Sandbox RPG: help me understand

[chuckdee]

Now, if the author can get away from having a fixed preconceived "story", and let that be what it plays out to be, they could get further away from "narrative".

I don't think he has a fixed idea of the story. He's just presenting the players with what's going on- their interactions with it change it. Or they don't interact, and it doesn't.

 

[TJS]

Basically sounds exactly like a living world sandbox to me. That is all about NPCs, knowing NPC motivations/agendas, knowing your locations, and having the NPCs react according to a timeline and motivation of their own (because "They live!"). So yeah, unless there is something more that I am missing from this, it basically is a living world/living adventure sandbox and narrative just seems to be getting used here as the qualify that he uses to wrap his mind around it all.

It's perhaps a kind of living world, but I think the fcous here is on investigating and solving mysteries and making that actually feel like something that works.

I think Tynes is less interested in the idea of a sandbox as he is in making a mystery investigation game work. What he calls the narrative sandbox is just one way to approach this issue.

The players have to gather a lot of information and put it altogether and solve the mystery. This is where it's possible to run into problems. If the players need to gather a lot of information they may get completely bogged down. I found that players just don't remember enough details week to week to solve a complex mystery. It works with keen players who know they need to take notes and will actively do it, but that can also be a bit like the old school dungeon mapping issue in that it can slow down the game and mistaken assumptions in the notes can push the players completely off track as they forget in following weeks why they made it.

I find the best solution to this issue is structural. For the most part skip the gathering information stage and have the players focus on the putting it together stage. Rather than have the characters start standing over a dead body and having to case the scene interview witnesses, knock on doors etc, have the characters called in because the previous detective met a suspicious fatal accident and here are his notes.

I would call this the jigsaw approach. The characters have all of the pieces, they just have to figure out how they fit together. (Not literally all pieces or the players would just sit around talking, but a lot of them). In a way it's how the computer game Her Story approaches solving a mystery structurally.

 

[A Fiery Flying Roll]

I don't think he has a fixed idea of the story. He's just presenting the players with what's going on- their interactions with it change it. Or they don't interact, and it doesn't.

Yeah, his criticism of the linear nature of many CoC adventures implies the opposite if anything.

Reading between the lines, I'm pretty sure that the use of "narrative" here is shorthand for "using narrative techniques in your gamemastering" rather than following a conventional story. When he talks about "dramatic beats" he's using a term much more common in theater than books.

 

[robertsconley]

Funny, I know all the English words you used, but when you put them in this order, I get nothing. Is this some American slang you're using?
Urban Dictionary gave me nothing for "abstract system", "abstract may be more fun" and all the other combinations I tried...

does this help?
A system with abstract combat may be more fun because all you really need to learn is the "broad picture" parts of combat.

More seriously, I actually agree with this - though I don't think any skill is really so "automatic". But yeah, close to that. Maybe a 1 on a normal die?

Yup

I actually suspect your SoDW got way more than 6 replays.

Well Scourge had 12 runs with Swords & Wizardry + MW Supplement*. But that just was luck due to the number of opportunities I had to run it in the early 2010s. Half a dozen is a more realistic number to shoot for.

*Plus once with GURPS (1999, and the one that was part of a campaign), once with D&D 3.0 (2001, a one shot with friends), three times with D&D 5e (after 2015).

Oh and the one time I adapted it for Adventures in Middle Earth. Which also the only time the party failed to deal with the Demon Wolf (a Tolkien Werewolf in this version). Why? Because I handed out background cards with one of them telling the player he is really a agent of Sauron and has succumbed to the shadow. And the player in question just fucked up the party's plan when they confronted the Demon Wolf. He actually died. Another party member died, another ran for his life diving into a river and letting the current take him away. The third hid underneath bodies of villagers.

It was bad, I thoroughly broke that group. Strangely they enjoyed themselves and praise the player who betrayed the party.

 

[TristramEvans]

Yeah, the term "narrative" is a Chinese puzzlebox in modern RPG discourse.

I'm going to take a closer loo at this article that I only had the chance to skim yesterday while in class, let's see if we can use context clues to sus out WTF the author is talking about with their nonsensical phrase "Narrative Sandbox"...

Chaosium’s Call of Cthulhu was the first investigative roleplaying game and arguably the first to really expect and deliver a recognizable plot for every adventure.

Was it? Probably, Ill take the author's word for that. But let's focus on the one word there: "plot". I think in this context its very clear that by saying "deliver a recognizable plot" the author means " present a Linear Adventure", which, yeah, Call of Cthulhu modules are the pre-eminent examples of, done very Very well.

The more I played and ran Call of Cthulhu and the more I wrote and edited adventures at Pagan, the clearer it became that this linear series of scenes had a lot of problems. While they initially appeared to make the Keeper’s job easier, since you could run the adventure scene by scene, they frequently broke down whenever an investigative skill check failed. This then made the Keeper’s job substantially harder as they were required to improvise new scenes or discoveries on the fly and stitch the investigative thread back together.

