| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
I don't think this has been posted yet, but I've always liked the idea: Schrödinger, Chekhov, Samus.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
I'm extremely lucky in that I can have an over-arching plot set out, but I have a couple of players that love taking the bull by the horns and creating their own plots (they also love Skyrim/Oblivion).
I'm currently running RotR, and the party's enchanter has decided to turn evil and seek out Sorshen, Runelord of Lust. This has required him making another character for use with the party and playing a concurrent solo campaign with the enchanter after a blow up with the CG ranger...
But my players always have plans of their own, and they won't let me get in the way of them! In this same campaign, the Shoanti is trying to restore his people to glory, the ranger wants to take out her Order of the Nail parents, and the dwarf cleric has a personal quest involving his secretive Order of Irori. A couple of players are just along for the ride, and they're the ones I tend to tie up in the AP/"my plot".
I guess a sandbox really shifts the focus onto PC self-determination, but you need players who are determined! Luckily, I've got 'em :)
|
After 17 years of GMing, I'm bored of writing extensive plots that require me, far too often, to restrict my player's choices.
I'm sick of building a themepark where players sometimes never want to get on the rides.
Hence forth, at least for the time being, I reject the path. The plot. The ride.
Instead of a park, I want to build a sandbox.
What experiences do people have with more sandbox style play?
Does anyone know any good blogs/templates/guides to creating a good sandbox?
Any warnings from those who've had problems in the past?
I'm actually thinking of starting a whole new campaign world. Now if I sandbox the thing - it means all I need is adventure after adventure and the location they are in.
I can apply a mesh to the world and plot the movement of events across the mesh- it means creating a large number of plots and NPCs and simply letting the PCs venture across the mesh - laying down events as they meet them - allowing others to reach their endgame without PC intervention and exerting changes to the mesh dynamic based on changes the PCs get away with. The PCs are not the only heroes - they are a minor force for change.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
The other method I like, is instead of planning a grand plot, you sketch out a couple of ideas of what could happen in the next session. You don't plan for the session after that. Part of that planning is also intentionally vague and undecided as well.
During the game, you solicit player input. Not just on their reactions to events, but ideas they have about what might be going on. The players also become responsible for pushing the plot further, the DM thinks up a couple of scenes that will get the session started, after that the players get to set the tone and pace.
The benefits of this style:
- less prep work
- more brains thinking of cool plot ideas
drawbacks:
- you need to have a deep understanding of the rules and a stable of NPC monster stats you can use/modify on the fly for whatever you need
- lots of unresolved sub-plots (they'll come up during session A, won't get talked about in session B, then in session E someone will go "hey, what happened to...")
- harder to come up with an end point for a story
It takes a while to get used to, but it can be a lot of fun just to see what kind of story develops during a session.
I've kind of setup a world myself that is intended to be a sandbox of sorts. The biggest things I focused on were developing overarching plot lines for both the world as a whole and each individual region and a short list of factions and organizations that the PCs are likely to bump into at some point. Between that and a map I created more or less randomly on CC3, I was able to develop enough details to have something to work with as the PCs explored. Even seemingly random encounters reveal something about the world as a whole with this basic framework; it may be useful to the party at the time, it may not, but either way, it still ties into the bigger picture. Eventually, the PCs will end up getting sucked into the larger plots no matter what they do because when they get enough power, there are more than enough groups out there that will take notice and "encourage" them to look beyond themselves; still, the PCs get to shape how and when that occurs, and exactly what their role will eventually be in those larger plots.
After 17 years of GMing, I'm bored of writing extensive plots that require me, far too often, to restrict my player's choices.
I'm sick of building a themepark where players sometimes never want to get on the rides.
Hence forth, at least for the time being, I reject the path. The plot. The ride.
Instead of a park, I want to build a sandbox.
What experiences do people have with more sandbox style play?
Does anyone know any good blogs/templates/guides to creating a good sandbox?
Any warnings from those who've had problems in the past?
I'm actually thinking of starting a whole new campaign world. Now if I sandbox the thing - it means all I need is adventure after adventure and the location they are in.
I can apply a mesh to the world and plot the movement of events across the mesh- it means creating a large number of plots and NPCs and simply letting the PCs venture across the mesh - laying down events as they meet them - allowing others to reach their endgame without PC intervention and exerting changes to the mesh dynamic based on changes the PCs get away with. The PCs are not the only heroes - they are a minor force for change.
Sounds cool I keep forgetting to email you about your map.
After 17 years of GMing, I'm bored of writing extensive plots that require me, far too often, to restrict my player's choices.
I'm sick of building a themepark where players sometimes never want to get on the rides.
Hence forth, at least for the time being, I reject the path. The plot. The ride.
Instead of a park, I want to build a sandbox.
