Quote from: robiswrong;774423That's what I was getting at - the term "sandbox" seems to have shifted to "a static geographic area where nothing happens, and there are no reactions to the actions of the players" for a significant portion of gamers.

I think you are absolutely right, and I really have no idea why this is true. I've mentioned wanted to run a sandbox to some people who have played tradtional RPGs for years, and their worry is it would just be a videogame with no lasting consequences (like GTA, run long enough and the law forgets).

I think that reluctance stems from people not knowing how to tell a GM that they're not having fun or from GMs not being receptive to criticism.

Quote from: Black Vulmea;774267Gnome Stew: we re-invent the wheel, so you don't have to!

Yeah, if there's a more over-rated GM advice site, mainly though ignorance of the readers of rehashed content, I've never seen it.

Quote from: robiswrong;774423That's what I was getting at - the term "sandbox" seems to have shifted to "a static geographic area where nothing happens, and there are no reactions to the actions of the players" for a significant portion of gamers.

Quote from: ForthrightRay;774433I think you are absolutely right, and I really have no idea why this is true. I've mentioned wanted to run a sandbox to some people who have played tradtional RPGs for years, and their worry is it would just be a videogame with no lasting consequences (like GTA, run long enough and the law forgets).

White room echo chamber reiterated bullshit from people who have no living memory of what they're talking about, just playing a game of "TGD/AP Telephone".

The newest games supported by the largest gaming corporations are so far divorced from the origins of the hobby that younger people are floored when they find out "Wow, you can have like, a setting where there's people outside of the adventuring party, and those people interact and stuff!"

It's like the genius from a couple weeks ago who invented the hexcrawl.

Quote from: CRKrueger;774483It's like the genius from a couple weeks ago who invented the hexcrawl.

Wait, what? :confused:

Quote from: jan paparazzi;774347But easier to use. You just pick out what you want to play. If you want to fight you join a mercenary league or a knights order. If you are fighting on the battlefield all the time you don't have much business with the scrollhunters who are out there collecting treasury from dungeons or with the thieves guild who are stealing valuables from mansions in cities.

Until, of course, the dungeoneers return from the ruins of the Imperial Mausoleum bearing the Scroll of the All-Conquering Host, the legendary incantation that, when read out loud, makes any army invincible for a fortnight and guarantees victory in battle. An ambitious warlord hires the Thieves' Guild to acquire the Scroll, and retains the mercenary company as his plans for conquest are set in motion; the knightly order, loyal to the true and lawful king of the land, rallies to his banner, even under the threat of certain defeat...

They don't always have to interact, but I like it better when they do.

Quote from: jan paparazzi;774347In a vampire game you get in contact with all the other groups, because they form a coalition together for all the city titles. And the other splats are opposition. Maybe I got the wrong picture here and isn't it as black and white.

Absolutely! The main point I'd like to get across is that absolutely nothing about the so-called "fish tank" approach is (a) different from what everyone's been calling "sandbox" for years now, and (b) exclusively or specifically pertaining to investigative or mystery scenarios.

Quote from: CRKrueger;774483The newest games supported by the largest gaming corporations are so far divorced from the origins of the hobby that younger people are floored when they find out "Wow, you can have like, a setting where there's people outside of the adventuring party, and those people interact and stuff!"

To be fair, it's easy to laugh at the the 'deep thinkers' at Gnome Stew - and believe me, I do, loudly and often - but to their credit, sometimes they are treading new-to-them ground that's worth the walk.

Quote from: CRKrueger;774483It's like the genius from a couple weeks ago who invented the hexcrawl.

:rotfl:

Yeah, that was friggin' comedy-gold.

Quote from: The Butcher;774500They don't always have to interact, but I like it better when they do.

I like it better when you have to option to decide if they interact. With vampire (and mage .. and changeling as well) I feel like they HAVE to interact with each other. It's the main focus of the game. I never liked that part. Hunter is different. In that game they can work togehter to kill some demon and split up after that.

