Structure vs Freedom

[HidesHisEyes]

I'm hoping to start running a campaign some time soon and I've decided I want to run something that gives the players lots of options for what adventures to have and lets them pick and choose which ones to pursue. There will be a story but I plan to make it more like unravelling a mystery a little at a time, finding clues here and there while on (rather dungeon-crawly, action adventure style) quests.

The reason why I haven't just described it as a "sandbox" campaign is because I also really want it to have some amount of structure. I feel like sandbox games tend to involve too much wandering around and trying to find adventures. At their worst they degenerate into long, dull discussions about what to do next. So what I want to do is offer the players a very clear list of quests or adventures to pursue, and create a very clear divide between "downtime" and "adventure time". Downtime ends when you pick an adventure and set out. I will probably make the premise that the PCs are working for some kind of organisation, maybe just a simple adventurers' guild, and the missions pop up on a big notice board. But as I said, a story will gradually emerge.

Obviously this gives the players much less freedom than a true sandbox where they just wander on their own terms. But it's still not entirely linear and it cuts out hours of dithering and replaces them with that sweet, sweet adventures (at least in theory).

But I want to gauge whether other people are with me on this. What do you think? Do you appreciate structure or do you think player freedom trumps everything?

[Freemason Than]

I like it, and usually go for a similar approach myself.

I'm a big fan of sandbox-style gameplay, but I don't like to commit to it all the way either. It helps a ton if everyone is required to make a character that is ready and willing, from the get-go, to pursue the main quest - or are all moving towards a certain goal at least. Something basic and open-ended like "stop the regime", "get rid of the dragon", "save the princess", etc..
It saves time and prevents people from just wandering around aimlessly, looking for something meaningful to do. In my experience, a random events plot wears out its welcome very quickly. With a clear destination in mind, it also ensures everyone is on the same page so the party doesn't stay together 'just because'.

So the notice board thing is clean and simple. Go kill these bandits. Go to this or that location.
Then let the players go nuts with how exactly they handle the situation.

[Frozen_Feet]

Give them a treasure map with multiple marked locations of interest.

The game can otherwise be pure sandbox, but at least the players always have an idea of where they could go next.

[Florian]

But I want to gauge whether other people are with me on this. What do you think? Do you appreciate structure or do you think player freedom trumps everything?

There´re some "structured sandboxes" around and they generally seem to be quite popular. Take a look at Kingmaker, for example. The mix of being able to run around like you want but still always get a coherent story going has a very high appeal.

[Yora]

One very nice approach is to do sandbox adventures instead of a sandbox campaign. Instead of a whole region at once, do one dungeon, ruin, or village at a time. Create the place, the people currently in that place, the event that is currently going on there, and then let the players interact with the place and NPCs in whatever way they want. When they think they solved the situation to their satisfaction and there's nothing left to do for them in that place, they return home to their base and you can start thinking about the next place they might go to and what situation is currently going on there.
It's basically a movie series or TV show format. If you want to you can have places appear again with a new situation going on, or have old NPCs show up in new places.

[Arcane_Snowman]

Player freedom doesn't trump much of anything in my opinion, as the DM you're entitled to have fun also. If your idea of fun involves running a straightforward game for them then that's up to you. On the other hand I do believe that at the players ability to affect the story is paramount. Those two things are not the same, and a lot of the time a mostly linear story gets a bad rap from railroading DMs who force their PCs along the plot.

Now, I personally run games with a lot of personal freedom. Usually, I try to find out what the players want for their characters and the present a number of plot hooks for them to follow, and then build upon those either with more stuff to interest them, consequences of their actions or secret plots for them to stumble upon on their way to meeting their own objectives. This means that there's a lot less faffing about not knowing what you want to do, whilst at the same time not putting as great a burden on me in terms of having to make every single corner of the world up.

As with anything when it comes to roleplaying with people, it's all a matter of what those at your table feel, yourself included, the most comfortable with and what concessions you are willing to make for the sake of fun.

[SirBellias]

Have you looked at Rollplay's West Marches campaign on YouTube? Because that is almost exactly what you describe, except with a rotating player base. It would probably be easier with the same players, actually.

Basically, the players start every session at the main tavern in the border town of a huge, boring empire. The wilds are dangerous in this area, and as such provide suitable adventuring opportunities for anyone looking for some action. Usually in their campaign the characters hear about different missions from their rather generic contacts, but when my friends and I run it we use a notice board as you describe. I kept 3 or 4 things on the noticeboard that were doable, as well as some news from outlying regions that they could look into. It worked pretty well, but my campaign fell victim to balancing issues that you won't have with a fixed player base. All in all, it led to some of the best sessions I've ever ran.

Edit: Freemason_Than's idea is a good one for keeping the party together. What I do when I have a large enough player base is not have the party sticking together. Sure, they may all go with each other to do a quest or two at some point, but they can rely on whose available at the time, just as we rely on whichever players are available at a time. But if you have a small number of players, or want the same party catch all the pieces of the same story, I'd go with Freemason_Than's idea.

[valadil]

But I want to gauge whether other people are with me on this. What do you think? Do you appreciate structure or do you think player freedom trumps everything?

I think player choice trumps everything. If the players choose to do something, you should commit to it. You should empower them to make an informed choice, but respect the choices they make. Your ability to roll with any choice is what separates tabletop RPGs from video games.

As it relates to your question though, I have no issue with offering some premade choices to the players. I actually think it helps move the game along.

Some players want to sit back and watch the game happen to them. Letting them pick left or right is all the choice they want. Other players will be more opinionated. If you offer them a, b, and c, and they come up with "d: other", you better go with it. They cared enough about the game to ignore the choices you handed out and actually came up with their own option. That's behavior you want to reward.

[Honest Tiefling]

I appreciate the DM being comfortable, really. If they want to run a sandbox, fine. If they need more structure and really think it's the best way to provide detail, fine. Prepping a campaign is a lot of work, and it can really show if the DM can't really handle the workload or isn't really feeling it. If they need structure to get that creativity going or to reduce prep, that should be a fine choice.

If I had to pick a preference...I'd say structure. I get the appeal of a sandbox, but they've always gone horribly as the rag-tag group of adventurers is a bit too rag-tag, or no one can agree on which plot point to follow. That's probably been bad experiences, however.

[Yora]

As it relates to your question though, I have no issue with offering some premade choices to the players. I actually think it helps move the game along.

I think possibly the most important part of a GM's work is to present the world and NPCs to the players in a way that makes them feel like there's always a way forward for them. The very last situation you ever want to have in a campaign is the players feeling like they reached a dead end and there's no real way in which they could continue from here on, or that they have to do something they don't really like because there's nothing else they could be doing. When everything goes well, the players should always think that there's at least two things they could do in their situation.
But any other idea they come up with should also be something they can attempt. It does not have to work out for them and be a success, but as long as the adventure goes forward that's okay.

[Mastikator]

Give them a treasure map with multiple marked locations of interest.

The game can otherwise be pure sandbox, but at least the players always have an idea of where they could go next.
I love this idea.

That's all I have to say

[Darth Ultron]

But I want to gauge whether other people are with me on this. What do you think? Do you appreciate structure or do you think player freedom trumps everything?

This is a lot like most normal games: there is structure with at least the illusion of player freedom. It is a lot like the DM just ''makes the world'' and has everything ''act and react normally'' and the players are (sort of) free to (sort of) do anything (but not really anything).

Often the game has the ''structure'' of the PC's ''must'' do X, and the DM gets the players to, um ''freely'' pick that to do. And the payers get more illusion of freedom as they can ''do X'' anyway they want to.....sort of. They can at least ''try'' anything. Though most of the time the solution to X is pretty obvious, so the players need to '''freely '' pick that. Though the players can always, say pick what arrow the character shoots from the bow.....but not avoid the fight(mostly).

[neonagash]

This is a lot like most normal games: there is structure with at least the illusion of player freedom. It is a lot like the DM just ''makes the world'' and has everything ''act and react normally'' and the players are (sort of) free to (sort of) do anything (but not really anything).

Often the game has the ''structure'' of the PC's ''must'' do X, and the DM gets the players to, um ''freely'' pick that to do. And the payers get more illusion of freedom as they can ''do X'' anyway they want to.....sort of. They can at least ''try'' anything. Though most of the time the solution to X is pretty obvious, so the players need to '''freely '' pick that. Though the players can always, say pick what arrow the character shoots from the bow.....but not avoid the fight(mostly).

If that described most of the games I had been in I would have quit playing back in middle school.

I feel like I should hold up a D&D book and ask you where it bad touched you after reading that.

[OldTrees1]

If that described most of the games I had been in I would have quit playing back in middle school.

I feel like I should hold up a D&D book and ask you where it bad touched you after reading that.

Other way around. Darth Ultron DMs for his group. We don't have good data on how fast players leave his table but ...


I am a fan of Player have full agency but their characters are in a living world. By living world I mean:
1) Information cannot be retconned after set. Even if the players didn't see the information.
2) The world will have events and change that are set into motion independently of PC action.

If I get a weird set of PCs that start working at a tavern to enable them to play Humans & Houses, then the story will be the PCs playing H&H while events unfold in the world around them (including how the PCs endure those events to get back to more H&H). <Hmm. That kinda sounds like a fun one time experience.>

However there is a broad range of structure X agency and different people like to play in different parts.

[HidesHisEyes]

One very nice approach is to do sandbox adventures instead of a sandbox campaign. Instead of a whole region at once, do one dungeon, ruin, or village at a time. Create the place, the people currently in that place, the event that is currently going on there, and then let the players interact with the place and NPCs in whatever way they want. When they think they solved the situation to their satisfaction and there's nothing left to do for them in that place, they return home to their base and you can start thinking about the next place they might go to and what situation is currently going on there.
It's basically a movie series or TV show format. If you want to you can have places appear again with a new situation going on, or have old NPCs show up in new places.

This is similar to what I have in mind, although not exactly the same. Really cool idea and definitely one I'll explore. Thanks!

[Takewo]

If that described most of the games I had been in I would have quit playing back in middle school.

I feel like I should hold up a D&D book and ask you where it bad touched you after reading that.

He has a point, though. As far as I know, many games fall in either being a sandbox without any sort of plot whatsoever, or being a sort of adventure where the master provides several hooks to the party and they just follow them.

That doesn't mean, of course, that all games are like that. Many aren't. I personally try not to run those kinds of game. But many people play like that.

[Darth Ultron]

If that described most of the games I had been in I would have quit playing back in middle school.

Well, it does describe most games. You just don't like my use of truth. You'd much rater like to believe the illusion where things are said like ''the players have freedom''. And you just choose to ignore the little note that says that is not exactly true.


Other way around. Darth Ultron DMs for his group. We don't have good data on how fast players leave his table but ...


I am a fan of Player have full agency but their characters are in a living world. By living world I mean:
1) Information cannot be retconned after set. Even if the players didn't see the information.
2) The world will have events and change that are set into motion independently of PC action.



Good players I vetted before the game don't leave, other random players run for the hills at a good 50% or so.

And see, here are the notes I was talking about above. See how it is said ''players have full agency''(um, except X). Well, see that changes the ''full agency''.



He has a point, though. As far as I know, many games fall in either being a sandbox without any sort of plot whatsoever, or being a sort of adventure where the master provides several hooks to the party and they just follow them.

That doesn't mean, of course, that all games are like that. Many aren't. I personally try not to run those kinds of game. But many people play like that.

Many are, people just don't like being honest. Or maybe it's just the irrational narrow hate filled view of structure.

