In the classic article on West Marches style games based on the campaign experiment of the same name the author goes to great lengths to explain how the PCs drive everything based on what they find. He does however note that he as the GM has most of the plans behind the scenes and the players are just uncovering what's there.
In another thread I admitted my one issue with this style of gaming: Intelligent Villians. What do you do if you want to have a scheming mastermind monster planted somewhere out there in the wilds? For example you've got say a young green dragon, Int 12, that's lived already for hundreds of years. Is he just flying around his forest waiting for adventurers to find him?
It would seem that in this "plotless" style game where everything is based on what the PCs find when they get there it would be antithesis to then have such a villain in the wilds. Please share your thoughts and/or any experiences you've had in such games.
Yeah, I've always thought the West Marches concept is silly, for more or less this reason (and related ones):
1. There's no plot (or metaplot).
2. There are no persistent villains (certainly not ones who do anything interesting).
3. There's no interaction between any parts of the world, on any but the most local scale.
4. Even though it's a "sandbox" of sorts, the PCs can't actually effect any changes to the world, because...
5. There IS no world. There's just an area with a set of disparate adventure locations, and outside of that region there's... nothing. Just an amorphous, unspecified mist.
Come to think of it, West Marches might be interesting as a sort of existential horror campaign, where the PCs slowly realize that the world they are in is not real, has no existence outside of this one region; that even the "city" doesn't exist beyond the small trade district they've seen; and that they can't... ever... escape... no matter how much they try...
You ever actually BEEN to Shell Beach?
Seriously though Mak, I hear you. I was looking over some notes from 2 years ago and originally I'd planned to run my current campaign West Marches style. Its a homebrew. But then I switched and I couldn't figure out why til I read a liner note. I'd rolled up "settlement" a couple hexes from the main city and I thought "how can I have miles of unexplored wilderness with a town 30 miles from the major city?" Why wouldn't there be trade, and political scheming, and shared lore and everything that comes from civilization?
Couple that with intelligent monsters/villains and I can't understand how this game style is supposed to work.
Yeah, I've always thought the West Marches concept is silly, for more or less this reason (and related ones):
1. There's no plot (or metaplot).
2. There are no persistent villains (certainly not ones who do anything interesting).
3. There's no interaction between any parts of the world, on any but the most local scale.
4. Even though it's a "sandbox" of sorts, the PCs can't actually effect any changes to the world, because...
5. There IS no world. There's just an area with a set of disparate adventure locations, and outside of that region there's... nothing. Just an amorphous, unspecified mist.Come to think of it, West Marches might be interesting as a sort of existential horror campaign, where the PCs slowly realize that the world they are in is not real, has no existence outside of this one region; that even the "city" doesn't exist beyond the small trade district they've seen; and that they can't... ever... escape... no matter how much they try...
You're imposing an awful lot of restrictions that don't have to be in play. While it's certainly possible any of those issues could exist, they could exist for any campaign. They certainly don't have to exist for a sandbox-style game like the one described.
(see my next post for specific examples)
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In the classic article on West Marches style games based on the campaign experiment of the same name the author goes to great lengths to explain how the PCs drive everything based on what they find. He does however note that he as the GM has most of the plans behind the scenes and the players are just uncovering what's there.
In another thread I admitted my one issue with this style of gaming: Intelligent Villians. What do you do if you want to have a scheming mastermind monster planted somewhere out there in the wilds? For example you've got say a young green dragon, Int 12, that's lived already for hundreds of years. Is he just flying around his forest waiting for adventurers to find him?
It would seem that in this "plotless" style game where everything is based on what the PCs find when they get there it would be antithesis to then have such a villain in the wilds. Please share your thoughts and/or any experiences you've had in such games.
So almost every campaign I've run for the last 15 years has followed a similar concept, primarily because my players tend to avoid having plots/assignments handed to them and pursuing what interests them.
Villains: You've got to have them. I take different approaches for different campaigns but usually, it's different approaches for specific villains.
The agenda-based villain: This is a villain with a plan and she is actively pursuing it. I work out what the villain hopes to accomplish and her general plan for achieving it. I also map out a loose timeline of how long it will take for an objective to be achieved if the players do nothing to stop it. If the players choose to pursue other things, certain events will happen and will affect the setting.
Location-based villain: This is a villain that either controls an area or limits his filed of operations to a single location or small area. He's searching for a lost relic, questing to find a path to immortality, ruling his domain with an iron fist -- whatever. If the PCs never venture to this area/location, the status quo in that area remains largely unchanged. Unless, of course, at a later point in the campaign you want to shift the villain into an agenda-based villain.
PC-generated villain: This is a villain that reacts to something the PCs are doing/have done. Whether it's a bandit lord, bounty hunter, local authorities, thieves' guild, etc. - the PCs are now on this person's radar in a negative way and they are now actively working against the PCs.
As with any sandbox campaign, this requires more up-front prep to establish plot seeds and hooks in broad brush strokes.
Saying that the campaign will be limited to a certain area is not any more restrictive that saying "I prepared this adventure/plot and you need to follow it". Much less so, in fact.
You can absolutely have the setting/world change. The only thing imposing a static environment is a GM who doesn't want to adjust and update the campaign as the players interact with it.
Also, I've found that the key is to define the area in broad strokes and then focus on individual NPC characters and their goals, and objectives. If you know who the main NPCs are, what they're doing and why, filling in location details, henchmen, etc. is much easier.
Past the initial setup, I find most of the campaign management is updating how the NPCs, setting, and villains adjust/react to what the PCs are doing (or what they're ignoring and allowing to occur by omission). Plots I never would have considered have arisen out of this style of campaign to the increased enjoyment of the players and the GM.
Here's a sample framework of three PF campaigns I'm running currently:
Group A - wandering adventurers. Consistent player mix where they can pursue adventures that interest them. Go anywhere, do anything.
Group B - same as Group A but for a different set of players
"Pick-up" Campaign - a campaign set in a city focusing on "smaller" (i.e. shorter) story arcs. Session frequency and player composition varies and the intent is to allow characters to drop in and out as needed while allowing for PF play even when a full Group can't get together due to scheduling conflicts.
