Is railroading always bad?

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What is the premise of Blades in the Dark?
It takes place in a sort of Victorian steampunk city with a strong urban fantasy bent. The city is controlled by various criminal gangs and the PCs are members of a new gang that starts with no territory or money and are trying to make it to the big leagues by performing heists on high society and so forth.

The setting feels a bit like the computer game Dishonoured if you know that.
 
What is the premise of Blades in the Dark?

From

Blades in the Dark
is a tabletop role-playing game about a crew of daring scoundrels seeking their fortunes on the haunted streets of an industrial-fantasy city. There are heists, chases, occult mysteries, dangerous bargains, bloody skirmishes, and, above all, riches to be had — if you’re bold enough to seize them.

You and your fledgling crew must thrive amidst the threats of rival gangs, powerful noble families, vengeful ghosts, the Bluecoats of the city watch, and the siren song of your scoundrel’s own vices. Will you rise to power in the criminal underworld? What are you willing to do to get to the top?
 
I've never been able to pull the trigger on Blades in the Dark. I want to read it because some of the mechanics sound unique and interesting, but on the other hand, I know it will never get played.
 
I would tend not to think of Blades in the Dark as a sandbox game because it has such a fixed style of play. In general it's assumed play is based around heists or something like heists and doesn't really work if you depart to far from that.

On the other hand, as hacks of the game seem to show, you can treat a lot of things as metaphorical heists, so possibly? - if the GM knows the system well enough is and is confident enough with it?
 
So I've got a question about how various folks would characterize the sandboxness of:

The West Marches as run by Ben Robbins. His game allowed the players to define their own missions, however, there were some constraints:

- There is no adventure in town.

- Parties must return to town by the end of a game session (later somewhat relaxed)

- Adventure is "out there" in the wilds, not "back there" towards civilization.

To me that is a sandbox, but it doesn't allow any of the following:

- A character to decide to settle down and run an inn (and continue play)

- A character to decide to start a thieves guild in town

- A character to decide to become king of "back there"

I don't remember if he required players to come up with some minimum number of players for a session, though I'm pretty sure he did have a maximum.
 
Blades in the Dark is a cool game. The setting is interesting too. I just wouldn't play it. I do think if you like to read RPGs, it is definitely worth it.
 
I would tend not to think of Blades in the Dark as a sandbox game because it has such a fixed style of play. In general it's assumed play is based around heists or something like heists and doesn't really work if you depart to far from that.

...
So I've got a question about how various folks would characterize the sandboxness of:

The West Marches as run by Ben Robbins. His game allowed the players to define their own missions, however, there were some constraints:

- There is no adventure in town.

- Parties must return to town by the end of a game session (later somewhat relaxed)

- Adventure is "out there" in the wilds, not "back there" towards civilization.

To me that is a sandbox, but it doesn't allow any of the following:

- A character to decide to settle down and run an inn (and continue play)

- A character to decide to start a thieves guild in town

- A character to decide to become king of "back there"

I don't remember if he required players to come up with some minimum number of players for a session, though I'm pretty sure he did have a maximum.

So, like these types of points, and arguing that sandboxes "shouldn't" prohibit things as described in ffilz ffilz 's description of West Marches, is why I tried to come up with a new term that allowed for BitD or West Marches style play where you're not following a predefined, linear path, but you're still fairly constrained to certain types of activities (heists for BitD, going out and plundering stuff for WM).

So if it's splitting hairs, I ain't the one doing it ;)
 
Blades in the Dark is a cool game. The setting is interesting too. I just wouldn't play it. I do think if you like to read RPGs, it is definitely worth it.
My group really enjoyed it when we did a year long, but it's fair to say we played it differently than it's written.

We kept some of the narrative mechanics like flashbacks, but on stuff like GM authority we were a lot more trad.
 
I would tend not to think of Blades in the Dark as a sandbox game because it has such a fixed style of play.


Yeah, it's definitely not geared towards Sandbox play. I still don't like assigning specfic playstyles to games, as that ultimately lies in the hands of the GM IMO, but using the game as intented/RAW it's clearly not intended for a Sandbox campaign
 
That's the thing that rubs me wrong. I love the theme of BitD - but I simply don't understand the point of limiting the play to the level it does (or any other game like that, while being insistent on it being an RPG (which it kinda is, I guess).

