Without a guiding hand to weave the random rolls together the totality of the rolls becomes silly and slapstick.

I understand what the guy is trying to accomplish, but there are ways to handle a totally random setting and this isn't it. There are interactions between the random tables in the rules - frex, the sage's chance of knowing the answer to the paladin's question offers another way to introduce random results into the campaign other than the treasure tables. He could then make up a random map to a randomly determined location filled with random monsters, based on the randomly determined existence of the holy avenger.

But what kills me about this guy's response is the idea that he'd simply say no, not unless I roll it on the treasure table, to a player who is PROACTIVELY trying to engage the game-world. Players like that are the gold standard of 'sandbox' games - why on gawds green earth would you say no to that?!

Quote from: Black Vulmea;539747I understand what the guy is trying to accomplish, but there are ways to handle a totally random setting and this isn't it. There are interactions between the random tables in the rules - frex, the sage's chance of knowing the answer to the paladin's question offers another way to introduce random results into the campaign other than the treasure tables. He could then make up a random map to a randomly determined location filled with random monsters, based on the randomly determined existence of the holy avenger.

Or the sage might have bad information, but when the party gets there, more clues.  Maybe they can follow up immediately, maybe they can't.  Maybe the sage knows how to get there, but doesn't know where to start (Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade).  Or perhaps only vague, abstract clues.  Either of those will let the players decide where to go next, as the DM only needs to determine if their ideas are clever enough.

QuoteBut what kills me about this guy's response is the idea that he'd simply say no, not unless I roll it on the treasure table, to a player who is PROACTIVELY trying to engage the game-world. Players like that are the gold standard of 'sandbox' games - why on gawds green earth would you say no to that?!

Absolutely.  Clearly this DM has no idea how to actually run a game, and a good sandbox requires far more than moderate skills at DMing.

Sigh.

This is the kind of shit that causes railroad storywankers to get up on a soapbox and "prove" how superior they are.

How does this guy think of himself as a grognard? He allows the rulebook to dictate his entire campaign with himself as nothing more than a glorified die roller and rules parser. Seems a lot like a cult of RAW DM to me.

I agree with what everyone's said. The whole point of a sandbox is for the world to feel lifelike (well, that, and to have genuinely surprising turns at the game table). If you hit an illogical boundary, like the hedges in a Zelda game, it's all gone down the drain.

Quote from: Benoist;539692The comments on that link aren't that great either, by the way: they all basically vindicate the guy in his belief that there is a line somewhere where if you're not rolling the dice you stopped sandboxing.

This is why I don't have a blog. I'd rather have people disagreeing with me when I'm wrong, even if I get called a loser or a pig fucker every now and then, than a happy echo chamber. Not all blogs are like this, of course, but I don't think I'm brilliant enough to attract a large and diverse following like some of the most successful OSR blog auteurs.

Quote from: Black Vulmea;539747I understand what the guy is trying to accomplish, but there are ways to handle a totally random setting and this isn't it.

I want to point out that sandbox hexcrawls are not random in the way the guy is eluding too. Random tables are one way, out of many, to creatively come up with with I call the "Bag of Stuff" you need to successfully run a sandbox. They are mean to be used in conjunction with a referee reasoned judgement not supplant it or used as the primary tool.

The Bag of Stuff is what I call the mass of little details, including NPCs, that a referee uses to generate content on the fly or flesh out general descriptions. By developing a large Bag of Stuff, the referee of a sandbox can greatly lower the amount of prep they need to do for a session. Sometimes to virtually nothing if this is a setting they used in prior campaigns.

Quote from: The Butcher;539899This is why I don't have a blog.

Pigfucking loser.


C'mon, SOMEBODY was gonna say it eventually.

Quote from: estar;539906I want to point out that sandbox hexcrawls are not random in the way the guy is eluding too. Random tables are one way, out of many, to creatively come up with with I call the "Bag of Stuff" you need to successfully run a sandbox. They are mean to be used in conjunction with a referee reasoned judgement not supplant it or used as the primary tool.

I don't have a problem with a totally random sandbox generated using, say, the tables in the 1e AD&D. I think that's a valid approach, producing a roleplaying equivalent to something like Source of the Nile.

What I think is missing here is that the randomness doesn't seem to be used to build a game-world, however. Sure, you can generate everything randomly, but the next step is to weave the pieces into a coherent whole. It's not enough to say that there are five orcs in a room next to a naga because that's what the dice generated - the next step is to develop a rationale as to why the five orcs and the naga are next to one another.

