Back in the 80s when I'd been Running RuneQuest 2 a lot, and using Harn for a few years I could run a pretty decent adventure on zero prep. I had a few books of stat blocks and knew the details about everything in the area of Harn we were running around in. It was pretty amazing. it all sort of jelled, I don't think I could do that today, even on Harn (still have all the old books). I'm too rusty and less confident. Now I use a VTT which sort of, kind of, demands maps of everything because it's so visual and so a lot more prep is required. Maybe by the time I'm in an old folks home with lots of time on my hands I'll be up to that level again.

Quote from: blackstone on December 19, 2024, 11:18:21 AMI believe we're staying in the context of D&D/AD&D.

That was never stated and classic Traveller is in the OSR, as is Tunnels and Trolls, RQ, The Fantasy Trip, etc. OSR, as per the first Yahoogroups, was never about just TSR, it was about older styles of play. And that group helped spawn all of this.

I run exclusively non-d20 games these days, and I still use hexcrawl mechanics in them.

Quote from: Nobleshield on December 19, 2024, 01:00:30 PMSee, this makes sense as to why it's a term for this. I was familiar with the term for freeform games, but for RPGs, it sounded just weird, like the people trying to take D&D back to being a war game.

Well, there are wargames, and then there are wargames. Some wargames feel expansive and some don't. For me, I could see the implications of D&D and it's focus on playing an individual character that would allow me to run campaigns that moved away from some of the minutiae of 70s era hex and counters wargames and step into the shoes of Julius Caesar, Alexander the Great, or Conan and carve your own path across the landscape.

Quote from: Nobleshield on December 19, 2024, 01:00:30 PMI think my general confusion is about the people who espouse zero prep and no adventure hooks at all. (This is not the same as "story-driven" or "adventure path"; I mean like "You are summoned to the Mayor of Townsville's residence, and he offers you 100 gp each to deal with a band of ogres raiding the town from their hideout in the hills to the North." which is almost exclusively how my groups played in the 90s, these weren't necessarily linked adventures, although they could be loosely related e.g. maybe those ogres aren't just raiding the village, they're in the pay of Baron von Badguy who wants to take over the town, etc) I get, even, the idea of having various side trek rumors that the PCs may or may not pursue. I also like the PCs driving something by saying at the end of a session that they're interested in finding out more about X. (I don't exactly know how this would play out, but I can sort of get ideas.)

In some ways the sandbox referee is running a pen & paper virtual reality. The main difference is that the referee is a person not tireless CPU. So we have to create a set of techniques that allows people to work within their human limits to breath life into the setting to allow players adventure there. Interacting with the setting as if they are there as their character.

Perhaps this section from what I wrote in Blackmarsh will help.

QuoteAdventuring Advice
This format is designed to make it easy to referee players as they explore the world.  With a list of locales, it is easy for the referee to determine what is over the next hill and what possible challenges the players might face.  In addition, since the players can largely be left to their own devices, this format allows the referee more time to focus on the core adventures in his campaign.

Not every hex location has a description, and the background information is only meant to be a loose framework.  Referees are encouraged to add material and make the setting unique to their campaigns.

It is suggested that to get maximum use of this setting that the referee look over the locales, then chose the ones that best suit the campaign.  Note the NPCs and their circumstances.  Develop a timeline of events if the characters are not involved.  Detail important locales and add new ones of your own design.  Do the same for the NPCs, and make notes on their motivations and personalities.

After each session of the campaign, review what the players did.  Look at your original timeline of events, see what impact their actions had, and make the needed changes.  Sometimes the players' actions will lead to a new and unexpected chain of events. 

The creativity of the referee comes by not forcing his players to follow a predetermined story, but to develop new and interesting consequences based on the players' actions.  Use the NPC's motivations and personalities to decide which consequences are the most likely and pick the most interesting.

The result is a campaign where the players feel they are forging their character's destiny within a living, breathing world.  It will not only be fun and adventurous, but also filled with surprises.  Consequences will accumulate and spin the campaign into unexpected directions.

I don't think it is or ever has been common.

But rolling everything up is the way I've DMed for decades. It's fun and is easier than trying to memorise a module.

I don't think a play style has to be The One True Way It's Always Been Done to be good.

