from a list of options - would that be accurate? Other than that it's not really different to many other games, once we're ignoring the sex moves.

Well, just to be clear:  I didn't say it's completely like a traditional game, but rather that once you get the collaborative stuff out of the way then it plays out very similar to a traditional game as far as the flow of the game.

The collaborative stuff was done in our first session prior to beginning play and only lasted for about 5-10 minutes and consisted of about a total of 10 questions; several questions for each character and then a couple questions for the group.

The GM provided us with a section of a hex made with geographical features and (mountains, rivers, forest, plains, and etc.) some sites (city, ruins, and etc.) marked on it, but not named.  Some of the questions for the characters revolved around naming some sites on the map.  It was pretty cool how the map panned out with just a few questions.  On the section of map that we could see it showed us a shoreline with two small islands offshore, and one of the islands was completely forested.  The Druid immediately named the island and claimed it as a strong druidic site and elven homeland.  This was pretty cool and made sense geographically.  

I selected a city and in answering a question named a cave complex nearby that is rumored to be a sacred site to dwarves because Moradin supposedly obtained his pure water for forging divine weapons from fresh-water springs deep in the earth and cave complex.

The Thief's questions and answered outlined a huge plot and drama with several organizations; and due to his contribution we started the game in a fight with some dudes from his drama, LOL!

I'm not sure if this is DW or the GM making it up on his own, but apparently there had been a fairly recent deicide that killed off many of the deities of the game world and so I had to answer the question 'why did Moradin survive the deicide?'  This was pretty cool and got me thinking about the game world, its deities, and the fundamental impact that a deicide would have on the world.

The general questions for all the characters and players also helped set up some of the premises of the game world for the GM, and also established the Bonds between the PCs.

This whole process took about 10-15 minutes and flowed naturally.  It didn't feel forced or disconnected really.  We were just talking and brain-storming ideas, and then cherry-picked the ones we liked.  Once that was done, we went straight into the gaming action and, thereafter, the game flowed like any other game I have played over the years.

Quote from: silva;640843Do you feel the nature of the mechanics in DW also makes the game flow in full-speed / "go, go, go!" most of times ? (even making it too frantic at some points) ?

'Frantic' is a pretty good word and also kind of describes the lost feeling I had at first in the combat scene.  The GM was hustling the scene forward by constantly asking us how we're reacting to his Moves.  After discussing it with the GM after the game, and reading the DW PDFs I have, I now understand that's the heart of the game and combat- kept things moving forward with intensity.  Now that I understand this concept I think that the rushed and frantic feelings will melt away in further play.

Now the whole 'weak-success' thing is the unique and interesting thing about the DW game.  However, in actual play at the table, it didn't seem foreign, jarring, or storygame-y to me.  The back and forth between the players and the GM was not really all that different than I have experienced in any other game at any other table.  In any other regular game, the GM narrates the results of combat rolls and this played just the same to me.

Now, to be honest, I was very conservative in this game because it was new and I didn't know what to expect and, consequently, I placed the bulk of my expected narration into the GM's lap.  Naturally, he picked it up since it was the first game and carried the majority of the narration.  He would as me some pointed questions and then cue the narrated results from my answers.  However, the next time we play I will be more interactive and more forthcoming with narration on my end for my Moves and their results.

As a GM, I kind of like it when players are allowed to have a hand in making the setting like that.  It gives me fun and unexpected things to work with, and helps me feel like I'm discovering the setting just as much as they are.

Quote from: Drohem;640954why did Moradin survive the deicide?  

So why did Moradin survive the deicide?

Quote from: Technomancer;640968So why did Moradin survive the deicide?

Moradin survived the Deicide because he is strong, smart, a survivor, and the master of the underground realm.  He is an Alpha. :)

Quote from: Drohem;640975Moradin survived the Deicide because he is strong, smart, a survivor, and the master of the underground realm.  He is an Alpha. :)

In other words he hid in a hole in the ground until the whole thing blew over?

Quote from: Drohem;640975Moradin survived the Deicide because he is strong, smart, a survivor, and the master of the underground realm.  He is an Alpha. :)

That sounds really cool in my head in Sam Elliott's voice.

Quote from: Imperator;640881I have the feeling that the enthusiasm with AW and DW is more related with the indie community giving themselves permission to like a trad game because it has been designed by the right person.

This.

Of course, the corollary is that within the defenders-of-trad community, liking AW or DW is thoughtcrime because it was designed by the wrong person.

KoOS

Quote from: Bobloblah;640990In other words he hid in a hole in the ground until the whole thing blew over?

Naturally, that's the bitter response of a cleric who's god failed to survive the great Deicide! ;) :D

Quote from: Drohem;641182Naturally, that's the bitter response of a cleric who's god failed to survive the great Deicide! ;) :D

:o
Busted!

Quote from: Imperator;640881But what it has is a completely trad feeling. You do the exact same things you would be doing in any trad game, with identical procedures. (...) I have the feeling that the enthusiasm with AW and DW is more related with the indie community giving themselves permission to like a trad game because it has been designed by the right person.

I think this is an over-simplification because there is a qualitative difference in how AW associates its mechanics. (I'm only casually familiar with DW, so my comments may or may not apply to it.)

In a traditional RPG, the associated mechanics generally model specific, concrete actions. If we think of that as "tactical decision making", then AW features strategic decision making. The distinction is subtle, but radical.

For example, in D&D you'd make the non-mechanical decision to "fuck this shit" and bug out, but you'd make a specific mechanical decision to use the mechanics for breaking down a door to escape. In AW, on the other hand, you make the mechanical decision as a Gunlugger to "fuck this shit" and bug out, and then you'd make the non-mechanical decision that your strategic aim is accomplished by busting through the door.

The other major shift in AW is the idea of limiting the GM to a specific set of moves that they're allowed to perform. This not, IME, an actual constraint on the GM (because of how those moves are formulated). But it is a radically different way of looking at how the GM interacts with the game.

And I think this different POV (combined with how easy it is to hack the system) is why AW has attracted so much enthusiasm.

It's an RPG, not an STG. But it is also different from traditional RPGs in several key ways. Trying to gloss over those differences isn't useful or accurate.

Quote from: Justin Alexander;641262For example, in D&D you'd make the non-mechanical decision to "fuck this shit" and bug out, but you'd make a specific mechanical decision to use the mechanics for breaking down a door to escape. In AW, on the other hand, you make the mechanical decision as a Gunlugger to "fuck this shit" and bug out, and then you'd make the non-mechanical decision that your strategic aim is accomplished by busting through the door.

That's just offloading the mechanics onto the GM though, in a freeform way. If I have this right, in a standard game the player decides to bug out, then make a kick down doors roll.

In AW, the player decides to bug out, makes a roll to determine how successful that idea was, and it's up to the GM to interpret that roll.

You've shifted and soft-focused the complexity from the setting and rules to the GM's imagination, which is typically neither a predictable nor an unlimited quantity and gets worn out like everything else as play progresses. I guess opposed rolls work in the same way, but basically its burden shifting.

Quote from: Bobloblah;640842Don't think I've heard anyone say quite that, although I've heard a lot of people say they found the game felt very "old-school" in play. Not sure what to make of that, myself. Maybe it just depends on what portion of the experience of playing an RPG one focuses/has always focused on?

"Feels Old School" = gives me the warm fuzzies I got when I was 12.

Even though I wave the OSR flag, the idea that there was some sort of "old school style" that all of us early gamers agreed upon hive mind style in the 80s is just ludicrous and speaks more of old fart memory deterioration and nostalgia driven revision.  

The terms "Monty Haul", "railroad", "rules lawyer" and "whiny little bitch" were well known around the game table even in those halcyon days of yore when Michael Jackson was black.

Well since leisure games has the paperback version for £16(or 30 for the hardback) i may just grab a copy next week and see what its like at my next rpg sesh in couple of weeks, at that price even if its abit shit(which it doesnt actually sound like it will be) i can at least get a few hours worth of reading out of it and probably steal a crapton of ideas.

Quote from: The Traveller;641329If I have this right,

You don't. In fact, one of the first things AW tells you is that the player isn't allowed to name the mechanic without specifying their character's action (See page 12 of AW.) The way it works is:

Player: Fuck this shit. I bust down the door and get the hell out of there.
GM: Make a fuck this shit check.

Or you might have a situation where the "player has her character take an action that counts as a move, but doesn't realize it". In that case:

Player: I throw myself against the door, trying to bust through!
GM: You're saying "fuck this shit"?
Player: Yup.
GM: Make the check.

This is actually specifically what I meant when I said that glossing over the differences in AW's approach as compared to a traditional RPG isn't useful: It results in you completely screwing up the mechanics.

Quote from: Broken-Serenity;641469Well since leisure games has the paperback version for £16(or 30 for the hardback) i may just grab a copy next week and see what its like at my next rpg sesh in couple of weeks, at that price even if its abit shit(which it doesnt actually sound like it will be) i can at least get a few hours worth of reading out of it and probably steal a crapton of ideas.

I hope you find it worthwhile, I bought a PDF and really wish I could pick up a hardback.

Quote from: Justin Alexander;641490You don't. In fact, one of the first things AW tells you is that the player isn't allowed to name the mechanic without specifying their character's action (See page 12 of AW.) The way it works is:

Player: Fuck this shit. I bust down the door and get the hell out of there.
GM: Make a fuck this shit check.

Or you might have a situation where the "player has her character take an action that counts as a move, but doesn't realize it". In that case:

Player: I throw myself against the door, trying to bust through!
GM: You're saying "fuck this shit"?
Player: Yup.
GM: Make the check.

This is actually specifically what I meant when I said that glossing over the differences in AW's approach as compared to a traditional RPG isn't useful: It results in you completely screwing up the mechanics.

Who's glossing over anything, I'm trying to get a handle on what specifically makes AW different.

So "fuck this shit" is noted on the character sheet as a skill, described as "going somewhere in a big hurry and perhaps some disarray"? Or there is a general move called "fuck this shit", described similarly?

Quote from: Silverlion;641492I hope you find it worthwhile, I bought a PDF and really wish I could pick up a hardback.

I can generallly find at least 1 or 2 things of use out of most rpg's i pick up even if the game itsself isnt much good, so im sure i'll get my monies worth out of it :)

Quote from: Broken-Serenity;641533I can generallly find at least 1 or 2 things of use out of most rpg's i pick up even if the game itsself isnt much good, so im sure i'll get my monies worth out of it :)

Great attitude to have. :)

I basically bought Anima Beyond Fantasy for that reason (well and the art, especially in the monster book) - I doubt I'll ever run it.

Quote from: The Traveller;641530Who's glossing over anything, I'm trying to get a handle on what specifically makes AW different.

So "fuck this shit" is noted on the character sheet as a skill, described as "going somewhere in a big hurry and perhaps some disarray"? Or there is a general move called "fuck this shit", described similarly?

I'm trying to learn the system but I believe that it works like this.

Move: "Fuck This Shit!"
When your character decides that what is currently happening needs to stop,
Roll and on a 10+ choose 2 from the following. On a 9-7 choose 1 and GM provides a reaction to your proclamation.
On a 6 or less get -1 forward to next move due to lack of effort.

• Leave location successfully
• Break off interaction with any opponents
• +1 forward to next Intervene move
• +1 forward to next Defend move

==

Now I could be entirely wrong or just partially.
=

Quote from: Greentongue;641721I'm trying to learn the system but I believe that it works like this.

Okay, thanks that's a lot clearer. Do you feel it will lead to a lot of referencing result tables, or are there only a few moves, could you print out all the move tables on one A4 reference sheet?

Quote from: The Traveller;641733Okay, thanks that's a lot clearer. Do you feel it will lead to a lot of referencing result tables, or are there only a few moves, could you print out all the move tables on one A4 reference sheet?

Here is the the Dungeon World Character Sheets PDF (http://dl.dropbox.com/u/3269630/dwdotcom/DungeonWorld_character_sheets.pdf).

It contains the classes of Dungeon World and the Basic Moves for the class, as well as other class specific information.

Quote from: Drohem;641754Here is the the Dungeon World Character Sheets PDF (http://dl.dropbox.com/u/3269630/dwdotcom/DungeonWorld_character_sheets.pdf).

It contains the classes of Dungeon World and the Basic Moves for the class, as well as other class specific information.

Right, that's exactly what I was saying earlier, a few skills referenced from tables or descriptions. It's Joe Dever's Lone Wolf, the gamebook/RPG, circa 1984. They've stripped down the skills, options and equipment to the bare minimum and put them on a character sheet.

And why not, it seems to work and I love gamebooks, but the tradeoffs are there alright, plain as day, mostly gaining granularity by losing variety.

I like how it lets you carry semi related bonuses forward, as with Discern Reality, but is it revolutionary? Not really, no. Definetely the best attempt I've seen yet to bring gamebook style play to an open ended tabletop environment though, it could really work well.

Quote from: The Traveller;641760And why not, it seems to work and I love gamebooks, but the tradeoffs are there alright, plain as day, mostly gaining granularity by losing variety.

The number of people on this forum willing to regularly post, "I'm completely ignorant, so lemme tell you what I think." is amazing to me.

Quote from: Justin Alexander;641802I'm completely ignorant, so lemme tell you what I think.

Thanks, but maybe next time.

Well the whole concept of moves strikes me as Forgist, in the sense that it basically codifies into rules basic decisions and actions that should really be open-ended and up to the participants of the game (you know, what makes an actual role playing game what it is: the open-endedness of it all). It creates limits, instead of creating a normal collaboration and dialog between the players and GM. And if the creation of a specific rule for each "move" is not a self-imposed limit and hair-splitting of putting basic actions into their own little rules boxes with specific effects and the like, then what the fuck is the point? Why make every action or decision or event a game unit, instead of just, you know, cut the middle man and get directly into the situation and describe what you do organically, without the need for rules clutches to tell you what to do or how to run the game?

It all sounds rather pointless and "edgy" for the sake of it from a (Forgist) theorist's standpoint, IMO.

There is a saying, "Restrictions Breed Creativity". I believe that the goal is to provide just enough restrictions to cause this.

The intent of my Move: "Fuck This Shit!" was to show how a frequent occurrence could be codified to establish game world expectations. (Maybe some sort of "Rebel".) This would most likely be used to quantify a specific character and not be a "Basic Move".

A framework of expectations help a game to flow smoothly.
=

Quote from: The Traveller;641329That's just offloading the mechanics onto the GM though, in a freeform way. If I have this right, in a standard game the player decides to bug out, then make a kick down doors roll.

In AW, the player decides to bug out, makes a roll to determine how successful that idea was, and it's up to the GM to interpret that roll.

That sounds like combat and 'saves' in OD&D, and how a lot of other things were done as well in the 1970s, in my experience.

Like a lot in FRPing, it's a matter of degrees along a spectrum, and calls for careful playing by ear. Ideological theorizing about when to make assumptions or who should 'narrate' so much tends to overlook the details that matter on the scene.

Quote from: Phillip;641814That sounds like combat and 'saves' in OD&D, and how a lot of other things were done as well in the 1970s, in my experience.

Agreed, it's definetely old school, antediluvian old school, but in terms of encouraging roleplaying? Depends on the group I'd say.

I can't make heads or tails of this shit.

First I have a question about this combat thing. So Drohelm? hit a dude and took damage because he wasn't quite good enough. So far I'm fine with that (staged successes and all that.  I seem to recall something similar happening to me in Soveriegn Stone in the Pre-3E days), so really my question is how does that work when turned around? Do the NPC's make attack rolls (or whatever... I'm going in order here to clarify my understanding so don't go all semantic on me yet) and suffer damage too from inadequat success? Or is it one of those games where its pretty much Passive NPCs who never/rarely roll against the players type of deal (That is the onus on actions/dicing is on players, and their relative successes and failures determines the NPC actions?)


Second:  Pulling back the focus from 'tactical' actions (I kick down the door!) to 'Strategic' actions (I enter the room boldly?) seems like a poorly thought idea wrapped in a marketing gimmick to me. Maybe I'm taking offense to the words chosen?  Maybe I'm not picking up what you guys are putting down, so I'm reluctant to wade into a discussion/debate/arguement on this topic since I'm not at all clear what's actually going on.

Third: Re: Fuck this shit.

One of three things is true. Maybe more than one, but lets start there.

Fuck this Shit is, in fact, an action in the game and is so written in the book.
Fuck this Shit is an example used by Justin to explain stuff without needing to reference and/or argue actual mechanics to make a point. A glib, useful, example
Fuck this Shit is, like most/all actions in the game defined and named by the player (a la fudge?) by some arcane mechanics. THat is Drohelm, when making his character invested creation resources (levels, points, poker chips... whatever) into a skill he called Fuck This Shit, and mechanically added abilities to it that made it explicitely useful for bugging out.

One is cute but probably obnoxious in the long run (see also: HoL)
Two is useful for people familiar with the game, but as discussion has grown it is making it hard for guys like me to actually grasp what the fuck you all are talking about
Three is.... well, I think it sounds (in this thread) like a terrible mix of 4E's powers and Fudge(?) player defined free-form nonsense.






I will admit to not really knowing Fudge or any of its spinoffs. I have been recently invited by a non gamer to run the Dresden Files, which I have since learned is a Fate game, which I BELIEVE makes it a Fudge clone... and why I didn't buy the book when I saw it recently. I haven't made up my mind about the game (seeing as person in question is highly flakey and hasn't brought it up again, I'm not feeling any pressure...).

I've played a couple games of Dungeonworld and I quite like it.