Campaign Rules for the Pick-up Campaign consist of the following:
1. The campaign is set in and around the city of Korvosa. PCs may be from other areas, but they've moved to the city and now call it home.
2. Each story is limited to a single session. i.e., no cliffhanger ending that is picked up on the next session. Story arcs can continue across multiple sessions but that's because they are occurring within Korvosa rather than tied to specific players/player characters.
3. The players' characters will, through the course of the game, all have at least made the acquaintance of the other PCs. Since they all live in the same city, even if they haven't adventured together they may have met previously at a tavern, worked a side job together, etc.
Trust me. These types of campaigns not only work, but can be extremely rewarding.
I would second the 'agenda-based villain' above with one additional note.
As the GM, I would approach the "marches" game with this core concept. The PCs are not the only group influencing the map. I'd start by developing a series of individuals or groups that are doing the same style of exploration/exploitation that the Players are, only the are starting from a different entry point, and they have built-in reasons why they won't work together or with the PCs.
View it as a turn-based strategy game, like Civilization... Just because fog of war denies you the ability to see your enemies when the game starts, doesn't mean they aren't there, and they aren't plotting against you (or in their own interests against yours).
Having the Players encounter locations that make it look like another adventuring party recently arrived and looted a dungeon or tomb that they found then ignored for awhile will heighten some suspense, add a feeling of pressure to explore and add additional tension.
Also, it allows the party to creatively handle encounters with other groups, brokering deals, setting up groups to fight each other, etc if they are into intrigue.
But, in the long run, defeating any one of these villains doesn't end the campaign or the challenge, just gives a general feeling of accomplishment.
I'm all over everything you're talking about B-team and have run my 30+ years of campaigns the same. However the article I linked in my OP espouses a different philosophy.
1. Little to no NPCs. The party should be the stars of the show and if there were NPCs adventuring in the land around them it would belittle these characters.
2. The city is merely a resource. This is not a place for adventure or even for RP; the hub or base of operations for the party should do nothing more than just provide them a place to rest and buy/sell gear between adventures.
3. No overarching plots. In other words; bye-bye Agenda-based Villain. With no overarching plots there are no long-term planning villains in this game.
So extrapolating from these tenets the classic sandbox cited by a lot of folks on these boards, the West Marches type style, has no room for 2 of your three villain types. Sure, some in-place tyrants might react to the PCs to change up their own defenses but with no overarching plots these villains never become planners, there are no NPCs to hunt the PCs long term, and there can't be any masterminds to begin with.
Now when I mentioned YOUR kind of sandbox there Porterhouse, when commenting in other threads, I'm told that it is not a true sandbox. I am then referred back to the West Marches. This is the reason for my discussion.
Incidentally B.P. Gas, here's the M.O. of my current homebrew:
Setting: Elderscorn Vale, the lands of Karnoss. This is a weather-worn valley of mountains, hills, and boreal woods bordered to the east by coastal highlands. There are a couple major cities, an open world map, and one MAJOR dungeon one hex from the city known as the Ruins of Flamenwing Castle.
The Ruins themselves are infested with evil which continues into several dungeons below. I say several because instead of one steady descent there are outposts of one or multiple levels scattered all through the ruins and the rugged uplands and woodlots surrounding it.
Plotline: Start in Ravenhurst, 20 miles from the ruins, and get outfitted. Intro - guard a corpse of a guy killed in the ruins and said corpse turns into a monster. After that...go. There are major villains (a kobold mastermind, an evil young dragon, and a guild of slavers to name a few) as well as one shot evils and the overarching plot (if there is one) is slowly being generated by the PCs. Tenatively the current one involves the party locating a sadistic kobold and finding out why kobolds from his outpost are showing up with the anvil mark of the PC paladin's father on their masterwork weapons.
Does "no over-arching plots" mean the same thing as "no self-motivated villains"?
I tend to think the intent is to avoid the campaign rails where there is a story that dominates everything. The pull of a western marches game, is there can be several stories, and they can evolve based on player input, and blend together as needed.
Conceptually, a wandering monster group that can cross territorial zones lines and has a believable motivation is a fair definition of "agenda-based villain". As long as the villain's agenda doesn't dominate a story line, I'd add it as fair play.
I'd think that would qualify as "he as the GM has most of the plans behind the scenes and the players are just uncovering what's there."
I don't think there is anything preventing you from adapting a "West marches" style game to include long range plots or thoughtful villains. In then end I think it is just more effort and a desire for a diff style. You can as GM design a detailed world for the PC's to explore at leisure but also include some BBG's with plans that change over time or as a result of PC actions. Maybe the PC's never notice but things will be happening in the background.
Example: the PC's take out the Kobolds in the shutter wood and that brings the dragon they worshiped out on a rampage. The rampage displaces a hobgoblin hoard that attacks a local settlement. The PC's might only encounter the Hobgoblins and never know the rest or might puzzle it all out or some of it.
I'm sorry, but most of the opposition to the West Marches concept seems to boil down to "You're doing it wrong". The West Marches, as I understand it, is not a "philosophy", but, among other things, a need to schedule a large player base around the lives of working adults, by playing a sort of stripped-down campaign reminiscent of old-school PvE-type games, eschewing many of the more "literary" trappings that RPGs have picked up over the years. It aims for Keep on the Borderlands, not Queen of the Demonweb Pits.
It's a product of its circumstances, and, IMO an elegant solution to them. If it doesn't fit your local circumstances or preferences, don't use it. Or modify it to suit you.
I tend the defining characteristic of a sandbox game is: go anywhere and have any kind of game you want. West Marches supports this but seems to remove NPCs and the prospects of civilization from the equation. Frankly I'd like to have a West Marches game full on WITH settlements.
The PCs start off in a city with the hex they're in being civilized. Since that hex is in fact about 30 square miles then it holds the city, outlying villages and roads connecting these. Then there's roads through the wilds to a few neighboring "civil hexes" scattered on the world map. Of course there's still MUCH more wild than civilized so the party has lots of places to explore.
