Pretty much what the title says.
My #1 gaming goal for 2012 is to successfully introduce a bunch of people who got their start with gaming in the 1990s, the age of AD&D 2e and the old World of Darkness (great games which featured horrible advice).
There's always the possibility that they won't bite, i.e. they won't engage the sandbox. While there are a few handy tricks for getting them involved (e.g. ninjas attack), most of them feel heavy-handed and trite when executed repeatedly.
What do you do then? Fall back to a more structured model, e.g. mission-based stuff? Try and find new hooks to get them to interact with the setting? Have the much-vaunted Talk on What Everyone Expects From The Gaming Table?
Quote from: The Butcher;520990Pretty much what the title says.
My #1 gaming goal for 2012 is to successfully introduce a bunch of people who got their start with gaming in the 1990s, the age of AD&D 2e and the old World of Darkness (great games which featured horrible advice).
There's always the possibility that they won't bite, i.e. they won't engage the sandbox. While there are a few handy tricks for getting them involved (e.g. ninjas attack), most of them feel heavy-handed and trite when executed repeatedly.
What do you do then? Fall back to a more structured model, e.g. mission-based stuff? Try and find new hooks to get them to interact with the setting? Have the much-vaunted Talk on What Everyone Expects From The Gaming Table?
Yes. I would do some kind of misson. Like in a Deadlands game I played years ago. The scenerio was that we were on a train and was like the Orient Express almost. I played a Hucksters that was a Pinkerton and there was a player that was a Cleric of the Southern persuasion of Pinkerton's iirc. Anyway all the characters had hooks to interact with the "world" or sandbox after the misson. They could team up or be at crosspurposes whichever they felt because it was up them after the misson given they knew each other and understood not everything is what it seemed on the surface after the misson.
Give them campaign traits like FC to get them started (buddy of the sheriff or contact: underworld fence of the town/region whatever works. Kind like background traits pathfinder style a couple of them work out to an extra feat for everybody not unbalanced at all. And gives them a reason to be there in that world or area of the world.
Hmm. I wouldn't try new hooks as much as I'd fish for them, even if the players aren't super-aware of what I'm doing.
What I mean, is, when your players create characters (after you've briefed them on your setting details their chars might know), have them write down a couple of goals each -- things they really, really want their characters to accomplish, or maybe even things their characters feel strongly about. Then, when you're laying out the initial situations in your world, setup things so that when a player comes into contact with a situation, their character, by their very nature, has to respond.
Give them a bit of pressure in the set up. Maybe they all need money for some reason or other. Needing money is a good kick up the backside to go looking for action.
Quote from: noisms;520995Give them a bit of pressure in the set up. Maybe they all need money for some reason or other. Needing money is a good kick up the backside to go looking for action.
I agree, and subtlety in this gets you no-where.
The most successful set up I ever used, was that pre-game, the PCs all got captured by Pirates and shackled to the oars. Then a local rock hard psychotic German wizard sank the pirate ship by hitting it with an iceberg and coincidently they happened to be in the only seats that did not get obliterated. The German dude then tossed them all a single coin for their trouble, and left them to it with a general reminder that he would kill them at the drop of a hat if they caused trouble.
It was kind of based on the Brian runs cattlepunk strips in KotDT, but with more German guys throwing ice burgs. At that point they have nowhere to go but to star interacting with shit, because they need to get food, shelter from psychotic puffins and some way of convincing a very hostile world they should not be killed out of hand. It actually worked really well, three of the four players responded quite well and two of those really went for it (and as a group, three of them are really reactive. Interestingly, the normally proactive one was the one who did not really engage).
Quote from: noisms;520995Give them a bit of pressure in the set up. Maybe they all need money for some reason or other. Needing money is a good kick up the backside to go looking for action.
That's a good one. Money, revenge (like the old "you have a paper slip with five names of people who killed off your friends and family" hook from
The Demon Princes,
Kill Bill etc.) I had a sandbox campaign that failed, and it failed because the players were in a different mindframe, carefully trained by other games to follow the leads and collect their plot tokens. Giving them a stronger focus may have helped. I realised it, but too late to save the thing and generate momentum.
Of course, sometimes it just doesn't work out. In that case, you can switch back to more mission-based structures and give them relative freedom within that framework. Which is what we did after my failure, with another guy taking the GM seat, and me soon kicking off the longest best sandbox game I have ever run with a different set of people.
You have a starship with a mortgage on it, gotta go make money by engaging in speculative trade from world-to-world while having an adventure now and then to pay those bills.