It's very much a Storygame as I understand them. It gives a lot of the control of the narrative to the players, the GM has their own specific set of moves etc. I think it's confusing people because it's a Storygame set in a dungeon crawl setting. That and it calls it's action resolutions "Moves", which is a name that belies the very broad scope of action and resolution that the Moves cover.

For example, there is a standard move "Defy Danger", in which you as a player can use any idea you've ever thought of to defy danger. For example: A goblin archer fires an arrow at you. Do you knock the arrow away with your shield? Dodge behind a wall? Pray the arrow misses? Do you charge the archer, confident in their lack of marksmanship? All these are valid Defy Danger actions. On a high roll, you get exactly what you want, maybe more. On a middling roll, you get what you want, but it gets more complicated. On a low roll, you fail.

That said, I think it's awesome. Playing the game felt very reminiscent of my first games of AD&D, where it seemed like anything was possible and I was willing to try anything as a character. I'm not much of a storygame guy, but I had a great time playing this one.

In traditional rpgs pc actions and therefore adventures ought to be spontaneous.
Dungeon world is definitely not a traditional rpg as it forces a certain kind of pc actions. Actions based on the outcomes of the cliche adventures and actions of the d&d genre.

I would not call its rules a story game. I would rather call it a d&d game emulator, which is something totally different than playing traditional d&d itself.

Quote from: Drohem;641754Here is the the Dungeon World Character Sheets PDF

That looks informative. Thanks!

Quote from: Benoist;641808Well the whole concept of moves strikes me as Forgist, in the sense that it basically codifies into rules basic decisions and actions that should really be open-ended and up to the participants of the game . . . It creates limits, instead of creating a normal collaboration and dialog between the players and GM.

If you choose to treat things so rigidly, you can do it in D&D as well! How about those OFFICIAL AD&D rolls for boxing and wrestling moves, for example?

It's really up to you, though, isn't it?

I suspect the main problem here is that the mode of presentation is not a copy of old familiar D&D-ese.

If the DW folks tell you that you MUST scrupulously go precisely by the book, or else you're playing something other than DW, then let them take such blame as may be due.

Otherwise, I think the RPG convention that all 'rules' are mere suggestions should go without saying.

Quote from: PhillipI suspect the main problem here is that the mode of presentation is not a copy of old familiar D&D-ese.

Bingo!

Quote from: Phillip;641822If you choose to treat things so rigidly, you can do it in D&D as well! How about those OFFICIAL AD&D rolls for boxing and wrestling moves, for example?

You're projecting that rigidity yourself. Besides, that misconstruction sounds eerily familiar, in the same way "dissociated mechanics" triggered outcries of "but all rules are abstract!" in previous conversations.

Comprenne qui pourra.

Quote from: Spike;641817I can't make heads or tails of this shit.

First I have a question about this combat thing. So Drohelm? hit a dude and took damage because he wasn't quite good enough. So far I'm fine with that (staged successes and all that.  I seem to recall something similar happening to me in Soveriegn Stone in the Pre-3E days), so really my question is how does that work when turned around? Do the NPC's make attack rolls (or whatever... I'm going in order here to clarify my understanding so don't go all semantic on me yet) and suffer damage too from inadequat success? Or is it one of those games where its pretty much Passive NPCs who never/rarely roll against the players type of deal (That is the onus on actions/dicing is on players, and their relative successes and failures determines the NPC actions?)


Second:  Pulling back the focus from 'tactical' actions (I kick down the door!) to 'Strategic' actions (I enter the room boldly?) seems like a poorly thought idea wrapped in a marketing gimmick to me. Maybe I'm taking offense to the words chosen?  Maybe I'm not picking up what you guys are putting down, so I'm reluctant to wade into a discussion/debate/arguement on this topic since I'm not at all clear what's actually going on.

Third: Re: Fuck this shit.

One of three things is true. Maybe more than one, but lets start there.

Fuck this Shit is, in fact, an action in the game and is so written in the book.
Fuck this Shit is an example used by Justin to explain stuff without needing to reference and/or argue actual mechanics to make a point. A glib, useful, example
Fuck this Shit is, like most/all actions in the game defined and named by the player (a la fudge?) by some arcane mechanics. THat is Drohelm, when making his character invested creation resources (levels, points, poker chips... whatever) into a skill he called Fuck This Shit, and mechanically added abilities to it that made it explicitely useful for bugging out.

One is cute but probably obnoxious in the long run (see also: HoL)
Two is useful for people familiar with the game, but as discussion has grown it is making it hard for guys like me to actually grasp what the fuck you all are talking about
Three is.... well, I think it sounds (in this thread) like a terrible mix of 4E's powers and Fudge(?) player defined free-form nonsense.

I will attempt answer these based on my personal belief.
1) Do the NPC's make attack rolls (or whatever...
In DW there are Fronts. These are GM defined and drive the NPCs/world. These fronts are things the occur to further the goals of NPC factions. They are intended to be something that the players would not want to be successful. Therefore the NPCs will attack the player characters if they stand in the way of the NPCs goals. Most Adventure Fronts will contain immediate dangers to the PCs so to answer the question, NO. It is assumed that unless the PCs actively resist, the NPCs are successful.
Does that mean the NPCs will harm or kill the PCs of they don't resist? YES.
"The thug has drawn his sword and is moving closer to stab you. What do you do?"

2) ??

3) The example "Fuck this Shit" was given as a triggered event that is expected to have a few predefined results.
In normal play the character either automatically succeeds or if someone/thing was attempting to stop them then, declare how they were avoiding and roll Defy Danger. On 7 or higher they succeed but with a cost. On 10+ they just straight up succeed.

If for some reason a GM actually created a Move "Fuck this Shit", then this would be done to provide consistent characterization (or easy reminding for a GM if a World Move).
=

Quote from: Spike;641817Maybe I'm not picking up what you guys are putting down, so I'm reluctant to wade into a discussion/debate/arguement on this topic since I'm not at all clear what's actually going on.

The way this game works, the GM never rolls dice, and the players never call out a Move. If a player describes a simple attack against an armed enemy, the GM calls for a Move called "Hack and Slash". If the player rolls a high success, he deals his damage, or his damage +1d6 and his enemy also deals damage. If he rolls a median success, he deals his damage and the enemy deals theirs. However if this isn't an armed or capable enemy, or they could not reasonably defend themselves, they are simply slain and no hack and slash move is rolled.

The Move Fuck This Shit was a made up, which the game encourages GMs to do to sort out the key points of their adventures and flavor their games. Each move is like a tiny 3 result table that the GM can call for when he thinks it has been triggered. Otherwise the players and GM just describe everything their characters do without mechanics.

I've sometimes used (but not written up formally) the approach that there's an expected outcome, a better than average (for the players) outcome, and one worse (or simply more complicated) than average. This looks like some examples of that sort of assessment.

Quote from: KrakaJak;641838The way this game works, the GM never rolls dice, and the players never call out a Move. If a player describes a simple attack against an armed enemy, the GM calls for a Move called "Hack and Slash". If the player rolls a high success, he deals his damage, or his damage +1d6 and his enemy also deals damage. If he rolls a median success, he deals his damage and the enemy deals theirs. However if this isn't an armed or capable enemy, or they could not reasonably defend themselves, they are simply slain and no hack and slash move is rolled.

Nothing against Greentounge, but this was a lot more informative than his attempt (too much jargon!).

By itself that's fine. I've seen this sort of thing before, and I'm not entirely against it, though I do find that the more rigid interpretations (this appears to be a case...) do trigger a sort of WTF preemption.  I'm absolutely certain there are cases where NPCs should be 'acting' without 'Interacting', but I can't think of anything off the top of my head.  Certainly I like how reducing rolls can speed up game play and it make's the Drohelm example from early in the thread a little more relatable. It wasn't merely that he attacked and took damage, but that the resolution of the fight for that round was... balanced I guess you could say. Got it.

QuoteThe Move Fuck This Shit was a made up, which the game encourages GMs to do to sort out the key points of their adventures and flavor their games. Each move is like a tiny 3 result table that the GM can call for when he thinks it has been triggered. Otherwise the players and GM just describe everything their characters do without mechanics.

Yeah, see: I find this ridiculous nonsense on the face of it. Without actually reading the rules I'm reluctant to break out a point by point list of what I personally find wrong with it.  I'll more or less leave it at 'laziness masquerading as inventiveness'... much like the Skill List in Unknown Armies.

likewise: for a game that seems to be simplifying the play (single unopposed rolls that govern both sides of an opposed action), this does seem like needless 4E style power card complexity for its own sake.


I'm actually somewhat disappointed. While I was obviously questioning the game based on the AW sexual nonsense from a previous thread, I had thought that the game itself, as expressed in hacks like DW, might actually be appealing to me. I appear to have been mistaken.

Quote from: KrakaJak;641819It's very much a Storygame as I understand them. It gives a lot of the control of the narrative to the players, the GM has their own specific set of moves etc. I think it's confusing people because it's a Storygame set in a dungeon crawl setting. That and it calls it's action resolutions "Moves", which is a name that belies the very broad scope of action and resolution that the Moves cover.

Two of the key defining elements of a shared narrative game are the removal of surprise/randomness and a distance being put between players and characters, typically in the form of arbitrary NPC control or other control of the world/focus on narration. Moving away from the first person perspective in other words.

I haven't seen any of that in the mechanics so far - instead what you have are multiple choice skill results using dice with a slightly weird set of tradeoffs. In short a 1980s-era gamebook transformed into an RPG. There doesn't seem at first blush to be much that interferes with immersion, although again I haven't read the rules.

Do the rules speak about narration or story, stepping out of the first person at all?

Quote from: The Traveller;641891Do the rules speak about narration or story, stepping out of the first person at all?

No stepping out of the first person at all.

Quote from: Imperator;641900No stepping out of the first person at all.

Well that's the main box checked, is there anything to say stop the GM from having the Cardinal put out a hit on the group because they ran over his pet cat with a wagon while making their getaway from a haggling session gone terribly wrong, without them knowing it? Other than interpreting the results of moves, are there any restrictions on the GM basically?

Quote from: The Traveller;641923Well that's the main box checked, is there anything to say stop the GM from having the Cardinal put out a hit on the group because they ran over his pet cat with a wagon while making their getaway from a haggling session gone terribly wrong, without them knowing it? Other than interpreting the results of moves, are there any restrictions on the GM basically?

No, not at all.

If the PCs ran over the pet cat of the Cardinal and the Cardinal decides that they are to be killed, then the PCs will meet some nasty assassins and they will have to fight them using the normal rules. No restriction whatsoever.

Quote from: Imperator;641997If the PCs ran over the pet cat of the Cardinal and the Cardinal decides that they are to be killed, then the PCs will meet some nasty assassins and they will have to fight them using the normal rules. No restriction whatsoever.

Then there's nothing shared-narrativey I can see about this game. It's a different style of game, one I haven't seen before except in gamebooks, for example as krakajak says moves have a very broad scope of action and resolution, they need to because there aren't many of them, and you can't have many of them because you'd have to spend half the game referencing desciptions (the tradeoff), but he is mistaking the normal player driven sequence of a roleplaying game for narrative control - these have two completely different meanings.

Fair enough, nobody really likes Baker, I don't know if he's making a red cent from this endeavour, but the crew behind this have put out what appears to be a decent product. Unless there's something else in the bushes of course.

Quote from: The Traveller;642016Then there's nothing shared-narrativey I can see about this game. It's a different style of game, one I haven't seen before except in gamebooks, for example as krakajak says moves have a very broad scope of action and resolution, they need to because there aren't many of them, and you can't have many of them because you'd have to spend half the game referencing desciptions (the tradeoff), but he is mistaking the normal player driven sequence of a roleplaying game for narrative control - these have two completely different meanings.

Fair enough, nobody really likes Baker, I don't know if he's making a red cent from this endeavour, but the crew behind this have put out what appears to be a decent product. Unless there's something else in the bushes of course.

But is it an RPG, or a Storygame?

Quote from: Mistwell;642021But is it an RPG, or a Storygame?

Not to repeat myself but there don't appear to be any of the mechanics that make shared narrative games counterproductive to roleplaying, on the face of it. So yes, an RPG - the players don't have any more narrative control or interest than their characters would have. This is dependent on new information coming to light of course.

Quote from: The Traveller;642016Then there's nothing shared-narrativey I can see about this game.

The player's not narrating anything really, however the player does have some form of narrative control through the choices they make in the "succeed with complications" number range.  As I mentioned before with firing an arrow (the Volley move) a partial success means the player then decides whether he...

1. Actually hit with full damage, but had to fire several arrows to do it, thus reducing ammunition.
2. Actually hit with full damage, but had to reposition himself to do so, meaning the GM gets to put him in danger, possibly in front of charging orcs, or hanging off a balcony or whatever.
3. Score a weak hit that may do no damage whatsoever.

Now whether this is allowing a kind of retroactive world editing control after the die roll, or whether it is a form of mini-conflict resolution really depends on how the GM runs it, but traditional old school task resolution it ain't by any stretch of the imagination.

Best case scenario you get a variable time frame where one action could be one shot or several, could be aiming and firing or could include quite a bit of moving and then firing, depending on the players choice.

A table that is used to RPGs that include more narrative elements probably will be fine with it, others who prefer more traditional games are going to have a problem with dissociation.

Basically, the idea behind the X-world frame is to limit the players and GM to certain moves not in order to give players storytelling power, but to create a focused game that hits all the tropes of the genre.  A properly designed playbook can look to a more traditional RPer like a series of cards you have to play, but a properly designed playbook (which is what the X-world system calls a class, ie. a set of moves) will reinforce the genre and make it "feel" like you are playing a Post-Apocalyptic or Dungeon Crawling game.  In the case of Dungeon World, it's new school design applied to an old school genre.  As Justin said, describing it as old school is incorrect, if not downright unhelpful.

A similar thing existed in WFRP3 where certain classes like the Wardancer, Swordmaster, Trollslayer etc had certain cards they could play and had different tokens you had to manage which seemed very fiddly to read, but damned if a Wardancer didn't play like a Wardancer felt, with constant motion and shifting between offense and defense.  (If they'd laid off the narrative timing and relative distance crap and made use of maps as if it was a world you were adventuring in and not a Broadway Play, the line may have survived :D).

Quote from: CRKrueger;642031As I mentioned before with firing an arrow (the Volley move) a partial success means the player then decides whether he...

1. Actually hit with full damage, but had to fire several arrows to do it, thus reducing ammunition.
2. Actually hit with full damage, but had to reposition himself to do so, meaning the GM gets to put him in danger, possibly in front of charging orcs, or hanging off a balcony or whatever.
3. Score a weak hit that may do no damage whatsoever.

I see what you're saying here, but to be honest that's just an elaboration on the binary one-zero success-fail of normal dice rolls. My own game allows retroactive moves, like Wild Dodge, declared after an attack, giving +4 on that dodge but -6 on all subsequent dodges instead of the standard -2, and my system is far from the only one that uses this method, albeit rarely. You know you're about to get damaged so you throw caution to the wind at the last instant. It's as legitimate as using fate or luck points really.

Further, most of the choices in moves are left up to the GM, or are framed as questions and as such are not disruptive to the raw mechanics. The GM can answer as he or she sees fit.

Quote from: CRKrueger;642031A table that is used to RPGs that include more narrative elements probably will be fine with it, others who prefer more traditional games are going to have a problem with dissociation.

Honestly I don't know why the GM uber alles contingent isn't all over this, the control over the setting combined with limited player moves seems very much up that alley.

Quote from: CRKrueger;642031As Justin said, describing it as old school is incorrect, if not downright unhelpful.

Only if you don't consider gamebooks old school. ;)

Quote from: Silverlion;640710Playing the game felt like a traditional RPG to me, it didn't pop up any "uncomfortable" elements that felt deprotaganizing, or "move your playing piece."

Quote from: Drohem;640723I agree that, for the most part, it played like a regular RPG session.

Quote from: Omnifray;640724I played a DW hack and also found it to be rather trad, as has been discussed elsewhere on these boards quite recently.

Quote from: Haffrung;640741I've read Dungeonworld, and it doesn't seem too far out there. I don't think my traditional-minded players would have a problem with it.

Quote from: mhensley;640758DW felt pretty traditional to me.

Quote from: Imperator;642046Yeah, its just codifying and putting a name to something that many of us have been doing for years, but it is completely trad.

Quote from: CRKrueger;642031A table that is used to RPGs that include more narrative elements probably will be fine with it, others who prefer more traditional games are going to have a problem with dissociation.

It seems like your opinion that those who prefer more traditional games are going to have a problem with it is not well supported by those here who have played the game.

Quote from: The Traveller;642016Then there's nothing shared-narrativey I can see about this game. It's a different style of game, one I haven't seen before except in gamebooks, for example as krakajak says moves have a very broad scope of action and resolution, they need to because there aren't many of them, and you can't have many of them because you'd have to spend half the game referencing desciptions (the tradeoff), but he is mistaking the normal player driven sequence of a roleplaying game for narrative control - these have two completely different meanings.

Fair enough, nobody really likes Baker, I don't know if he's making a red cent from this endeavour, but the crew behind this have put out what appears to be a decent product. Unless there's something else in the bushes of course.

Yeah, its just codifying and putting a name to something that many of us have been doing for years, but it is completely trad.

And it's selling pretty well, AFAIK. He published his data and were good. Not Pathfinder-level good, but definitely a commercial success.

