At it's most basic:

For the players: How to decide where to go?


Clearly, if you make uo stuff on the fly, your decisions influence the other areas. And then you create a giant wave of
made up facts you have to incorporate into the other encounters, which gets bigger and bigger until it collapses over you and destroys any believability.

Sure I can run a one off adventure, but a campaign, w/o keeping up on all the powers, cities, factions; without keeping track of villains and allies?

Quote from: Caesar SlaadSo, in the same breath, you don't understand, but demonstrate it.

... [snip] ...

Already, I have a hook or two and some salient details to run encounters with local NPCs. Plenty to go on for a night's gaming.

Great post CS.  :cool:

Quote from: SettembriniAt it's most basic:

For the players: How to decide where to go?
...

I assume that the DM will give the players some hooks/goals initially that will prompt them to want to go to certain places.  Of course, the cool thing about the Wilderlands is that the players can ignore those hooks/goals (or put them 'on hold') and go somewhere else without completely screwing the DM.

IME, once the campaign gets going, it is usually pretty obvious where the players want to go, based on previous actions, knowledge gained, established goals, etc.

QuoteIME, once the campaign gets going, it is usually pretty obvious where the players want to go, based on previous actions, knowledge gained, established goals, etc.

That won't work without serious prep time. At the very least I'd have to read all through the areas hexes, and mak a list of the powers that be etc.
Taking track of rumours alone is quite some feat.
I have no qualms doing just that, but I was to be shown the prep-lessness of Wilderlands.

Quote from: SettembriniAt it's most basic:

For the players: How to decide where to go?


Clearly, if you make uo stuff on the fly, your decisions influence the other areas. And then you create a giant wave of
made up facts you have to incorporate into the other encounters, which gets bigger and bigger until it collapses over you and destroys any believability.

Sure I can run a one off adventure, but a campaign, w/o keeping up on all the powers, cities, factions; without keeping track of villains and allies?

Wow, that sounds awfully slippery slope to me.

The key is keeping track of your own creations well enough to improv them realistically, and to invoke reasonable elements when they'd become important.

I've run campaigns where I didn't have all the prep work done before even getting started.  Hell, I don't think I have ever run any other kind of campaign.

How do the players decide where to go?  Well, they do that from week to week.  I feel them out at the end of each session and try to get a handle on where they want to go next, or what they want to accomplish.  I then prep to accommodate them if it's at all reasonable.  I spend 2/3 or more of my prep time on their likeliest destinations and the remaining 1/3 among anything else they might want to do.

If I had to have everything exhaustively detailed before a game even starts, I'd never DM.  That's way beyond my attention span, and I wouldn't want to do it.  Amazingly enough, though, I've run great games without that crazy megapreparation, and my players love coming back for more.

-O

Quote from: SettembriniThat won't work without serious prep time. At the very least I'd have to read all through the areas hexes, and mak a list of the powers that be etc.
Taking track of rumours alone is quite some feat.
I have no qualms doing just that, but I was to be shown the prep-lessness of Wilderlands.

Why do have to read through all the hexes?  You only use the hexes you use.

QuoteWhy do have to read through all the hexes?  You only use the hexes you use.

So where do rumours come from? How do players plan in any way?

Quote from: SettembriniSo where do rumours come from? How do players plan in any way?

I don't have my set handy so don't know what's nearby or where the players might start, but from the above example -

- I already mentioned the possibility that an escaped sacrificial virgin might approach the PCs for help.

- Similarly, other effects of the hex in question might be immedately apparent and generate flavors and/or rumors. For example, the PCs are waiting at the gates when they overhear a man in an ash-covered wagon ahead of them discussing why he has returned from his business trip so soon with the guard, and relating that the town appeared burned to the ground and he's going to have trouble making ends meet over the winter.

- A man in the town may approach the PCs and beg for them to rescue his daughter, who had been identified as a virgin and rounded up in the latest offering.