Been working for Traveller since 1977.
Provide them with a clear objective to start with, which could be decided prior to play or handed out to them as play begins (i.e. a mission or some event they engage in right at the start of the game such as their friends' assassination in New York in Masks of Nyarlathotep), and then enlarge the field of possibilities as the adventure progresses.
They could find traces of parallel criminal dealings that tie into another adventure, find out that the bad guys had two or more sponsors who are themselves engaged in other nefarious activities, and from there the PCs decide what to do with that, which lead they want follow etc. Alternately, an NPC, a patron, the police, could make the choice for them if they can't or won't do it on their own. You just need to take it slow and let them take the lead when they feel confident with it by keeping at it, providing them the world to interact with on a coherent, continuous basis so that it will in effect exist when the time comes for them to make it on their own.
TL;DR start with a clear mission/objective, enlarge the field of play from there, as the campaign proceeds, until the players won't need the training wheels anymore.
Quote from: noisms;520995Give them a bit of pressure in the set up.
Definitely. One of the best (though short-lived, alas) sandboxes I ran was a Gamma World game a couple years back. It started with a description of the PCs witnessing the annihilations of their home village by a heavily-armed force of pure strain humans backed up by a nuclear-armed robotic tank. Then I simply asked them, "What do you do now?"
The PCs had no place to stay, no one to speak with, nowhere to get comfortable through inertia. They were in a situation where they had to do something. They eventually found out that the marauders were agents of the Knights of Genetic Purity (I used heavily-modified versions of the GW factions for this game).
Game ended before they finished their plan for assailing the enemy home base...didn't get to the parts I was really hoping to get to, which involved them discovering they were on a generation ship ala Metamorphosis Alpha with a heavy leavening of Wolfe's Book of the Long Sun (even used terms like "shiprock" and had the god windows and everything...despite what I thought were overly obvious clues to the true nature of their characters' environment, my players never suspected).
A couple of thoughts
1) I'm running a sandbox game right now and I started with the PC's in an organization (paramilitary) that gave them missions before they graduated to a more pure sandbox. By that time they had enough at stake in the world that they're pretty self-motivated.
2) A classic approach is to give them a McGuffin artifact / object that draws attention -- a magic sword or a ring-of-power or whatever. Give them some reason to hold on to it, but it can be an adventure-generator for at least awhile (Bad guys come after it. Good-guys come to examine / consult it, groupies come to worship it, etc.)
Cheers,
-E.
I no longer suscribe to the Forge Game Theory as a whole, but a couple gems stood out to me.
One is the idea of "bangs". Like POW ZOOM BANG. BANG. Toss something in there and see what the players do with it. Generally, these can feel really kitschy and contrite to me at times. Especially when paired with a light barely there system. If the idea is truly random (i.e. those Ninjas attacking for no good reason), it doesn't work well IME.
Here is how I do Bangs; look over the characters, find the stuff they focused on. Backgrounds, advantages, disadvantages, class, skill choices, items chosen, anything really. What is important to this player for this character? Did they mention any particular hijinks when they were making it?
Then I fashion a Bang out of that stuff. The more characters I can tie into it, the better.
They aren't just attacked by Ninjas, but by a group of highly trained assassins sent by the Baron DeMarkus (enemy of our disenfranchised noble Mage) to retrieve the Goldblume family heirloom. The famed blue ruby of the Forgotten Highlands. One of our characters, the alluring Rogue Dancer Shanna was given this by her mother when she was young and made inference that it held magic. Gothwit and Dallus, our down-on-their luck mercenaries were quite taken with Shanna, and agreed to travel with her a bit, until something more lucrative presented itself. In the last 2 years, only the adventures Shanna and crew embroiled themselves in we're too tasty to walk away from. Both men have grown quite fond of her.
There. My Mage stated he had an enemy on his character. My Rogue had this heirloom, so I tie them in together. I ask the mercenaries how they came to travel with these other two, and they both chose loyalty to Shanna for their characters. I just tie them in, light the Baron's greed fuse, and toss the Bang in and see where they take it.
If you pay attention to what your players are choosing for their characters, you're going to get a strong idea of what they want to see in the game. Toss it in there, and then let them lead you to the next "thing". Perhaps they need to establish a base and build power and wealth to confront the Baron? Or maybe they feel he's too powerful and calavant across the land, trying to put as much distance between them as they can.
