About Bookkeeping NPC, absolutely essential because we can't remember everything and consequences (either from PCs or NPCs or world events) makes a world breathe. Great advice that I would like to repeat for emphasis. However I would also like to indulge in expanding good practices to make your GM life easier:

1. Not everyone needs to be on an Index Card (my jargon for NPC bookkeeping), i.e. not everyone is important to the players to warrant even a proper name. Tragically this also means that what you feel is interesting won't necessarily accord with what they feel is interesting. We are finite beings with finite processing power, sometimes it's OK for the bartender to just be addressed as "The Bartender."

First Corollary: Powerful persons/organizations that can fuck you up good if you step out of line, e.g. Holders of Power, do warrant an Index Card even if your players are not going to meet them... yet.

Second Corollary: Powerless, or less powerful, persons/organizations that consistently receive Active Player Attention (not perfunctory transactions) eventually DO warrant an Index Card. Sometimes players say through in-game action who they are interested in developing deeper roleplaying relationships.

2. Not everyone needs to ever have Stats, including those with an Index Card. Ravenwing hits on this major pitfall of overprepping: statting the known universe. The game, ideally, is not a test of character generation system mastery with every encounter a spreadsheet white room arena duel. Repeat that previous line openly to players who "don't get it"; it's perfectly OK to 'fire a player from your table' if their idea of "RPG fun" is not to play a role in your game world, but to merely battle out spreadsheets like Pokémon. This touches upon Spinachcat's comment on getting everyone on the same page first, and carries into the next part about active/passive players.

3. Index Carded NPCs should have some volition of their own, to breathe. This keeps the world in motion while the PCs are away. This is also there to respond to the passive player who doesn't instigate the necessary interaction with a sandbox. The active player will likely thrive in a sandbox -- there are a few issues, but for the most part it's positive -- the passive player can peter out a sandbox tout de suite.

This is where an NPC's Reaction Rolls, Rumors, Goals, Personality, et cetera, saves you from just having a staring contest at the table. If they're not active, they sure as hell are likely reactive (if they have a pulse and want to be at the table at all), so those NPC Index Card notes save you so as to improvise Active NPC Stimuli upon the passive PC. This can be good or bad, and that's what content generators (Reaction Rolls, Random Tables of Stuff, etc.) are for, but regardless they are never to be used to be indifferent and maintain the passive status quo.

We all bookkeep in our own way, but to illustrate an old example I'll repost. It does several things, quick improvisational summary of NPC, goals for long term volition, jobs & routines for easy PC access, relationships for social web volition, and news rumors and quests to feed PCs if they're stuck and bored (secrets are easter egg rewards for deeper interaction):

Quote from: Opaopajr;831709Grab a 3x5" index card, scribble known details about the NPC (name, looks, 3 adjective personality...) and then separate a section for each tasks/routine, goals, and relationships. On the reverse, save for current news, quests, & secrets. Update accordingly, get in its headspace, and let loose.

i.e.:

Carlotta Duriel
wild, curly-haired brunette with fiery black eyes and commanding alto voice.
personality: passionate, quick-tempered, brooding.
job & routine: gunsmith, store open from M-F 10am to 6pm.
goal: match the quality workmanship of her grandfather.
relationships: Guillarme, silversmith --, Marquis Lac -, Duphrain, sheriff /, Lady Helene +, Armand, famed duelist ++. PC +.

(reverse)
news: mahogany gun handle shipment delayed.
rumors: Marquis Lac deliberately funds bandits to disrupt this town.
quests: a) find another source of good hardwood, fast! b) find evidence for truth in Marquis Lac and bandits rumor.
secrets: shot her last lover in the heat of jealous passion. she visits a lovely grave in the next county annually because of remorse.

Write it in pencil, edit regularly when they encounter each other, and let it flow organically. At worst, when the romance peters out or fails, you have a fleshed NPC and contact source.

Quote from: estar;897360(snip)

Well, but here's the rub.  If your aim is to be accurate, then strive to be accurate.  If your working premise is "It's fantasy/gaming fun so we don't have to bother with that stuff," then why are we fooling with data or ratios at all?  Just say "There are 1d4 blacksmiths, 1d6 bakers and 2d6 magic item shops, etc.," and have done with it.  It's a great deal easier, a great deal cleaner, and a good bit less confusing.