This seems to occupy a fuzzy area. On the one hand, it doesnt strike me as all that storygamie (though I dont think I understamd the mechanics all that well) but definitely different from most rpgs i have played. These mechanic do seem unusual to me, and they look kind of narrow and limiting imo, but its seems like an rpg. I think we are at a point where narrowing what an rpg is more and more, is just getting counter productive. The mechanics are design decisions I would never make. Looks like a game I probably wouldnt enjoy much (though would be happy to try). Is it an rpg? Sure. Just not one I have much interest in based on what I have seen.

Quote from: The Traveller;641805Thanks, but maybe next time.

Ah! Deliberately deceptive quotation! The last bastion of the moronic troll. Thanks for providing further confirmation of the fact that we should be ignoring your banal stupidity in this thread.

Quote from: Mistwell;642021But is it an RPG, or a Storygame?

AW has no narrative control mechanics. (Not sure about DW, but my skim-thru didn't find anything.) So, it's an RPG not an STG (http://thealexandrian.net/wordpress/6517/roleplaying-games/roleplaying-games-vs-storytelling-games).

Quote from: Spike;641850Yeah, see: I find this ridiculous nonsense on the face of it.

Really? Which part, exactly? The part where actions like "I walk across the street" can be taken without rolling dice? Or the part where the GM can make a ruling for actions taken outside the existing rules?

Quote from: Spike;641817First I have a question about this combat thing. So Drohelm? hit a dude and took damage because he wasn't quite good enough. So far I'm fine with that (staged successes and all that.  I seem to recall something similar happening to me in Soveriegn Stone in the Pre-3E days), so really my question is how does that work when turned around? Do the NPC's make attack rolls (or whatever... I'm going in order here to clarify my understanding so don't go all semantic on me yet) and suffer damage too from inadequat success?

It's a couple of things.

First, the strategic-based mechanical decisions of the PCs lend themselves well to a player-faced mechanic and that is, in fact, the mechanic that's used. (You're not deciding to tactically "hit the goblin with your sword"; you're strategically deciding to fight the goblin in order to achieve some specific end. So the mechanical resolution isn't discrete, it's judgmental on your entire strategic approach. You're not resolving sword blows; you're resolving entire encounters or large chunks of encounters.)

But, it would be a mistake to characterize this as "passive NPCs" who just wait for the PCs to do stuff. Virtually everything the GM is supposed to be doing in AW is about having NPCs actively challenge the PCs. And the GM is mechanically empowered to take action in many different ways.

Quote from: Justin Alexander;642058Ah! Deliberately deceptive quotation! The last bastion of the moronic troll. Thanks for providing further confirmation of the fact that we should be ignoring your banal stupidity in this thread.

Hmm. And yet I can count on the fingers of one foot the number of forums I've been banned from. Something to think about while your house fills up with dozens of gamers, perhaps.

Quote from: The Traveller;642063Hmm. And yet I can count on the fingers of one foot the number of forums I've been banned from. Something to think about while your house fills up with dozens of gamers, perhaps.

You were being deliberately dishonest with your "out of context" post. Just because you claim popularity (dubious of course) does not mean you are not a dishonest poster.

Quote from: Justin Alexander;641802The number of people on this forum willing to regularly post, "I'm completely ignorant, so lemme tell you what I think." is amazing to me.

Quote from: hamstertamer;642083You were being deliberately dishonest with your "out of context" post. Just because you claim popularity (dubious of course) does not mean you are not a dishonest poster.

It was the only part of the post worth quoting, and by far the most honest in the correct context. Plus, I make no claims towards popularity, merely that I'm not sufficiently maladjusted to have been forced out of the company of my community.

Still, I've no doubt his walls are ringing with the laughter of happy gamers.

Wow, it seems a Second Edition is already in the make!

http://www.dungeon-world.com/dungeon-world-second-edition/ (http://www.dungeon-world.com/dungeon-world-second-edition/)

Quote from: silva;642105Wow, it seems a Second Edition is already in the make!

http://www.dungeon-world.com/dungeon-world-second-edition/ (http://www.dungeon-world.com/dungeon-world-second-edition/)

LOL that was a good one.

Yeah, that one was a bit funny, :D

Quote from: Mistwell;642045It seems like your opinion that those who prefer more traditional games are going to have a problem with it is not well supported by those here who have played the game.

Eh, Tim, Omnifray and the Mad Spaniard (while I love 'em) aren't exactly on the Capital-T side of Traditional.  Hell "all player rolls" by itself would throw DF and K&K into fits.

The "Succeed with Complications" result adds a level of abstraction to everything where the roll is firing the bow if you roll high enough, but if you don't, your roll really is attempting to set up the shot, and your failure means you have different ways to optionally try and get a better shot.

Simple "physics of the world", simulation, single task-based resolution, whatever you want to call it, those mid-range successes are not it.

Last weekend some guys I play with went and played DW at a meetup, were like 8 of them.  Only a couple liked it, the others said it was ok, but when they got a "half-result" their words, it "felt like rewriting what happened."  So yeah, it's mostly traditional, because it's attempting to enforce traditional tropes, but it uses a new school approach that would probably make Ben's teeth itch.

Quote from: The Traveller;642063Hmm. And yet I can count on the fingers of one foot the number of forums I've been banned from. Something to think about while your house fills up with dozens of gamers, perhaps.

Let's sum up:

(1) Claims of authority from self-proclaimed ignorance.
(2) Deliberate misquotation.
(3) Fallacious ad hominems.

An impressive quantity of intellectual dishonesty, but far too transparent. On a trolling scale of 1 to 10, I give you a score of 2.

Quote from: CRKrueger;642114Last weekend some guys I play with went and played DW at a meetup, were like 8 of them.  Only a couple liked it, the others said it was ok, but when they got a "half-result" their words, it "felt like rewriting what happened."  So yeah, it's mostly traditional, because it's attempting to enforce traditional tropes, but it uses a new school approach that would probably make Ben's teeth itch.

Based on your description, it sounds like an attempt to use the strategic-oriented rules in AW the same way you use the tactic-oriented rules in a traditional RPG resulted in people describing outcome before checking the mechanic.

You see the same thing happen with social skills a lot: People will describe the outcome of the social encounter, then roll the dice, and get jarred by the "rewriting" that happened because they assumed an outcome before checking the outcome.

You would never say, "I hit the orc with my sword, opening a huge gash across his chest and dealing 25 hp of damage! Now, lemme roll my attack roll..." Don't do the equivalent here.

Quote from: CRKrueger;642114Simple "physics of the world", simulation, single task-based resolution, whatever you want to call it, those mid-range successes are not it.

Having watched this exchange for a while I thought I'd pop in to say that I agree with you. Any time a player selects outcomes, he's stepped at least one foot on to Story Game game.

I'd extend it to say that it's made worst in my mind by never having the NPCs roll as that feature creates a mindset where the PC is a special snowflake compared to the rest of the world. That isn't Story Game so much as just a bad idea.

That it's gained as much traction as it has here just indicates to me how far the Story Game mindset has come over the years, starting small with HERO/FATE points and growing from there. Given that game design has done away with real attempts at simulation, and has done just about all the LITE rules there are to do, it's really the only direction left for it go.

Dungeonworld is basically an old school game with training wheels for the
DM in place. Its not a storygame as some claim (though there are a few mis-steps in that direction, well, no moreso than any classic TSr edition of D&D).

The reason its not considered an RPG on these forums appear to be political in large part. Shame because there's some clever things DW does that could very easily be ported to old school D&D.

I find offense that I'm not captial T traditional! (No, not really.)

The fact is I've played D&D since 1981, I've played Gurps, MSH, COC/BRP, Mythus, FGU games, TSR Games, Chaosium games, White Wolf Games, and many many many more.

That doesn't mean I don't think things can be done better/more streamlined/more obvious at times, but it doesn't make me "Indy" either.

I may lean a bit off traditional but I wouldn't say I'm jumping the tracks here. I've tried many Story Games and rejected nearly all of them, I've tried many Traditional games, and rejected many of them too.  

For the record High Valor, Hearts & Souls, and other games of mine tend to be player rolls for everything--and it wasn't even a new idea/new use for gaming even then. Buffy: The Vampire Slayer did it years before and that is off the top of my head.

Quote from: Silverlion;642157...but it doesn't make me "Indy" either.

I may lean a bit off traditional but I wouldn't say I'm jumping the tracks here. I've tried many Story Games and rejected nearly all of them, I've tried many Traditional games, and rejected many of them too.  

So you're saying you're Bi?

Quote from: Justin Alexander;642146Let's sum up:

(1) Claims of authority from self-proclaimed ignorance.
(2) Deliberate misquotation.
(3) Fallacious ad hominems.

An impressive quantity of intellectual dishonesty, but far too transparent. On a trolling scale of 1 to 10, I give you a score of 2.

Do you actually read any of the comments you're responding to or is this all just a parade of pretty lights and colours, a few trigger words and off you fly. You know what, it's not worth the effort dealing with this level of stupid, although as I'm on the subject you might consider renaming the blog to 'the pedestrian' to better reflect its content.

Quote from: CRKrueger;642114Eh, Tim, Omnifray and the Mad Spaniard (while I love 'em) aren't exactly on the Capital-T side of Traditional.  Hell "all player rolls" by itself would throw DF and K&K into fits.

Well, it is certainly not the most common but I recall some games using a "GM doesn't roll" model well before any story-game was born.

I think that "traditional" is a very wide umbrella. :)

QuoteSimple "physics of the world", simulation, single task-based resolution, whatever you want to call it, those mid-range successes are not it.

Yeah, but I do not think they are such a great deviation as to drag you out of immersion or stop the game from feeling like any other RPG. YMMV, of course.

Quote from: CRKrueger;642114The "Succeed with Complications" result adds a level of abstraction to everything where the roll is firing the bow if you roll high enough, but if you don't, your roll really is attempting to set up the shot, and your failure means you have different ways to optionally try and get a better shot.

Simple "physics of the world", simulation, single task-based resolution, whatever you want to call it, those mid-range successes are not it.

Quote from: Imperator;642183Yeah, but I do not think they are such a great deviation as to drag you out of immersion or stop the game from feeling like any other RPG. YMMV, of course.

Honestly, it seems as if any problems with the mid-success mechanic could be fixed by a "GM chooses" rule. That way, it's not the player retroactively editing what they did, but the GM telling them "in order to hit, you had to expose yourself."

Even the most hard-core Trads should be down with that kind of mechanic.

(Now, this may actually wreck the gameplay of AW/DW. But it does seem to answer the objection.)

Quote from: Daddy Warpig;642191Even the most hard-core Trads should be down with that kind of mechanic.

I wouldn't be. In my case I'm of the opinion that choice (beyond the decision to make the attempt in the first place) has no part in resolution be given to the player or the GM.

We played it once, and I wouldn't do so again. There's no initiative system, so everything comes down to whatever a-hole decides to shout the loudest.

I also didn't like the limitations on players picking the same class in a group (everyone has to pick a different class), the asinine practice of picking a character's name from a provided list, or the relative high starting power level of characters.

It just seems like an awful lot of effort to try to get a certain amount of rules to run a certain way. I can make a block engine Chevy power my refrigerator, , but that doesn't mean it's useful or desired in any sense.

Dungeon World is a poor, badly flawed game that does nothing that other games don't do better for me. I don't care what label or politics you wish to ascribe to it, but it just isn't a very good game.

Quote from: Zachary The First;642199We played it once, and I wouldn't do so again. There's no initiative system, so everything comes down to whatever a-hole decides to shout the loudest.

Last I checked there was a GM to "direct traffic/fiction".

QuoteI also didn't like the limitations on players picking the same class in a group (everyone has to pick a different class), the asinine practice of picking a character's name from a provided list, or the relative high starting power level of characters.

Valid points.
While not something written in stone, it is something to encourage unique characters and ease new players into gaming.

QuoteDungeon World is a poor, badly flawed game that does nothing that other games don't do better for me. I don't care what label or politics you wish to ascribe to it, but it just isn't a very good game.

This reminds me of the ending of ALIEN ART (http://www.fantasticfiction.co.uk/d/gordon-r-dickson/alien-art.htm).
While you are entitled to your opinion, you offered a blanket statement instead. Sad because it stains your previous points.
=

Quote from: Zachary The First;642199Dungeon World is a poor, badly flawed game that does nothing that other games don't do better for me. I don't care what label or politics you wish to ascribe to it, but it just isn't a very good game.

I sense that you are holding back, let go your true feelings! :)

I don't think I've heard you slam a game so hard, it must be a real dog. Interesting that it's getting such a positive spin from some. We may be seeing a bit of a sea change in the hobby.

You'd likely disagree with me, but perhaps this is due to people get bored with the OSR which is about the age to be yesterday's news. That it would open doors for games like AW wouldn't surprise me, many of the OSR concepts would taken a bit farther carry one there.

Quote from: CRKrueger;642114Simple "physics of the world", simulation, single task-based resolution, whatever you want to call it, those mid-range successes are not it.

Quote from: Imperator;642183Yeah, but I do not think they are such a great deviation as to drag you out of immersion or stop the game from feeling like any other RPG. YMMV, of course.

I agree with Ramon; I didn't find the process egregious enough to break my bond with my character or the flow of the in-game action.

Good post, Zach! :)

Quote from: Zachary The First;642199We played it once, and I wouldn't do so again. There's no initiative system, so everything comes down to whatever a-hole decides to shout the loudest.

This is one of my points of concern with the game because this is a significant deviation from most games that I play.  Luckily, there are only four of us (including the GM) that play in this game and we've all been playing together for a while now so the 'loudest A-hole' was not really a factor for us.  

In fact, it was sort of the opposite for us because we play online via Skype and there is an inherent courtesy when playing online not to shout over someone else talking and to wait to speak so as not to drown out another person's voice.  However, our GM correctly identified the situation and drew us into the combat and action with direct questions.

However, if one were playing with strangers or new players then I could easily see how the loudest person in the group could dominate or control the action and flow of the game.

Quote from: Drohem;642235However, if one were playing with strangers or new players then I could easily see how the loudest person in the group could dominate or control the action and flow of the game.

Like many systems in many games, it really comes down to two things, yes? (1) The GM should handle traffic control, making sure no one is neglected and no one dominates; (2) the players should not be dicks.

Quote from: Zachary The First;642199We played it once, and I wouldn't do so again. There's no initiative system, so everything comes down to whatever a-hole decides to shout the loudest.

I also didn't like the limitations on players picking the same class in a group (everyone has to pick a different class), the asinine practice of picking a character's name from a provided list, or the relative high starting power level of characters.

I don't think "shout the loudest' is an issue with my local groups, because generally I let someone go and then circle the table most of the time--using either group initiative, or their planning, to decide who goes when.

I am also fond of the picking different classes because it does a good job of keeping each character unique before personality is added, plus a little more of that works great for some groups--especially since my local group that players Pathfinder tend to pick classes that differ from everyone else if they can. (I think of it like much of the other stuff as a very "Basic" way of doing things, and that Advanced Dungeon World, would be full of add in material, and ways to tweak classes/moves to customize further.)


As for names, well, I didn't use a name they gave me--it was very optional way to speed play. Along with the description elements outside of moves.

Quote from: gleichman;642198I wouldn't be. In my case I'm of the opinion that choice (beyond the decision to make the attempt in the first place) has no part in resolution be given to the player or the GM.

WTF does that even mean?

Quote from: Technomancer;642259WTF does that even mean?

What is said. A mechanical game resolution should tell me what the result is, not turn around an ask me what the result was.

Now I don't think that always has to be the case. Fluff descriptions that don't mean anything mechanically but expain what happened are always good. And extreme fumbles are fair game for some consideration and decision on the part of the GM.

But as the common case for normal success, partial success, or failure? No thanks. The system should provide all the answers because that's it's job and we don't get to decide such matters (i.e. I don't decide to between tripping or dropping my weapon in combat for example, I'm working to make sure neither happens).

By the way, just opened another thread inspired by this one:

http://www.therpgsite.com/showthread.php?t=26164

Im wondering how easy it would be to use Dungeon World with D&D modules and adventures ( like Keep on Borderlands, for example). What do you guys think ?

Quote from: silva;643595Im wondering how easy it would be to use Dungeon World with D&D modules and adventures ( like Keep on Borderlands, for example). What do you guys think ?

I see it perfectly feasible and very interesting.

Quote from: gleichman;642275What is said. A mechanical game resolution should tell me what the result is, not turn around an ask me what the result was.

Now I don't think that always has to be the case. Fluff descriptions that don't mean anything mechanically but expain what happened are always good. And extreme fumbles are fair game for some consideration and decision on the part of the GM.

But as the common case for normal success, partial success, or failure? No thanks. The system should provide all the answers because that's it's job and we don't get to decide such matters (i.e. I don't decide to between tripping or dropping my weapon in combat for example, I'm working to make sure neither happens).

How about thinking of it as a frozen moment in time? Let's say you are guarding an entrance against an orc in order to protect the children in the room. On a full success, you hit the orc, hold it off, and take no damage. On a partial, you choose one of the three. On a failure the orc gets by you, you do no damage, and get hit.

Roll 10+: full success.
Roll 6-: failure.