Here the author identifies what I refer to as "The Pixelbashing Issue", which is a lesser form of the "Moon Logic Issue". It's one I solved in my own investigative games a long time ago, by leaving the clues up to chance rather than pre-determined, but we can clearly see the "problem" inherent to pre-determined plots in linear adventures that the author is seeking to address.

a narrative sandbox where the adventure consists primarily of character agendas and location descriptions. Because when you know what the NPCs want, and you know the relevant locations, the actual scenes of the story can emerge organically from the actions of the players. If the players took an unexpected action, good or bad, the story could continue because the Keeper understood the agendas and timetables of the NPCs.

OK, here we have his definition of this term, "narrative sandbox", and there is a lot to unpack here.

First off "the adventure consists primarily of character agendas and location descriptions" just describes a sandbox, pretty simply. So this begs the question what makes it a "narrative sandbox" rather than just a sandbox? Does this next statement give a clue?

"the actual scenes of the story can emerge organically from the actions of the players" - the author has now introduced the term "story", on top of "narrative" and "plot". But because this term is ambiguous, it's impossible to tell what meaning he is using here, and if it has any relationship to the "plot" as defined by him or the "narrative" which remains undefined. At face value, we can just say the "story" is simply "whatever happens in the game", and so again we are left with the question, what makes this a "narrative sandbox" as opposed to just a sandbox?

We expected players to actually solve mysteries through investigation, interviewing NPCs, and making intuitive leaps.

lol, how...novel. Suddenly the players were actually role-playing investigators in your investigative role-playing games.

The author then goes on a tangent about Gumshoe,and I'll skip all of that except for this one bit that I think is starting to paint a picture for me of what is actually going on here:

Our two approaches to investigative scenarios are fundamentally different, even though both set out to solve the same basic problem. At Pagan we wanted to simulate the experience of conducting an investigation. Robin, I believe, wanted to translate the experience of watching or reading investigation-themed entertainment.

Yes, in 2022, the author is suddenly identifying the difference between traditional roleplaying and modern storygaming.

And, then we get a few paragraphs that kinda sorta simply reiterate what's already been said.

And the answer to the most basic question, "what is the difference between a narrative sandbox and a sandbox?" is never actually answered, but I think now I know the reason: there is no difference, the author is simply discovering a playstyle that the rest of us have known about for decades for the first time and appending the term "narrative" to it because they are coming from a background of storygaming and those fuckers append "narrative" to every word like a bad 90's game author uses the term "punk", convincing themselves that this is innovation and not simply them being woefully behind the curve.

Sorry Virginia, there's no such thing as a "Narrative Sandbox"

 

[chuckdee]

And the answer to the most basic question, "what is the difference between a narrative sandbox and a sandbox?" is never actually answered, but I think now I know the reason: there is no difference, the author is simply discovering a playstyle that the rest of us have known about for decades for the first time and appending the term "narrative" to it because they are coming from a background of storygaming and those fuckers append "narrative" to every word like a bad 90's game author uses the term "punk", convincing themselves that this is innovation and not simply them being woefully behind the curve.

Sorry Virginia, there's no such thing as a "Narrative Sandbox"

Personally, I think the problem is that we're looking as Narrative as a descriptor, which is why I think Narrative Sandbox is such a loaded term as said above. It think it's a Sandbox with Narrative elements enabled. The typical Gumshoe adventure (and Delta Green in general, and may extend to many investigative oriented scenarios) assume a particular path to the end. If you want to have that, but also have Sandbox play, then you have two opposing things. I looked at this as a way to resolve that dissonance.

 

[TristramEvans]

It think it's a Sandbox with Narrative elements enabled.

Possibly, but without any examples in the article itself, this would be conjectural

 

[chuckdee]

Possibly, but without any examples in the article itself, this would be conjectural

Very true, which is one of the reasons I brought it here to unpack to see what others were getting from it.

Looking at the example products that he points out though (The Labyrinth, The Dracula Dossier, Walker in the Wastes), I think that perhaps he just didn't communicate it well, because The Labyrinth and the Dracula Dossier are definitely laid out in a manner that could be considered sandbox, while still maintaining the underlying systems, i.e. Night's Black Agents and Delta Green.

The normal adventures that they publish are very self contained, and the campaigns more linear than I like, which was the reason I gave up on them, and almost didn't get either. Not sure if Impossible Landscapes suffers from this, as it seemed a bit too far off what I wanted. Though revisiting, I'm not so sure if I didn't miss out on something special with that one.

 

[hawkeyefan]

Very true, which is one of the reasons I brought it here to unpack to see what others were getting from it.

Looking at the example products that he points out though (The Labyrinth, The Dracula Dossier, Walker in the Wastes), I think that perhaps he just didn't communicate it well, because The Labyrinth and the Dracula Dossier are definitely laid out in a manner that could be considered sandbox, while still maintaining the underlying systems, i.e. Night's Black Agents and Delta Green.

The normal adventures that they publish are very self contained, and the campaigns more linear than I like, which was the reason I gave up on them, and almost didn't get either. Not sure if Impossible Landscapes suffers from this, as it seemed a bit too far off what I wanted. Though revisiting, I'm not so sure if I didn't miss out on something special with that one.

I’ve seen the Dracula Dossier described as an improvisational sandbox. Which seems pretty apt to me. The GM prompts the players with information, and what they do with that information is entirely up to them. None of it needs to be set in stone, and the GM will also improv based on what the players have their characters do. I really want to run this campaign.