What experiences do people have with more sandbox style play?
Does anyone know any good blogs/templates/guides to creating a good sandbox?
Any warnings from those who've had problems in the past?
I have GMed for the better part of two decades myself -- almost exclusively with the same two groups of people. I adopted a sandbox style of play almost exclusively - placing my central plots only when the players were thoroughly ensconced in something by their own choices (I find parties tend to, after initially selecting a direction, move with a certain inertia if the objective is one they perceive is important enough. Ie, at one point my party saw it as a matter of honor to recover a stolen supply train that for the most part (besides having some old loot parked on it) was thoroughly inconsequential. I was able to turn their vehemence to get their stuff back into a vehicle for a complete plot arc.
I often ask my players what their favorite shows, books, stories, at the time are -- and if multiple people are in love with certain ideas I may even tailor the world to suit a kind of parallel campaign. For example, I ran a "FarScape" campaign to several players complete satisfaction, despite most everything I knew about the show coming from my players, and a little bit of research on Wikis and a quick view of the Pilot episode and a couple of others.
So I'll say from experience this method can be a lot of fun, is very achievable (you get better and better with practice, and you can lead your players to water -- but you can't make them think -- By letting them loose in your sandbox you can be certain you are "giving the people what they want"... when they might find themselves unfulfilled (no GM can rock all faces all the time) they will know it is largely a product of their own choices and you can spice areas to taste so that when they ARE feeling like picking up a scent, a story, an epic even -- it is at THAT moment you can strike, rather than hitting them with the flavor of the month at the start of a campaign before they are even warmed up and their minds, more than anything, have been absorbed on min-maxing their characters and relative peen-measurement with other characters at the table.
Here's some advice that's always worked for me:
1) STEAL SHAMELESSLY, FROM EVERYTHING. Make note of all the stories, history, news, and fiction you consume. Tailor it or melt it down into tiny little balls that you can insert into random crap you might be spinning by the seat of your pants. This could be as simple as spending an hour at a book or comic shop and gleaning stories from every cover you see. I used to check out online or in arcades every fighting game I could find, and make mental or short paper notes on every character I could find (and some of those fighting games have dozens of characters) because just from their visuals, a couple of quotes, or their emotes they often tell quite a detailed narrative. Because you are not TRULY familiar with so much of the material that you are using for inspiration, even if your portrayals or inclusions are reminiscent of something the players are familiar with -- it will always be largely your own, because you are taking it where your creativity takes you, and 17 years of precedent gives you a lot to draw on.
Basically, all of those characters -- or costumes, or environments form a bank of characters and backdrops to pick up the slack for your own creativity on the fly... so that it's always colorful no matter how random, and when your inspiration AND your creative flow are both at their peak -- it's SPECTACULAR. There are SEVERAL points in my completely sandbox campaign where stories have emerged that EVERYONE was completely WOWED at how they organically formed and how unique and satisfying they became. Because after a while, your players will know that your world is very much like a real world in a way -- a lot of normal going on around (even when normal is in the context of a fantastical world) but once in a while... WHOA... constellations of random things form a pattern that you can overlay a premise that they never saw coming -- because you thought of it on the fly, but it's brilliant enough that it looks like it covers events from before they were even paying attention or looking for a pattern. I LOVE THESE MOMENTS... because the players have to wonder if the entire thing was designed and I was leading them by the nose (even though it was all completely their decisions) or... well, the only other ready explanation is yes... I really am that good. Ahhhh... contentment.
2) Random tables are your friends. Get every random table from rooms to inns to fractal terrain generators, to names, to treasure generators and USE THEM. Even if they are cross genre find something about them to steal and adapt. Say you find an awesome starship floor-plan generator but you run a fantasy campaign... glean what you can about the layouts for fantastical vessels, or just more and more inspiration. Then those dice you are rolling behind the screen can sometimes pop into a million different plot-seeds, or little encounters, but something is always happening.
3) Always ask each player the kinds of things their aspiring towards, and also the kinds of "franchises" that are capturing their attention. Sure, the entire party might need to be up for a murder mystery to take the adventure in that direction... but if one character consistently draws pleasure from a mystery -- give them one to pursue. Perhaps it would lead to targets of opportunity or additional points of interest the party must visit (always make it a small detour) but if a particular player can draw additional pleasure from chasing their own motivations without detracting overmuch, you can give them a little more of that additional randomness -- and once the other players see that person is getting a little extra attention (or reward) they might formulate a shared pattern(s) of interest or their own idiosyncrasies.