Roll 1-9: frozen moment. If you've done sports, or driven a car, you've had these moments. Whatever it was you were trying to do has just gone pearshaped, and you have a bad choice ahead. Hit the dog, or the parked car. Let the forward through on goal, or foul. That kind of thing. So the narration would be "you try to block off and attack the orc, but it has ducked under your blow and and drawn even with you. If you jump into the room, it won't be able to hit you, but you won't be able to hit it, and next round it will attack the children. If you step forward and slash backwards you will be able to hit it, but it also has a free shot at your ribs and will be able to attach the children next round (unless you kill it, but you would still take damage). If you throw your shoulder into it, you'll be able to stop it from getting into the room, but it has a free shot at your belly. Which do you choose to do? Option one, selfish choice, no risk to the PC, fail the mission. Option two, gambler's choice, risk to the PC, may fail the mission. Option 3, altruist's (hero's) choice, risk to the PC, succeed at the mission.

Player makes the choice, the round continues and is resolved.

Now personally, the thing I don't like is get all three, get one, or none, since sometimes there may only be one sensible outcome, and others there may be a dozen, but that's an implementation rather than conceptualization question.

Addendum: personally I would allow the player to pick more than 1 for partial success, at some cost. For example:

Do damage and avoid damage: I jump back and throw my axe at the orc, but the orc is in the room and can attack the children (if it survives the axe) AND you are disarmed next round;

Do damage and block the orc: I throw my dagger to pin the orc to the door, but the orc attacks you AND you are disarmed next round,

avoid damage and block the orc: I dive under the orc's weapon and tackle it to the floor, but you do no damage AND you are prone, carrying a penalty forward into the next round ("tripped").

Do all three, but after jamming your sword into the orc and tackling it to the ground, you are unarmed AND prone in the next round.

Quote from: Daddy Warpig;642191Honestly, it seems as if any problems with the mid-success mechanic could be fixed by a "GM chooses" rule. That way, it's not the player retroactively editing what they did, but the GM telling them "in order to hit, you had to expose yourself."

Even the most hard-core Trads should be down with that kind of mechanic.

That's how it looks to me, too.

EDIT: "Retroactive editing" may or may not be at issue, methinks. "This is what I'm trying to do" is different from "this is what happens" (which may not yet have been detailed).

As I said earlier, this is pretty familiar stuff from the days when D&D, T&T, En Garde, Traveller, etc., had abstractions that left a fruitful void for the participants to fill in with descriptions of what it meant, what exactly happened.

Quote(Now, this may actually wreck the gameplay of AW/DW. But it does seem to answer the objection.)

It might not wreck the game, but it would seem to discard one of the reasons people who are enthusiastic about it are likely to be so.

Although I'm not likely to do more than peruse free stuff such as that character-sheet/moves-rundown packet, I might someday use a technique borrowed (consciously or not) from DW if it happens to fit the situation.

Different people -- sometimes the same people at different times -- have different preferences as to "where the game is": what decisions they want to focus on or gloss over, what things to roll for, what to work out in detail with calculations and tables, what to improvise.

Ok, this thread has now become about discussing DW and its mechanics, so its being moved to Other Games.

RPGPundit

So, resurrecting this monster to continue the discussion on the other thread (http://www.therpgsite.com/showthread.php?p=661631#post661631)..

Quote from: CKruegerThe problem Silva is that you're wanting to "agree to disagree" about the definition of key terms like sandbox, IC, OOC, narrative control, etc.

You, self-admittedly, possess little to no experience with old school RPGs, and yet you seem unable to understand for example why AW, due to it's very design does not support sandbox gaming, in fact cannot support sandbox gaming.

You post thread after thread saying "Hey guys, here's this new school game that's exactly like old school games (even though it was specifically designed not to be.)"

If you actually are incapable of telling the difference between...
1. Having your character build a castle from the ground up, paying for the whole thing, and taking months if not years of campaign time to do it.
And
2. Between character sessions (actual time not being important because there is no time if nothing dramatic is happening) I choose to *poof* create a new hold I now run.
...then I just don't know what to say. It just comes down to what goes on in my head when I roleplay in-character is not what goes on in your head when you "roleplay in-character". As I've said before different mental processes leading to a fundamental definitional difference.

Krueger, before we start discussing this, I think its important to ask:

What is sandbox gaming for you?

For me, its a gaming mode characterized by player-agency and by a GM that reacts and adapts to the players input, the more plausibly and consistently as possible. In other words, sandbox is what the GTA videogames do - to offer an open and vast "playground" for the players to run around and interact as they please. No central plot/story exists, except those the players elect for themselves or suggest for the GM to create.

This is the essence of sandbox to me. The methods or tools by which this gaming state is reached will vary - some will use tables and charts, others will use improv skills, others only shared imagined spaces, and others even videogames, etc. but the essence is there regardless of the tools.

Do you agree with my assessment about what constitutes "sandbox" here ?

Quote from: silva;661634For me, its a gaming mode characterized by player-agency and by a GM that reacts and adapts to the players input, the more plausibly and consistently as possible.

Sorry to interrupt. But, a question: I'm not that knowledgeable about Forge theory; what is player agency? Is there a popularly-agreed upon definition, or is its definition a point of contention?

Quote from: silva;661634For me, its...
No central plot/story exists, except those the players elect for themselves or suggest for the GM to create.

I guess for myself I see sandbox as a fully formed world that isn't going to wait for the PC's in order for things to happen. The PC's can work on plans of their own, but the world has a billion different plots/hooks/stories, most of which the players will never see due to them not paying attention to what/who is around them, or them being wrapped up in other things. The old D20 Star Wars ads indicating a single stormtrooper in a formation and asking "What's His Story? (It was something like that, I can't remember for sure)

Not sure if that makes sense or not, it's what showed up in my brain.

Quote from: silva;661634So, resurrecting this monster to continue the discussion on the other thread (http://www.therpgsite.com/showthread.php?p=661631#post661631)..



Krueger, before we start discussing this, I think its important to ask:

What is sandbox gaming for you?

For me, its a gaming mode characterized by player-agency and by a GM that reacts and adapts to the players input, the more plausibly and consistently as possible. In other words, sandbox is what the GTA videogames do - to offer an open and vast "playground" for the players to run around and interact as they please. No central plot/story exists, except those the players elect for themselves or suggest for the GM to create.

This is the essence of sandbox to me. The methods or tools by which this gaming state is reached will vary - some will use tables and charts, others will use improv skills, others only shared imagined spaces, and others even videogames, etc. but the essence is there regardless of the tools.

Do you agree with my assessment about what constitutes "sandbox" here ?

Re. bold: try changing those to character rather than 'player'. Now mull that over a little while. Not what you, Silva want, but what the character you are portraying wants. Not the plot you select, elect, or suggest, but what the effects of the character acting in his/her interests as she/he sees them (filtered through you, obviously) turn out to be in the setting.

Character-agency, not player-agency.

Quote from: apparition13;661650Re. bold: try changing those to character rather than 'player'. Now mull that over a little while. Not what you, Silva want, but what the character you are portraying wants. Not the plot you select, elect, or suggest, but what the effects of the character acting in his/her interests as she/he sees them (filtered through you, obviously) turn out to be in the setting.

Character-agency, not player-agency.

Actually, given one of the * World principles is "address the characters not the players", that actually makes it closer to the spirit of the games. So good point.

Yup, Ladybird is right. Apocalypse World asks the MC to address the characters all the time. Anyway, I have a question in this regard...

Quote from: Apparition13Re. bold: try changing those to character rather than 'player'. Now mull that over a little while. Not what you, Silva want, but what the character you are portraying wants. Not the plot you select, elect, or suggest, but what the effects of the character acting in his/her interests as she/he sees them (filtered through you, obviously) turn out to be in the setting.

Character-agency, not player-agency.

Is there really a difference between those in practical terms (character-agency vs player-agency), in regard to sandbox gaming ?

The question is honest. I ask it because:

1. the most amazing sandbox experiences I had came from videogames where you control a party of characters instead of a single alter-ego (eg: King of Dragon Pass, Ultima 4, Darklands, etc) and this fact didn’t nullify the sandbox experience at all.

2. I have doubts on the possibility to separate what your character thinks/wants from what you/the player in control of the character thinks/wants. It seems impossible to me In practical terms, but I admit never giving much thought to it.

What do you guys think ?

Quote from: CnathI guess for myself I see sandbox as a fully formed world that isn't going to wait for the PC's in order for things to happen. The PC's can work on plans of their own, but the world has a billion different plots/hooks/stories, most of which the players will never see due to them not paying attention to what/who is around them, or them being wrapped up in other things...

Not sure if that makes sense or not, it's what showed up in my brain.

Makes total sense, Cnath! Yes, I would add it to my definition too. ;)

Quote from: K PetersenSorry to interrupt. But, a question: I'm not that knowledgeable about Forge theory; what is player agency? Is there a popularly-agreed upon definition, or is its definition a point of contention?

Sorry K, I don’t know about Forge theory neither. By "player-agency" I just meant "player-driven gameplay".

Quote from: Ladybird;661722Actually, given one of the * World principles is "address the characters not the players", that actually makes it closer to the spirit of the games. So good point.

I'll give it to the AW/DW authors in that they do stress not announcing GM moves and trying to keep things at the character-level, unfortunately, to them character-level means "appropriate within the fiction", and many of the moves and mechanics concern things related to the character, yet outside the character's direct control.  The narrative meta-layer is assumed and fundamental.

Quote from: CRKrueger;661762I'll give it to the AW/DW authors in that they do stress not announcing GM moves and trying to keep things at the character-level, unfortunately, to them character-level means "appropriate within the fiction", and many of the moves and mechanics concern things related to the character, yet outside the character's direct control. The narrative meta-layer is assumed and fundamental.

Assuming everything you wrote above is true, what does it have to do with sandbox gaming ? :confused:

Quote from: silva;6617582. I have doubts on the possibility to separate what your character thinks/wants from what you/the player in control of the character thinks/wants. It seems impossible to me In practical terms, but I admit never giving much thought to it.

It only happens when a player doesn't choose the option that would be meta-best for the pc, but instead chooses the option that the pc would want, even if that brings no mechanical advantage, or even causes mechanical disadvantages. It could be considered the difference between roll and role-playing to use that old and overused phrase.

For instance, when I'm gaming I the player want the party to be a well oiled machine, watching each others back and working together. That said, I've had characters whose long term goals included killing other party members as revenge for insults... I the player knew that it would be bad to do that, but with things that had occurred, I couldn't deny the pc's desire to get his revenge, even if it would cause huge problems. (sadly I moved away and so never had the chance to finish off the long term plot)

Some times a character is a reflection of it's player, and that's fine. Some people want to take things a step further and create a character with it's own viewpoint/worldview/goals.

The above is of course imho, ymmv. :D

apparition13's point cuts to the chase, doesn't it?

Character-agency at the heart of an open world (generated and kept alive by tables/chance/GM refereeing): traditional rpg sandbox

Player-agency at the heart of an open world: storygame sandbox. Sandbox yes, but a storygamey one. Storygame yes, but indeed a sandbox - of sorts.

So while this discussion is in the right category now, what Silva talks about does look like a sort of sandbox to me - just not a traditional one. I'd be interested how such a world is kept consistent without the traditional 'boundaries' that lend it verisimilitude, though. does it feel real if anything can be changed from outside influence not by characters' actions but by by players' whim? or are players as bound by the sandbox's 'reality' in the storygame sandbox as the GM is in the traditional sandbox?

Is this a new thing with storygames?

Quote from: Riordan;661785apparition13's point cuts to the chase, doesn't it?

Character-agency at the heart of an open world (generated and kept alive by tables/chance/GM refereeing): traditional rpg sandbox

Player-agency at the heart of an open world: storygame sandbox. Sandbox yes, but a storygamey one. Storygame yes, but indeed a sandbox - of sorts.

So while this discussion is in the right category now, what Silva talks about does look like a sort of sandbox to me - just not a traditional one. I'd be interested how such a world is kept consistent without the traditional 'boundaries' that lend it verisimilitude, though. does it feel real if anything can be changed from outside influence not by characters' actions but by by players' whim? or are players as bound by the sandbox's 'reality' in the storygame sandbox as the GM is in the traditional sandbox?

Is this a new thing with storygames?

Sounds reasonable to me, and a useful discussion.

Quote from: silva;661758Yup, Ladybird is right. Apocalypse World asks the MC to address the characters all the time. Anyway, I have a question in this regard...

Is your expected response assumed to be what the character would desire, or what you think would be more fun/dramatic?

QuoteIs there really a difference between those in practical terms (character-agency vs player-agency), in regard to sandbox gaming ?

Yes there is, in practical terms, and in regard to sandbox gaming.

QuoteThe question is honest. I ask it because:

1. the most amazing sandbox experiences I had came from videogames where you control a party of characters instead of a single alter-ego (eg: King of Dragon Pass, Ultima 4, Darklands, etc) and this fact didn't nullify the sandbox experience at all.

I'm having trouble groking this, because part of the sandbox experience is the possibility of unconstrained action. Aren't video games constrained? Can your King of Dragon Pass party decide "screw this, let's move to Pamaltea and open a tavern"?

Quote2. I have doubts on the possibility to separate what your character thinks/wants from what you/the player in control of the character thinks/wants. It seems impossible to me In practical terms, but I admit never giving much thought to it.

The clearest example I can think of actually comes from a Ron Edwards game, Elfs. It is intended to be a comedy game of the slapstick variety. One of the stats is "dumb luck". If you decide to try and succeed at something with dumb luck, you declare two actions*, one that the character wants (hit the orc with my sword) and one the player thinks could be amusing (escape by tripping and tumbling through the door), and roll a dice pool vs. a target number. If you get any successes, the player action succeeds (the elf misses, but the momentum of the swing carries it through the door), if you get all successes, both do (the elf hits, and trips through the door). If you get no successes, both fail. (There doesn't seem to be a "character succeeds but player fails" option.)

In other words, the player is supposed to come up with funny actions, while the character is trying to be a dungeoneering Elf. Sometimes funny and dungeoneering will be the same thing, sometimes they will be in conflict.

If you're making decisions based on what the character would want, that's character driven. If based on what you want, humor, drama, etc., it's player driven. Any given decision can be compatible with both, but sometimes there is conflict between what you want (keep the party together) and what the character wants (split the party to pursue a private vendetta).

*I think this could work for Paranoia as well.

Quote from: Riordan;661785apparition13's point cuts to the chase, doesn't it?

Character-agency at the heart of an open world (generated and kept alive by tables/chance/GM refereeing): traditional rpg sandbox

Player-agency at the heart of an open world: storygame sandbox. Sandbox yes, but a storygamey one. Storygame yes, but indeed a sandbox - of sorts.

I think apparition13 has approached a crucial distinction, but didn't get it quite right.

Sandboxes are based on two principles, one of which is player-driven plot: a form of player agency restricted to what the characters do, not over anything else. It also implies and depends on a GM reacting and adapting to player input via the character's actions. Silva's definition of "sandbox" breaks "player-driven plot" into two components, ditching the restriction to character actions.

In addition, he's missing the other principle of sandbox play: a world divorced from external plot or other meta-level concerns. Nothing in a sandbox exists to fulfill a plot need, or to address a theme. Things exist either because they were defined in advance by the GM, created in the moment by a table, or improvised on the spot to fill an in-world need. Monsters show up in an encounter because they were placed there as guards or they are attracted to noise or the smell of food, not because of dramatic needs or game-balance needs. A magic sword exists in a treasure trove because it was placed their by someone, not because the PC's story includes finding a magic sword, or because the sword is a major macguffin. Events occur because some character, PC or NPC, did them, not to move the story along or because they fit the genre.

The reason why storygames -- pure storygames, at least -- are not sandboxes is because they don't follow the restrictions of the sandbox. Player agency isn't restricted to just what the character can do in the game, and GM additions to the world aren't restricted to in-world needs. If a GM railroad is antithetical to a sandbox, so is a player railroad -- a player changing things in the game world to suit some narrative end.

Quote from: talysman;661797I think apparition13 has approached a crucial distinction, but didn't get it quite right.

I'm not sure about not getting it quite right, but we're in the same ballpark at least. :)

Sandboxes are based on two principles, one of which is player-driven plot: a form of player agency restricted to what the characters do, not over anything else. It also implies and depends on a GM reacting and adapting to player input via the character's actions. Silva's definition of "sandbox" breaks "player-driven plot" into two components, ditching the restriction to character actions.I'll quibble a bit with this. If a player wants to explore some concept in the setting, the way to do that is to create a character with the same interests. But those interests can then diverge, which can bring what the player wants the character to do and what the character would want into conflict again.

QuoteIn addition, he's missing the other principle of sandbox play: a world divorced from external plot or other meta-level concerns. Nothing in a sandbox exists to fulfill a plot need, or to address a theme. Things exist either because they were defined in advance by the GM, created in the moment by a table, or improvised on the spot to fill an in-world need. Monsters show up in an encounter because they were placed there as guards or they are attracted to noise or the smell of food, not because of dramatic needs or game-balance needs. A magic sword exists in a treasure trove because it was placed their by someone, not because the PC's story includes finding a magic sword, or because the sword is a major macguffin. Events occur because some character, PC or NPC, did them, not to move the story along or because they fit the genre.

Well, again a quibble. The GM may create a world in order to explore some concept, for example Pendragon to explore Arthurian play, or Glorantha to explore religion, but once created the world follows it's own internal logic.

PCs acting on genre expectations is a different matter; I'm okay with it, some have problems with it.

QuoteThe reason why storygames -- pure storygames, at least -- are not sandboxes is because they don't follow the restrictions of the sandbox. Player agency isn't restricted to just what the character can do in the game, and GM additions to the world aren't restricted to in-world needs. If a GM railroad is antithetical to a sandbox, so is a player railroad -- a player changing things in the game world to suit some narrative end.