When things start to slow down, I see nothing wrong with tossing in another Bang to shake things up and generate some interest. It's like the weekly TV series. Exploration takes up a few episodes, and once in a while an episode ties in the "overall plot". I don't predetermine the plots, I just have events going on, and things fall out of those events, and I see where the players take it. I consider it part of the GM's toolkit; pacing.
Quote from: trechriron;521022I no longer suscribe to the Forge Game Theory as a whole, but a couple gems stood out to me.
One is the idea of "bangs". Like POW ZOOM BANG. BANG. Toss something in there and see what the players do with it. Generally, these can feel really kitschy and contrite to me at times. Especially when paired with a light barely there system. If the idea is truly random (i.e. those Ninjas attacking for no good reason), it doesn't work well IME.
Here is how I do Bangs; look over the characters, find the stuff they focused on. Backgrounds, advantages, disadvantages, class, skill choices, items chosen, anything really. What is important to this player for this character? Did they mention any particular hijinks when they were making it?
Then I fashion a Bang out of that stuff. The more characters I can tie into it, the better.
They aren't just attacked by Ninjas, but by a group of highly trained assassins sent by the Baron DeMarkus (enemy of our disenfranchised noble Mage) to retrieve the Goldblume family heirloom. The famed blue ruby of the Forgotten Highlands. One of our characters, the alluring Rogue Dancer Shanna was given this by her mother when she was young and made inference that it held magic. Gothwit and Dallus, our down-on-their luck mercenaries were quite taken with Shanna, and agreed to travel with her a bit, until something more lucrative presented itself. In the last 2 years, only the adventures Shanna and crew embroiled themselves in we're too tasty to walk away from. Both men have grown quite fond of her.
There. My Mage stated he had an enemy on his character. My Rogue had this heirloom, so I tie them in together. I ask the mercenaries how they came to travel with these other two, and they both chose loyalty to Shanna for their characters. I just tie them in, light the Baron's greed fuse, and toss the Bang in and see where they take it.
If you pay attention to what your players are choosing for their characters, you're going to get a strong idea of what they want to see in the game. Toss it in there, and then let them lead you to the next "thing". Perhaps they need to establish a base and build power and wealth to confront the Baron? Or maybe they feel he's too powerful and calavant across the land, trying to put as much distance between them as they can.
When things start to slow down, I see nothing wrong with tossing in another Bang to shake things up and generate some interest. It's like the weekly TV series. Exploration takes up a few episodes, and once in a while an episode ties in the "overall plot". I don't predetermine the plots, I just have events going on, and things fall out of those events, and I see where the players take it. I consider it part of the GM's toolkit; pacing.
You just articulated exactly what I trying to say upthread. I take it even further in my games. I typically give Pathfinder or Fantasy Craft background/campaign traits, usually 2 to each player, basically works out to an extra feat, specifically tied to the campaign and intertwined to each character in the group. They can't help but use them if you've pegged their in game goals correctly.
I find making side quest hooks on the fly at the end of each session tends to work. But I also make players work for it too, and I don't create the side quest beforehand. Basically I create a form of "attendance + coolness" currency that allows people to buy side quests that they sorta create in-game. Sorta like training wheels; helps people get thinking about self-motivation.
So for example, each player attending gets a coin for attendance. As they do really cool and entertaining things in-game they might get an additional coin by GM opinion. At the end of the session, the GM improvs side quests based on what happened and gives them a coin value. Players may then spend their own coins to open a quest for themselves (the quest requires that PC to be present to go on, others may assist), pool coins to open an expensive quest together, or save coins for another time.
Sorta dissociative, but for some reason players who normally are reactive and completionists tend to thrive on the idea of "opening secret easter eggs." Might be a sign of the times from video game influences. However it does give me time to prep side quests as players take the direction and tell me what they want to do next session.
Interesting idea but to clarify, is this used to set up later sessions or done at the end of the night? And what about your more introverted players? Are they left in the cold? Not everyone is quick on the trigger.
Shipwreck.
They're stuck on an unknown land. They have no way to back the fuck out, as the ship's gone. They've got their starter gear, and have to explore the damn place if they want to survive. Back against the wall, nowhere to run = they'll fight like hell (i.e. engage and adventure) because there's no other choice.
Mission based can be awesome especially in a fixed setting, like a city, with the stable cast of NPCs and lot's of mystery and intrigue.
The secret for me for me about running a good mission based campaign is multi-threading. Rather than just focusing on one adventure at a time make sure that as one adventure is in progress you introduce and foreshadow elements of the next ones. This will make the transition to the next adventure feel more natural.