The West Marches (which I'm not familiar with - but I'll go by what ffilz ffilz wrote)... My first question is "Why are any of these limitations necessary?" The premise, from what I can extrapolate is a rocksolid guideline to build a sandbox around on their own.

If the goal is to have a ripping "adventure" - why are the "ripping adventures" limited to simply what is "not in town"? Or why *can't* a PC start an Inn as a conceit?

It sounds like a lot of these systems are designed to be extended boardgame mechanics that have adopted RPG elements more than being dedicated RPG's unto themselves. So when you're "not in town" - you go have a dungeoncrawl ala Dungeon? What is the upside to it rather than not just playing Dungeon?

I'm not saying it's *not* sandbox either. In fact, I ran a sandbox that played nearly exactly like the rules described - without having to make those rules explicit. The part was from a tiny town, they went out to the local woods to "adventure" (against the local tribe of goblins that were stealing the town's beehives to get the honey!) and the PC's used largely non-lethal weapons because they were just 10-year old PC's. So they had to be home before dark - otherwise their parents would be pissed and make them do extra chores (which I had some mini-games for milking cows, chasing rogue chickens and goats, picking fruits and vegetables etc.) But they could do anything they wanted. And the players loved it.

But the players themselves were 10-years old. So... yeah. It was actually a lot of fun. (and if anyone wants to know - I used the SW: Adventurers Edition). Do I think I could have gotten away with this with my regular players? It would be an extremely hard sell, but maybe?

So I'm not sure why one *needs* the explicit rules that limit the players ability to play? If the setting is well crafted enough, meta-rules aren't really necessary. Except to curtail the mechanical ability to do anything else outside of the explicit nature of the game, which is kinda anti-sandbox as a conceit.
 
I can understand why West Marches insists adventures can't happen in town.

In my sandbox Symbaroum game, which followed a lot of the hooks in the books, there was just too much happening in town. It took too long really for the PCs to leave the town and explore the rest of the setting. Not necessarily a problem if the game is fun of course, but if you do want to get that exploration then it may be an issue. (Although this can be covered by just making the town minimalist rather than explicitly forbidding it).

But also key to west marches is the idea of the open table. This necessitates certain structures that may be limiting in order to work. If the town is a neutral place where nothing happens but which expeditions set out from, then it becomes an easy jumping on point for everyone.
 
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The West Marches (which I'm not familiar with - but I'll go by what ffilz ffilz wrote)... My first question is "Why are any of these limitations necessary?"
It's been awhile since I looked at West Marches, but what I recall is that the restrictions were to facilitate drop-in play, with shifting parties of adventurers based on the players actually at the table at the time of playing, rather than The Party, Holy and Inviolate in its Blessed Immaculatude.
 
So I've got a question about how various folks would characterize the sandboxness of:
It sounds like whoever is running that game knows how to manage a complex sandbox with a lot of players. :smile: Those rules look really familiar and remind of me a campaign way back in the 90's with a large pool of players who floated in and out of the game. It was rarely 100% certain who was going to show up at game night. I remember it being certain death to spend the night in the dungeon because that's when all the really dangerous incorporeal undead start roaming around. Anyway, now that I am older and wiser I realize those seemingly arbitrary rules made it much easier to manage the campaign.

Edit: To this day I strongly discourage players from spending the night in a dungeon with dangerous wandering monsters like incorporeal undead.

It's been awhile since I looked at West Marches, but what I recall is that the restrictions were to facilitate drop-in play, with shifting parties of adventurers based on the players actually at the table at the time of playing, rather than The Party, Holy and Inviolate in its Blessed Immaculatude.
You beat me to it.
 
So I'm not sure why one *needs* the explicit rules that limit the players ability to play? If the setting is well crafted enough, meta-rules aren't really necessary. Except to curtail the mechanical ability to do anything else outside of the explicit nature of the game, which is kinda anti-sandbox as a conceit.

In theory, by limiting the game in that fashion, the game can provide a lot more structure around that activity and support it better.

Like, I can run a bakery business game in GURPS, but a game designed around it would likely have a lot more structure in place to support advertising, word of mouth, quality of baked goods, etc.

And, yeah, it's kinda "anti-sandbox" which is why I'm veering away from using that term for BitD. Because while that style of play still isn't "do whatever" as some people insist on for a "true sandbox", it's still not linear in any way.

It's been awhile since I looked at West Marches, but what I recall is that the restrictions were to facilitate drop-in play, with shifting parties of adventurers based on the players actually at the table at the time of playing, rather than The Party, Holy and Inviolate in its Blessed Immaculatude.

