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Balor01
2011-08-01, 09:52 AM
Hey guys,

I have a question.

I am a semi-long time DM and during the years I started to love sandbox and 3.5 ed.
This fall, however, I may start to DM for a small group consisting of one very good sandbox-game-type player and probably a couple noobs who are more used to WoW-like games. Meanaing, you get a quest to "kill X" or "fetch Y" form guy like this: http://compuball.com/WoW/images/beginner/Cursor_Quest_Give.jpg.
It happened on occasion that people of these type went full retard (being unable to come up with a decent quest by themselves) and started killing NPCs (and ended up in jail) or had to eventually start to roll Fort. checks because they started to starve.

As much as I find this amusing, (and do not refrain from TPK and other brutal shennanigans) I would still like maybe some ideas how to involve people in a certain undertaking without making them the target of local assassins guild, vampire family or make them recruited by local Cleric of Pelor with you-look-trustworthy approach.

Then again, this last may be fun with cleric being a greater doppelganger who wants to use the party for human centripede experiment. :smallbiggrin:

Erloas
2011-08-01, 10:49 AM
So you are asking how to get your players to go find their own trouble without finding too much of it?

Put them in a large, very corrupt, and dangerous city. Where a bit of killing will go on almost unnoticed. Where there are too many small powers still fighting for control and no group has yet had the power to take over too much. So while they might make some enemies they aren't going to get themselves too big of enemies. Knowing everyone is evilish or at least corrupt they can not worry too much about what they do.

If they are slow to act, they can still be approached for jobs, ala quest giver because a lot of people will need hired muscle, but they can also run into events going on in the city, such as rival gangs, and pick which side to help. They might be slow to pick up on the openness of things, but if you give them a few jobs and portray the setting right then it can become clear to them that the only way to get ahead is to work for themselves rather then someone else.

Yora
2011-08-01, 10:51 AM
You don't make campaigns with beginner-level players in which they can do what they want.

Such players lack the experience to know what really is possible in a game, and what unwritten expectations exist between players and gm.
All campaigns need a goal. If it's a goal that has been defined by the gm, or if the players agree on a goal, is really mostly unimportant.

The first step should be to get together with all the players and have them discuss what type of campaign they want to play. Is it a pirate campaign, a colonization campaign, a thieves campaign, a military campaign, or whatever. And when everyone has agreed on a goal, only then you get to the point where they players start to think of the characters they would like to play.

In a gm driven campaign you usually have the goal of "this is the antagonist, you have to prevent him from implementing his plan". Whereas in a player driven campaign it's "we want to achieve this thing, how do we gather the resources and allies to make it happen". But in either case, you need a goal. And it should be something that is in the personal interest of the characters, which is why it is important that characters are created after the goal is defined.

Radar
2011-08-01, 11:04 AM
PCs tend to do more stupid things, when they are bored or have too much time at their hands. It's always good to have some odd jobs available - through a noticeboard or a proclamation (Hear ye! Hear ye!). They might see some other mismatched groups of adventurers debating over some available quests. Generally let them decide on the job (at least virtually - many different quests might lead to similar encounters anyway).

If you want to show them, that actions have consequences, then you can play out some scene, where local authorities efficiently deal with criminalists. Let's say they took up guard duty for some caravan or what have you. Some shady figure approaches them before they assume duty and offers them some more cash for being somewhat lazy on the job. If they take his offer, they'll at the very least have to deal with bad reputation (they failed at their job) and they authorities will question them throughoutly. If they don't, let them encounter the same NPC some time later, while he is being publicly punished for some other crime.

LansXero
2011-08-01, 11:23 AM
A nice blend of "WoWlike questgiving" and sandbox that Ive read recently has been the Kingmaker adventure path by Paizo. It includes a whole subsystem for creating your own kingdom and stuff, and has a main plot, but there are tons of not-in-order sidequests as well as a lot of blank space for improvisation or whatnot. Id recommend checking it out :D

dsmiles
2011-08-01, 11:36 AM
You don't make campaigns with beginner-level players in which they can do what they want.

Such players lack the experience to know what really is possible in a game, and what unwritten expectations exist between players and gm.
All campaigns need a goal. If it's a goal that has been defined by the gm, or if the players agree on a goal, is really mostly unimportant.

The first step should be to get together with all the players and have them discuss what type of campaign they want to play. Is it a pirate campaign, a colonization campaign, a thieves campaign, a military campaign, or whatever. And when everyone has agreed on a goal, only then you get to the point where they players start to think of the characters they would like to play.

In a gm driven campaign you usually have the goal of "this is the antagonist, you have to prevent him from implementing his plan". Whereas in a player driven campaign it's "we want to achieve this thing, how do we gather the resources and allies to make it happen". But in either case, you need a goal. And it should be something that is in the personal interest of the characters, which is why it is important that characters are created after the goal is defined.This. So much this.

There is simply just too much potential for disaster with inexperienced roleplayers in a sandbox. They will either get bored, or get TPK'd. Either way, it's bad for business, and will lead to them not coming back to get the experience to be able to function properly in a sandbox.

sdream
2011-08-01, 12:08 PM
If you have an experienced player in the group, make him a dread necromancer who owns the souls of a couple old friends who died because they were too foolhardy to pick smart fights.

The massive spell keeping them alive drains the power of the necromancer and can only bring them back as a shell of their former glory (hello, low levels).

Then you can handwave cheap ressurections and the party has a goal to restore them to true life and their original power, which they can be hunting down relics (levelling up).

TheThan
2011-08-01, 01:41 PM
You don't make campaigns with beginner-level players in which they can do what they want.

Such players lack the experience to know what really is possible in a game, and what unwritten expectations exist between players and gm.
All campaigns need a goal. If it's a goal that has been defined by the gm, or if the players agree on a goal, is really mostly unimportant.

The first step should be to get together with all the players and have them discuss what type of campaign they want to play. Is it a pirate campaign, a colonization campaign, a thieves campaign, a military campaign, or whatever. And when everyone has agreed on a goal, only then you get to the point where they players start to think of the characters they would like to play.

In a gm driven campaign you usually have the goal of "this is the antagonist, you have to prevent him from implementing his plan". Whereas in a player driven campaign it's "we want to achieve this thing, how do we gather the resources and allies to make it happen". But in either case, you need a goal. And it should be something that is in the personal interest of the characters, which is why it is important that characters are created after the goal is defined.


I agree with this, you need to let your players pick up some experience with tabletop rpgs for a while. then after a bit you can introduce them to sandbox style games.

Balor01
2011-08-02, 03:29 AM
Great advice, tnx. I'll talk to players, but I also like Erloas' suggestion. I have just a city for my scoundrel PCs.