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Conners
2008-06-27, 01:47 PM
One thing I've really wanted to do for some time is DM a game where the players decide what the adventure is. Where they go, what they do, what they can do.
Rather than: "You all start in a tavern, meet each other, then all decide to go on this quest that happens by," it's more like: "You start in area X, she starts in Y, and the dwarf is in Q--here's the map, decide where you want to go."

My notes so far on the project:
Make a detailed or semi-detailed layout of the lands, countries, islands, continents, whatever you you want the players to be able to travel to.
You must also have a clear history of the world to avoid confusions as to the story.
Get several reliable co-DMs.
Pre-set-up several adventures, NPCs, towns, and NPC cohorts.
Randomly choose the positioning of each player (it's possible for two to be in the same place, though not so likely)--make sure not to place them in TOO risky an area.
Pray like heck it doesn't all scr*w up.

The PCs will travel a lot from place to place, none of them knowing the location of their fellows without special circumstance. The main way to find another PC is listen to rumours and gossip, collecting information about said PC till you eventually work out how to locate them. Another method is simply to go to a place everyone gathers/is-gathering--famous temples, ruins, war-campaigns, gold-rushes, that sort of thing.

Land itself will be vague to the players--they'll know town X is ten miles south because the people of their village Y told them that. However, they won't know that a horde of barbarians patrol around the 200 miles east one must travel to reach the empire of Z.

Due to the realistic set-up of the world, there will be a lot of quests the PCs hear of that they just can't accomplish. They start off at first level, but they still may hear about the demon lurking in the city sewers, which you intend to become a major villain at a higher level. Should they embark on too hard a mission, they'll have to swallow their pride and run like hell.

NPCs play a larger role in this "living" world. Players aren't the only ones who are special--heroic, adventurer NPCs will be doing quests, sometimes competing with PCs over them. Should PCs keep an ear to gossip, they may frequently hear about specific adventurer NPCs, or their deathes...

"Good" races, however, are not the only ones with gifted individuals. Goblin clans will have their fair-share of swift-bladed warriors and noiseless-assassins. Wiping out communities of most anything will become more tricky. Should a incredibly gifted person raise from any race, more spectacular events shall happen. Wars will be waged, artefacts will be sought, kingdoms will be ruled from the shadows...

The PCs are expected to team up with NPCs and NPC-cohorts frequently--since they are not in contact with other PCs to begin with, and soloing a mission can, sometimes, very well be classified as suicide.

I don't plan on doing this any time soon, but I thought I might as well start learning tips and tricks now. It'd be great if you more experienced players and DMs would give me advice on the matter.

My main worry is: Can I do this stuff with 4th edition...? I'm guessing "no", unless I borrow a lot from 3.5ed. Which comes to the problem of what goes, what stays, and what's changed/added homebrew-wise.

Other than that, I'm wondering how to randomly generate NPC-heroes for both "good" and "evil" races. There was a method for randomly generating a town/city/whatever -- as well as the different classes (and levels) of the NPCs in said place -- in 3.5ed that is a good basis.

Then I just need to work out a table for the success and failure (in a nutshell) for NPC adventurers, armies, Kings, etcetera, with all the events of the "living" world.

Please post advice you have about the project.

Chronicled
2008-06-27, 02:04 PM
Read all of this man's notes on the subject: Ars Ludi (http://arsludi.lamemage.com/index.php/78/grand-experiments-west-marches/).

Also, make sure your players are up for it/in the proper mindset. I tried to run a very free roaming game, and my players started looking around for a quest giver. I ended up having to write a plot of sorts, but made sure that there was still plenty of freedom in how to go about it.

batsofchaos
2008-06-27, 02:11 PM
Why wouldn't you be able to run a 4ed game like this? Mechanically, it's no different from any other game; there's just a unique take on running quests.

Personally, I'd forgo the "players are on their own and don't really know eachother" hook, and just stick them together somewhere and let them do what they wish. The reason being, there'd be an awful lot of solo adventuring before the PCs work together (if they ever work together), which means that DM is on triple-duty for game-running, and the socialization aspect of gaming gets cut down significantly. I think it would be a planning, energy, and logistical nightmare to run a game like that for anything beyond a solo campaign.