The Labyrinth sounds fairly similar in that it gives a bunch of material to the GM and ideas on how to use it, but no specific course to navigate or specific destination.

Walker in the Wastes doesn’t feel like a sandbox game to me. It has some elements of that in that it allows there to be some freedom for the PCs to do things how they like, and there need not be a set order of events. But I feel like it still requires or at the very least expects the same steps to be taken, even if the order in which they’re taken is unimportant. It’s more like an example of “node-based” adventure design, I’d say. It was an attempt to recapture the sprawling grandeur of Masks of Nyarlathotep.

Impossible Landscapes is an odd one. I’ve never played it, and I’ll admit I’ve not read all of it (it’s fucking dense) but I have read a good deal of it, and I don’t think I’d call that a sandbox either. I don’t want to spoil it, so I won’t go into great detail. Although I think it’s impressive in ways and I think it’d likely make an entertaining campaign, there are a couple of central elements that bump up hard against the idea of sandbox play.

 

[chuckdee]

I’ve seen the Dracula Dossier described as an improvisational sandbox.

That sounds like a lot better (and more descriptive) term than Narrative Sandbox.

 

[TJS]

That sounds like a lot better (and more descriptive) term than Narrative Sandbox.

I'm not sure what's improvisational about it really. You get a whole book of pre-prepared material. It's not the same as a scripted adventure, but neither are you really making it up as you go along.

 

[TristramEvans]

That sounds like a lot better (and more descriptive) term than Narrative Sandbox.

It seems redundant to me, like saying it's a "Sandbox Sandbox"

 

[AsenRG]

does this help?
A system with abstract combat may be more fun because all you really need to learn is the "broad picture" parts of combat.

Nope, brain still returns Error 505...but thanks for trying.

Yup
View attachment 41297

Well, that's not a normal die, but yeah, close to it. (Normal dice are cubic).

Well Scourge had 12 runs with Swords & Wizardry + MW Supplement*. But that just was luck due to the number of opportunities I had to run it in the early 2010s. Half a dozen is a more realistic number to shoot for.

*Plus once with GURPS (1999, and the one that was part of a campaign), once with D&D 3.0 (2001, a one shot with friends), three times with D&D 5e (after 2015).

...so a total of 18 (with AiME)? I seem to have been pretty close.
I agree half a dozen is more realistic, just noting you overdid it in the Demon Wolf's case.

Oh and the one time I adapted it for Adventures in Middle Earth. Which also the only time the party failed to deal with the Demon Wolf (a Tolkien Werewolf in this version). Why? Because I handed out background cards with one of them telling the player he is really a agent of Sauron and has succumbed to the shadow. And the player in question just fucked up the party's plan when they confronted the Demon Wolf. He actually died. Another party member died, another ran for his life diving into a river and letting the current take him away. The third hid underneath bodies of villagers.

It was bad, I thoroughly broke that group. Strangely they enjoyed themselves and praise the player who betrayed the party.
View attachment 41296

Well, it seems to have been a good game. And he played exactly what you served him with, so I'm not sure why you'd be complaining about it. Sorry to say, but I'm siding with the other players, the one who betrayed them deserves credit, as far as I'm concerned.

 

[chuckdee]

I'm not sure what's improvisational about it really. You get a whole book of pre-prepared material. It's not the same as a scripted adventure, but neither are you really making it up as you go along.

Improvisation isn't done in a vacuum. Look at one of the best improvisation shows "Whose Line is it anyway". They're given a scenario, and the improvisation is in the interpretation and reaction. That's why I thought it a better term.

 

[AsenRG]

I’ve seen the Dracula Dossier described as an improvisational sandbox. Which seems pretty apt to me. The GM prompts the players with information, and what they do with that information is entirely up to them. None of it needs to be set in stone, and the GM will also improv based on what the players have their characters do. I really want to run this campaign.

The Labyrinth sounds fairly similar in that it gives a bunch of material to the GM and ideas on how to use it, but no specific course to navigate or specific destination.

Again, what sandbox doesn't work like that, unless it's entirely PC-exploration-driven hexcrawl and the content of hexes doesn't change until the PCs get there? I mean, static sandboxes are a thing, but I find them to be an inferior (as in, less fun) form of the game.

Walker in the Wastes doesn’t feel like a sandbox game to me. It has some elements of that in that it allows there to be some freedom for the PCs to do things how they like, and there need not be a set order of events. But I feel like it still requires or at the very least expects the same steps to be taken, even if the order in which they’re taken is unimportant. It’s more like an example of “node-based” adventure design, I’d say. It was an attempt to recapture the sprawling grandeur of Masks of Nyarlathotep.

I admit I'm not sure whether that's what usually meant as "node-based", but I'd say that this could work with a sandbox.
Like, if some event X would only happen if the PCs achieve objectives A, B, C, D, F, Q and U in any order (so DAFUQBC is totally possible) & that isn't an event that should happen & if the things that lead to ABCDFQU aren't the only (nor even the majority) of content? It might be "extra content in sandbox" for all I care. I used to put such things in, but I called them "Easter eggs" (I've omitted doing that lately, mostly due to being tired and too close to a burnout).

