Quote from: The Traveller;713874So it's not just an encounter but a plot hook as well. Admittedly it involves a lot more work so I'd probably just salt them among striahgt up random encounters, but if you've a half an hour here or there the portfolio can build up quickly.

IMO that is exactly the purpose for which you put a "special" result in your random encounter tables.

Quote from: Artifacts of Amber;713777A sandbox, to me, is that I have not prefabricated anything about the world beyond making a map. I have a map of the town and the "world" but very few things are labeled or defined yet.

Thanks for any useful comments, less useful arguments can go screw themselves

I will answer with another question.

I am playing a character and I walk through a town. If I was really there, there would be people walking back and forth about their daily business.

1) I walk through town from one gate to the next. How would you handle what I would encounter.

2) I walk through the gate and in the middle of the town I pick a person and hit him. How would you decide who I hit.

In my experience random tables are the best tools to use for this.

However that only the beginning. You need to find the right set of random tables to use that reflect your judgment of what the players would run into. I use a variant of the tables used in Harn. I use them because they reflect more my low fantasy style but still has the possibility of monsters. The ones in the D&D books was too high fantasy for how I present my setting.

Quote from: talysman;713873No, it has to be *meaningful* deviation. If the players skip the Dungeons of Dread and go to Marvelous Mansion, but it doesn't matter, because you were planning on using the same encounters in the same order whichever way they choose, it's not a sandbox. Their choice was meaningless.

You even acknowledge this when you talk about bypassing GM encounters. The only way you can bypass a GM encounter is if the GM can't force specific encounters. If the GM *can* force specific encounters, then geography doesn't matter: the players are on a predetermined path, regardless of where the wander.

There's a difference between:

a) The PCs will meet up with the DM's planned encounter no matter which way they go (i.e. in a dungeon, the PCs come to a fork where they can go right or left; whichever way they go, the DM moves his planned encounter to that path)
b) The PCs will not meet up with a particular DM planned encounter unless they go to where the DM placed that encounter.  In your example above, the PCs can go to Marvelous Mansion, it's just that nothing happens when they get there.

a) is a railroad in disguise.  b) can occur in a true sandbox.

Quote from: talysman;713844Much as I hate to agree with Arduin, who is almost always wrong, I have to agree with him this time.  Or half agree.

The crucial point is "non-GM mandated". A sandbox isn't just "Players wander anywhere they want" but also "players choose what encounters they experience". The wandering determines what happens, not the GM's precious plans.

There has to be some loss of GM control over what happens for it to be a sandbox. That means that the "moveable encounter" is very risky; if you are using an encounter planned for a different location because you want that encounter to happen, you are railroading; if you are using it because oops, the players wandered into new territory and you need one, quick, then it may still be a sandbox.

I think if you read over what I actually wrote again, none of it conflicts with what you're saying. I never said a GM simply picks what encounter a party stumbles into, merely that the DM could pre-plan what's where. It's a ridiculous amount of work for an entire Sandbox setting, particularly considering the efficiency of random encounter rolls and tables, but it can be done. Moreover, it is done, to some extent, for many location based modules. Most of the content is pre-placed, although there are still typically random encounters (I've run such adventures and never had the party hit a random encounter). It's just not as feasible to do this on the larger scale of a setting.

Arduin's assertion that no random encounters means it's not a Sandbox is simply factually incorrect, and you have admitted that in your post, as you had to add qualifiers:

Quote from: talysman;713844...but if the GM is determining when the encounters are occurring, and in what order, it's either a railroad, or on the edge of being one

...none of which is necessarily the case just because of a lack of random encounter tables.

Quote from: talysman;713844It's true that you can have arbitrary encounters without them being *random* encounters. There are ways to select from a list of prepared encounters without forcing a particular encounter. But really, random encounters are a hell of a lot easier, and they restrict GM control over the situation.

To me, this is the real argument for them, as the other bogeymen (railroading and illusionism) can be avoided without randomly rolled encounters. It's just way more work.

Quote from: Benoist;713801They're not "necessary" in and of themselves (the problem with a word like "necessary" is that it implies an absolute, 'either you have this, or that is impossible), but they are pretty damn important to guarantee an organic development of the circumstances in the game world, for me.

Completely agreed with Benoist.

I think the question isn't 'necessity', or even 'good' or 'bad', but rather 'what function do they fill?'

As far as railroading, illusionism, etc...

Random encounters aren't a cure against railroading.  And lack of random encounters doesn't mean you're being railroaded.  That said, I think it's a reasonably good signal for certain types of games that there's no railroad.