The next consideration is the sheer amount of planning that would need to go into this. Since there are no guidelines for the PCs on what sort of things they want to do, you need to be prepared for any option. Being prepared doesn't necessarily mean you need detailed maps, planned encounters, statted NPCs, etc. for every single conceivable location, though. The best thing to do would be to build several files of "improvisation" materials. These materials are basically pre-fabricated information that can be quickly and easily inserted into multiple situations. Having about twenty or thirty "rooms" mapped can be used to build a quick-and-dirty dungeon. Pre-statted groups of encounters can be easily inserted anywhere you need an encounter. Some generic stats for NPCs of different types, plus a random list of names can lead to on-the-spot NPC generation. Having these tools in hand takes a lot of the time-consuming statting that goes into adventure planning out of the way.

Last thing I'd suggest is probably critically thinking about the scale. I'm actually planning a campaign very similar to this sort of idea, but I'm restricting the scope to a single city. Having a big, or even boundless scope can lead to so much pre-planning that the game stalls before getting off the ground. Games of this sort can be really rewarding, but they are very top-heavy. All that prep in the beginning can lead to DM burn-out far before dice hit the table.

Tistur
2008-06-27, 02:20 PM
Hi,

I'm playing in a game sort of like this right now, with a homebrew ruleset based on 3e. We're playing it as a "character driven" story: one of us is under a curse and trying to find a cure, one is on the run and looking for revenge, etc. It's a lot of fun.

I would suggest that you decide clearly what your goal is: do you want a story driven by RP, or a story driven by chance ("I happened to be in a town that needed help with a little kobold problem..."), or a series of loosely connected adventures?

Are you planning on playing IRL? If so, are you planning on getting together as a group? (It doesn't sound like it...) If your players are friends, I'd suggest giving them the option of crafting a backstory together, so some of them at least begin knowing each other, if not together. (In the game I mentioned above, we tried very hard to avoid "You look trustworthy!" moments, and that took a lot of time.) Or have an organization whose members trust each other, and give them a chance to join. The Adventurers Guild, maybe, and to get in you have to prove yourself to X members, or save a member's life under dire circfumstances, or the like. This fits in with your many NPC adventurers.

To get at least tangentalyl back on topic, I would suggest giving the players maps showing at least the borders and capitial cities of some countries. For fun, I would probably skew the proportions of each map slightly differently, as they all got the maps from different mapmakers.

I'm not clear why you'd need co-DMs - for the many NPCs?

And I think it's very important to be able to accurately describe the level of threat each quest entails, if you're leaving it up to the players to decide which monsters they can take on. I'd have several in-character ways of doing this written up before hand.

Keld Denar
2008-06-27, 02:29 PM
What you are proposing is a large sandbox style game similar in nature to the computer game like Morrowind or Oblivion. The PCs are free to come and go as they wish, take or leave adventure hooks, and generally explore EVERYTHING.

Unfortuantely, this has a couple problems.

A) Player motivation: Sometime the players will be daunted by how massive and open the world is, and have no clue how to get around to getting into trouble. People don't walk around with yellow ! over their heads in D&D.

B) Material: Sandbox games typically have whole teams of designers working to provide the amount of material they contain. To design every single NPC and every single tavern in every single town, not to mention major cities! is a daunting task for 1 person. Anything short of that can feel randomly generated or similarly hollow.

Tsadrin
2008-06-27, 02:36 PM
One thing I've really wanted to do for some time is DM a game where the players decide what the adventure is. Where they go, what they do, what they can do.
Rather than: "You all start in a tavern, meet each other, then all decide to go on this quest that happens by," it's more like: "You start in area X, she starts in Y, and the dwarf is in Q--here's the map, decide where you want to go."

This is the very core essence of 'old-school' D&D as a lot of people played it. Read through any of the many articles about how Arneson and Gygax ran their games.


Make a detailed or semi-detailed layout of the lands, countries, islands, continents, whatever you you want the players to be able to travel to.

You don't need a huge area to start with. The first level or two of the nearest mega-dungeon. Some local maps and some notes about the local villages and perhaps one large city in the vicinity. The players will be unable to really travel far at low levels for the most part, and as they level they'll usually provide ample warning for doing anything outside the primary play area.


You must also have a clear history of the world to avoid confusions as to the story.

Again, no need to go overboard. You'll burn yourself out. A local history is good enough to get started. When players find need for more information you can work on it.


Get several reliable co-DMs.

A 1:20 ratio is good. If you're running a sandbox game you shouldn't have much trouble with two or three groups of 4-6 each along with the random individual. Just keep good notes.


Pre-set-up several adventures, NPCs, towns, and NPC cohorts.