Edit: They are a bit like the House of Representatives. If you use one of the covenants you got them all. It doesn't make sense not to do so. I always find that restrictive.

Quote from: Black Vulmea;774509To be fair, it's easy to laugh at the the 'deep thinkers' at Gnome Stew - and believe me, I do, loudly and often - but to their credit, sometimes they are treading new-to-them ground that's worth the walk.

Ok, I didn't know that. I don't visit a lot of these sites. Not nerdy enough I guess. I never been on pennyarcade and I intend to keep it that way.

Quote from: The Ent;774493Wait, what? :confused:

Yeah.

Some guy on Facebook in the Tabletop RPG group had talked about this great new idea he had for a game, where you'd have a grid of a large location and encounters keyed to grid locations.

Quote from: Black Vulmea;774509To be fair, it's easy to laugh at the the 'deep thinkers' at Gnome Stew - and believe me, I do, loudly and often - but to their credit, sometimes they are treading new-to-them ground that's worth the walk.

Agreed.  It's easy for those of us that have been playing 30-40 years to think all of this stuff is common sense, but it's not necessarily obvious to people that have been playing for a shorter time, especially if their expectations are set by "Adventure Paths" and the like.

Quote from: ForthrightRay;774415I guess the idea here is to sandbox an event rather than a region, so the death of Laura Palmer can trigger all sorts of outcomes in Twin Peaks depending on what the players do.

Bingo. This is highly focused sandbox, or a sandbox+; a scenario. The layer on top is that there's one specific thing the players are supposed to be doing; beyond that, there's a lot of freedom, but the specific thing guides the prep, includes a storyline, and even inspires "key scenes".

If anything it's kind of like a town in Dogs in the Vineyard. The focus is more on a specific problem that's baked in than it is on exploring and discovering your own goals. This doesn't make it better or worse than a more pure sandbox. You could blow it up into a whole campaign framework of you like.  But stringing a bunch of them together will give you a different structure from a more organic continuity.

The Requiem Chronicler's Guide has something like this. You have to write down names of NPC's, write down their motivation towards a certain issue (f.e. Masquerade violation) and draw arrows between the NPC's for their relations. Those arrows could have texts like: protect him, prove him wrong, change his mind etc.

Quote from: robiswrong;774558Agreed.  It's easy for those of us that have been playing 30-40 years to think all of this stuff is common sense, but it's not necessarily obvious to people that have been playing for a shorter time, especially if their expectations are set by "Adventure Paths" and the like. (emphasis added - BV)

Exactamundo.

They're discovering ways of doing things that I learned at fourteen, but they're having to undue years of conditioning to get there, so while I snicker at their often wide-eyed way of presenting their 'discoveries,' hey, at least they're thinking outside the box.

Quote from: robiswrong;774558Yeah.

Some guy on Facebook in the Tabletop RPG group had talked about this great new idea he had for a game, where you'd have a grid of a large location and encounters keyed to grid locations.

That said I can easily see someone not having seen this kinda thing before, I mean outside of the OSR hexcrawl stuff has been really rare for what, 20-30 years? I mean I've played for 20 years and didn't Get hexcrawls until I got into osrgames. Allthough I'd run sandboxes before that, mind. A friend used to call my old sandboxes "squarecrawls"

Re-inventing the wheel can be a good learning excercise, and writing about it might be helpful to others.

At some point, though, it's helpful to avail oneself of the treasury of experience in a field that has been around for some time.

I think one problem for many younger gamers is that the resources are not so obviously before them as in the days when what now is called "sandox" was called simply "the campaign".

Anyhow, the main pitfall to beware of is getting too invested in the expectation that the players will pursue this or that course of action. That depends on the customs of the group at hand. With one, you might be able to count on players following your lead to Mystery Manor; with another, planned "main events" might turn out to be off the stage of the players' undertakings.