Quote from: Omega;943758So the DM is just a vend-bot for the players egos. oh-fucking-yay.

Boy oh boy, I have no idea how you got that out of what you quoted.

Me too.

Honestly, how does one read estar's post and conclude from his words "So the DM is just a vend-bot for the players egos..."?

There's nothing there making that connection unless one is willfully missing everything estar took the time to explain in his second post.

Quote from: Gronan of Simmerya;943773Boy oh boy, I have no idea how you got that out of what you quoted.

The way he worded it came off as a bit too "The DM is only there to serve the players whims." vibe.

Quote from: Omega;943929The way he worded it came off as a bit too "The DM is only there to serve the players whims." vibe.

Quote from: Voros;943661My question is where the term originated.

I always thought Sandbox came from war gaming with lead minis. You set up a table, built a shallow box to sit on said table, then filled it full of sand. You could then sculpt the sand to create the basic battlefield, before adding scenery, buildings, ect. You played the battle, or a series of battles (i.e. a campaign) re-sculpting the sand and resetting new scenery as required.

Quote from: Weru;944423I always thought Sandbox came from war gaming with lead minis. You set up a table, built a shallow box to sit on said table, then filled it full of sand. You could then sculpt the sand to create the basic battlefield, before adding scenery, buildings, ect. You played the battle, or a series of battles (i.e. a campaign) re-sculpting the sand and resetting new scenery as required.

It did but not directly. But via the use of sandbox as a common term used for 4x strategy games like civilization and the first open world first person shooters. And sandbox was applied to those games in part because of what you described above. The other part being the association it had with freeform childhood play.

Quote from: Black Vulmea;943940

You should talk. Try again.

Probably the more apt question is what degree of freeform as a DM do you, or your DM, like to use? Or what degree of freeform do you as player, or your players, prefer?

And if freeform is not liked... Why? What aspects fail?

Quote from: Omega;944480You should talk. Try again.

You've got five different posters in the thread telling you you're talking out of your ass and you come at me? Kiss my entire fucking ass and own your mistake.

Quote from: Voros;943663I've seen at least as much pretension among OSR groupies as storygamers. People love to form their tribes and point and yell at the 'other' side.

Yup.

QuoteYou narrativists are pretty, too.

So just what definition of Narrativist are we using here?

Anyone who thinks that the OSR is about "the GM following the players' whims" has clearly never played an OSR game. Certainly not one I was running!

Quote from: RPGPundit;944846Anyone who thinks that the OSR is about "the GM following the players' whims" has clearly never played an OSR game. Certainly not one I was running!

Isn't it more the players following the GM's whim?  In bad games, you know the ones you played in once and left, that seemed to be the cast.  In good games the GM was a fair referee who constructed an engaging world/adventure at let you have at it; and when everyone acts like reasonable mature humans, plenty of give and take / negotiation to cover things outside the "rules."

Quote from: PrometheanVigil;941331If your PCs are in an undercroft and there are undead about, do you enable them to try and sneak past from above via hanging beams or, say, have weak walls that they can break through to circumvent areas with concentrated undead?
Just an example.

So late to the thread but is this a serious question?  I never choose what will happen to intentionally circumvent or allow a player course of action.  If there is not enough information from before the player decision; then to prevent me from being biased I will assign a random chance to it being one way or another and roll (secretly).  Here is where players may negotiate for what they think odds are and if there is any luck point type thing they are asked to spend it now.  After the secret roll if the players come up with some test or have some expertise they could get to know the secret roll.  

I think the difficulty GMs have, even in a simple situation like this, is they lack much real world knowledge that would let them have an idea of the odds or if things are possible.  I always found this maddening back in the day; especially with anything involving the outdoors or physical ability or experience with animals.

For example I've climbed across the beams in a barn, in an older barns it's easy as they are wide.  Breaking through a wall, if you've done any remodeling or demolition that's an easy call as well.  It will depend immensely on what the barn walls are made of, how old it is, etc.  There are  also a lot of openings in barn walls for things like feed, shit, ventilation all sorts of stuff.  

When in doubt these days one can use the internet.