Stick with a few pre-rolled henchmen and major NPCs (local guard captains and the like. People the players will interact with on a regular basis. There's no real need to stat out the King or his mistress if the players aren't going to meet them.


Randomly choose the positioning of each player (it's possible for two to be in the same place, though not so likely)--make sure not to place them in TOO risky an area.

Players will hire henchmen and advertise in guildhalls and taverns for fellow adventurers to help explore. Let them use these tools to organize. A large town or small city is the perfect place to base the PCs out of in the beginning.


Pray like heck it doesn't all scr*w up.

Keep good notes and maintain an accurate calendar. Those two things will keep everything in line.


The PCs will travel a lot from place to place, none of them knowing the location of their fellows without special circumstance. The main way to find another PC is listen to rumours and gossip, collecting information about said PC till you eventually work out how to locate them. Another method is simply to go to a place everyone gathers/is-gathering--famous temples, ruins, war-campaigns, gold-rushes, that sort of thing.

Land itself will be vague to the players--they'll know town X is ten miles south because the people of their village Y told them that. However, they won't know that a horde of barbarians patrol around the 200 miles east one must travel to reach the empire of Z.

At lower levels there shouldn't be a lot of wilderness travel unless you, as a GM, don't populate your world with random encounters. Most wilderness encounters are large, aggressive, and usually deadly to lone adventurers and small parties. (This is why caravans exist. To move goods and people in safety through large numbers.)


Due to the realistic set-up of the world, there will be a lot of quests the PCs hear of that they just can't accomplish. They start off at first level, but they still may hear about the demon lurking in the city sewers, which you intend to become a major villain at a higher level. Should they embark on too hard a mission, they'll have to swallow their pride and run like hell.

Very true. This will be the biggest 'shock' to players used to AD&D 2nd and D&D 3.x. Sometimes a character just stumbles into the wrong level of a dungeon or bites off more than he can chew.


NPCs play a larger role in this "living" world. Players aren't the only ones who are special--heroic, adventurer NPCs will be doing quests, sometimes competing with PCs over them. Should PCs keep an ear to gossip, they may frequently hear about specific adventurer NPCs, or their deathes...

"Good" races, however, are not the only ones with gifted individuals. Goblin clans will have their fair-share of swift-bladed warriors and noiseless-assassins. Wiping out communities of most anything will become more tricky. Should a incredibly gifted person raise from any race, more spectacular events shall happen. Wars will be waged, artefacts will be sought, kingdoms will be ruled from the shadows...

I tend to keep this restricted though. The players are the heroes. The world is not completely static, but it usually isn't until players start making waves that the world really grows.


The PCs are expected to team up with NPCs and NPC-cohorts frequently--since they are not in contact with other PCs to begin with, and soloing a mission can, sometimes, very well be classified as suicide.

The use of henchmen and men-at-arms is vital to this type of play. But as I mentioned earlier using advertising and word of mouth as tools players shouldn't find it hard to discover one another in a town or small city.


I don't plan on doing this any time soon, but I thought I might as well start learning tips and tricks now. It'd be great if you more experienced players and DMs would give me advice on the matter.

I run all of my fantasy games in this way. I hope I've given some insight. If you have any further questions I'd be happy to answer what I can.


My main worry is: Can I do this stuff with 4th edition...? I'm guessing "no", unless I borrow a lot from 3.5ed. Which comes to the problem of what goes, what stays, and what's changed/added homebrew-wise.

I found this style of play VERY difficult to run using 3.x. The combats took too long and simple encounters were anything but. Most of your game time using this style of play usually involves a lot of planning and exploring. If a random encounter takes two hours to play through you've wasted a lot of time that could have been used for something else, especially if the group of PCs are not together. In D&D 4th I see combat running faster and as long as you ignore set encounter restrictions and just let the players encounter what you've put in the area it should work well enough.


Other than that, I'm wondering how to randomly generate NPC-heroes for both "good" and "evil" races. There was a method for randomly generating a town/city/whatever -- as well as the different classes (and levels) of the NPCs in said place -- in 3.5ed that is a good basis.

Then I just need to work out a table for the success and failure (in a nutshell) for NPC adventurers, armies, Kings, etcetera, with all the events of the "living" world.

Random generation works well for random NPCs, but anyone the PCs are going to interact with should be built with purpose in mind. As for random events, if you're truly desperate for something on that scale I'd recommend finding an old copy of Mechwarrior (the 1st edition). There is a great random events table in that book. (Once per game month there is an event from the minor to world shattering.)


