Sandboxing - story before, story now, story after
James_Nostack:
Phase 3: White Boxin'
In early 2009 as Eric's Glantri game began picking up steam, a new player named Tavis began running a monthly "0e" game. The major framework of play is the 3 Little Brown Books of 1974, but we've got a smattering of 1e, Arduin, Basic, and the occasional bit of 2e or 3e thrown in for good measure. In keeping with the eclectic rules, Tavis's setting is a kitchen-sink 1970's DAW paperback world, which I've taken to calling "acid fantasy." Our map, with 40 sessions of work, is here; much of the action for the first 30 sessions concerned the Lost City, based on Paul Jaquays's classic 1978 module, The Caverns of Thracia. (The fussy notations on the north of the map reflect recent stuff I've missed out on.)
Tavis's game is by far the most open-ended campaign world I've ever been in. The Black Peaks game and the Glantri game were open-ended, in the sense that Eric and I were committed to following along with player initiative. But I, and possibly Eric too, don't handle improv especially well: I can do it but it's work sometimes. Tavis, on the other hand, has mastered and internalized about a zillion random tables, and knows his inspirations so well that even if some detail isn't prepped he can infer it. On the other hand, Tavis tries to save effort by incorporating published modules, typically old Judges Guild stuff which tends to adopt the same acid fantasy aesthetic, as the main focus of play. (I'm not sure we've ever played in a Tavis-designed dungeon.)
This has been a lot of fun to play in, but we don't always do as much playing as I would like. Taking Gygax's suggested number of players from Men & Magic into account ("At least one referee and from four to fifty players can be handled in any single campaign, but the referee to player ratio should be about 1:20 or thereabouts"), Tavis plays with a very large group, often 10-15 people. This makes it almost impossible to reach consensus, particularly when the more risk-averse long-timers start to fret over the optimal way to handle a situation. Typically this group plays for 6 hours a month, the first 2 hours of which are spent deciding what to do, and then up to 1 hour prepping to do it. (I would purposefully arrive 3 hours late, ready to rock.)
So that's one peril of extreme laid-back sandboxing "you tell me what you're doing" style of play: if the Dungeon Master takes no social control over the deliberation process, you can end up with analysis-paralysis situations. Tavis doesn't see it as his role to ramrod people. Rather, the group will organically evolve its own procedures for reaching decisions that are optimized for the preferences of the regular players. People who don't like it will self-select out, as I largely have. (I don't agree with this, but it seems to be philosophy.)
Part of the reason decision-making takes so long is that there are so many choices, so many character-driven priorities, and so many setting-ramifications to think through. Taking the planning process on-line didn't help (warning: 8 pages of hand-wringing bullshit.) There can be a point where the setting is too complex, or at least, where the "adventuring party" is so heterogeneous in its desires that it's hard to figure out how to interact with a highly responsive setting.
However! Once play begins, and everyone knows what they're supposed to be doing, it's a very solid, entertaining time. I am not sure if this qualifies as "Story After" play as Ron's defined it. For me, there are about 3 hours of greatness in a 6 hour social event, but really, only about half of those 6 hours are spent in play; the rest is more like lightly-RP'd fussing over the menu. I don't find that entertaining, so I'm not considering it part of the greatness; but it keeps happening so I presume it serves some purpose for others. The delving is fun, action-packed, and almost always entertaining in the moment; we're not revising stuff, other than to chop out the tedious "tune up the orchestra" phase of play.
"Fuck the Adventurer"? Fuck You!
In his essay, Ron writes:
Quote
I will now provide a set of concepts and practices to bring out what seem to me to be these games’ best
features for setting-centric Story Now play. The idea is to embrace the setting as a genuine, central
source of the colorful thematic dilemmas explicit in the games’ introductory text, and to resist the
retraction and retreat to comparatively tame Story Before which are explicit in the later GM-advice and
scenario-preparation text. . . .
