TheRPGSite

A lot of people want to run a decades-long, real-time campaign and end up very disappointed when it doesn't pan-out. I have run/played in such a campaign (it lasted near 20 years on and off) and it was very satisfying but the fact is for every game we started that ran ten full sessions we started five or six that didn't last beyond the second or third session. We played a lot of games and like to experiment.

My personal advice, for what it may be worth, is that when you start a new campaign plan in advance for it to run for ten to a dozen sessions. If holds everyone's interest and people want to keep using their characters, you can keep it going. If not you can try something else.

If you're running a sandbox style game this isn't so much an issue but start out with something relatively small and contained if you are going to use a more narrative setting.

If you have a grand story in mind have an introductory period where you are facing off a lieutenant of the world-crushing Dark Lord and if people are into it you can escalate it into something bigger.

Also, don't be afraid to run a few one-off adventures, perhaps with premade characters, to find your stride before you get into something much larger; especially when playing with a new group of people where you don't know if everyone is going to commit to a more involved campaign.

The whole point of the hobby is for everyone to have a good time and that includes the GM. Don't make yourself crazy.

I really like running two ways now.

One level per mini-event.  You complete the current quest, you get a level.  I know that is a LOT faster than the XP progression of a lot of games, but I'm here to play, not grind out XP.

The other thing is to take on an idea that was core to one particular RPG, Legend of the Demon Lord.  In that OSR game (which has some interesting features for leveling up and classes) the premise is that by the time you reach level-10, the game's maximum, you are ready for The Big Bad.  The Demon Lord makes his appearance.  Also, the Demon Lord can be anything from a dragon, or a creepy child with no eyes, or a big minotaur with wings, whatever.  Then the endgame plays out and your final quest is to kill him.  Then roll up new characters are start over.

That game has a built in endgame scenario as part of its core design.

Good advice!  8)

I generally run mini campaigns strung together.  My maximum length of any individual campaign is 40 hours of play.  That doesn't mean the game is over.  Instead, I can then lead into another mini campaign that's essentially another episode in the same adventurers' lives.

I try to mix things up though.  I'll do a mystery/investigation mini campaign and then I'll so a wilderness mini campaign.  I really try to make things fresh and different.

Quote from: DocFlamingo on February 16, 2024, 10:55:12 PM
My personal advice, for what it may be worth, is that when you start a new campaign plan in advance for it to run for ten to a dozen sessions.

You're not writing a story, you're playing a game. It runs for as long as it needs to run or as long as there's sufficient interest for it, not for an arbitrary, predetermined number of sessions.
Leave short campaigns to shit like storygames.

Quote from: NotFromAroundHere on February 17, 2024, 01:32:12 PM

Quote from: DocFlamingo on February 16, 2024, 10:55:12 PM
My personal advice, for what it may be worth, is that when you start a new campaign plan in advance for it to run for ten to a dozen sessions.

You're not writing a story, you're playing a game. It runs for as long as it needs to run or as long as there's sufficient interest for it, not for an arbitrary, predetermined number of sessions.
Leave short campaigns to shit like storygames.

Any game with a narrative theme to it--which in no way makes it a "story game"--needs a degree of prep and an idea of what's likely to be covered in a given session. Try decaf, dude.

Quote from: NotFromAroundHere on February 17, 2024, 01:32:12 PM

Quote from: DocFlamingo on February 16, 2024, 10:55:12 PM
My personal advice, for what it may be worth, is that when you start a new campaign plan in advance for it to run for ten to a dozen sessions.

You're not writing a story, you're playing a game. It runs for as long as it needs to run or as long as there's sufficient interest for it, not for an arbitrary, predetermined number of sessions.
Leave short campaigns to shit like storygames.

Once you get the feel of doing things behind the screen for a while, you can judge pretty consistently how long prepped material is going to be in game play hours.  That's not the same as forcing it to take a set amount of time.

There are outliers of course.  I had a table turn a single encounter into 15 hours and everyone has stories of large amount of prepped content being bypassed.

I had a campaign that went for over a decade, but it was really just a series of adventures with a common setting and stable of characters rather than a story with an overarching plot.  More Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser than Lord of the Rings.  That's probably what I'll continue to do, but I do see the appeal of a game with a overarching story.  Back when I was active on ENWorld, they had a Story Hour forum where people told the events of their game in narrative form.  Some of the games with a long plot were very entertaining to read and sounded like a lot of fun to be in.  If I were to do it I'd probably plot it out like a tv show.  I'd plan to have a story that wraps up in a season (about a year), with ideas about how to make that the first season part of a much longer story (decades).  That way you can get to the end of the season, finish the story in a satisfying way, then be ready to either move on to something else or continue with the next part of the larger story, whichever your group wants to do.

Quote from: BadApple on February 17, 2024, 02:13:31 PM

Quote from: NotFromAroundHere on February 17, 2024, 01:32:12 PM

Quote from: DocFlamingo on February 16, 2024, 10:55:12 PM
My personal advice, for what it may be worth, is that when you start a new campaign plan in advance for it to run for ten to a dozen sessions.

You're not writing a story, you're playing a game. It runs for as long as it needs to run or as long as there's sufficient interest for it, not for an arbitrary, predetermined number of sessions.
Leave short campaigns to shit like storygames.

Once you get the feel of doing things behind the screen for a while, you can judge pretty consistently how long prepped material is going to be in game play hours.  That's not the same as forcing it to take a set amount of time.

There are outliers of course.  I had a table turn a single encounter into 15 hours and everyone has stories of large amount of prepped content being bypassed.

I was making a very generalized statement and not implying a hard and fast rule be set. I kind of got the impression the previous comment was just a "I'm going to step on the new guy" post.

Quote from: DocFlamingo on February 17, 2024, 02:22:01 PM

Quote from: BadApple on February 17, 2024, 02:13:31 PM

Quote from: NotFromAroundHere on February 17, 2024, 01:32:12 PM

Quote from: DocFlamingo on February 16, 2024, 10:55:12 PM
My personal advice, for what it may be worth, is that when you start a new campaign plan in advance for it to run for ten to a dozen sessions.

You're not writing a story, you're playing a game. It runs for as long as it needs to run or as long as there's sufficient interest for it, not for an arbitrary, predetermined number of sessions.
Leave short campaigns to shit like storygames.

Once you get the feel of doing things behind the screen for a while, you can judge pretty consistently how long prepped material is going to be in game play hours.  That's not the same as forcing it to take a set amount of time.

There are outliers of course.  I had a table turn a single encounter into 15 hours and everyone has stories of large amount of prepped content being bypassed.

I was making a very generalized statement and not implying a hard and fast rule be set. I kind of got the impression the previous comment was just a "I'm going to step on the new guy" post.

I don't recall seeing much of that here, and he's almost as new as you are.  My impression is that he has strong feelings on the subject and is still riled up from the last argument he had on it.  There are people that have had bad experiences with a DM forcing the players along his planned story no matter what they want to do, and they tend to think any story or plot in a game is bad.  IMO forcing a story is not fun for the players, but a disconnected series of events with no story connection is not super fun either.  For an RPG, you want to be somewhere in the middle

Quote from: Mishihari on February 17, 2024, 02:27:28 PM

Quote from: DocFlamingo on February 17, 2024, 02:22:01 PM

Quote from: BadApple on February 17, 2024, 02:13:31 PM

Quote from: NotFromAroundHere on February 17, 2024, 01:32:12 PM

Quote from: DocFlamingo on February 16, 2024, 10:55:12 PM
My personal advice, for what it may be worth, is that when you start a new campaign plan in advance for it to run for ten to a dozen sessions.

You're not writing a story, you're playing a game. It runs for as long as it needs to run or as long as there's sufficient interest for it, not for an arbitrary, predetermined number of sessions.
Leave short campaigns to shit like storygames.

Once you get the feel of doing things behind the screen for a while, you can judge pretty consistently how long prepped material is going to be in game play hours.  That's not the same as forcing it to take a set amount of time.

There are outliers of course.  I had a table turn a single encounter into 15 hours and everyone has stories of large amount of prepped content being bypassed.

I was making a very generalized statement and not implying a hard and fast rule be set. I kind of got the impression the previous comment was just a "I'm going to step on the new guy" post.

I don't recall seeing much of that here, and he's almost as new as you are.  My impression is that he has strong feelings on the subject and is still riled up from the last argument he had on it.  There are people that have had bad experiences with a DM forcing the players along his planned story no matter what they want to do, and they tend to think any story or plot in a game is bad.  IMO forcing a story is not fun for the players, but a disconnected series of events with no story connection is not super fun either.  For an RPG, you want to be somewhere in the middle

Fair enough.

Quote from: DocFlamingo on February 17, 2024, 01:41:13 PM

Quote from: NotFromAroundHere on February 17, 2024, 01:32:12 PM

Quote from: DocFlamingo on February 16, 2024, 10:55:12 PM
My personal advice, for what it may be worth, is that when you start a new campaign plan in advance for it to run for ten to a dozen sessions.

You're not writing a story, you're playing a game. It runs for as long as it needs to run or as long as there's sufficient interest for it, not for an arbitrary, predetermined number of sessions.
Leave short campaigns to shit like storygames.

Any game with a narrative theme to it--which in no way makes it a "story game"--needs a degree of prep and an idea of what's likely to be covered in a given session. Try decaf, dude.

LOL. You don't know what are you talking about.

While RPGs are not story-making games, you can absolutely "plan" a campaign to last 10-12 sessions, and I think it is a good idea.

For example, I'm planning running "Nights Dark Terror", which might take half a dozen sessions, not sure.

Of course, the PCs can "abandon the mission" at any point, but when you finish the module you can decide if you'll keep playing or not.