At a basic level, playing an RPG boils down to:

1) GM describes situation
2) Player tells GM what they do
3) GM determines result and communicates to player
4) Return to step 1

We use randomization in step three when there's more than one possible outcome of an action, and we want to choose between them.  And that's all a random encounter table is - "you go from point X to point Y.  What happens?" and the table is just a list of things that *could* happen.

Using randomization as the determining step lets the decision of what happens *right now* be arbitrary, though within constraints set up by the GM in advance.  So by a GM using random encounters, he's basically saying "yeah, here's a bunch of stuff that *could* happen, but I'm not particularly invested in any of them."  That's usually a pretty good sign that the GM ain't railroading.

If the GM just *determines* the encounter, it could be railroading, or not.  The GM could be determining the encounter because that's what needs to happen to get to the 'destination' (plot or otherwise) that the GM wants.  Or, they could be doing their best to make appropriate things happen based on the player actions and decisions, with no strong opinion on what happens.  But apart from just crazy random tables that are basically 'all roads lead to Rome', using random encounters is a pretty good sign that the GM *isn't* trying to drive things a certain direction.

Even people saying things like "random encounters are a waste because they're not plot relevant" shows how ingrained the idea of railroading can be - how do you *know* they're not important to the future of the game?

Rolling on a random encounter table does not prevent a gm from illusionism or railroading.

Quote from: Bill;713928Rolling on a random encounter table does not prevent a gm from illusionism or railroading.

Agreed.

Quote from: Artifacts of Amber;713853What would be the difference in a random encounter table I created and me just throwing something down. other than the random nature of it. I still defined what can be in a region so why define it ahead of time and then randomize it?

Unlike most of the people here, I don't see a big difference. The key to a sandbox is that the players are free to explore an environment. That environment may all be inside the GM's head, rather than in lists and tables. As long as it is consistent once created, and makes some sense in context, it could all be created ad hoc; it's still a sandbox.
I see content generation via random tables, and pre-game written materials, as both GM aids. Personally, now, I couldn't run a game without them. But I remember being 12 and my brain much more flexible and able to improvise seemingly endlessly, creating fantastic worlds in-play with effectively nil prep - probably helped we were playing Fighting Fantasy. :cool: If you can do that and make it work, great.
It's not Illusionism unless you are negating player choice by pre-deciding they will have encounter X no matter where or what they do. If the PCs are free to go to sea or explore the dark forest, and you decide at that moment what happens in response to either action (presumably different things), that's not Illusionism, that's fine.

Quote from: Exploderwizard;713808In order to run a sandbox without any random encounters you need to do a whole lot of work that may never see the light of play.

Without location based encounteres fleshed out OR random encounters its just a matter of plopping what you will in front of the players at a time/place of your choosing. That is NOT a sandbox.

Strongly agree on one, strongly disagree on two.  Like many others who've chimed in, I find the definition of "sandbox" to be terribly simple: the players tell me what they're doing, instead of me telling them what they're doing.  How and where encounters happen, and by what means they're selected, has nothing to do with that.

But yes, sandboxing involves a lot of work, if you don't have tables on which you roll everything.  Just for a lark, I just took a bit to go through one district of the city out of which I've had a majority of my parties based since the mid-80s, a giant national capital of 80,000.  The number of businesses there where PCs in recent years have had significant interaction -- and not counting the "Someone went into there to buy a few fathoms of rope eight years ago" bits?  21, about.  Not just a couple lines apiece, either; this is an example:

QuoteThe Woflo Inn: Caters to the buccaneering and smuggling trades, and thereby watched by the Guard and under the protection of the Mockers.  Funny business is not long tolerated, even if the fanatically loyal clientele (augmented by several notable adventurers; the owner's older sister Elaina is an Intermediate Master-class Fruningen wizard (600+ pts), and her bodyguard Kardo (250+ pts) is a renowned ex-prikinger) permitted the same.  The innkeeper is Grace (Innkeeper-15), a winsomely pretty redhead in her early twenties who took over the inn from her sister; she is still feeling her way around keeping the itinerant clientele in line, lacking her sister's awesome powers.  She and her husband have a toddler daughter and another child on the way.  The barkeep is Jurgin (Fristle, 155 pts), an ex-adventurer with a strong lecherous streak.   The Woflo is notable in the district for the best stews in the Old City.  The inn has ample room for guests, as well as two separate escape tunnels from the basement into the sewers.  
   