Sounds like old school megadungeon games. Like, isn't that how Gronan of Simmerya Gronan of Simmerya basically describes Gary running games? And it lines up with some of the games that I played in that dated from that era.

Everything old is new again.
 
It's been awhile since I looked at West Marches, but what I recall is that the restrictions were to facilitate drop-in play, with shifting parties of adventurers based on the players actually at the table at the time of playing, rather than The Party, Holy and Inviolate in its Blessed Immaculatude.
Actually, it wasn't for drop in play. Players had to come up with a mission, form a party, and schedule a session. But yea, part of the town setup was so that there was a safe place for parties to return to, share their findings (another part was the map was shared, carved into a table at the tavern), and regroup for the next mission.
 
Actually, it wasn't for drop in play. Players had to come up with a mission, form a party, and schedule a session. But yea, part of the town setup was so that there was a safe place for parties to return to, share their findings (another part was the map was shared, carved into a table at the tavern), and regroup for the next mission.

True. But, both "drop in" and WM style games are still open table in the fact that there is no One True Party, and the game is designed with structures in place to allow a semi-random group of players.

How that group is determined on a session-by-session basis differs (planning vs. "whoever shows"), but the end result (no set group of players) is the same, and the structures to make that work are pretty much identical.
 
In theory, by limiting the game in that fashion, the game can provide a lot more structure around that activity and support it better.

Yes but.....

Like, I can run a bakery business game in GURPS, but a game designed around it would likely have a lot more structure in place to support advertising, word of mouth, quality of baked goods, etc.
Glad you brought up GURPS. With GURPS while designed to be generic the core books only goes into a few things in specific detail. BY detail I mean covering a specific aspect of a setting. Instead the core books does is provide a toolkit that you could use to design a campaign around a bakery business.

GURPS covers this at first in the main sourcebook and then over the past decade starting to covering in a lot of specific detail in focused PDF supplements. For example how Dungeon Fantasy starter. A better example is GURPS Social Engineering and its follow up supplements which are even more narrowly focused on specific social situations.

Using these supplement results in a finely tuned system handling that topic in not only for mechanics but the campaign itself. Yet at the end of the day it is still GURPS. Which means if you only needs bits and pieces you can find those in the supplements. In my mind this is the best of both worlds.

In contrast Blades in the Dark is finely tuned for the one thing it handles well. Currently it has the advantage because it all in one spot presented as a unified whole.

The lesson isn't to argue that GURPS could do what Blades in the Dark does but rather you could design a narrowly focus product like BiTD yet it remains part of a larger system allowing you to use part of it in another style of cam;paign like a sandbox.
 
I mean, in theory? But in a lot of cases it turns out that games work well for certain subsets of things, and get worse the further you get from that.

Like, I've been playing GURPS since... '86? I'd say that overall GURPS does great at fairly low tech stuff - typical fantasy. Not surprising, given SJG's previous experience with TFT. High tech stuff it does passably well, but some of the randomization gets wonky - 7d6, for instance, has very little variability in it in most cases.

And then look at supers. While GURPS Supers works, it's generally accepted that Champions handles supers better, despite being fairly similar in overall approach... and I'd definitely argue that GURPS works better for non-supers, in most cases, than HERO does.

Even generic systems have strengths and weaknesses. A system designed to do a thing should, in theory, be able to do that thing better.

Additionally, I'd argue that some of the campaign structure stuff in BitD is useful in and of itself to provide a larger "metastructure" to play that can help create the overall experience. A more open game almost *can't* have something like that, but in exchange it allows for a wider possibility of play. So there's a trade-off there - how much do you want that additional freedom for your game? How okay are you with having a tightly constrained premise? You clearly value the more open game far more, and so would always come down on that side, but I don't know that it's a universal good.
 
So I'm not sure why one *needs* the explicit rules that limit the players ability to play? If the setting is well crafted enough, meta-rules aren't really necessary. Except to curtail the mechanical ability to do anything else outside of the explicit nature of the game, which is kinda anti-sandbox as a conceit.
Supporting and focusing one style, mode, or method of play through specific restrictions has the advantage of making it easier and/or ensured, since it is supported through mechanics, but the disadvantage of reducing the capacity of or making outright impossible, other styles, modes, or methods, since those mechanics can be detrimental, if not outright anathema, to them, - the essential nature of Forgian Coherence.