BTW:

Furthermore, there must be some purpose to it all. There must be some backdrop against which adventures are carried out, and no matter how tenuous the strands, some web which connects the evil and good, the opposing powers, the rival states and various peoples. This need not be evident at first, but as play continues, hints should be given to players, and their characters should become involved in the interaction and struggle between these vaster entities. Thus, characters begin as less than pawns, but as they progress in expertise, each eventually realizes that he or she is a meaningful, if lowly, piece in the cosmic game being conducted. When this occurs, players then have a dual purpose to their play, for not only will their player characters and henchmen gain levels of experience, but their actions have meaning above and beyond that of personal aggrandizement.

1e DMG.

Quote from: NotFromAroundHere on February 17, 2024, 03:33:13 PM

Quote from: DocFlamingo on February 17, 2024, 01:41:13 PM

Quote from: NotFromAroundHere on February 17, 2024, 01:32:12 PM

Quote from: DocFlamingo on February 16, 2024, 10:55:12 PM
My personal advice, for what it may be worth, is that when you start a new campaign plan in advance for it to run for ten to a dozen sessions.

You're not writing a story, you're playing a game. It runs for as long as it needs to run or as long as there's sufficient interest for it, not for an arbitrary, predetermined number of sessions.
Leave short campaigns to shit like storygames.

Any game with a narrative theme to it--which in no way makes it a "story game"--needs a degree of prep and an idea of what's likely to be covered in a given session. Try decaf, dude.

LOL. You don't know what are you talking about.

Okay, you're a jackass; thanks for clarifying. Have fun elsewhere.

Quote from: Eric Diaz on February 17, 2024, 03:44:55 PM
Furthermore, there must be some purpose to it all. There must be some backdrop against which adventures are carried out, and no matter how tenuous the strands, some web which connects the evil and good, the opposing powers, the rival states and various peoples. This need not be evident at first, but as play continues, hints should be given to players, and their characters should become involved in the interaction and struggle between these vaster entities. Thus, characters begin as less than pawns, but as they progress in expertise, each eventually realizes that he or she is a meaningful, if lowly, piece in the cosmic game being conducted. When this occurs, players then have a dual purpose to their play, for not only will their player characters and henchmen gain levels of experience, but their actions have meaning above and beyond that of personal aggrandizement.

1e DMG.

Good points. I like to start a new campaign in a very sandbox--do as you will fashion and then find something that interests the party and build a more narrative series of adventures based off that once I know they're into it. I'll run that then go back to sandbox style for a time, do a few this or that sessions, then maybe do another longer, multi-session adventure when it seems appropriate.  Flexibility is all important.

Yeah I think it's a generally a good idea to have some kind of end-point in mind for a campaign. Even for a sandbox I like to have a couple "win conditions" wherein if the players achieve X goal, I'll bolt on a final adventure and end it. Generally it's going to be a pretty major goal like "become king", which the campaign probably won't last long enough to get to, but at least it provides some direction.

Generally I'm moving more towards a more goal-oriented campaign structure. I've said this recently in other threads, but randomly wandering around with no end goal is starting to wear on me as a player, and I'm noticing the same listlessness in the players in my sandbox games. I'm running a sandbox now, but after it ends I'll probably move to a mission-based structure for the next one.

Quote from: DocFlamingo on February 17, 2024, 04:27:59 PM
Good points. I like to start a new campaign in a very sandbox--do as you will fashion and then find something that interests the party and build a more narrative series of adventures based off that once I know they're into it. I'll run that then go back to sandbox style for a time, do a few this or that sessions, then maybe do another longer, multi-session adventure when it seems appropriate.  Flexibility is all important.

That's how I've always done it. Then i will occasionally retroactively make a baddie from the initial sandbox section connected to the big bad or whatever so the players think things are far more planned out than it ever was.

Quote from: Ruprecht on February 17, 2024, 05:35:01 PM

Quote from: DocFlamingo on February 17, 2024, 04:27:59 PM
Good points. I like to start a new campaign in a very sandbox--do as you will fashion and then find something that interests the party and build a more narrative series of adventures based off that once I know they're into it. I'll run that then go back to sandbox style for a time, do a few this or that sessions, then maybe do another longer, multi-session adventure when it seems appropriate.  Flexibility is all important.

That's how I've always done it. Then i will occasionally retroactively make a baddie from the initial sandbox section connected to the big bad or whatever so the players think things are far more planned out than it ever was.

That's an excellent point. The Venture Brothers did a lot of throw-away gags which they later integrated into larger plot-lines and made it seem like they intended it all along. A strong sense of continuity and coherence lends a lot of weight to even a very free-form campaign.

Quote from: DocFlamingo on February 17, 2024, 04:27:59 PM
Good points. I like to start a new campaign in a very sandbox--do as you will fashion and then find something that interests the party and build a more narrative series of adventures based off that once I know they're into it. I'll run that then go back to sandbox style for a time, do a few this or that sessions, then maybe do another longer, multi-session adventure when it seems appropriate.  Flexibility is all important.

Yes, that's very much my style too. Start with a sandbox, plenty of hooks. See what interests the players, and especially what they bring to the table. It's their game too, and as GM I love to be surprised by how things go. I run Red Dawn and the PCs join with the Soviets? Awesome!  ;D  Maybe there's a statue at the end dedicated to the Wolverines, those brave Workers & Peasants who brought International Socialism to America.

Quote from: ForgottenF on February 17, 2024, 05:07:49 PM
I've said this recently in other threads, but randomly wandering around with no end goal is starting to wear on me as a player, and I'm noticing the same listlessness in the players in my sandbox games. I'm running a sandbox now, but after it ends I'll probably move to a mission-based structure for the next one.

I feel like there's something going wrong here. Why aren't the players developing their own goals? That's what sandboxing is all about.

My campaigns tend to run 4 months to a year, with 1 session per week. Each session is around 3 hours, occasionally going to 4 or 5 hours if we have time and interest. That gives players enough time and adventure to hit 8th-12th level with one or two characters.

That said, I tend to run games in the same campaign world, so while we may have 3 or 4 campaigns in a year, they usually build off the same material. Campaigns tend to come to an end either because the players are satisfied with their higher level characters, or have a desire to start off fresh in a new area. Plus my buddies and I are always coming up with new ideas, so we like to swap DMs often. We're usually never without a game or a DM as a result.

Quote from: S'mon on February 17, 2024, 06:06:07 PM

Quote from: ForgottenF on February 17, 2024, 05:07:49 PM
I've said this recently in other threads, but randomly wandering around with no end goal is starting to wear on me as a player, and I'm noticing the same listlessness in the players in my sandbox games. I'm running a sandbox now, but after it ends I'll probably move to a mission-based structure for the next one.

I feel like there's something going wrong here. Why aren't the players developing their own goals? That's what sandboxing is all about.

I've given this a fair chunk of thought, and I reckon there's a few common factors.

The biggest and most universal one is temperament and motivation. Some people just aren't self-starters. Some people aren't motivated by money or power (in games at least). Some people are just lazy and want the adventure dropped in front of them. Those kinds of players are always going to fair less well with sandboxing than they will with having a goal presented with them. In my sandbox games, I tend to get a mix. I usually have two or three players who will actively scheme towards their own goals, --usually political influence-- and then the rest of the group are passengers who just want to move to the next adventure. Even the active schemers aren't terribly interested in treasure or XP for it's own sake. They're still pursuing a story, they just want to push the direction of it themselves.

Probably second biggest is decision paralysis. Present a group of five or six players with a completely open sandbox, and you often get a deadlock on what to do next. I generally see better results if the players are presented a menu of 2-5 options to choose between for their next move. There's also an issue of shared imagination here. I've noticed a lot of players really have a hard time connecting with a sandbox at the large scale. It's almost as if they file the setting information away as "background fluff" and don't recognize elements of the setting as real things they can interact with until they encounter them directly during normal play.

A problem I've seen a lot in sandbox games I've played in is the DM not picking up what the players are putting down. A player will come up with some kind of scheme to get ahead in the world, and the DM will either brush it off or misunderstand the intent. That only has to happen a couple of times before players give up. Obviously I try not to do that in my games, but no one's ever aware they're doing it.

Another issue is time. This is probably unique to games played in shorter sessions, but when you're running a two to four hour session, sandboxing (particularly hexcrawling) can feel like a waste of time. A random encounter stands out more if it's half the session. I think you can mitigate this to a great degree if you put in the work to keep travel and random encounters interesting, but it's probably the case at some basic level that short sessions lend themselves better to a more focused experience.

A setup I've wanted to try which I think mitigates all these issues is the city sandbox. You take a highly stratified fantasy metropolis like Lankhmar or Night City (or Altdorf, Sigil, Ankh-Morpork or whatever; the possibilities are endless), set your players at the absolute bottom of the ladder and tell them "your mission is to claw your way to the top of the heap, however you can do it". That gets them signed on to the broad campaign goal from the outset. The smaller sandbox limits the decision paralysis. Travel is less of an issue within a city, and you'd naturally expect fewer random encounters, so it's more time efficient.

For campaign play I like to leave it open ended. If the players want to do something else for a while the campaign can always be set aside and picked up again when there is interest. I have never felt the need to 'End Things' after a pre-determined amount of time or number of sessions.

One shots, for game store or game day event play is a different matter. When you have a 3 or 4 hour time slot to run an adventure then you want to make sure that some sort of conclusion can be reached in that time slot. The game is for a group that may never all get together again so it kind of has to be self contained.

Quote from: ForgottenF on February 17, 2024, 10:25:08 PM

Quote from: S'mon on February 17, 2024, 06:06:07 PM

Quote from: ForgottenF on February 17, 2024, 05:07:49 PM
I've said this recently in other threads, but randomly wandering around with no end goal is starting to wear on me as a player, and I'm noticing the same listlessness in the players in my sandbox games. I'm running a sandbox now, but after it ends I'll probably move to a mission-based structure for the next one.