A lot of GM's have said thing like ''I do nothing and sit around and wait for my players to make a plot''. Ok, fine, but then after that it is a standard structure type game. But the DM will get all up on their high horse and say their game is special and unique as the players picked the plot. And yet there game is a standard structure type game.

A lot of GM's find making plots too hard, so they just do the Adventure Path of just putting adventure in front of the PC's no matter what they do or where they go. And this can work for a very short time, but if the game will have any reality to it....it needs structure.

[Florian]

@Darth Ultron:

Like so often, I think that you seem to have a certain dividing line in mind but fail to convey it.

My take on it:
- Setting: This is simply "the world" as it is, created with everything in it. It defines everything that could be possibly done in it.
- Meta-Plot: This is some overall happening in the setting with its own momentum. Like A and B are in a state of war. It happens regardless of player agency.
- Sandbox: This is Setting with some un-triggered Meta-Plot lying around that players are free to trigger and engage in or not.

[Takewo]

Well, it does describe most games. You just don't like my use of truth. You'd much rater like to believe the illusion where things are said like ''the players have freedom''. And you just choose to ignore the little note that says that is not exactly true.

However, his experience might have been different. There are other ways to play the game.


And see, here are the notes I was talking about above. See how it is said ''players have full agency''(um, except X). Well, see that changes the ''full agency''.

I don't think these two things apply to the same context. The game system, house rules and things that are agreed or imposed that will or will not be do not affect agency during playtime, they set the framework in which the story is going to unfold.

Agency refers to the extent to which a player is master over his character's actions. If the character will end up saving the princess no matter what the player wants it to do, then there is no player agency. If, however, the player can decide that the character will not save the princess, then there is player agency (up to a certain point, at least).


Many are, people just don't like being honest. Or maybe it's just the irrational narrow hate filled view of structure.

Indeed.


A lot of GM's have said thing like ''I do nothing and sit around and wait for my players to make a plot''. Ok, fine, but then after that it is a standard structure type game. But the DM will get all up on their high horse and say their game is special and unique as the players picked the plot. And yet there game is a standard structure type game.

I don't know what kind of game masters you have encountered, but I am yet to find somebody who claims that their games a unique and special. And yet, most game masters I have encountered have a particular way to play that makes it different to the others.

The fact that the players picked the plot, well, that is many times an illusion, I agree. Other times, the players choose a plot among different options, which is not bad. It is close to impossible to develop a story in which there is no plot whatsoever. The game master's job is to give options to the party (at least, that's in a very short, unspecific way how I see it) and provide the world in which the players act. However, there is a great difference between these two options:

a) There is this dark lord who threatens to destroy the world. You've got to defeat him.

b) There is this dark lord who threatens to destroy the world. You've got to destroy them by first saving this village from an invasion of orcs, then meeting this NPC, then seeing how she dies, then going to the Blue Mountains and finding the blueprint for the Philosopher's Stone, then doing five hundred push-ups, then infiltrating into his Dark Tower, then running away from his Dark Tower, then finding one of his high rank lackeys and grilling him for information, then using such information to thwart one of his minor plans, then....

[GrayDeath]

Generally ... I cant say. it heavily depends on System, Setting, Players etc...

I for once enjoy athmospheric, breathing, "logically consistant in their reactions" World and NPC´s.
I also love good stories, but the abovementioned has precedence over just about anything else (except the "No idiots here please" and such of course ^^).


So lets say I want to have my Players do most of the deciding themselves, like in my recent IK Campaign.

In that Case I think about where to start, memorize the general Situation there, build their Characters with them, thend ecide what Entry Hook to give them.
Im this example they all decided to be in the Khadoran Military (from Khadoran Noble running away from boring home life to Lael Deserter we had a wide variety).
After knowing that I gave them a very basic job: travel from X to Y, how you do it, what you do along the way, everything up to them (and a bit of Randomness^^).

And I watch them closely while they do, making notes of what their Characters did, why (I think^^), and what they seem to enjoy.

That determines the next Job they get (Military Campaigns need Orders....but I usually give them rather wide ones, like "Find this troubling resistance cell and make the trouble stop", instead of "Search for Informant X, find Resistance Fighter A and B and kill them, then report back with your findings to get sent to kill resistance leader".

All a matter of taste and priorities.

True totally free Sandboxing....I only saw working once, and in that case ALL the players knew the world exceedignly well, built their characters with an agency in mind and went to work.
it was glorious ... but it ended, as do all good things.


So to sum it up: Give it "hard" but WIDE structure, be clear with the players about it (and check that the Characters fit) and have fun!

[OldTrees1]

My take on it:
- Setting: This is simply "the world" as it is, created with everything in it. It defines everything that could be possibly done in it.
- Meta-Plot: This is some overall happening in the setting with its own momentum. Like A and B are in a state of war. It happens regardless of player agency.
- Sandbox: This is Setting with some un-triggered Meta-Plot lying around that players are free to trigger and engage in or not.

What I mean as Living World falls between Meta-Plot and Sandbox. Gears are turning under their own momentum, but player agency can effect, stop, or even avoid those gears.

[Yora]

Depends on the type of sandbox. There's at least half a dozen of them. All they have in common is a map that lets players chose where they want to go and the absence of a script that determines the outcome of the players' actions.

[Florian]

Depends on the type of sandbox. There's at least half a dozen of them. All they have in common is a map that lets players chose where they want to go and the absence of a script that determines the outcome of the players' actions.

"Map" is a relative term here.


What I mean as Living World falls between Meta-Plot and Sandbox. Gears are turning under their own momentum, but player agency can effect, stop, or even avoid those gears.

"Living World" is rarely a doable concept.
That would either mean to have "the World" as an additional player that participated in the action.
Or it means having "High Zoom" options besides the usual "Low Zoom" on the Characters.

For example, Traveler knows the "Dynasty" rules and has a "Dynasty Turn", Stars Without Numbers does the same with "Polity Turn".

[OldTrees1]

"Living World" is rarely a doable concept.
That would either mean to have "the World" as an additional player that participated in the action.
Or it means having "High Zoom" options besides the usual "Low Zoom" on the Characters.

For example, Traveler knows the "Dynasty" rules and has a "Dynasty Turn", Stars Without Numbers does the same with "Polity Turn".

I am not sure what you are talking about here. What I meant by "Living world" (as detailed previously):
1) No retconning even if the Players have not observed the information in question
2) NPCs have plans that they will initiate and attempt to make work regardless of if the PCs encounter them or not.

I find it doable to keep track of the progress, complications, setbacks, and consequences of a handful of significant NPCs as part of the background sandbox that the PCs have full agency in. Depending on the PC choices they might never encounter, might prevent the initiation of, or might encounter one or more of these plans.

[Florian]

I am not sure what you are talking about here. What I meant by "Living world" (as detailed previously):
1) No retconning even if the Players have not observed the information in question
2) NPCs have plans that they will initiate and attempt to make work regardless of if the PCs encounter them or not.

I find it doable to keep track of the progress, complications, setbacks, and consequences of a handful of significant NPCs as part of the background sandbox that the PCs have full agency in. Depending on the PC choices they might never encounter, might prevent the initiation of, or might encounter one or more of these plans.

What you term "Living World" is a mix of "Consistent World" and "Actions have Consequences".

You players know of, say, 3 possible plot hooks, one with a time-limit attached and they chose to engage one.
You as GM then look at the time it takes and figure out what happens meanwhile with the two other plot hooks.

The point of critique here is that a) it´s again fully GM-controlled action and b) the numbers will always run against the PC as they can rarely engage in more than one plot hook at a time.

Both subsystems I mentioned solve this dilemma by pitting the players side against the gms side so also the off-screen happenings can be influenced by both side and allow for the expression of agency.

[OldTrees1]

What you term "Living World" is a mix of "Consistent World" and "Actions have Consequences".
Yes. Someone once called it a "Living world" in part due how far I take the "Consistent World" part. So I have been using that term(and defining it each time).


You players know of, say, 3 possible plot hooks, one with a time-limit attached and they chose to engage one.
You as GM then look at the time it takes and figure out what happens meanwhile with the two other plot hooks.

The point of critique here is that a) it´s again fully GM-controlled action and b) the numbers will always run against the PC as they can rarely engage in more than one plot hook at a time.

Both subsystems I mentioned solve this dilemma by pitting the players side against the gms side so also the off-screen happenings can be influenced by both side and allow for the expression of agency.

a) Yes the GM simulates the world while the Players simulate their characters. The camera follows the players so I think that works fine provided the Player agency is not curtailed.

b) Why do numbers run against the PCs? I mean you could choose only villains for the active NPCs, and make sure their plots don't interfere with each other, and make sure the PCs dislike every one of those plots. But then you are deliberately choosing to outnumber the PCs rather than the base state of having active NPCs. (unless you meant outnumber as in your choices at the icecream vendor outnumber your stomachs)

c) I don't like Player VS GM dynamics. In my opinion it sets the wrong tone for me for the cooperative storytelling. I will keep those in mind but ...

[AMFV]

But I want to gauge whether other people are with me on this. What do you think? Do you appreciate structure or do you think player freedom trumps everything?

I think that talking to the players about the amount of structure or freedom beforehand is more important than the amount that is there. If I (as a player) am expected to provide my own adventure hooks, then knowing that before I twiddle my thumbs for hours is good. If have zero freedom and am on the rails, then knowing that before I try to go off a different direction is good. Again the key to this (as with most dilemma) is communication.

[Saintsqc]

I have played with a GM who used a "structure" approach and with another GM with a sand-box game who used a lot of improvisation. Both was fun.

A structure game is more challenging IMO. The plot, environnements, dungeons, encounters, etc., are already designed, so when the party succeed, I know that we made the right decisions. I mean, it's like if we had beaten the game.

I usually play sand-box game and it's true that it sometimes turn badly (ie : half of the party wants something, the other half wants something else). But, from my experience, a sand-box game allows more RP and is more tailored to the taste of the party. I like a sandbox game with a precise long-term goal the most. For example, in my current group, we have to save a city from a dragon (every character wants to do it, so there is no wandering around). On our way to the city, the ranger spotted recent footprints of orcs. The player rolled a very high survival check (nat 20 + various bonuses) and the GM was like "Uh, allright...I let you decide what your character is finding" and he did continue the game with what the party decided. I really enjoy simple things like that.

So I would say that a mix of both is a good. I think a GM can't go wrong with a semi-structure game (well defined plot, pre-designed key encounters, etc.) and a lot of room for players actions/decisions. IMO, a GM should have a clear view of the destination, but the journey should totally be up to the players.

[Thrudd]

Player freedom only works with a sufficiently developed structure. Players need to know what sort of things they are meant to be doing and the game world needs to provide clear ways for them to do that.
You don't just say "ok, your character is in a town. Do something!"
For example: the player needs to know that they are an adventurer, that they belong to a party of adventurers who work together, that they gain experience by finding treasure or killing monsters, and be shown where they can look for treasure or monsters. The players need to know how the world works so they can decide how to act and how to plan their activities.

If you want a collaborative story game, then the players need to know that you want them to collaborate together to decide what their characters' goals and motivations and relationships will be, and then place them in a world where they can pursue those goals with situations that test them. You can't just assume they know this, have them make characters and then plop them down in your setting without any collaboration and say "start the story!". Every player will take their character off in a different direction, or stay together even though it makes no sense for the characters.

So freedom is nothing but chaos if there isn't enough structure. Structure that doesn't give the players any meaningful choices is just as bad or worse. In that direction, players don't even really play the game, they just follow along with a story you've written.

You need both: enough structure so that the freedom of action is clearly leading somewhere, enough freedom so that the players' choices truly matter.