This seems useful. So long as you remember that sandbox is not a midpoint between railroad (GM driven story) and story (player driven story), but is orthogonal to both (story, if anything dramatically coherent occurs, is emergent).

I'd like to point out, besides naming  a few thinks in the world building phase, most of what we do is character driven in Dungeon World.

We choose things our characters would do primarily.


So far the only problem I see that  we still have some "action/move" connections we need to get rid of (that is using the name of the move, but ah well.)

Quote from: CRKrueger;661762I'll give it to the AW/DW authors in that they do stress not announcing GM moves and trying to keep things at the character-level, unfortunately, to them character-level means "appropriate within the fiction", and many of the moves and mechanics concern things related to the character, yet outside the character's direct control.  The narrative meta-layer is assumed and fundamental.

We probably could go through all of the choice moves, and argue for a week about whether they are character or player level choices. I think some of them are and some of them aren't. But would that actually solve anything?

Quote from: apparition13;661789Is your expected response assumed to be what the character would desire, or what you think would be more fun/dramatic?

You know, it doesn't actually say. So let's say "No".

But on the other hand: in almost any other roleplaying game, literally nothing is stopping the player from trying things that they think would be more fun/dramatic, rather than that the character would desire. People who want to roleplay, will, and you can't stop them. People who don't, won't, and you can't make them.

Quote from: silva;6617582. I have doubts on the possibility to separate what your character thinks/wants from what you/the player in control of the character thinks/wants. It seems impossible to me In practical terms, but I admit never giving much thought to it.

What do you guys think ?

Sorry to be flippant, but it's called roleplaying. I do agree with your core point - at some level, you are always going to be speaking to the player and their perception of the character, rather than the character themselves - but it's a matter of trying as hard as you can to get across that gap. Nobody can teach that, only give you things to think about, you really have to learn it by experience... if you want to.

Quote from: Ladybird;661828People who want to roleplay, will, and you can't stop them.

Actually with OOC mechanics, you can.  Forcing people to think outside their character to engage with the game system removes them from roleplaying their character at that point in time/for that decision.  Once you start getting a significant portion of OOC mechanics in the game, then you have a RPG where you spend a significant portion of time not Roleplaying.

This of course assumes by Roleplaying and RPG you mean being IC when you make mechanical choices in the game system.  Pretty sure we're not all using that definition.

Quote from: silva;6617582. I have doubts on the possibility to separate what your character thinks/wants from what you/the player in control of the character thinks/wants. It seems impossible to me In practical terms, but I admit never giving much thought to it.

It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.

Aristotle

Quote from: CRKrueger;661887Actually with OOC mechanics, you can.  Forcing people to think outside their character to engage with the game system removes them from roleplaying their character at that point in time/for that decision.  Once you start getting a significant portion of OOC mechanics in the game, then you have a RPG where you spend a significant portion of time not Roleplaying.

This of course assumes by Roleplaying and RPG you mean being IC when you make mechanical choices in the game system.  Pretty sure we're not all using that definition.

Tangentilly related perhaps, but I was thinking of this on my way to the gym at lunch.
I got to the point having reread the L&L entry on healing in towns vers the wild and the assumption in old school play that everyone was an Adventurer and had a core of standard skills.
That for some reason got me thinking about puzzles. Old TSR dungeons were full of puzzles. Riddles, giant Chessboards, etc etc littered the ancient dungeons of yore.
When solving these things how many players attempted to do it in character and how many just put their mind to it?

I think this is a core decision for players and it affects game design and all sorts of things.
If we don't define the set of actions a PC knows how to do do we assume they can do exverythign we can describe.
This maps to this discussion in as much as do we describe what they can do from their perspective in character or do we have to step outside of character. Do we solve the puzzle as Drak the 19 year old 1/2 orc assassin or as Jibbajibba the 43 year old IT Manager.

I will probably regret getting into this topic but I am not sure this is the right distinction. I think the assumption in Silvia's post, judging by his prior arguments, is how much power the player has to affect the setting. It isn't about whether he plays the character as himself or as Jark the Insignificant, it's about whether his only tool to affect the setting is Jark or if he can alter it by telling the GM he wants X to appear in the game. There is a difference between saying 'I go to the capital to see if they have a silk guild' versus 'can you put a silk guild  with political intrigue in the next town'. To me, that is the key difference. Does the the game allow you to contribute to the setting as a co-GM or does it expect you to limit your power to your character. My guess is anything containing the former would not be considered a pure sandbox by the majority of tabletop rpg fans (what they do in video games other media that sandboxes doesn't necessarily apply to how we use the word).

Quote from: BedrockBrendan;661944I will probably regret getting into this topic but I am not sure this is the right distinction. I think the assumption in Silvia's post, judging by his prior arguments, is how much power the player has to affect the setting. It isn't about whether he plays the character as himself or as Jark the Insignificant, it's about whether his only tool to affect the setting is Jark or if he can alter it by telling the GM he wants X to appear in the game. There is a difference between saying 'I go to the capital to see if they have a silk guild' versus 'can you put a silk  with political intrigue in the next town'. To me, that is the key difference. Does the the game allow you to contribute to the setting as a co-GM or does it expect you to limit your power to your character. My guess is anything containing the former would not be considered a pure sandbox by the majority of tabletop rpg fans (what they do in video games other media that sandboxes doesn't necessarily apply to how we use the word).

That's a pretty good definition I think.
It's certainly different from "Thudd realises that the rocks are arranged int eh Fibonacci sequence and so places 21 stones on the entrance stone in front of the portal"

Quote from: BedrockBrendan;661944I will probably regret getting into this topic but I am not sure this is the right distinction. I think the assumption in Silvia's post, judging by his prior arguments, is how much power the player has to affect the setting. It isn't about whether he plays the character as himself or as Jark the Insignificant, it's about whether his only tool to affect the setting is Jark or if he can alter it by telling the GM he wants X to appear in the game. There is a difference between saying 'I go to the capital to see if they have a silk guild' versus 'can you put a silk  with political intrigue in the next town'. To me, that is the key difference. Does the the game allow you to contribute to the setting as a co-GM or does it expect you to limit your power to your character. My guess is anything containing the former would not be considered a pure sandbox by the majority of tabletop rpg fans (what they do in video games other media that sandboxes doesn't necessarily apply to how we use the word).

Not directly related to your point (which I agree on):

Incidentally, limits are what defines the literal sandbox. It isn't just a heap of sand somewhere, nor an endless beach. The sandbox has a frame, which is where the players sit, while the characters live on the sand inside the frame.

Worldbuilders have fun building the castle. Roleplayers have fun living in the castle. The way I see it, storygame players like to do a bit of both: have a share in the castle/worldbuilding at the cost of some immersion.

Where it breaks down for me, though, is when such interventions happen as a sort of deus ex machina where the character living in the sand asks the player watching over him for a favour. Player fiat? :D

Quote from: BedrockBrendan;661944I will probably regret getting into this topic but I am not sure this is the right distinction. I think the assumption in Silvia's post, judging by his prior arguments, is how much power the player has to affect the setting. It isn't about whether he plays the character as himself or as Jark the Insignificant, it's about whether his only tool to affect the setting is Jark or if he can alter it by telling the GM he wants X to appear in the game. There is a difference between saying 'I go to the capital to see if they have a silk guild' versus 'can you put a silk guild  with political intrigue in the next town'. To me, that is the key difference. Does the the game allow you to contribute to the setting as a co-GM or does it expect you to limit your power to your character. My guess is anything containing the former would not be considered a pure sandbox by the majority of tabletop rpg fans (what they do in video games other media that sandboxes doesn't necessarily apply to how we use the word).

Yep. Sandbox play assumes a hard limit on players only making changes to the game world during play via what their characters do. Although I'd add that there's also a limit on the GM, who cannot add anything to the world in response to player goals, either... since that would mean that the players were indirectly able to break the in-character limitation. The world is the GM's character, and sandbox GMs aren't allowed to change things except through their character, either.

Although I'd allow leeway during pre-play set-up. There's nothing wrong with the group co-creating a sanbox setting, then players creating characters in that setting. It's just that, once play begins, players can't change the setting except through in-character actions.

Similarly, there's nothing wrong with the GM making up sandbox details on the fly, as long as the details aren't being tweaked to fit the characters, or dramatic necessity, or other out-of-world concerns. A pure high-improv sandbox is what I call a "sketchbox", because it involves leaving details of some areas sketchy, maybe nothing more than a couple sentences like "There are dragons and giants in the northern mountains, but also rumors of a lost dwarven kingdom." When the players go to mountains, the GM starts filling in details, and the details become fixed as they are revealed in play.

Quote from: talysman;662010Yep. Sandbox play assumes a hard limit on players only making changes to the game world during play via what their characters do. Although I'd add that there's also a limit on the GM, who cannot add anything to the world in response to player goals, either... since that would mean that the players were indirectly able to break the in-character limitation. The world is the GM's character, and sandbox GMs aren't allowed to change things except through their character, either.

Although I'd allow leeway during pre-play set-up. There's nothing wrong with the group co-creating a sanbox setting, then players creating characters in that setting. It's just that, once play begins, players can't change the setting except through in-character actions.

Similarly, there's nothing wrong with the GM making up sandbox details on the fly, as long as the details aren't being tweaked to fit the characters, or dramatic necessity, or other out-of-world concerns. A pure high-improv sandbox is what I call a "sketchbox", because it involves leaving details of some areas sketchy, maybe nothing more than a couple sentences like "There are dragons and giants in the northern mountains, but also rumors of a lost dwarven kingdom." When the players go to mountains, the GM starts filling in details, and the details become fixed as they are revealed in play.

So if Biff Roeldpla makes a comment IC the DM is never, never allowed, saying to himself "Oh shit why didn't I think of that I should use that" to use something a player says IC to affect the Sandbox, because when he does it is no longer a Sandbox and instantly becomes some ..other thing?

Quote from: jibbajibba;661934That for some reason got me thinking about puzzles. Old TSR dungeons were full of puzzles. Riddles, giant Chessboards, etc etc littered the ancient dungeons of yore.
When solving these things how many players attempted to do it in character and how many just put their mind to it?

From Old Geezer's descriptions of Gary's original sessions, it seems pretty clear that he saw D&D as a sort of lateral thinking puzzle game.  Certainly some of his later Sorceror's Scrolls columns make it very clear that he had no use for "immersion" as this site likes to define the term.

My experience with engineering, classical/medieval history and experimental archaeology is that most moderns couldn't think like the average Dark Ages mercenary if their lives depended on it.

Quote from: Sommerjon;662026So if Biff Roeldpla makes a comment IC the DM is never, never allowed, saying to himself "Oh shit why didn't I think of that I should use that" to use something a player says IC to affect the Sandbox, because when he does it is no longer a Sandbox and instantly becomes some ..other thing?

... Because I'm somehow talking about rigid binary definitions of "sandbox"?

There are two obvious alternatives to what you're saying:

(1) The separation between in-character and out-of-character effects applies only to actual play. That is, you can't say "Oh shit, why didn't I think of that? I should use that RIGHT NOW" and change what's already been decided, and still consider it a pure sandbox. In fact, changing stuff in play like that is considered cheating on the GM's part.

(2) It's a continuum. I keep talking about "pure" sandbox. You could have a slightly less pure sandbox. One or two impurities is OK. A regular rule to allow out-of-character changes to setting during play is not. It's something else, or a hybrid at best.

Quote from: talysman;662041... Because I'm somehow talking about rigid binary definitions of "sandbox"?

There are two obvious alternatives to what you're saying:

(1) The separation between in-character and out-of-character effects applies only to actual play. That is, you can't say "Oh shit, why didn't I think of that? I should use that RIGHT NOW" and change what's already been decided, and still consider it a pure sandbox. In fact, changing stuff in play like that is considered cheating on the GM's part.

(2) It's a continuum. I keep talking about "pure" sandbox. You could have a slightly less pure sandbox. One or two impurities is OK. A regular rule to allow out-of-character changes to setting during play is not. It's something else, or a hybrid at best.

I think it is also something where the issue is it is not essential to what a sandbox is. It could happen and you would still have a sandbox, but silva was arguing, i think, that players contributing creatively outside their character (i.e. there should be a goblin faction here when we arrive) is as essential to the sandbox as player characters having the freedom to explore the setting. To me it seems like a redefinition of the concept in order to put narrativist mechanics at the forefront of the style. I could be wrong, since he may have meant something else, but i think that is where this part of the discussion stems from. And I am not saying what he describes isnt viable or fun, it just isnt what most folk think of as sandbox.

Quote from: BedrockBrendan;662049silva was arguing, i think, that players contributing creatively outside their character (i.e. there should be a goblin faction here when we arrive) is as essential to e sandbox as player characters having the freedom to explore the setting. To me it seems like a redefinition of the concept in order to out narrativist mechanics at the forefront of the style.

Ya Think? :hmm:

Quote from: BedrockBrendanI could be wrong, since he may have meant something else, but i think that is where this part of the discussion stems from. And I am not saying what he describes isnt viable or fun, it just isnt what most folk think of as sandbox.

You ain't wrong.

Quote from: BedrockBrendan;662049I think it is also something where the issue is it is not essential to what a sandbox is. It could happen and you would still have a sandbox, but silva was arguing, i think, that players contributing creatively outside their character (i.e. there should be a goblin faction here when we arrive) is as essential to the sandbox as player characters having the freedom to explore the setting. To me it seems like a redefinition of the concept in order to put narrativist mechanics at the forefront of the style. I could be wrong, since he may have meant something else, but i think that is where this part of the discussion stems from. And I am not saying what he describes isnt viable or fun, it just isnt what most folk think of as sandbox.

Yes.

Quote from: talysman;662041... Because I'm somehow talking about rigid binary definitions of "sandbox"?

There are two obvious alternatives to what you're saying:

(1) The separation between in-character and out-of-character effects applies only to actual play. That is, you can't say "Oh shit, why didn't I think of that? I should use that RIGHT NOW" and change what's already been decided, and still consider it a pure sandbox. In fact, changing stuff in play like that is considered cheating on the GM's part.

(2) It's a continuum. I keep talking about "pure" sandbox. You could have a slightly less pure sandbox. One or two impurities is OK. A regular rule to allow out-of-character changes to setting during play is not. It's something else, or a hybrid at best.

I don't think GMs can 'cheat' can they ?

A sandbox isn't a set of rules yopu have to adhere to. Its a Gaming tool that focuses on players allowing their PCs to set their own agendas and actions in a living world that exists beyond the bounds of their characters direct experience.
If you loose sight of the point of a sandbox , to create interesting games that are fun for the players, then you have to question the whole purpose of the exercise.

For me I have no trouble with a PC describing how they have been to the northern mountains and met tribes of goblins. I might use it I might not, I might add goblins I might not, I might have the party get there only to find piles of burn goblin bones.
Whatever works best for the game, makes sure people have the most fun and helps create a believeable setting populated by believable characters

Quote from: daniel_ream;662034From Old Geezer's descriptions of Gary's original sessions, it seems pretty clear that he saw D&D as a sort of lateral thinking puzzle game.  Certainly some of his later Sorceror's Scrolls columns make it very clear that he had no use for "immersion" as this site likes to define the term.

My experience with engineering, classical/medieval history and experimental archaeology is that most moderns couldn't think like the average Dark Ages mercenary if their lives depended on it.

The other two sure, but how does engineering figure into this?

Quote from: jibbajibba;662092I don't think GMs can 'cheat' can they ?

Yes. They can.

Old Geezer talked about this in one of his Q&A threads on RPGnet (http://forum.rpg.net/showthread.php?633165-So&p=15592403#post15592403). The question asked was about a referee punishing players who overloaded on combat spells instead of mixing in utility spells, for example. OG's response:

QuoteThe world came first, so changing the world based on player spell selection would have been cheating. It's about the only way for the referee to cheat, in fact. Any ref who changed things on the fly to punish players based on that day's spell selection would have found themselves without any players.

What was there, was there. There was a nest of six trolls on Level 1 of Greyhawk. If you went there with three first level characters, you found six trolls. If you went there with nine 11th level characters, you found six trolls. Changing the world as you seem to be describing above would have been anathema. It is really the only way to cheat as the referee.

OG didn't specifically mention sandbox play at this point, but that's what he's talking about. To run a sandbox, you set up an area and you play that area. Since you have complete control over placing absolutely anything you want absolutely anywhere, and since you can change any rules you want, it's not fair to the players to change things in the world after you know what the players are going to do.

Quote from: jibbajibba;662092A sandbox isn't a set of rules yopu have to adhere to. Its a Gaming tool that focuses on players allowing their PCs to set their own agendas and actions in a living world that exists beyond the bounds of their characters direct experience.

But, for a world to be a living world, it can't be changed on a whim. It has to change for reasons that seem internal to the world. So, yes, there is a set of rules you have to follow: the rules of the world, and the rule about following the rules of the world. Major deviations from that means you aren't playing in a sandbox.

Quote from: Bloody Stupid Johnson;662096The other two sure, but how does engineering figure into this?

"I just felt like plugging my Linked-In résumé." :)

Quote from: talysman;662099Yes. They can.

Old Geezer talked about this in one of his Q&A threads on RPGnet (http://forum.rpg.net/showthread.php?633165-So&p=15592403#post15592403). The question asked was about a referee punishing players who overloaded on combat spells instead of mixing in utility spells, for example. OG's response:



OG didn't specifically mention sandbox play at this point, but that's what he's talking about. To run a sandbox, you set up an area and you play that area. Since you have complete control over placing absolutely anything you want absolutely anywhere, and since you can change any rules you want, it's not fair to the players to change things in the world after you know what the players are going to do.