I feel like there's something going wrong here. Why aren't the players developing their own goals? That's what sandboxing is all about.

I've given this a fair chunk of thought, and I reckon there's a few common factors.

The biggest and most universal one is temperament and motivation. Some people just aren't self-starters. Some people aren't motivated by money or power (in games at least). Some people are just lazy and want the adventure dropped in front of them. Those kinds of players are always going to fair less well with sandboxing than they will with having a goal presented with them. In my sandbox games, I tend to get a mix. I usually have two or three players who will actively scheme towards their own goals, --usually political influence-- and then the rest of the group are passengers who just want to move to the next adventure. Even the active schemers aren't terribly interested in treasure or XP for it's own sake. They're still pursuing a story, they just want to push the direction of it themselves.

Probably second biggest is decision paralysis. Present a group of five or six players with a completely open sandbox, and you often get a deadlock on what to do next. I generally see better results if the players are presented a menu of 2-5 options to choose between for their next move. There's also an issue of shared imagination here. I've noticed a lot of players really have a hard time connecting with a sandbox at the large scale. It's almost as if they file the setting information away as "background fluff" and don't recognize elements of the setting as real things they can interact with until they encounter them directly during normal play.

A problem I've seen a lot in sandbox games I've played in is the DM not picking up what the players are putting down. A player will come up with some kind of scheme to get ahead in the world, and the DM will either brush it off or misunderstand the intent. That only has to happen a couple of times before players give up. Obviously I try not to do that in my games, but no one's ever aware they're doing it.

Another issue is time. This is probably unique to games played in shorter sessions, but when you're running a two to four hour session, sandboxing (particularly hexcrawling) can feel like a waste of time. A random encounter stands out more if it's half the session. I think you can mitigate this to a great degree if you put in the work to keep travel and random encounters interesting, but it's probably the case at some basic level that short sessions lend themselves better to a more focused experience.

A setup I've wanted to try which I think mitigates all these issues is the city sandbox. You take a highly stratified fantasy metropolis like Lankhmar or Night City (or Altdorf, Sigil, Ankh-Morpork or whatever; the possibilities are endless), set your players at the absolute bottom of the ladder and tell them "your mission is to claw your way to the top of the heap, however you can do it". That gets them signed on to the broad campaign goal from the outset. The smaller sandbox limits the decision paralysis. Travel is less of an issue within a city, and you'd naturally expect fewer random encounters, so it's more time efficient.

Good thoughts!
Only 2-3 self motivated players is completely normal - you only really need 1 if they're at every game, but there's a big risk of them developing 'main character syndrome' so 2-3 is ideal IME. An entire group of self motivated self starters can be too much to handle, and tends to be highly fissile as competing agendas develop.
Decision paralysis - a sandbox without plenty of cool hooks is a litter box. Players only need a couple options, but the GM also needs to let things go in unexpected directions. For my 5e Basic game I have a rumour table, PCs can have 1 roll/week if they spend a gp carousing. I may do the same
with the new Cyberpunk game. I totally agree that a sandbox should be limited scale - the core area in my 5e Basic game is the town of Threshold and an 8x8 mile wilderness valley. In my Cyberpunk game it's South Night City, which IMC only has a population of something over 100,000 or so.
Not picking up on plans/communication - yes this is an issue. Maybe a player has a cool to them idea  but doesn't really express it well. Maybe the GM doesn't like it, it doesn't fit the game theme or doesn't seem to go anywhere. Looking at stuff from a different angle can really help there.
Time - I mostly disagree in that I find short frequent sessions are better suited to following one PC's agenda, then can wrap it and do a different one next time. Some games like 4e D&D just hate sandboxing though. But a huge battle can be fine if it's infrequent. Eg the massive shootout with the Dirty Cops kicking off my Cyberpunk game I think worked well, but I wouldn't want every game to be like that.
I agree re city sandbox, or neighbourhood within a large city. Give them a sandbox of limited scope they can easily grasp; it can always be expanded later.

Quote from: Eric Diaz on February 17, 2024, 03:44:55 PM
While RPGs are not story-making games, you can absolutely "plan" a campaign to last 10-12 sessions, and I think it is a good idea.

Absolutely not. Again, RPGs are not scripted media, the "story" is an emergent property of the game and not a preplanned outcome.
Assuming and end after an arbitrary duration is met is simply stupid.

Quote from: NotFromAroundHere on February 17, 2024, 01:32:12 PM

Quote from: DocFlamingo on February 16, 2024, 10:55:12 PM
My personal advice, for what it may be worth, is that when you start a new campaign plan in advance for it to run for ten to a dozen sessions.

You're not writing a story, you're playing a game. It runs for as long as it needs to run or as long as there's sufficient interest for it, not for an arbitrary, predetermined number of sessions.
Leave short campaigns to shit like storygames.

Modules usually have a beginning, and end. Sometimes not much of a middle as a meander.

Planning a campaign with a thought out conclusion is not storybaming or necessarily plot. You know have an idea where things will likely end.

Quote from: NotFromAroundHere on February 18, 2024, 04:06:26 AM

Quote from: Eric Diaz on February 17, 2024, 03:44:55 PM
While RPGs are not story-making games, you can absolutely "plan" a campaign to last 10-12 sessions, and I think it is a good idea.

Absolutely not. Again, RPGs are not scripted media, the "story" is an emergent property of the game and not a preplanned outcome.
Assuming and end after an arbitrary duration is met is simply stupid.

A1-4 Slave Lords
T1-4 Hommlet to Temple of Elemental Evil
G1-3, D1-3, Q1, Against the Giants, Descent to the depth of the Earth/Shrine of the Kuo-Toa, Vault of the Drow, Queen of the Demonweb Pits.
U1-3, Sinister Secret of Saltmarsh, Danger at Dunwater, The Final Enemy
X4,X5,X10, Master of the Desert Nomads, Temple of Death, Red Arrow Black Shield

All of these module series have a starting scenario and end goal, all also have elements of exploration in the wilderness (except Slave Lords).

All of the above will play out differently each time you run them.  You can have pre planned stuff and still have a non story game. 

This is exactly the sort of dogmatic OneTrueWayism that made me avoid the entire OSR scene for years.

Quote from: DocFlamingo on February 16, 2024, 10:55:12 PM
Also, don't be afraid to run a few one-off adventures, perhaps with premade characters, to find your stride before you get into something much larger; especially when playing with a new group of people where you don't know if everyone is going to commit to a more involved campaign.

I went even smaller for a Starfinder mercs campaign that was sadly a casualty of Covid.
I aimed for 2-3 mini chunks of content. Stuff that could be completed in less than an evening of play. My thought was #1. Just to try it out and see how it ran, and #2. To give the players choice of content. If they didn't want to take a contract, that was maybe 30 minutes of prep, and most of that typing and looking up stats and numbers, and I can always recycle prep for later.
Everyone seemed to have fun, and I was going to leave loose threads for the players to pick up to indicate the more long-term content they wanted to pursue.
And the Covid hit and everything went to shit. Ah well.

Quote from: NotFromAroundHere on February 18, 2024, 04:06:26 AM

Quote from: Eric Diaz on February 17, 2024, 03:44:55 PM
While RPGs are not story-making games, you can absolutely "plan" a campaign to last 10-12 sessions, and I think it is a good idea.

Absolutely not. Again, RPGs are not scripted media, the "story" is an emergent property of the game and not a preplanned outcome.
Assuming and end after an arbitrary duration is met is simply stupid.

Bro, do you even lift?

Quote from: NotFromAroundHere on February 18, 2024, 04:06:26 AM
Absolutely not. Again, RPGs are not scripted media, the "story" is an emergent property of the game and not a preplanned outcome.
Assuming and end after an arbitrary duration is met is simply stupid.

I think it depends upon how dogmatically you stick to the storyline. Then again if you are planning political things they should probably happen if the players get involved or not. Eventually the players might take notice or feel the need to leave the area. Either way the setting feels alive and the players have agency.

Quote from: Svenhelgrim on February 18, 2024, 05:33:34 AM

Quote from: NotFromAroundHere on February 18, 2024, 04:06:26 AM

Quote from: Eric Diaz on February 17, 2024, 03:44:55 PM
While RPGs are not story-making games, you can absolutely "plan" a campaign to last 10-12 sessions, and I think it is a good idea.

Absolutely not. Again, RPGs are not scripted media, the "story" is an emergent property of the game and not a preplanned outcome.
Assuming and end after an arbitrary duration is met is simply stupid.

A1-4 Slave Lords
T1-4 Hommlet to Temple of Elemental Evil
G1-3, D1-3, Q1, Against the Giants, Descent to the depth of the Earth/Shrine of the Kuo-Toa, Vault of the Drow, Queen of the Demonweb Pits.
U1-3, Sinister Secret of Saltmarsh, Danger at Dunwater, The Final Enemy
X4,X5,X10, Master of the Desert Nomads, Temple of Death, Red Arrow Black Shield

All of these module series have a starting scenario and end goal, all also have elements of exploration in the wilderness (except Slave Lords).

All of the above will play out differently each time you run them.  You can have pre planned stuff and still have a non story game.

I love those X series modules, good times. You actually can kill the Master in X5 too so Red Arrow Black Sheild doesnt happen (which makes sense, when they made an actual Mystara timeline RABS was said to take place 100 years in the future cause it was basically replaced by test of the warlords.)

Quote from: yosemitemike on February 18, 2024, 05:46:47 AM
This is exactly the sort of dogmatic OneTrueWayism that made me avoid the entire OSR scene for years.

This is my least favorite part of the OSR.

But trust me, 5e fans are not too different.

Quote from: NotFromAroundHere on February 18, 2024, 04:06:26 AM

Quote from: Eric Diaz on February 17, 2024, 03:44:55 PM
While RPGs are not story-making games, you can absolutely "plan" a campaign to last 10-12 sessions, and I think it is a good idea.

