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How many of you play in or DM a Sandbox game using the Pathfinder setting?
If you're a player share your experiences with this type of roleplay.
If you're a DM share your exciting moments, your facepalm moments, and anything else you'd like to share. Is it as frustrating as it is enjoyable?
Can't wait to hear your stories!
Nope.
I can't manage the energy to do one from scratch. I enjoy creating my own material (a lot!) but I like to have an adventure path as a "fallback position" when the creative juices run dry.
Kingmaker looks mighty tempting to GM, but I'm playing in that currently. My GM does do a lot of mashups and weird stuff though, so it's very sandboxy.
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I love writing (and playing!) quasi-sandbox adventures and campaigns.
I find that a full sandbox/freeform adventuring gameplay does not really fits my taste - nor that of my players - involving way too much work in preparation time and a greater "winging it" ability that I can handle, not to mention the very real possibility that not having a clear and definite structure leads astray both the characters and the scope of the adventure/campaign.
So I found a somewhat optimal balance between a classical type of adventuring framework and a more sandbox approach:
- the basic narrative framework follows a standard mechanic or sequence of situations, but they are developed to be rather small, self contained and not too strongly tied together, leaving ample space for lapses of time in between. So while the timeframe can be rather strict in a single episode or situation, it is not pre-calculated at all.
Eg. "we must hurry before this problem explodes rigth in our faces" but not "we have to hurry because we don't know what comes next".
- I write down a ginormous lot of encounters, both simple and complex, stand alone or tied together, exotic or sharing a common theme. The first two issues of Kingmaker are a good example of this. Just triple the number.
These encounters serve multiple functions: thay are a great atmosphere building tool, they function as basic building blocks to describe the setting, they work as red herring/evidence/clues providers, and they are good for basic XP-balancing issues.
- I usually write down also at least one (in longer adventures two, in full-blown campaign even three or four) secondary plotlines, that are tied to the primary one by common theme such as an NPC or magic item, or by a shared place such as a settlement or region.
While being way simpler than the primary plot, these secondary adventuring possibilities give the player characters the ability to choose first hand what they want to do and skip further away from any railroading feeling. Also, if they're closely tied to the primary plot, they could serve the same role of the simpler encounter, but with a greater scope.
So, basically I combine different types of adventure structure (location based, event based, freeform) to get a framework that's free of the railroady feeling of one type and the dispersive threat of the other - or at least, it tries to!
As an added benefit, it helps developing the setting by describing places, NPCs, creatures, encounters, while not overloading too much my poor humble GM shoulder with prep work - and any unused element goes into the the stash of tools good for the next time.
Having the large number of encounters and the secondary plotlines at the ready is perhaps the greatest asset of this approach, because they show to the characters that the world they're living in is a complex and maybe dangerous place that "keeps running even if they're not looking", and at the same time offer them the ability to have a direct influence in the path the game is developing (going place C instead of obvious place A or B, just because they like to), while staying under the guide and control ability of the GM.
Well, sorry for the rant. ;-)
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This wasn't in the Pathfinder setting (or ruleset) but I ran a sandbox low-magic Viking explorer campaign a few years back before I knew what sandbox was.
It was set in a land similar to Greenland when the Norse settled there - Ice, Fjords, Polar-bear men, Neanderthal Inuit-Skraelings. The PCs were all non-magical martial classes (non casting bard variant, fighter, rogue, non-magic ranger, scout from 3.5) and were of the first generation to be born in the settlement. The quests were for things like bog iron to make tools and weapons and trees to build long ship masts and whatnot.
For planning, I drew up a large scale map of the area with approximate terrain - mountain ranges, wind-sheltered valleys, fjords, glaciers, tundra - nothing too specific. Then, I divided the areas up into different Challenge Ratings (i.e. the fjord that they lived in was CR1, the seas were CR2, the mountain ranges on each side of their home fjord were CR3, the tundra going up to the ice sheet was CR7, the Northeast part of the ice sheet where the polar bear-men lived was CR14 etc. Then I crafted random encounter tables for each area that had encounters from CR-2 to CR+2. In general, the difficulty increased as the altitude increased or as the distance increased from their home base.
For some of the random encounters, I would jot down a few ideas about what I had in mind as I made up the table, especially as the PCs were getting close to one of the boundaries.
In terms of sandbox, I had planned that a Dwarf craftsman would be found in a certain valley to the East beyond where the only good timber grew and the Skraelings' home would be somewhere to the west. The Dwarf knew where the bog iron was but wouldn't tell the PCs unless they retrieved a mechanical owl that had been stolen by a certain (now-cursed) frost giant that lived in a castle above a glacier to the Northeast. The bog iron was located in a haunted swamp beyond the Skraeling camp and if the PCs made peaceful contact (with no language in common and no magic to bridge the gap), they could earn a trading partner, could get some help with the puzzle of the haunted bog, could get pointed back east to where the good timber was to be found and might even be taught how to hunt for whales the Inuit way (i.e. detachable harpoons attached to floating bladders that would cause a whale to tire out and surface where it could be lanced).
I decided that if the PCs went over a certain line to the north, they would bump into the Polar Bear men and would activate a series of encounters that would lead to a war some years later.
On top of that overall location-based plotting, I planned discrete severe weather encounters, natural disasters like flash floods and landslides, a strange campsite where there was firewood stacked and waiting (courtesy of some fey that wanted to entice any travellers to stay so they would deal with a nearby ogre) and a number of other encounters. I used these flexibly, putting them wherever it made sense for an evening's session.
Not Pathfinder, but I am currently running a rather sandbox style Mutants & Masterminds campaign. During the week, I come up with a rather vague plot; villain X is doing evil deed Y for reasons Z. I come up with a hook and then basically follow the Players around.
I try not to have too many preconceived ideas on how they uncover the plot. In my experience players are more than creative enough to find plenty of ways to uncover the plot, often times better than I ever would have anticipated. They also, often, think up even better plots and some times, right in the middle of the game, I change the plot to follow their ideas instead of what I originally had. You have to be flexible and good on your feet to pull this kind of thing off, but it can be very rewarding.
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@Evil Lincoln and xevious. I'd love to hear how your Kingmaker campaigns turn out!
@ Golem101. Great ideas sir. I didn't view your post as a rant at all.
@Greycloak. Loved reading what you did in that campaign. I like the idea of polarbear people. HA!
@ Courtfool. M&M is actually my second favorite RPG to GM. I do a similar things to what you're doing when I run M&M as well.
Keep the stories coming people! Awesome!