Impossible Landscapes is an odd one. I’ve never played it, and I’ll admit I’ve not read all of it (it’s fucking dense) but I have read a good deal of it, and I don’t think I’d call that a sandbox either. I don’t want to spoil it, so I won’t go into great detail. Although I think it’s impressive in ways and I think it’d likely make an entertaining campaign, there are a couple of central elements that bump up hard against the idea of sandbox play.

...OK, I should take a look at it! At worst, material might be re-skinned and re-used.

 

[chuckdee]

Again, what sandbox doesn't work like that, unless it's entirely PC-exploration-driven hexcrawl and the content of hexes doesn't change until the PCs get there? I mean, static sandboxes are a thing, but I find them to be an inferior (as in, less fun) form of the game.

I think again, the point isn't that other Sandboxes don't work in a similar way. It's enabling Sandboxes to work with Narrative type play. When you lay out a plot and conspiracy, there's a certain art to being able to do that and not deviate from the idea of a Sandbox, I've found. You have to be willing to allow the players not to interact with your narrative, but still play through with it.

This isn't some huge revelation- other than the fact that it can apply to narrative games, which many think is like mixing oil with water.

 

[CRKrueger]

Yeah, his criticism of the linear nature of many CoC adventures implies the opposite if anything.

Reading between the lines, I'm pretty sure that the use of "narrative" here is shorthand for "using narrative techniques in your gamemastering" rather than following a conventional story. When he talks about "dramatic beats" he's using a term much more common in theater than books.

Dramatic Beats is also a term used in TV show writing rooms.

 

[A Fiery Flying Roll]

Dramatic Beats is also a term used in TV show writing rooms.

That makes sense. So I think in Laws' case he seems a lot more inspired by films and tv than novels. (Which makes sense from the main creator of Feng Shui).

That works better for me anyway if people are going to draw inspiration from other media for RPGs. There's lots of differences between playing a RPG and actors improvising on set. But that's still a lot more similar than the process of an author writing a fantasy novel.

 

[Moonglum]

I think again, the point isn't that other Sandboxes don't work in a similar way. It's enabling Sandboxes to work with Narrative type play. When you lay out a plot and conspiracy, there's a certain art to being able to do that and not deviate from the idea of a Sandbox, I've found. You have to be willing to allow the players not to interact with your narrative, but still play through with it.

This isn't some huge revelation- other than the fact that it can apply to narrative games, which many think is like mixing oil with water.

I agree with this, but would add that a 'static sandbox' sort of approach can be an effective way to teach/learn how this sort of rpg works. Once upon a time, the underlying assumptions of D&D and its followers included the idea that you would naturally begin with a new DM creating some sort of small, controlled space that the PC's could explore - under their own steam and making their own small decisions - and that the fuller, more dynamic campaign would naturally emerge as both sides of that dynamic kind of grow into their roles gradually. The beginning of that process is described relatively clearly and concretely in the rules books of that era, but the progression toward a richer sandbox, full of NPCs who are also moving around under their own steam and making their own decisions, was assumed to be something you would just figure out on your own by experimentation and the application of your innate creativity and imagination.

Today, I think a lot of people come to this subject really pre-conditioned by video games, movie and TV presentations of fantasy stories (which tend to be really stereotyped) and intensely curated, managed and controlling commercial settings. This makes it hard to imagine what would happen if you controlled the creative process completely on your own. It would be like handing someone an empty journal and telling them to write their own collection of fantasy novels. Many people would find the idea tremendously intimidating - perhaps impossible - and would either retreat to re-reading GoT or maybe writing their own knock off of a familiar story. Better is to set aside what you think you know from commercial products and just write one page of a scene, which then grows to a 10 page vignette, which then is followed by the rest of a short story, which eventually matures in your mind into something grand.

 

[CRKrueger]

Yeah, the term "narrative" is a Chinese puzzlebox in modern RPG discourse.

I'm going to take a closer loo at this article that I only had the chance to skim yesterday while in class, let's see if we can use context clues to sus out WTF the author is talking about with their nonsensical phrase "Narrative Sandbox"...



Was it? Probably, Ill take the author's word for that. But let's focus on the one word there: "plot". I think in this context its very clear that by saying "deliver a recognizable plot" the author means " present a Linear Adventure", which, yeah, Call of Cthulhu modules are the pre-eminent examples of, done very Very well.



Here the author identifies what I refer to as "The Pixelbashing Issue", which is a lesser form of the "Moon Logic Issue". It's one I solved in my own investigative games a long time ago, by leaving the clues up to chance rather than pre-determined, but we can clearly see the "problem" inherent to pre-determined plots in linear adventures that the author is seeking to address.



OK, here we have his definition of this term, "narrative sandbox", and there is a lot to unpack here.

First off "the adventure consists primarily of character agendas and location descriptions" just describes a sandbox, pretty simply. So this begs the question what makes it a "narrative sandbox" rather than just a sandbox? Does this next statement give a clue?

"the actual scenes of the story can emerge organically from the actions of the players" - the author has now introduced the term "story", on top of "narrative" and "plot". But because this term is ambiguous, it's impossible to tell what meaning he is using here, and if it has any relationship to the "plot" as defined by him or the "narrative" which remains undefined. At face value, we can just say the "story" is simply "whatever happens in the game", and so again we are left with the question, what makes this a "narrative sandbox" as opposed to just a sandbox?



lol, how...novel. Suddenly the players were actually role-playing investigators in your investigative role-playing games.

