Quote from: John Morrow;382828I don't think that's entirely true and there is plenty of evidence of people running stories as soon as role-playing spread to a wider audience.

Your MA 'exhibit' consists of an example of a PC and NPC having a relationship and players running NPCs on behalf of the referee, and "storytelling" in the DF article is at its most extreme a metaplot and at its most common, in my experience, the sort on content one finds riddled through status quo, 'sandbox-y' settings.

I think you're really reaching more than a bit here.

As far as the Traveller 'exhibits' go, I agree that MWM tended to publish very linear adventures, The Traveller Adventure being among the worst of these, but GDW also published Leviathan, about as 'sandbox-y' a published adventure as one is likely to find.

Quote from: estar;383162I played GURPS for 20 years before taking up Swords & Wizardry. However I pretty much ran a sandbox regardless of the ruleset I used.  Which so far as been AD&D 1e, Fantasy Hero 1st, Harnmaster 1st, GURPS 2nd, GURPS 3rd, GURPS 4th, D&D 3.0, D&D 4.0 and now Swords & Wizardry.

I suppose by writing "some of the 'old school' pundits" I opened up the possibility that I was referring vaguely to everyone who associates themselves with "old school", but really I was just saying that James isn't the only one.

In other words, not pointing the finger at you, Rob.

And to shift gears: TCO, people have opinions, deal with it.

Quote from: Elliot Wilen;383179And to shift gears: TCO, people have opinions, deal with it.

You're putting too much stock into my aggression and miss what I'm saying.

I hear a lot of "Old Schoolers" acting all shocked when somebody accuses them of calling something "badwrongfun" or taking offense to their statements. All I'm saying is that this is what happens when you directly or indirectly comment on how somebody else plays a game. I could care less what people say, but trying to act all innocent about it rubs me the wrong way. That and the fact that "X isn't D&D" is a much more inflammatory statement than "X sucks" or "I prefer Y to X", and there is a strong undercurrent among the OGL community of "X isn't D&D".

Quote from: John Morrow;383125No, I'm talking about the people who show up reliably every week, don't complain very much, roll what they are supposed to roll, respond to the GM, say what their character is doing when needed, respond to NPCs, and may even offer suggestions during group discussions about what to do from tie to time but who don't have any interest in setting the goals for the group or finding a story to pursue in the setting and don't mind being given missions and otherwise being led along by NPCs and other PCs.  Almost every group I've played with has had one or two of these people.

I know I do. Doesn't mean they're boring, or anti-social. They talk a lot. And have a lot of fun playing. But setting goals and making plans isn't in their makeup. They just go with the flow. Doesn't really matter to them if it's another player or the DM steering the boat.

Quote from: thecasualoblivion;383180You're putting too much stock into my aggression and miss what I'm saying.

Well, first you overreacted to simple disagreement, so it's hard to say where your argument begins and ends.

Then you demonstrated that you don't know what "passive aggressive" means, so it's difficult to tell if what you write is actually indicative of what you're trying to communicate.

Finally, you habitually use the word "orthodoxy" as shorthand for "if my statements are disregarded or shown to be false, it's evidence of a deceitful conspiracy to suppress The Truth".

If you feel people don't understand you, try communicating more clearly and consistently without resorting to paranoia as justification for faulty reasoning.

Quote from: Elliot Wilen;383179I suppose by writing "some of the 'old school' pundits" I opened up the possibility that I was referring vaguely to everyone who associates themselves with "old school", but really I was just saying that James isn't the only one.

In other words, not pointing the finger at you, Rob.

Didn't mean to sound/write defensive I was thinking more about the questions about my experiences and so wrote that.

As for Old School Pundits in general I think most of them including James do good work in uncovering the roots of the hobby. We may not always agree with their conclusions but most especially James put out the "raw data", so to speak, so people can draw their own conclusion if they don't agree with with the pundits.

TCO is spot on when he says there is an undercurrent from a lot of people that basically goes what you are playing is not D&D. Anyone who can't see that in comments round here is being pretty blinkered.

You get it from both sides 4e fans saying that their version of game is the current version and all else is irrelevant because the game people play is the one that matters. And OD&D fans saying that all versions since '76 have been polluted with a mix of narrativism, min/maxing and PC as a special snowflake-ism.

Personally... I would say ... bollocks.

Play the game you want to play. Anyone on this site could write their own RPG that would be as good as anything you could buy provided they listen to their players and dump the stuff that doesn't work and reinforce the stuff that is good. Just cos this play style or that play style or that rule system or this rule system was once touched by the hem of Gygax's cloak or has been rated best rule system evar by the PRG writer's guild of America or has shifted 3,000,000 copies in a week doesn't make them any better than something you knock up yourself and refine through actual play.

Back the OP. Personally I am not keen on sandboxes. As a DM I find them too much work as a player I find they don't lead to interesting stories.. Yes that's right stories. I get bored with sandbox environments as a player because I want to feel like there is an arc here that the story I am involved with is going somewhere has some resolution. I gave up on MMOs because you wander about killing increasingly tough things and taking their stuff, true sandbox play. I want intrigue I want player driven plots I want plot hooks linked back to that NPC I mentioned in my character background, I want to be a special fucking snowflake.

Heresy I hear them cry... in fact if I look out of the window I can see the villagers heading this way with their pitchforks and torches.

Quote from: jibbajibba;383207Back the OP. Personally I am not keen on sandboxes. As a DM I find them too much work

That what I mainly work on. Showing folks that it is not any harder to prep for and some techniques to make it easier.

