How does one play a "Living World" game?

[SangoProduction]

I found an interesting game that had not only an interesting world but also explicitly allowed Spheres. Perhaps one of the few games with spheres, run by anyone other than me and my one DM friend, that wasn't throwing up a million and one red flags. (Man it is exhausting. And disheartening.)

So I joined. But I only have the vaguest of idea as to how a living world game is played. As I understand it, it's one where groups are essentially formed from those available from the server, in an almost pickup group -esque fashion... And supposedly each party's session is supposed to happen in a shared world... and that's it.

Any advice?

[JNAProductions]

I found an interesting game that had not only an interesting world but also explicitly allowed Spheres. Perhaps one of the few games with spheres, run by anyone other than me and my one DM friend, that wasn't throwing up a million and one red flags. (Man it is exhausting. And disheartening.)

So I joined. But I only have the vaguest of idea as to how a living world game is played. As I understand it, it's one where groups are essentially formed from those available from the server, in an almost pickup group -esque fashion... And supposedly each party's session is supposed to happen in a shared world... and that's it.

Any advice?

Have fun!

If you want more details, I'd talk to the other players and the DM(s). There are different ways to run a living world game, so ask those who are most experienced with this specific game.

[Tiktakkat]

A little background to go with the basics:

Way back at the dawn of gaming conventions, RPG events featured pregenerated characters. You might get to negotiate to pick which one you played, but you generally had zero input into what they could do or what items they had. You used them for that adventure and then forgot about them.
Then someone had an idea about letting people make their own characters and use them from game to game, and the "Living Campaign" concept was born.

They generally work as you noted: you make your character, form a pick up group with other people waiting to play, and off you go. Each campaign features a series of adventures set in a campaign world, and as you play your character gains level and items.
Naturally, there are limits. Such campaigns will restrict character design to certain books, as you note you had to search to find one that allowed Spheres. XP can only come from adventures for that campaign, no picking up stuff from outside. Likewise items are often restricted to what you find in specific adventures, though many will have a list of "generic" items, like basic weapons, armor, and stat boosters, that any character can purchase. Those often have level restrictions - no buying a +5 sword at 3rd level if you somehow get the gp for it.
Adventure resolutions for ongoing campaigning might be decided either by a "consensus" of results from the event the adventure premieres at, or by a similar method. Through that, the campaign develops just as a regular campaign would.

Beyond that, rules are very campaign specific. Some allow character rebuilds; some utterly prohibit it; some let you make a completely different character of the same level every few adventures or time period. You need to read the particular campaign rules for those.

As for how it works in practice, much as home games, it depends a lot on the staff and players. A good staff will keep a constant flow of adventures available, decent DMs will be there for the play experience rather than to tally up personal kills and TPKs, and decent players can make the pick up groups a lot more fun than the same old, same old.
Equally, bad versions of those can make it an exercise in wasted time and money.
And then there are groups who never go to events and merely use the available adventures for their home group.
I can provide pages of anecdotes of all of those.
For the most part, go in with good intentions, be prepared for most players you meet to not play at your level of game expertise and be ready to adapt to that, and just go with the flow.

[gijoemike]

Many years ago we had a similar concept running at our local gaming store. We had something like 15 people that wanted to play D&D 3.X. So, we decided that everyone ( GM's too) would make a character that were all parts of a local community in Forgotten Realms. There was a big brute body guard, a cleric of mystra, a wizard, a thief/street rat, a ranger, a bard, a second cleric, a spike chain gladiator, warlock cultist, etc.

Every time we would meet 2 or 3 people would run a table and everyone else would join the adventure premise that GM tossed out. Sometimes ppl couldn't make it. This could range from an npc asking for help from the local guard, a flyer posted at the end, a vision or magic plea for help, a interesting plot hook noticed in a previous adventure, etc. Sometimes the party would be 7 ppl other times just 3 or 4. All the characters knew all the other characters, all characters were built under the same set of rules/accepted sources.