Better still, try to get multiple cases running in parallel. This will give the players more choices and make the game session feel more open. Of course if you overdo this it can end up confusing the players.
One of the best things about multi-threading is that allows the GM to test out plot hooks without committing to them. Say for instance in the course of investigating a mobster the players discover some unrelated dirt on the local TV personality, chances are the player's reaction will reveal to the GM whether discovery interests the player and should be developed into it's own adventure or just background fluff.
Eventually, as Benoist mentions, the players might actually come up with their own goals and shift into a more sandbox mode. Or not, or maybe you keep flip-flopping between mission based and sandbox. It's all good.
Going in line with previous - start the PCs as someone who is under someone's command (mercenaries, soldiers etc. etc.) then, after one - two missions, you give them next ones...while also they have their own opportunities, that they had discovered while on earlier missions.
Quote from: Rincewind1;521062Going in line with previous - start the PCs as someone who is under someone's command (mercenaries, soldiers etc. etc.) then, after one - two missions, you give them next ongtoes...while also they have their own opportunities, that they had discovered while on earlier missions.
This is classic Warhammer 40k, it's totally how you run Dark Heresy (skwee) love that game as GM or player. :)
Mostly player given the system has "quirks" and a steep learning curve as a GM. At least for me.
I do quest buying at the end of a session. During the session I dream up new side quests on the fly, and at the end I offer my ideas. However, if I come up with good ideas after last session's end, I may show up next session with those new side quest ideas also on the list. And what shows up on the list tends to stay on the list for simplicity -- until I wrap up a campaign main quest (if there's one at all), where it'd be a convenient place to time out some quests.
And when I say sidequest, it's more of a highlighted encounter or a catchy title. Like if the party met a beggar on the road towards the village, and the PCs interacted with the beggar in an interesting way, I might 'quest' off of that at the session's end. I might say, "Traveling Beggar, 1 plot coin." or "Hobo murmurs need of Murder Hobos (joke), 1 plot coin." Outside of the title I generally have not much but a rough sketch.
But opened side quests are available while players are on the 'main quest.' So it's just about them telling me what they want to pursue next session. Yet they must deal with any location and travel time issues. And any outstanding quests with time limits keep ticking down as well.
It's not a tradition sandbox, I think. Well, it may be in core structure. But it starts with a push, even though it improvs a lot after the fact and front loads pacing upon the players. It's structured in a mini-game way that seems more like a video game. Yet, outside of the first session's general campaign impetus, the rest tends to snowball from the PC's own decisions.
Thankfully while trying this new method I haven't had to deal with very shy players. But I feel I'll be getting a few quite soon. I anticipate that they'll just contribute towards opening larger sidequests. I'd like a few cheaper ones on the list so that they can do something on their own when other players decide to "storm the castle" or the like w/o them (I'm trying to transition towards a more open table format). But we'll see.
Ideally I'm looking forward to this method helping open table format in a sandbox so players feel free to not need a consistent party to do anything. Something like 4e Encounters open table but without the linear campaign or wait for a minimum number of players for a quorum. With opened sidequests of varying difficulty people should routinely have something to play when I'm ready, I hope. Edit: it's sorta like using the overland map like a dungeon, but without the dungeon... I hope it works!
So everyone is in as long as they show up they get a chance to put in what their character's would like to try outside the pressure of saying it IG or IC, , cool. :)
Bangs are good, yes. In my Yggsburgh campaign I allowed a brief scene-setting opening which was quiet - PCs getting ready to travel on a stage coach with NPC aristocrats - then hit them with a bang - highwaymen lying in wait. Their response shaped the whole campaign.
For certain players, you'll find a sandbox works best if it's NPC-based rather than hex/geography-based. Noisms discusses this approach on his blog re his Cyberpunk campaign - http://monstersandmanuals.blogspot.com/
Instead of/as well as detailing tons of hexes, you details tons of NPCs, perhaps in a city, with conflicting/competing goals and motivations. The PCs have freedom in who they latch on to, who they oppose etc.
I'd think for ex-WoD players used to vampire politics etc this approach might be particularly useful?
A basic notion that probably bears saying: sandbox does not equal "no adventure hooks". (Just becaue, y'know, I have read blog entries out there about campaigns like that.)
If the party is in a city, have 3-4 adventure ideas with enough thought behind them to last a session. They don't have to be comlpicated: there's an abandoned temple/mausoleum/palace with rumoured riches inside. A notable person has disappeared and there's probably a prize to whoever finds him/her. A band of criminals made off with some a haul, and they're hiding in the sewers while the city is under lockdown.