Of course most gamers don't give a damn.  (Heck, most gamers are perfectly happy to run settings right out of the shrink wrap, and not worry about the subject at all.)  Those aren't the people for whom such articles and blogposts are written.

Quote from: Ravenswing;897613Well, but here's the rub.  If your aim is to be accurate, then strive to be accurate.  If your working premise is "It's fantasy/gaming fun so we don't have to bother with that stuff," then why are we fooling with data or ratios at all?  Just say "There are 1d4 blacksmiths, 1d6 bakers and 2d6 magic item shops, etc.," and have done with it.  It's a great deal easier, a great deal cleaner, and a good bit less confusing.

Of course most gamers don't give a damn.  (Heck, most gamers are perfectly happy to run settings right out of the shrink wrap, and not worry about the subject at all.)  Those aren't the people for whom such articles and blogposts are written.

It has to do with the managing life of the setting, being consistent, but allowing for variations, and not to have to come up with a specific list from scratch every single damn time. The problem with saying there is 1d4 blacksmith etc is that it doesn't scale well between the different settlement size. You wind up with multiple lists for each size category. Then you will have to rinse and repeat if you want to vary it between type of settlement. (Seaport vs. Inland etc). My approach is not meant for guy who wants to make a town, dungeon, and a wilderness and call it a say. It is meant to sit between that and going the fullblown Harn, Tekemul, Glorantha route.

S John Ross approach means you have one table for each type of settlement that works regardless of the size of the settlement. So then you focus on providing alternative to account for that seaports are different than inland cities which are different than desert cities, etc. This is why instead of just completely duplicating his work, I instead modified it to work with the price list I posted.

Finally as a general comment on using any algorithm or table to generate random content it is best used as a baseline starting point. The point isn't to spit out ready to run content. The point is to cover the 80% of a locale that you have no particular idea or preference as to what goes in there.

Quote from: Ravenswing;897613

Of course most gamers don't give a damn.  (Heck, most gamers are perfectly happy to run settings right out of the shrink wrap, and not worry about the subject at all.)  Those aren't the people for whom such articles and blogposts are written.

Heck, most medievalists don't care that much about medieval demography, let alone gamers. That is a very niche area of study, even among experts. I took three or four medieval history courses in college and the closest we got to demography was during a section on the black death. I've got shelves of history books and very few of them get into historical demography (and usually it is very focused, like trying to determine the number of aristocratic families in a particular region of China of the course of two centuries).

Personally though I can see the point of bringing in real data though as a starting point and then working it into something the feels more gameable.

Some cool stuff in this thread. I'm not the OP nor am I running a fantasy sandbox at the moment but I am taking note for the next time the gang of hobbits gets together to wreak havoc in the realms.

Maybe someone also noted up thread, but it also useful before the game play begins to have the players work up what their characters' connections are to each other, something I try to always do ever since I came across it in the old WEG Star Wars RPG. saves you from "you meet in a tavern" and other hoary clichés, unless you want that.

Quote from: estar;897360I am well aware of the issues involved. Hence the title Fantasy Demographics. Within the document I pointed out that my categories were quite arbitrary and designed to be gamable within a fantasy campaign. The goal to make something that within the ballpark and usable for the average referee. Not that it is historically accurate, otherwise I would have done was S John Ross had done is present it a reflection of medieval life.

Also I read your rebuttal post when you pointed it out the last time and obtained some of the books on the list. While interesting to read, I like reading history books, it not straightforward as to how you get the numbers you need from it. You have to do some extensive scholarship and even then make more than a few judgement call to make it usable for what is a leisure activity.

Even then, all the historical numbers point to a higher population at a higher density than your typical fantasy campaign. While accurate, the result in my opinion is not very gamable for a typical D&Dish fantasy campaign. It needs to be ratcheted down by a least an order of magnitude. This way you get area of dense civilization but there is plenty of wilderness and the actual number of high status individual (feudal nobles, merchant magnates, etc) is more managable.

This is why I wrote Fantasy Demographics, the catagories that S John Ross used in my opinion were not well suited for a typical fantasy campaign. So I used the categories, I developed for my Majestic Wilderlands and recalculated the numbers.