So I don't see the random part as the problem here. It's the "seasoned judgement" that seems to be absent.

Quote from: The Butcher;539899Not all blogs are like this, of course, but I don't think I'm brilliant enough to attract a large and diverse following like some of the most successful OSR blog auteurs.

Completely and utterly orthogonal to the topic, this is one of the reasons I think most RPG communities need some kind of social software that's not a blog XOR a forum XOR a wiki, but rather a "social publishing" platform that fuses all of these things together.  Imagine one site where you can hang out in the fora and call each other pigfuckers, that also hosts your blog where the same pigfucker-callers can comment on your posts, that also hosts your campaign wiki (comments on wiki pages enabled or not as you see fit, plus access controls), has event scheduling so you can manage your play dates, groups/tribes/circles to cluster interests together, etc.

It wouldn't actually be all that hard; Drupal could do it out of the box, but damn that's an ugly and inefficient framework to deal with.  Packages like Elgg and Dolphin lack the content creation/management features. Hmmm...

Quote from: Black Vulmea;539948Pigfucking loser.


C'mon, SOMEBODY was gonna say it eventually.

Yeah well, I should've seen it from a mile away, shouldn't I?

Quote from: daniel_ream;539967Completely and utterly orthogonal to the topic, this is one of the reasons I think most RPG communities need some kind of social software that's not a blog XOR a forum XOR a wiki, but rather a "social publishing" platform that fuses all of these things together.  Imagine one site where you can hang out in the fora and call each other pigfuckers, that also hosts your blog where the same pigfucker-callers can comment on your posts, that also hosts your campaign wiki (comments on wiki pages enabled or not as you see fit, plus access controls), has event scheduling so you can manage your play dates, groups/tribes/circles to cluster interests together, etc.

It wouldn't actually be all that hard; Drupal could do it out of the box, but damn that's an ugly and inefficient framework to deal with.  Packages like Elgg and Dolphin lack the content creation/management features. Hmmm...

To the best of my understanding, G+ is kind of like that, though I've long since given up on keeping up with the beautiful madness that is Zak's giant RPG circle.

Quote from: The Butcher;540018To the best of my understanding, G+ is kind of like that

In theory, yes, but G+ ties together a bunch of entirely disparate apps that share no common code and don't really communicate with each other.  I'm thinking of something more cohesive, where you can log in and immediately see that ArchangelSlayer has updated his campaign wiki, four people have commented on your last blog post, and there are six new threads in the specific subfora you're following at the moment - and all of those things are crosslinked via a common user database and commenting functionality.

Quote from: daniel_ream;540024In theory, yes, but G+ ties together a bunch of entirely disparate apps that share no common code and don't really communicate with each other.  I'm thinking of something more cohesive, where you can log in and immediately see that ArchangelSlayer has updated his campaign wiki, four people have commented on your last blog post, and there are six new threads in the specific subfora you're following at the moment - and all of those things are crosslinked via a common user database and commenting functionality.

This could be really, really cool. Or really, really confusing. In any case I'd give it a try.

Kind of a Facebook for roleplayers...

I like sandbox but I'm not a huge fan of random encounter tables. My approach to sandbox is to offer the players plot hooks that will lead them into situations/encounters/adventures but it's up to them whether they want to bite those hooks or not. There's no overarching plot that I'm driving them towards and if they opt to ignore the hooks I offer and head off in their own direction instead, I'll accomodate that by making stuff up on the fly (or, if appropriate, feeding them into a pre-written scenario), not randomly-generated encounters.

Take my WFRP2e game that's started, f'rinstance. I've just presented The Butcher's protagonist character with a plot hook for a little mini-adventure that is designed to give him an opportunity to recruit the other PCs to help him. However, if they decide to ignore that hook and ask around to see if there's other work to be had, I'll feed them a few other rumours and gossip, some of which, if followed up, will lead into other adventure-directions that are appropriate for that group. If, on the other hand, they decide something completely random (e.g. they want to rob the Countess's jewels), I'll roll with that. The overriding rule is that they can do whatever they want . . . although, of course, there will be consequences to their actions.

I'll use randomness to decide certain things - e.g. whether or not a tavern is dwarf-friendly, whether or not a town watch patrol happens to come along while they're mugging a little old lady - but it's all very much within a context that I've created, rather than one that I've left to chance.

Quote from: Acta Est Fabula;539703Yeah, sandbox was never meant to override common sense.

D&D was never meant to override common sense.