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hymer
2012-11-17, 03:27 PM
In my recent sandbox campaign (inspired by Westmarches), it was imperative to get players to go back to the starting point (a fort in the wilderness) between sessions. The PCs attending any mission depended on which players were invited by the mission caller, and which of those signed up for it. So the 'party' was not expected to be the same two sessions in a row.
This felt natural, as the fort was the place where food and safety could be had, and NPCs with useful skills, services and resources could be consulted. Once they got access to teleportation and such, it got less of a worry exactly where they were, of course. They could meet back up easily.

Now, in my coming campaign, I'd like to make an E6 sandbox that includes civilized cities, but I'd also like to have the capacity for many players and PCs to get together in varying groups to do what they want.
Can anyone come up with a device that would achieve this? In the former campaign, the fort was often compared to the Foreign Legion, in that many kinds of character could have a reason to come there. I'd like to give the PCs as much freedom as I can, but strangely, I can give them more freedom if I can sort out some groundrules for them to adhere to. Like the place they go back to between adventures.

I've been thinking about something like a travelling circus, so the PCs can move this base in directions they prefer. Anyone have any experience with this sort of thing? Suggestions, thoughts?

J-H
2012-11-17, 10:54 PM
How about a trade network? Several large cities and a number of medium-sized cities (with varying geography and economies) with regular caravans and/or barges traveling between them. Need to move part of the party halfway across the continent? Advance the timeline by 6 months and just say that they came along with the next scheduled caravan.

Blightedmarsh
2012-11-18, 03:05 AM
Mobile base?

Ship/airship/wagon train/Train/Giant transformable golem/s?

hymer
2012-11-18, 05:44 AM
@ J-H: Definitely a thought. There's still a bit of a communication problem, though. Perhaps a worry about a very different time flow, but I can just make the distances less.

@ Blightedmarsh: I'm leaning towards a ship at the moment. Everybody goes back to the ship after the session, and the ship can be pretty much anywhere next session. Main problem there is that one guy in our group is planning a pirate campaign, and I don' want to be stepping on his campaign's toes too much.

Cikomyr
2012-11-18, 05:46 AM
Take a page from Quest for Glory; the Adventurer's Guild.

nedz
2012-11-18, 06:50 AM
You can use guilds, with different guild houses in different towns. Churches and Monasteries can be made to work this way also.

Really though, in a sandbox, this should be up to the players. If the players choose to play classes like Druid, Ranger or Barbarian then they might wish to be independent, and thus without any base.

Cikomyr
2012-11-18, 07:14 AM
You can use guilds, with different guild houses in different towns. Churches and Monasteries can be made to work this way also.

Really though, in a sandbox, this should be up to the players. If the players choose to play classes like Druid, Ranger or Barbarian then they might wish to be independent, and thus without any base.

That is why I like the idea of Adventurer's guild. It's just a place where you can go if you need dough, or help, or contacts, etc...

Even loner-type characters might go there once in a while to get anything, be it job, reinforcement, etc... But it's not like the Guild can actually order them around.

hymer
2012-11-18, 07:19 AM
@ Cikomyr: How does that work? I don't know the game. I'm not even sure it is a game. :)

@ nedz: I'm afraid I need to give them some guidance to start with. At some point they may decide to leave whatever 'base' I end up providing, but there are social RL reasons they should have one to start with.
I'm a little hazy on how the guild houses would work. Is there a teleporter in them? Message system?

Blightedmarsh
2012-11-18, 07:29 AM
I think the idea is that each chapter house acts as a local base.

hymer
2012-11-18, 07:46 AM
Ah, well, if PCs 1-4 are in base A, PCs 5-8 have gone to Base B, and PCs 9-10 are still back at base C, it doesn't make gathering them together very natural, if it turns out the players want PCs 1, 3, 5, 7 and 9 for their next mission.

Blightedmarsh
2012-11-18, 08:10 AM
But if these chapter houses are in close contact with each other then the players can agree to rendezvous at the mission site.

hymer
2012-11-18, 08:12 AM
Yeah, that makes sense. They'd need some really fast method of communication. Pigeons, perhaps. Could be doable.

J-H
2012-11-18, 08:29 AM
There's always magic. Got Palantiri or a fixed audio-only equivalent?

hymer
2012-11-18, 08:39 AM
I try to keep that sort of thing to a minimum. The palantíri were major strategic considerations in the wars of Arnor. I think I'll stick to pidgeons for now, it's got that E6 feel to it. :)

J-H
2012-11-18, 08:56 AM
That's because the palantiri could be used to see more than just the other stones. How strategically important is having a single MagicVideoChat in each major city that only connects to the other major cities?