[Florian]

b) Why do numbers run against the PCs? I mean you could choose only villains for the active NPCs, and make sure their plots don't interfere with each other, and make sure the PCs dislike every one of those plots. But then you are deliberately choosing to outnumber the PCs rather than the base state of having active NPCs. (unless you meant outnumber as in your choices at the icecream vendor outnumber your stomachs)

c) I don't like Player VS GM dynamics. In my opinion it sets the wrong tone for me for the cooperative storytelling. I will keep those in mind but ...

I´ll give you an example. I´m running a L5R sandbox that is based shortly before the start of the Clan War and is based in one city and a bit of surrounding countryside. The second map is the usual R-Map charting the growing relationship between personalities and organizations.

The stated goal for this campaign simply was raising in power (and surviving the turmoil of the Clan War, which my players know nothing about...yet)

We´re using a "four seasons" model where each season is overall dedicated to certain activities and it could always happen that entire organizations, NPC or even PC are absent during this time. (Winter is court season, summer is war season, your actual lord can send you out with the army, and so on)

So, at the start of each season, we talk about what each known faction will generally try to achieve, with the players taking control of their allies. (We use a margin of success table and some random event generators at this point). This step roughly takes 15 minutes and sets in motions how the general world will overall behave in that season and affect a lot of the things that will happen when player in character POV.

[OldTrees1]

I´ll give you an example. I´m running a L5R sandbox that is based shortly before the start of the Clan War and is based in one city and a bit of surrounding countryside. The second map is the usual R-Map charting the growing relationship between personalities and organizations.

The stated goal for this campaign simply was raising in power (and surviving the turmoil of the Clan War, which my players know nothing about...yet)

We´re using a "four seasons" model where each season is overall dedicated to certain activities and it could always happen that entire organizations, NPC or even PC are absent during this time. (Winter is court season, summer is war season, your actual lord can send you out with the army, and so on)

So, at the start of each season, we talk about what each known faction will generally try to achieve, with the players taking control of their allies. (We use a margin of success table and some random event generators at this point). This step roughly takes 15 minutes and sets in motions how the general world will overall behave in that season and affect a lot of the things that will happen when player in character POV.

I see. That does not sound like the previous Players VS GM language. That sounds like a good alternate to keep in mind for when there are organizations vs organizations. Thank you.

[Florian]

Using such a structure also has the added benefit that the themes of the season always add short-term goals next to the overall long-term goals players might have.

[Darth Ultron]

However, there is a great difference between these two options:

a) There is this dark lord who threatens to destroy the world. You've got to defeat him.

b) There is this dark lord who threatens to destroy the world. You've got to destroy them by first saving this village from an invasion of orcs, then meeting this NPC, then seeing how she dies, then going to the Blue Mountains and finding the blueprint for the Philosopher's Stone, then doing five hundred push-ups, then infiltrating into his Dark Tower, then running away from his Dark Tower, then finding one of his high rank lackeys and grilling him for information, then using such information to thwart one of his minor plans, then....

Well, now see ''B'' is more the Jerk Railroad DM, then a DM with Structure. And that is the big problem everyone seems to make: any structure is bad as, um, 25 years ago, maybe, in some game a DM was a jerk so all structure is bad.

Like take ''A''. Ok, so the ''awesome'' DM has nothing planned and no plot or story or anything other then ''dark overlord plots to destroy world''. So, the players will now try and stop this. Ok, so what next. So, with no structure, the players can just say ''um, we want to do this'' and the DM can say ''ok''. But.....then, the DM needs to add in details and structure as you can't do anything with nothing. So, after the whole five minutes of ''player freedom'' it becomes a normal structured game. And once the game goes on for more then a couple minutes, they can't undo the structure, unless your doing some weird crazy game.

[Quertus]

Many are, people just don't like being honest. Or maybe it's just the irrational narrow hate filled view of structure.

A lot of GM's have said thing like ''I do nothing and sit around and wait for my players to make a plot''. Ok, fine, but then after that it is a standard structure type game. But the DM will get all up on their high horse and say their game is special and unique as the players picked the plot. And yet there game is a standard structure type game.

A lot of GM's find making plots too hard, so they just do the Adventure Path of just putting adventure in front of the PC's no matter what they do or where they go. And this can work for a very short time, but if the game will have any reality to it....it needs structure.

Suppose I set out a series of totes, containing 1,000 copies of each "generic" Lego in each available color. Suppose a child used those blocks to make a Death Star. Only blue. And on fire. With a seemingly out of place brown beam running through it.

Suppose the child explained their creation thusly: last weekend, they had been roasting marshmallows, when their marshmallow caught fire. By the time they put it out, it had turned into an inedible cinder, strangely reminiscent of the Death Star. This had made them sad - thus the blue color.

Did I in any way railroad the child in their creation?

Now, let me take this example in a few directions.

For character creation. I could let their creation stand. Or I could pick out the appropriate shade of grey, and rule that Death Stars only come in the appropriate color in my game. Or I could rule that, based on their themes, they need to remake the creation, but limit themselves to blocks from the Lego Star Wars, Lego Barbie Camping, and Lego Childhood Trauma sets. I could even generously open up some of the custom pieces from those sets.

Running the game. I could sit back, and let the child continue to build more things. I could wait as above, and then ask how they relate to one another. I could ask pointed questions, like who / what is holding the stick, or what the heat source is. I could suggest or force certain answers to those questions. I could begin building or introducing my own Lego creations, and see what the child does with them. I could begin linking my creations to the child's creations in what I consider a logical fashion. Or I could just take the Legos away from the child at this point.

The sandbox. Most sandbox games don't look like huge tubs of generic pieces. Instead, you have a (somewhat) random handful of blocks from, say, Lord of the Star Scooby Wars. So if you want to build Princess Leia making out with Legolas on top of the Mystery Machine, it will be a lot easier than, say, Captain Kirk snogging Princess Peach on the hood of the Batmobile.


I'm hoping to start running a campaign some time soon and I've decided I want to run something that gives the players lots of options for what adventures to have and lets them pick and choose which ones to pursue. There will be a story but I plan to make it more like unravelling a mystery a little at a time, finding clues here and there while on (rather dungeon-crawly, action adventure style) quests.

The reason why I haven't just described it as a "sandbox" campaign is because I also really want it to have some amount of structure. I feel like sandbox games tend to involve too much wandering around and trying to find adventures. At their worst they degenerate into long, dull discussions about what to do next. So what I want to do is offer the players a very clear list of quests or adventures to pursue, and create a very clear divide between "downtime" and "adventure time". Downtime ends when you pick an adventure and set out. I will probably make the premise that the PCs are working for some kind of organisation, maybe just a simple adventurers' guild, and the missions pop up on a big notice board. But as I said, a story will gradually emerge.

Obviously this gives the players much less freedom than a true sandbox where they just wander on their own terms. But it's still not entirely linear and it cuts out hours of dithering and replaces them with that sweet, sweet adventures (at least in theory).

But I want to gauge whether other people are with me on this. What do you think? Do you appreciate structure or do you think player freedom trumps everything?

Be prepared for when the players want to follow all of the trails. Or none. Or they can't agree on which to follow.

Be prepared for the players to miss lots of puzzle pieces, or to miss (or misinterpret) the importance of some pieces.

What will you do if the players get frustrated that they can't seem to advance the plot?

You are only planning one overarching theme. What if they don't like that theme? (X-Files)

Enjoyment trumps everything. Done right, this format seems capable of producing adequate quantities of fun for most players. Just be vigilant of the many ways it can go south, and be prepared to fix / discuss problems with the players.

[NorthernPhoenix]

I am not sure what you are talking about here. What I meant by "Living world" (as detailed previously):
1) No retconning even if the Players have not observed the information in question
2) NPCs have plans that they will initiate and attempt to make work regardless of if the PCs encounter them or not.

I find it doable to keep track of the progress, complications, setbacks, and consequences of a handful of significant NPCs as part of the background sandbox that the PCs have full agency in. Depending on the PC choices they might never encounter, might prevent the initiation of, or might encounter one or more of these plans.

Serious question, how does this work? Any information could be anything until it's observed by the players right? Like if your players are out killing Rats and you think "Today the king was assassinated" and the players later want to meet the King, does the campaign greatly benefit from you not being able to go either way and instead being locked into something you thought might be relevant many sessions ago?
Same with the second point, do you just roll dice randomly to decide whether NPCS succeed or fail at their tasks in the absence of player interaction?

[Max_Killjoy]

The game and its setting should not in general feel as if the world goes on a smoke break whenever the PCs aren't around, or like every building they don't happen to enter is just set dressing.

[AMFV]

The game and its setting should not in general feel as if the world goes on a smoke break whenever the PCs aren't around, or like every building they don't happen to enter is just set dressing.

Unless you're playing in a game that's entirely protagonist centered. Which might be alright for some games. Then it's question of how much window-dressing you need to make it believable.

[Quertus]

Serious question, how does this work? Any information could be anything until it's observed by the players right? Like if your players are out killing Rats and you think "Today the king was assassinated" and the players later want to meet the King, does the campaign greatly benefit from you not being able to go either way and instead being locked into something you thought might be relevant many sessions ago?
Same with the second point, do you just roll dice randomly to decide whether NPCS succeed or fail at their tasks in the absence of player interaction?

For myself, I can say that yes, the game, consistency, and the players' ability to piece things together greatly benefits by not retconning details - even ones that the PCs have not directly observed. Because actions have consequences. And, if there's anything we should have learned from time travel movies, it's that retconning may well have unintended consequences - consequences that, in this context, could turn your otherwise great plot into a steaming pile of illogical ****.

[goto124]

What are examples of the world continuing to run in spite of the players?

[Max_Killjoy]

What are examples of the world continuing to run in spite of the players?


* their parents aging while they're off adventuring for 5 years between visits home

* there being other adventurers out there doing stuff

* people in general being reasonably competent and not licking the idiot ball if the PCs aren't there to hold their hands

* the evil plot you've dropped plenty of clues about continuing to progress, even while the PCs are off chasing some bit of trivial nonsense that they've fixated on as "obviously very important" based on some otherwise meaningless background color you've included, because evidently the world is made of Chekhov's Everything.

[Thrudd]

What are examples of the world continuing to run in spite of the players?

If the players choose to go hunt a dragon in the mountains instead of help a village being attacked by orcs, when they get back from the mountains the town has been looted and destroyed by orcs, or has been damaged and lot of people died fending them off.

If the evil baron is gathering an army to invade his neighbor and the players never get around to investigating that or doing anything about it, the baron attacks his neighbor without warning and overruns them. If they go to that kingdom later, they'll find people being repressed and overtaxed by the evil baron with his henchmen in the castle, instead of finding the original lord of the castle and his undermanned defenses in need of help.

If the players leave the dungeon to craft magic items or gather an army of mercenaries for a couple months, by the time they get back there someone else might have cleared it out and taken all the treasure already, or some new monsters have moved in and spruced the place up.

Basically, in a game where players have the ability to choose between various adventures, enterprises or missions to take on, the things they choose not to do are still happening in the world around them. It isn't like a video game where all the side quests, and even the main quest, just wait there until you choose to engage them. If you save grandma from muggers, the guy robbing the bank on the other side of town is going to get away. Batman can't be everywhere at once, even if he has a bat scanner that tells him all the crimes going on.

[Max_Killjoy]

It isn't like a video game where all the side quests, and even the main quest, just wait there until you choose to engage them.



Yes -- a good example of the opposite sort of setting would be the way some video games are set up, with everything feels like it's just sitting there waiting for the players to show up, even if it waits for years.