Absolutely not. Again, RPGs are not scripted media, the "story" is an emergent property of the game and not a preplanned outcome.
Assuming and end after an arbitrary duration is met is simply stupid.

It seems you completely missed my point. Check the rest of my post of other posts mentioning classic modules.

Assuming an end in 10-12 sessions can happens for a number of reasons, including scheduling, since everyone also has a real life to take care of.

But I'm not even suggesting that. What I'm suggesting is that you can run a published module - almost ALL of them have a pre-planned goal - and calculate how many sessions it could take.

I've mentioned "Nights Dark Terror" that looks like 10-12 sessions to me, but I cannot be sure (haven't finished reading it).

You probably won't get an exact number (unless, again, real life stops you for some reason), but you can have an educated guess.

And the players can obviously give up on pursuing the slave lords or whatever, or drop out for a number of reasons.

Quote from: Ruprecht on February 18, 2024, 10:48:22 AM

Quote from: NotFromAroundHere on February 18, 2024, 04:06:26 AM
Absolutely not. Again, RPGs are not scripted media, the "story" is an emergent property of the game and not a preplanned outcome.
Assuming and end after an arbitrary duration is met is simply stupid.

I think it depends upon how dogmatically you stick to the storyline. Then again if you are planning political things they should probably happen if the players get involved or not. Eventually the players might take notice or feel the need to leave the area. Either way the setting feels alive and the players have agency.

Yep. In the end, the DM decides what happens. A good DM, IMO, allows for player agency and doesn't enforce a scripted set of events.
But somebody's gotta come up with the content, and judge how that content plays out in response to the character's actions. The DM is the person with that responsibility, and the one who makes a decision as to how big a dungeon is, or how deep a conspiracy goes. Unless the adventure is purely RND table encounters, with no narrative to connect them to the camapaign setting.

These days; 5 good sessions in a row, is a Winner.

Quote from: S'mon on February 18, 2024, 01:58:24 AM

Quote from: ForgottenF on February 17, 2024, 10:25:08 PM

Quote from: S'mon on February 17, 2024, 06:06:07 PM

Quote from: ForgottenF on February 17, 2024, 05:07:49 PM
I've said this recently in other threads, but randomly wandering around with no end goal is starting to wear on me as a player, and I'm noticing the same listlessness in the players in my sandbox games. I'm running a sandbox now, but after it ends I'll probably move to a mission-based structure for the next one.

I feel like there's something going wrong here. Why aren't the players developing their own goals? That's what sandboxing is all about.

I've given this a fair chunk of thought, and I reckon there's a few common factors.
...

Good thoughts!
Only 2-3 self motivated players is completely normal - you only really need 1 if they're at every game, but there's a big risk of them developing 'main character syndrome' so 2-3 is ideal IME. An entire group of self motivated self starters can be too much to handle, and tends to be highly fissile as competing agendas develop.
Decision paralysis - a sandbox without plenty of cool hooks is a litter box. Players only need a couple options, but the GM also needs to let things go in unexpected directions. For my 5e Basic game I have a rumour table, PCs can have 1 roll/week if they spend a gp carousing. I may do the same
with the new Cyberpunk game. I totally agree that a sandbox should be limited scale - the core area in my 5e Basic game is the town of Threshold and an 8x8 mile wilderness valley. In my Cyberpunk game it's South Night City, which IMC only has a population of something over 100,000 or so.
Not picking up on plans/communication - yes this is an issue. Maybe a player has a cool to them idea  but doesn't really express it well. Maybe the GM doesn't like it, it doesn't fit the game theme or doesn't seem to go anywhere. Looking at stuff from a different angle can really help there.
Time - I mostly disagree in that I find short frequent sessions are better suited to following one PC's agenda, then can wrap it and do a different one next time. Some games like 4e D&D just hate sandboxing though. But a huge battle can be fine if it's infrequent. Eg the massive shootout with the Dirty Cops kicking off my Cyberpunk game I think worked well, but I wouldn't want every game to be like that.
I agree re city sandbox, or neighbourhood within a large city. Give them a sandbox of limited scope they can easily grasp; it can always be expanded later.

I'm stuck with both short and relatively infrequent sessions (biweekly), which may explain some of the different experience. If most of the players have to sit around while one of them does their thing, and that's all the roleplaying they get to do for two weeks, they might be more disappointed.

It's probably worth noting that when I'm talking about a sandbox in this context, I mean a procedural sandbox: a hexcrawl, pointcrawl, megadungeon, etc. Something where most of the content is intended to be laid out in advance, and then players choose which way to go and the DM responds by reading the notes or rolling on a table. That's easy to contrast with something like a Pathfinder adventure path or one of the longer WFRP campaigns, where there's a pre-determined endpoint and a presumed sequence of beats the players are going to hit on the way there. For the record, I do think you can run the latter style in a way that provides for plenty of player choice, but for the sake of argument let's call that a railroad.

Thing is, neither of those are how most games are run IME. What I think most people do you could more properly call "a railroad where you lay the tracks down in front of you as you go". Most DMs come into each session with a rough idea of what's going to happen that night. That's what they prep for, and there's an implicit understanding that the players will go roughly in the direction the DM lays out. And then based on the events of each session, the DM goes off between games and works out what would happen next. That's how we always ran games growing up, and part of me suspects it's still the superior method. I've largely moved away from it since I went to VTT, because of the expectation in that environment of having assets prepared for everything, but I've been thinking I'd rather get back to it in future.

I'm definitely not generally in favour of GM creating everything in advance, though I do run a lot of megadungeons these days. If homebrewing I find it's much better to develop a bare frame first, then by player interest. I wouldn't have detailed South Night City Precinct Station #14 if there wasn't a Lawman PC.

Quote from: DocFlamingo on February 16, 2024, 10:55:12 PM
A lot of people want to run a decades-long, real-time campaign and end up very disappointed when it doesn't pan-out.

Because they fall for this trolling that 1:1 time must be used for near everything. Or actually everything as some of these fucks extol.

Quote from: S'mon on February 18, 2024, 06:17:47 PM
I'm definitely not generally in favour of GM creating everything in advance, though I do run a lot of megadungeons these days. If homebrewing I find it's much better to develop a bare frame first, then by player interest. I wouldn't have detailed South Night City Precinct Station #14 if there wasn't a Lawman PC.

Fully agree. A have basic overview of a lot of things and add detail once you know what the part is interested in pursuing. Save yourself a lot of time and frustration that way.

Wrong topic. Deleted.

My general experience is that players take several sessions to "get into character" for any given campaign. Some experienced roleplayers can do that much faster and a few slower learners take longer.

At the same time, after about twenty sessions, about one session in five to one in ten turns into a dud which feels weaker than the rest. This is generally because your original character Macguffins are either getting satisfied and the PCs have to shuffle to find new ones or they aren't making any progress and their life goals are going on the backburner. Neither of those feel great. After about thirty sessions, you may as well start a new campaign with new characters because the core motivations have either rotated out or fossilized. The Ship of Theseus paradox means that if the campaign is working well, you are already all playing new characters.

This leads me to my conclusion that the best campaigns tend to be between ten sessions and twenty sessions long. That is long enough that players can break their characters in, get a feel for the world, get major character goals done, get friendships with each other, and wrap up a world-changing threat, but it is not so long that you leave much time for faffing about and wind up with several meh sessions. And this is before we start talking about game mechanics, which tend to sputter and fail after fifty sessions.

I won't say there's anything inherently wrong with ultra-long term play, but that long campaigns should be the exception and not the norm. People look at them like they're something special, and as someone who has been in a few....they often wind up being monuments to mediocrity.

Quote from: Fheredin on February 19, 2024, 06:05:11 PM
My general experience is that players take several sessions to "get into character" for any given campaign. Some experienced roleplayers can do that much faster and a few slower learners take longer.

At the same time, after about twenty sessions, about one session in five to one in ten turns into a dud which feels weaker than the rest. This is generally because your original character Macguffins are either getting satisfied and the PCs have to shuffle to find new ones or they aren't making any progress and their life goals are going on the backburner. Neither of those feel great. After about thirty sessions, you may as well start a new campaign with new characters because the core motivations have either rotated out or fossilized. The Ship of Theseus paradox means that if the campaign is working well, you are already all playing new characters.

This leads me to my conclusion that the best campaigns tend to be between ten sessions and twenty sessions long. That is long enough that players can break their characters in, get a feel for the world, get major character goals done, get friendships with each other, and wrap up a world-changing threat, but it is not so long that you leave much time for faffing about and wind up with several meh sessions. And this is before we start talking about game mechanics, which tend to sputter and fail after fifty sessions.

I won't say there's anything inherently wrong with ultra-long term play, but that long campaigns should be the exception and not the norm. People look at them like they're something special, and as someone who has been in a few....they often wind up being monuments to mediocrity.

You need the right group for it to work and taking breaks from it is key.

We have 2-3 DM's  who rotate around as befitting the story points, 10+ players, and play every other weekend at the same time for the last 20+ years. Our campaigns last 2-3years at minimum with capping out at level 12-15. I've had a core group that has been with me for the entire time and many come and go.  It's upto me to be the Cruise Director to make sure who will be attending and the date we will be playing on.  We have moved and canceled dates when Real Life comes up and since it's twice a month people SHOULD be able to plan around that same time. 

We heavily involve the players with an overarching framework of a plot tied to their backstory with a broad set of guardrails to make sure they reach the finish line of the end story.   How they get there is upto them and the plot changes and shifts like the sands of the desert and we adapt with the choices they make.  75% is homegrown with 25% being heavily modified content.

I'd love nothing more than to run a Mega-Dungeon and have multiple parties coming in and out of it with lots of changes as the plot unfolds.  I have 2 players who would love that to death, old school folks, the rest would be bored out of their skulls and they want to feel like they are playing in a more dynamic and engaging story where their choices can and do matter.