In my rough draft of "How to make a Fantasy Sandbox." I have the same list of professions  but now there are multiple lists to account for specific circumstances. The numbers have been arbitrarily shuffled to reflect my sense of how a seaport differs from a rive town which differs from a town on the Silk Road, etc, etc. This is based on what I read in my history books including the one I read from your lists.

If I was writing for a game whose appeal rest on historical accuracy then your criticism is on point. However what being done is to be make thing that is consistent, in the ballpark, and above usable by the average referee.

First: you have a much lower opinion of the "average Referee" than I do:).

Second: If you're not aiming for historical accuracy, then why would you need any historical data? Shuffle them arbitrarily, as you said you've been doing! Do that until you get numbers that make sense to you, given the kind of campaign you're running.

Then, in the case of market-related items, roll a d30-d30 and add it to the result to determine shortages or overabundance. The first results in higher prices, the latter results in lower prices only if you get a quantity, but for the same prices you get higher average quality;).

There's no need for long essays, though, just explain to Referees what they need for D&Dish campaigns and let them adjust.

And my advice badly needs being reformatted, but since it's posted on TBP, I don't get to edit:).

https://forum.rpg.net/showthread.php?580891-Lazily-GMing-a-sandbox-campaign

Have fun;)!

Quote from: AsenRG;897711First: you have a much lower opinion of the "average Referee" than I do:).

Quote from: AsenRG;897711There's no need for long essays, though, just explain to Referees what they need for D&Dish campaigns and let them adjust.

I don' t think the average referee is interested in doing research into obscure primary resources in other languages to come up with a random table. I think they are a tad more interested in just getting on with their campaign. But would like a tad more support than somebody telling them "Make up whatever shit feels right to you."

In all seriousness, my view of how this stuff works is that you got the guys who are utterly comfortable with making stuff on the fly all the time and it works well for them. At the other extreme you got guys who need a rule for everything they make or do. There is a broad middle where people desire varying levels of support for what they want to make. And to make it more complex, in some areas (for example NPC generation) they totally got it for making it up on the fly. But in other areas (perhaps making a dungeon level or a wilderness) they desire some explicit guideline as a starting point. I wrote Fantasy Demographic targeted at that middle.

So while for you it is an overly long essay that has little use, it wasn't for the thousands who downloaded it since I posted it a couple of years back. And who are still downloading it and who still send the occasional email telling me how useful it is.

Quote from: AsenRG;897711Second: If you're not aiming for historical accuracy, then why would you need any historical data? Shuffle them arbitrarily, as you said you've been doing! Do that until you get numbers that make sense to you, given the kind of campaign you're running.

I don't how many I have to repeat, so that it within the ballpark of reality. So the Paris Tax Rolls is only for one place in one year of a 1,000 year medieval period. Maybe what being counted is just their last name. Regardless it is a piece of hard data that is accessible to me as a STARTING POINT. I combine that was the less specific stuff I know about the medieval era to produce something that looks plausible for a fantasy medieval setting. Tabletop roleplaying is about about taking a bunch of stuff from reality, and legends shaking it all up and making something fun and interesting.

Quote from: AsenRG;897711Then, in the case of market-related items, roll a d30-d30 and add it to the result to determine shortages or overabundance. The first results in higher prices, the latter results in lower prices only if you get a quantity, but for the same prices you get higher average quality;).

The point is generate a number of businesses to use to generate a bunch of NPCs to make a locale come to life for the players of the campaign. While yes if a town has a lot of tailors or a lack thereof it would makes sense that the price of clothing would effected but another issues than the one I am addressing with Fantasy Demographics..

Quote from: estar;897750I don't how many I have to repeat, so that it within the ballpark of reality. So the Paris Tax Rolls is only for one place in one year of a 1,000 year medieval period. Maybe what being counted is just their last name. Regardless it is a piece of hard data that is accessible to me as a STARTING POINT. I combine that was the less specific stuff I know about the medieval era to produce something that looks plausible for a fantasy medieval setting. Tabletop roleplaying is about about taking a bunch of stuff from reality, and legends shaking it all up and making something fun and interesting.
.