But, for a world to be a living world, it can't be changed on a whim. It has to change for reasons that seem internal to the world. So, yes, there is a set of rules you have to follow: the rules of the world, and the rule about following the rules of the world. Major deviations from that means you aren't playing in a sandbox.

OG  can say what he likes doesn;t make it true :)
A GM can't cheat. They can be a douche, they can be a dickhead and they can loose all their players but they can't cheat because of rule 0 :)

You're argument 'Major deviations from that means you aren't playing in a sandbox' means you are loosing site of the reason you are using a snadbox in the first place. Its just a tool to make the game more fun and engaging.
As per Pundy's arguments on realism, you can't create a perfect sandbox without a huge AI simulation package, you aren't going to roll for the effect of natural disease or calamity on each important NPC etc etc . All 'sandboxes' are part of a continum from super complex and complete (like an MMO perpetual world but with consequences) to super simple and sketchy.
The difference between "Last month I wrote down the whole sandbox" and "yeah that is a good idea that fits in this bit of my sandbox really well I will just add it in" is just one of timing not of defintion.

The basic tenants of a sandbox seem to be
i) the players are in charge of their PC paths - no railroads
ii) the world moves apart from the PCs with things happening beyond them - world in motion
iii) The GM doesn't move things deliberately to make the PCs encounter or avoid them - which is really just an extension of (i)

Since a world in motion is only ever going to be degree of illusion populating areas based on player concepts that arise in play doesn't break the core tenants so its fine.

So a PC describes how they grew up in the north and they were constantly plagued by Goblin Hordes. If the north was undefined then the GM adds that in now from now on the north has goblin hordes. When the PCs eventually get to the North they descover that for 10 years Commander Grey has been raiding the goblins and driving them futher back and now a wall is being constructed to keep them out of human lands.
This creates a world in motion. The players have a fact when they arrive at the place the fact applied they find the world has moved on without them.

But again the key point is do the players have fun and is the game enjoyable.
That is all that matters. Everything else is just trappings.

I have had this discussion before and I am trying not to get embroiled in rehashes of old arguments as no one is changing their mind anytime soon and it just creates ill-feeling so. That was my 5 cents worth.

Quote from: Bloody Stupid Johnson;662096The other two sure, but how does engineering figure into this?

A significant background in making things with your own two hands will give you a decent understanding of exactly what can be built with two hands, as well as what kinds of ways you can injure yourself in the process.

(and just to piss off Benoist: about an eighth of my extended family is Old Order Mennonite;  I've been to a barn raising or two in my time)

This really just comes down to "most people who wank on about immersion should probably go re-read Thud and Blunder (http://www.sfwa.org/2005/01/on-thud-and-blunder/) again".

Quote from: daniel_ream;662034From Old Geezer's descriptions of Gary's original sessions, it seems pretty clear that he saw D&D as a sort of lateral thinking puzzle game.  Certainly some of his later Sorceror's Scrolls columns make it very clear that he had no use for "immersion" as this site likes to define the term.

My experience with engineering, classical/medieval history and experimental archaeology is that most moderns couldn't think like the average Dark Ages mercenary if their lives depended on it.

Quote from: daniel_ream;662146A significant background in making things with your own two hands will give you a decent understanding of exactly what can be built with two hands, as well as what kinds of ways you can injure yourself in the process.

(and just to piss off Benoist: about an eighth of my extended family is Old Order Mennonite;  I've been to a barn raising or two in my time)

This really just comes down to "most people who wank on about immersion should probably go re-read Thud and Blunder (http://www.sfwa.org/2005/01/on-thud-and-blunder/) again".

So basically you're saying that you can't imagine something unless you have real life experience relevant to what you're imagining. That's more full of shit than usual danny boy, even without getting into the inanity that is 'engineering, classical/medieval history and experimental archaeology' (home carpentry, reading books, and LARPing) somehow equalling a grasp on the experience of being a medieval mercenary.

Now if you had said 'I've spent several years living among the poorest people on earth in South East Asia, washing my clothes in the river, catching fish with a bit of bent wood, and generally trying to avoid getting malaria and dysentery' you'd have a far better understanding of the realities of medieval life.

Given my experience as a sushi chef, interior decorator and kayak enthusiast, I assure you nobody here is anywhere close to being in a mindset of futuristic spaceship captain operating in galactic divided by Sino - American corporations.

Snark aside - it's not about getting into the precise mindset. It's about trying to do so.

I'm a huge history enthusiast, and I try to get into that mindset as much as possible. And truth be told - you just need to read a few history books that focus on life and culture rather than battles & campaigns, to get the hang of it. I recommend Bronisław Geremek's works, if you can get your hands on translations.

Because I do admit, the mindset of those people is nearly alien to ours...yet similar in certain aspects. 500 years might've passed, but some things didn't change. Most of humans still love to drink, sing and fuck, and will do whatever's necessary to ensure those activities will commence, in copious amounts preferably.

Quote from: jibbajibba;662125OG  can say what he likes doesn;t make it true :)
A GM can't cheat. They can be a douche, they can be a dickhead and they can loose all their players but they can't cheat because of rule 0 :)

You're argument 'Major deviations from that means you aren't playing in a sandbox' means you are loosing site of the reason you are using a snadbox in the first place. Its just a tool to make the game more fun and engaging.
As per Pundy's arguments on realism, you can't create a perfect sandbox without a huge AI simulation package, you aren't going to roll for the effect of natural disease or calamity on each important NPC etc etc . All 'sandboxes' are part of a continum from super complex and complete (like an MMO perpetual world but with consequences) to super simple and sketchy.
The difference between "Last month I wrote down the whole sandbox" and "yeah that is a good idea that fits in this bit of my sandbox really well I will just add it in" is just one of timing not of defintion.

The basic tenants of a sandbox seem to be
i) the players are in charge of their PC paths - no railroads
ii) the world moves apart from the PCs with things happening beyond them - world in motion
iii) The GM doesn't move things deliberately to make the PCs encounter or avoid them - which is really just an extension of (i)

Since a world in motion is only ever going to be degree of illusion populating areas based on player concepts that arise in play doesn't break the core tenants so its fine.

So a PC describes how they grew up in the north and they were constantly plagued by Goblin Hordes. If the north was undefined then the GM adds that in now from now on the north has goblin hordes. When the PCs eventually get to the North they descover that for 10 years Commander Grey has been raiding the goblins and driving them futher back and now a wall is being constructed to keep them out of human lands.
This creates a world in motion. The players have a fact when they arrive at the place the fact applied they find the world has moved on without them.

But again the key point is do the players have fun and is the game enjoyable.
That is all that matters. Everything else is just trappings.

I have had this discussion before and I am trying not to get embroiled in rehashes of old arguments as no one is changing their mind anytime soon and it just creates ill-feeling so. That was my 5 cents worth.

Spot on, Jibba. I agree with every word.


P.S: some nice posts here. Im out of time now, but will try to answer them later.

Quote from: daniel_ream;662146(and just to piss off Benoist: about an eighth of my extended family is Old Order Mennonite;  I've been to a barn raising or two in my time)

"I've been to a Mennonite barn raising or two, so I damn well know better than you do what is going on in the head of a mercenary chasing dragons in some elf game!"

 :)

More seriously now.

Immersion is not about becoming a "realistic" alter ego in a setting. I think some people should have a look at our multiple conversations about absolute realism on these boards to know my position about that particular point.

Immersion is about seeing the game world from your character's point of view. You can be yourself in the process, pretend to be your character, and any variation thereof.

I personally know that working on wooden toys in Santa's workshop and reading books about General Robert E. Lee wouldn't get me much closer to understanding what a Confederate soldier felt like actually fighting at Gettysburg. But the game isn't about "realism" to me. It's about let's pretend, and about suspension of disbelief.

Let's pretend and suspension of disbelief are aided by the believability of the game milieu. Different gamers will have different thresholds in that regard: some will need more believable elements than others to in effect pretend and suspend disbelief, while the nature of these elements, what "feels believable" in fact, will also vary from gamer to gamer. On Thud and Blunder (http://www.sfwa.org/2005/01/on-thud-and-blunder/) reads to me like a column discussing what feels believable and what the value of a minimum of thinking and research are to the believability of a fantasy setting. And I wholeheartedly agree with that.

So. All that to say that one's faculty to immerse in the make-believe isn't dependant on the actual realism of the decor or characters therein.

As for the attempt in redefining "sandbox" to fit narrative games because somehow it's "bad" if narrative games aren't doing that thing and they can't possibly be different and fun on their own merits for some reason, color me unimpressed. Why it is that some gamers just can't own up to the fact they are playing different games than others and enjoying their own games for their own personal reasons, instead of going through mental gymnastics in order to appropriate the terms others are using and pretending like it's all the same, I have no idea. Good luck with that, though, I guess.

I was going to respond to the immersion issue but Benoist basically made the points for me. It's about feeling like I am there seeing things from my character's point of view, not about genuinely understanding what the life of a medieval warrior was and how he might have seen the world (I am interested in those sort of things and am particularly fond of micro history but don't think any of this is needed to have immersion in an rpg).

Realism can lend to, or greatly enhance, the sense of immersion but two concepts are not directly linked.  Personally, well done verisimilitude provides a better atmosphere for immersion than realism.  I will take good verisimilitude over realism any day to aid my immersion in the character and game world.  Now, when realism and verisimilitude mix together well that's the sweet spot of immersion for me.

While I agree with Ben on the relativity of realism and immersion (great post, Ben), I also agree with Riordan that sandbox gaming can exist regardless of immersion in a alter-ego.

Some videogames and boardgames are good examples of it - like the Battletech Mercenaries campaign me and my brother were planning last year, where each player would assume the role of a small merc company (containing mechs, pilots, staff, repair facilities, etc) and had to control the company´s finances, contracts, employees, supplies, etc. The fact that we assume the "role" of an entire army dont negate the sandbox experience, I think. And notice that, in this case, the sandbox would be player-driven, not character-driven.

So, summarizing: IMHO, for a sandbox to work, its only necessary for the player to be represented by an alter-something (this "something" may be a character, a party, clan, army, etc), in a environment/setting regulated by an entity that keeps the environment consistent, dynamical/rective, and player-driven (this "entity" can be a gamemaster, a computer program, some randomization tool, etc).

IMHO, of course. ;)

Quote from: silva;662235While I agree with Ben on the relativity of realism and immersion (great post, Ben), I also agree with Riordan that sandbox gaming can exist regardless of immersion in a alter-ego.

Some videogames and boardgames are good examples of it - like the Battletech Mercenaries campaign me and my brother were planning last year, where each player would assume the role of a small merc company (containing mechs, pilots, staff, repair facilities, etc) and had to control the company´s finances, contracts, employees, supplies, etc. The fact that we assume the "role" of an entire army dont negate the sandbox experience, I think. And notice that, in this case, the sandbox would be player-driven, not character-driven.

So, summarizing: IMHO, for a sandbox to work, its only necessary for the player to be represented by an alter-something (this "something" may be a character, a party, clan, army, etc), in a environment/setting regulated by an entity that keeps the environment consistent, dynamical/rective, and player-driven (this "entity" can be a gamemaster, a computer program, some randomization tool, etc).

IMHO, of course. ;)

Computers can't do sandboxes. A sandbox in the RPG sense is an infinite world, unscripted, living seperately from anything the group does. If the group doesn't do anything, it will continue to change and evolve on its own. There are no borders, boundaries or limits. With computers you eventually reach the edge of the map, in one way or another, not a problem RPGs have, at least with a good splash of imagination. Talking about computer games and sandboxes in the same breath just means you don't understand what a sandbox is.

It's a term that was misappropriated from software development initially, the original meaning (and current meaning as far as software goes) is a confined area where you can do whatever you like without affecting the rest of the system, it translates to segregated areas. A more accurate phrase to describe the RPG version is 'open ended'.

Shared narrative games operate from a plot centric point of view, they are deliberately thematic railroads. By their nature, like computers, they are unable to engage with the concept of a sandbox. With that said, some of their mechanics which require player creation of parts of the game world are not neccessarily antithetical to sandboxes, just to immersion.

Immersion itself is a phenomenon independent of sandboxes, neither one requires the other. But as far as RPG sandboxes go, immersion is important to fully enjoy the experience.

QuoteComputers can't do sandboxes.

Yes, they can.

QuoteA sandbox in the RPG sense is an infinite world

No, its not. Every sandbox - be it on rpgs, boardgames, computers, etc - is limited by the underlying concept that permeates and propels the game. It's a conceptual limit.

Eg: a sandbox about Shadowrunners in Seatlle will have definite conceptual boundaries. The first time a player step out of this boundaries (eg: retiring from this life and taking a straight job in McDonalds) the sandbox is over for him. In this case the player will need to create another character, except if the group accepts playing-out 2 radically and different and non-related games (one being shadowrunners in seattle, other being McDonalds Employer: The Simulator), which, in practical terms, no group is.

So, no. Sandbox games aren't infinite. Every game will have a definite conceptual scope. What characterizes a sandbox is not how wide-open this scope is, but how free you are to interact with the pieces inside the scope, and how open its internal structure is to accommodate and adapt to the players messing in a consistent fashion.

And Computers are perfectly capable of implementing this. Easily even. I can even name games that do this: GTA San Andreas, STALKER Call of Pripyat, Ultima 4, Darklands, Mount&Blade Warband, Crusader Kings, King of Dragon Pass, Dwarf Fortress, etc.

Just play them and see for yourself. ;)

Quote from: silva;662258Yes, they can.

No, they can't, in the same way that computers can't mimic RPGs in any realistic sense.

Quote from: silva;662258No, its not. Every sandbox - be it on rpgs, boardgames, computers, etc - is limited by the underlying concept that permeates and propels the game. It's a conceptual limit.

Eg: a sandbox about Shadowrunners in Seatlle will have definite conceptual boundaries. The first time a player step out of this boundaries (eg: retiring from this life and taking a straight job in McDonalds) the sandbox is over for him. In this case the player will need to create another character, except if the group accepts playing-out 2 radically and different and non-related games (one being shadowrunners in seattle, other being McDonalds Employer: The Simulator), which, in practical terms, no group is.

Wait, what? So now you're conflating the limits of a sandbox with character death, so if any character dies or retires the sandbox is not longer unlimited? Even by your logically fragile glass jaw standards that's pretty weak, silva. So weak in fact that I'm actually trying to dig out some modicum of an actual point in there, but no, I'm afraid you've just gone mentally rabid on account of a relentless diet of raw bullshit.

Medic!

Quote from: silva;662258So, no. Sandbox games aren't infinite. Every game will have a definite conceptual scope. What characterizes a sandbox is not how wide-open this scope is, but how free you are to interact with the pieces inside the scope, and how open its internal structure is to accommodate and adapt to the players messing in a consistent fashion.

These are two seperate things. Being infinitely extensible and the ability of characters to interact with the setting have nothing to do with one another.

Quote from: silva;662258And Computers are perfectly capable of implementing this. Easily even. I can even name games that do this: GTA San Andreas, STALKER Call of Pripyat, Ultima 4, Darklands, Mount&Blade Warband, Crusader Kings, King of Dragon Pass, Dwarf Fortress, etc.

Just play them and see for yourself. ;)

Computers are limited entirely by the abilities of the coders. Eventually you just run out of map, or end up repeating the same map again and again. No matter where you go someone has been there before, there is no discovery, no exploration. This isn't even a discussion, go educate yourself on the limitations of AI before parading your ignorance before the whole world again. Your mother must be ashamed of you.

Traveller, no need to offend, dude.

We just disagree on what constitutes a sandbox. Nothing wrong with that

Quote from: silva;662272Traveller, no need to offend, dude.

We just disagree on what constitutes a sandbox. Nothing wrong with that

This is not just a disagreement. This is a demonstartion of the Gross Conceptual Error that you have about what a sandbox is.

No Jeff, its not. Traveller´s techonbabble is even easy to refute.

But, frankly, its a waste of time continuing on this line of discussion.

Quote from: Silverlion;640710It also felt exciting, I mean I generally felt that some things wouldn't have happened in some other fantasy games without pulling teeth. Like our thief sliding off a roof after trying to knock the feet out under his foe and the foe grabbing his ankle on the way down. I know some GM's and some games do this, but it was nice the way this one handled it.

How was it handled?

Quote from: silva;662281No Jeff, its not. Traveller´s techonbabble is even easy to refute.

But, frankly, its a waste of time continuing on this line of discussion.

I await your refutation with a big bag of popcorn and a laugh track on repeat. Listen champ, if you'd like to talk about sandboxes I'll talk about sandboxes, but let's make sure we're speaking the same language first eh. What you seem to think a sandbox is and what a sandbox actually is are two different things. Therefore you have no right whatosever to make definitive statements about sandboxes, and if you continue with your bizarre train (ejaculated over or otherwise) of thought I will continue to delightedly illuminate your ignorance for the edification and entertainment of all and sundry.

Quote from: Ghost Whistler;662294How was it handled?

A failed roll gives rise to consequences that are broader than just failing at the action. Also, consequences more commonly arise from rolls, as they are somewhat detached from success and failure. Finally, the system grants XP on failure, so that tends to make the player feel more inclined to embrace failure IME

Quote from: Ghost Whistler;662294How was it handled?

The game offered the player success for a price. I cannot remember if he chose the falling off the roof directly or if the GM suggested it, but the actual "failure" is offered as part of the die roll. If you don't roll high enough you get a success for a price roll option. You then name the price (or the GM does) and take the fallout of that to get what you wanted in character.