I had to learn to read my players and to blend what I enjoy running with the stories that they come up with which are far far wilder than anything my imagination can dream up. That buy in is critical to not having a campaign drag out into eternity and to avoid the crash-and-burn which is all too common in RPG campaigns.

These days I prefer one-shots and short story arcs.  I might not live long enough for a decades long campaign.  :-)

I wonder if people here (in this thread) actually ever have played an actual sandbox campaign.

The wheedling of meta-engineering campaigns based on "numbers of sessions" and "fights per session" down inevitably to the player-centric "damage per round" ultimately is just ignoring the actual game itself.

But this comes from the notion that "running an adventure" is supposed to act like a scripted story. When the reality is the "story" is what the PC's do. And the GM's job is only to facilitate them doing things as represented by the setting. Saying something like "I don't have time to do a multi-year campaign" is like saying "I don't have any intention of playing TTRPG's for years."

If the campaign is unscripted, you simply play. The campaign is over when everyone agrees its over. This largely depends on the depth of skill of your GM. Inversely it depends on the quality of the GM's player's and their capacity for engagement - and directly that tension that exists between them.

No amount of badly scripted adventures will hold a group long term, and no amount of well scripted one-shots will truly give the feeling of total player agency as long as the script takes dominance over the actual game.

It's bizarre. Pre-determining campaign length is like setting an alarm for having sex. Granted by this analogy, doing one-shots as a "campaign" is like claiming premature ejaculation is good sex. Well at least someone got theirs... Aim higher, go deeper (pun intended).

Quote from: tenbones on February 23, 2024, 02:08:20 PM
I wonder if people here (in this thread) actually ever have played an actual sandbox campaign.

How do you run a sandbox campaign? You specifically. I know how I run mine.

Well first I establish with my players what I want to run - they get input. I usually pitch a few ideas thematically of what I'm interested in running. Fantasy ? Supers? Horror? Cyberpunk? then I start drilling down on possible concepts. Mind you, everyone know just because we're starting thematically, precisely NONE of my campaigns require we remain on theme, that's really up to the players.

So how I build a sandbox - I'm going to swipe a post I made a while ago, here on this forum.

The First Layer
So let's pretend, for example, I'm starting a Pirate Campaign. The first thing I do is start building out the starting area (so for example my version of Tortuga). I populate it with NPC's, factions, places of interest, and jam pack it with as much detail as I think will be cool. I figure out all the interconnected sinew - between factions, NPC motivations and goals etc. All the things that the PC's can interact with directly. This is the first immediate tier. It exists without anything expressly required other than the PC's being there. In other words, it's a self-contained "Village of Hommlet" that the PC's could wander around on their own and even adventure there. It can be as expansive as you need it to be, but it should scale based on the PC's actions involving whatever content you've created there to express that location to the hilt. This assumes that the PC's are going to be based there for some period... (and wherever they're going to be based, I build that location out exactly the same way with the new location's issues being customized to the circumstances).

The Second Layer
Behind the scenes I consider the "economy" of the place - basically if there are Pirates, that means I need to know the means about how they go about pirating, handle loot (plugged into factions and NPC's) - effectively I build a basic map of who, what, where, when, how the place operates. This means outlining WHO are the people being potentially pirated. Nations? City-states? Other pirates? Free Traders? The PC's don't need to know any of this. The point is this is the next layer. These are the possible interactions that can occur where the PC's leave their home-base and *do* things out there, that could possibly affect things in the First Layer. In fact - it SHOULD affect things in the First Layer.

So let's say the PC's set out from Tortuga, and start pirating and they keep hitting these ships along a certain trade-route... and for the most part their victims are from a particular City-State/Nation. AT MINIMUM they return to Tortuga with increased rep, and booty. This *should* change elements of the First Layer to represent that. Anything from certain NPC's being pro/con the PC's actions. Factions reacting to the PC's endeavors etc. This is pretty basic - you can ramp it up with some complexity - the PC's hit a convoy and they get a treasure map/information that would directly effect the "economy" of Tortuga. The map could lead to a module, or a dungeon, and/or secrets that would disrupt the First Layer greatly. It could be the discovery of actual *power* (magic items, spells, gear, whatever) that can either propel the PC's out of this layer, or to become major players in the First Layer. All of this becomes fodder for creating a potential Third Layer.

Third Layer
The Third Layer is what exists expressly outside of the ecosystem of the first two layers. These are Ports o' Call beyond the "Pirate Game concept". So the PC's get caught in a storm that brings them to some other land... the world expands. The question becomes do the players stay here? If so, then you rinse/repeat what you do in the First/Second Layer - only you do it in this new locale. What happens now, is you're creating a much more expansive game - new issues, new interactions all working together based on the actions of the PC's.

In terms of scaling "power" - that's entirely dependent on what the constraints of your setting allows (and what you want to deal with). In our make-believe game here - I may have started in the First Layer with magic being "low powered"... but in the Second Layer they may have risen to prominence where the discovery of something else where that status quo may change. They might discover a spellbook for instance where now greater magic is allowed to filter in. OR they end up on an adventure that takes them into the Third Layer and that location has an entirely difference status-quo on power... perhaps the PC's bring that back to the First Layer after a brief layover in the Third? Or maybe they STAY there... and soak it up and assimilate.

The key is to consider this as early as possible before you pull the trigger on it. These constraints should be bolstered by the system you choose to run. Some systems don't handle "high-power" well. And it might not require it. Again it depends on the constraints. You'll note here at no point do I talk specifically about "Domain Play", or "Modules" etc. Because it all has its place depending on your bandwidth as a GM.

As a sandbox GM - player agency is a top priority for me. For other GM's they might not like wrestling with all those variables, but the way I build out layers in my campaigns as above is a model for inexperienced sandbox GM's to get a mental handhold on it because if you build it out right, it *almost* runs itself. You just have to learn how to use carrot/stick tactics to keep the PC's moving and doing stuff and let the world react to their actions and reactions.

The campaigns proceeds until it comes to some natural resolution. I've had games last a month, years, TPK's on session 3... heh, it happens. My part is to do all I can to give the PC's the playground to go crazy. It ends where it ends.


The important thing here is that while I'm building a sandbox for my players to dive into, I'm not telling them overtly what to do. In Session 0 I *am* helping them conceive of their characters and grounding their ideas into the context of the Sandbox Starting point so they generally know exactly why their PC is there. We'll suss out some details that are of interest to them - and it might be something I never considered for the Sandbox in the first place, which can spur more content to create and tantalize with.

For instance if one of my players wanted to play a Mage, we'd discuss what/why/when/where his Mage is in this place, and now I'd have to think about "what do Mages do here?" then before the game starts I'd have all that sorted out. It might be that Mage in Tortuga have some special code they live by due to a Curse(tm) placed upon the region. Or that all Mages are expected to do <X> or <Y> happens - of course the players don't necessarily know this. It's something *specific* for them to discover that other characters may never know about - because they're not Mages. The scale of these things is entirely up to you. The goal is to make it interesting and adventure-worthy. I do *not* believe in itnerant characters "just because". They can *become* itinerant characters in-game, but they're not going to start that way. Especially casters.

Quote from: tenbones on February 23, 2024, 04:59:32 PM
Well first I establish with my players what I want to run - they get input. I usually pitch a few ideas thematically of what I'm interested in running. Fantasy ? Supers? Horror? Cyberpunk? then I start drilling down on possible concepts. Mind you, everyone know just because we're starting thematically, precisely NONE of my campaigns require we remain on theme, that's really up to the players.

So how I build a sandbox - I'm going to swipe a post I made a while ago, here on this forum.

The First Layer
So let's pretend, for example, I'm starting a Pirate Campaign. The first thing I do is start building out the starting area (so for example my version of Tortuga). I populate it with NPC's, factions, places of interest, and jam pack it with as much detail as I think will be cool. I figure out all the interconnected sinew - between factions, NPC motivations and goals etc. All the things that the PC's can interact with directly. This is the first immediate tier. It exists without anything expressly required other than the PC's being there. In other words, it's a self-contained "Village of Hommlet" that the PC's could wander around on their own and even adventure there. It can be as expansive as you need it to be, but it should scale based on the PC's actions involving whatever content you've created there to express that location to the hilt. This assumes that the PC's are going to be based there for some period... (and wherever they're going to be based, I build that location out exactly the same way with the new location's issues being customized to the circumstances).

The Second Layer
Behind the scenes I consider the "economy" of the place - basically if there are Pirates, that means I need to know the means about how they go about pirating, handle loot (plugged into factions and NPC's) - effectively I build a basic map of who, what, where, when, how the place operates. This means outlining WHO are the people being potentially pirated. Nations? City-states? Other pirates? Free Traders? The PC's don't need to know any of this. The point is this is the next layer. These are the possible interactions that can occur where the PC's leave their home-base and *do* things out there, that could possibly affect things in the First Layer. In fact - it SHOULD affect things in the First Layer.

So let's say the PC's set out from Tortuga, and start pirating and they keep hitting these ships along a certain trade-route... and for the most part their victims are from a particular City-State/Nation. AT MINIMUM they return to Tortuga with increased rep, and booty. This *should* change elements of the First Layer to represent that. Anything from certain NPC's being pro/con the PC's actions. Factions reacting to the PC's endeavors etc. This is pretty basic - you can ramp it up with some complexity - the PC's hit a convoy and they get a treasure map/information that would directly effect the "economy" of Tortuga. The map could lead to a module, or a dungeon, and/or secrets that would disrupt the First Layer greatly. It could be the discovery of actual *power* (magic items, spells, gear, whatever) that can either propel the PC's out of this layer, or to become major players in the First Layer. All of this becomes fodder for creating a potential Third Layer.