Then once the players pick on (or several) options to work, go into reactive mode and build on the logical consequences of their actions.
Quote from: The Butcher;520990Have the much-vaunted Talk on What Everyone Expects From The Gaming Table?
This is never a bad idea no matter what type of game you want to run. If a whole table full of players honestly tells you they enjoy being led around a campaign via storylines then have at it.
Quote from: The Butcher;520990There's always the possibility that they won't bite, i.e. they won't engage the sandbox. While there are a few handy tricks for getting them involved (e.g. ninjas attack), most of them feel heavy-handed and trite when executed repeatedly.
I have run quite a few Sandboxes and none of them have been completely "It's up to you" in nature. Sure, the players have absolute control over what they do, where they go and so on. However, they don't have control over what NPCs do, especially off-camera NPCs.
Quote from: The Butcher;520990What do you do then? Fall back to a more structured model, e.g. mission-based stuff? Try and find new hooks to get them to interact with the setting? Have the much-vaunted Talk on What Everyone Expects From The Gaming Table?
In my Sandboxes, I always have a plotline, or normally several plotlines, that chunk along in the background, sometimes engaging with the PCs and sometimes producing news flashes and so on. Quite often the PCs get involved in some of the plotlines and take them over, generating their own plotlines from them.
It is always possible to introduce some major NPCs as patrons or employers as a short-term measure, perhaps for one or two scenarios.
Quote from: The Butcher;520990There's always the possibility that they won't bite
If they won't bite the multitude of scenario hooks in a properly designed sandbox, why would they be any more likely to bite the solitary hook in the mission-based game?
Quote from: Bradford C. Walker;521051Shipwreck.
They're stuck on an unknown land. They have no way to back the fuck out, as the ship's gone. They've got their starter gear, and have to explore the damn place if they want to survive. Back against the wall, nowhere to run = they'll fight like hell (i.e. engage and adventure) because there's no other choice.
I've used that one before, as well as having the PCs start off in a town or stronghold under siege. Starting them off as slaves can be fun because you don't have to wait half an hour for them to buy equipment. In media res is my preferred method for kicking off a campaign.
I'm way too lazy to come up with missions, quests, or anything of the sort. Nor do I take the effort to set up a traditional sandbox. That crap takes planning beforehand. Mostly just make stuff up as we go.
I simply have the world operate like it is a semi-real place. Things happen, the players can involve themselves in whatever they feel like, but none of it is set up specifically to involve them.
Say it is a D&D game in some village. Makes sense for me that a traveling peddler may show up. If they interact with the peddler, maybe he has something interesting to tell them, maybe he is an ass. Whatever pops in the old noggin.
Whatever the players interact with, I just have the world react in however seems logical. If the PCs kill off the asshole peddler, for instance, makes sense he may have family somewhere who might care.
I've never seen players who wouldn't interact with anything. They do, however, often ignore stuff. No biggie, something else will happen. If they ignore the peddler, maybe they see peasants start working on clay masks for an upcoming trade fair.
I don't think it takes big whiz-bangs like ninja attacks. Just riff off whatever the players interact with. Small things can grow into epic adventures when the dead peddler's family comes looking for vengeance against the PCs in the middle of the trade fair.
Quote from: Old One Eye;521335I'm way too lazy to come up with missions, quests, or anything of the sort. Nor do I take the effort to set up a traditional sandbox. That crap takes planning beforehand. Mostly just make stuff up as we go.
I simply have the world operate like it is a semi-real place. Things happen, the players can involve themselves in whatever they feel like, but none of it is set up specifically to involve them.
Say it is a D&D game in some village. Makes sense for me that a traveling peddler may show up. If they interact with the peddler, maybe he has something interesting to tell them, maybe he is an ass. Whatever pops in the old noggin.
Whatever the players interact with, I just have the world react in however seems logical. If the PCs kill off the asshole peddler, for instance, makes sense he may have family somewhere who might care.
I've never seen players who wouldn't interact with anything. They do, however, often ignore stuff. No biggie, something else will happen. If they ignore the peddler, maybe they see peasants start working on clay masks for an upcoming trade fair.
I don't think it takes big whiz-bangs like ninja attacks. Just riff off whatever the players interact with. Small things can grow into epic adventures when the dead peddler's family comes looking for vengeance against the PCs in the middle of the trade fair.
I'm in this camp, but let me articulate it differently.