The only time that the setting should feel like it all revolves around the PCs, is when it actually does.

[goto124]

How does one balance between having a world run on without the players, and punishing them for misinterpreting the clues dropped? If a GM drops hints about a robbery, but the players fail to pick up on the clues (aka don't even know there's a robbery) and instead follow something the GM didn't plan to be important, where is the line between a realistic playout of behind-the-scenes events, and punishing the players for not reading the GM's mind the exact way the GM thought?

[OldTrees1]

Serious question, how does this work? Any information could be anything until it's observed by the players right? Like if your players are out killing Rats and you think "Today the king was assassinated" and the players later want to meet the King, does the campaign greatly benefit from you not being able to go either way and instead being locked into something you thought might be relevant many sessions ago?
Same with the second point, do you just roll dice randomly to decide whether NPCS succeed or fail at their tasks in the absence of player interaction?

Information at my table can be anything until observed by the GM or the Players. Once information has been observed by the GM (or the Players), it becomes immune to retcon by GM policy. This avoids the case where the GM uses retcons to invalidate the choice the players made that affected hidden information. Basically the world is real instead of a quantum superposition. Different groups will have different preferences on the matter. My preference is to avoid superpositions.


I abstract out the NPCs' plans in the absence of player interaction. Think of it as the NPCs "taking 10s" against each other during DM prep.

For example:
The thieves guild is setting up for a huge heist.
The guard is trying to round up the thieves guild with brute squads.
The doppelgangers are trying to infiltrate the other groups.

If the PCs don't interfere for a month:
The doppelgangers will have decent success at infiltrating the brute squad but only moderate success at infiltrating the thieves guild (the guild would have better security than a brute squad).
The brute squads will have moderate success are rounding up people but only minor success at catching guild members. Likely 1 of those rounded up would be a doppelganger.
The thieves would have setbacks so the preparation would be lengthened but the preparation would be completed.

[Florian]

How does one balance between having a world run on without the players, and punishing them for misinterpreting the clues dropped? If a GM drops hints about a robbery, but the players fail to pick up on the clues (aka don't even know there's a robbery) and instead follow something the GM didn't plan to be important, where is the line between a realistic playout of behind-the-scenes events, and punishing the players for not reading the GM's mind the exact way the GM thought?

Why punish them?

First, you do not "hint" about something. You tell some straight facts and name concrete options.
Second, this type of game is all about player agency. They can formulate their own goals and pursue them at their own pleasure.

See it a bit like WoW but as an evolving world (and without the level-based barriers)

"Welcome to Goldshire, laddies"
These are the facts:
- Kobolds began an assault on the local gold mine
- Gnolls threaten the outlying farmers
- For some reasons, all messengers we sent to the capital for aid never seem to come through.
These are the rumors:
- A ghost might haunt the local lake
- A gang calling themselves the Defiance Brotherhood seems to have set up shop around
- The Gnolls are led by a fearsome warrior of their kind.

.... and off you go.

[Yora]

What? It's nothing like WoW. That game has no agency at all.

[Florian]

What? It's nothing like WoW. That game has no agency at all.

Then you misunderstood what I was saying. Goto123 asked about punishment and how a world could develop along the way.

WoW zones are a good example because they reasonable well portrait how a well developed starting area of a sandbox can look like and how stupid it will be when nothing changes from that point onwards.

So we know what happens when things are ignored, like the kobolds overrunning the mine or the farmers getting slaughtered, that´s what OldTrees1 and I were discussing a bit up-thread.

That simply leaves the question why things should be punished. They´re simply offering to engage in something a start the action, nothing else.

[goto124]

That... didn't answer my question at all. If it's PURELY to give options to the players, why have the other things go on in the background?

Come to think of it, after players make a choice and pursue that one choice, it's nice to have other elements running in the background that could interact with the players eventually. Tougher decision-making (which some players like), living world, etc.

I suppose that in a sandbox, players expect everything to go on without their intervention. This sort of understanding would have to be placed up front before the game starts.

[HidesHisEyes]

Player freedom only works with a sufficiently developed structure. Players need to know what sort of things they are meant to be doing and the game world needs to provide clear ways for them to do that.
You don't just say "ok, your character is in a town. Do something!"
For example: the player needs to know that they are an adventurer, that they belong to a party of adventurers who work together, that they gain experience by finding treasure or killing monsters, and be shown where they can look for treasure or monsters. The players need to know how the world works so they can decide how to act and how to plan their activities.

If you want a collaborative story game, then the players need to know that you want them to collaborate together to decide what their characters' goals and motivations and relationships will be, and then place them in a world where they can pursue those goals with situations that test them. You can't just assume they know this, have them make characters and then plop them down in your setting without any collaboration and say "start the story!". Every player will take their character off in a different direction, or stay together even though it makes no sense for the characters.

So freedom is nothing but chaos if there isn't enough structure. Structure that doesn't give the players any meaningful choices is just as bad or worse. In that direction, players don't even really play the game, they just follow along with a story you've written.

You need both: enough structure so that the freedom of action is clearly leading somewhere, enough freedom so that the players' choices truly matter.

Yes!

I think there is also a question of "scope" or "scale" here though. I agree there has to be some player agency, some meaningful choice-making, somewhere in the game for it to be at all satisfying. But I'm not convinced that that has to be present on every level of magnification, if that makes sense.

For example, if you have a sandbox campaign where the PCs have a distant but definite overall objective and make decisions about how to go about it, they are going to be making meaningful choices on quite a "zoomed-out" level. The choice between "go to Waterdeep and ask their lords for help" and "investigate rumours of a dragon near Baldur's Gate", for example. Once they've committed to a decision they will be making more zoomed-in decisions within that. "Set up a meeting and try to convince the lords that they should help through reason and eloquent arguing" or "impress them by taking care of this bandit who's been bothering their trade routes". Then it's "try to find the bandit in his lair" or "accompany attractive caravans and wait for an ambush opportunity". And so on, in a fractal-like zooming-in until you reach specific mechanical decisions like "persuade or intimidate" or "attack or cast a spell".

I have two misgivings about a game that tries to provide meaningful choices at every single one of those levels. First, it's a hell of a lot of work for a DM to build a world that can accomodate all of these things. Not saying it can't be done, and there are certainly ways to do it that cut down on work ("build scenarios, not plots" being a great piece of advice), but I do think it's harder than maybe some GMs realise.

Second, and more what I'm worried about, is what I mentioned to start with: it's hard for the players too. It's hard having to parse available information and work through decisions at every single level. It takes time and discussion, and I really think if there's too much of it games can start to feel like meetings instead of... you know, games.

But suppose the GM simply tells the players that they need to gain Waterdeep's trust by helping them with this bandit problem. Now the PCs decide how they're going to deal with the problem, then they do it. Or to take it a step further, the lords of Waterdeep also tell them the bandit is such a skilled woodsman that tracking him back to his lair is impossible. It has to be an ambush. Now we have a session where the PCs make decisions about how they're going to set up this ambush - who has what job, who stands where, how far do you let the robbery go before the PCs attack. As long as the DM works hard to make the scenario interesting, the PCs are going to be making all kinds of meaningful choices.

Freedom within a scenario, in other words. And don't forget that when it comes to combat, meaningful choices are built into the game design - where do you go on the battlefield, how do you use your actions? (I'm speaking in D&D terms, I realise, but all systems have this to some extent, I think). This on its own probably isn't enough - at this point you'd be playing the combat system rather than the game as a whole - but it's a start.

Now I may have been railroaded, or quasi-railroaded, into that scenario, but to be perfectly honest I'm fine with that. I spend five hours of my weekend playing out a cool, exciting scenario, instead of spending half of that time deciding what to do and potentially surprising the GM with our decision to the point where they have to make something up on the fly, which probably won't be as satisfying. And I still got to make meaningful choices, just not all of the choices.

[HidesHisEyes]

I think that talking to the players about the amount of structure or freedom beforehand is more important than the amount that is there. If I (as a player) am expected to provide my own adventure hooks, then knowing that before I twiddle my thumbs for hours is good. If have zero freedom and am on the rails, then knowing that before I try to go off a different direction is good. Again the key to this (as with most dilemma) is communication.

Despite all the points I wanted to make in my monster post just now, yours may well actually be the most important point. If as a GM you have a sense of what level of freedom your game offers - freedom to what level of magnification, to talk about it in terms of my post above - and you communicate that to players before starting, most reasonable players will either be fine with it or opt out at the beginning if they know it's not for them.

[HidesHisEyes]

How does one balance between having a world run on without the players, and punishing them for misinterpreting the clues dropped? If a GM drops hints about a robbery, but the players fail to pick up on the clues (aka don't even know there's a robbery) and instead follow something the GM didn't plan to be important, where is the line between a realistic playout of behind-the-scenes events, and punishing the players for not reading the GM's mind the exact way the GM thought?

This is the problem I'm hoping to solve with the approach I'm taking. To some extent I want to create the "living world" others have talked about here. I want to at least have possible quests "time out" if the PCs don't get around to them. And some of those quests, if they time out I want there to be significant consequences for that.

But my intention is to make all the quests very definite, discrete options. Present the players with a list of things they can go and do, and they pick which one to do. The metagame (the assumptions the game is based on) guarantees that none of these things will be a waste of time. No red herrings, because I agree that players shouldn't be punished for misinterpreting clues. That is further than I want to take the "living world" idea. It's putting world simulation ahead of gameplay, which is valid but not what I'm interested in.

A related point about the protagonists being the centre of the world: they are, in my opinion. They always are. Certain video games (Skyrim springs to mind, much as I love it) don't make enough effort to disguise it, but a game is about the players. The world isn't real. One should either do just enough to create the illusion of a real world, or one should come right out and say "this isn't primarily about gameplay or story, it's a simulation of a world".

[Florian]

@HidesHisEyes:

Simply do a test run first. There´s a small ready-made hex-crawl sandbox that can be done in 2-3 sessions and is very good to "test the waters" if you and your players are ready for similar things.
Link to Challenge of the Frog Idol:
https://rpgcharacters.files.wordpress.com/2011/06/dyson-logos-challenge-of-the-frog-idol.pdf

@goto124:

Handling it that way puts a lot more meaning into individual choices that have been made.
You have three problem spots, you go and solve one, the other two gets worse really showcases what impact the characters have on the game world.

[goto124]

B-but... I don't want THAT much responsibility on my shoulders! I want my choice to be meaningful, but not flapping-butterfly-causes-hurricanes meaningful!

How do I enjoy a game when every decision I make causes a bad consequence one way or another? I don't play games for that level of realism!

*bursts into tears*

[HidesHisEyes]

Goto124: I think one can compromise by offering meaningful choices in restricted contexts. The level of restriction is up to the DM and can be played with. I certainly don't think a player is childish for wanting to make meaningful choices and still have a decent gameplay experience. I mean, no, I don't play games for that level of realism. Should I? If I want total realism I can always just... get on with my life.

Florian: That look like a great example of Yora's "sandbox adventures, not sandbox campaigns" idea. I am tempted to convert it to 5E (and maybe change the setting) and run it and see how it goes. Thanks!

[goto124]

I see! Thanks!

What is a sandbox campaign?

[HidesHisEyes]

It's like a sandbox adventure except the players have much more freedom and agency, and much less chance of having a satisfying experience ;)

[Florian]

I see! Thanks!

What is a sandbox campaign?

It´s first and foremost a tool to make "actions have consequences" in the first place. How those will exactly look is dependent on the setting and the intended mood of the overall game.
When I´m playing L5R, consequences will always be harsh and you will possible doubt the choices you made. That is wanted because in this setting, you can always opt to "fall", switch to the Dark Side and gain a burst of power that maybe, maybe would have helped you prevent it when it all went wrong.
Without that, the Dark Side loses a lot of seductive power.