You could also have a Pony Express type service (plot hook) or semaphore towers (flags in daytime, 9 lanterns at night that are covered in different patterns for different words/characters). All those require is a sufficient investment.

hymer
2012-11-18, 09:03 AM
Pony express yes. Semaphore no. You're thinking Eberron and Discworld, I'm thinking Middle-Earth and the 200 BC Mediterranean. :)

J-H
2012-11-18, 09:33 AM
It's technologically possible in both - the Romans could have done it if they had thought of it and decided to invest the resources.

hymer
2012-11-18, 09:54 AM
It's as good a way of blowing up the mood and atmosphere as quoting Monty Python. Whether it's practical, I think we disagree there, but that's not really the problem.

Water_Bear
2012-11-18, 10:06 AM
It's as good a way of blowing up the mood and atmosphere as quoting Monty Python. Whether it's practical, I think we disagree there, but that's not really the problem.

Well, Roman frontier watchtowers actually did use flag-codes and torches to send messages, so it's not historically inaccurate. And if you remember the Return of the King's badass torch-lighting montage, it can be pretty dramatic.

Obviously taste is going to vary, but if you're keeping stuff like Gnomes, Beholders and the Bigsby's Hand spells this kind of thing seems fairly minor in terms of breaking the serious tone.

hymer
2012-11-18, 10:16 AM
As much as I worry about this thread degenerating into this discussion...

Yes, military posts, which were maintained at great cost for a very good reason, could do this. Having a semaphore system spanning the continent (at astronomic cost compared to sending pigeons, and huge practical difficulties) would change the world in ways we can barely imagine.
As mentioned, it's an E6 campaign I'm planning, so I'm not worried about Bigby's hands nor the eyes of the beholder. And I actually don't put gnomes in my campaigns.
I may have PCs capable of casting fireball, and they may run into a strange creature such as a manticore though (and a system of watch towers and border forts are very likely to have some method for signalling). But these will be local rarities, and none of them will be pervading the world like a system as the one described would.

Excession
2012-11-18, 06:12 PM
Pony express yes. Semaphore no. You're thinking Eberron and Discworld, I'm thinking Middle-Earth and the 200 BC Mediterranean. :)

Well, advanced semaphore systems like a hydraulic telegraph (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydraulic_telegraph) were used in 400 BC Greece. Simple stuff like smoke signals require even less tech. Continent spanning not so much (though Sicily to Carthage is damned impressive), but just because it was a long time ago doesn't mean people were stupid, or unable to see the advantages of long distance communication.

The problem with a pony express is that it's going to be extremely expensive to maintain. You need to feed and house a lot of horses and riders, and that isn't nearly as cheap as most people think. Pigeons are perhaps cheaper, but you still need to ship the birds back manually afterwards, assuming they even survive the trip. I'm also not sure how long a pigeon can be kept in one place and still think of the intended destination as "home".

Jerthanis
2012-11-18, 10:13 PM
You could also have all of the Adventures hosted out of a single specific location, but which can take the party out to other centers of culture sometimes, but the Adventurers' home is in the one specific city, and it is where the adventure is to be found...

Perhaps a frontier town, with an untamed wild nearby, perhaps corrupted by Fae magics or an Undead Blight. Outside the frontier are cities that have more resources and experts, and some places to go for additional Adventuring but if they want to do the Cool Stuff of the game, they'll make their way back to that town eventually.

snikrept
2012-11-19, 04:45 AM
Consider accelerating the passage of world time.

Missions take place months apart instead of days. Plots move on the scale of years. Pigeons / couriers / caravans / ships etc now easily have time to summon PCs from other places to do the next mission.

Secondary advantage: level progress isn't as crazy as normal. Avoids "we came to this city at planting time as clueless commonfolk; we are back here at harvest time as world-renowned demigods..."

Tertiary advantage: Evil bosses can legitimately be scaled in power level to the PCs. When the story starts they're still youths with a gang of toughs; by the time the PCs are high level, if they've not yet been dealt with they've amassed money and power and threaten the kingdom. A process which might take decades.

hymer
2012-11-19, 05:16 AM
@ Excession: Impressive, but local - and again military. I wonder whether Polybius was right on Sicily-Carthage. Sounds like the initial prompting (for one thing) would make this difficult.
The adventurer's guild would use the pigeons by having adventurers going to a nearby city take a bunch of pigeons with them when they go (or send them along with merchants they usually work with). The pigeons would stay most of their time at home base, and only go to the next town or city. If you want to send a few cities away, you send it in steps. And yes, some pigeons might not make it, though this worry hasn't stopped them from being used for military purposes. Fortunately, pigeons are relatively inexpensive, and you can send more than one.
And the fear of interception helps too.