4) Feed them until they are full, but not sick. -- I learned that if the players are having a good time and it's not necessarily advancing the plot, it doesn't always serve to pull them from the meal they are enjoying to point them towards another feast you planned. If you make them an exquisite grilled cheese sandwich, they'll still be pissed if you clear the table and tell them the creme brule' is off to the north. I have two examples of this that turned out very well for my leaving "my little piggies" at the trough. In one circumstance we started a new batch of characters and I lead them to a nearby dungeon so they could get some xp and a little loot before forging ahead on my preconceived campaign of political intrigue. The players attacked and explored the dungeon, but even after a couple of visits kept wanting to go back. I attempted to dissuade them by making the outer reaches they'd already hit a couple of times sparse and looted out, but this only encouraged them! They wanted to keep coming back to this dungeon until they had chased all the monsters out, or wiped it entirely. The original plot I had in mind never even got seeded, and instead the entire campaign became about their becoming a freelance dungeon clearing company, which expanded to include more hirelings, local interests, mineral rights, rivalries and many many dungeon adventures. A second example was a similar side-point of interest... the party was told there was a "Turtle Valley" where some normally docile turtle creatures often returned to lay eggs, and escalating populations was leading to them becoming very aggressive about mating/laying territory so there was incentives on killing some of them. The party loved it -- they kept going back, for the xp, and even though the monetary rewards started low (a pittance per head) they got more and more excited about killing the things more efficiently to make it economically viable. I ended up making it an adventure of several sessions, with them fighting increasingly ridiculous (and more ancient) turtle/reptile/beach creatures in a struggle to get the party and their allies to the end of the valley -- where I placed a "Brood Queen of Turtles" (basically a re-vamp of an ancient dragon) as a super enemy on a pile of treasure. All this from a simple little side-attraction. But I paid DEADLY CLOSE attention to what the players were enjoying... and sometimes the players just enjoy doing stupid crap... creating context for that stupid crap can sometimes be difficult, but when it pays off, and the players snap out of the silliness -- well, the same story can be remembered in different contexts. Because it was an epic adventure AND a stupid turtle hunt where everyone ran around like it was a prairedog-fire-drill.
When Randomness conspires to serve you an exploitable pattern, or a REALLY good name for something gets jumbled together -- the players can neither believe, nor care, it was an accident. It's just awesome. Names like "Underlord Mu'urdan", "Vice-Admiral Kishurgen", and "Touryan DeBauxForte" came out of random generators... but in my gaming circle they are as revered as any Darth Vader. Let them kick around the balls you pull out of the air, and before too long, you'll start to see a couple you can run with. Those are the plays EVERYONE remembers.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Thread Necro!!!
I love me some sandboxy type play. I think the hardest thing about running a sandbox game is motivating and engaging my players. The whole thing that makes it a "sandbox" for me personally is that the players drive the story forward with their decisions while the gameworld continues reacting in the background.
For example right now I have a game that has a main plot of exploring the wilds and finding out why dragons have returned. That's a huge and vague plot, not one you can just walk down in a straight line. As such the PCs have chosen to join and remain affiliated with an adventurer's guild.
The first couple of games there was a specific mission: find a locale in the wilds and clear it of kobolds and blight. Even this was too big to just railroad, so the players took a couple approaches. First they scouted the locale, found it, and tested the site's initial defenses. Barely surviving this recon they pulled back and hid in the wilds.
While hunting in the woods I arbitrarily rolled a wilderness locale: a shallow cave with dried blood on the entry. I was feeling saucy so I gave it an occult/horror feel but otherwise there was no encounter, just a site. The players seized on it and the next thing I knew there was a cult side plot.
I'd completely forgotten that one of the PCs had an evil cult in their backstory until the player reminded me in the moment. I ran with it, stole a village I'd written up for another game and situated the cult there. Wham-bam, we had a couple of adventures where the PCs saved this village from evil! Best of all it tied into the PC's backstory so the player was really dialed in.
When they finally got back after the kobolds they had a little extra loot from the village they'd saved. This ended up making a solid difference and the PCs were able to push through clearing the place out in 2 game sessions encompassing one long day of battle. They came back to town exhausted but victorious. Now they're off on a follow up plot from the cult thing tied into resolving the one PC's actual backstory.
I have written encounters and some plot, but basically the players are making choices (like missions from the guild or pursuing personal plots) and the world is just reacting. Fun times!
This is kind of how my l5r game is going right now. As a group we have never played this system before, so I was elected to run it. So I built a basic starting adventure, gave them a jumping off point, and have so far just let them run with it as far as they can. I have several generic combats (which are always modified by who they are with, where they are, etc) and a handful of big name characters that they run into every so often. The whole point is that I don't really care where they go so long as they have fun, I have a gigantic overplot, but no concrete plot because I want my players to develop their character. Why should I reject their choices, the only things I have to say are what would be acceptable under Rokugani law etc. So far my players are enjoying what they can and cannot do. Probably my most successful game next to my old Deadlands game, but that's a whole other story.