The person running this website is a racist who publicly advocates genocidal practices.

I am deleting my content.

I recommend you do the same.

Quote from: Baulderstone;968257There would be a few, but I imagine most of the crap people argue about here in the abstract wouldn't matter if we were sitting around a table. Most of my strongly held opinions are about how I like to run a game. If I am playing in a game with another GM, I can let all my gaming principles slide if the company is good and the game moves at a reasonable pace.

People just tend to be a lot more friendly and polite in person than they are on the Internet anyway.

Internet can't punch you in the face:).

Quote from: S'mon;968434Black Vulmea is a good reminder of the truth of Aristotle's Golden Mean. There are two vices for every virtue, and even a very good thing (like sandbox campaigns!) can be turned bad when taken too far.

Except what Black Vulmea is doing isn't taking the sandbox too far. I've seen "sandbox taken too far", and it's not that;).

Quote from: Dumarest;968547Based on the vitriol, I assume you guys are being forced to play together at the same table. Otherwise why on earth do you care how someone else conducts a game? :confused:

No, they're just upset that someone on Internet is wrong:D!

Quote from: S'mon;968859This is a major major problem for me when it happens. I don't handle it very well. I had a player, a young English teacher, last year submit a backstory for a PC he'd already been playing for a year or so. It started 135 years in the past, and I think the whole thing was 60 pages - I read the first few pages then gave up.
Player: "Is that ok?"
Me: "Eh, yes?"
Turns out I'd just agreed that his PC was the true heir to a major Duchy... For the rest of the game he then kept asking me when she'd become Duchess.... It really drained my desire to keep running that campaign. I ended it last month after several years, the backstory thing still leaves a sour note.

Of course I should really have manned up and demanded a 1-page version of the backstory before I'd consider it. But he had this puppy dog devotion to his character and his work, I didn't have the heart to do what I should have.

You should have asked the 1-page version, but do so very politely and explaining that you want an abridged version instead;).

Quote from: AsenRG;968974Except what Black Vulmea is doing isn't taking the sandbox too far. I've seen "sandbox taken too far", and it's not that;).

So, there are lots of good notions for sandboxing:

PCs should be proactive, with goals. Outward looking, not introspective. Gigantic backstories are a bad thing. PCs should be active, making contacts in-game, not (generally) relying on meta-resources like 'Contact Points'. It's what the PCs do in-game that counts, not what they did before play started. Don't railroad - it's not really a sandbox if the mysterious stranger's quest is compulsory (do this or no game tonight) or effectively compulsory (do this or world ends).

Black Vulmea kinda takes all the good advice a good sandbox GM could give, and (reading him literally) turns it into a horrible pile of steaming crap, the kind of shit that has caused huge numbers of GMs to run failed sandbox games and then blame the sandbox, not the shitty advice.

Never provide adventure hooks. Never have any PC backstory or pre-existing connections to the world. People actually read this shit & think it's how a Real True Sandbox has to be. Then wonder why their game fails.

Quote from: Black Vulmea;968924But we're not talking about "actual human experience" - we're talking about playing a game, and in my (actual human) experience, interacting with npcs to develop resources and achieve goals in actual play is more fun than, 'oh, my character knows this guy I totally made up full-cloth before the game started who can help us.'


Aaaaand start to the clock for the half-wit who replies, 'But having Contact: Whatever doesn't preclude roleplaying!'

I just don't see why both can't be fun. Not everyone's cup of tea, which is fine. I like having players meet characters in game, but I also think it can add to the session if one of the players has a pre-existing connection to someone in the world and they draw on that person in a time of need. I do think it presents potential balance issues, so letting them make up a contact on the spot is usually inadvisable (and you might want to set some constraints or randomizing factors if you do include contacts). I think it particularly works on connections you would expect players to have (parents, uncles, cousins, friends, etc). And if you do give the players the ability to make contacts prior to play, the GM definitely needs to have a hand in saying what is permissible and what isn't (the old, "I just happen to be a good friend of the king" is a perennial issue).