Most adventures were played out in a single session. There were some that took 2 sessions to play out. On adventures that went south, group A could magically call for group B to come in and support them. So week 1 group A has serious trouble and needs to distract the citadel of orcs, call in Group B to save a local town and fight the orcs. Group A then sneaks by and fights cutists in the cave network who were paying off the orcs to be a private army. This built up the community/world around the PC's and the PC's actually mattered in the overall story.

At the end of each session a few people would volunteer to run next session. 1 or 2 GMs would always have a spare adventure planned out in case that GM fell sick or just couldn't make it.

I normally see this get played out as all PC's are part of a explorers guild/adventurer's guild. Later on players can retire their PC to become an officer/envoy for the guild. And they then bring in a lower level PC to be a new recruit.

[gijoemike]

What are the red flags being thrown for those others sphere's games?

[Kurald Galain]

So I joined. But I only have the vaguest of idea as to how a living world game is played. As I understand it, it's one where groups are essentially formed from those available from the server, in an almost pickup group -esque fashion... And supposedly each party's session is supposed to happen in a shared world... and that's it.
The best part of a living world is recurring places and characters. You can e.g. get a quest to travel to Greenleaf Forest, and have been there in a previous quest, and meet characters who have been there in a different quest. Or your character can develop a love/hate relationship with a recurring NPC and find out that other PCs also have an opinion on this PC. Or an artifact may be foreshadowed in several adventures and some PC may end up owning it. When done right, this really makes you feel like you're part of a bigger world.

This also means that after an adventure, you can get a sheet of paper like "You were fair-minded | neutral | insulting towards Duke Ekud, and in future adventures you get a +5 | +0 | -5 on diplomacy rolls against anyone in or from his duchy". Conversely, the GM would have to fill in a form that "The PCs killed | redeemed | let escape the antagonist Baron Norab", and the outcome that most groups chose ends up canon for any future appearances of Norab.

Finally, because social control is stronger than with a group of completely random pickups, and because there tend to have banlists, living campaigns tend to avoid the worst excesses of bad players and bad GMs. Oh, and if the campaign is big enough then that makes it much easier to find a game when and where you want, although really only PFS and AL are big enough for that last one. HTH!

[Palanan]

Originally Posted by gijoemike
What are the red flags being thrown for those others sphere's games?

Seconding this question. What are these red flags, exactly?

[SangoProduction]

What are the red flags being thrown for those others sphere's games?

Standard red flags. The hints of "Oh... this is going to be a train wreck." Just pretty remarkable how I've found only a couple DMs who allowed Spheres who didn't put up red flags like they were a fashion accessory.

[Palanan]

But what do you consider to be a "red flag"? What are the specific behaviors that you find concerning?

[Kitsuneymg]

But what do you consider to be a "red flag"? What are the specific behaviors that you find concerning?

A few I’ve taken note of (more yellow flags, but they’ve discouraged me several times)

1: allowing literally any 3pp or all books. SoP makes some things better (blasting,) but if you’re allowing all of paizo, then an eclectic/esoteric training wizard/harbinger into some PRC is gonna trounce anything I could bring to the table
2: “looking for 6 to 8 players.” General flag, but I’ve seen it a lot on sop games
3: “no power gamers!” Without any actual description of expected power level. Like I said before, a sphere blaster can do enough damage to make it worth playing; it’s much better than a paizo blaster. And people tend to compare it to paizo and decide that since it’s better, it must be power gaming/broken.

These aren’t too spheres specific, but the issues seem to be exacerbated by spheres or seem to be encountered more in spheres games.

[icefractal]

1: allowing literally any 3pp or all books. SoP makes some things better (blasting,) but if you’re allowing all of paizo, then an eclectic/esoteric training wizard/harbinger into some PRC is gonna trounce anything I could bring to the tableI mean ... funny you should pick that example, because getting three levels of martial ability while maintaining full casting is something that's pretty easy to do in Spheres.

Given that even Paizo alone or Spheres alone can be broken if you really want to, I think power level is just something that needs to be discussed for a campaign, regardless of sources allowed.