There is also a time management issue here too. I have used a lot of primary sources in my campaigns and as a basis for information in thing's I've published. But for things like equipment, pricing, demographics, that stuff can get pretty involved. I'm fine using these documents as a starting point. I find for most players, this level of plausibility is sufficient. I have gamed with players who require a little more detail and depth, and when I have such a player in my group, I will happily work them (even draw on their expertise) because it helps me flesh out stuff and it occasionally leads to books or resources I didn't know about. But those players have been in the extreme minority at my table. In fact, most of my players probably wouldn't mind, or would even welcome less historical realism in my games because I can occasionally go overboard here. A the end of the day though, the GM needs to have some basic information about things in the setting and I find there is a balance between how much time you invest in researching that and how much time you spend prepping other aspects of the campaign.

Quote from: Opaopajr;897432We all bookkeep in our own way, but to illustrate an old example I'll repost. It does several things, quick improvisational summary of NPC, goals for long term volition, jobs & routines for easy PC access, relationships for social web volition, and news rumors and quests to feed PCs if they're stuck and bored (secrets are easter egg rewards for deeper interaction):

Interestingly, in last weekend's session, I used this character as the gunsmith the players were sent to when they decided they wanted to have silver bullets made with a cross on them. She managed to sell one player a new custom made pistol and the rich noble a matched set of fancy decorated, custom made pistols. She also got a fancy dinner and flirtation from the rich noble.

So thanks!

My definition of a sandbox is one in which the players can change the setting (or) the mechanics of the game.

What is the OP's definition?:or others

Brian Jamison does a great job of explaining sandboxing. http://gamemastering.info/

Quote from: Bren;897887Interestingly, in last weekend's session, I used this character as the gunsmith the players were sent to when they decided they wanted to have silver bullets made with a cross on them. She managed to sell one player a new custom made pistol and the rich noble a matched set of fancy decorated, custom made pistols. She also got a fancy dinner and flirtation from the rich noble.

So thanks!

She lives! That's really cool to hear. Hopefully she ends up a memorable character to the players by the end of the campaign. It's also fun looking back at NPC index cards from where they started to where they ended up.


(I'm also curious if you made something interesting between Guillarme, the silversmith, and her as they were asking for silver bullets with a cross on them. Their relationship was double minus bad, which could have been caused by anything. Having a sour working relationship between the silversmith and the gunsmith during the custom silver bullets order almost writes itself. As long as the customer doesn't end up hurt -- or worse, with poor product -- the anger could manifest in real fun ways.

Or perhaps you inserted other NPCs and this is irrelevant? :cool:)

Quote from: J.L. Duncan;897891My definition of a sandbox is one in which the players can change the setting (or) the mechanics of the game.

What is the OP's definition?:or others

Certainly not a change of mechanics - I'm not even sure what that would look like.

As for my definition, I mean one in which the players fully drive the pace and direction of events in the game; the GM's role is to provide and administer the setting and to provide interesting things to "look at," as it were, but it's up to the players only to really decide what actually gets "touched."

By contrast, my current supers campaign involves specific plot points that I introduce, and then I often use a sort of binary "if/then" to introduce other plot points based on players' reactions, ultimately in service towards a story that will eventually have a climax and conclusion.

I see sandboxing as more active than reactive and, as my 10-year old son aptly described it, a "fantasy life simulator."

Quote from: Opaopajr;897911(I'm also curious if you made something interesting between Guillarme, the silversmith, and her as they were asking for silver bullets with a cross on them. Their relationship was double minus bad, which could have been caused by anything. Having a sour working relationship between the silversmith and the gunsmith during the custom silver bullets order almost writes itself. As long as the customer doesn't end up hurt -- or worse, with poor product -- the anger could manifest in real fun ways.

Other than using the relationship's existence as a way of justifying her as a previous source of silver bullets, I didn't do anything with that.

The players had previously received some silver bullets to kill a loup garou. They were given the bullets by the Captain-Lieutenant of Cardinal Richelieu's Guard who got the bullets (indirectly) from Richelieu. Recently, the players wanted some more silver bullets, this time with crosses cast on them. (Silver having a much higher melting point than lead, then can't just cast silver bullets the way they do lead ones.) When they asked the Captain-Lieutenant, I had to figure out where the bullet's came from...ergo Carlotta. So the Captain-Lieutenant sent them to Duriel & Duriel Gunsmith. Having a sense of humor, he didn't bother to tell them that the gunsmith is a woman.

Now that you've reminded me of the double negative I have to think old Guillarme didn't properly get paid. For some reason. I'll have to consider if and how that manifests.