A Sandbox needs a couple of components to make it work. The idea is that things are happening in the world, and the PCS are allowed to make less scripted responses to the events of the world.
Again, as has been mentioned, a good sandbox GM has enmeshed the backstories of the pcs into the setting, to make more real the connection between the pcs and the world itself. This provides some emotion, direction, or, to use a psych term, this provides some dynamic energy. If you haven't done a good job here, you have to provide a lot more energy yourself as the GM later.
As a few people mentioned, there are normally multiple plotlines running around that the pcs bump into, and they are free to react as they will to these multiple, and normally multi-level plotlines. I normally recomend having some of these that seem unrelated to actually be part of the same story.
The next component that is a necessary one is the idea of, "World in Motion". All of those storylines and plots running around are not static, and it is the GMs job to psuh the fallout from these plots advancing.
And then you need to get fun, and synergize this World in Motion with the earlier enmeshing of the character into the setting. Not only did the month's cash deposits from the Exchequer's office get stolen...but the word on the street is that oner of the character's guilds is involved. Yes, there were strange lights in the top floor of the old library after midnight...but a pair of mages from the Magic School the group's mage came from investigated an dissapeared. The ravaging humanoid band out in the western fields continued their rampage, and destroyed the farm of the fighter's cousins; and the group that routed them is feted in front of the group; and lo! The bitter rival of the group's archer is part of the group that won fame and wealth for helping route that band!
I have certainly seen, even in my full-blown Cast of Thousands, World-in-motion style campaigns, situations where the players, completely unused to the idea that they have to be the active participants in finding adventure, end up doing basically nothing and then complain the campaign is "boring".
So I can't say I'm a hardliner about the sandbox's "impartiality" needing to be absolutely pure. I'm more than willing to make things happen, to fudge encounter checks at least, to leave hooks right in front of players' fucking faces, if it means that it will get them to actually start to interact with the setting.
RPGPundit
Quote from: RPGPundit;521513I have certainly seen, even in my full-blown Cast of Thousands, World-in-motion style campaigns, situations where the players, completely unused to the idea that they have to be the active participants in finding adventure, end up doing basically nothing and then complain the campaign is "boring".
So I can't say I'm a hardliner about the sandbox's "impartiality" needing to be absolutely pure. I'm more than willing to make things happen, to fudge encounter checks at least, to leave hooks right in front of players' fucking faces, if it means that it will get them to actually start to interact with the setting.
RPGPundit
Yeah that's basically it. The idea being to just kickstart the thing and then take off the training wheels. It's just a matter of getting them involved and then the campaign elements unfold and fall into place by action-reaction from there.
Quote from: RPGPundit;521513I have certainly seen, even in my full-blown Cast of Thousands, World-in-motion style campaigns, situations where the players, completely unused to the idea that they have to be the active participants in finding adventure, end up doing basically nothing and then complain the campaign is "boring".
I've run into this as well, but I've always considered it more of a "choice paralysis" because the Players initially are not used to a campaign setting where they drive the action and the setting interacts and responds to them. Take your average Player and say, "What do you want to do?" and they usually get this deer in the headlights look because the options available to them are just too many and the Players are overwhelmed.
You've got to give them a nudge, or a reason to go out and do the things that they are there to do. Even if it is just initially to get their PCs out of the starting gate.
Quote from: RPGPundit;521513I have certainly seen, even in my full-blown Cast of Thousands, World-in-motion style campaigns, situations where the players, completely unused to the idea that they have to be the active participants in finding adventure, end up doing basically nothing and then complain the campaign is "boring".
So I can't say I'm a hardliner about the sandbox's "impartiality" needing to be absolutely pure. I'm more than willing to make things happen, to fudge encounter checks at least, to leave hooks right in front of players' fucking faces, if it means that it will get them to actually start to interact with the setting.
RPGPundit
Yep, gotta give the ball a little push to start it rolling sometimes.
I've found that the key to successful sandbox play is to start out linear and then shift to more of a free form. In other words, I know what is going on in the campaign world at the beginning of a campaign and I'm opening the game with something will pull the players into the middle of what is taking place. How they react to it and where it will go after that is anyone's guess, but there be a firm foundation from the start.
I never have a scripted ending in mind. I might have a vague idea about the possibilities but it is so subject to change based on what the PCs do and do not do that it is pointless to create the endgame with any degree of detail ahead of time.