Please post advice you have about the project.

Enjoy!

ColonelFuster
2008-06-27, 04:07 PM
Goal. Goal, goal, goal, goal, goal, goal. Make it so that your players all have a similar goal, like "defeat Demon Lord X" and you should be able to nudge them into one another.

Example: Dwarfie the fighter starts out in the kingdom of Placezhul. He starts out as just a soldier- his first (solo) adventure is traveling with a small company to clear out a dungeon. For one reason or another, an avatar of Orcus shows up at the end and kills the rest of his teammates, sparing him so that he can spread fear to the rest of the kingdom. His kingdom kicks him out after that for one reason or another (they think he's been tainted, they think he's crazy, they think he killed his commander for political gain, or all of the above). After that, you can give Dwarfie the world-map and start dropping rumors about the Chalice Knights with anyone he asks about evil outsiders.

Example 2: Elfie the magic-user is an apprentice under his father/father figure. After a good deal of roleplaying (solo adventuring with a wizard is scary scary OMG I ONLY HAVE 0 HP LEFT AAAAAAAHHHHH A HOUSECAT!), the elder wizard reveals what his grand spell is- and it turns out destroying his body and soul, leaving only a symbol in the ground. Elfie is then given free range of the world to discover what happened. It just so happens that that symbol represents a combination of Undead and Demon....

Example 3: Bob the Druid is raised on tales of Orcus, the Demon prince. When his elders ask Nature about his movements, Nature reports that he will rise to godhood unless defeated within ten years. The rest of his clan sighs and shakes their heads at the hopeless cause, but Bob is prodded into warning the world about it or something. Given the map, ready to charge and rip faces off.

Example 4: Doc the rogue is a small-time theif who steals from the wrong guy- a palace official. now that they have him, they're forcing him to travel with a group of paladins as their scout. They can't stop talking about how much they look forward to going to the Chalice Academy, a building where every hall has a statue made of pure gold, and every wall is decorated with platinum artwork, and blah blah blah you should steal that stuff blah blah blah. When he invariably gives them the slip, he gets the world map and is free to go wherever he wants.

It works alot better if your players are freinds, because they will naturally want to meet up and work together towards their goal. But that goal will be the driving force in the campaign, and should be the central point to every adventure. With luck, they might even acheive it :)

The Colonel

Dan_Hemmens
2008-06-27, 04:21 PM
I'm a bit confused about what you're trying to achieve here.

Why are you planning on having the PCs starting off in random locations? Are they supposed to know each other? Or are you writing that off as unrealistic as well?

If you go ahead with this, you'll have to be very, very careful to avoid getting totally bogged down in world admin.

Vortling
2008-06-27, 04:37 PM
There's no reason why this should be any harder in 3.x, 4e, or any other system that supports the style of fantasy gaming you want.

My only suggestion is to have the players not only start together but have them build characters that are going to work together. Otherwise you'll be tearing your hair out on a regular basis and better off having each of them play their own little session until they meet up.

Tsadrin
2008-06-27, 05:47 PM
Goal. Goal, goal, goal, goal, goal, goal. Make it so that your players all have a similar goal, like "defeat Demon Lord X" and you should be able to nudge them into one another.

I strongly disagree with this as a starting point. At later levels, after players have explored the area on their own and perhaps worked together there should be some common goals the characters may share.

At level 1 though the best the players should look for is safety in companionship. Exploring the local ruins or investigating a strange event are good hooks to get players together, but common 'goals' and BBEGs are the stuff of railroads. In a sandbox game the GM is NOT a storyteller. As a DM your goal is to be a referee and rules arbitrator that judges PC actions and NPC actions in a neutral manner.

A DM may drop all the rumors and plot hooks they want, but if the players want to ignore them and do something completely different then that's their right. This is however a different style of play than most players are used to, especially if they started role-playing in the late 80's or early 90's.

erikun
2008-06-27, 08:10 PM
Hmm, sounds like a really interesting idea. Thank you Chronicled for the link, although I don't think that's quite what Conners was going for. A couple of things I'd like to point out.

First, either 4e or 3.5e should work just fine. For what you're planning, I don't see anything that one system does poorly that the other might do any better, really.

One of the biggest problems is that classes aren't meant to go solo. Wizards need a meatshield, fighters need a healer, rogues need someone to get enemies off their back... this means that, at the beginning of the game, your PC are either working my themselves with 3-4 NPCs or are just not going on adventures.