When playing D&D, I play it more light-hearted and stick more to the genres there.

A "Sandbox Campaign" mostly means "open ended, possible multiple groups in the same setting at the same time"

[OldTrees1]

That... didn't answer my question at all. If it's PURELY to give options to the players, why have the other things go on in the background?

Come to think of it, after players make a choice and pursue that one choice, it's nice to have other elements running in the background that could interact with the players eventually. Tougher decision-making (which some players like), living world, etc.

I suppose that in a sandbox, players expect everything to go on without their intervention. This sort of understanding would have to be placed up front before the game starts.


B-but... I don't want THAT much responsibility on my shoulders! I want my choice to be meaningful, but not flapping-butterfly-causes-hurricanes meaningful!

How do I enjoy a game when every decision I make causes a bad consequence one way or another? I don't play games for that level of realism!

*bursts into tears*

Well different people have different tastes and desires. That is perfectly acceptable. So while I use a living world to give the player choices more meaning than the players are necessarily informed of, that might not be the right fit for you.

Although I would like to point out that not all consequences are butterfly to hurricane consequences and not all consequences are bad consequences. Two examples: A tyrant might die of old age to be replaced with his gentler heir. Or The thieves guild might smuggle someone to safety.

However the easiest change to move from my style to a style that better fits you is to change the "Information becomes immune to retcon once the GM sees it" to "Information becomes immune to retcon once the PCs see it". This way the players still have a solid enough world to make meaningful choices (presuming they see enough information to make informed choices) but the meaning does not exceed the information.

[Yora]

I always find that a lot can be learned about running games well from taking good looks at the fiction that inspires them. I think in the end the driving hope of most players in an RPG that isn't pure dungeon crawling is to have their PCs do cool things like characters in fiction. And when you look at any kind of adventure and fantasy fiction, the tale is always trimmed down to the essentials. It starts with nobody ever going to the toilet (unless they get attacked on the way) but continues with ignoring huge amounts of the world and things that happen around the characters. All the things that are irrelevant to the plot.
In a sandbox campaign you don't know what the plot is unless it already happened, so you don't fully know what things will be unimportant in advance. This means you don't have the ability to cut things down to the essentials as aggressively as an author.

But you can still limit things down a lot by giving the campaign a focus. A campaign in which the players can do everything is a huge amount of preparation work for the GM, of which almost all will go unused, and it doesn't provide the players with any kind of structure to follow. Don't make a sandbox in which the players can do everything, that will probably not work out. Instead either get together with the players to agree on a focus, or pick a focus and then gather players who want to play the campaign you're offering. (In practice most players are happy to play whatever the GM picks for them, but it still helps to ask what the players of an existing group think about an idea you have that you want to run. If they are not too thrilled by it pick another idea you'd like to run.)

Once you know what your focus is, you can narrow down your preparation work significantly. If the focus is Pirates, you only need to prepare coasts and islands and can completely ignore the mountains, and forests, and deserts. In the worldbuilding part of your preparation, you don't need to know how the landscape is in those places and what people live there. When it comes to creating NPCs you won't need to create any for those areas either. If you do a Plains Riders campaign you don't need to bother with ports and sea trade. They exist in the world, but you already know in advance that they won't become important to the campaign.

What I do when praparing a Fistank campaign (a sandbox that is about NPC instead of exploring the landscape or building a town), the next step I do is to chose the important factions. Even though there will be hundreds of interest groups active in the setting, only a few of them might become important for the focus of the campaign. In pretty much any campaign the Baker's Guild will be completely irrelevant (unless you run a city campaign with a focus on guild politics). Yes, potentially the player's could end up befriending some bakers and it could be that their connections help the players to get access to the city council building, which might be useful to investigate an assassination. It could. But the odds for that are insignificant. By not including the Baker's Guild the players might not have access to an option they would have had if the guild were included. But you can always only prepare so much and you have to make the cut somewhere. And my advice is to cut very extensively Four factions might be entirely sufficient and I wouldn't include more than six. And once you have a focus for the campaign, knowing which four potential factions to include becomes pretty easy.

The setting of Star Wars is huge, but in the classic movies only three of the hundreds of factions matter: Imperial Military, Rebel Armed Forces, and Jabba's Enforcers. Because the focus is Rebel Troops fighting Imperial troops. The entire political and administrative arms of the Empire don't matter, they don't get fleshed out. The whole political and propaganda branch of the Rebellion is fully ignored. Jabba's illegal business empire is ignored.
But if you were to run a campaign with the focus on Rebel spies or Imperial counter-terrorism, the political branches would be just as important factions as the military branches, while Jabba's gang is completely irrelevant. But maybe also add a faction for a ship building company that is uncertain about which side to bet on, and a faction of Imperial dissidents who are planning a coup but still want to crush the rebellion.

When you then actually run the campaign, the dynamic nature of the world can be almost entirely limited to the activities of the factions that are relevant to the focus. Change will constantly happen everywhere, but most of it will be irrelevant for the campaign because it's not inside the focus. When the players have finished one of their adventures and you want to advance the timeline, simply concentrate on what's going on with the relevant factions. All the other small and big events that are not relevant to the focus just happen off screen and remain unmentioned. This can of course be overdone and it's always neat to add some color to the world by occasionally mentioning things happening while the PCs are away or that are not relevant to the story that is unfolding.
But the important thing is to know what your focus is for the campaign. This helps you and the players a lot in narrowing down options. And you want to have a small number of meaningful options rather than a lot of meaningless ones. And it's precisely the focus that creates meaning.

It's of course equally important that the player's understand the focus and agree to play along and don't go wandering off the stage. Many sandbox GM promote the idea that any time players reach the end of the map, you should simply create more map for them. But being more a Fishtank guy than a Hexcrawl guy, I disagree with that. It's totally okay to let the players know if their ideas would lead them off the map, literally and figuratively, and appeal to their decency to accept the limitations and not make things needlessly hard for the GM. It's better to tell them that they have reached the fence than railroading them back to their starting point.

[HidesHisEyes]

Yora, while I was thinking about this thread while grocery shopping today I came to much the same conclusion. Freedom and meaningful choice are vital to a truly satisfying RPG, but it's perfectly fine for it to be freedom and meaningful choice within the context of the adventure. The level of freedom fits the scale of the adventure. Even if the entire adventure is a six-room dungeon, those rooms should be arranged and designed in such a way that the players can make meaningful choices in how to navigate them and overcome the obstacles in them. Is it a less satisfying experience because the GM has to say no if they decide to wander off into the wilderness? I doubt it.

[Darth Ultron]

.

Did I in any way railroad the child in their creation?
.

I'm not following the legos at all....


How does one balance between having a world run on without the players, and punishing them for misinterpreting the clues dropped? If a GM drops hints about a robbery, but the players fail to pick up on the clues (aka don't even know there's a robbery) and instead follow something the GM didn't plan to be important, where is the line between a realistic playout of behind-the-scenes events, and punishing the players for not reading the GM's mind the exact way the GM thought?

When you say ''punish'' the players, your slipping back into the Player vs. DM idea. And you should avoid thinking of the game like that. That just takes you down the road of anything the DM does is against the players. In general, 99% of the world is on pause if the players are not around....but not that 1% that the players know about. In any game world with a living reality things must happen or it is just silly and pointless. So unless your game does not have things like ''fire burns wood'', things need to happen.

The players don't need to read the DM's mind, they just need to play the same game the DM is playing. And the DM is playing the Classic Game: they give a plot hook and expect the players to follow the hook and play the game. Some how, in the last couple years, the idea of the jerk player has ruled supreme. And this jerk player refuses to follow any of the DM's hooks or even listen to the DM at all.


That... didn't answer my question at all. If it's PURELY to give options to the players, why have the other things go on in the background?



Well, the game world would be very fake and boring and artificial if nothing happens ever anywhere unless the PC's were there to do or not do it. You could have a game world that was very static. So the players would be like ''what is going on in the world'' and the DM would be like ''you guys got into a bar fight at the tavern last night''. The players would then ask ''and?" and the DM would continue with ''absolutely nothing else happened anywhere in the world."

And it's real odd for the players to go into town and learn about something, like say a coming orc attack, that they choose to ignore and go adventuring all over the map for like a year. Then they come back and find the orc attack is still coming and nothing has happened in the town for a year.

[HidesHisEyes]

...
When you say ''punish'' the players, your slipping back into the Player vs. DM idea. And you should avoid thinking of the game like that.

Not too sure about your use of "should". There are a thousand ways of playing RPGs. Many people do see it as players v GM in the sense that there is a goal of some kind and part of the GM's job is to make it a challenge to achieve. And "challenge" means logical and, you know, game-like. D&D is a game that generates stories, but I think the "game" part sometimes gets forgotten. If you want to simulate a world and generate stories from that, then something like Dwarf Fortress is a better option in my opinion.

Also it's interesting that you think the idea of the "jerk player who never does what they're supposed to" dominates, because I think it's the idea of the "jerk GM who never gives players freedom" that dominates. I guess it all depends where you're standing.

[Thrudd]

That... didn't answer my question at all. If it's PURELY to give options to the players, why have the other things go on in the background?

Come to think of it, after players make a choice and pursue that one choice, it's nice to have other elements running in the background that could interact with the players eventually. Tougher decision-making (which some players like), living world, etc.

I suppose that in a sandbox, players expect everything to go on without their intervention. This sort of understanding would have to be placed up front before the game starts.

You sort of answered your own question. The world goes on in the background because you want the world to feel like it is alive and that the characters are actually a part of something bigger than themselves. Things the players don't interact with now absolutely should have an impact later. Maybe they choose not to stop the bank robber today. But a few months later, the guy who robbed the bank has used the money to build an iron man suit and is terrorizing the city. If you stop the robbery but instead don't save grandma, the grandson becomes a Punisher-like vigilante who goes on a murder spree, and you'll probably cross paths with that guy.

This style may sound like it requires a ton of preparation, but it really doesn't. It only requires a clear understanding of the setting. If the setting is alive for the GM, then the results of various actions and inactions will come easily and spontaneously. You prep a few adventures before the start of the game for the players to choose from. The ones they don't choose don't disappear, they just evolve. Before the next session, you decide on the consequences of the first game's activity and prep a couple more scenarios, and so it goes.
The work gets heaviest in a classic D&D style dungeon crawl where you're trying to make new dungeons all the time, but if you're running that sort of game you must be the sort of person who likes to do that anyway (like me); drawing intricate maps and making map keys and tables of probabilities are fun for you.

The understanding of the players should be that their characters exist in a fictional world. A world that acts like you would expect a world to act (given whatever fantastical elements apply). They don't know what is going on behind the scenes and wherever their characters aren't looking. As the GM, you should have an idea of this. You don't need to design everything in advance, it can be spontaneous, but it should make sense according to the living world you have envisioned. You need to make sure the world responds to the players in a natural way.

Put simply, the GM's role is to envision the world and know how it responds to the characters. The players' role is to interact with that world through the proxy of their characters. Stories emerge when the players choose to take on a certain role in the world and pursue certain courses of action, which result in chains of events that have repercussions.

[HidesHisEyes]

Well, drawing dungeon maps and planning encounters may be fun but it's still time-consuming, and there's only so much time I can devote to it. As I said, the advice "plan scenarios, not plots" goes a long way, but to return to my original point, the other problem with the super-sandbox campaign is the amount of time spent at the table discussing and trying to figure out what to do. I don't enjoy this as a player or as a GM.