@ Jerthanis: Certainly worth consideration. Especially in conjunction with something of snikrept's suggestion.

@ snikrept: Good thinking! It would set a different mood from what we usually see, and crafters would probably have it too good unless I find some other way of getting a handle on them. I'd also need to take into consideration that the 'adventurer' might turn into a shopkeeper to make the most of the downtime.

Friv
2012-11-19, 10:08 AM
If you want something that's E6 magical, as opposed to over-the-top magical, you could also use druid-trained peregrine falcons. They move a bit faster than pigeons and are a lot harder to easily intercept, and Animal Messenger is only a Level 2 spell, so 3rd-level druids could put together a few specialized magic items for an adventurer's guild that would allow them to send falcons all over the place without having to have individual ones for each chapterhouse route.

It is something that makes the guild impressive, without having an actual telegraph network in place to do things over the top.

hymer
2012-11-19, 11:15 AM
Good point. If the players are ok with it, they may actually cooperate with a network of druids from the beginning. Such a group should have no trouble keeping contact with that.

Blightedmarsh
2012-11-19, 11:31 AM
If your talking about endurance flight then falcons aren't the fastest; not even close. You want ducks; geese are a close second.

J-H
2012-11-19, 12:27 PM
I think you should go with an African swallow for speed. I hear they are very fast when unladen.

nedz
2012-11-19, 02:47 PM
Owlpigs, that's what you want. Much more intelligent and stealthy, well, at least if anyone does report them — they are not likely to be believed.

Blightedmarsh
2012-11-20, 12:34 AM
But not crows; they're smart enough to stab you in the back when the going gets tough.

Yukitsu
2012-11-21, 01:54 AM
Fill it with really fun NPCs.

hymer
2012-11-21, 06:57 AM
Always a good idea. Would you elaborate? Is 'it' the base or the campaign world or something else?

Yukitsu
2012-11-21, 01:51 PM
Always a good idea. Would you elaborate? Is 'it' the base or the campaign world or something else?

Any of those. If you put interesting NPCs in a basic shop, they'll shop there more often. If you put it in a city, they'll visit that city. If you make it their base' staff, they'll spend more time in base.

In my case, they like the NPC's in their company's city, so they spend a lot of time in town, even though they can travel wherever they want.

hymer
2012-11-22, 05:13 AM
I hope my skillz will be up to the challenge. :) Thanks for the advice.

BootStrapTommy
2012-11-23, 02:38 AM
Make the players be apart of a specific organization. Just like a generic adventurers guild or something, nothing too plot shaking or railroading. A completely characterless guild with absolutely no motivation besides letting the players know what all quest are out there at the moment. Make the base be the Guild headquarters, and make it located centrally at a oft tarveled crossroads. Make the party start there. Make them receive most of their mission through the Guild, but don't write any more into the Guild other than that they connect quest-hungry adventurers with quests that need doing. Make it so that the quest giver is the classic shady in the back of an inn asking for the mcguffin, but don't allow the players to find him on their own. Make the guild say "shady character in inn wants mcguffin. Check it out if you like. If not lordly fellow in castle has a rat problem or mayor of nowhereville has an angry native problem." Basically they'd be a fantasy equivalent of a temp service. Then make them offer discount services to members, just to make the players' pocketbooks agree (drop a few silver or one to five gold of the price of things for building it through the guild).

Basically you just sandbox like normal, but put "the guild says these quests are available if you would like" instead of "these are the quests available to you." If they hear the guild name enough, they'll likely stick around, even though the guild is basically a useless storytelling device.

hymer
2012-11-23, 06:12 AM
@ BST: Thanks for your thoughts. It may well be something like that. Though...


"these are the quests available to you."

I'd never say that in a sandbox. :)

Yukitsu
2012-11-23, 05:21 PM
On Boot Strap's advice, to make sure they don't just bail on their guild, a good way to invest them in making sure it gets fleshed out instead of abandoned is to make them the guild leaders, just make sure some NPCs are hanging around the guild.

hymer
2012-11-23, 05:24 PM
This is intended to be a sandbox, so I better not force too much on them. But thanks anyway.The basic idea of making the guild something they can take personal pride or joy in is good.