Still, if the players WANT to do an urban game one night, they just head for a "civil" hex and seek out some intrigue. Later if they want to go back to exploring they can. If, while exploring the players pine for the Temple of Elemental Evil then suddenly they stumble across 50 levels of megadungeon.
I don't know that West Marches, taken as vanilla, supports this.
I'm with MC, I don't see anything that in that blog that says self-motivated villains can't exist.
Similarly, while the setup for the Western Marches is the town is a place to re-equip & rest, there's nothing in there that says it's only used as a resource, so you're imposing a limitation unnecessarily.
Sandbox doesn't have to be limited to site-based adventures only. Granted, that's usually the setup depicted b/c that's what the publisher or GM can create in advance. No one is saying you have to run it as static adventure zones.
But even if you chose to do so, there's nothing preventing you from having intelligent villains in those static zones. Examples could include priests of Orcus (Rappan Athuk), the demi-lich of Tomb of Horrors, Strahd from Ravenloft. They have reasons for why they operate within their "static zone".
For me, a sandbox campaign is one where there are multiple plot hooks and seeds (location, NPC, and item-based) and you leave it to the PCs to pick what ones they will pursue based on in-game actions and where they choose to travel. Skyrim is a sandbox game that has discrete plots woven within it, but nothing forces your to play the Dragonborn quest to completion.
Honestly, I've grown very tired of vocal RPG-community brethren acting as if they have a lock on what things are and the "one true way". If you want to adhere to their definition of a sandbox, that's your choice but I outgrew that style of play shortly after playing the original Keep on the Borderlands.
Examples of Sandbox/Open Worlds that also incorporate plot arcs:
Kingmaker - defined by PF's own publisher as a sandbox campaign yet there are plot arcs within it. GM's are encouraged to add settlement/kingdom intrigue & adventures beyond the scope of what's presented in the AP issues.
Skyrim
Fallout 3
Hell, even in published sandbox adventures like the Keep on the Borderlands and Kingmaker AP, the site-based encounter is there to allow for freedom of choice in exploration, not to limit the world/setting/game. Nothing I've ever read in a sandbox-style publication states that creatures encountered in a hex/site will never leave or interact with the world. It's just providing a framework for where they are and what they're doing when the PC's encounter them for the first time.
That said, it sounds like you want to explore the viability of a campaign that operates within those rigidly defined constraints. That's cool if it works for you.
However, the freedom of choices and possibilities that a RPG can provide overcomes the limitations of what can be contained within a published product or a computer RPG. Limiting yourself to static, self-contained site-based-adventuring seems to throw away a lot of what makes RPGs great. YMMV.
I'm sorry if I'm coming off snarky. Its just that in a couple other threads vanilla West Marches has been touted as the way to run a sandbox and injecting plots or schemes then disqualifies the campaign as "open".
I agree that for a lot of folks, my own players in particular, this style of campaign would actually be a great idea. Wholeheartedly endorse modifying West Marches to fit your ideas and running that as a campaign.
I personally enjoy writing canned modules as well as running them. However I also like the freedom for my players to do whatever they want. As a result my games tend to drift into the exact same place BPorter's do. Again, I apologize if any of my rhetoric seems combative.
Mark I think we may be mis-interpretting what you are asking for here.
I think when you reference the West Marches Game, and highlight a weakness, the user base is helpfully thinking "how can we help you work around this weakness", when it seems you are looking for anecdotes on if we came to the same conclusion when faced with a game with similar limitations.
So we end up with startlingly divergent definitions of terms, but it comes from a desire to be helpful
EDIT.. ninja'ed by Op..
I think where I got some of my misconceptions of West Marches was this paragraph here:
An interesting side effect was that West Marches put me (the GM) in a more neutral position. I wasn’t playing any scheming NPCs or clever plots, so I wasn’t portraying intelligent opposition and didn’t have any ulterior motives. The environment was already set, so instead of making up challenges that matched the party I just dutifully reported what they found wherever they went. When I rolled I would freely tell the players what bonuses or target numbers they were up against, so the players looked at the dice to see the result, not me.
I suppose that's not a hard-and-fast rule of the style but it seems to dictate the ideal that there's no overarching plots and such.
MC and Porter: I'm really just looking for a discussion of this style of gaming - its merits, its negatives and its experiences. I'm trying to wrap my head around how this became the "gold standard" for several gamers for sandbox gaming.
I suspect that many people are enchanted by Ben Robbins' description of his campaign, and think "I want to run THAT!".
They don't seem to realize that it's more along the lines of "I had a bunch of players with schedules all over the place and a detailed, plot-heavy game with tons of back-story for all those people wasn't in the cards--here's a neat way I solved it that was fun for us and also breaks some paradigms about how campaigns should be organized in interesting ways. I'll write about it so others can glean inspiration from it without necessarily copying it like savants."
You ever actually BEEN to Shell Beach?
Seriously though Mak, I hear you. I was looking over some notes from 2 years ago and originally I'd planned to run my current campaign West Marches style. Its a homebrew. But then I switched and I couldn't figure out why til I read a liner note. I'd rolled up "settlement" a couple hexes from the main city and I thought "how can I have miles of unexplored wilderness with a town 30 miles from the major city?" Why wouldn't there be trade, and political scheming, and shared lore and everything that comes from civilization?
Couple that with intelligent monsters/villains and I can't understand how this game style is supposed to work.
Oh my god, that's EXACTLY the movie that popped into my mind when I wrote this!
Yeah, I like my settings to be rather more... organic. As you described. The idea that the PCs just never have the option of doing anything interesting in a city, for example, is offputting.
I'm sorry if I'm coming off snarky.
Nope. You're fine. I was referring to people telling you that you weren't defining a sandbox, not that what you were defining was an issue.
Best of luck. I can't really add anything with respect to this particular style of sandbox/site-based gaming beyond what I've said. Even trying to accommodate the player schedule issues described in the original article, I wouldn't run things straight-up as he describes in his Marches write-up.
Mark, I've just gotta say that you start some of the most interesting threads on the board. Thanks for that. :)
Will try to post something more pertinent when I have a chance to go read up on the "West Marches" style of game from the link you provided.
-TimD
Interesting. I like running and playing in these kinds of games, though I do like to have some story-driven plots occasionally sprinkled in.