I think a big portion of my disconnect is the initial session, as after that it more or less should be easier to figure out what route the players want to take (typically because they should indicate this after the session, although in the event they don't, what do you do?). The initial setup is the really confusing part because it seems like, for that session especially, you need to have several rumors fleshed out to provide an adventure and/or random charts ready to wing it. You'd start off with like a single sentence, e.g., "You've just arrived in Townville," and then maybe roleplay the initial interactions with the guards or describe some shops/etc. as the PCs explore the town (the inevitable "I'm going to see if there's a blacksmith" type of stuff). And then what? 

I guess because I've never actually SEEN anyone play in this way, I'm not sure of the part between "Let's start playing" and "Okay, you've decided to pursue X rumor/take Y job." if I was a PLAYER in a game like that I'd know enough to pick up on cues/pursue cues if the DM seems lost ("I'm going to head to the tavern and drop a few coins, ask the barkeep if he's heard about any work for adventurers in these parts") but I don't see the people I'd be recruiting to play willing to do that (from what I've seen of engaging with them in other games and/or a session or two of D&D 2024)

I've always understood hex crawl to be "let's move across the wilderness map hex by hex and see what's there."  Not very interesting since a wilderness is mostly empty of monsters and treasure, and not used a whole lot.  Sandbox is something else entirely, though I suppose you could say hexcrawl is a very unfocused type of sandbox.

Quote from: Mishihari on December 19, 2024, 07:53:35 PMI've always understood hex crawl to be "let's move across the wilderness map hex by hex and see what's there."  Not very interesting since a wilderness is mostly empty of monsters and treasure, and not used a whole lot.  Sandbox is something else entirely, though I suppose you could say hexcrawl is a very unfocused type of sandbox.

Yeah, that's part of the issue too. The hexcrawl as most OSR seems to think of it, at least from how they talk, is basically like a board game, moving from hex to hex, rolling what's there, and then fighting something (or rather interacting with it in some way) and moving on to the next square.

Quote from: Nobleshield on December 19, 2024, 06:54:53 PMI think a big portion of my disconnect is the initial session.

Typically I have the party on a previously assigned mission (the way Lost Mines of Phandelver works). They need to know the lay of the land before a sandbox works, that takes a session or two. We have a group text for the game and I'll drop rumors and background of the campaign area type stuff into that (on little yellow gifs so they stand-out among the text stream). That way they hopefully see absorb things a bit at a time instead of in one big info dump during the game.

I've never done a real hex crawl so I'll just stay out of that.

The problem with these discussions is that there doesn't seem to any consensus about what terms like sandbox or hexcrawl even mean.  Did we do sandbox games back then?  I don't know.  What's a sandbox game?  I have asked this sort of question before.  What I get is a lot of "When I say sandbox/hexcrawl I mean" with no two people giving the same answer.  It's difficult to answer whether I did hexcrawl games back then when there's no actual, commonly agreed upon definition of what a hexcrawl game even is. 

Quote from: Nobleshield on December 19, 2024, 09:36:40 AMNow I completely understand the idea of traveling from Point A to Point B and having something like, "Oh look, a ruined tower; maybe we should investigate" as a side trek to the main adventure or an interim. But I don't "get" how a whole campaign can be done like this because it seems like a random bunch of stuff with no rhyme or reason. You need to include other elements, not just "Move to hex, roll for encounter, resolve, move to next hex," which seems to be how most of the "actual plays" showing hex crawls appear.

I don't ever remember what some people mean when they say a pure sandbox game.  That is to say that I never saw a game where everything was procedurally generated using random tables.  There defined locations on the map even if the players did not know about them right away.  The random tables were for when the players went someplace that didn't have any defined thing already there.  I vaguely remember that you were supposed to use that Avalon Hill Wilderness Survival game for overland exploration so I guess that's what hexcrawl is supposed to mean?  I didn't have it or use it.  I didn't know anyone who did.  If what I did matched that game, it was a coincidence. 

I started playing in 1977, with the Holmes Basic Set, but once the AD&D books came along, we switched over to it. What really opened my eyes was Judges Guild products like Wilderlands of High Fantasy and City State of the Invincible Overlord. And City-State (the version I have) is packed full of gonzo and unwholesome fun.