[snip]
Make player-characters in it. In doing so, drive this into your brain: fuck “the adventurer.”
• Not all types of characters described in the character creation options are OK. They need to be
characters who would definitely be at that location, not just someone who could be there. They
have something they ordinarily do there, and are engaged in doing it.
• All characters, player-characters too, have lives, jobs, families, acquaintances, homes, and
everything of that sort. Even if not native to that location, they have equivalents there.
• Player-characters do not comprise a “team.” They are who they are, individually. Each of them
carries a few NPCs along, implied by various details, and those NPCs should be identified. It is
helpful for at least one, preferably more of them to be small walking soap operas.
I see what Ron is saying here: in order to really dig into the setting the way cleats dig into a soccer pitch, the adventurer can't be some nameless, rootless wanderer with no interests, friendships, or whatever. This may be true in games aiming for Narrativist goals, and I can certainly see an argument that even when it's not strictly necessary it should be best practice. But I think it overlooks some stuff, at least specifically in the contest of historically revisionist OSR D&D play. (Of course, that style of play isn't explicitly aiming at Narrativism, so maybe it's not a counter-example after all.)
Judging from our own extensive play, and about a zillion blogs recounting the same experience, D&D characters enter the world as six attribute scores, a class, an alignment, and a name. That's not a lot to go on! Maybe the player comes up with a half-ass backstory that the DM integrates into the setting, or not. But D&D characters are passionately, tragically, achingly plugged into the setting: they are all drug-addicts, fiending for gold like Bogart in Treasure of the Sierra Madre.
On first arriving anywhere:
* Who's got the most gold?
* How well is it guarded?
* What are the reprisals?
* Who will benefit from us robbing this guy, and therefore might shelter us?
For example, in Tavis's White Box game, we've got a pretty good idea that the Necromancer has a ton of treasure. But he also keeps level-draining Wraiths trapped in crystals to throw as grenades against intruders. We're terrified of level-drains, and don't have enough high-level Clerics to feel confident against a large number of Wraiths, so we have left the Necromancer alone until very recently. In the Glantri game, people quickly realized that B1: In Search of the Unknown had really shitty treasure, so we kicked that place to the curb and only go back when we're
You can even draw up a list of expected treasure values, and then if you're really bored, try to weight that against the expected difficulty to figure out the juiciest targets. The point is that "D&D adventuring" (i.e., drug addiction) is an immediate hook into the setting. (When "adventuring" isn't synonymous with drug addiction, as in Alternity or, I don't know, GURPS, I think Ron's points acquire greater force.)
Additionally, Tavis's game features "carousing rules" based on Jeff Rients's house rules (which in turn were based off concepts from an old Dragon article, "Orgies, Inc."). The idea is that you're a dude with a lot of gold burning a hole in your pocket, and you don't earn XP until you piss it away--and the process of doing so might get you into trouble leading to further adventures. This can be seen as a mechanical way to generate the friends/enemies/relationships that Ron mentions in his essay, plowing the reward system into generating new predicaments. Eric has adopted similar rules, though I think the mechanics differ.
But I also think that this stuff happens over time, even with PC's who don't have roots. It takes a while--probably 5 sessions or so--but in that time, rivalries and so on will naturally spring up. This assumes, of course, a long period of play.
Eero Tuovinen:
The topic is very dense and I've got real world stuff to focus on, but I'm reading. Also, this:
Quote from: James_Nostack on October 29, 2011, 08:45:30 AM
So that's one peril of extreme laid-back sandboxing "you tell me what you're doing" style of play: if the Dungeon Master takes no social control over the deliberation process, you can end up with analysis-paralysis situations. Tavis doesn't see it as his role to ramrod people. Rather, the group will organically evolve its own procedures for reaching decisions that are optimized for the preferences of the regular players. People who don't like it will self-select out, as I largely have. (I don't agree with this, but it seems to be philosophy.)