Quote from: PaladinCA;521562I've found that the key to successful sandbox play is to start out linear and then shift to more of a free form. In other words, I know what is going on in the campaign world at the beginning of a campaign and I'm opening the game with something will pull the players into the middle of what is taking place. How they react to it and where it will go after that is anyone's guess, but there be a firm foundation from the start.
I never have a scripted ending in mind. I might have a vague idea about the possibilities but it is so subject to change based on what the PCs do and do not do that it is pointless to create the endgame with any degree of detail ahead of time.
Makes sense to me. In the same vein as the "tentpole dungeon" (discussed here (http://greyhawkgrognard.blogspot.com/2008/12/old-school-campaign-tent-poles.html) and elsewhere), you have a "tentpole mission" (/conflict/etc.). Something to fall back on, in any case.
My current game is hung on the Saltmarsh series - but, considering there's a decent chance that the group one week won't have any of the same faces that were in the group last week, there's a smörgåsbord of missions, characters, lairs, ruins, dungeons, and such to occupy PCs who aren't actually involved in those events. (I'm finding that doing all this development work for non-module stuff is giving events IN the module a lot more significance, not to mention the fact that I don't have to adjudicate questions not covered in the text in a complete vacuum.)
Quote from: PaladinCA;521562I've found that the key to successful sandbox play is to start out linear and then shift to more of a free form. In other words, I know what is going on in the campaign world at the beginning of a campaign and I'm opening the game with something will pull the players into the middle of what is taking place. How they react to it and where it will go after that is anyone's guess, but there be a firm foundation from the start.
I never have a scripted ending in mind. I might have a vague idea about the possibilities but it is so subject to change based on what the PCs do and do not do that it is pointless to create the endgame with any degree of detail ahead of time.
This is what I do. Mostly because I'm lazy and can't be arsed to create preplanned bullshit so I make shit up on the fly, mostly going off the few hard guidelines I might have, kind of like an outline/framework for a paper which always changes as ideas pop into my head or some whim facilitated by what one of my players do when it presents itself.
Huh, tentpole dungeon. A support beam that holds up the circus. Something to fall back on when PCs hanker for something less involved (or just delightfully mindless). I like the term.
Quote from: RPGPundit;521513I have certainly seen, even in my full-blown Cast of Thousands, World-in-motion style campaigns, situations where the players, completely unused to the idea that they have to be the active participants in finding adventure, end up doing basically nothing and then complain the campaign is "boring".
So I can't say I'm a hardliner about the sandbox's "impartiality" needing to be absolutely pure. I'm more than willing to make things happen, to fudge encounter checks at least, to leave hooks right in front of players' fucking faces, if it means that it will get them to actually start to interact with the setting.
RPGPundit
Well, that was the reason for the last part of my post, enmeshing the characters in the World in Motion.
It's almost operant conditioning. When the PCs see events moving along, and them missing the boat, or their inaction having a personal effect, which is sort of formalizing your little push.
Just shine a light on the consequences of their lack of action, and most will say, "crap, I won't do that again.'
I think part of it depends a lot on how you set up your timing. You need to have a timeline of events, that is, of how things will play out subject to modification by PC actions, and its necessary that there be some big things happening in your sandbox world relatively early in the game, in order to get the players swept up in it. Some of the times where my sandbox games have failed is where I planned for a long slow buildup of events, meaning the players had no early events to hook onto.
RPGPundit
Quote from: RPGPundit;521904I think part of it depends a lot on how you set up your timing. You need to have a timeline of events, that is, of how things will play out subject to modification by PC actions, and its necessary that there be some big things happening in your sandbox world relatively early in the game, in order to get the players swept up in it. Some of the times where my sandbox games have failed is where I planned for a long slow buildup of events, meaning the players had no early events to hook onto.
RPGPundit
I always liked that GM advice in the original Star Wars D6 rulebook about starting the players "In Media Res." When you place the players right into the middle of things at the start, they can't help but do something about it, even if just to try and get away from the mess. :D
Quote from: PaladinCA;522469I always liked that GM advice in the original Star Wars D6 rulebook about starting the players "In Media Res." When you place the players right into the middle of things at the start, they can't help but do something about it, even if just to try and get away from the mess. :D
Except that some people would say that's not much of a sandbox then, and they might be right, depending on how you framed your "in media res".
RPGpundit
In my experience and from reading other people accounts the main reason that sandbox fail to take off initially is the lack of context for a player to make a reasonable decision. Without context they might as well use a dice as they have nothing to base their choices on. This situation generally leads to the sandbox campaign failing unless you have some highly motivated players.
