Quote from: Elliot Wilen;627717Am kinda busy, Brian, but thank you for your write up. I agree, it's not very sandbox-y.

In general terms, I think Sword and Sorcery, Power Trips, and Dark Fantasy are best served by the Sandbox approach. While High Fantasy is basically impossible.

Quote from: Elliot Wilen;627717I do think you could have a "moral" sandbox where the overall goals and outlook of the PCs is a given, but broad strategic choices still give a lot of freedom, but your example doesn't seem to fall into that category.

If you have players willing to, you could have a 'moral' sandbox. But I've seen very few examples of that (our original one back in the 70s would count at certain points in it's lifecycle) as the format doesn't really support it.

What's missing no matter what however is the classic high fantasy overarching theme that puts things into prespective IMO. This is because the players are serving their own interests first, even if their own interest is running around being heroes.

It's a subtle but important difference.

Also to address the latest bit of brain shit to leak from Gleichman's skull* of course you can have epic quests and heavy morality in sandbox play.

It's just something the player's have to pursue.

The player's in a sandbox are fully capable of saying, "You know that big brooding evil to the east? We're taking that shit down." and off they go.

They can say, "You know how the city state keeps slaves? yeah, we're ending that."

Likewise they can also decide to profit from the Big bad Evil or become slave traders themselves, putting down revolts left and right.

Or they can die in a ditch.

*I don't expect Gliechman to understand this however as he seems to have the mental acuity of a rather dim teenager.

Now, if he had simply said that Sandboxes have a tendency towards producing amoral adventures grubbing around at the margins of the world he wouldn't get an argument from me. But Gliechman doesn't see tendencies, everything is an absolute and anyone that falls outside is stupid and immoral. Worthless to boot.

Quote from: gleichman;627587Wealth and Power. These are common sandbox goals as they are the only ones really supported by the concept. Hence why I described Sandboxes as amoral.

Except that was when my friends and I were 15, 16 year old. Now with a mature group of players the goals are as diverse as in real life and well as the reasons for pursuing them. Wealth and power are sometimes important and sometime now.

I present the circumstances the players choose how their character deal with it. Some go gung ho and get involved right away. Some ignore the events around them and pursue other goals.  And other go explore the slice of life of an element of my setting which could be a locale, a group, a culture, a religion, a neighborhood, etc.

This mainly stems from one of my few requirements for playing in my campaigns which is "Roleplay your character as if you are really there." combined with my willingness to let the players set the direction of the campaign.

And another consequence of this approach that by and large the players do the right thing. Because for the most the players don't want to live under, live with, or be responsible for folks who are demented assholes. I had players do evil and were evil assholes themselves. But it gets old quickly due to the way I run my campaigns.

Quote from: Black Vulmea;627589The wealth to build a hospital for travellers and the power of an order of knights to protect them.

Wrong again, Brian.

Just last week, the players in my present campaign decided to retire from being mercenaries and used their king's ransom to buy an inn.

Quote from: gleichman;627591He didn't say anything about what they'd use the wealth and power for, the very thought seemingly didn't even occur to him it was so unimportant.

In my very first Wilderlands campaign, one player used his wealth and power to reunited a fractured Kingdom. And another player built a wizard's tower setup as a school to train other mages.

Folks can see the scans of those notes and the map I used at this post



The movie Excalibur was the inspiration as this was before Game of the Thrones. The part about one land, one king along with the king and land are one.

So anything else you would like to tell me about the games I ran back then?

Quote from: estar;627730So anything else you would like to tell me about the games I ran back then?

You told me enough when you left out that information in your original post.

And if you've been following my conversation with LordVreeg you'd know that I really don't care all that much about what they do after they've started playing (each individual plot hook). I'm concerned with their ability to walk away from things without consequence.

Quote from: gleichman;627591He didn't say anything about what they'd use the wealth and power for, the very thought seemingly didn't even occur to him it was so unimportant.

In my very first Wilderlands campaign, one player used his wealth and power to reunited a fractured Kingdom. And another player built a wizard's tower setup as a school to train other mages.

Folks can see the scans of those notes and the map I used at this post


The movie Excalibur was the inspiration as this was before Game of the Thrones.

So anything else you would like to tell me about the games I ran back then?

What is with this fixation on consequences in the sandbox?

If the players walk away from a plot hook, there *should* be consequences. The players learned about an evil awakening in Barovia earlier in the campaign, when a distant patron begged for help; they took their sweet ass time getting there, and the situation was much worse when they finally arrived 6 months later.  A sandbox area doesn't go into stasis if a plot hook is ignored; there is no guarantee the road not taken is even there.  Why shouldn't ignoring a wealthy patron or the edict of a local ruler cause social problems and complications?  It does in the real world.

Reasonable (and foreseeable) problems that arise by ignoring game events does not equal a railroad.

Quote from: Beedo;627743Reasonable (and foreseeable) problems that arise by ignoring game events does not equal a railroad.

Exactly.

Quote from: Beedo;627743If the players walk away from a plot hook, there *should* be consequences. The players learned about an evil awakening in Barovia earlier in the campaign, when a distant patron begged for help; they took their sweet ass time getting there, and the situation was much worse when they finally arrived 6 months later.  

Two questions.

First, what would have happened if they didn't go at all?

Second, were they still able to win when they did go?

Quote from: gleichman;627745Two questions.

First, what would have happened if they didn't go at all?

Second, were they still able to win when they did go?

*win*?

Quote from: DestroyYouAlot;627663Should we start calling this hypothetical beast the strawbox?

Litterbox.

Aka a crappy sandbox.

Quote from: Beedo;627743Reasonable (and foreseeable) problems that arise by ignoring game events does not equal a railroad.

Yep.

Good to see you joining the conversation, Beedo.

Quote from: LordVreeg;627597I have a lot of overarching storlyines, and games that have lasted for over a decade, where the characters find goals and motivations, get married, have children, establish themselves in guilds and in politics, where some PCs have more experience in their social skills than in their HP.

I envy you, something about the way I referee my campaigns makes the player want to play each and every damn day. In my current campaign, I just now got them to consent, after 16 sessions, to fast forward six days while they waited for somebody armor to get finished.

And it is not the first campaign that this happened. Although the present campaign is notable that at several point that between five characters there was stuff happening throughout all 24 hours of the game day. I could not say no because none of it unreasonable. Their collective actions meant we were lucky to get one or two game day out of a single session.

Right now I am in day 45 of the campaign after 20 sessions.

Quote from: gleichman;627732You told me enough when you left out that information in your original post.

And if you've been following my conversation with LordVreeg you'd know that I really don't care all that much about what they do after they've started playing (each individual plot hook). I'm concerned with their ability to walk away from things without consequence.

yep You'd see...

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

The problem with that is that it reduces any and all possible events in the Sandbox to something trivial. "

he has set it up in his own little head that free choice of the PCs equates to an automatic reduction of all possible goals and events in that game to the trivial.

Of course there are effects and ramificatrions for every player decision.
"The players are free to go where they will and do as they will, and the world reacts accordingly. But the longer a big sandbox goes the more the players have to deal with the consequences of their own actions."  Every single decision the PCs make can have ramifications down the road, event chains that they can intercede with again or not, and deal with the results of that decision.

Centrally, that is part of the art of being a GM.  Creating a natural cause and effect within the setting that the players resopnd to from as immersed a position as you can create through the within-setting logic.