The first problem is that it kills the social aspect - it's just the player and the DM, with most of the fighting going on between allied and enemy NPCs. Either the player gets to run the allied NPCs (thus reducing them to basically minions) or the player sits back in most fights while the NPCs wail on each other.

The second is that, after 8 levels in the same group, what reason would the PCs have for ditching their current groups and working together? It make no sense in character, and very little sense OOC.

Well, those are the biggest stumbling blocks I can see at the moment. Good luck with the planning, though!

Tough_Tonka
2008-06-27, 09:00 PM
well heres a few suggestions to help keep things in this type of campaign interesting.

1. Avoid making the campaign completely reactionary. Often the Heroes will be looking for trouble, but sometimes trouble goes looking for the PCs. If you keep a calender you might schedule some invasion and natural disasters from time to time and you might want to generate some interesting crises that occur while the heroes are in town (for exmaple the PC might stuble upon a corpse in the middle of a dark street).

These events don't have to level appropriate (lv 2 PC might have to deal with an invasion of ogres for example), but there should be something the heroes can do in these situations (in the previous example the PC could try to help the community flee from the area).

As the PCs gain fame and fortune they might also be pulled into the politics of the setting if they have managed to avoid them thus far. Relative might be kidnapped, ambitious thieves might try there luck with the PC's fortunes. Paranoid men of power might try to have the PCs put out before they pose to much of a threat. Opposing organization or kingdoms might bid for the PCs favor.

2. Make sure to have a good number of Shiny Red Balloons (I came up with the name myself). Shiny Red Balloons are usually low to mid level NPCs that like just begging to get into conflict with the PCs. Examples include anti-vigilantly guards, boastful tavern brawlers, pompous nobles and the like.

As there name suggest they break as easily as balloons, but the real adventure consist of the sudden explosion following the rip. For example said tavern brawler might be a favored mook for the city's most ruthless and vengeful crime lords or the guard might use his connections to falsely accuse the heroes of various misdeeds.

sikyon
2008-06-27, 09:04 PM
Honestly I suggest using a premade campaign setting for this, and allowing the players to free roam. Random encounter tables outside of cities are good, as are random event generators. Ie. (name1) (verb) (name2) with (noun) and randomly generate it. Like Bob pilfers Johanas with custard. It can make for hillarious ad lib campaigns.

Yahzi
2008-06-28, 12:59 AM
Read all of this man's notes on the subject: Ars Ludi (http://arsludi.lamemage.com/index.php/78/grand-experiments-west-marches/).

as the great MUD Nexus teaches us, danger unites. PCs have to work together or they are going to get creamed. They also have to think and pick their battles — since they can go anywhere, there is nothing stopping them from strolling into areas that will wipe them out.
Totally. Awesome.

This is my philosophy exactly!


No such thing in West Marches: I rolled all dice in the open, not behind the screen. If the dice said you sucked a critical, a critical you did suck.

Did this lead to looming specter of sudden death? Yes, but having strong and fairly unyielding consequences combined with a consistent, logical environment meant the players really could make intelligent decisions that determined their fate — they really did hold their own lives in their hands.
:smallbiggrin::smallbiggrin::smallbiggrin:

I love this guy!

:smallbiggrin::smallbiggrin::smallbiggrin:

Tsotha-lanti
2008-06-28, 02:39 AM
It's feasible, but note that splitting the party is always the last thing you want to do; everyone else will get bored while one person is acting. It's inevitable. "Don't split" is the big rule of GMing.

I don't think there's any system where this would work better or worse; in any game, this kind of campaign requires a lot of preparation. You have to map-n-stat all the areas available to the PCs, and keep map-n-statting any area they plan to head into in more detail. This is why you want to end every session with "What and where do you want to do next time?"

Swordguy
2008-06-28, 03:13 AM
I run pretty much ALL my games like this. There's 2 ways to do it. One is what people are talking about: premake everything. I've done that - I got to sit in a bed at the MACH hospital at Fort Jackson for 6 months, with no TV, and so had the time to do that. If you don't have that sort of time, there's the second way to do so.

Improvise pretty much everything. All you need to start is the name and general idea of the town you're starting in, and literally improvise from there, picking up on your players cues ("You said this city had an extensive and ancient sewer system. I wonder if there's anything down there?" GM: "Why yes, actually, there's been a serious issue lately with huge plague-ridden rats boiling up from the sewer every few months. They seem to get nastier with each infestation.").

