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My Friday gamers have made a request for a narratively driven sandbox game. However, I really want to run Rise of the Runelords since it's such a classic. Now, I'm not married to the idea yet but I have been considering it, just as I have been considering a wide-open Varisia-based game where the party can just go wherever they like.
So how could I go about making this campaign a sandbox in the style of Kingmaker?
have you considered running Kingmaker? it is already awesome and with tweaks using the new options available since its release it could be super awesome.
Greetings, fellow travellers.
Have you check this thread?
Other rough-and-dirty considerations/thoughts:
Instead of giving them their own barony you might want to slightly change the theme and have them become one of the ruling factions of Sandpoint.
With Sandpoint still being the fulcrum of your story, I'd go for something like a KM redux where the PCs focus less on building their own kingdom but building their own town.
If the players (and you, too) are dead set on giving them their own little barony, I would transfer most of what's written in KM and RotRL to the small settlement of Wartle--it's about a week's travel from Magnimar and with the swamp, the woods and the plains nearby you could salvage a lot of the encounters and story line from KM (staying too close to Magnimar for this purpose makes me feel uneasy, somehow).
Having a look at it from the other way, so to speak, you could insert Sandpoint for Restov, replace the BBEG from KM with RotRL's BBEG and off you go.
Ruyan.
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I have been running RotRL Anny ED for some time now. My group has "gone any where they want". They have been to Cheliax and were on their way to Nidal(plans got interrupted). Kaer Maga was visited as well.
Ultimate Campaign should have all the information you need to give them settlement based awards anywhere you want in Varisia. My players home base is Magnimar with no problems. In fact one of my players had their cleric purchase the Foxglove Townhouse. Hehe :)
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Thanks for the advice guys, though I guess I wasn't very clear about what I meant.
The kingdom building aspect of Kingmaker wasn't what interested me. I heard somewhere that one of the developers called KM the 'adventure lot's of little paths' because the story is told through a plethora of quests and missions. Rise of the Runelords on the other hands seems to be a very linear progression of escalation up to the Big Bad.
The players asked for a sandbox with a story and I'd like to give them that though they are pretty easy going and would play something linear if I told them it was a classic and really fun according to The Internet(TM). So what I'm wondering is how difficult would it be to decouple and break up the story into a number of quests that the party can approach more free form (aka sandboxy)?
I don't think it would be terribly hard to be honest, especially if you broadened it to a slower leveling path. I believe RotRL is set for the fast leveling track.
I know at least in the second adventure The Skinsaw Murders, that it's set up to be able to pick and choose aspects of it in some mini quests and setups. There's also a fair amount of online side quests that the community has created to help with this as well. That way you get breaks for any "forced" story line and can allow for a more sandbox feel while still allowing the group to work toward the built in story and goal at their own pace.
For instance there's Chopper's Isle which you can work in in various ways...there's the plethora of different goblin tribes that don't get any real talk outside of the fact that they may or may not be gathering together thanks to the Thistletop faction. Plenty of opportunities for Magnimar side quests and interactions. If they start going to broad, just make their side quests etc slowly steer them back in line. They want to go check out Windsong Abbey?...easy enough to find a way to work it into Skinsaw.
It'll take some time to fully flesh out...but it can be done as long as you're willing to put in the time.
Yes, if you're willing to put in a bit of extra work, then you could easily create additional encounters for Runelords (especially if you have the Anniversary edition as it includes extra tidbits). The Forums should help in this as well, as could some modules (for instance, I've inserted the Dawn of the Scarlet Sun free module for when the PCs first entered Magnimar seeking the Skinsaw Cult - the guards were told to recruit the PCs by Judge Ironbriar who has stated his suspicion these murders are connected, though the guards suspect Judge Ironbriar is just desperate for results at this juncture). Similarly you can find other modules you can insert in places, and just not drive the story as much in places.
The gist of the issue is that Rotrl has a plot, but the timescales for the various incidents usually aren't that important. So there's plenty of time for the PCs to mess about doing other things, which may or may not coincidentally include meeting things involved in the plot if they end up in the right area. It does mean that it's not going to be an unrestricted sandbox: you need to tie them to the area, predominantly Sandpoint. You'll obviously need to add a bunch of stuff from other sources or write your own, and you'll need to slow down the xp rate to Medium or Slow and restrict treasure somewhat.