Quote from: Silverlion;662303The game offered the player success for a price. I cannot remember if he chose the falling off the roof directly or if the GM suggested it, but the actual "failure" is offered as part of the die roll. If you don't roll high enough you get a success for a price roll option. You then name the price (or the GM does) and take the fallout of that to get what you wanted in character.

Yeah, that is cool IME. 'Success with consequences' is often pitched as a question for the player.

"You can jump over the gap, but to do so will require you throw you all into it, losing your balance and falling down the roof on the other side. What do you do?"

Quote from: Riordan;661785apparition13's point cuts to the chase, doesn't it?

Character-agency at the heart of an open world (generated and kept alive by tables/chance/GM refereeing): traditional rpg sandbox

Player-agency at the heart of an open world: storygame sandbox. Sandbox yes, but a storygamey one. Storygame yes, but indeed a sandbox - of sorts.

So while this discussion is in the right category now, what Silva talks about does look like a sort of sandbox to me - just not a traditional one. I'd be interested how such a world is kept consistent without the traditional 'boundaries' that lend it verisimilitude, though. does it feel real if anything can be changed from outside influence not by characters' actions but by by players' whim? or are players as bound by the sandbox's 'reality' in the storygame sandbox as the GM is in the traditional sandbox?

Is this a new thing with storygames?

Riordan, I agree with your initial asessment. But with some ibservations:

, Apocalypse World is not a storygame. He has some mechwnics that give the player some control over his own "role". But this control is exerced by the player (not the character) and under some circunstances. So, a gang leader may name his followers and, if he levels up, he has the option to add qualities to his gang (money, savagery, surpluses, growth, etc).  But this isnt made by the character, mid-session, insted its made by the player, between sessions when you level up.

And While the game is running the gm adresses the character, not the player.

Quote from: Skywalker;662311Yeah, that is cool IME. 'Success with consequences' is often pitched as a question for the player.

"You can jump over the gap, but to do so will require you throw you all into it, losing your balance and falling down the roof on the other side. What do you do?"

Yup, I think this is the really genius of AW, the weak-sucess concept. ;)

Quote from: CRKrueger;661762I'll give it to the AW/DW authors in that they do stress not announcing GM moves and trying to keep things at the character-level, unfortunately, to them character-level means "appropriate within the fiction", and many of the moves and mechanics concern things related to the character, yet outside the character's direct control.  The narrative meta-layer is assumed and fundamental.

Krueger, care to cite some examples of moves/mechanics that are outside the character control ?

I know AW has some new school ideas, but I cant remember any actual storygame rules right now.

Quote from: The Traveller;662238Computers can't do sandboxes. A sandbox in the RPG sense is an infinite world, unscripted, living seperately from anything the group does. If the group doesn't do anything, it will continue to change and evolve on its own. There are no borders, boundaries or limits. With computers you eventually reach the edge of the map, in one way or another, not a problem RPGs have, at least with a good splash of imagination. Talking about computer games and sandboxes in the same breath just means you don't understand what a sandbox is.

.

Computers can totally do sandboxes.
You can write a program to generate and populate hexes in a map.
You can then take that population and from a series of 'cultural' and 'social' tables give them colour and depth, You can then extrapolate to an events table to set up world in motion.

You would conceed that a DM using a series of random tables could generate an ever expanding sandbox thus so can a computer.

What a computer can't do, at least not currently, is to extrapolate from the actions of the players as to how the game world is affected. This is because computers can only react to known options, currently. When you get to an AI state where a computer can take an option and match that option to a pattern and from that extrapolate to what the effect would be on the world well MMOs will be more fun.

The advantage a computer sandbox would have would be back to your own drive for realism. You could actually run a Computer generated sandbox on real world data. So you would have kingdoms rising and falling monarchs spawning children and making alliances all carrying on as a world in motion. The DM would read the history reports like a Reuter's news feed

I actually think a couple of coding guys ought to put together a package where you could input your own choice of initial variables and then have the programme generate a world and run it through 1000 years of history then give it back to you as a nicely aged game setting.

Quote from: daniel_ream;662034From Old Geezer's descriptions of Gary's original sessions, it seems pretty clear that he saw D&D as a sort of lateral thinking puzzle game.  Certainly some of his later Sorceror's Scrolls columns make it very clear that he had no use for "immersion" as this site likes to define the term.

In his introduction to the AD&D DM's Guide Gary said (paraphrasing): "of the two types of roleplayering styles currently extant, "simulationist [immersion]" and "game", AD&D is firmly in the latter camp. It is a game first and foremost."

Quote from: The Traveller;662238Computers can't do sandboxes. A sandbox in the RPG sense is an infinite world, unscripted, living seperately from anything the group does. If the group doesn't do anything, it will continue to change and evolve on its own. There are no borders, boundaries or limits. With computers you eventually reach the edge of the map, in one way or another, not a problem RPGs have, at least with a good splash of imagination. Talking about computer games and sandboxes in the same breath just means you don't understand what a sandbox is.

It's a term that was misappropriated from software development initially, the original meaning (and current meaning as far as software goes) is a confined area where you can do whatever you like without affecting the rest of the system, it translates to segregated areas. A more accurate phrase to describe the RPG version is 'open ended'.

Shared narrative games operate from a plot centric point of view, they are deliberately thematic railroads. By their nature, like computers, they are unable to engage with the concept of a sandbox. With that said, some of their mechanics which require player creation of parts of the game world are not neccessarily antithetical to sandboxes, just to immersion.

Immersion itself is a phenomenon independent of sandboxes, neither one requires the other. But as far as RPG sandboxes go, immersion is important to fully enjoy the experience.

I agree with most of this, but I always thought "sandbox" came from actual physical sandboxes where little kids can play with sand, the only limits being their imagination (and the physics of sand, or course).

Quote from: jibbajibba;662342Computers can totally do sandboxes.
You can write a program to generate and populate hexes in a map.
You can then take that population and from a series of 'cultural' and 'social' tables give them colour and depth, You can then extrapolate to an events table to set up world in motion.

You would conceed that a DM using a series of random tables could generate an ever expanding sandbox thus so can a computer.

Random tables only go so far before repeating themselves, what you end up with sooner or later is a melange of locations that are more or less the same. The GM can take the seeds of ideas and make them into something new and original, or weave them into a larger whole.

What you're saying is still much closer to a sandbox than anything silva was babbling about however.

Quote from: jibbajibba;662342When you get to an AI state where a computer can take an option and match that option to a pattern and from that extrapolate to what the effect would be on the world well MMOs will be more fun.

Sixty years of AI research have produced exactly zero intelligent entities and almost no steps in that direction. We don't even have a formal definition for intelligence, AI is very very far off indeed.

Quote from: apparition13;662371I agree with most of this, but I always thought "sandbox" came from actual physical sandboxes where little kids can play with sand, the only limits being their imagination (and the physics of sand, or course).

Apparently not, I think in fact that one of the forum regulars, estar, had a hand in the original coining of the phrase. The misinterpretation of it being a children's play area came later.

Quote from: The Traveller;662378Random tables only go so far before repeating themselves, what you end up with sooner or later is a melange of locations that are more or less the same. The GM can take the seeds of ideas and make them into something new and original, or weave them into a larger whole.

What you're saying is still much closer to a sandbox than anything silva was babbling about however.

No I don't agree with that.
In anthropology we look for patterns, trends and similarities and we find them. Forest cultures tend to stay nomadic longer, they tend to have polytheistic religions, Desert cultures tend to settle round oases and form more settles societies quicker and tend to be monotheistic worshiping some variant of the sky god.

Armed with real world data, some imagination and some extrapolation you can create some huge cultural variation tables that basically cover every culture that exitis on earth and a few things that don't churn them through a random gnerator governed by some master algorythms and Ithink you have a pretty need tool.

Geography is even easier becuase its all covered by physics. If you define your sandbox as a standard M class planet with 500 million square km of surface area (the Earth, but you could vary this up of down and alter gravity etc as a result as you see fit) you get certain climatic zones with certain paglioclimatic vegetation types, Cool temperate western maritime defaults to an Oak-Ash Complex deciduous forest unless you do somethign about it or you are in a coastal zone or a swamp etc. You can easily layer that on your computer generated sandbox then vary with cultural and historical overlays.

Astrophysicists, use similar programs not to work out what alien planets might look like given a range of different physical parameters.

So a computer generated sandbox is only bounded by the limits of the parameters of "reality" you impose upon it. You can even add unreality and loating mountains etc can be added to the initial parameters as options simple really.  

QuoteSixty years of AI research have produced exactly zero intelligent entities and almost no steps in that direction. We don't even have a formal definition for intelligence, AI is very very far off indeed.
.

AI is far off, but sixty years ago did you think you would be carrying a phone in your pocket that can video, communicate across the globe to any one of several billion other handheld devices, that it could play games, operate on voice command, show you maps of your current location with your location marked thanks to GPS satelites.... all pretty amazing.

And it doesn't have to be true AI it needs to appear to be true AI which is different :)

Quote from: jibbajibba;662397No I don't agree with that.
In anthropology we look for patterns, trends and similarities and we find them. Forest cultures tend to stay nomadic longer, they tend to have polytheistic religions, Desert cultures tend to settle round oases and form more settles societies quicker and tend to be monotheistic worshiping some variant of the sky god.

Armed with real world data, some imagination and some extrapolation you can create some huge cultural variation tables that basically cover every culture that exitis on earth and a few things that don't churn them through a random gnerator governed by some master algorythms and Ithink you have a pretty need tool.

Geography is even easier becuase its all covered by physics. If you define your sandbox as a standard M class planet with 500 million square km of surface area (the Earth, but you could vary this up of down and alter gravity etc as a result as you see fit) you get certain climatic zones with certain paglioclimatic vegetation types, Cool temperate western maritime defaults to an Oak-Ash Complex deciduous forest unless you do somethign about it or you are in a coastal zone or a swamp etc. You can easily layer that on your computer generated sandbox then vary with cultural and historical overlays.

Astrophysicists, use similar programs not to work out what alien planets might look like given a range of different physical parameters.

So a computer generated sandbox is only bounded by the limits of the parameters of "reality" you impose upon it. You can even add unreality and loating mountains etc can be added to the initial parameters as options simple really.  

You do realise we're unable to model the climate on our own planet successfully, even after throwing enormous resources at it. Everything that happens in a computer is scripted, even the random stuff. If it wasn't scripted it wouldn't be there. The definition of a sandbox is that it's unscripted. This is also why shared narrative games are unable to handle sandboxes.

Now I will admit that computers can do a pretty good impression of a sandbox, but once you scrape the surface the cracks start to show.

This is actually the reason why I stopped playing computer games now that I think of it, once you figure out the underlying logic everything becomes predictable. The only things that work for me on computers are PK games because humans are the only worthy opponents, and even then the patterns in the system aren't hard to spot.

Quote from: jibbajibba;662397AI is far off, but sixty years ago did you think you would be carrying a phone in your pocket that can video, communicate across the globe to any one of several billion other handheld devices, that it could play games, operate on voice command, show you maps of your current location with your location marked thanks to GPS satelites.... all pretty amazing.

Progress as you're describing isn't the result of random advances dropping out of a magical cloud of spinning lights and colours, it's an incremental process of many small steps. If you aren't paying attention to the steps it might look like these things magicked themselves into existence, but they didn't.

What makes AI different is that we don't have anything to aim for - there is no definition of intelligence. The best anyone's come up with have been smart systems which support users in particular fields, like Google's suggestions when you search for something.

I represented this conundrum in my near future game by the invention of 'trinary' chips and languages; binary is yes-no, on-off, 1-0. Trinary is yes-no-maybe, the introduction of chaos via Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle which allows true AI to evolve.

Quote from: jibbajibba;662397And it doesn't have to be true AI it needs to appear to be true AI which is different :)

The EU handed out or is handing out a few billion to some guy to attempt just that, brute force the problem and create a simulacrum. It's been tried before and hasn't worked, and I see no particular reason why it should work this time either. The brain isn't simply a series of daisy chained xboxes.

Jibba, a computer must be programmed with choices for its random tables before it can roll on them. Since the computer cannot create its own program to run, the sandbox limitations of any computer driven game will be dictated by the number of possible choices that are within the program.

Human being are self-programmable, and thus capable of near infinite possible choices.

Therefore, a computer can run a limited sandbox. Not a true sandbox.

Quote from: jeff37923;662403Jibba, a computer must be programmed with choices for its random tables before it can roll on them. Since the computer cannot create its own program to run, the sandbox limitations of any computer driven game will be dictated by the number of possible choices that are within the program.

Human being are self-programmable, and thus capable of near infinite possible choices.

Therefore, a computer can run a limited sandbox. Not a true sandbox.

Really :)

But I can set say 10 variables with a table of 40 options per table for a total number of combined options of 40 to the 10th power, or lots to the layman, several orders of magnitude more than there are stars in the heavens (well technically 10 times more than there are stars in the Milly Way but you get the idea) :)
Close enough to infinite for a game world eh? And certainly more than there are actual regional variations on earth or different area hexes than all the RPG games of all genres that have ever been written and ever will be written ever .... probably.....

Quote from: jibbajibba;662404Really :)

But I can set say 10 variables with a table of 40 options per table for a total number of combined options of 40 to the 10th power, or lots to the layman, several orders of magnitude more than there are stars in the heavens (well technically 10 times more than there are stars in the Milly Way but you get the idea) :)
Close enough to infinite for a game world eh? And certainly more than there are actual regional variations on earth or different area hexes than all the RPG games of all genres that have ever been written and ever will be written ever .... probably.....

Still limited by what is programmed into it.

The computer cannot break the limits of its programming until it becomes self-programming like a human being.

If you would like a more concrete example for your pseudointellectualism to gnaw upon, you may compare the experience of playing a tabletop RPG with playing a single person computer game.

Quote from: jibbajibba;662404Really :)

But I can set say 10 variables with a table of 40 options per table for a total number of combined options of 40 to the 10th power, or lots to the layman, several orders of magnitude more than there are stars in the heavens (well technically 10 times more than there are stars in the Milly Way but you get the idea) :)
Close enough to infinite for a game world eh? And certainly more than there are actual regional variations on earth or different area hexes than all the RPG games of all genres that have ever been written and ever will be written ever .... probably.....

Here's (http://www.dack.com/web/bullshit.html) a hard example of three tables with 50-70 options each. Now how many times do you need to click the button before they start getting repetitive? Ten tables will take a bit longer but not that much longer. Eventually you run into the same problem, everything starts to take on a familiar feel.

As I said computers can do a decent facsimile of a sandbox which will last for a while, but they can't do a sandbox.

In your own example, if you use the system a hundred times odds are that every element of the tables has been repeated at least twice. So while the combinations might be unique every part of the combinations will have been seen twice before. It's not just a feel of familiarity, it is familiarity.

Quote from: Benoist;662204"I've been to a Mennonite barn raising or two, so I damn well know better than you do what is going on in the head of a mercenary chasing dragons in some elf game!"

Siege towers don't build themselves.

You've backpedalled nicely with the whole "immersion doesn't mean, y'know, immersion-immersion" explanation, but what you're really saying is that every RPG is Dream Park.  You're not playing a character; you're just playing yourself in some kind of soi-disant theme park version of a fantasy world.  Look too closely and you realize the castles are all wooden facades and the hobgoblins are surly teenagers wearing paper-mache heads.

Quote from: The Traveller;662407Here's (http://www.dack.com/web/bullshit.html) a hard example of three tables with 50-70 options each. Now how many times do you need to click the button before they start getting repetitive? Ten tables will take a bit longer but not that much longer. Eventually you run into the same problem, everything starts to take on a familiar feel.

As I said computers can do a decent facsimile of a sandbox which will last for a while, but they can't do a sandbox.

In your own example, if you use the system a hundred times odds are that every element of the tables has been repeated at least twice. So while the combinations might be unique every part of the combinations will have been seen twice before. It's not just a feel of familiarity, it is familiarity.

Dude, if I divided the whole planet Earth into 1km squares I woudl have 500 million of them... I guarantee that more than a few of them would be pretty much the same that's not familiarity that's geography :)

I have said my piece look up using computer algorithms to generate random maps or planetary constructs or what not. Plenty of examples,

I generated lots of Traveller star systems using 2d6 and a set of tables I figure its not to hard to move that to maps and a computer.
I might take this topic to the design forum and walk through how I would approach world building like this if I decide not to go out for a beer.

Quote from: jibbajibba;662414Dude, if I divided the whole planet Earth into 1km squares I woudl have 500 million of them... I guarantee that more than a few of them would be pretty much the same that's not familiarity that's geography :)

...and there's more to a sandbox than geography. If all anyone wanted was a list of terrain features and weather, repetition comes with the territory. But of course people want interesting and unique or at least unusual things to do and see, and possibly kill, which is where the imagination comes in. Something notably lacking in computers, which is my entire point. A GM, even one using tables as idea seeds, will still adjust the expanding sandbox in ways no computer can mimic.

Quote from: The Traveller;662415...and there's more to a sandbox than geography. If all anyone wanted was a list of terrain features and weather, repetition comes with the territory. But of course people want interesting and unique or at least unusual things to do and see, and possibly kill, which is where the imagination comes in. Something notably lacking in computers, which is my entire point. A GM, even one using tables as idea seeds, will still adjust the expanding sandbox in ways no computer can mimic.

So you conceed the geography?