I'll be keeping an eye on this topic.
Now in the article Ben says that there are clues sprinkled about that lead to the history of the West Marches, so that might be an overarching story, but at the same time he admits that these are only hints at finding and overcoming obstacles and not meant as a story. This would lead me to believe that, if there are plots that evolve organically in a West Marches style game they are short lived.
In other words the PCs are out exploring and have a wandering monster encounter with a group of goblins in the marsh. That's odd because these are forest goblins. This puts them 30 miles (2 hexes) away from their base. Also they're loaded down with odd equipment: cold-iron nets and cages, several potions of water breathing and a picture of a female, vaguely goblinoid but with hair and fins in a pond.
Turns out the goblins were going to capture a bog nymph for whatever reason. The PCs can go check on the nymph and there might be a little story there or they might follow the goblin tracks back to the woods and then they deal with it there. Either way its resolved that game and then the PCs move on.
There can be story w/out overarching story I guess. Is that sandbox or not?
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I'd say if there is nothing pointing you to that story, you only engage it on it's own terms and ignoring it doesn't derail the game I'd qualify it as "sandbox"
But since you are encountering some legacy baggage from others' definition of what qualifies as Open and what doesn't, I can't say how I'd define it is any more valid than how they would.
For my perspective, and for the open-style games I've played, the underlying question was always one of 'agency'. Do you, as players, feel in control of the story, do you have the freedom to make meaningful choices? If the answer was yes you are playing in a sandbox game.
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I don't get this "no recurring villains" thing. In my experience with sandbox games villains who don't die become recurring villains (if they have a continued interest in the pc's or vice versa or both).
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West Marches is actually a very weird speciment of Sandbox, not the ultimate benchmark of Sandbox.
The peculiarities of WM can mostly be explained by the ~30 players involved. The idea was that adventures happen in the wilderness, taking roughly one session, and that people are back in town at the end.
Adventures are supposed to be short, because next session may feature an entirely different player pool and they shouldn't be "blocked" because some PCs are unavailable due to still being in the wilderness, or some still in town.
As for the "no adventures in town" thing, that's an artistic choice, to focus on wilderness over urban intrigue and politics.
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It's like having a TV show. Suppose you try to stuff in everything - detectives, families struggling in a difficult economy, troubling world politics, romantic subplots, vampire conspiracies, aliens, celebrities, gritty survival in the slums, subtle psychological development. Your show will probably not do well at any of them, because you dilute the themes by having too many of them.
The theme of WM was exploring the wilderness. Having lots to do in town would detract from that. Having a major plot with a main threat in the wilderness would probably make all missions revolve around that. The power of WM is supposed to be that people can whimsically decide to go somewhere entirely else on the next adventure.
It's not totally realistic. It isn't meant to be.
It's not the only good way to run a campaign, but it sounds like a lot of fun to me.
As I've said before I suppose I extrapolated the "no recurring villains/overarching plots" from comments by the WM author to the effect that there was supposed to be no plot or story. Now the main reason I wanted a discussion was to try and understand how, in that kind of a setting, you could have intelligent, sophisticated villains if in fact there was no scheming or overarching plot.
Many have made the comment that I've misinterpreted. That WM could indeed have a plot and that the villains may in fact be driving it. However I'd also point out that the PCs in WM games got all of their "story" or plot-based info from 3 sources: their own explorations, speaking with other players or "tavern talk". The author went to great lengths in the WM article to explain that everything was player driven.
This to me suggests again that there's no mastermind villains or overarching threats. If there were this would take away from the exploration of the game. If there's an ancient red dragon in the mountains laying waste to everything in a bid to raise the apocalypse then once the players get wind of him they'll focus on getting strong enough to defeat the thing thus shifting from wilderness explorers to dragon-slayers.
I may once again be overthinking or misinterpreting. This isn't the way I'd choose to run it, but then I don't have the challenges the original GM did. If I had a couple dozen players, all of which actually wanted to play my game and not enough time to plan a lot of stuff, I'd probably run things the exact same way. And to mirror A-bomb's comment that sounds like a lot of fun to me too.
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Based on the style of game espoused, it seems like recurring villains are probably not gonna be a thing that happens...but smart villains and recurring ones aren't the same thing at all.
You can easily have a brilliant monster out there in the wilds with a detailed plan he's in the process of executing...and none of it will ever come up until the PCs go to that part of the world and deal with it. It does thus behoove you to avoid plots that'll alter the world too much...but that's a very small subset of villainous plots. A Black Dragon doing bio-magical experimentation, accumulating treasure, and conquering local humanoid tribes is absolutely a clever monster doing something with his or her life...but it's not doing anything that's relevant to the PCs lives until they wander into its domain.
You avoid more overarching villain plots because, as someone mentioned, they don't fit the genre of adventure you're going for. Same reason you probably don't have an an army of demons break through and start ravaging the entire country Worldwound-style in a campaign intended to deal exclusively with conflict between criminal organizations in the city's capital or detailed palace intrigue. You certainly could combine the two...but that's a very different campaign than the second on its own.
I'm sorry, but most of the opposition to the West Marches concept seems to boil down to "You're doing it wrong". The West Marches, as I understand it, is not a "philosophy", but, among other things, a need to schedule a large player base around the lives of working adults, by playing a sort of stripped-down campaign reminiscent of old-school PvE-type games, eschewing many of the more "literary" trappings that RPGs have picked up over the years. It aims for Keep on the Borderlands, not Queen of the Demonweb Pits.
It's a product of its circumstances, and, IMO an elegant solution to them. If it doesn't fit your local circumstances or preferences, don't use it. Or modify it to suit you.
+1. See also Opening your game table on the Alexandrian blog. In fact that blog carries a lot of insights that go well with the insight from ars ludi's West Marches experiment.
It's about a lowering prep work for the DM, compensating shifting player attendance and doing old school dungeon- or hex-exploration style gaming with lots of random influences and less pre-written adventure/plot scripts.