The author then goes on a tangent about Gumshoe,and I'll skip all of that except for this one bit that I think is starting to paint a picture for me of what is actually going on here:



Yes, in 2022, the author is suddenly identifying the difference between traditional roleplaying and modern storygaming.

And, then we get a few paragraphs that kinda sorta simply reiterate what's already been said.

And the answer to the most basic question, "what is the difference between a narrative sandbox and a sandbox?" is never actually answered, but I think now I know the reason: there is no difference, the author is simply discovering a playstyle that the rest of us have known about for decades for the first time and appending the term "narrative" to it because they are coming from a background of storygaming and those fuckers append "narrative" to every word like a bad 90's game author uses the term "punk", convincing themselves that this is innovation and not simply them being woefully behind the curve.

Sorry Virginia, there's no such thing as a "Narrative Sandbox"

Yeah, he's identifying the primary foundational difference between what you and I would term Roleplaying and what I would call Narrative Roleplaying. Laws believes Roleplaying is an art form, a type of improv creation. As such, there's always an inherent 4th wall authorial lens to his games, even when roleplaying. It's always "Roleplaying+", it's never just Roleplaying.

 

[BedrockBrendan]

Yeah, he's identifying the primary foundational difference between what you and I would term Roleplaying and what I would call Narrative Roleplaying. Laws believes Roleplaying is an art form, a type of improv creation. As such, there's always an inherent 4th wall authorial lens to his games, even when roleplaying. It's always "Roleplaying+", it's never just Roleplaying.

I tend to think of laws as a genre emulator. But it depends on the game. For me there is a pretty big difference between a game like Esoterorists and Hillfolk. The former was much more about emulating mysteries, and the latter is a lot more focused on improv style drama. The former is not a sandbox, it is structured around investigative scenes and clues. But definitely more in the realm of incorporating cinematic beats and stuff. Personally I like this stuff, but I do draw a line between that and classic sandbox (and again it is one of the reasons I call my own campaigns drama and sandbox: because I love throwing in Chang Cheh style beats of a bunch of masked martial artists popping out of the walls, or someone revealing secret family background to a character at a dramatic moment, but I also want the open exploration and freedom of a sandbox structure).

I listen to Robin Laws and Kenneth Hite's podcast and I think they are both pretty knowledgeable of different schools of thought in gaming (including the ones we are discussing here). I do seem to remember Laws talking about sandbox in an episode and his description seemed accurate to me.

But also I think Laws is like a lot of designers who are from that era, where they may be aware of these conversations, they may incorporate some of these ideas into their games, but their focus isn't really on which camp that falls into. They have a style their own and bring what tools work for them into that style.

For example in Hillfolk he talks about narrative games as puts Hillfolk within the context of that discussion in the RGP community. But you really get the sense he isn't bound by that discussion. He has his own goals and interest and they are much more rooted in an approach to gaming that isn't as tethered to definitions in online gaming forums. That may be one of the reasons why I liked Hillfolk so much (I am not sure). It appealed to me in a way that many other games that might have the narrative label affixed to them don't (I think another reason may be the emphasis on talking in character).

For me, when this stuff really started working for me at the game table, is when I thought less in terms of those online camps and whether was running a sandbox that fit this definition or that, and more in terms of what worked for me, what I was having fun doing, what tools and tricks enabled me to get a wuxia genre experience that didn't feel like a 90s style railroad or feel like it was breaking our immersion, etc. Ultimately what got me there was relaxing my views on a lot of style concerns, or at least focusing less on edge cases and more on the general thrust of things that makes sense.

To be clear though, I think these kinds of qualifiers are very helpful. When I was just calling what I did sandbox, I did feel more bound by the classic sandbox framework. But the moment I wrote down "Drama and Sandbox" I felt I had the freedom to do what I wanted in the games I was running and writing (which at the time was emulating what you see in wuxia movies and read in wuxia novels). But I wanted to do it in a way that was still anchored in that sandbox/living world.

 

[A Fiery Flying Roll]

Yeah, he's identifying the primary foundational difference between what you and I would term Roleplaying and what I would call Narrative Roleplaying. Laws believes Roleplaying is an art form, a type of improv creation. As such, there's always an inherent 4th wall authorial lens to his games, even when roleplaying. It's always "Roleplaying+", it's never just Roleplaying.

Laws' player typologies are notable here:

The Method Actor believes that roleplaying is a medium for personal expression, strongly identifying with the character he plays. He may believe that it's creatively important to establish a radically different character each time out. The method actor bases his decisions on his understanding of his character's psychology, and may become obstructive if other group members expect him to contradict it for rules reasons, or in pursuit of a broader goal. He may view rules as, at best, a necessary evil, preferring sessions in which the dice never come out of their bags. Situations that test or deepen his personality traits are your key to entertaining the method actor.

The Storyteller, like the method actor, is more inclined to the roleplaying side of the equation and less interested in numbers and experience points. On the other hand, he's more interested in taking part in a fun narrative that feels like a book or a movie than in strict identification with his character. He's quick to compromise if it moves the story forward, and may get bored when the game slows down for a long planning session. You can please him by introducing and developing plot threads, and by keeping the action moving, as would any skilled novelist or film director.

(There's seven others but these are the most relevant here).