Keva Ob-Eye (175 pts), who has the district concession from the Mockers, has a backroom set aside for her uses.  Her lieutenants are Jakaesa (165 pts, lives at B13), who brokers smuggled goods through a cell of buyers, one of longshoremen and one to launder through legitimate businesses; Layco (150 pts), who runs street crime in the district, with two loan sharks, a fence, two burglars, two pickpockets and three button men; and Julian (A12).  Keva herself has a clerk (in a back office at the Chank's Eye (A30) and two guards (@ 70 pts).  Largan val Casuen (A42) is also a regular.  Another frequent customer is Galna (165 pts), a scarred, short, heavy balding man who is head of the largest smugglers' ring in the city and brother of the Harbormaster.  

I've got nineteen such neighborhoods in the city, and about 1,100 businesses created in all of that.  Likely players have had interaction with a hundred or so of them.[/COLOR]

Quote from: Ravenswing;714043Strongly agree on one, strongly disagree on two.  Like many others who've chimed in, I find the definition of "sandbox" to be terribly simple: the players tell me what they're doing, instead of me telling them what they're doing.  How and where encounters happen, and by what means they're selected, has nothing to do with that.

How and where the encounters happen is the difference between a sandbox and illusionism.

If you decided that an orc patrol was the next encounter no matter what then it makes no difference where the players go or what they want to do. In that case the players might think that their choice of direction and purpose mean something while the reality is they do not.

But is that the only other option? Someone mentioned upthread that they felt that they were creative enough when they were younger to come up with everything on the fly. In other words: the party didn't meet the same orcs wherever they went, but what they did meet was neither pre-built, nor rolled randomly; the DM would be rather literally role playing the world.

Quote from: Bobloblah;714120But is that the only other option? Someone mentioned upthread that they felt that they were creative enough when they were younger to come up with everything on the fly. In other words: the party didn't meet the same orcs wherever they went, but what they did meet was neither pre-built, nor rolled randomly; the DM would be rather literally role playing the world.

If you can keep what is where in your head and not need to have notes then more power to you. It just becomes easier to fall into the trap of having whatever you feel like happen regardless of player choice that way. Self justification for just deciding whatever you want lurks around every corner.

Of course if it is not important to players that their decisions mean anything, only that they end up in entertaining adventures, this works like a charm. Maintaining internal consistency is also trickier, but that too, only matters as much as the participants care about such things.

From a 'purist' standpoint, I don't think you can 'keep it in your head' and claim 'sandbox sainthood'.  Subconscious exists, and all that.

Thankfully for me, I have little use for purity of any form, and like to blend.  I highly recommend people try it.

To the OP, I'd recommend you use the dice, whether or not you use a table, because as others have said, it's a lot easier to model a fluid world against probabilities than it is to make it up as you go.  As a GM you have a lot of duties, so it often makes sense to offload what you can.  Now this doesn't have to be a table out of the DMG.  It could just as easily be Mythic or similar.  Just so you let go of some of the control and, more importantly, responsibility.

Quote from: Exploderwizard;714124If you can keep what is where in your head and not need to have notes then more power to you. It just becomes easier to fall into the trap of having whatever you feel like happen regardless of player choice that way.

re "having whatever you feel like happen"

I think you need to be careful to distinguish between "what I have already decided will happen, whatever the players now decide to do" and "what I now decide will happen, in response to player input". Both are "having whatever you feel like happen", but the former is Illusionism and the latter is not.

Quote from: Bobloblah;714120But is that the only other option? Someone mentioned upthread that they felt that they were creative enough when they were younger to come up with everything on the fly. In other words: the party didn't meet the same orcs wherever they went, but what they did meet was neither pre-built, nor rolled randomly; the DM would be rather literally role playing the world.

(Was me) AIR - and it was a long time ago, ca 28 years - I was 12, in one campaign I had the Fighting Fantasy map of Allansia and the monsters in "Out of the Pit". There were encounter tables in the book, but some encounters would not be from the tables. I can remember an encounter with a group of bounty hunters who wore American Football style helmets and were armed with pen sized wands that shot laser beams. AFAICR I don't think this was pre-scripted at all; and I think there was a lot more stuff like that. At one point a PC fell through a thatched roof and found himself in the studdy of Vanatar the Necromancer, a close cousin of Vonotar the Traitor in the Lone Wolf gamebook "Fire on the Water". I was constantly creating content - the world - ad hoc in response to player input. There was zero railroading or Illusionism; but very little material was pre-created. I was drawing from the imaginative facility that children have.