You may or may not want to spice the incidental incidents with things that illuminate the main plot. It's a bit fragmented already (there's only a vague connection between the first part and the rest) and a lot of wandering about in between will only exacerbate that.
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What I think I will do is see if the main elements of the plot can be decoupled a bit though, from what I gather the first part separates itself. I am going to make a handful of quests and decide where the party encounters it and where it takes them. I'll try to make as many of those quests related to the main plot as I can though a bunch will be unrelated.
I guess I'll see how much work it ends up being and whether it's worth it or better to just keep it linear and hope my players don't pout too much.
One thing where it might get railroady if you follow what's given...is the beginning of Skinsaw. Players are on a time clock basically...so if they delay too much more and more murders happen and eventually signs get pointed at them due to the notes left behind. I suppose you can always adjust this, however, by deciding to space it out over a much longer period of time should they decide to go off course.
I've been GMing RotRL in a sandboxy way so far, mostly by fleshing out more of the NPCs and their sub-plots, as well as mapping and detailing much of the surrounding areas to where the players are based. Lots of work but fun and it's paying off so far.
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Okay, so book in hand finally, this is what I have come up with for 'quests' in the first chapter:
Wanted: Goblins
Goblin raids have gotten more severe so an open bounty on goblins has been posted.
Goblin Threat
Root out the source of the goblin threat on the Lost Coast.
Wanted: Sandpoint Devil
The beast has been plaguing the Lost Coast for years. Slay the elusive creature.
Bandits on the Road
Goblins are not the only threat to the Lost Coast. Find the source of the bandits and end it.
Attack on Sandpoint
Goblins attack Sandpoint during the Swallowtail festival.
Thassalonian Ruins
A sage/explorer wants to catalog Thassalonian ruins and pays good money for maps.
Grubber’s Hermitage
The fishing village has gone silent, investigate the cause.
Chopper’s Isle
The party investigates Chopper’s Isle.
Goblin Advance
The alliance of goblin tribes, based out of Thistletop, begin in control of certain territories and every day advance closer to Sandpoint until they make their attack on the Swallowtail Festival.
These are a handful of ideas to flesh out and decouple what is not already sandboxy in part two.
What I would do:
Most importantly remove any ticking clocks, instead of saying "an attack will happen in 3 days" say "there is an imminent attack in the future." That way the players don't feel led by the nose.
I don't like portraying "quests" just gossip and rumors, maybe the town guard complaining about things. Sometimes its true, usually its not.
Use RotRL as written.
Take these things as examples from Kingmaker and use them as site based encounters, possibly with bounties and drop off all of the kingdom building and any long term plot hooks.
The Mite Tree - its a great location to drop and the farmers would know about it, probably complain about it.
The Kobold Hippie field - Sorry can't remember the name, the kobolds are eating all of the hallucinogenic mushrooms. Just a fun encounter.
Oleg's - Use it as some frontier post out from Sandpoint that has requested some aid against local bandits.
The Bandit Camp - As written.
Stag Lord's Fort - drop some hints about it later, I'd suggest if you are doubling up to use the slow xp track.
Kingmaker has so many site based encounters that can be dropped in any adventure. Just drop out all of the kindgom building stuff. That's all in book 2 anyway.
Consider getting the first chapter of Kingmaker, first to get inspiration from how it uses rumors and items and encounters to be seeds for other quests, and second to cannibalize locations and encounters from it.
Consider having a random encounter table that has the potential to lead-in to your planned-out quests.
Also consider leveling-up by fiat. You won't want to find yourself in a situation where you're desperate to railroad the party back to the main quest simply because they're enjoying getting off the rails so much.
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I plan on approaching the quests as more of a means for me to keep things clear. I want to present them to the party as rumors, events, and discovered locations. As they interact with the world either through interaction or exploration they will learn new things that may lead them in new directions.
The world also will not be static and things will happen to them and around them so I won't be eschewing a ticking clock. Karzoug's plans are already in motion after all and the party, if they ignore the main plot long enough, will be forced to contend. That being said, the party will still have plenty of time to explore and interact with the world only discovering later on that there is a ticking clock.
I'm approaching it the way the first Fallout game did things in that it was a sandbox with lots of interesting places to explore, discover, and interact with, but the player only has a certain amount of time to deal with the main threat before all hell breaks loose, and I don't mean that broken water purifier...