- If the PCs were some further distance away, you could create more far reaching rumors and goals for the players. For example, if a player expresses desires for a magical sword, you could drop rumors that a somewhat untrustworthy adventurer stole a well known sword with dragon slaying properties, and went south (or whatever) in pursuit of a dragon he had heard of there. Drop more hints about the warrior and his eventual demise.

Quote from: SettembriniSo where do rumours come from? How do players plan in any way?

I think your games are structured fundamentally differently from most any that I have run.

Also - thanks to this thread, I went ahead and snapped this up from Amazon for $45 with free shipping.  The no-detail-maps thing may bother me, but I absolutely love capsule descriptions.  They fit my DMing style very well.  I think it will give me something new and interesting to throw at my players.

-O

Quoteyou could create

This is all I'm saying:

It is great inspiration, but needs as much prepwork as anything else. No magic pixie dust in that supplement.

QuoteI think your games are structured fundamentally differently from most any that I have run.

Actually I suspected that, but I wanna try to pinpoint the differences. I hope to learn from you guys.

Quote from: jrientsIs there any entry like that on every hex for the map?  Because I'm perfectly willing to bullshit my way through the questions you call "non-wingable".  I see the limitations you outline, but I think I'm going to agree with Pundit on this one: I could totally use a box full of hexes like that with little or low prep.

Yup, this is pretty much what Wilderlands is all about. Its why I love it.
If you dig old-school, this is what its all about.

And to Settembrini: All your questions are really good ones. The Old-school answer is this: either they don't matter, or you make them up. If they don't matter to the players or the DM, then its not part of the adventure and you just ignore it.
If it matters to the DM, its only because its going to add another layer of adventure (lets say that the dragon has the maidens in his service to trade with some gnollish raiders... the whole point being that it means after you can throw some gnolls at the PCs).
If it matters to the players, in the sense of them asking you why x is so, you have to think fast and make up a suitable answer. GMs in the old days had to have reflexes; it was the wild west, and we were the gunslingers.

I was Doc Holliday.

RPGPundit

Quote from: SettembriniAt it's most basic:

For the players: How to decide where to go?


Clearly, if you make uo stuff on the fly, your decisions influence the other areas. And then you create a giant wave of
made up facts you have to incorporate into the other encounters, which gets bigger and bigger until it collapses over you and destroys any believability.

Sure I can run a one off adventure, but a campaign, w/o keeping up on all the powers, cities, factions; without keeping track of villains and allies?

Its the old "start from the village then create the empire" trick; basically, when you DO state something, it becomes part of the setting, and then if you're a good GM you'll write that down and keep it as something that is significant later on.  So instead of starting out with the whole campaign/setting determined from the beginning, you are filling in the gaps more and more as you go along, and the things that come up in the campaign itself are what shape the world.

RPGPundit

Quote from: SettembriniThat won't work without serious prep time. At the very least I'd have to read all through the areas hexes, and mak a list of the powers that be etc.
Taking track of rumours alone is quite some feat.
I have no qualms doing just that, but I was to be shown the prep-lessness of Wilderlands.

No, you don't.

You just have to stop being scared of faking it and changing it and winging it and making it up as you go along.

Not to mention that most of the wilderlands, aside from the centralmost region, is basically wild savagery with tiny pockets of civilization. I once described it as "Fantasy Gamma World".  So you have these little areas that are all cut off from each other.  So if you're currently playing in the upper part of the upper right quadrant of map 4, that's pretty much the only region you need to know a lot about RIGHT NOW. You have to have read through the book of course, and have a vague idea of what's going on elsewhere, but in general that "elsewhere" won't affect the area you're in. Its not that kind of world. We're talking Conan meets Mad Max here.

RPGPundit

Quote from: SettembriniActually I suspected that, but I wanna try to pinpoint the differences. I hope to learn from you guys.

The main thing that differs, I think, and I don't know if its because you're German, or because of your "generation" is that you have a considerable less trust in your own ability to improvise and keep it fun without having it all laid down beforehand.

You have to believe in your power as a GM to make it fun. That's the first step, grasshopper.

RPGPundit