If your definition of ”Sandbox” is non-linear, emergent play without plot based solely on players motivations, goals, and actions and the world’s response to those, then such limited play can be considered to fit the definition...as long as you agree to the terms of the limitations and premise. In other words, the Sandbox just gets smaller.

If your definition of “Sandbox“ is Living World, ie. that the PCs can do anything that their PCs could do given the nature and reality of that setting, then such limited play cannot be considered to fit the definition.

So, as Black Vulmea said earlier...RobIsRight.

There must be a definitional difference between a large, completely Open Sandbox the size of an alternate reality and a small, Limited Play Sandbox that constrains what PCs can do and what playstyles are supported for various purposes.

As I mentioned before one thing to do is stop using words you know are defined multiple ways and increase confusion in favor of specific words that provide clarity.

The type of Open Sandbox play that encompasses all possible options available to people living in an alternate reality, (like PCs opening a gourmet Cimmerian bakery or PCs forming a secret cult to assassinate all Force users in the galaxy freeing mankind forever) without any mechanics or rules that prevent those options, needs a term - Living World is already being used a lot to describe this, I think it fits.

Types of Limited Sandbox Play like West Marches or Blades in the Dark do not allow for all possible options. They constrain those options and specifically prevent PCs from doing everything PCs should be able to do if the setting were real for a variety of reasons. However, they do allow the PCs to drive the action with their own goals, motivations and actions and the world to respond freely with consequences resulting naturally from those actions. Rob is using non-linear to describe this. It works.

Instead of circling endlessly in whether or not Blades in the Dark is a Sandbox(for different definitions of Sandbox) we could say that...

Blades in the Dark is not Living World, but it is Non-Linear.
 
Yeah, I've been trying to invert the discussion from "define sandbox" to "there are games that have these properties, what's a good word for that?"

I'm far less interested in getting everybody with different definitions of an existing term to agree on what that term "should" mean (which won't be held to outside of this thread anyway) than I am in looking at games with specific properties and how the work and relate to each other.
 
Even generic systems have strengths and weaknesses. A system designed to do a thing should, in theory, be able to do that thing better.
You have good points about GURPS, and I think my reply could have been better. Let's see if this works better.

Blades in the Dark is more about how you use the rules then the rules themselves. The same with sandbox campaigns, it is how you use the rules rather than the rules themselves. GURPS could be used with the structure of Blades in the Dark. Would not have the same feel as BitD minimalist mechanics. Just as BitD rules describing characters and what they can do can be used in a sandbox campaign. As a product however, how BiTD uses it rules it what makes it not useful to a sandbox referee. Since how it uses it rules forms a large part of its appeal it hard to separate the two.
 
Yeah, I've been trying to invert the discussion from "define sandbox" to "there are games that have these properties, what's a good word for that?"

A "Cardboard Box game"
 
Do folks consider how one uses the rules to be different than rules themselves? Or it all rules?

My view RPG systems are comprised of
  • What character can do (like Strength, Class, Skill, tc)
  • How to resolve things that character can do (Like stealth, magic, combat, etc)
  • How the setting works (random encounter tables)
  • What available in the setting (creatures, NPCs, treasure, vehicles, etc)
In addition my systems tell you how to use the above which can include
  • Experience awards (most RPGs)
  • Creating Encounters (3E, 4E, 5e)
  • Flashbacks (BiTD)
  • Structure of a session or adventure (BiTD, West March)
  • Structure of a campaign (Ars Magica)
While the specifics of the above are tied to the system. What I view as the system is generally not tied to above. Change how you use the rules and you can keep on using the same system but have the campaign feel completely different.

Conversely if you keep using rules in the same way although use a different system, you can keep the campaign recognizably the same. Although if the system doesn't have same type of stuff that available in your setting it will take a lot of work to make it work.
 
Do folks consider how one uses the rules to be different than rules themselves? Or it all rules?

I'd say it's all rules.

If I wanted to break it down I'd break it into "rules" and "procedures". But I think that generally, for games that have both rules and procedures, they're usually designed to work together, and should be considered a single whole.

If you choose to do things with the game beyond that, that's all cool and dandy.
 
Do folks consider how one uses the rules to be different than rules themselves?

Kinda, maybe?

I mean, I consider the GM ultimately the arbiter of the rules, with the power to apply, ignore, or change them at will. So rules are, generally speaking, simply a tool at the GM's disposal. They don't "make the game" as it were.
 
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