Making the world feel as if it exists independently of the players is something I'm very much in favour of and so is player freedom. But again, both things can adjust to fit any scale. A small village with a few rumours circulating and a couple of dungeons nearby is more satisfying more of the time than a whole kingdom with a dozen factions vying for power and a hundred potential plots, simply because it's more manageable for both the GM and the players, and more feasible to do each element justice. That's been my experience.

[Darth Ultron]

Put simply, the GM's role is to envision the world and know how it responds to the characters. The players' role is to interact with that world through the proxy of their characters. Stories emerge when the players choose to take on a certain role in the world and pursue certain courses of action, which result in chains of events that have repercussions.

This sounds so good and makes everyone who reads it feel happy. But it's such a falsehood, at best. And, sure, you can waste a good half hour or so doing nothing while ''the world reacts to the PC's'' or whatever. But, then after that time, you need to play a structured game or just run a sandbox.

Like say the silly DM has no plot or story or anything at all prepared except the ''they know how things will react'' thing. Ok. So the Pc's wander around and randomly get some ''reactions''. And a story is made when the PCs randomly bump into a NPC and they ''react'' and the players decide to do something. Except, remember that the DM has nothing prepared. A good DM can whip of a good, fun distraction for a couple hours....but a real adventure needs structure and time and preparation. Unless your game has ''story plots'' that are at the level of cartoons made for ''y'' audiences(''the bad guys are at the bad place...we goez and stops'em!'').


Not too sure about your use of "should". There are a thousand ways of playing RPGs. Many people do see it as players v GM in the sense that there is a goal of some kind and part of the GM's job is to make it a challenge to achieve.

In most RPG's the DM is not a foe. The DM is not ''opposed'' to the PCs. The DM is neutral. The game spirals downhill when the whinny players go all like ''The DM is personality attacking me when they attack my PC'' or ''the DM is making the game hard because they hate me''

[RazorChain]

How does one balance between having a world run on without the players, and punishing them for misinterpreting the clues dropped? If a GM drops hints about a robbery, but the players fail to pick up on the clues (aka don't even know there's a robbery) and instead follow something the GM didn't plan to be important, where is the line between a realistic playout of behind-the-scenes events, and punishing the players for not reading the GM's mind the exact way the GM thought?

You aren't punishing them for missing out as they will be engaging in other things, things that they might think is more important. If the king gets overthrown by an evil villain while the PC's are dragon hunting they might come back and help the prince or princess to regain the throne. This might be after that the GM has dropped clues about that the villain was going to attempt a coup.

The scene only changes there is no punishment involved. It's like if you decide to watch a movie instead of going playing golf are you then missing out on playing golf? Or going to the ice cream store? Or all the other things that are happening around you?

[RazorChain]

This is the problem I'm hoping to solve with the approach I'm taking. To some extent I want to create the "living world" others have talked about here. I want to at least have possible quests "time out" if the PCs don't get around to them. And some of those quests, if they time out I want there to be significant consequences for that.

But my intention is to make all the quests very definite, discrete options. Present the players with a list of things they can go and do, and they pick which one to do. The metagame (the assumptions the game is based on) guarantees that none of these things will be a waste of time. No red herrings, because I agree that players shouldn't be punished for misinterpreting clues. That is further than I want to take the "living world" idea. It's putting world simulation ahead of gameplay, which is valid but not what I'm interested in.

A related point about the protagonists being the centre of the world: they are, in my opinion. They always are. Certain video games (Skyrim springs to mind, much as I love it) don't make enough effort to disguise it, but a game is about the players. The world isn't real. One should either do just enough to create the illusion of a real world, or one should come right out and say "this isn't primarily about gameplay or story, it's a simulation of a world".

It is much easier than you think. Unless you create a huge world and try to keep track of and simulate what everybody is doing even that has no relevance to the PC's.

In most fantasy settings news travels slowly and you have no news agencies so mostly people have no clue what is happening in the next village/town or even country. Only the major news reach them and then even as rumours.

The PC's are mostly involved in local settings be it an area/town/city so you only need to simulate a few things. So if they have 3 things going on and choose to do one of them you can have some wait (that dungeon isn't going anywhere) and some can be resolved without their interference (the bandits were hunted down while the PC's were raiding the dungeon)

When they revisit a location you might simulate if something noteworthy has happened in their absence.

I use rumours a lot, both about the PC's themselves and events they have participated in and I only simulate things that have a relevance to the PC's.

[RazorChain]

B-but... I don't want THAT much responsibility on my shoulders! I want my choice to be meaningful, but not flapping-butterfly-causes-hurricanes meaningful!

How do I enjoy a game when every decision I make causes a bad consequence one way or another? I don't play games for that level of realism!

*bursts into tears*


This reminds me of a girl in my group and she is very careful in her decisions, she enjoys the game but she knows I'm a bastard GM and small decisions may have huge consequences later. I love to throw complications in the PC's way and present them with moral dilemmas.

All good stories have struggles, choices and consequences. Without it the story isn't much fun, even the Carebears or My little pony have moral choices, obstacles that have to be overcome and consequences to the protagonist's actions.

[goto124]

This reminds me of a girl in my group and she is very careful in her decisions, she enjoys the game but she knows I'm a bastard GM and small decisions may have huge consequences later. I love to throw complications in the PC's way and present them with moral dilemmas.

I remember playing a similar game before. After a while I couldn't take the stress any more and quitted, because I realized I spent more time worrying than actually having fun.

[Max_Killjoy]

This reminds me of a girl in my group and she is very careful in her decisions, she enjoys the game but she knows I'm a bastard GM and small decisions may have huge consequences later. I love to throw complications in the PC's way and present them with moral dilemmas.

All good stories have struggles, choices and consequences. Without it the story isn't much fun, even the Carebears or My little pony have moral choices, obstacles that have to be overcome and consequences to the protagonist's actions.


That can easily cross a line to where the players feel like none of their character's efforts accomplish anything and every action no matter how carefully planned and well executed just leads to more complications and messes, where every conversation is a minefield of potential discord with NPCs, and any chance they take is a sure setup for problems. Players end up paranoid and paralyzed, unwilling to do anything but hunker down and defend, literally and/or metaphorically.

[Darth Ultron]

That can easily cross a line to where the players feel like none of their character's efforts accomplish anything and every action no matter how carefully planned and well executed just leads to more complications and messes, where every conversation is a minefield of potential discord with NPCs, and any chance they take is a sure setup for problems. Players end up paranoid and paralyzed, unwilling to do anything but hunker down and defend, literally and/or metaphorically.

One of the DM's jobs as part of making the game fun, is to not do this.

You get three levels to reality:

1)Unbelievable stupidity-This is where most fiction goes to. Not only are the bad guys unbelievable stupid, but so is the whole world, up to and including things like the laws of nature.

2)Average, but still a little dumb-This is for more intelligent fiction. The bad guys are at least as smart as a normal person, and so is the world and the laws of nature.

3) Smart-You can't really do this in fiction as you'd have no story. Everyone would be smart and obey the ''normal'' laws of nature.

[neonagash]

As a player I can't stand structured games. They bore me to tears, I just don't enjoy the dice rolling that much. If most of the campaign is sandbox and the occasional adventure is structured I can deal with it. But I won't like those sessions much.

I GM the same way. The campaign is very sandbox. I have overarching situations but no grand plot. Individual adventures may be more or less structured, ie they decide to "capture so and so" for bounty is very open ended, but "break into mummy tomb for plague cure" will by necessity be more structured.

As long as the overall campaign has a good mix of adventure types all is well. Its when you get too much of anything that it gets to be a problem.

[RazorChain]

That can easily cross a line to where the players feel like none of their character's efforts accomplish anything and every action no matter how carefully planned and well executed just leads to more complications and messes, where every conversation is a minefield of potential discord with NPCs, and any chance they take is a sure setup for problems. Players end up paranoid and paralyzed, unwilling to do anything but hunker down and defend, literally and/or metaphorically.

I think you are confusing narrative complications with me being out to get the PC's in a GM vs. Players kind a game.
Well it isn't like that every time the PC's turn a stone they get hit by an avalanche. I run narrative driven campaigns and I don't use DnD. So instead every obstacle is a carefully planned combat encounter that has to be beaten I throw other kinds of problems into the PC path. And when I mean there are consequences, that doesn't mean they are bad. I don't punish players, I strive to make the narrative more interesting and of course their effort make a difference but as in life things can get complicated. I don't run my games in black and white or good vs bad.

How fun would Lord of the rings be if the story went like this: Frodo took the ring to Mordor and dropped it into Mt. Doom. The End.

At my table the players know that it isn't all rainbow, sunshine and happy ever after. I understand that some people are perfectly happy in a game where they can realize their power fantasy. Where the bad guys are EVIL and can be slaughtered without a thought and if the law show's up it is enough to point out that it's fine because only bad guys were killed. But I got tired of that game 20+ years ago and most of my friends also.

It's like in a DnD game where I played a Paladin and the DM was going to give me a xp penalty for not killing a Hag because she was evil. So I said "Wait! What? How can my character be good if he's supposed to kill 1/3rd of the population because he thinks they are evil? Is he supposed to commit mass murder because of his perception of them being evil and without a proof of it. Since when has killing been perceived as good?".

[Florian]

I remember playing a similar game before. After a while I couldn't take the stress any more and quitted, because I realized I spent more time worrying than actually having fun.

Remember something I wrote earlier? That if not careful, the numbers will always be against the players?
That will happen if you have choices to make and they will always turn out to be hard, binary choices. In the long run, there I agree with you, it gets frustrating to the point of quitting the game.

That´s why players should be encouraged to come up with creative solutions to be the mitigating factor here.

To go back to the "Goldshire" example choices above, that could mean to send a rider to tell the farmers to evacuate back to town, buy some equipment in the local shop, diplomacy the sherif in lending you some militia, equip them, have the bard do a rousing speak and send them of to do a holding action at the mine while you personally check why the capital can´t be reached anymore.

This is heroic action taking place and really affects the world. If the GM is an a-hole and will tell you the rider died en route, the militia did´t have a chance and got slaughtered, then get up and leave.

[Thrudd]

Well, drawing dungeon maps and planning encounters may be fun but it's still time-consuming, and there's only so much time I can devote to it. As I said, the advice "plan scenarios, not plots" goes a long way, but to return to my original point, the other problem with the super-sandbox campaign is the amount of time spent at the table discussing and trying to figure out what to do. I don't enjoy this as a player or as a GM.

Making the world feel as if it exists independently of the players is something I'm very much in favour of and so is player freedom. But again, both things can adjust to fit any scale. A small village with a few rumours circulating and a couple of dungeons nearby is more satisfying more of the time than a whole kingdom with a dozen factions vying for power and a hundred potential plots, simply because it's more manageable for both the GM and the players, and more feasible to do each element justice. That's been my experience.

I totally agree. You need to start at a reasonable scale, and the world grows and gets more fleshed out as the game goes on and if the characters' influence and power grows. I'm not suggesting that the GM literally have an entire world being simulated at all times and on all levels in their head or on paper, 99.9% of which will never be seen by the players. Maybe you have some general ideas about larger-scale plots and trends, but the focus is always on the places the characters are actually interacting with.

That said, even though we are focusing on the small scale that is relevant to the characters, everything is better when the world is logically conceived: the players should be able to understand who their characters are, how they fit into the world and why they are doing the things the game expects them to do and therefore make reasonably informed decisions regarding their actions.

Decision paralysis can be a problem, but all types of games have potential pitfalls. The GM should feel ok with interrupting a debate that is going on for more than a few minutes, and ask the players to take a vote and make a decision. In combat scenarios, I support a loose time-limit on declaring actions for the same reason.