A couple of folks posted starting off a Sandbox campaign with missions. Missions solve the problem by providing context namely NPC X telling them to do Y. So while the range of choices is minimal now they have something to base their decisions on. Nothing wrong with this as long as you realize that it is not the only way to successfully start a sandbox.
The general technique that works with most players is to do a pre-game where you sit down with the player and talk about their character. You bounce ideas off of each other about goals and background details. During this, the referee will take the players vague ideas and offering alternatives grounded in the details of the setting. The player then picks what he likes the best and you move on. The referee also tries to slant the choices to give natural reasons for the party to be together. How specific you make all this is a judgment call based on the player's interest and attitude.
The concrete result should be a page of notes and the player understanding the initial situation of his character. Because the player understands his character initial situation from the first session he has something to make his choices.
Pundit brought an issue where his timeline of events ramp up slowly. What I do to overcome that is that the players usually starts the campaign focused on personal goals that are somewhat limited. During the pursuit of these goals the larger events start intruding. And their understanding of the larger events also increases as they interact with the setting. Sometimes they care and sometimes they don't. Sometimes they have to deal with the larger events if they threatened one of things they care about accomplishing.
While I try to slant everything to be interesting, I don't try to force things to come together unless that would naturally happen. If the players manage to dodge all the major events of the campaign's time period so be it.
And you've never had a game that fell apart out of boredom as a result?
If you have, then I admire your principles in believing so much in The Sandbox that you're willing to let a campaign die rather than betray that; misguided as that seems to me.
If you didn't, I would bet that in your heart of hearts if you check you might realize that there have been times you too have "nudged" things along.
RPGPundit
Quote from: RPGPundit;522851And you've never had a game that fell apart out of boredom as a result?
If you have, then I admire your principles in believing so much in The Sandbox that you're willing to let a campaign die rather than betray that; misguided as that seems to me.
If you didn't, I would bet that in your heart of hearts if you check you might realize that there have been times you too have "nudged" things along.
RPGPundit
This sounds like the same old misunderstanding - that a sandbox is purely reactive.
Compare it to a pinball machine. Any properly-designed sandbox is going to be chock full of "bumpers" for the party to stray up against - requires not a whit of "authorial control" to keep that ball bouncing, simply run it as it lies. Occasionally it might require judicious use of the "flippers" - which is still not "cheating", or whatever. Just drop a new event/character/group/etc. into the mix. The sandbox isn't in keeping hands-off, it's in having the stones not to railroad things along a predetermined path. New thing happens, party reacts to it (or doesn't). Simple as can be.
Quote from: RPGPundit;522851And you've never had a game that fell apart out of boredom as a result?
I had campaigns fail but not from boredom.
Quote from: RPGPundit;522851If you didn't, I would bet that in your heart of hearts if you check you might realize that there have been times you too have "nudged" things along.
A couple of things that I need to explain here
In the pre-game I help the player to try to come up with an interesting background. In addition I try work to with the player to setup multiple hooks as a lot of time what the players thought would be interesting or important is not.
During the campaign one of the job of a referee of a sandbox campaign is to generate the consequences of what happens as a result of the player's choices. I don't go for the most probable but rather look for the most interesting of the POSSIBLE results that are plausible.
So in essence, I do indeed nudge things along. What "interesting" in both situation depends on the player. So during the course of the campaign I try what the players like and doesn't like. Both as individual and as a group.
I been doing this for a long time and developed a good eye for interesting consequences that keeps the player engaged in the campaign. I am not perfect by any means and learning new techniques and tricks all the time. And there are times when I misread and everything I do fails to engage the player.
And the sandbox style is not THE way to run tabletop roleplaying. It is a package of techniques to run a campaign a certain way. It has specific consequences and disadvantages. There are other techniques to use if you want to base a campaign around a interesting location or a interesting plot.
The point of my earlier reply was about the complaint you had on ramping up events. I ran into that issue as well and figured out a way to solve it that works most of the time.
Fair enough.
RPGPundit
Quote from: RPGPundit;522851And you've never had a game that fell apart out of boredom as a result?
I've had one campaign from a few years ago, which collapsed from boredom on my part.
It was a sandbox 4E D&D game played in the post-spellplague 4E Forgotten Realms, with players who were not experienced with sandbox type games.
It became kinda boring to DM, when the players just went around Waterdeep getting into bar fights and beating up random people on the streets. Not much else happened, other than the players setting the bars/saloons on fire after killing everybody in the establishment.