Then is there presence to leave threads open in WM style games? For example:
Group A, consisting of Alex, Boris, Constantine and David leave the town in search of adventure. In the course of their travels they hit a nest of kobolds; the lead kobold has kidnapped some other travelers and the sadistic torturer is having them flayed alive so they lose Con/Cha, then having a mid-level evil cleric kobold hit them with Lesser Restoration and healing so he can keep hurting them. The evil torturer is using the skin he collects for superior scrolls.
Anyway, Group A finds this dude, lays into the nest but doesn't finish it before they have to retreat with the prisoners. They head back to town, rest up, and get ready to resupply with the expressed idea that they end the torturer for good.
Group E consisting of Eduardo, Francine, Gavin and Helen make it to the table the next time. They head into the wild meeting up with a den of mites using giant vermin to dig up a minor artifact. The PCs clear out the den but lose the main villain and the artifact in the process.
Now the third session is Alex, Francine, David and Gavin, so a mix of both groups. They do a little research, find out how dangerous the artifact is and decide to go after that. This quest ends up taking all of that session PLUS the next session. Now it's been a month since meeting the torturer kobold with Group A.
Do you, as a GM, have any obligation to maintain this villain in the foreground, or perhaps remind the PCs of this evil via background elements like missing townsfolk, recurring nightmares from the previous victims and some kind of reusable scroll found in the wilds? Or, since this game is entirely player driven do you just wait for the players to return to the kobold plotline if they ever do and just scrap the line if they don't pursue?
interesting but busy thread. dotting for later reading...
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Kingmaker in many ways is a West Marches style game, and I couldn't help but make some of the NPCs more reactive to the PC's presence.
I want the players to know the world is active even beyond their own actions, as it lends a sense of verisimilitude to the game. Their characters are but one moving part in a world of many moving parts.
In a West Marches style game I'd probably have a "sleeping evil" type villain, like a Runelord or slumbering dragon or dormant gates to elder realms or something that the players can discover as they go.
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I'd say the obligation is only as deep as you want it to be. After all, Eduardo and Helen know nothing about the torturer, while Francine and Gavin have only hearsay about him. They definitely won't go searching for him, but they might explore the hex that he was originally found in. At that point, the GM has to make a decision: is the torturer still there, or did he leave? Do you want to drop hints that will lead them to him? Do you want Group E to defeat an enemy that members of Group A might want to go out and hunt down themselves? What will you do if Group E succeed and kill him only for Group A to go hunting for him?
I'd say a campaign like this is an exercise in world-building, and your only obligation is to keep the world as consistent as possible, so that what your players know about the world is still true from session to session (unless other players change it). That means that if there's an evil kobold torturer out there, your "obligation" is to not forget he exists and decide what evidence of his existence, if any, your players are going to find.
This raises another interesting question: how much in-game knowledge can the PCs get from each other? Do they know each other? Are they communicating in their downtime?
@ Silent Saturn: in the WM article the idea was that, between sessions players were freely allowed to chat with one another about their experiences. This OoC conversation was simulating the characters hanging about the common room of the inn, having an ale and telling tales of their adventures.
This is similar to an example of play from the Alexandrians open table. Different groups entered the Caverns of Thracia dungeon there and both met a boss NPC that drove them off the first times around. When one group defeated them it was a great acvomplishment felt across all groups/players. Read the blog post I linked to above for more details.
I think there's no obligation for the DM to have the NPC recur but it is rather a chance. If the players share news a player-driven recurring villain is indeed a great thing. If they do not care you spare some prep time reusing the NPC or put the NPC on the back burner if they go somewhere else. From the DMs perspective it is about how you "respawn", repopulate, reuse or migrate unkilled NPCs or cleared dungeon levels/adventure sites.
Read that Alexandrian blog post already!:-) It's got lot of insight.
To understand the WM style campaign, you have to understand the problem that he was trying to solve for his gaming table. It's a style of game that is very focused on a couple of aspects to the exclusion of others. So, if you don't want to focus on those same aspects, then it probably isn't a campaign style that will benefit your game.
Does your group have 12 players who have difficulty all getting together at the same and/or regularly scheduled times?
Imagine having 12 players, but on any given session you only had 4 random ones show up. Now plan a coherent story for that.
This is similar to an example of play from the Alexandrians open table. Different groups entered the Caverns of Thracia dungeon there and both met a boss NPC that drove them off the first times around. When one group defeated them it was a great acvomplishment felt across all groups/players. Read the blog post I linked to above for more details.
I think there's no obligation for the DM to have the NPC recur but it is rather a chance. If the players share news a player-driven recurring villain is indeed a great thing. If they do not care you spare some prep time reusing the NPC or put the NPC on the back burner if they go somewhere else. From the DMs perspective it is about how you "respawn", repopulate, reuse or migrate unkilled NPCs or cleared dungeon levels/adventure sites.
Read that Alexandrian blog post already!:-) It's got lot of insight.
Wait... are you saying I should read that post or something? :)
I read it and it illustrates a great way to extend a very basic game to a lot of players at once. Immediately I found myself questioning though: why would anyone build a town so close to a source of danger? Why would random strangers meet up to explore a dungeon? Why wouldn't the dungeon just take over the town?
I suppose these are all questions that don't need real answers to play the campaign. Another way to look at it would be that the campaign might exist, in part, to answer those questions.
I know at least one guy though in my current gaming group though that would play this style of game exclusively and almost without reservation. It still seems hard for me to conceive that there wouldn't be some super-intricate plot if something so huge as a "megadungeon" were right next to a settlement but I think I'm coming to realize: that's only an issue I have, not most gamers.
No campaign is going to meet every gamer's needs 100% of the time. A WM campaign eschews a complex plot in favor of portability and plug'n'play of PC's from session to session.
In a way, he made it almost a LARP. The act of collecting your party to go to the dungeon, something that would happen in a land of buried wealth (and did often times in the real world when Western civilization liked to take artifacts from other people), becomes something you do in real life. The interaction with other characters is the other players, which is why he greatly limits the interaction with NPC's in town.
There are border towns on the edge of civilization, even today. Towns near the edge of the rain forest in Brazil, Canadian cities near the tundra, pretty much every city in Alaska, plenty of places in Russia as well.
Anyways, the campaign is less about solving in game issues and more using in game stuff to help fix real life issues.