[Florian]

Hm. I don´t know. "Reasonable Scale" is such a soft, undefined term.

If I was to start a PF-based sandbox today, I´d simply use Varisia as is for the sandbox and go out and plunder every available AP and module to fill it with content, where´s enough of it available, starting it all, cliche over cliche, in Sandpoint.

That would be a "reasonable scale" for me, as later transitions over to flight and teleport will not be a hassle to handle at all because they have been anticipated. (I will only be slightly annoyed when someone will come up with Plane Shift for no reason)

[HidesHisEyes]

In most RPG's the DM is not a foe. The DM is not ''opposed'' to the PCs. The DM is neutral. The game spirals downhill when the whinny players go all like ''The DM is personality attacking me when they attack my PC'' or ''the DM is making the game hard because they hate me''

Sorry, that's not what I meant at all. Obviously if a player takes the DM's decisions personally then you have a problem. What I said was that to some extent the DM is opposed to the players, because part of his/her job is to provide them with challenges and goals. Challenges are hard to overcome by definition, and goals should be hard to reach. That's what makes it fun, that's where the satisfaction comes from. Even if the players poke around and choose their own goal, it's still the DM's job to make it challenging to achieve. In the true and perfect sandbox some people advocate the DM isn't trying to do anything but create a perfectly believable world, and I honestly think there's more to it than that. Read the DMG, read about the concept of the adventuring day. That exists so the DM can build adventures that are a good level of challenge. These are the assumptions on which the game is designed.

As always, it's not the one true way - but neither is a big simulationist sandbox. There are a thousand ways to play and they're all valid, I'm just defending my favourite one.

[HidesHisEyes]

It is much easier than you think. Unless you create a huge world and try to keep track of and simulate what everybody is doing even that has no relevance to the PC's.

In most fantasy settings news travels slowly and you have no news agencies so mostly people have no clue what is happening in the next village/town or even country. Only the major news reach them and then even as rumours.

The PC's are mostly involved in local settings be it an area/town/city so you only need to simulate a few things. So if they have 3 things going on and choose to do one of them you can have some wait (that dungeon isn't going anywhere) and some can be resolved without their interference (the bandits were hunted down while the PC's were raiding the dungeon)

When they revisit a location you might simulate if something noteworthy has happened in their absence.

I use rumours a lot, both about the PC's themselves and events they have participated in and I only simulate things that have a relevance to the PC's.

This actually sounds close to what I have in mind. As Yora suggested waaaaaay back at the beginning of this thread, sandbox adventures instead of sandbox campaigns. So the model I'm planning on using now is a small sandbox to which the players are confined (I just tell them that) and in which they have some sort of goal. Then they can do whatever they want in that sandbox until the goal is either achieved or definitively failed. With this model I can either string together a bunch of these mini sandboxes to create an overall story (building each one after the one before is played out, since I don't know how they're going to end) or I can just create unrelated sandbox adventures and have them represent the highlights of a party's adventuring career.

[Florian]

Mentioning "Adventuring Day", so you want to use D&D 5E as system?

I mainly ask because each edition is build around a core assumption that dictate where the balance-point is. Any change in handling that assumptions will lead to rebalancing how it all works.

For example, 3E gravitates towards the dungeon level, aka 13,3 encounters to level up with approximately 2 full rests in-between, else the intra-class balance begins to shift.
A sandbox format that only has one encounter and then allows for a full rest begins to shift very quick.

4E/5E gravitate more towards a delve format, a concentrated series of encounters until full rest.

Incidentally, that ties into your question of multiclassing. Full multiclassing (Fighter/Wizard), in contrast to limited multiclassng (Eldritch Knight) will have an significant impact on the adventuring day and how resources are handled.

[HidesHisEyes]

I totally agree. You need to start at a reasonable scale, and the world grows and gets more fleshed out as the game goes on and if the characters' influence and power grows. I'm not suggesting that the GM literally have an entire world being simulated at all times and on all levels in their head or on paper, 99.9% of which will never be seen by the players. Maybe you have some general ideas about larger-scale plots and trends, but the focus is always on the places the characters are actually interacting with.

That said, even though we are focusing on the small scale that is relevant to the characters, everything is better when the world is logically conceived: the players should be able to understand who their characters are, how they fit into the world and why they are doing the things the game expects them to do and therefore make reasonably informed decisions regarding their actions.

Absolutely.


Decision paralysis can be a problem, but all types of games have potential pitfalls. The GM should feel ok with interrupting a debate that is going on for more than a few minutes, and ask the players to take a vote and make a decision. In combat scenarios, I support a loose time-limit on declaring actions for the same reason.

The decision paralysis thing is one thing on the micro level of combat, and I have a loose time limit for that as well when I DM. But in large-scale sandbox campaigns I find it can also happen on the macro scale. So it's downtime, we're in the city or our fortress trying to decide what to do next and there is just so little information to go on because of course we're not "supposed" to do anything, it's all about freedom, and it becomes this long circular discussion, and sometimes even when we do pick something to do it doesn't take very long and doesn't involve much challenge because, you know, it won't necessarily, because in a believable world not everything will be a challenge.

If I want that kind of experience then I'll stay home and read a novel by Sarte or something, and save my train fare.

[HidesHisEyes]

Florian: yes, I am talking about 5E which is the system I use. There is difference between the implied structure in each edition, I'm sure. Broadly my point is that there always is an implied structure and the game wasn't really designed from a "total freedom" point of view. Not to say you can't try and run it that way, but as a friend of mine put it "your mileage may vary".

[Florian]

Florian: yes, I am talking about 5E which is the system I use. There is difference between the implied structure in each edition, I'm sure. Broadly my point is that there always is an implied structure and the game wasn't really designed from a "total freedom" point of view. Not to say you can't try and run it that way, but as a friend of mine put it "your mileage may vary".

You should have mentioned that a bit earlier because the system used can have a huge impact on what recommendation to give.

Edit: Lunchbreak. Will give you a recommendation later.

[HidesHisEyes]

Hm. I don´t know. "Reasonable Scale" is such a soft, undefined term.

If I was to start a PF-based sandbox today, I´d simply use Varisia as is for the sandbox and go out and plunder every available AP and module to fill it with content, where´s enough of it available, starting it all, cliche over cliche, in Sandpoint.

That would be a "reasonable scale" for me, as later transitions over to flight and teleport will not be a hassle to handle at all because they have been anticipated. (I will only be slightly annoyed when someone will come up with Plane Shift for no reason)

Interesting. I know there is a lot of published material around for PF so that would be much easier than for 5E, although a store of material is accumulating for 5E as well, and now there's the DM's Guild too.

This is actually the approach I took when I first started DMing 5E. I ran Mines of Phandelver and then started looking for other adventures, couldn't find very much and started writing my own, didn't have time to make lots of adventures and present them as options, and so instead the whole thing became very linear. Not at all what we had intended.

Now one of the players is DMing and pretty much the same thing as happened. As people here have pointed out, it can be sandboxy for a while but once the players commit to something the DM has to have that thing ready to play. My friend has even less time than I do and for now the game is on hiatus until he finds time to design what we've said we want to do.

This is how I decided I needed a more structured approach, and ended up making this thread.

[Yora]

Making the world feel as if it exists independently of the players is something I'm very much in favour of and so is player freedom.
This is something that has been extensively debated among fans of the Elder Scrolls games. And one major point that is often regarded as critical for making Morrowind so much better than the following games is that the world exists independent of the player by having all NPCs and monsters at fixed strengths and not scaling them to the player's current abilities. If you encounter something and it's too tough, you either need to use better tactics or come back with more power later. Not everything you encounter is conveniently just so strong that you can defeat it with a bit of effort. The requirement to use strategy and resources to overcome some threats is also something that gives players agency. The players can chose how much risk they are willing to take by pressing on or going back. In a scripted adventure going back and doing something else is not an option. In a sandbox it always is and that makes the decision which places to visit much more meaningful.
If you do a campaign of sequential sandbox adventures, this can still be included. Put opponents of different strength in different part of the dungeon and chose a layout that makes every encounter in the adventure optional. Clearing the dungeon is not the objective. Chosing to go against the bigger threats is a gamble on the players' side. They could get nice rewards, but they could also die.
Basic and AD&D did this by making XP primarily based on finding treasures and less on defeating monsters. This made the option to steal treasure without defeating the guardian a very attractive choice, and one that usually involves a lot of player agency.
If XP come all from treasure, this gets a bit more difficult. It strongly encourages players to deal with every encounter they can find. The one solution I can think of is to be firm with character death. This can only work if death is a real danger. Now placing monsters that look harmless but are deadly is a very cheap trick and quite unfair, unless you want to have a game where the players suspect that everything can instant kill them. (AD&D loved this stuff, I think it's awful.) But the players need to know that taking risks can mean character death.


The decision paralysis thing is one thing on the micro level of combat, and I have a loose time limit for that as well when I DM. But in large-scale sandbox campaigns I find it can also happen on the macro scale.


I mainly ask because each edition is build around a core assumption that dictate where the balance-point is. Any change in handling that assumptions will lead to rebalancing how it all works.

For example, 3E gravitates towards the dungeon level, aka 13,3 encounters to level up with approximately 2 full rests in-between, else the intra-class balance begins to shift.
A sandbox format that only has one encounter and then allows for a full rest begins to shift very quick.

The answer to both these issues are wandering monsters/random events. Resting after every fight had always been an issue from the very start, and the solution is wandering monsters. If every 10 minutes in a dungeon means that you can have an encounter with a wandering monster, you won't get 8 hours of uninterrupted rest. The only options to rest is to find a safe hiding space (which should be very rare and maybe not easy to find for players either) or to leave the dungeon. But while going to the exit you can have more encounters with wandering monsters, and the next time you come back you have to go all the way back to your last point of exploration and also have some wandering monster encounters along the way.

This is also why the game world can not be purely static in a sandbox. When you leave a dungeon after fighting some inhabitants, the remaining ones will prepare for a next attack and move into areas that had been cleared. Leaving and coming back means you kind of have to start the dungeon all over. When it comes to things going on outside of dungeons it's the same thing. Leaving and coming back later needs to mean that the situation will not be the same as it was last time. The players might return with more power, but the challenge they had been facing is probably bigger as well. Again, this actually increases player agency. It's not just considering the risk about pressing on against firm opposition, but also the risk of the opposition taking advantage of the players take a break.
And the best thing with a sandbox is: Player's can lose. Not being able to stop a villain or rescuing a captive or whatever isn't the end of the game. It's a bit disappointing, but except for total party kills live goes on. And once again: Agency. Victories are much more meaningful when it's not a given that you can't lose. Losing from time to time is great for a sandbox campaign. And generally it's not simply a matter of total victory or total defeat. I think ideally players should always accomplish some of their goals but never all of them.

[HidesHisEyes]

Yora: Yep, we're talking the same language. I had a lot of fun with Oblivion and Skyrim but the difference between them and Morrowind was that they started to feel like theme parks instead of fantasy worlds, thanks to the level scaling thing.

Translating the Morrowind approach to tabletop RPGs is hard, I think, if you're going for a large sandbox world. You need to think carefully about how to drop clues to let the players know what they can and can't handle - you can't load your game like you can in Morrowind, after all, and even Morrowind nudged you in certain directions. Again it's agency: the players need to be making informed decisions about what tasks to take on, not just guessing. The "oops, went the wrong way, TPK" phenomenon is equivalent to the "apparently harmless creature actually meant for level 20s" that you mention.