So I suspect what you would call "Narrative Roleplaying" Laws would call "Storytelling".

And what you'd call "Roleplaying" he'd consider "Method Acting".

 

[BedrockBrendan]

I think again, the point isn't that other Sandboxes don't work in a similar way. It's enabling Sandboxes to work with Narrative type play. When you lay out a plot and conspiracy, there's a certain art to being able to do that and not deviate from the idea of a Sandbox, I've found. You have to be willing to allow the players not to interact with your narrative, but still play through with it.

This isn't some huge revelation- other than the fact that it can apply to narrative games, which many think is like mixing oil with water.

But to me, when it reads like they are having the plot or conspiracy arise organically out of NPC motivations in reaction to PCs, that is basically a living world approach (again unless I am missing something crucial here). The way I look at it is you can look at plots (and using that word loosely here) in a few different ways. One way is as a series of events you imagine unfolding overtime during the course of the adventure or campaign. But the other is more in terms of motivations, not the events themselves. In the latter approach you know NPC X wants revenge agains the people of Y and he has access to resource Z. But the plan is something you have him enacting almost the way a player character would (you aren't necessarily breaking down every action he takes into combat rolls and skill rolls, but you are thinking through his actions, and not thinking through beats in a conspiracy plot). Those two approaches do achieve very different results. The latter is good at adapting to player actions. The conspiracy can go in a whole other direction depending on what players do. It isn't a series of beats with lines connecting them that you are trying to keep in place. I could be wrong but this was the approach I thought they were implying when they described their narrative sandbox.

Also just as a general point, sometimes these things are hard to put into clear terms (even if those terms exist, people talk in lots of different places on line and in life, and read different designers). When I first encountered the concept of living adventure in Feast of Goblyns, it was described as the "wandering major encounter". That wasn't a particular clear way of describing it, and the text that followed suggested a lot more than the initial term coinage.

The way I see design and online gaming is a lot like music. Some people know music theory and can use terms like the Aeolian mode or a 12/8 time signature to describe what they want (I don't think we have an equivalent monolith vocabulary in RPGs to music theory, but there are at least contending lexicons). But a lot of musicians, probably most, know just a little, maybe even know music theory, and you end up with bands or small musical scenes that have their own unique vocabulary (and they often use the same words to describe things as other bands or scenes, but in different ways). One musician might say "Make that sad", another might say "put that in a minor key". Or they learn a term, and start using it in a more narrow way, or a broader way, than the source where they originally encountered it. It is still useful to them because it is how they rap their mind around it.

 

[hawkeyefan]

I'm not sure what's improvisational about it really. You get a whole book of pre-prepared material. It's not the same as a scripted adventure, but neither are you really making it up as you go along.

I think the difference between Dracula Dossier and something like The Labyrinth (which I've not read, so I could certainly be off on this) is that the Dracula Dossier offers a bunch of possibilities for the GM. Multiple interpretations of the NPCs and factions are offered, and these don't have to be decided ahead of play. They can be decided as play progresses, tailored to some extent based on what the players have shown interest in, and what they may have come up with on their own.

Something like The Labyrinth offers a pretty set situation or dynamic as the game opens, and then gives suggestions about how they will progress, and likely advice on how interaction with the player characters may change or impact that progression. I feel that the elements here are more set. Yes, the factions or NPCs may react to the players, and the GM will have to improv as needed. So in that sense, they are very similar, and fall into the sandbox category.

But with Dracula Dossier, the very nature of the factions or NPCs may be improvved by the GM to suit the game. The book offers multiple "truths" and leaves it up to the GM to decide which to use, or which to tweak, or which one to use as the base to come up with his own. For example, Quincy Morris may be simply an American cowboy in the UK and a suitor of Lucy, just as he appears in the novel, or he may be a US intelligence agent, or he may be a servant of Dracula.

I think in this sense, the idea of improvisation is taken a step further. It's not just NPC reactions and deciding how the world reacts to the PCs, it's also in how the GM develops and implements the details of the world in response to the players.

 

[TristramEvans]

To be clear though, I think these kinds of qualifiers are very helpful. When I was just calling what I did sandbox, I did feel more bound by the classic sandbox framework. But the moment I wrote down "Drama and Sandbox" I felt I had the freedom to do what I wanted in the games I was running and writing (which at the time was emulating what you see in wuxia movies and read in wuxia novels). But I wanted to do it in a way that was still anchored in that sandbox/living world.

like alignment, I think all these terms are much better as "descriptive" than "proscriptive". I don't think anyone should try to aspire to any playstyle, it should develop organically, and the terms are mostly useful for communicating those things retrospectively.

Which is like the opposite of say, Forge theory's main proposition, which is how game designers end up with something like 4th edition or Champions Now!

I don't know many of Laws's games, I don't think, but if I'm not mistaken he was the author of the Dying Earth RPG, wasn't he?

 

[hawkeyefan]

But also I think Laws is like a lot of designers who are from that era, where they may be aware of these conversations, they may incorporate some of these ideas into their games, but their focus isn't really on which camp that falls into. They have a style their own and bring what tools work for them into that style.

It seems that, generally speaking, many game designers are far less concerned about such categorization compared to folks in online discussion. As you say, they tend to be aware of these things, but they simply treat them as tools available to them, and when they design a game, they want to use the best tools for that game.