Third Layer
The Third Layer is what exists expressly outside of the ecosystem of the first two layers. These are Ports o' Call beyond the "Pirate Game concept". So the PC's get caught in a storm that brings them to some other land... the world expands. The question becomes do the players stay here? If so, then you rinse/repeat what you do in the First/Second Layer - only you do it in this new locale. What happens now, is you're creating a much more expansive game - new issues, new interactions all working together based on the actions of the PC's.

In terms of scaling "power" - that's entirely dependent on what the constraints of your setting allows (and what you want to deal with). In our make-believe game here - I may have started in the First Layer with magic being "low powered"... but in the Second Layer they may have risen to prominence where the discovery of something else where that status quo may change. They might discover a spellbook for instance where now greater magic is allowed to filter in. OR they end up on an adventure that takes them into the Third Layer and that location has an entirely difference status-quo on power... perhaps the PC's bring that back to the First Layer after a brief layover in the Third? Or maybe they STAY there... and soak it up and assimilate.

The key is to consider this as early as possible before you pull the trigger on it. These constraints should be bolstered by the system you choose to run. Some systems don't handle "high-power" well. And it might not require it. Again it depends on the constraints. You'll note here at no point do I talk specifically about "Domain Play", or "Modules" etc. Because it all has its place depending on your bandwidth as a GM.

As a sandbox GM - player agency is a top priority for me. For other GM's they might not like wrestling with all those variables, but the way I build out layers in my campaigns as above is a model for inexperienced sandbox GM's to get a mental handhold on it because if you build it out right, it *almost* runs itself. You just have to learn how to use carrot/stick tactics to keep the PC's moving and doing stuff and let the world react to their actions and reactions.

The campaigns proceeds until it comes to some natural resolution. I've had games last a month, years, TPK's on session 3... heh, it happens. My part is to do all I can to give the PC's the playground to go crazy. It ends where it ends.

Ok yeah. Now say I'm running a similar campaign and I've got three or four adventure threads that the characters are pursuing, and I want to wrap up the campaign and I don't want to leave any threads dangling. We may return to the campaign at a later date, but I don't want to leave anything major up in the air in case the group changes, they forget stuff, the adventure gets "cold", etc.
I can eyeball how long the existing content will last based on previous experience. I can even cut them short early, for example, Captain Bushellback, the rival of the characters was killed by the Royal Navy off screen.
I don't want to go too heavy handed, and it may take shorter or a bit longer than my estimations, but as an experienced GM, I'm pretty good at pacing and estimating how long content will last. Heck, that's how I pace the new adventure leads that I introduce.

In my experience, it's generally true that most players see the end coming after extended play where everyone will be happy to stop. Especially if there are obvious openings to revisiting the sandbox later.

of course trick is sticking that landing so it happens.

Quote from: tenbones on February 23, 2024, 02:08:20 PM
I wonder if people here (in this thread) actually ever have played an actual sandbox campaign.

The wheedling of meta-engineering campaigns based on "numbers of sessions" and "fights per session" down inevitably to the player-centric "damage per round" ultimately is just ignoring the actual game itself.

But this comes from the notion that "running an adventure" is supposed to act like a scripted story. When the reality is the "story" is what the PC's do. And the GM's job is only to facilitate them doing things as represented by the setting. Saying something like "I don't have time to do a multi-year campaign" is like saying "I don't have any intention of playing TTRPG's for years."

If the campaign is unscripted, you simply play. The campaign is over when everyone agrees its over. This largely depends on the depth of skill of your GM. Inversely it depends on the quality of the GM's player's and their capacity for engagement - and directly that tension that exists between them.

No amount of badly scripted adventures will hold a group long term, and no amount of well scripted one-shots will truly give the feeling of total player agency as long as the script takes dominance over the actual game.

It's bizarre. Pre-determining campaign length is like setting an alarm for having sex. Granted by this analogy, doing one-shots as a "campaign" is like claiming premature ejaculation is good sex. Well at least someone got theirs... Aim higher, go deeper (pun intended).

I've run a couple of sandbox campaigns - currently running one - but I don't see the issue with making a rough estimation about how much it will last.

Again, think Curse of Strahd, Tomb of Annihilation, Nights Dark Terror, etc. CoS is done when the PCs kill Strahd or get killed. Likewise for ToA and Acererak (ToA even ahs a ticking clock, the world will end if the PCs do not succeed in 60 days or whatever, making the duration even easier to calculate).

Remember Gygax advises in the DMG that the campaign must eventually show a good x evil (or Law x Chaos) backdrop to the whole thing.

Episodic play is also possible, especially with multiple antagonists.

I don't see why play a campaign until everyone is bored - that has happened to me once, but not on purpose (the players just couldn't stomach the death of one important PC).

Also, every couple of years I like to change settings anyway.

Well, I usually have a fairly good estimate on how long a campaign will last, but not how long the setting will last.  That's because to me a campaign is a specific set of characters and their exploits towards some major goal(s).  Doesn't even matter if it's a pure linear thing with pre-cooked adventures or a pure sandbox with the players driving everything.  I may very well do multiple campaigns in that same setting, and some of those campaigns may even have overlapping characters.  My campaigns typically run 18 to 24 months.  The setting usually ends when I feel I've got most of the good mysteries out of it, and am ready to move onto a new one.  That's a lot more difficult to predict. 

There is something I don't think I've ever considered: when has a setting run dry?

I know most people have a dim view of the Forgotten Realms, usually because of the same reason they have dim views of D&D as a game - because it's been pooped upon by an endless river of diarrhea of bad ideas through various incarnations.

Honestly, I've never run dry of ideas of what to do with it, or in it. Greybox is Realms is merely a canvas for me. I always put my own take on a specific place. Same with Greyhawk. And I always use the 1e source material for my inspiration. I've run my own homebrew worlds before, only a few of them ever really caught on.

But even a better example - my Supers games. I liberally use Marvel and DC in the same way. Star Wars too. I take a basic slate and just run with it. I've never actually run dry on any particular established setting. Set them down for a while? Sure. Never ran dry tho.

For me, it's not so much a setting running dry as having another setting idea that I want to do more.  Plus, the settings I enjoy the most are my own, anyway.  I've tended to switch settings when I switch systems.  The Realms is a good example of that.  There's a ton of stuff that I could still have a blast with in that setting, not to mention several major areas I've never even touched.  Yet, since my last Realms campaign over 20 years ago, it's never bubbled higher than 4 or 5 on my list of things to do next. 

I suspect that my current settings will have longer legs than any I have done for awhile.  It helps that the system and setting are a match. 

Quote from: tenbones on February 23, 2024, 02:08:20 PM
I wonder if people here (in this thread) actually ever have played an actual sandbox campaign.

The wheedling of meta-engineering campaigns based on "numbers of sessions" and "fights per session" down inevitably to the player-centric "damage per round" ultimately is just ignoring the actual game itself.

But this comes from the notion that "running an adventure" is supposed to act like a scripted story. When the reality is the "story" is what the PC's do. And the GM's job is only to facilitate them doing things as represented by the setting. Saying something like "I don't have time to do a multi-year campaign" is like saying "I don't have any intention of playing TTRPG's for years."

If the campaign is unscripted, you simply play. The campaign is over when everyone agrees its over. This largely depends on the depth of skill of your GM. Inversely it depends on the quality of the GM's player's and their capacity for engagement - and directly that tension that exists between them.

No amount of badly scripted adventures will hold a group long term, and no amount of well scripted one-shots will truly give the feeling of total player agency as long as the script takes dominance over the actual game.

It's bizarre. Pre-determining campaign length is like setting an alarm for having sex. Granted by this analogy, doing one-shots as a "campaign" is like claiming premature ejaculation is good sex. Well at least someone got theirs... Aim higher, go deeper (pun intended).

A man after my own heart.

Yes, this is the way.

Quote from: Eric Diaz on February 23, 2024, 06:36:18 PM
Also, every couple of years I like to change settings anyway.

The biggest hurdle for us back in the day, to a really long term campaign, was DM/System/Setting hopping.

It's still a problem.

Developing GM skills to get past the linear module-running, and the "novelist-wish-fulfillment" railroading into learning how to sandbox requires individuals that actually *want* to GM, rather than just be the guy that fills the role because no one else wants to the job.

I'm literally in the middle of setting up a studio in my office to start talking about these methods and GMing as a developmental process for YT/Rumble. Especially with the D&D implosion happening/incoming with 6e. We're gonna need more GM's than ever.

/Starship Troopers Engaged

So I'm doing my part!

Would you like to know more?

Currently my campaign (the first i've ran in decades) has been going on for about 3 years now.  Playing every other week on average, and the party is
just now hitting 5th-6th level, so far so good.  Pace seems about right for how much we get done in a session.  The campaign is pretty much a
sandbox, though I've tossed a few old modules at the players for old times sake.  Was fun, as my older players (the others who played in the 1980's)
had mostly forgotten even the details of the Keep on the Borderlands, and the younger 5e players of course never had heard of it, was nice to run it
again after so long, never thought I'd have the chance given how ubiquitous it was back in the day.  Apart from that, though, pretty much everything
i just made up myself. 

Major events unfold when they are meant to by the lose timeline I have, though there's no overarching plot per se, the group has plenty of small ways
to influence events, which will improve as they get more levels and practice under their collective belts.  Seems better to let the story unfold naturally
as the result of the players decisions, and those are getting more complicated all the time.

No burnout yet, if i survive another 10 years, could go on just as long as that!  heh heh.

Greetings!

Interesting. I can't say that I share the theoretical "problem" of setting burnout, or frenetically changing campaign settings. My campaigns have all been set within my campaign setting of Thandor forever now, since I'd say 1980. I have periodically been entertained and inspired by other campaign settings, such as the Old World of 1E WHFRP, Greyhawk, Known World, Mystara, and Greybox Forgotten Realms. And Talislanta! While each has been inspiring, and enjoys various merits, all have shortcomings and flaws. So, I continue to keep game campaigns set within Thandor.