If you're familiar with the blog of Angry DM you might be able to guess that I read it. He suggests a really interesting approach to controlling difficulty, which is to break the level progression into tiers of three levels each (after 1 and 2 which have their own "apprentice" tier). Encounters in a given part of the game world (in a given mini-sandbox scenario, for example) are designed according to the encounter maths for the middle level of a tier. For example, you start an adventure at level 3 and can go where you want, fight what you want, within that adventure. All the encounters will be designed according to the guidelines for level 4, so they will start off hard, get easier when you level up, then get even easier. (I'm planning to have a "boss dungeon" which actually will be locked until you've done enough to reach level 5, and which will be somewhat harder). So some areas will be really challenging, but all will be doable, especially if you're clever about how and when you approach them. It's a diluted version of the Morrowind thing.

And I agree about there being consequences for players clearing half a dungeon then coming out and going to bed and going back the next day. Again it takes some thought to implement, I think, and until now my players and I have pretty much just gone with a social contract because they too understand the "adventuring day", but for the sake of freedom and agency yeah, consequences are the ideal.

Oh and edit: I totally agree about player failure too. In the campaign I play in we recently went hunting a roc and almost, almost killed it. We were in its nest at the top of a tree and it flew away once we'd wounded it enough, and the barbarian jumped off the tree and tried to land on its back and failed, and it got away. My character is an arrogant monster-hunter and this roc is now "the one that got away" - his nemesis and a constant irritation to him because it's a hunt that he can't brag about. So yeah, failure can really enrich the story and character side of it.

[Yora]

And I agree about there being consequences for players clearing half a dungeon then coming out and going to bed and going back the next day. Again it takes some thought to implement, I think, and until now my players and I have pretty much just gone with a social contract because they too understand the "adventuring day", but for the sake of freedom and agency yeah, consequences are the ideal.

I think Angry probably had the best advice on this: Figuring out what NPCs and monsters do gets very easy when you know what they want. The default assumption for opponents in RPGs is that they will try to kill the PCs on sight. (Because that's the extend of what videogames can do and what action movies bother with.) But to make a world alive and independent of the PCs, you really just need to know what those NPCs and creatures want. (Not dying should always be a top priority.) In published adventures opponents are often just there in a room because the designer thought "I think I'll put some enemies here for a fight". When preparing a living sandbox, this often won't do. Know what the opponents want and then you'll have little trouble to come up with logical things for them to do on the fly.

[Max_Killjoy]

I think you are confusing narrative complications with me being out to get the PC's in a GM vs. Players kind a game.
Well it isn't like that every time the PC's turn a stone they get hit by an avalanche. I run narrative driven campaigns and I don't use DnD. So instead every obstacle is a carefully planned combat encounter that has to be beaten I throw other kinds of problems into the PC path. And when I mean there are consequences, that doesn't mean they are bad. I don't punish players, I strive to make the narrative more interesting and of course their effort make a difference but as in life things can get complicated. I don't run my games in black and white or good vs bad.

How fun would Lord of the rings be if the story went like this: Frodo took the ring to Mordor and dropped it into Mt. Doom. The End.

At my table the players know that it isn't all rainbow, sunshine and happy ever after. I understand that some people are perfectly happy in a game where they can realize their power fantasy. Where the bad guys are EVIL and can be slaughtered without a thought and if the law show's up it is enough to point out that it's fine because only bad guys were killed. But I got tired of that game 20+ years ago and most of my friends also.

It's like in a DnD game where I played a Paladin and the DM was going to give me a xp penalty for not killing a Hag because she was evil. So I said "Wait! What? How can my character be good if he's supposed to kill 1/3rd of the population because he thinks they are evil? Is he supposed to commit mass murder because of his perception of them being evil and without a proof of it. Since when has killing been perceived as good?".


I'm not confusing anything.

I've played with a GM who literally cannot tell the difference between "complications make the story" and turning the campaign into a damn minefield.

[Florian]

Interesting. I know there is a lot of published material around for PF so that would be much easier than for 5E, although a store of material is accumulating for 5E as well, and now there's the DM's Guild too.

This is actually the approach I took when I first started DMing 5E. I ran Mines of Phandelver and then started looking for other adventures, couldn't find very much and started writing my own, didn't have time to make lots of adventures and present them as options, and so instead the whole thing became very linear. Not at all what we had intended.

Now one of the players is DMing and pretty much the same thing as happened. As people here have pointed out, it can be sandboxy for a while but once the players commit to something the DM has to have that thing ready to play. My friend has even less time than I do and for now the game is on hiatus until he finds time to design what we've said we want to do.

This is how I decided I needed a more structured approach, and ended up making this thread.

Ok. Try this approach then: "Hub and Spokes" coupled with "Revelation".

Instead of one bigger adventure, you create some smaller adventures, the size of "Delves", meaning covering at most one Adventuring Day. All look to be independent but will drop clues and when you finished a set of them, some background information about the larger happenings/background is revealed, tying them all together in hindsight to be one bigger story. As 5E more or less has some Tiers inbuilt with the leveling structure, you can tie that into the overall story development, so each "hub" is centered around one Tier and you should be ready to progress into the next Tier and "hub" when you´ve finished all "spokes".

That gives a little freedom of how and what to engage what, maybe take a break and tackle the other things for a while, but will ultimately hold the leveling and story structure together.

I can try and work out an example for this, if you want to.

[HidesHisEyes]

I think Angry probably had the best advice on this: Figuring out what NPCs and monsters do gets very easy when you know what they want. The default assumption for opponents in RPGs is that they will try to kill the PCs on sight. (Because that's the extend of what videogames can do and what action movies bother with.) But to make a world alive and independent of the PCs, you really just need to know what those NPCs and creatures want. (Not dying should always be a top priority.) In published adventures opponents are often just there in a room because the designer thought "I think I'll put some enemies here for a fight". When preparing a living sandbox, this often won't do. Know what the opponents want and then you'll have little trouble to come up with logical things for them to do on the fly.

This is satisfying even when the encounter in question has been planned as part of an adventuring day structure. If the PCs get past some monsters without fighting and expending resources then any fights they do have after that point will be easier, and that's their reward for finding a creative solution rather than treating it like Diablo 2.

Not that a bit of hack'n'slash isn't fun too!

[HidesHisEyes]

Ok. Try this approach then: "Hub and Spokes" coupled with "Revelation".

Instead of one bigger adventure, you create some smaller adventures, the size of "Delves", meaning covering at most one Adventuring Day. All look to be independent but will drop clues and when you finished a set of them, some background information about the larger happenings/background is revealed, tying them all together in hindsight to be one bigger story. As 5E more or less has some Tiers inbuilt with the leveling structure, you can tie that into the overall story development, so each "hub" is centered around one Tier and you should be ready to progress into the next Tier and "hub" when you´ve finished all "spokes".

That gives a little freedom of how and what to engage what, maybe take a break and tackle the other things for a while, but will ultimately hold the leveling and story structure together.

I can try and work out an example for this, if you want to.

This Is very close to my original plan that I outlined at the start of this thread. Yora's idea of self-contained sandbox adventures (as opposed to a giant sandbox campaign) also appeals to me massively.

Mainly I'm just glad that some people are on the same page as me and not everyone thinks total player freedom is the be-all and end-all. "Total freedom within the context of an adventure" is a good concept that people have helped lead me to. Again, thanks for the input everyone (even those who disagree with me). I can't wait to get DMing again.

[kyoryu]

So I've been thinking about this for a while, and I think I have a way to break down "freedom", that works for a number of games.

Most games (outside of pure exploration games) tend to have a number of 'scenes' in them (substitute the word encounters if you prefer.)

A scene can be seen, from the outside, as a black box which will have some impact on the world, and can lead to further scenes. Usually a scene will have some rough question it's trying to answer (possibly multiple)

So, there's a couple of interesting things we can ask about scenes:

1) Who determined we would have this scene?
2) How do we determine how it ends? Who determines that?
3) How many ways can it end?
4) How many scenes can it lead to? Who determines that?
5) What impacts can it have on the world? Who determines those?

In a more railroaded structure, the answers tend to be that each scene is determined by the GM, has a single exit criteria, minimal impact on the world (or, at best, pre-determined impact on the world), and a single scene that it leads to. More illusionist GMs will include some kind of "mini-scene" that drives to the next proper scene, or modify the next scene just enough that it still makes sense, but it's ultimately a pretty linear set of scenes. Player impact beyond "getting to the next encounter" is pretty minimal, in that it won't really impact what's avaialble at all.

Even in the most 'open' game, there will still be scenes where the GM sets the next scene - ambushes, etc.

This is all independent of how much/little prep the GM has done, and of whether or not there's some kind of 'master story' going on in the background.

[RazorChain]

I'm hoping to start running a campaign some time soon and I've decided I want to run something that gives the players lots of options for what adventures to have and lets them pick and choose which ones to pursue. There will be a story but I plan to make it more like unravelling a mystery a little at a time, finding clues here and there while on (rather dungeon-crawly, action adventure style) quests.

The reason why I haven't just described it as a "sandbox" campaign is because I also really want it to have some amount of structure. I feel like sandbox games tend to involve too much wandering around and trying to find adventures. At their worst they degenerate into long, dull discussions about what to do next. So what I want to do is offer the players a very clear list of quests or adventures to pursue, and create a very clear divide between "downtime" and "adventure time". Downtime ends when you pick an adventure and set out. I will probably make the premise that the PCs are working for some kind of organisation, maybe just a simple adventurers' guild, and the missions pop up on a big notice board. But as I said, a story will gradually emerge.

Obviously this gives the players much less freedom than a true sandbox where they just wander on their own terms. But it's still not entirely linear and it cuts out hours of dithering and replaces them with that sweet, sweet adventures (at least in theory).

But I want to gauge whether other people are with me on this. What do you think? Do you appreciate structure or do you think player freedom trumps everything?


I'm going to throw in that freedom has nothing to do with structure actually. A sandbox game where the players have all the freedom in the world is most often a VERY structured game. Everything is already in place and the players are only limited by the boundaries of the sandbox...heck even a box is a structure.

What I think you mean is Linear Story vs Freedom. Also wandering around doing nothing in a sandbox isn't the best representation of freedom in play either, it would be better to give them the choice to wander around or have some of those sweet, sweet adventures.

[RazorChain]

I'm not confusing anything.

I've played with a GM who literally cannot tell the difference between "complications make the story" and turning the campaign into a damn minefield.


You must have been playing with one of those Jerk DM's that Darth Ultron mentions frequently.

[goto124]

You mean, one of the jerk DMs that Talakeal mentions frequently?

[RazorChain]

You mean, one of the jerk DMs that Talakeal mentions frequently?

yeah maybe I was confusing it with those jerk players

[HidesHisEyes]

I'm going to throw in that freedom has nothing to do with structure actually. A sandbox game where the players have all the freedom in the world is most often a VERY structured game. Everything is already in place and the players are only limited by the boundaries of the sandbox...heck even a box is a structure.

What I think you mean is Linear Story vs Freedom. Also wandering around doing nothing in a sandbox isn't the best representation of freedom in play either, it would be better to give them the choice to wander around or have some of those sweet, sweet adventures.

Well, a sandbox has limits, but is that the same thing as structure? I think of structure as the game's elements being arranged in such a way as to give the DM some control over how the game unfolds. And if the players in a sandbox game do choose to chase an adventure, the DM is going to need structure for that adventure, otherwise it won't be able to go anywhere.

But perhaps you're right, since in a good sandbox the players have freedom to interact with the elements of it however they want, and that requires structure. Again, it's freedom within the context of the adventure. Structured freedom.