D&D General [rant]The conservatism of D&D fans is exhausting.

[Hussar]

Those few things aren't just getting you through the next four hours of play...it's getting you through the next 400 hours of play.

Y’know how much material I needed to play 400 hours of sandbox in Ironsworn? A page. One page. And here’s a dirty secret. That page was AI generated because I was having a bit of trouble thinking of a good start point.

So no. I don’t need a “stack of modules” to run a sandbox. It can be done that way, sure. But it’s not needed. What is needed is a system that facilitates sandbox play without the need of stacks of modules, online generators and a three hundred page setting bible.

 

[Hussar]

Hussar was claiming that having to prep the stats for this six-room dungeon in a game like D&D is prohibitively time-consuming, and therefore D&D is bad for sandboxes.

Not quite. I’m saying that the prep for this six encounter dungeon multiplied by the number of locations that the dm provides for the players to explore - a minimum of three at the very least, up to dozens or even hundreds according to some- makes it prohibitively time consuming.

Or to put it another way. Apparently DnD is fantastic at sandbox play if I choose to incorporate dozens if not hundreds of pages of material written by someone else. Doing it on my own is too much work according to virtually everyone in this thread.

So, based on that, I’m going to say that there are other systems out there that are better at sandbox play.

 

[TiQuinn]

Y’know how much material I needed to play 400 hours of sandbox in Ironsworn? A page. One page. And here’s a dirty secret. That page was AI generated because I was having a bit of trouble thinking of a good start point.

So no. I don’t need a “stack of modules” to run a sandbox. It can be done that way, sure. But it’s not needed. What is needed is a system that facilitates sandbox play without the need of stacks of modules, online generators and a three hundred page setting bible.

Dude, what if people just friggin like the stack of modules, online generators and 300 page setting bible?

 

[payn]

Not quite. I’m saying that the prep for this six encounter dungeon multiplied by the number of locations that the dm provides for the players to explore - a minimum of three at the very least, up to dozens or even hundreds according to some- makes it prohibitively time consuming.

Or to put it another way. Apparently DnD is fantastic at sandbox play if I choose to incorporate dozens if not hundreds of pages of material written by someone else. Doing it on my own is too much work according to virtually everyone in this thread.

So, based on that, I’m going to say that there are other systems out there that are better at sandbox play.

Dude, what if people just friggin like the stack of modules, online generators and 300 page setting bible?

 

[TiQuinn]

 

[Azzy]

Oh, wait....

 

[Hussar]

Dude, what if people just friggin like the stack of modules, online generators and 300 page setting bible?

Heh. I know this was meant light heartedly. But I would like to answer actually.

There’s nothing wrong with “like”. That’s perfectly fine. But I’m not really talking about preference. I mean good grief DnD is my go to game and I’ve certainly run sandbox (ish) campaigns in it. Like I said, I ran the World’s Largest Dungeon back in the day and that’s a huge sandbox.

With a thousand page setting bible.

But my point isn’t about preference. I’m simply saying that some systems make sandboxing a lot easier to do than DnD. That’s it. That’s the hugely controversial statement. That there are better systems for running sandboxes than DnD.

 

[payn]

Heh. I know this was meant light heartedly. But I would like to answer actually.

There’s nothing wrong with “like”. That’s perfectly fine. But I’m not really talking about preference. I mean good grief DnD is my go to game and I’ve certainly run sandbox (ish) campaigns in it. Like I said, I ran the World’s Largest Dungeon back in the day and that’s a huge sandbox.

With a thousand page setting bible.

But my point isn’t about preference. I’m simply saying that some systems make sandboxing a lot easier to do than DnD. That’s it. That’s the hugely controversial statement. That there are better systems for running sandboxes than DnD.

 

[TiQuinn]

But my point isn’t about preference.

Yes, but I think that IS what other people's point has been about. Efficiency or ease is sometimes not what some people want. The time thinking about their setting, the time creating maps, the time thinking about modules to run, the time looking at generators - that can be the juice in playing the game.

We've had several threads now that:
1) Pose a problem.
2) Try to argue that it's a BIG problem.
3) Explain why D&D is terrible, bad, not great, mediocre, or average at solving this problem.
4) Pose possible solutions.
5) SURPRISE! All those solutions was Game X all along that I really wanted to talk about.

And a lot of people get stuck back at 2 and 3 because they never really bought into the problem to begin with.

 

[pemerton]

if you don't have adventures on standby then what are you intending the PCs to do once they reach an adventure site?

I think even D&D doesn't have to be quite as dungeon-focused as this question seems to imply.