As far as "Campaign Length" goes, or the campaign lifespan, I have never embraced any set ending point. Campaigns endure and proceed, usually for many months and years, ending at various points when various players have changed careers, adopting radically different schedules, or moved too far away for practical game meetings.

Semper Fidelis,

SHARK

Four-foot-one.

Quote from: Zalman on February 25, 2024, 03:26:33 PM
Four-foot-one.

A respectable length with time for breakfast, tea, and biscuits.  Perhaps concluding with some pipe weed at the end to reflect on your travels and adventures.

I don't so much experience setting fatigue as I do a combination of ADHD and perfectionism. In the short to intermediate-term, I tend to suffer from a lot of "grass is greener". I'll be running something and hear about another setting that sounds better in some way and then immediately start wanting to switch. In the longer term, I think the problem is I haven't yet found a setting I like well enough to want to be running it for the next forty years. Plus I generally pick settings the same way I pick systems, because I have a very specific type of campaign I want to run with them. I've started the early planning stages on a setting that I hope will be my version of SHARK's Thandor, but it's probably at least a year away from being ready for prime-time, so I'll likely keep bouncing for a while.

Like most things, this is pretty clearly a question of personal temperament. I've got an old friend who's been running Faerun for about twenty-five years. I don't think he's ever seriously considered another setting for D&D. He also just plays whatever the current edition is. Just totally unconcerned with the kinds of questions that prevent me from ever sticking with a setting or system for more than one or two campaigns.

Temperament is also almost certainly behind my preference for episodic campaigns or ones with defined objectives. I also prefer level-based/metroidvania videogames to sandbox ones, short-stories to novels, and "monster of the week" tv shows to season-long arcs. Call it what you want, but I prefer my entertainment to get to the point and then move on.

It doesn't help that my experience with playing in sandbox games (at least the way tenbones defines them) has been largely negative: usually a lot of fanny-ing about interspersed with lackluster encounters, because most GMs aren't actually all that good at improvising. Who knows? maybe someday I'll either play in a good one, or run one that's so overwhelmingly successful that it changes my mind. 

I like a campaign that is about something, or goes somewhere. As such, the campaign will probably plotted for a critical path, the minimum number of episodes to get from inception to overarching completion, with room for player actions to add episodes or skip previously anticipated ones. I like my concept driven material to be as short as possible and as long as necessary.

Quote from: ForgottenF on February 25, 2024, 07:49:30 PM
It doesn't help that my experience with playing in sandbox games (at least the way tenbones defines them) has been largely negative: usually a lot of fanny-ing about interspersed with lackluster encounters, because most GMs aren't actually all that good at improvising. Who knows?

Well, yea. Sandboxing is not "make it up as you go along". You always need a bunch of sandbox resources, and you need to be at least a few steps ahead of the players in making new material. I almost always prep the wandering monsters & suchlike pre-play.

Quote from: tenbones on February 23, 2024, 02:08:20 PM
I wonder if people here (in this thread) actually ever have played an actual sandbox campaign.

The wheedling of meta-engineering campaigns based on "numbers of sessions" and "fights per session" down inevitably to the player-centric "damage per round" ultimately is just ignoring the actual game itself.

But this comes from the notion that "running an adventure" is supposed to act like a scripted story. When the reality is the "story" is what the PC's do. And the GM's job is only to facilitate them doing things as represented by the setting. Saying something like "I don't have time to do a multi-year campaign" is like saying "I don't have any intention of playing TTRPG's for years."

If the campaign is unscripted, you simply play. The campaign is over when everyone agrees its over. This largely depends on the depth of skill of your GM. Inversely it depends on the quality of the GM's player's and their capacity for engagement - and directly that tension that exists between them.

No amount of badly scripted adventures will hold a group long term, and no amount of well scripted one-shots will truly give the feeling of total player agency as long as the script takes dominance over the actual game.

It's bizarre. Pre-determining campaign length is like setting an alarm for having sex. Granted by this analogy, doing one-shots as a "campaign" is like claiming premature ejaculation is good sex. Well at least someone got theirs... Aim higher, go deeper (pun intended).

Yes and no. I might not be the most talented GM out there, but I can run sandboxes and there are a heck of a lot more reasons campaigns going on too long causes problems than just adventure design.

• Character arcs naturally want to move towards progression. Running a character arc too long means you are intentionally making the character's life stagnate and that aspect of the campaign boring. Completing it and moving on to a new arc significantly changes the chemistry of the character to the point that you often may as well roll up a new character.
• System "power bands" don't like being extended too far. Most systems have a level or progression range they are designed to feel best during. This is usually relatively early on in the game, but not at the dead start. For example, almost all versions of D&D play best between Levels 3 and 7, even though the character progression goes on much longer. Savage Worlds plays best when you are most often rolling D4s, D6s, and D8s, and tends to handle modified rolls or D10s and D12s a fair bit less gracefully. It's not like these systems "break" but gameplay becomes notably less good when you leave the power band. This tends to limit the enjoyable vertical progression space, even if it's allowed by the book and technically works.
• Excess horizontal growth dilutes character personality. The more characters have a chance for horizontal advancement, the more overlap characters tend to have, which means less specialist spotlighting.
• Player characters tend to be less time efficient with table time if you leave play time unlimited.

So yeah, there are many reasons to not always aim for forever or very long campaigns. I won't say that they are "evil," but I also think that the choice to aim for indefinite campaign length does tend to weaken the potential experience if you had aimed to not carry the game on forever.

Quote from: Fheredin on February 26, 2024, 09:18:11 AM
Yes and no. I might not be the most talented GM out there, but I can run sandboxes and there are a heck of a lot more reasons campaigns going on too long causes problems than just adventure design.

Sure. There's always a good reason to not run a sandbox campaign. But then the question is "what IS a campaign", the moment we start talking about a "set goal within the constraints of a specified number of sessions" we're doing "storytime" not campaigning. Mind you, I'm not saying *you* are saying this, I'm saying that a "campaign", if you're not a storygamer, or a railroading GM, is something more than running an adventure(s) in some linear format where the GM is guiding players (not their PC's) to a specific goal.

The distinctions are entirely dependent on a GM's skill and understanding on how to conduct a Sandbox. I've proven this point to my players, who also doubted me, where I ran an entire adventure within a much larger campaign, addressing all their weird PC's interests, in what was tantamount to a T-intersection hallway that lasted months. How? By adjusting the literal scale of the "hallway" to massive geographical scale, effectively the players were hexcrawling without even knowing it. Mind you I was doing it to prove a point to some would-be GM's in my group. When they realized all their choices which were completely organic, and created by them, based on whatever inputs and parameters I gave to them via what I felt the setting would cough up based on their location: they were shocked to see that *I*, Mr. Sandbox, had them in a simple T-section hallway of a massive "old school" map.

What's the point of this? That the techniques of a good Sandbox GM transcends and incorporates *all* the other methods of GMing, including railroads, including one-shots, including chain-modules, etc. The conducting of a "campaign" is to play until everyone has come to a natural end. I can scale a one-shot adventure into a sprawling sandbox that could take years to explore, if I wanted to. That doesn't mean implicitly that the players will spend years doing so - a simply bad decision could wipe everyone in the first encounter after all. I'm merely saying that the proscription of length of a campaign, is a weird thing beyond what I find kind of obvious.

Quote from: Fheredin on February 26, 2024, 09:18:11 AM

• Character arcs naturally want to move towards progression. Running a character arc too long means you are intentionally making the character's life stagnate and that aspect of the campaign boring. Completing it and moving on to a new arc significantly changes the chemistry of the character to the point that you often may as well roll up a new character.

It's your job as a GM to keep things "moving" in the world. It doesn't mean that all progression is vertical. This is a common problem with D&D, especially today. The whole Level-up notion that the game promotes (turbo-charged by videogaming drinking their own urine about what they feel D&D IS, ironically), is a missing a tremendous point about sandboxing. In parallel, there is a *massive* realization right now in the videogaming world that "Survival games" are now a thing. Those are attempts at horizontal progression on a vertical axis. Yes you can build a castle... but in order to do that, you gotta learn how to harvest wood, to build the handle, to create the stone pick, to allow you mine the ore to smelt the metal to create the bronze axe-head that lets you cut the harder timber that lets you make the better handle, that lets you create the pick-head, that lets you mine the better ore and stone that lets you build etc. etc. - where the world is still in operation around you.

A character arc *should* happen. But the world keeps moving. The GM's job, in a sandbox, to keep that world moving. (I call it plate-spinning). The moment a PC can arrive at a place that my world doesn't support (for whatever reason) I better be thinking about WHY? That's what pushes us as GM's to get better at managing not just vertical progression, but horizontal. The Horizontal is **massively** important for sandbox play. PC's do not exist in vacuum. And horizontal play, done right, gives your PC's options they never conceived of (secret: you probably as a GM didn't conceive of them either which is where the Magic Sauce is). Nothing should be IMPLICIT. NOTHING. All things are game-fodder. Leveling up isn't some magical event that happens because some PC killed an Orc and DING! I hit 14th level. That's playing rules, not the game.

In a good sandbox, the change in a PC's arc *shouldn't* be too much of a surprise. When a PC is moving towards the end of a developmental arc (as you might put it) you should be paving the road internally with other options. This doesn't mean that the player will pursue them, but it means you as a GM should be constantly developing options just in case, even if the player goes an entirely different way (which is where you as a GM will have to quickly catch up).

Often a player in this case will run out of drive to do more. Which is fine. In sandbox play, that's a "low-mainteance" plate to keep spinning while you work on other PC's "arcs". You still let the players decide the focus of where things go. OR maybe you've hit the end of the campaign and everyone is happy?