The second method is probably the most permissive...but you've gotta be REALLY fast on your feet or the sessions bog down. Plus it can be pretty stressful. And somebody who's just there to kill stuff will kill your game real quick. But it's a hellacious amount of fun when you and your players are snapping ideas and stuff back and forth to each other. If RPing is cooperative storytelling, then this is that art form at its zenith.

Conners
2008-06-28, 05:59 AM
If I quote-reply all of you I'll probably get banned for breaking the server:smalltongue:, so I'll just give more general replies.

@Chronicled: I'll start reading it as soon as I reply to everyone, thanks.
I'll make sure to tell the party all the things they aren't used to they should know: It isn't a train-track quest they have to find their own things to do, all players start in separate positions, if they take on too tough a quest they'll get fried or will HAVE to run, and that they need to hire NPCs a lot.


@batsofchaos: Meh, just not use to the system yet and it seems to have less rules on randomly generating towns, etcetera.

That's why I have co-DMs (one for each group of PCs, preferably) and pre-set-up adventures and NPCs. So that one thing doesn't go wrong and then everything else falls apart while I'm fixing that :smalltongue:.

I didn't mean "work out what every area of the map will be like". I meant that if I need an adventure for the PCs who are bored, but I'm too sick to think up anything, I'll have a pre-set adventure I can give them while I recover. So, yeah, I meant basically what you're suggesting I do--sorry for not explaining properly.

Which is why I need the things I listed all set up. I won't have time to make up the history of the town of X, and I may very well forget it when a different PC comes to it.


@Tistur: Yo.

Why wasn't I invited to it :smallfrown:... :smallbiggrin:

Mostly RP, a bit of luck (the player comes to a town but fnds another band of adventurers have seized the quest--they could try and take the quest from them, or try to join them, or leave, etcetera), and an amount of realism. The world lives, sort of like Fable, it keeps on going and changing.

Nope, on this message board.

If I draw a map, I'm only drawing one--but more likely I'll just describe what the map entails, so I can probably do that. They all get maps of the country, continent, whichever. Medieval maps, however, are pretty vague, especially when showing a whole continent, so they'll need to find more detailed maps of the local areas to have much ease traveling.

Since I plan to split up the PCs, I'd prefer to have at least one CO-DM per PC.

Good idea. The only problem is how to describe the threat level without outright statistics or knowledge that the farmer/whatever wouldn't have.


@lussmanj: Yeah, I guess it is pretty similar. That seems to sum it up rather well.

A) That has been worrying me also. Hmm... perhaps I can have an Adventurers' Guild in all towns and cities. It would basically keep track of quests than give it out to adventurers of a suitable skill. In small communities, the adventurers' guild will merely be the local tavern where a guild representative lodges until his services are needed.

B) I didn't mean I was going to design every NPC, not even every town or city. I mean I will have a lot of pre-made towns and NPCs I can use wherever I need them (in one game they might appear in farmland X, while in another they might appear in city Z).


@Tsadrin: They did that in the first editions? Neat, I never knew about that.

Well, the point of the game is to be a massive area the PCs can change and explore, as in a whole country or continent.

This is actually quite necessary. That way, my CO-DM won't tell his PC that forest X is good, when I originally intended it to be the breeding-ground of evil druids' experiments.

Hmm... well, I was planning on all PCs starting out as individuals besides the rare group in the same place. On the other hand, perhaps I could start them out more group-ish with individuals being a bit less common.

Yeah, that's basically what I meant :smallsmile:. Along with quest-NPCs I can just place wherever I want at whichever time.

That's exactly what I was planning :smallbiggrin:.

Heh, even that isn't a definite guarantee of organization, but it'll certainly help. Thanks.

When I was practicing the set-up with my sister, that's exactly how I did it. Her first task was to find a caravan so she could travel safely out of the town.

Which is why I'll have to put that tidbit in capital letters and bolding, on size 5 font, to get it through to them before the game starts :smallbiggrin:.

Yep, I'll make sure there are a very select few who reach level 12 and beyond (I would normally make it a smaller level, but 4th edition has drow soldiers as 12th....). So one they get into 10 and above, they'll be among the most renown adventurers of the land.

Spot on.

