Quote from: ChristopherKubasik;961623I forgot to add about the "episodic" part:

In my LotFP game we have been playing through LotaFP modules and modules of my own design. There is no plot or plan however. The Players follow up on any rumors or breadcrumbs they wish to pursue. They choose when to bug out of a dungeon or go back to some god-forsaken village they had explored weeks earlier. I am not leading them to any climax of my own design. But the adventures are episodic. But there is a "background static" of Bigger Things Going On that the Players have chosen to pursue. This provides a sense of "purpose" the campaign perhaps... but it is all based on Player choices and nothing to do with me leading them anywhere or forcing their hand in any kind of agenda.

Christopher - for a published "unstable" setting inteded to be sandboxy/without any overarchig plot - how would you feel about a table of "World Events" that the GM could roll on from time to time to see what changes in the world at large. Maybe one nation invades another. Some magic artefact is located that shortens daytime to 6 hours a day. The king is assassinated and the royal court in uproar. Serpentmen hidden in a deep jungle finally reveal themselves to teh world at large. And so on? (sorry I edited this)

Quote from: Psikerlord;961655Christopher - for a published "unstable" setting inteded to be sandboxy/without any overarchig plot - how would you feel about a table of "World Events" that the GM could roll on from time to time to see what changes in the world at large. Maybe one nation invades another. Some magic artefact is located that shortens daytime to 6 hours a day. The king is assassinated and the royal court in uproar. Serpentmen hidden in a deep jungle finally reveal themselves to teh world at large. And so on? (sorry I edited this)

So, like the tables in Tony Bath's "Setting up a Wargames Campaign" circa 1972.

Available as part of this collection:

http://www.lulu.com/us/en/shop/society-of-ancients-and-tony-bath-and-john-curry/tony-baths-ancient-wargaming/paperback/product-15463540.html

Quote from: Gronan of Simmerya;961661So, like the tables in Tony Bath's "Setting up a Wargames Campaign" circa 1972.

Available as part of this collection:

http://www.lulu.com/us/en/shop/society-of-ancients-and-tony-bath-and-john-curry/tony-baths-ancient-wargaming/paperback/product-15463540.html

Hmmm quite possibly... if only this was available as a pdf...

In my games, characters never return to their "homes." They say their good-byes to people they will most likely never see again.

Quote from: ChristopherKubasik;961623In my LotFP game we have been playing through LotaFP modules and modules of my own design. There is no plot or plan however. The Players follow up on any rumors or breadcrumbs they wish to pursue. They choose when to bug out of a dungeon or go back to some god-forsaken village they had explored weeks earlier. I am not leading them to any climax of my own design. But the adventures are episodic. But there is a "background static" of Bigger Things Going On that the Players have chosen to pursue. This provides a sense of "purpose" the campaign perhaps... but it is all based on Player choices and nothing to do with me leading them anywhere or forcing their hand in any kind of agenda.

I do things much the same, usually with the addition of some form of behind-the-scenes faction-level game to mediate the Bigger Things Going On.

Quote from: ArrozConLeche;961627I need glasses...I read the title as "Erotic adventures in an immutable status quo"...nevermind.

Your version of the thread would have certainly been interesting.

Quote from: chirine ba kal;961635My guess is that one reason for stability in settings may be the use of pre packaged adventures and settings, and people using them in what amounts to very short (almost one-off) games. Just a thought, I don't have a lot of game-play time in that kind of campaign setting...

That's basically my intuition as well.  "Modules" tend to base a lot of their modularity on being self-contained and not affecting anything in the larger campaign setting.

Quote from: Shawn Driscoll;961680In my games, characters never return to their "homes." They say their good-byes to people they will most likely never see again.

Is that because of high levels of PC mortality or because they become nomads, endlessly roaming the world and never returning to any place they've been before?

I have to say that I first thought this thread would be about the pros and cons of a West Marches style of game. A Local DM would I know has started such as endeavour, and it seems to be going well, with some pretty full tables (8 players recently) over the past couple of months that he's been running it. But I know one player though who hopes to push back against against the static conceit, once he gets some levels under his belt.  Group tastes vary of course, yadayada, but I think most experienced players look forward to changing the world, or their small part of it, at some point.

Quote from: Gronan of Simmerya;961625Uuhhh.... in both Blackmoor and Greyhawk, the PCs BECAME part of the "movers and shakers," so the background situation was anything but stable.

That pretty much how it was in my campaigns from the get go.

Quote from: Gronan of Simmerya;961625And, of course, there is the lost "end game" of D&D, where you take a bunch of wargamers, give each one of them a castle, an army, and a treasury and stand back.

Or mages and a faction in a guild. Or thieves and their gang in a syndicate, a high priest and his temple, and so forth and so on. The list is endless. All you havet do is be willing to let the PCs "trash" your campaign with their plots and plans.