Quote from: Fheredin on February 26, 2024, 09:18:11 AM

• System "power bands" don't like being extended too far. Most systems have a level or progression range they are designed to feel best during. This is usually relatively early on in the game, but not at the dead start. For example, almost all versions of D&D play best between Levels 3 and 7, even though the character progression goes on much longer. Savage Worlds plays best when you are most often rolling D4s, D6s, and D8s, and tends to handle modified rolls or D10s and D12s a fair bit less gracefully. It's not like these systems "break" but gameplay becomes notably less good when you leave the power band. This tends to limit the enjoyable vertical progression space, even if it's allowed by the book and technically works.

True. Specifically, when it comes SW, I'd disagree. I'd have agreed with you when SWADE dropped... but Savage Rifts has taught me differently. To your broader point, you're spot on the money (and I'll address the SW part after) - a good GM running a campaign should understand the actual "power-bands" of their system in use. This is an important point for sandboxing because scaling your game can get thrown WAY out of whack, and limit the potential of your campaign by leaning into the vertical aspect of the game in order to "rush to the sweetspot". I'm guilty of this on occasion. This is where delving into the horizontal aspects of your sandbox can give a LOT of value to your otherwise linear progression, because it will engage your players in activities they otherwise wouldn't even realize they wanted. I could elaborate on Horizontal play more if people are interested...

This will extend your game and therefore your world by giving your players options and letting them go for it. This is the daunting part that will cause most Journeyman GM's to get sweaty, or we run headlong into GM's that are really just reluctant GM's that do it because no one else will. I think this point is where those reluctant GM's have the greatest chance to have that switch turned on where they realize how gratifying GMing with more depth can be, and they start actually enjoying it.

As for SW - I'm gonna disagree here because implied with the die-code of SW, you now have options to really up the powerscale of your game by leveraging the concepts in SW Rifts. YES it means you're playing a much higher-octane game. But what is high-level play supposed to be other than high-octane? Prior to SW Rifts, I felt the same thing as you. Mainly that the Core rules don't break down, but our assumptions (especially if you come from a prior edition like SW Deluxe) is that a "standard" build is based on a +2 total, and that the core task resolution and subsystems (read: magic systems) only extend so far mechanically RAW. SW Rifts blew that all up. The *standard* SW Rifts character at the start is nearly Heroic rank in "normal" SWADE terms (~13+ level for you D&D folks). And the core task resolution doesn't change at all. Rather the values you're needing to do larger things change. Therefore it mechanically reinforces much much much more horizontal play - Yeah your Mindmelter could slag this entire town with a couple of attacks. But why would you and it might cause a psychic ripple that brings the Xitiicix hordes down on your team. What do you DO about it? ALL of these sub-systems in SW Rifts, and what they implicate are *absolutely* informing us what could be possible in Non-Rifts settings.

If you want your game to be playable at 20th-lvl+ in D&D, it's a MASSIVE headache. If you're running SW Core + Fantasy, and you leverage the Mega Magic rules from SW Rifts? You build horizontal platforms for your non-casters to become legendary "iconic frameworks" unique to your setting, which then kicks off more vertical progression (more arcs!) for those PC's. Then you literally have no upper limit gated by ones perception of the die-codes. Is there a limit? Sure. But it's radically higher than most people imagine.

Quote from: Fheredin on February 26, 2024, 09:18:11 AM

• Excess horizontal growth dilutes character personality. The more characters have a chance for horizontal advancement, the more overlap characters tend to have, which means less specialist spotlighting.

This is a GM issue. It means you as a GM have to think broader OR more integral. Examples - your Horizontal growth of your warrior might be something like he gets knighted and is given a title and starts a keep, but your Thief character becomes his "advisor" (i.e. spymaster). In terms of horizontal growth the two are joined in a formal capacity, and that means the Thief character will have to bend his gameplay towards things like spying on potential rivals, setting up defenses against espionage, intelligence gathering networks - ALL the things the Warrior might not be suited to do. But for him, he's dealing with actual incursions into his territory, rivals prodding him at social events, hosting tourneys to keep himself sharp. Hunting expeditions led by his Huntmaster (another PC - ranger?) which might lead to a sandbox setpiece (a dungeon!).

ALL of those things are massive gaming opportunities that depend on you as the GM to give them proper relevance. Take it a step further, what is to stop the Thief character from maintaining his connections (in whatever manner appropriate to your game and setting) with the Underworld? The Thief PC might have been a member of the Thieves Guild... now he has temporal power as a trusted advisor to the local ruler, now he's SQUARELY a specialist while intrinsically intertwined with another PC's "schtick" that keep them mutually exclusive. And that tension is PURE gameplay glory. BUT it depends on the skill of the GM to keep it spinning.

Quote from: Fheredin on February 26, 2024, 09:18:11 AM

• Player characters tend to be less time efficient with table time if you leave play time unlimited.

Definitely true. The balancing act here is to make sure your NPC's have their own agendas and timetables. You can let players and their PC's chill all they want. But you need to balance it out in your sandbox with the idea that your NPC's (the important ones anyhow) also have agendas that have *nothing* to do with the PC's until those agendas and the PC's intersect on some level. THAT intersection is where the PC's have to decide to move and do something. Or not. GM's can easily say "Okay guys you're all chilling out doing <X> for downtime. I wanna let some time go by... "

You'll be surprised how lazy thinking Players will say some banal-shit like "Okay I'm gonna hang out and party in my favorite tavern" rather than say something constructive like "Remember those cultists we killed a few sessions ago? And a couple of them got away? I'm going to follow up with contacts/investigate/read up on that cult during the downtime."

Meanwhile if they do something banal, you're moving your timeline on your cult's real secret activities up based on what the PC's do on their downtime. IN EITHER CASE - once those two agendas intersect: you have adventure. Adventure means game. Game means the campaign is rolling forward.

Quote from: Fheredin on February 26, 2024, 09:18:11 AMSo yeah, there are many reasons to not always aim for forever or very long campaigns. I won't say that they are "evil," but I also think that the choice to aim for indefinite campaign length does tend to weaken the potential experience if you had aimed to not carry the game on forever.

Well again, it's dependent on what we wanna call a campaign vs. "we're playing a boardgame where there is a set start and ending, and we're gonna do stuff along the way and roll dice." We're doing the same thing... but one methodology involves gaming deeper than the other.

I'm not hung up on terminology like "campaign" and what it means per se. As a reflection of a collection of adventure sessions where players do stuff along a theme, sure. The quality of those experiences are what matter. In the meta - this ideally means having a GM that truly gives a shit, and players that only have to be ready to play. The "campaign" is that thing we all share that ends when it needs to end.

Quote from: S'mon on February 26, 2024, 07:56:11 AM

Quote from: ForgottenF on February 25, 2024, 07:49:30 PM
It doesn't help that my experience with playing in sandbox games (at least the way tenbones defines them) has been largely negative: usually a lot of fanny-ing about interspersed with lackluster encounters, because most GMs aren't actually all that good at improvising. Who knows?

Well, yea. Sandboxing is not "make it up as you go along". You always need a bunch of sandbox resources, and you need to be at least a few steps ahead of the players in making new material. I almost always prep the wandering monsters & suchlike pre-play.

Yep. And sandbox GM's have different tolerance levels for running their sandboxes based on their skills. Some Sandbox GM's are *really* good at improv. Other's are *really* good at organizational skills. Most of us are in-between. Prep is still prep, and there are a host of things to consider based on your personal strengths and weaknesses.

What is *not* part of my prep as a GM, is using a pre-made adventure that I haven't pored over and deconstructed to the atomic level to make sure it fits my setting. If using them at all.

Quote from: tenbones on February 26, 2024, 11:37:01 AM
What is *not* part of my prep as a GM, is using a pre-made adventure that I haven't pored over and deconstructed to the atomic level to make sure it fits my setting. If using them at all.

I'm about to run one for Cyberpunk where I've made the main friendly NPC the antagonist, switching friends and foes. I felt that suited the genre.  ;D

@tenbones,

What are "Horizontal", and "Vertical" progression?  Is that like wealth/titles/stuff and levelling respectively? 

Quote from: Svenhelgrim on February 26, 2024, 06:09:05 PM
@tenbones,

What are "Horizontal", and "Vertical" progression?  Is that like wealth/titles/stuff and levelling respectively?

Yeah - basically horizontal progression is anything in the game where the PC's get "power" or "ability" due to the things they do IN the game. So the Fighter that RP's starting his own mercenary company, that later becomes indispensable for a kingdom(s), the Wizard PC that starts a magic academy, or the PC that gets a title and domain, the Thief that becomes a major leader in the Thieves Guild.

Vertical progression is anything that is internal to the PC itself - class/skill progression, gear etc. which makes him more effective in direct play. Levelling and its *direct* corollary impactors in D&D terms.

Quote from: S'mon on February 26, 2024, 03:49:58 PM

Quote from: tenbones on February 26, 2024, 11:37:01 AM
What is *not* part of my prep as a GM, is using a pre-made adventure that I haven't pored over and deconstructed to the atomic level to make sure it fits my setting. If using them at all.

I'm about to run one for Cyberpunk where I've made the main friendly NPC the antagonist, switching friends and foes. I felt that suited the genre.  ;D

You're doing God's work. :)

I'm still waiting for tenbones guide for sandboxing anything. I feel that if I bring this up enough you'll eventually write it.

Quote from: PencilBoy99 on February 27, 2024, 11:05:35 AM
I'm still waiting for tenbones guide for sandboxing anything. I feel that if I bring this up enough you'll eventually write it.

It's coming. I'm working on something and will be including at least one face from these parts who has already done a bunch of sandboxing how-to's too. Soon!

I'm building a little mini-studio in my office, but getting hamstrung by big non-gaming things in my day-job (good things, but intense stuff). But it IS coming...