Our campaign is just like this, except it's only been going for around 40 sessions so far. Great fun, and as the GM I can underwrite the notion of letting the players coordinate themselves. The planning bit is quality entertainment in itself, we often have similar 20-50% shares of the session dedicated to doing party logistics, sorting information and deciding on the next adventure and its parameters. I read that planning thread just now, would love to play in that group!
My advice to players who think that we're getting stuck on minutiae has been boldness and initiative: seize leadership, make some snap judgments and get the party off into the dungeon - the GM doesn't need your planning, he's quite happy to run the game from the moment we sit down at the table. Dying might be losing, but it's not failing in the ultimate agenda of having fun.
That wiki inspires me, I should see about moving the planning process for our campaign to the Internet at some point. Something light-weight to begin with, the teenagers aren't often too sorted with web community tools.
James_Nostack:
Eero wrote:
Quote
we often have similar 20-50% shares of the session dedicated to doing party logistics, sorting information and deciding on the next adventure and its parameters. I read that planning thread just now, would love to play in that group!
Wow. That thread was killing me. I think there's this trick of parliamentary procedure where, if you just go around in circles long enough, weaker-willed participants will eventually give up: "Just make a decision, I don't care so long as this meeting ends!" Sometimes it feels like that to me, but obviously other players in that same thread loved it. But I think it's all sorted itself out, and everyone is happy.
Thinking about this a little more, about how to define a sandbox. Perhaps a sandbox is a medium for play? You've got a world, and within that world there are these dungeons where a lot of any particular session occurs. But when the session is not occurring (both literally, as in you're away from the table, but also when you're just bullshitting about what to do next), you've stepped back one level and are inhabiting the sandbox.
So the sandbox has some descriptive qualities: "The Lost City of Thracia contains Ontussa the Sphinx, who was enslaved by the Necromancer Ashur Ram." Right? Stuff to see and things that can be done. Backstory. Ancient history. Connective tissue between the dungeons, and between a dungeon and a town.
But it also has a procedural or prescriptive component: the sandbox is what the players choose to do, in the order they choose to do it. The descriptive stuff in the setting (the map of Scather's Hoard, the politics of the Nameless City) largely comes into existence in response to players' meanderings, both as preparation and response.
I'm setting up to discuss B2: Keep on the Borderlands a bit, but that also segues into historical discussion.
C. Edwards:
The planning aspect of play I tend to think of as "The Hannibal Factor", as in the A-Team, as in "I love it when a plan comes together." It's not something I mind, and I think that the creativity and imagination that often goes into planning and a positive return on that planning are part of the draw of play. Part of the implicit reward cycle I guess. But then I wouldn't run a game for ten of fifteen players at one time either. That's just not something I have any desire to do. Either tweaking the rules, or using rules that are less likely to hand your ass to you would probably cut down quite a bit on how much planning players feel is necessary.
James wrote:
Quote
Thinking about this a little more, about how to define a sandbox. Perhaps a sandbox is a medium for play?
That makes a lot of sense to me, and would explain why at a higher level (including the factors Ron mentions in his essay) individual examples of sandbox play can vary so much.
Abkajud:
Wasn't "sandbox" a direct response to the old way of having the players on a rail straight for the dungeon?
In my experience, people sign up to play a game of D&D on the basis that they're going to be led straight to the adventure and walked through it in a sort of slightly-detached "tour guide" kind of way. This is not as much the case with games of 0e, as it seems the OSR crowd has encouraged people to play early editions with more of a daring, explorative flair.
As I recall it, and as it's been used in MMORPGs, a "sandbox" is a game setting that you're allowed to explore, without being told what the plot is, by the GM. The level of prep can be high or low; the only necessity is that there is a means of prepping or improvising the details of the setting as they come under scrutiny through play. It doesn't strongly correlate to Creative Agenda per se; the motivations for playing a sandbox game can vary greatly.
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