Joe's post on the Quantum Ogre raises an old question about sandbox play: when does moving an encounter around interfere with players' freedom to decide what their characters do?
Where I disagree is that players' choices matter. It doesn't matter to me whether they made an informed choice or the choice resulted from blind chance. What matters is the consequences of that choice.
Suppose there is a fork in the road. They know nothing about either path. They choose the left fork. Joe argues that if they know nothing about either path, then putting a prepared encounter, like an ogre, on either road doesn't cost them anything.
For me, the question is different.
Why is the ogre there?
To answer that, I look at how I described the setting and the campaign's current circumstances. But another factor is particularly relevant in Joe's post. Whether anything was prepared at all; thus, both roads could represent a blank slate.
Part of my Bag of Stuff consists of prepared encounters that aren't tied to a particular region or location. So how is using something from my Bag of Stuff any different from what Joe is doing by placing the ogre encounter regardless of which fork is taken?
The difference is that Joe's procedure allows the ogre to be placed on whichever road the players choose because nothing distinguished the roads beforehand. What I do instead is look at what I know about each road, make a short list of what could be there, and roll to see if the result is an ogre on the list, since the chosen road runs through some hills. Then I will use that ogre encounter in my Bag of Stuff.
I do this to discipline myself so that I always follow through on the consequences of the players' choice instead of changing the circumstances because I have something prepared that would be convenient to use. To be clear, rather than treating the "blank slate" as permission to use something I prepared, I treat it as an uncertain part of my setting that I need to resolve during the session.
That said, I like and agree with quite a bit of Joe's post.
There is a section where he had a goblin cave prepared. The goblins were causing trouble for some local halflings, but the players opted to deal with some orcs instead. As the campaign progressed, Joe adjudicated that the halflings took care of the goblins themselves.
Joethelawyer, Quantum Ogre
Another variation on this I’ve experienced as a GM is where the encounter is more than just a basic bullshit ogre on the road or goblin ambush. For example, I made up a large cave complex where a clan of goblins lived, and they were raiding the halfling lands around. The PC’s had a choice to go there, or to orc caves, or a couple more places. They went to the orc caves, kicked their asses. Through roleplaying later, the halfling village they saved said they’d take care of the goblins, thanks for the help.
In my view, this represents World In Motion, an aspect of a Living World Sandbox. That is, as players make their choices and act accordingly, the other inhabitants aren't standing still but making decisions themselves. In this case, to finally deal with those pesky goblins once and for all.
As for the prep, it went back into his Bag of Stuff and was repurposed later with different inhabitants and circumstances, which is exactly what the Bag of Stuff is for.
The goblin caves went unused. It would be a bullshit move as a GM to have the PC’s encounter the goblin caves in the next encounter. But there’s nothing wrong with using it in the future. I reskinned it a bit, added a two-headed troll, and used it as an encounter with a different group. I could have used it with the same group once enough time had passed, and it was in a different place.
If you are interested in my ideas behind my Living World Sandbox. I have a blog post below summarizing what that type of sandbox campaign entails.
And I collected all my posts on Sandbox Campaigns on this page.
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