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The idea of sandbox gaming isn't that there is no plot. There is, and villains should have their own motivations and goals. For example, your young green dragon.
Imagine the PCs happily living in a village when some day a young green dragon swoops into town with his bandits and demands protection money from the villagers. Now as the PCs are likely still level 1, can't defeat the dragon and the bandits and the dragon, while not being able to fork over enough cash for the protection scheme, they will need to find some lucrative way to make money. So they go on an adventure in hex 1 (or another hex, you should probably generate some lucrative adventures here.
Once they made enough money (and gained experience) they will return to their village to find that the dragon and the bandits got impatient and burned their homes and killed their friends/family. Now the players will find a way to take their revenge upon the dragon, (hex 2), and the bandits. (Hex 3)
Now ofcourse, the dragon isn't flying around his forest waiting for the adventurers. First of all, treat the forest as his territory dungeon. Second, don't let the players encount him in his lair. Let them fight him where he has the advantage, and make use of his woodland stride ability.
Don't forget to repeatedly kick in the door. Bring the adventure to the players, provide plenty of hooks and keep the story exciting.
By "overarching plot" I read "primary motivation for the players to group and adventure." Think of it in terms of Conan (the old one with Ahnnald in it) vs. Lord of the Rings. Both had a primary villain who became the ultimate test for the adventurers. But in LotR, every part of the plot, all of the parties actions, were directed towards defeating Sauron. The adventure was guided totally by "what do we have to do next to stop Sauron?" Conan, on the other hand, was wandering, trying to get rich. He continued to stumble upon the temples of Set (on his own, in his own time) until he was given the minor job to rescue the princess, which led to larger things. At any point Conan could have said "screw this!" and headed west.
What no overarching plot really means is that your adventures aren't determined by a unified, extended goal that define your parties' reason for existing ("You are the chosen, who must stop The Lord of Doom from conquering the world"). Instead, your travels create the motivations at that time and place. It's less Star Wars and more Star Trek.
In my experience (and I started playing D&D in 1980), the sandbox game was the normal setup for an RPG in the beginning, with little published modules dropped in where convenient. Some games might have been planned 1-20 levels with a singular focus, but they were rare. It's only been since the advent of computerized RPGs and organized play that players have expected "story that leads me from place to place with predetermined outcomes"...
THIS. Excellent examples & summary.
So I've taken this discussion to heart. I've got a campaign I started a little while ago - essentially just a megadungeon near a city. I didn't really have a lot of ideas other than "go to dungeon, hack, return to city; repeat" when I first designed it.
I've gotten inspired to expand the game's scope WM style. I have a hexmap of the land and am working on the known surface ruins of the castle beneath which are the dungeon outpost areas of the megadungeon. Essentially the scope of the campaign will be around exploration of the dungeon zones but also other side quests available into the land.
To this point, over 4 game sessions of this campaign, the story and plot (such that there has been) has been driven by me as the GM. The only major hurdle I can forsee is putting this agency in the hands of the players as per the WM model. I've briefed the PCs via email but I still think the next session will be kind of a splash of cold water.
As far as my interpretation of the WM style: yes, I still think the classic West Marches in the article linked above seems a little simplistic. This colors my understanding of how villains and plots would be treated, if at all in such a game. However the contributors of this thread have provided enough evidence that a WM game can still be successful while employing more detailed BBEGs.
So that's what I'm trying now. I'm going to present my players a sandbox which on the surface seems like a lot of hexes to explore, but in fact hides the plots, schemes and machinizations of several greater forces. Unlike the classic WM game my campaign will include a city full of NPCs and just as much potential for urban gaming as exploration. It will be up to the PCs to forge their own path and figure out what's worth fighting against, and what's worth fighting for.
I'm running my own exploration/sandbox. There are/will be plots and recurring villains but everything exists in stasis until the players interact with it and 'unlock it'. Once they PCs unlock the NPC/Villain/Plot it begins to take effect. Whether they continue to interact with that plot thread is up to them but just their setting it motion will have consequences.
They way I think about these things, is I plot a broad outline of what the 'plot' for a given NPC is. For instance Sorin wants to conquer the world. The pc's interact with him on a purely local level but once they do he sets his plan in motion. There is opportunity for the players to follow that plot line, but even if they do not, Sorin is going to attempt to complete it. They may hear about those actions (the actrocity at the Abbey of Windfall, followed by the abduction of the Blind Oracle who holds the key to prophecy) and choose to do something about it, or they can continue on with whatever they want to pursue. Either way Sorin is going to complete hi
In my mind the key to the open game is to make player decisions drive the action. Ignoring something has a consequence, just as pursuing another thread does.
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@evil homer: I understand your logic.
However, I find that to be a kind of "false openness". If the players ignore the plotline, it'll go on without them until it's a huge problem an they realize they should've followed it sooner, because now the world is in peril. That's not real player freedom in my opinion.
Now, suppose the PCs meet Sorin, realize he's no good, but decide that he's someone else's problem. Because there are also two or three other plot threads they're worried about. Also, Sorin has nothing they want and scares them a bit, while they also have this map to a totally sweet ruin with tons of gold in it. Or the players just feel more like beating up on the orcs in the other plot thread than in chasing down the undead in this one.
A part of player freedom is deciding that a particular plot interests them less - for any reason - than another, and the GM accepting that decision. If the PCs ignore Sorin and he goes on a rampage, eventually some NPC paladins start caring about it and take the matter out of the PCs hands. Ignore a plot for too long and someone else starts working on it.
This style does create more work for the GM; you have to dangle several plot hooks for several plots in front of the players, and see which one they bite on. This also means you can't invest all your time in one plot that might not trigger.
If a plot is self-driven (with the scheming villain) it'll eventually force the players to pay attention (or force NPCs to pay attention).
The funny thing about the WM approach is that there were no NPCs to steal glory, no self-driven NPC plotters, and the players set the agenda.
Players talk amongst each other and decide they prefer to check out the Black Monastery (rather than the Swamp Temple, the Dragon Cave etc.), and tell the GM. The GM then picks up his vague notes about the Black Monastery and adds more and new detail because now it's actually going to be used.