Those JG "Wilderlands" type products were pretty much all about hexcrawling and, they usually came with a non-labeled outline version of land masses so players could fill them in.

A few of my friends ran JG based campaigns. They usually just picked out a town and we'd end up mapping our way to some area or dungeon. One ran a campaign in which our party was supposed to map out all of the hexes on a quarter of a map. We got most of it done I recall.

Quote from: yosemitemike on December 20, 2024, 01:00:48 AMThe problem with these discussions is that there doesn't seem to any consensus about what terms like sandbox or hexcrawl even mean.  Did we do sandbox games back then?  I don't know.  What's a sandbox game?  I have asked this sort of question before.  What I get is a lot of "When I say sandbox/hexcrawl I mean" with no two people giving the same answer.  It's difficult to answer whether I did hexcrawl games back then when there's no actual, commonly agreed upon definition of what a hexcrawl game even is.

Does anyone actually run a pure anything?

I think there are fairly concise definitions but, those terms we throw around aren't always mutually exclusive. Your campaign can be a sandbox with a campaign area based on hexes, and you can hexcrawl between locations in the sandbox. The concepts were there in play, but a lot of us GMing or playing didn't spend a lot of time on theorizing.

Quote from: Lynn on December 20, 2024, 01:24:46 AMDoes anyone actually run a pure anything?

I think there are fairly concise definitions but, those terms we throw around aren't always mutually exclusive. Your campaign can be a sandbox with a campaign area based on hexes, and you can hexcrawl between locations in the sandbox. The concepts were there in play, but a lot of us GMing or playing didn't spend a lot of time on theorizing.

If all hexcrawl means is that the GM uses a hex grid for the overland map and every bit of it isn't defined beforehand, then everyone I knew did that all of the time.  Defined that way, hexcrawl doesn't really mean much of anything though.  I have never played what I have seen people call a pure sandbox game but people in OSR circles sure love to talk about them and claim that they were the way everyone played back then.  I can tell you that I never saw or heard of anyone playing that way.

Quote from: Nobleshield on December 19, 2024, 06:54:53 PMI think a big portion of my disconnect is the initial session, as after that it more or less should be easier to figure out what route the players want to take (typically because they should indicate this after the session, although in the event they don't, what do you do?). The initial setup is the really confusing part because it seems like, for that session especially, you need to have several rumors fleshed out to provide an adventure and/or random charts ready to wing it. You'd start off with like a single sentence, e.g., "You've just arrived in Townville," and then maybe roleplay the initial interactions with the guards or describe some shops/etc. as the PCs explore the town (the inevitable "I'm going to see if there's a blacksmith" type of stuff). And then what? 

I guess because I've never actually SEEN anyone play in this way, I'm not sure of the part between "Let's start playing" and "Okay, you've decided to pursue X rumor/take Y job." if I was a PLAYER in a game like that I'd know enough to pick up on cues/pursue cues if the DM seems lost ("I'm going to head to the tavern and drop a few coins, ask the barkeep if he's heard about any work for adventurers in these parts") but I don't see the people I'd be recruiting to play willing to do that (from what I've seen of engaging with them in other games and/or a session or two of D&D 2024)

Perhaps this will help

QuoteThe Initial Context
One of the hard things about a campaign using these rules is what the players do at first. It is important to think about the initial context—the situation the players find their characters in when play commences. Sometimes the players are notably self-driven and the group has a specific idea of what they want to do. In these cases, the initial context can be minimal.
In most cases, the players will be unsure of the possibilities, so it is best to have three to five rumors, pieces of lore, or contacts prepared so the players have a choice of where to adventure. It is important that anything vital they would know is written up in a small handout and made available. Keep this handout as minimal as you can while still covering everything you deem important.