Thanks Tsadrin :smallsmile:. There is actually something I was wanting to ask someone... You see, my game will take place in the earlier DnD world, one of the great empires of the "past" is still around, and there are less ruins about (though still plenty enough). The reason for this is I want the PCs to really change the world later on.
Build their castles. Form orders of knights, wizards, thieves, whichever. Create fabulous items of great power which they can use to conquer, or that they will fear and seal away. Support the real heir to a throne and help him to regain his kingdom. Become a King or Queen themselves and try to rank up to Emperor or Empress.
So, what I was wondering, is how should I work out how to do things like this? There was a source book for 3.x about building strongholds, but I don't think 4e has any rules on that.

I didn't mean the combat -- it is superbly better in some ways in 4e -- I meant things like skills, rules for NPC building, etcetera.

Thanks, I'll look it up.

I will :smallbiggrin:!


@ColonelFuster: Goals will have to be their own, due to the set-up I want. Sure, they all might hear there's a goldrush, or a war, at this one place, and it'll be a good chance to gather, but they can all-out ignore it if they so choose.

[Have nothing to reply about the good examples since they unfortunately don't suit the type of game I had in mind.]

Players can decide to RP siblings, cousins, friends, lovers, whichever, and I will in turn make it easier for them to find each other or even have them automatically start in the same place.

I will take your advice and give them a driving goal every so often. Thanks Colonel!


@Dan_Hemmens: This is why I'm asking for more experienced DMs' help and advice, so that it doesn't all go horribly wrong then explode :smalleek:.


@Vortling: I was thinking about things like castle building rules which are only in 3.x and that sort of thing :smalltongue:.

I might have some of them start in small groups... I'll certainly have to think a lot on this if I have them start on their own.


@Tsadrin: My sentiments exactly. You seem pretty good at this type of game :smalleek:.


@erikun: I didn't get to read the link since I had to rush off to work, so I wouldn't know.

4e combat is simpler and generally better, but I don't think it has rules for castle building and such which 3.x supplements did have.

I know this, which is why PCs will HAVE to recruit NPCs to stand any chance on their own, generally.

If the PC just watches while their hired-blades take all the blows and almost die, s/he'll find his/herself deserted before long (if not murdered). NPCs are properly "living", so the players will have to treat them as such. The PCs should reach another one of their kind (if they didn't start out with one) reasonably soon, anyway.

Their NPCs may ditch them, remember :smalltongue:. You do have a point with this, but players should find each other well before then--if not, they probably weren't trying very hard and would be happier with their NPC minions.

Thanks, I hope I can avoid them XD!


@Tough_Tonka: 1. I was actually wondering how to roll for that kind of thing. "Roll an X sided dice to see if the countries of Y and Z go to war" sort of thing. I'll make sure to have plenty of events, though :smallbiggrin:.

Brilliant advice, I was thinking about something similar at points (the caravan the 1st level PC is travelling in is waylaid by gnoll raiders--they have little chance of victory and have to run.

Having their growing fame make a large effect on the world around them is a VERY important part of making the world feel real. The townspeople of X might ignore the player compl;etely, but when they come back two IC years later, everyone will say, "Look, it's Y who killed the Z of L!" Crowds will gather around the PC(s), people will offer them free stuff or places to sleep, some will ask to be taken on as apprentices. It will be fun at first, but will start to get annoying after several towns XD. Since the players themselves are external from the actual events, however, they'll likely find it very entertaining.

2. Yep, that's what I meant by pre-made NPCs, everything from goblin chieftains to corrupt captains of the guard.

Hmm... you just gave me an interesting idea. Thanks muchly for everything :smallbiggrin:.


@sikyon: Pre-made settings are tempting, but the real thing I like about DnD is using my creativity to make great games. Thanks for the advice, though :smallsmile:.


@:


@Yahzi: That's from the article? I better read it, it sounds good.


@Tsotha-lanti: That's why I need co-DMs, so that everyone can do stuff at once.

I was mostly thinking about castle-building rules and such... but it'll probably work out fine with 4e. I'm doing it on the forums, mind you, so I won't be having "sessions" as such :smallbiggrin:.


@Swordguy: 6 months? Yikes :smalleek:! Glad to see you're OK now.
This system would be good if I had a lot of spare time, but I unfortunately don't :smalltongue:.

Note: I'm doing this on the forums, so I got plenty of time to think. This is what I was planning :smallbiggrin:. I good idea of the history of the world in general, but details left for the moment itself.

Heh, I'll have to try out this DnDI thing and see what playing DnD online is like :smallbiggrin:.