BootStrapTommy
2012-11-23, 11:01 PM
I'd never say that in a sandbox. :)

Honestly, as a DM you always do this, sandbox or not. Ultimately you're the one who provides them with the quests they do and the world they exist in, whether or not you actually say "these are the quests available" or not. Ultimately the quest they do are the ones you let them. You just need to let them do what ever they wnat, then make them turn the quest into the guild at the end of the day. In a sense, in simply being the DM you are doing it.

Catch my drift?

nedz
2012-11-24, 12:46 AM
Basically you just sandbox like normal, but put "the guild says these quests are available if you would like" instead of "these are the quests available to you." If they hear the guild name enough, they'll likely stick around, even though the guild is basically a useless storytelling device.

This is why I don't like the adventurers guild idea. It just smacks of quest givers / deux est machina / railroads — even if it isn't.

Far better to make them members of a guild with an economic portfolio, then the business interests naturally generates issues that need resolving and will involve politics also. Bonus points if the cleric's church has an angle in all of whatever this is.

I'd sooner have them work for the post office even.:smallamused:

Blightedmarsh
2012-11-24, 01:29 AM
Considering that the post office is a order of druids who use animals for messages that could actually work.

hymer
2012-11-24, 04:53 AM
@ BootStrapTommy: Yes and no. I may well provide them with options, but I certainly don't limit them to those options (and what I was saying was, I certainly don't draw attention to their limits in scope if I can avoid it). The idea behind the sandbox is that the players, directly if they want or via their PCs in any case, get to shape the world too.
The time when I put my foot down is if they told me they wanted to do X, and I therefore preapred X - and then they begin heading off to do Y, which I haven't prepared. That won't work, I don't improvise well enough for that.

@ nedz: I see what you mean.

@ Blightedmarsh: For a given value of post office anyway. :smallbiggrin:

BootStrapTommy
2012-11-24, 02:04 PM
@ BootStrapTommy: Yes and no. I may well provide them with options, but I certainly don't limit them to those options (and what I was saying was, I certainly don't draw attention to their limits in scope if I can avoid it). The idea behind the sandbox is that the players, directly if they want or via their PCs in any case, get to shape the world too.
The time when I put my foot down is if they told me they wanted to do X, and I therefore preapred X - and then they begin heading off to do Y, which I haven't prepared. That won't work, I don't improvise well enough for that.


You missed my point. As a DM you are subconsciously doing it whether you actually limit them or not. It's the nature of being a DM that you are always railroading the players in one degree or another, intentionally or not. Even in a sandbox. If you weren't doing so, then you wouldn't be DMing, you would just be sitting there while the players DM themselves. The only way for it not to be the case is for there to be no DM. Because when it all boils down to it, even in a sandbox the DM is God and ultimately what the players can and cannot do is limited by the DM directly or indirectly, even if he is trying not to. Just the nature of the beast.

BootStrapTommy
2012-11-24, 02:18 PM
This is why I don't like the adventurers guild idea. It just smacks of quest givers / deux est machina / railroads — even if it isn't.

Far better to make them members of a guild with an economic portfolio, then the business interests naturally generates issues that need resolving and will involve politics also. Bonus points if the cleric's church has an angle in all of whatever this is.

I'd sooner have them work for the post office even.:smallamused:

I direct you to the above. A DM CANNOT NOT railroad players. The point of a sandbox is for the DM to attempt to as closely as possible replicate the philosophy quoted in my signature and reduce railroading to a minimum. But a DM cannot actually not railroad the players, since the DM effectively chooses all actions taken by all nonplayer characters. The players are going to have to make decisions based on and accept consequences to all actions which the DM chooses to make with the world of NPCs he has a his disposal.

Consequently, the guild could be very easily fitted into a sandbox without changing anything to the inner nature of the beast, only the outer appearance. And if there is absolutely nothing to the guild other than that they are a temp service, than the sandbox remains devoid of noncharacter driven plot. Fundamentally it changes nothing.

hymer
2012-11-24, 02:23 PM
Actually, I didn't miss your point (notice my paranthetical comment that you quoted, e.g.). I merely disagree with you, not least on what constitutes 'railroading'.

nedz
2012-11-24, 06:12 PM
I direct you to the above. A DM CANNOT NOT railroad players. The point of a sandbox is for the DM to attempt to as closely as possible replicate the philosophy quoted in my signature and reduce railroading to a minimum. But a DM cannot actually not railroad the players, since the DM effectively chooses all actions taken by all nonplayer characters. The players are going to have to make decisions based on and accept consequences to all actions which the DM chooses to make with the world of NPCs he has a his disposal.