Quote from: jibbajibba;383207as a player I find they don't lead to interesting stories.. Yes that's right stories. I get bored with sandbox environments as a player because I want to feel like there is an arc here that the story I am involved with is going somewhere has some resolution. I gave up on MMOs because you wander about killing increasingly tough things and taking their stuff, true sandbox play. I want intrigue I want player driven plots I want plot hooks linked back to that NPC I mentioned in my character background, I want to be a special fucking snowflake.

Sandboxes can have plots it just set up differently. Rather being a choice of adventures the "plot" unfolds around the character through the events of the campaign. It is up to the players to interact with these events and resolve them however they like.

Plus a lot of discussion about sandboxes miss the idea that the players need context to make meaningful decision. A great way to provide that context is in character backgrounds. A well designed sandbox campaign will use a character's background to a far greater extent than a normal campaign.

What sandbox, as a RPG term, started out as is way of explaining how to use the Wilderlands Boxed Set. Many of use who ran campaign with the original wilderlands found that the lists of locales used by the original made it easy to referee players when they decided to left instead of right while traveling in a setting.  We realized that original one line stat block was perhaps too terse and that a one or two paragraph expansion was about right in giving the referee something to go on yet allowing him to exercise his creativity.

But we said nothing about the contents of the locales. You can construct things so that they all building on each other to some predetermined event or locale. For example you create a sandbox setting where pieces of a plot where the world is about to be invaded by Slaads are scattered across the locale. Or you could go and make a ultra-realistic setting that plays like a slice of life in medieval europe.

The more I read these sandbox thread and more I think people are reading too much into the term. It is a format and a method of organizing your campaign. What the campaign is about still remains the same range of possibilities as before.

Finally Paizo's Kingmaker is a good example of a Sandbox with a goal (two actually). One is the PCs building a kingdom in the Stolen Lands and the other is a larger plot dealing with a threat to the region as a whole that the players stumble across through investigating the various locales.

Quote from: EstarSandboxes can have plots it just set up differently. Rather being a choice of adventures the "plot" unfolds around the character through the events of the campaign. It is up to the players to interact with these events and resolve them however they like.

I always use the term, "World In Motion" to describe this.  A goal of a good GM in this type of game is to provide a feeling that events are happening with or without the PCs, that there is a natural cause and effect going on, and that the PCs CAN change the course of events but if they do nothing, things will continue to move on.

Often this also means providing the PCs with more information than simple plot hooks.  It is vital to have things happenning around the PCs that contribute to the feel that they are in a live, moving world.

It also means giving them more choices.

You see , as I have espoused in the past, I use a technique called making shit up.

I start my making up some stuff then I enrich that with some more stuff I basically make up. Where possible I use the backgrounds that the players have written for their PCs however brief or complete because it adds to the illusion of texture.

I then tack a plot onto everything else and drive it with some NPCs (who I might stat but probably not fully, well not until it looks like the PCs might meet them).

Now I used to do this without thinking now I do it and try to make sure its not a railroad as I noticed a definite tendency to come back to things I had thought of because they were cool rather than allowing the PCs to drive their own conclusions.

Quote from: jrients;382994I don't.  I consider the sandbox as one of several useful bits that got applied to many different games by many different ways.  The old school scene tends to underline the sandbox because it is one of the techniques from the early history of the hobby that nearly went the way of the dodo, at least in terms of public discussion of the game.  Taking the sandbox more seriously than that seems to me like an ill-advised step towards ritualistic observation rather than an artistic choice.

Yes to both. It is an approach to create a creative and enjoyable campaign, which may seem like a breath of fresh air to many in its platonic (hexcrawl-style) form. It is a way to play the game.

Ironically, this thread is full of arguments appealing to popularity and history, and it is mostly coming from the people who wish to deligitimise sandbox campaigns for their own particular reasons.

Quote from: jibbajibba;383239You see , as I have espoused in the past, I use a technique called making shit up.

Yes that nice, but some folks appreciate learning more specific techniques to help them make shit up.

Quote from: Kyle Aaron;383115Yes. We call them "boring"...

Quote from: John Morrow;383125No, I'm talking about the people who show up reliably every week, don't complain very much, roll what they are supposed to roll, respond to the GM, say what their character is doing when needed, respond to NPCs, and may even offer suggestions during group discussions about what to do from tie to time but who don't have any interest in setting the goals for the group or finding a story to pursue in the setting and don't mind being given missions and otherwise being led along by NPCs and other PCs.  Almost every group I've played with has had one or two of these people.

The irony is that Kyle is now describing an extreme position, while excluding the middle. There may be some players as he describes, but they're quite rare and certainly don't fall under "casual gamer" as most people use the word.

Quote from: LordVreeg;383230I always use the term, "World In Motion" to describe this.  A goal of a good GM in this type of game is to provide a feeling that events are happening with or without the PCs, that there is a natural cause and effect going on, and that the PCs CAN change the course of events but if they do nothing, things will continue to move on.

Often this also means providing the PCs with more information than simple plot hooks.  It is vital to have things happenning around the PCs that contribute to the feel that they are in a live, moving world.

It also means giving them more choices.

I have nothing to add to this except +1.

Quote from: LordVreeg;383230I always use the term, "World In Motion" to describe this.  A goal of a good GM in this type of game is to provide a feeling that events are happening with or without the PCs, that there is a natural cause and effect going on, and that the PCs CAN change the course of events but if they do nothing, things will continue to move on.

Often this also means providing the PCs with more information than simple plot hooks.  It is vital to have things happenning around the PCs that contribute to the feel that they are in a live, moving world.

It also means giving them more choices.

Yes.  Amen brother.