Quote from: Gronan of Simmerya;961625So the short answer is this is less an artifact of "D&D" than it is an artifact of TSR shifting their marketing to 14 year old kids who had fuckall notion of history.

Maybe but my experience is that it is more a matter of temperament. Some people don't like other people messing with their shit. A bit of a contradiction when it comes to tabletop roleplaying but then people are people.

What more insidious is organized play.

Quote from: Omega;961629Um... since when?

That is definitely not the norm for D&D. Things change. Kingdoms rise and fall.

Yeah. In all my games there is no such thing as "stability". I always try to raise the stakes (as the conceits of the PC's statures rise to the occasion) to meet the demands of the powerful and the greedy, which inevitably means upsetting the status-quo. I haven't run a "static" setting in... well... decades.

Are you keeping a timetable and an events calendar? Y'know, Gygax did have something to say about Time Keeping and RPGs way back when...

Here's a fun trick, without getting too heavy into faction machinations: Scribble up a calendar of major events! Yup, write up each month, roll up some dice (on a table or a map), and go to town. Throw in natural disasters, benevolences, a war or festival, a few for each month... and just set it aside. Have it be like a rumor table resource, NPC people are talking, often with incomplete knowledge, and regardless of PC interference Life Will Go On.

Quote from: chirine ba kal;961635My guess is that one reason for stability in settings may be the use of pre packaged adventures and settings, and people using them in what amounts to very short (almost one-off) games. Just a thought, I don't have a lot of game-play time in that kind of campaign setting...

Quote from: nDervish;961684That's basically my intuition as well.  "Modules" tend to base a lot of their modularity on being self-contained and not affecting anything in the larger campaign setting.

There's also settings to consider. A lot of gamers get very attached to their favorite settings, and throw hissy fits if they get changed in any notable way. See the FR fan teeth-gnashing that happens every time an edition rearranges it, even though this happening every few years has become FR tradition. Myself, I refuse to acknowledge The Module Which Shall Not Be Named that ended with Factions being removed from Sigil. Part of it is that a lot of fans like to have common touchstones to memorize and to talk to unfamiliar gamers about, and it's hard to have common touchstones when things are constantly changing. And part of it is the don't mess with my shit attitude that estar mentions -- I've relaxed a lot over the years, and I'd now be happy to play a Planescape campaign where Factions rise and fall. But booting the Factions from Sigil wholesale ruins everything for me -- without the Factions, it's not Sigil or PS anymore.

Quote from: Headless;961612In d&d and a lot of role playing.  Things don't change.  You go on an adventure and come back to the same stable kingdom you left.

This does not reflect any campaign I've ever run or played in.

Can't say I've ever played an RPG, whether sci fi, fantasy, or even super heroes, where the setting remained the same in the way described up in the OP. That would just be weird.

Quote from: Tequila Sunrise;961743There's also settings to consider. A lot of gamers get very attached to their favorite settings, and throw hissy fits if they get changed in any notable way. See the FR fan teeth-gnashing that happens every time an edition rearranges it, even though this happening every few years has become FR tradition. Myself, I refuse to acknowledge The Module Which Shall Not Be Named that ended with Factions being removed from Sigil. Part of it is that a lot of fans like to have common touchstones to memorize and to talk to unfamiliar gamers about, and it's hard to have common touchstones when things are constantly changing. And part of it is the don't mess with my shit attitude that estar mentions -- I've relaxed a lot over the years, and I'd now be happy to play a Planescape campaign where Factions rise and fall. But booting the Factions from Sigil wholesale ruins everything for me -- without the Factions, it's not Sigil or PS anymore.

Eh, there's a significant difference from setting shake ups that are natural progressions of the instability of polities and well, apocalyptic transitions.

FF Time of Troubles is about as far as I would endure a setting apocalypse and even then I prefer to run my campaigns from GreyBox timeline. FF Ancient Age is fun because its apocalypse is an already known quantity and we're just running *mostly* vignettes of mostly forgotten heroes from a forgotten age, less alt history "saving everlasting Rome" or something. FF 4e Spellplague and A Forgotten Named Planescape Module are things that just nuclear winter the setting.

It's an issue of scale about such change, for quantity is a quality is all its own.

Quote from: Opaopajr;961718Here's a fun trick, without getting too heavy into faction machinations: Scribble up a calendar of major events! Yup, write up each month, roll up some dice (on a table or a map), and go to town. Throw in natural disasters, benevolences, a war or festival, a few for each month... and just set it aside. Have it be like a rumor table resource, NPC people are talking, often with incomplete knowledge, and regardless of PC interference Life Will Go On.

Yep I really like this idea

So every one has said they have dynamic settings.  Could anyone describe?  

What was the change?
What caused it in setting?
What Mechanic did you use to decide it should happen (may not apply)?
How were the PCs involved?
How did they respond?  
How many sessions did it take? This is is big question mark for me. I think there are some radically different game lenghts on this board.

Or if that sounds like home work just hit me with a 'no shit there I was.'