On that point, what I find can help is a general rule of "the more useful the NPC the more trouble that comes with it" can help. So if you do want to allow your player to be the brother of the king, well maybe his wing of the family is in trouble with the crown and on the run.

Quote from: BedrockBrendan;969000I just don't see why both can't be fun. Not everyone's cup of tea, which is fine. I like having players meet characters in game, but I also think it can add to the session if one of the players has a pre-existing connection to someone in the world and they draw on that person in a time of need. I do think it presents potential balance issues, so letting them make up a contact on the spot is usually inadvisable (and you might want to set some constraints or randomizing factors if you do include contacts). I think it particularly works on connections you would expect players to have (parents, uncles, cousins, friends, etc). And if you do give the players the ability to make contacts prior to play, the GM definitely needs to have a hand in saying what is permissible and what isn't (the old, "I just happen to be a good friend of the king" is a perennial issue).

On that point, what I find can help is a general rule of "the more useful the NPC the more trouble that comes with it" can help. So if you do want to allow your player to be the brother of the king, well maybe his wing of the family is in trouble with the crown and on the run.

I think I'm definitely more in favour of "I spend a Contact Point to know this guy" (per eg Twilight: 2000) than "There's a guy in my 60 page Backstory who..."

But I think Contact Point type meta-resources are best used in more storygamer cooperative-building type RPGs, rather than when sandboxing. They can potentially hurt the sense of immersion in a virtual world that sandboxing does so well.

What I did in my new 4e Nentir Vale sandbox was have the PCs by default be relatives or retainers of the Markelhays, the biggest noble house in the campaign area. So players can have as much status as they want for their PCs short of being Markelhay & his wife; I can't be blindsided by backstories unless they invent new Feywild kingdoms etc whole-cloth for them to be the Lost Heir of.

Quote from: BedrockBrendan;969000I just don't see why both can't be fun. Not everyone's cup of tea, which is fine.

This is where I'm puzzled: the intensity of the aversion. Someone likes short punchy backgrounds or none at all. That's fine, even extremely reasonable with some play styles. But people that like something different aren't the enemy that are going to come to your game and put a gun to you head until you produce more than 2 page of background for every character. This thread and the other have mostly been "I like..." rather "Everyone must...!" but it still seems to be getting people's boxers in a wad.

Quote from: Nexus;969007But people that like something different aren't the enemy that are going to come to your game and put a gun to you head until you produce more than 2 page of background for every character.

No? Then why did I spend on this money on airline tickets to track you guys down?

Dangit.

Quote from: darthfozzywig;969023No? Then why did I spend on this money on airline tickets to track you guys down?

Dangit.

All that ninja training wasted! Sad.

* dismisses archers *
* puts out torch *

Quote from: Nexus;969007This is where I'm puzzled: the intensity of the aversion. Someone likes short punchy backgrounds or none at all. That's fine, even extremely reasonable with some play styles. But people that like something different aren't the enemy that are going to come to your game and put a gun to you head until you produce more than 2 page of background for every character. This thread and the other have mostly been "I like..." rather "Everyone must...!" but it still seems to be getting people's boxers in a wad.

I suspect the folks who are getting their boxers in a wad have been burned by players producing back stories that have conflicted with the GM's ideas and then expected the GM to honor their back story over the ideas the GM had. Worst is when those back stories are so long the GM doesn't really take the time to read them.

I have been burned by such back stories, and one thing I observe that can happen with them is that the player is trying to write the success or position of their character into the back story rather than finding out in play (or supporting background that is bought with points in chargen).

Although it wasn't that long, we just had a Traveller player storm off because the GM wanted him to roll up a character in front of the GM, rather than take the character he carefully crafted (by re-rolling when the dice gave him something that wasn't part of his conception for the character).

Creating a character with back story is fine if that's part of the game the GM is offering to run and the players are choosing to play, but when a player tries to bring that into a game that has a different attitude, it's a problem, and people react strongly to it.