@evil homer: I understand your logic.
However, I find that to be a kind of "false openness". If the players ignore the plotline, it'll go on without them until it's a huge problem an they realize they should've followed it sooner, because now the world is in peril. That's not real player freedom in my opinion.
Now, suppose the PCs meet Sorin, realize he's no good, but decide that he's someone else's problem. Because there are also two or three other plot threads they're worried about. Also, Sorin has nothing they want and scares them a bit, while they also have this map to a totally sweet ruin with tons of gold in it. Or the players just feel more like beating up on the orcs in the other plot thread than in chasing down the undead in this one.
A part of player freedom is deciding that a particular plot interests them less - for any reason - than another, and the GM accepting that decision. If the PCs ignore Sorin and he goes on a rampage, eventually some NPC paladins start caring about it and take the matter out of the PCs hands. Ignore a plot for too long and someone else starts working on it.
This style does create more work for the GM; you have to dangle several plot hooks for several plots in front of the players, and see which one they bite on. This also means you can't invest all your time in one plot that might not trigger.
If a plot is self-driven (with the scheming villain) it'll eventually force the players to pay attention (or force NPCs to pay attention).
The funny thing about the WM approach is that there were no NPCs to steal glory, no self-driven NPC plotters, and the players set the agenda.
Players talk amongst each other and decide they prefer to check out the Black Monastery (rather than the Swamp Temple, the Dragon Cave etc.), and tell the GM. The GM then picks up his vague notes about the Black Monastery and adds more and new detail because now it's actually going to be used.
See now this is exactly the kind of thing I was getting at in the first place. If it's WM style, and a completely open world, there's no NPCs to clean up after the PCs. If you then had intelligent, scheming villains like Sorrin, the only thing keeping them from destroying the world would be the PCs. Once they trigger that thread they'd HAVE to follow it to the end...which becomes a railroad.
Hence my query: how can you have scheming villains in a classic WM style game?
But if you include scheming villains and DON'T want to railroad the PCs, you can either 1. destroy the world while the PCs are distracted, or 2. throw in NPCs to cover.
Personally I'm choosing #2. I've already given the players a hangout called the Sign of the Dragon and Hammer, AKA the Hammered Dragon Inn. The three times they've visited I've made a point to describe teams of adventurers, lone travelers and mercenary bands all frequenting the place. It's a classic "you meet in a bar" type fantasy cliche taproom where adventurers trade gossip and ready for the next quest.
So in my campaign, if the party makes for Flamenwing Castle, discovers the Scritedra Meiger (evil kobold torturer) and decide for whatever reason to leave that thread alone, the creature's evil will catch up with him in the form of another band of adventurers. When the party comes back to the bar they may hear a rumor that a group of rogues, led by an inquisitor, took it upon themselves to put an end to the sadistic deprevations of the Scritedra Meiger. If they still skip the plotline they will eventually learn that only the inquisitor returned, horribly scarred mentally and physically from the ordeal.
I want the players to be the heroes, there's no doubt about that, but I also want the world to feel a little dynamic and filled with more things than the PCs and the things they kill/talk to. To me the alternative is too much like a video game.
See now this is exactly the kind of thing I was getting at in the first place. If it's WM style, and a completely open world, there's no NPCs to clean up after the PCs. If you then had intelligent, scheming villains like Sorrin, the only thing keeping them from destroying the world would be the PCs. Once they trigger that thread they'd HAVE to follow it to the end...which becomes a railroad.Hence my query: how can you have scheming villains in a classic WM style game?
Well, one way is to have the villain's agenda be smaller-scale. Not every villain has to be a megalomaniac trying to achieve world domination.
Simpler "villains" examples:
1. A serial killer that the PCs leave to be handled by the local authorities -- the killer isn't caught and people are still dying. It hits home when an NPC known to the players becomes a victim.
2. A Thieves' Guild/crime syndicate moves in and begins extorting the local townsfolk. Society continues, the PCs are largely or completely unaffected but the tone/feel of that settlement changes.
3. The insane wizard keeps experimenting with creating unnatural hybrid monsters and/or undead. He's not trying to take over the world, it's just an academic exercise to him. The fact that he's releasing his creations into the wild or they are escaping is inconsequential to him.
4. As the evil cult/church rises in power uncontested by the PCs, good religions & worshippers in the region are marginalized.
5. The bandits that are too small-time to worry about continue to grow until they've impacted trade coming to the border settlement. Supplies are growing scarce and prices are going up...
As I said before, sandbox doesn't have to equal a static world. Some plots don't have to advance until- or if only- the PCs interact with them. That necromancer researching some foul magic? She's never going to make that breakthrough unless the players discover that lost crypt, etc.
But to address Ascalaphus' "false openness" point, I disagree. It's as open as everyday real-world existence. Further, it helps setting development and in-game immersion. Now, the players choices have consequences, both positive and negative. That's not false choice, that's showing that the PCs have something larger to consider beyond "whatever we feel like". Sure, if every unresolved quest or plot point leads to the world being in crisis, you're doing something wrong. But if the PCs can't deal with the "little evil" today because they're fighting a "larger evil" now, guess what? You've just had a new "larger evil" that has developed organically out of playing the game. The PCs are likely going to be more invested in stopping the "new evil" when they realize that if they could have stopped it sooner, it would be less of a threat.
While it's a little more work to take note of these "missed/avoided opportunities" it helps keep things going when the GM has writer's/design-block. It also avoids the pitfall of having to constantly have new threats intrude upon the setting or having to continually push the boundaries of the setting to allow for the next "undiscovered evil". (Those are, of course, valid options but shouldn't be the only ones that a GM can bring to bear.)
Btw, this idea of Open World/Sandbox still having in-game consequences based on player choices is pretty popular these days in CRPGs: Fallout 3, Skyrim, Mass Effect series, Dragon Age series, the Witcher series, etc.
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@BPorter: in your scenario, if the PCs don't chase down these plot threads, it seems that nobody else will either. Things will get worse, because no NPCs can be bothered to stop the bad guys.