I think you can do exactly the same thing with cultural groups extrapolating from the geogrpahy and climate you could generate human cultures from a random algorithm likewise you could add monsters from random monster generators, not such an original idea after all.
Sure the outcime would be limited by the imagination you put into those tables but since ones you make up are limited by your imagination anyway .....

that you run the who world through a historical events generation package with some algorithm to mirror response to events and interation between cultures let the thing run through a 10000 years of history and I think that would be pretty good. Ruins, lost civilisations, old roads overgrown by forest, cultures that lived underground but perished to unknown forces, ancient technology lost to the past.

Remember your moster tables can be far more complex and larger than 20 monsters in a single matrix by vegetaton type. Shit you could tie a random monster generator into the package and have it populate the randomised world (the word in compter games is Procedurally generated apparently) with randomised monsters, classic monsters and every variant in between....

Would be awesome.

I would think computers would be great at modelling stuff like geography (better than most GMs even if theprigram is good). But i would think where they probably break down in keeping the setting engaging. I can totally see jibba's point that you could plug in key patterns based on anthropology and get soe blieveable culture entries. What might be missing are two things: the exceptions and odd combos that make stuff interesting (though i imagine you could also program something to have a 20 percent exceptoin rate or something) and the ability to run believable npcs and independant monsters. Whenever i play an online multiplayer game, this seems to be a key area where computer games havent caught up with D&D. It still doesnt quite feel like a living world (though i must admit they have gotten considerably better over the years).however the best computer rpg i ever played was Darklands and that came out years ago (that may be nostalgia though).

But this feels like a seperate issue from how sandboxes are thought of and defined among table top roleplayers.

Quote from: The Traveller;662415...and there's more to a sandbox than geography. If all anyone wanted was a list of terrain features and weather, repetition comes with the territory. But of course people want interesting and unique or at least unusual things to do and see, and possibly kill, which is where the imagination comes in. Something notably lacking in computers, which is my entire point. A GM, even one using tables as idea seeds, will still adjust the expanding sandbox in ways no computer can mimic.

The whole point of a sandbox to me is both that it is "endless" in that you do not hit a border on the map that limits where you can go, but that there is no limit on what you can try to do. A good human sandbox GM can handle anything his players try to do, even if it is something he never thought of (let alone planned in advance for) and even if it is not covered in his "programming" (the written rules and procedures in the rule books).

A computer GM even of a good sandbox CRPG (like one of the better Elder Scrolls games) limits what the players can try to do to what is in its programming. It does not have anything like the ability of even a poor human GM to handle unusual player decisions and plans.  This is why I don't play CRPGs -- so many limitations on what I can do that I'm usually both annoyed and bored within an hour of starting to play.

Perhaps someday AI will have advanced to the point that a sandbox CRPG game will be indistinguishable to me from a sandbox tabletop RPG ran by a good GM, but given that I'm 55 I doubt this will happen in my lifetime.

Quote from: jibbajibba;662417So you conceed the geography?

How do you mean concede, if you were arguing that sandboxes are just geography you weren't having the same conversation I was.

Quote from: jibbajibba;662417I think you can do exactly the same thing with cultural groups extrapolating from the geogrpahy and climate you could generate human cultures from a random algorithm likewise you could add monsters from random monster generators, not such an original idea after all.
Sure the outcime would be limited by the imagination you put into those tables but since ones you make up are limited by your imagination anyway .....

that you run the who world through a historical events generation package with some algorithm to mirror response to events and interation between cultures let the thing run through a 10000 years of history and I think that would be pretty good. Ruins, lost civilisations, old roads overgrown by forest, cultures that lived underground but perished to unknown forces, ancient technology lost to the past.

Remember your moster tables can be far more complex and larger than 20 monsters in a single matrix by vegetaton type. Shit you could tie a random monster generator into the package and have it populate the randomised world (the word in compter games is Procedurally generated apparently) with randomised monsters, classic monsters and every variant in between....

Would be awesome.

So let me see if I understand this - you'd take a description like "a castle on two rivers with periodic rain occupied by a hundred orcs with the clap" and just play it straight as is? No offence but that sounds like it would get pretty tedious before too long.

Also there's a pretty good world generator here (http://donjon.bin.sh/fantasy/world/), along with adventure generators and all sorts of stuff. Your idea would take it up a notch but I'd do a bit of research to make sure someone else hasn't done it first if you were thinking of seriously pursuing it.

Quote from: daniel_ream;662410Siege towers don't build themselves.

You've backpedalled nicely with the whole "immersion doesn't mean, y'know, immersion-immersion" explanation, but what you're really saying is that every RPG is Dream Park.  You're not playing a character; you're just playing yourself in some kind of soi-disant theme park version of a fantasy world.  Look too closely and you realize the castles are all wooden facades and the hobgoblins are surly teenagers wearing paper-mache heads.

I could see it being a problem if you are playing and know how long it takes to build a seige tower, and the GM doesn't - if that comes up. If players aren't just ignorant of details, but don't know that they're ignorant of them, it couldn't form any sort of barrier to their immersion.

Quote from: Bloody Stupid Johnson;662429I could see it being a problem if you are playing and know how long it takes to build a seige tower, and the GM doesn't - if that comes up. If players aren't just ignorant of details, but don't know that they're ignorant of them, it couldn't form any sort of barrier to their immersion.

This is my experience. If you have a player at the table who happens to know a lot bout a given subject, then he may expect more details than the gm or system can honestly provide, but usually the four or five other players dont want that level of detail or realism. I think with any immersive entertainment you find things break down if you look too closely (most movie plots have holes if you think about them, many forms of entertainment routinelyviolate the laws of physics, most video games have a point where you simplyvcant interact with the setting, etc). When I play an rpg, I am looking for an experience where it feels real in the moment, and I am not too worried if later that day, when I think about it, i realize there was a realism or consistency issue.

Quote from: jibbajibba;662414I generated lots of Traveller star systems using 2d6 and a set of tables I figure its not to hard to move that to maps and a computer.

You're right, it isn't. What is hard and the key to a successful sandbox is not the numbers themselves, but the interpretation of them. Any Traveller Referee worth a shit knows this.

Quote from: daniel_ream;662410Siege towers don't build themselves.

Because barn raising tells you everything you need to know about siege engineering. Seriously? Who's being the pompous ass making projections and believing there's some sort of close 1:1 translation that because he's handled some beams and hammered nails in them with some (pacifist) Mennonite buddies, that makes him an expert on what a mercenary must feel on the battlefield?

You know, the very thing you were bitching about in the first place, those hipsters who know fuck all about what they're talking about and believe they're experts:

Quote from: daniel_ream;662034My experience with engineering, classical/medieval history and experimental archaeology is that most moderns couldn't think like the average Dark Ages mercenary if their lives depended on it.

Oh. That's right. YOU would be that guy here on this thread right now, dude.

A hipster thinking he's some kind of expert bitching about other hipsters thinking they're experts. Hm.

Quote from: daniel_ream;662410You've backpedalled nicely

I haven't backpedalled, since I never made the claim you'd like to assign to me. I said pretty much the opposite:

Quote from: Benoist;662210I personally know that working on wooden toys in Santa's workshop and reading books about General Robert E. Lee wouldn't get me much closer to understanding what a Confederate soldier felt like actually fighting at Gettysburg. But the game isn't about "realism" to me. It's about let's pretend, and about suspension of disbelief.

What I did was refute your reformulation of something you evidently have a problem with (immersion) to suit your own pre-made conclusions, which in this case was a silly made-up equivalence between immersion and 1:1 realism of your character.

You've made a strawman argument doubled with a "No True Scotman" take you'd easily bash thereof, but the problem is, (1) no one but yourself made that equivalence, and (2) you come off as the only one here claiming he's somehow an expert on siege engineering for having raised a couple of barns.

Give me a break.

Quote from: daniel_ream;662410with the whole "immersion doesn't mean, y'know, immersion-immersion" explanation, but what you're really saying is that every RPG is Dream Park.  You're not playing a character; you're just playing yourself in some kind of soi-disant theme park version of a fantasy world.  Look too closely and you realize the castles are all wooden facades and the hobgoblins are surly teenagers wearing paper-mache heads.

You know, if you look hard enough at any game table you're playing, you will catch a glimpse of a real life and blood GM behind the screen.

Who's the guy building "No True Scotsman" definitions of "immersion-immersion" out of thin air again? Oh right. That'd be you.

And yeah, you can role play yourself in outlandish situations, or nearly not yourself at all (there's always IME a part of oneself at play in a character, no matter how different it is from the real you on the character sheet), or anything in between.

Whether one is in effect playing an entirely realistic alter ego has nothing to do with immersion, which is the mental act of seeing yourself as your character (your character being you, a shade of you, or almost not you in the game) in the imaginary world depicted by the game.

What DOES aid immersion, as I previously mentioned, is the believability of the game milieu, as expressed here:

Quote from: Benoist;662210Let's pretend and suspension of disbelief are aided by the believability of the game milieu. Different gamers will have different thresholds in that regard: some will need more believable elements than others to in effect pretend and suspend disbelief, while the nature of these elements, what "feels believable" in fact, will also vary from gamer to gamer. On Thud and Blunder (http://www.sfwa.org/2005/01/on-thud-and-blunder/) reads to me like a column discussing what feels believable and what the value of a minimum of thinking and research are to the believability of a fantasy setting. And I wholeheartedly agree with that.

You'll excuse me, but I'm tired of arguing with people who do not read posts or if they do, either imagine stuff people said they actually never said, or rewrite/ignore whatever is actually written to suit their own arguments, and are being smug hypocrites bitching about shit they are themselves doing in the process, as you just did pretending you're an expert about what mercenaries must feel like on a battlefield because you've done some computing, read a bunch of books and hammered a couple of nails in a barn with some pacifists some day.

I'll go back to work, if you don't mind.

Quote from: Bloody Stupid Johnson;662429I could see it being a problem if you are playing and know how long it takes to build a seige tower, and the GM doesn't - if that comes up. If players aren't just ignorant of details, but don't know that they're ignorant of them, it couldn't form any sort of barrier to their immersion.

Yes. The problem is expectations. It's not about objective reality, but about one's subjective expectations of what would be believable or not. It doesn't matter if a guy raising a Mennonite barn actually became after that experience an expert in the field of medieval siege engineering. What matters is that this particular guy might believe so to some extent, and that affects what he is going to expect as being "realistic" or not in the game, i.e. what he's going to believe or not, what's going to aid him to immerse in the situation of the game, or on the contrary impede it.

Quote from: daniel_ream;662410Siege towers don't build themselves.

You've backpedalled nicely with the whole "immersion doesn't mean, y'know, immersion-immersion" explanation, but what you're really saying is that every RPG is Dream Park.  You're not playing a character; you're just playing yourself in some kind of soi-disant theme park version of a fantasy world.  Look too closely and you realize the castles are all wooden facades and the hobgoblins are surly teenagers wearing paper-mache heads.

Great post!

Its one of those things that should be written in a wall for everyone to remember that, no matter how hard you aim for immersion or realism or simulation or consistency or whatever, in the end its just a game of make-believe on a stage decorated with fake trees. So, yeah, don't take it too seriously. :)

Silva, you of all people should know that we do not take you seriously.

Quote from: jibbajibba;662397If you define your sandbox as a standard M class planet . . .

You know that "M-class planet" is made-up Star Trek technobabble, right?

Quote from: Black Vulmea;662465You know that "M-class planet" is made-up Star Trek technobabble, right?

Don't confuse him with facts! It'll hurt his brain!

Here's a thread discussing some made-up gaming technobabble and we get two geniuses.... :o

Quote from: jeff37923;662470

Quote from: Black Vulmea;662465You know that "M-class planet" is made-up Star Trek technobabble, right?

Don't confuse him with facts! It'll hurt his brain!

This amuses me.

Quote from: Bedrock Brendanhowever the best computer rpg i ever played was Darklands and that came out years ago (that may be nostalgia though)

Yeah, Darklands is awesome. I think a remake would give a great kickstarter project. But while it’s a very "open-ended" game, its sandbox quality has fallen behind the wave a bit though.

Perhaps Ironically, the videogames nowadays that I would call the "state of the art" on sandboxes are not even RPGs, but strategy/sims or genre-hybrids. That’s because most RPGs still rely on heavily scripted-entities and events, while the top sandbox games rely on simulated-entities and events. So, for eg: while on Dragon Age (a pure RPG) the world entities are pretty "static" while youre out and just come to life when you approaches them, in a game like Stalker (a FPS/RPG hybrid) or Crusader Kings 2 (a grand strategy/Sim hybrid) the entities are pretty "alive" roaming the world on their own accord to fulfill their agendas and needs, and even provoking changes in the world just as the player would.

I find that weird, because the crpg genre in my mind should be the one which most invest in "alive" worlds. But sadly, it keeps giving more importance to tell a story than to provide a alive experience.

QuoteWhenever i play an online multiplayer game, this seems to be a key area where computer games havent caught up with D&D. It still doesnt quite feel like a living world (though i must admit they have gotten considerably better over the years)

I think MMOs are the worst place to find a good sandbox or "liveable" experience, because their entities tend to be there just to fill shallow complementary roles (store owners, quest givers, monsters, bosses, etc) to the actual players.

Quote from: silva;662529I think MMOs are the worst place to find a good sandbox or "liveable" experience, because their entities tend to be there just to fill shallow complementary roles (store owners, quest givers, monsters, bosses, etc) to the actual players.

Then please tell us why you have been claiming that Grand Theft Auto is a sandbox.

Between other things, because entities in GTA have the potential to change and evolve based on the player interactions with the environment, be it in regard to the very protagonist (through degrees of relationship - positive or negative), or regardless of him.

While CPU entities in MMOs are pretty much static - whatever the changes the player causes to the environment, they rarely change. I think the reason for that is the underlying premise of most MMOs - that its the players who should provide all changes to the environment directly, not the AI. Regardless of the reason though, the outcome is a world that feels pretty artificial, except if all players strive to make it "alive" consciously (as is the case in some "roleplaying servers"), which is rarely the case, really.

EDIT: only MMO I know of that came close to being a true sandbox was EVE Online, even then only regarding its economical aspect, that was really deep and well developed.

Quote from: silva;662537Between other things, because entities in GTA have the potential to change and evolve based on the player interactions with the environment, be it in regard to the very protagonist (through degrees of relationship - positive or negative), or regardless of him.

While CPU entities in MMOs are pretty much static - whatever the changes the player causes to the environment, they rarely change. I think the reason for that is the underlying premise of most MMOs - that its the players who should provide all changes to the environment directly, not the AI. Regardless of the reason though, the outcome is a world that feels pretty artificial, except if all players strive to make it "alive" consciously (as is the case in some "roleplaying servers"), which is rarely the case, really.

Could you please repeat this in english. I can't figure out what you are trying to say in that first paragraph.

Oops. sorry Im not a native. :D

Try this: Entities in GTA have the potential to change or evolve based on the player interactions with the environment. This change may be in relation to the very player (through degrees of relationship - positive or negative), or not. While MMOs lack these.


OBS: I think its important to note that, the sandbox potential for implementation is always evolving, specially on the computer environment. So, what we called a great sandbox yesterday (Darklands) could be a weak sandbox by nowadays standards and computational capabilities. Even GTA lacks more advanced things seen more recently in games like Crusader Kings 2, Dwarf Fortress, Stalker, Minecraft, etc.

OK, but it is still limited by what the computer game has been programmed with. Although it is closer than what you were saying earlier when you talked about direct Player input as to how the narrative would change, because in a computer game like GTA the only way you can interact is through your character.

Quote from: The Traveller;662378Apparently not, I think in fact that one of the forum regulars, estar, had a hand in the original coining of the phrase. The misinterpretation of it being a children's play area came later.

Huh. I think I'll put this in the "misheard lyrics that I like better than the real lyrics" file, since playing in a sandbox makes more sense to me as an analogy for RPGs.

Quote from: jibbajibba;662417So you conceed the geography?

I think you can do exactly the same thing with cultural groups extrapolating from the geogrpahy and climate you could generate human cultures from a random algorithm likewise you could add monsters from random monster generators, not such an original idea after all.
Sure the outcime would be limited by the imagination you put into those tables but since ones you make up are limited by your imagination anyway .....

that you run the who world through a historical events generation package with some algorithm to mirror response to events and interation between cultures let the thing run through a 10000 years of history and I think that would be pretty good. Ruins, lost civilisations, old roads overgrown by forest, cultures that lived underground but perished to unknown forces, ancient technology lost to the past.

Remember your moster tables can be far more complex and larger than 20 monsters in a single matrix by vegetaton type. Shit you could tie a random monster generator into the package and have it populate the randomised world (the word in compter games is Procedurally generated apparently) with randomised monsters, classic monsters and every variant in between....

Would be awesome.

A setting isn't a sandbox. Any setting can be used to run a sandbox game, or a railroad, or a story, or a competition, or a beer and pretzels one off (though some settings are easier to run in some styles than others).

A sandbox game is a verb, not a noun. It's what happens when the players' imaginations, the setting, and the GM's imagination interact. It's fundamentally about creativity, imagination, and improvisation IMO; sandbox play for me is "how the heck do I respond in a manner that makes sense given the setting to what the players just decided to do".

Flipping through Dungeon World here, I think it missed something thats really cool about Apocalypse World: the way each item, name, lookout, and puntuation in the character sheet serve the purpose of communicating the setting in a effective and evocative way.

If all possible Paladin names are just 4, and all are bland / generic ones, whats the point ?