Frank

It doesn't seem worth the effort to go track down all the things to er, offer constructive counterpoints about, on this thread, but ...

* Why has the "Sandbox vs. Structured" thread become the "short vs. long backstory" thread?

* Seems to me like meaningful character history would actually tend to be more useful in a dynamic "sandbox" campaign than in a "structured" campaign, in the sense that it could have logical effects rather than just be an explanation/excuse why the "structure" of the pre-planned adventures are what they are (and would be anyway without the history, the way many such structures seem to really be designed not based on logical developments of history).

* Even if you start a campaign with no character description and only give characters names after they survive some combat, that play itself creates a history for them, that the players will know and understand from having experienced it. That's the most effective sort of history.

* Even when the GM and the player actually read and know the invented history of a new PC, that can tend to be pretty flat when they haven't really any experience with it and it has little to do with the game situation.

* A world's history being detailed is not a bad thing, if the GM doesn't go about dumping excessive irrelevant details of it on the players.

* Oh, and although I often don't use the point system for it much, in case some of you are really wondering what to do about PC backstories that have valuable effects, GURPS is one RPG that has a well-thought-out system for such things. Any element of a character's situation which results in positive or negative effects can be assigned a value in balance points. They've thought of various ways to categorize these: Patrons, Allies, Reputation, Social Status, Dependents, Enemies, etc., and in a point-based system like GURPS (or as a way to add on to another system to balance such things out), there can be balancing impacts. So sure you can be friends with the king, but being around kings can have lots of disadvantages, too. You could assess the type and frequency of advantage the relationship with the king has, and if the other PCs don't have anything comparable, you can assign some balancing related (or unrelated) drawbacks. For one simple example, Dumas' Three Musketeers were friends with the king, sort of, but that also lead to them having many enemies.

Quote from: Justin Alexander;968962That's so far away from what literally anyone in this thread has said, I have to assume it's a deliberate strawman.

Did I misquote you?

It's the argument I hear in pretty near every thread on this topic, actually, and I'm even willing to concede that it's valid to the extent that a 'real' person has family, friends, colleagues, rivals, et al, and it's a reasonable inference that player characters could be the same. It's certainly the way I create NON-player characters - I recall a conversation with one of my Flashing Blades players years ago, when he asked how I came up with so many intrigues and kept them all straight: it was insanely easy I replied, because every time I added a non-player character to the campaign, I asked myself, who is his uncle? his brother? his sister? his in-laws? his best friend? his romantic rival? and from those kinds of questions connections simply radiated outward into the setting through personal and professional connections. It's second nature to how I build a setting.

So why do I approach player characters so differently? For me, the most fundamental aspect of playing the game is exploring the setting. That isn't by any means restricted to crawling hex maps - mostly, it's sussing out the relationships between characters, and figuring out ways to use those to my advantage in furthering my in-character goals. Creating a shell of character relationships before we've so much as rolled a die is boring as shit to me - it's playing tennis with the net down.

In our Boot Hill campaign. my character arrived in Promise City not knowing a soul. In the year since, he's punched cows for a local rancher, served as a deputy sheriff a couple of times, gambled in a local saloon in exchange for a cut of the profits with the owner, married the cantina owner's daughter, bought two businesses and established his own land and livestock company. None of that started with Contact: Saloon Keeper or a background call-out to a 'family friend who owns a ranch in El Dorado County.'

As a player, relationships made through actual play are far more interesting and meaningful than shit dreamed up in a 'background' which no one, not even me, actually experienced.

Quote from: Skarg;969034Even if you start a campaign with no character description and only give characters names after they survive some combat, that play itself creates a history for them, that the players will know and understand from having experienced it. That's the most effective sort of history.

Exactly.

Quote from: ffilz;969033I suspect the folks who are getting their boxers in a wad have been burned by players producing back stories that have conflicted with the GM's ideas and then expected the GM to honor their back story over the ideas the GM had. Worst is when those back stories are so long the GM doesn't really take the time to read them.