 

[BedrockBrendan]

like alignment, I think all these terms are much better as "descriptive" than "proscriptive". I don't think anyone should try to aspire to any playstyle, it should develop organically, and the terms are mostly useful for communicating those things retrospectively.

Which is like the opposite of say, Forge theory's main proposition, which is how game designers end up with something like 4th edition or Champions Now!

I am definitely more in the descriptive rather than proscriptive camp when it comes to terms. But I also think when you are deeply invested in online conversations around them, it can be easy to have those conversations linger in your head and it sometimes take stepping back and thinking about what works best for your table and your GMing style to best bring what you've gained from those conversations without allowing those conversations to take over or lead you down a path you might not really want to go.

 

[A Fiery Flying Roll]

I don't know many of Laws's games, I don't think, but if I'm not mistaken he was the author of the Dying Earth RPG, wasn't he?

That was him. He was also co designer of 2nd ed Over the Edge. Feng Shui is his big game and is notably genre emulation rather than narrative in the sense it's used here. Hillfolk was him doing a full on story game.

Generally, I wouldn't put him at the top of my informal league of game designers. (There's only three people at the top of that anyway). But he's solidly in the top half of the mid tier.

 

[TristramEvans]

That was him. He was also co designer of 2nd ed Over the Edge. Feng Shui is his big game and is notably genre emulation rather than narrative in the sense it's used here. Hillfolk was him doing a full on story game.

Generally, I wouldn't put him at the top of my informal league of game designers. (There's only three people at the top of that anyway). But he's solidly in the top half of the mid tier.

Feng Shui was a RPGnet darling for a little while in the early aughts, but I've never owned it. I recall some interesting conversations around Hillfolk a few years ago.

 

[A Fiery Flying Roll]

Feng Shui was a RPGnet darling for a little while in the early aughts, but I've never owned it. I recall some interesting conversations around Hillfolk a few years ago.

Had some great games of it back in the day. It tries to recreate the feel of Hong Kong action movies and does so really well. I played a honey badger that could take on human form.

I generally think that being a net darling is more of a hindrance than a help to most games, apart from raising Kickstarter funds. It tends to get good games written off by everyone else and then net lose interest after 6 months. (See also Reign which I think was a victim of that).

 

[TJS]

I always tend to think of Feng Shui as a game with a fun premise, which can be carried along a fair way just by it's setting and a willingness to make it work - plus it's archetypes character creation system which does a lot to make those work.

However, to my mind, it always ran into the problem that trying to recreate action movie combat tends to have in rpgs. It's a verbal medium so detailed descriptions don't land and there's not really much more to the underlying combat system than D&D hit point depletion with little tactical options so those descriptions need to do a lot of work. And the mooks suffer from the same problem later attempts at mook rules tend to suffer from and only 13th Age managed to solve, which is that if you're not speciailised at killing mooks you're wasting your turn taking them on, and if you are, then they exist merely an excuse for you to do your thing and wipe them out.

Or in other words it was a really cool game, but whenever it reached it's intended climaxes in action scenes it took a concerted effort by all involved for it not to feel like a slightly anti-climactic slog.

 

[TristramEvans]

I liked how Wushu handled it, as far as recreating frenetic Martial Arts fights

 

[TJS]

Hmmm...Feng Shui setting, but 13th Age where everyone is a monk, or maybe a multi-class Monk/Sorcerer.

 

[A Fiery Flying Roll]

To be fair, when I played Feng Shui the GM was someone not known for sticking to the rules particularly closely so it's fair to say that we're unlikely to have seen any issues.

 

[Skarg]

He says explicitly he doesn't. He's just presenting the players with a mystery and letting them solve it any way they want...that's the antithesis of "preconceived" in my book.

Sure, within the box of the game being about wanting to and going through with solving a mystery.

Sorry, man, but I think you're committing the same mistake he did when he added the word "story", except in reverse: you're letting the word blind you to what he really means - while he's adding a buzzword to justify (possibly to himself) what he really does.

Well, that could be, depending, yes, on what he meant by "story" and "scenes" when he wrote:

the actual scenes of the story can emerge organically from the actions of the players. If the players took an unexpected action, good or bad, the story could continue because the Keeper understood the agendas and timetables of the NPCs.

That does make me want to say "my game is not 'a story' and it doesn't consist of 'scenes'. So I'd say the "events and situations of play" instead of "scenes of the story". And of course I'd say gameplay (not a 'story') can continue (except for PCs who happen to have died).

But maybe he meant effectively the same thing?

It seems to me that most people who talk about RPGs in terms of scenes and stories are thinking as GMs and authors about steering gameplay along expected paths, which I've so often seen done poorly that I'm not happy to even see those words used.

 

[CRKrueger]

Laws' player typologies are notable here:



(There's seven others but these are the most relevant here).

So I suspect what you would call "Narrative Roleplaying" Laws would call "Storytelling".

And what you'd call "Roleplaying" he'd consider "Method Acting".

and he'd be wrong about the Method Acting part. The entire description is based on an external view of the character. Law's Method Actor thinks about the psychology of the character from a 3rd person perspective. You engage the Method Actor by exercising his Personality Traits - a 3rd person player-facing, not character facing mechanic.