I call that a false choice because while it may seem to the players that they have the freedom to pick up a plot or go elsewhere if the plot doesn't interest them, that's not really the choice. The plot won't go away if you choose not to pursue it, it'll just fester. That plot they for some reason didn't want to engage, now just got bigger and more pressing.
I generally agree with Mark Hoover's idea, that if the PCs ignore a plot then eventually some NPC will take an interest. You can even use that to motivate PCs: "if you don't take this mission now, I'll hire someone else, and you can forget about the big payout", or "if you wait too long, someone else is going to get to the dragon's hoard". Plots aren't just chores, they're also opportunities that can be lost if you wait too long.
However, WM is a somewhat strange beast. The intent was to have much higher player agency; the idea was to let players set the entire agenda, rather than have some NPC plots influence the agenda.
NPCs can be seen to be doing things, evolving, hatching some schemes. That works. But if those schemes have a significant impact on the PCs or things the PCs care about, then that will intrude on PC agenda-setting. Previously they had total freedom to choose where to go next, but now they ought really to deal with this local problem first...
You're never going to convince me that giving players an option, letting the players pass on the option, and then letting the option progress is a "false choice". By definition, the players chose not to do something. (If it works for your game to view it as a false choice, that's cool.) I'm simply giving examples of how choosing not to do something can set up future adventures or help drive in-game immersion and setting development in an otherwise static environment.
I get the idea of the WM approach. My "pick-up campaign" operates on the same principle. Most sessions are 100% improv based on the actions of the PCs. However, once the PCs interact with a plot/area, unless it is a site-based encounter, I'm free to extrapolate what happens if the PCs don't pursue the quest. Not doing so (and there have been instances I've not followed up on something in this manner) have led to breaking the players' immersion "We encountered that guy 3 months ago. He hasn't done anything since?"
If you want the campaign to remain entirely static and exist solely for the PCs, i.e. NOTHING happens unless the PCs interact with it, than to the OP's original question, then no, I don't believe you can have a scheming villain on any meaningful scale. The best you can get is a BBEG that's bound to a particular site (for whatever reason).
The WM blogs talk about a particular form of sandbox meant to allow high #s of players in a framework that allowed for rotating players and infrequent schedules. The GM appears to have chosen to not utilize scheming NPCs and focus solely on site-based & wandering monster encounters as a means to reduce prep and hone his focus on the next unexplored area. It wasn't because the presence of plots or scheming NPCs would create "false choice" options.
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So I've taken this discussion to heart. I've got a campaign I started a little while ago - essentially just a megadungeon near a city. I didn't really have a lot of ideas other than "go to dungeon, hack, return to city; repeat" when I first designed it.
I've gotten inspired to expand the game's scope WM style. I have a hexmap of the land and am working on the known surface ruins of the castle beneath which are the dungeon outpost areas of the megadungeon. Essentially the scope of the campaign will be around exploration of the dungeon zones but also other side quests available into the land.
To this point, over 4 game sessions of this campaign, the story and plot (such that there has been) has been driven by me as the GM. The only major hurdle I can forsee is putting this agency in the hands of the players as per the WM model. I've briefed the PCs via email but I still think the next session will be kind of a splash of cold water.
As far as my interpretation of the WM style: yes, I still think the classic West Marches in the article linked above seems a little simplistic. This colors my understanding of how villains and plots would be treated, if at all in such a game. However the contributors of this thread have provided enough evidence that a WM game can still be successful while employing more detailed BBEGs.
So that's what I'm trying now. I'm going to present my players a sandbox which on the surface seems like a lot of hexes to explore, but in fact hides the plots, schemes and machinizations of several greater forces. Unlike the classic WM game my campaign will include a city full of NPCs and just as much potential for urban gaming as exploration. It will be up to the PCs to forge their own path and figure out what's worth fighting against, and what's worth fighting for.
Great Mark, keep us posted of the progress and/or problems.
As for player driven play, the Alexandrian has lots of blog posts about a hexcrawl campaign, designing different mechanics to implement hexcrawls. He also talks about how new mechanics will drive playstyle in another post, highlighting how after he introduced encumbrance rules, players quickly wanted to keep track of such things. Yes i like that blog...
So maybe introducing some hexcrawl and random encounter (essential to a sandbox imho) rules will result in your players adopting a hexcrawl/sandbox frame of mind all by itself.
@Than the Man: a lot of what's in the blog post you linked to is fairly intuitive or RAW (I think) in PF. It also hearkens back to my ancient training as a 1e GM. I like the portion of keying locations though.
This fits with my own design when generating this campaign. It started as a megadungeon, yes, but as soon as I was done generating the bare bones I looked around and realized I'd need a lot more varied and interesting locales for the PCs to visit between dungeon hacks so they didnt burn out. Rather than key them on encounters I started with a couple site-based encounters.
The piece I think I'm struggling with but also am the most pumped to try out is how to provide information to the PCs. Think about it: in a linear game the first clues need to the next encounters and so on until you're 20th level and wailing on Orcus. At the other extreme is the WM game where the players literally just pick a direction and go without the need for info.
In my current campaign however I have at least 2 players who want ongoing, developing plot and story. As such I need to find a way to consistently feed this plot while also maintaining an open world. Yes, some clues will be generic but some details, once revealed will lead in specific directions and may obscure the PCs' information gathering.
For example: the PCs have a goal of defeating kobolds and there's a lot of them in the megadungeon, but that's not the ONLY place the kobolds can be found. The little blighters have spread around the region and have varied interests to further their mayhem. As such I want to scatter a couple kobold nests around but they're hidden. Challenge: how to key these places so as not to just give them right away and also how to lead the party there without saying "there's other kobolds in F23".
My own answer to myself would be figure out what the kobolds are doing there, and what they're using as a base of operations. These details in place, mention a secondary result of either. So if the kobolds in F23 are holed up a cave in the forested mountain terrain and they're hunting for veins of mithril there, perhaps they kidnapped some dwarven miners on the way that the party could hear about or perhaps the party is asked to investigate strange lights and sounds on the heights on the pine-sheltered peaks of the Bonefrost range there.
Of course, here again I'm veering off the classic WM path. The party is supposed to trigger the kobolds, not the other way around.