This is from my "The World outside of the Dungeon" Chapter from my Basic Rules for the Majestic Fantasy RPG. I made the chapter available for free as a PDF from here if you want to read it in its original context.

https://www.batintheattic.com/downloads/The%20World%20Outside%20of%20the%20Dungeon.pdf

Some blog posts that I wrote
Axioms of Sandbox Campaigns
https://batintheattic.blogspot.com/2017/08/my-axioms-of-sandbox-campaigns.html

How to Manage a Sandbox Campaign: The pre-game.
https://batintheattic.blogspot.com/2011/04/how-to-manage-sandbox-campaign-pre-game.html

Quote from: yosemitemike on December 20, 2024, 01:00:48 AMThe problem with these discussions is that there doesn't seem to any consensus about what terms like sandbox or hexcrawl even mean.  Did we do sandbox games back then?  I don't know.  What's a sandbox game?  I have asked this sort of question before.  What I get is a lot of "When I say sandbox/hexcrawl I mean" with no two people giving the same answer.  It's difficult to answer whether I did hexcrawl games back then when there's no actual, commonly agreed upon definition of what a hexcrawl game even is. 

Quote from: Nobleshield on December 19, 2024, 09:36:40 AMNow I completely understand the idea of traveling from Point A to Point B and having something like, "Oh look, a ruined tower; maybe we should investigate" as a side trek to the main adventure or an interim. But I don't "get" how a whole campaign can be done like this because it seems like a random bunch of stuff with no rhyme or reason. You need to include other elements, not just "Move to hex, roll for encounter, resolve, move to next hex," which seems to be how most of the "actual plays" showing hex crawls appear.

I don't ever remember what some people mean when they say a pure sandbox game.  That is to say that I never saw a game where everything was procedurally generated using random tables.  There defined locations on the map even if the players did not know about them right away.  The random tables were for when the players went someplace that didn't have any defined thing already there.  I vaguely remember that you were supposed to use that Avalon Hill Wilderness Survival game for overland exploration so I guess that's what hexcrawl is supposed to mean?  I didn't have it or use it.  I didn't know anyone who did.  If what I did matched that game, it was a coincidence.

In a hobby where people everyone can't even agree on what roleplaying games are, I don't think we are ever going to get a definition of sandbox that everyone agrees on. I do think there is a lot of broad agreement though among people who play sandboxes (and while I may do them different from Rob or this person or that, we'd generally recognize that what the other person is doing is a sandbox). I also don't think sandboxes need to be pure to work. Purity can be bad for gaming if things are breaking down at a table (this is true of any style). I've never been a huge fan of the term sandbox itself, but it's the word that stuck and what people understand (I always prefer to say living adventure or campaign: simply because sandbox feels like a static metaphor, and sandboxes are not usually static). I don't even think hexes are a requirement for a sandbox, though they are useful and common (whether they are simply used to measure distance and chart exploration or being used to populate a world with details). That is largely just a mapping and setting content matter. What matters is the players are being given the freedom to genuinely explore the setting, to not follow hooks (and I think when you start to run sandboxes you start to become much less reliant on hooks in general if the players are sufficiently engaged). After that I think you can have all kinds of sandboxes. The way I see planning a sandbox is you do need to do your prep before hand (you need all your locations, groups, setting details and NPCs sorted out so they are exploring something), but you also need to develop the ability to improvise and extrapolate setting details (because no amount of prep is going to be exhaustive and the world can be in a dynamic state). Eventually the players ask a question like "is there an X here?" and you might not yet have an answer.

In terms of random procedures and tables, those are just tools. They are useful for sandbox play but they aren't required for everything. I think what sorts of tables you use are going to be dependent on the type of sandbox setting you are running. I'm mostly running sandboxes in a wuxia setting at the moment, so my main tables I use are Grudge Tables (where I put a list of current enemies with vendetta's against the party), Basic Encounter Tables by environment (city, wilderness, etc), encounter tables for specific places (i.e. this particular city, or this particular temple), and things I call shake-up tables (which are often unique to the campaign and based on any conflicts the players have started or entered into). I always use grudge tables regularly (this is just an easy way for me to not forget past grudges, and I find rolling on a regular basis gives these kinds of encounters a natural rhythm), and I always roll when players are traveling and fail their Survival rolls. Shake-up tables are very campaign dependent and frequency is usually either by feel or X number of sessions/X number of weeks in setting. Specific encounter tables I often find useful, but for some locations I don't find them necessary. I don't think using these kinds of tables is a requirement of sandbox though. I use them because one part of play I enjoy as the GM is being surprised and I also find that tables help shake me out of patterns and habits