The concept that you're thinking as the character because you're trying to BE the character, not make people believe you're thinking and acting as the character (which is ACTING like the character) has possibly not even entered Law's mind. It sure hasn't entered the mind of a lot of players.

 

[Skarg]

Oh and the one time I adapted it for Adventures in Middle Earth. Which also the only time the party failed to deal with the Demon Wolf (a Tolkien Werewolf in this version). Why? Because I handed out background cards with one of them telling the player he is really a agent of Sauron and has succumbed to the shadow. And the player in question just fucked up the party's plan when they confronted the Demon Wolf. He actually died. Another party member died, another ran for his life diving into a river and letting the current take him away. The third hid underneath bodies of villagers.

It was bad, I thoroughly broke that group. Strangely they enjoyed themselves and praise the player who betrayed the party.
View attachment 41296

Why was that bad? Sounds like an interesting game to me. It had an interesting, consequential, unintended outcome that followed naturally from the players' actions, and allowed for real risk and failure. Sounds like an actual game instead of another %$@# session where the players do what they're expected to do, face no particular challenge or risks, suffer no material consequences, nothing really unexpected happens, no real consequential choices are made, no real dilemmas faced, etc.

 

[AsenRG]

I think again, the point isn't that other Sandboxes don't work in a similar way. It's enabling Sandboxes to work with Narrative type play. When you lay out a plot and conspiracy, there's a certain art to being able to do that and not deviate from the idea of a Sandbox, I've found. You have to be willing to allow the players not to interact with your narrative, but still play through with it.

This isn't some huge revelation- other than the fact that it can apply to narrative games, which many think is like mixing oil with water.

...well, if anyoneneeds to be enabled, sure, the article is worth the effort. Though I'd note that he is talking about Delta Green, which is...about as narrative as BRP.

Sure, within the box of the game being about wanting to and going through with solving a mystery.

You can level the same criticism at CoC.
And it's about as true for CoC and Delta Green.

Well, that could be, depending, yes, on what he meant by "story" and "scenes" when he wrote:

Shrug.

That does make me want to say "my game is not 'a story' and it doesn't consist of 'scenes'. So I'd say the "events and situations of play" instead of "scenes of the story". And of course I'd say gameplay (not a 'story') can continue (except for PCs who happen to have died).

But maybe he meant effectively the same thing?

Well, I believe those are just terms we all use to describe effectively the same things. I'd say "events and situations" as well, today, but when I was reading White Wolf books (thanks to Exalted) I'd have used "scenes", which is a system term there, and possibly "story/chronicle" for the campaign. Though that sounded like a clumsy term, so I didn't use it a lot.
And in both cases, I'd mean the exact same thing.

It seems to me that most people who talk about RPGs in terms of scenes and stories are thinking as GMs and authors about steering gameplay along expected paths, which I've so often seen done poorly that I'm not happy to even see those words used.

Yeah, getting to dislike things because they were used poorly is a real thing. I should know.

Laws' player typologies are notable here:



(There's seven others but these are the most relevant here).

So I suspect what you would call "Narrative Roleplaying" Laws would call "Storytelling".

And what you'd call "Roleplaying" he'd consider "Method Acting".

and he'd be wrong about the Method Acting part. The entire description is based on an external view of the character. Law's Method Actor thinks about the psychology of the character from a 3rd person perspective. You engage the Method Actor by exercising his Personality Traits - a 3rd person player-facing, not character facing mechanic.

The concept that you're thinking as the character because you're trying to BE the character, not make people believe you're thinking and acting as the character (which is ACTING like the character) has possibly not even entered Law's mind. It sure hasn't entered the mind of a lot of players.

Yes, but Black Leaf is also right that Law would probably consider that to be Method Acting!

 

[robertsconley]

Why was that bad? Sounds like an interesting game to me. It had an interesting, consequential, unintended outcome that followed naturally from the players' actions, and allowed for real risk and failure. Sounds like an actual game instead of another %$@# session where the players do what they're expected to do, face no particular challenge or risks, suffer no material consequences, nothing really unexpected happens, no real consequential choices are made, no real dilemmas faced, etc.

I meant it was bad in-game from the characters POV. Out of game the players had a blast.

 

[AsenRG]

I meant it was bad in-game from the characters POV. Out of game the players had a blast.

Sure it was bad from IC POV, but from your post it seemed you're rating it as a bad thing from an OOC POV as well.
OTOH, when we are actually playing to be faithful to the character's and see what's going to happen...well, sometimes that can conflict with "mission objectives". Which is what a scenario is, in the end...well, most scenarios, IME, including the Scourge.

It's the same conflict we'd have with characters dying, for example...
Some people abhor it because it "leads them to disengagement" or something.
Some abhor it because it means they didn't do well enough with the mission's objectives and take it as a "you lose" sign.
Some of us believe it's part of the game and while we'd strive to avoid it, just as the characters would, sometimes characters can and do take decisions that contradict that objective.
Just as real people do.

Same with your situation, above. Is it leading the party to fail mission objectives, to lose valuable members, is it betrayal of their OOC trust, or is it being faithful to the character IC?
Yes.

So yeah, that player should be praised in my book!
Which probably tells you where I stand on those matters...not that I haven't made it clear since I've been on the Pub!