Consequently, the guild could be very easily fitted into a sandbox without changing anything to the inner nature of the beast, only the outer appearance. And if there is absolutely nothing to the guild other than that they are a temp service, than the sandbox remains devoid of noncharacter driven plot. Fundamentally it changes nothing.

Actually my comments were mainly about the appearance, though your thesis is false.

Consider:


Player(s) decide to leave town and head west.
DM generates some random terrain, or consults his previously generated random terrain (1).
Based upon the terrain, the DM generates some random encounter.
DM runs encounter.


(1) an arbitrary map will suffice.

Now this type of methodology can be extended to cover the whole campaign, and involves no rail roading, so it is not true that the DM must always rail road.

Such games are quite dull and I wouldn't recommend them, but it does disprove your theory.

BootStrapTommy
2012-11-25, 09:22 PM
Actually my comments were mainly about the appearance, though your thesis is false.

Consider:


Player(s) decide to leave town and head west.
DM generates some random terrain, or consults his previously generated random terrain (1).
Based upon the terrain, the DM generates some random encounter.
DM runs encounter.


(1) an arbitrary map will suffice.

Now this type of methodology can be extended to cover the whole campaign, and involves no rail roading, so it is not true that the DM must always rail road.

Such games are quite dull and I wouldn't recommend them, but it does disprove your theory.

Fundamentally flawed premise. A campaign is more than randomly generated terrain and encounters. There are PEOPLE populating any fantasy, even a sandbox. You cannot DM a campaign without passing some kind of thought to these NPCs and since the PCs are not gods, their actions will ultimately have consequences which will win them both friends and enemies form among these NPCs. And players will inevitably encounter those NPCs and interact with them. In fact, this will happen MORE OFTEN in a sandbox than in a normal campaign, since players are far more likely to end up in a town in a sandbox than a campaign. And unlike terrain and encounters, there is no real mechanism for "randomized personal interaction". The DM effectively PLAYS all NPCs (and any randomly generated monsters coem to think of it) and a sandbox will inevitably have more NPCs than a normal campaign. And every time players interact with NPCs, players only have a small and roughly defined set of possible interactions which they are inclined to take. While a player CAN take almost any action, there are pretty obvious and often severe consequences for doing certain actions. And the truth is "railroading" is simply assigning consequences to actions. And even in a sandbox, this should be on the forefront of a DM's mind. But the implication is simple here. The DM has choices to make about how to play NPCs and how they interact with the player. The choices the DM makes effect the players. When the DM makes those choices (which they must make based on the nature of the game) they effectively limit the players as well, at least in the lose sense of introducing consequences to the players which did not previously exist. For example, if a group of players decide that they would like to change things up in the sandbox and put Player B on the throne, a DM has a lot more to do and create for the players to even attempt to complete such a goal. And each characters which the DM builds to help or hurt their chances at this objective affectingly limits the decisions which the players themselves must make and the options they have for such decisions. This is because each character a DM adds introduces a whole new set of consequences for actions taken, a limitation on players. And to ignore this is to boil the game down to just random encounters and nothing more. Yet even in random encounters the DM must make decisions for what actions the monsters take.

This is honestly what I dislike about player wars on "railroading". Fundamentally at it core the mechanics dictate a certain level of railroading. When DMs try to not railroad their players, they usually are just finding ways to hid what little railroading they do from players. A fundamental law of interaction is that actions have consequences. And this is a fundamental foundation for the way role-playing games are set up. When players ignore the guy who says the world will end without their help, and then the world ends, the players have no reason to be butthurt about it. They made a poor choice.

BootStrapTommy
2012-11-25, 09:31 PM
Actually, I didn't miss your point (notice my paranthetical comment that you quoted, e.g.). I merely disagree with you, not least on what constitutes 'railroading'.

I see your point. But it honestly annoys me. Like I said, usually when a DM reduces railroading in a campaign, all they actually do is hid it from the players. Just seems pointless to me. Its still there, players should just get over the fact that it is a necessary evil of the game. You can only go and do what it is within the power of a DM to build for you to do. And while you can take any action, you should expect natural consequences from taking such actions. Players are too quick to call it railroading, instead of realizing that its just the nature of the beast of relying on a single person to build the entire fantasy world you're in off the top of their head. If players would just get over that, DMing would be a lot easier.