I have been burned by such back stories, and one thing I observe that can happen with them is that the player is trying to write the success or position of their character into the back story rather than finding out in play (or supporting background that is bought with points in chargen).

Although it wasn't that long, we just had a Traveller player storm off because the GM wanted him to roll up a character in front of the GM, rather than take the character he carefully crafted (by re-rolling when the dice gave him something that wasn't part of his conception for the character).

Creating a character with back story is fine if that's part of the game the GM is offering to run and the players are choosing to play, but when a player tries to bring that into a game that has a different attitude, it's a problem, and people react strongly to it.

Frank

But that is what the word "No" is for. If the GM is just allowing everything, sure that will be a problem. And there are all kinds of ways to go about this, from randomized methods, to point buy, to letting players come up with their own background. But there is always the GM there who can step in and say 'no'.

Quote from: Skarg;969034It doesn't seem worth the effort to go track down all the things to er, offer constructive counterpoints about, on this thread, but ...

* Why has the "Sandbox vs. Structured" thread become the "short vs. long backstory" thread?

* Seems to me like meaningful character history would actually tend to be more useful in a dynamic "sandbox" campaign than in a "structured" campaign, in the sense that it could have logical effects rather than just be an explanation/excuse why the "structure" of the pre-planned adventures are what they are (and would be anyway without the history, the way many such structures seem to really be designed not based on logical developments of history).

The thing is sandbox play is about discovering what's out there or what will happen rather than having lots of "this has already happened" or "this is predestined to happen" stuff. A detailed character back story almost always has lots of the "already happened" stuff and sometimes has "predestined to happen" stuff.

Too much setting detail can also create similar problems.

Quote* Oh, and although I often don't use the point system for it much, in case some of you are really wondering what to do about PC backstories that have valuable effects, GURPS is one RPG that has a well-thought-out system for such things. Any element of a character's situation which results in positive or negative effects can be assigned a value in balance points. They've thought of various ways to categorize these: Patrons, Allies, Reputation, Social Status, Dependents, Enemies, etc., and in a point-based system like GURPS (or as a way to add on to another system to balance such things out), there can be balancing impacts. So sure you can be friends with the king, but being around kings can have lots of disadvantages, too. You could assess the type and frequency of advantage the relationship with the king has, and if the other PCs don't have anything comparable, you can assign some balancing related (or unrelated) drawbacks. For one simple example, Dumas' Three Musketeers were friends with the king, sort of, but that also lead to them having many enemies.

In a system that provides this kind of stuff, then as long as a player doesn't take a background that conflicts with the general idea for the game I have (if all the PCs are going to be peasants, then buying certain advantages is not going to fly, and we'd better all be in agreement before we introduce a PC who is a bastard who will end up inheriting). And then yes, you should give some color to the background items you have taken/been granted by the mechanics of the game. On the other hand, the background ideally is also written in a way as to allow more possibility in play rather than less possibility in play.

Frank

Quote from: BedrockBrendan;969041But that is what the word "No" is for. If the GM is just allowing everything, sure that will be a problem. And there are all kinds of ways to go about this, from randomized methods, to point buy, to letting players come up with their own background. But there is always the GM there who can step in and say 'no'.

Sure, but I've had players be really resistant to my saying no to their long back story... Or I've been put in a trap, I had an idea that I wanted to reveal in play, but you just wrote your back story to contradict my idea, so I either spoil the mystery, or I will invalidate your back story as the mystery is exposed. Even in a sandbox, or especially in a sandbox, the GM should be able to have some ideas of how things MIGHT play out, the key is that the players should be able to disrupt those ideas through play, not because they wrote some backstory that contradicts the idea before dice have even hit the table.

I may be a bit hot about this because the last time I had a pages long back story (that I couldn't make myself read in detail), the player did just that. In the end, the campaign really didn't last that much longer...

Frank