You guys have all given me some great advice. Thanks :smallbiggrin:! You've also brought several questions to my attention:


Rules for events of the world
The army of X is fighting the army of Y, who wins?

For this I'm thinking a d100 with the following modifiers: +2 if the event is slightly favourable, +5 if the event is favourable, +10 if the event has a decent chance of succeeding, +15 if the even has a good chance of succeeding, +20 if the event is very likely to succeed, +30 if the event has little chance of not succeeding.
Negative modifiers are go in the same order: -2, -5, -10, -15, -20, -30. The modifiers are given under the opposite circumstances.

A natural 100 means UTTER success: The army takes practically no losses and becomes famous for its victory--instilling DEEP fear into the other armies of that nation, and great respect from other military forces.
The diplomat not only secures peace with the savage empire but gains favour from them, granting his country with an almost unstoppable guardian, who is glad to share some of their bountiful treasure.
Not only do the NPC adventuring party defeat the orc tribe, but the orcs have mistaken the party's skill in battle to be godly and all orcs pay great respect and tribute to the party (who will likely gain command of the orc tribe they conquered).

A natural 1 is basically the same thing as saying, "Rocks fall and everyone involved dies" since rolling a 1 and not dying barely ever go together on these d100 rolls: Your army is utterly crushed by the clever general, barely anyone survives--your foolish defeat inspires several of your nation's enemies to declare open war, and several allies to relinquish some or all of their support to your war-cause and you are likely executed for the treasonous blunder.
Saying completely the wrong things, you offend the emperor more than he has even been in his whole life and so he captures you and sends you to be tortured as long as you live--seeking your family and friends he destroys your nation utterly with great atrocities and acts of barbarism.
The orcs expected you, and they're stupid orcs--they capture some or all of you alive, and decide to make your lives into a semi-hell by turning you into their most badly-treated of slaves.

Now... the numbers for success and failure:

100 and above: Magnificently superb success.
80 - 99: Brilliant success.
70 - 79: Success.
60 - 69: Mild success
50 - 59: No better, no worse.
40 - 49: Mild Failure.
30 - 39: Failure.
2 - 29: Great failure.
1 or less: Devastating failure...

This sound about right?


Castle Building: How should I do it....?


Fame and Infamy

As PCs get more famous or infamous, people will react different to them. If they're a stealthy assassin who is never caught, then they will have mostly unchanged renown, except when their identity is known. [More later]


So, anything to comment on these new additions?

Dan_Hemmens
2008-06-28, 06:07 AM
Sorry to reiterate this, but I still don't understand this whole "PCs don't start off in the same location" thing. What do you hope to gain by it? Why is it helpful? What is the advantage of this policy?

Conners
2008-06-28, 06:42 AM
Sorry to reiterate this, but I still don't understand this whole "PCs don't start off in the same location" thing. What do you hope to gain by it? Why is it helpful? What is the advantage of this policy? Well, 1) for realism, and 2) To be interesting. I like the idea of the PCs having to stand on their own two feet for a while and have to find others if they wish to advance well in the world.

Dan_Hemmens
2008-06-28, 06:50 AM
Well, 1) for realism, and 2) To be interesting. I like the idea of the PCs having to stand on their own two feet for a while and have to find others if they wish to advance well in the world.

Okay, but how is it realistic? You're going to wind up with a situation in which a bunch of complete strangers living on different sides of a continent mysteriously decide to seek each other out and team up to fight evil.

It gets even worse if there's NPC adventurers out there. If you're assuming that "adventuring parties" exist, and that people meet each other and form them, then what's going to wind up happening if people are being realistic instead of metagaming their asses off to get the party together, is that everybody is going to team up with a bunch of NPCs.

The odds of five complete strangers meeting and forming an adventuring party are so astronomically small that it's never going to happen if you try and run things "realistically".

Of course "realistically" 99% of PCs should be farmers and commoners anyway...

Dhavaer
2008-06-28, 06:51 AM
One good piece of advice I've heard for games like this is to have a list of power groups in the area and their goals, and have the adventure's events come from the pursuit of these goals reforming around the arrival of the PCs (e.g. the city watch, who want to wipe out a particuarly troublesome street gang, keep a close eye on the PCs to see if they could be allies or are enemies; the merchant's guild want the PCs to drive away the bandits who are setting ambushes along the road to the north, as much to keep them from causing trouble in the town as to be rid of the bandits; the demon behind the scenes at the creepy orphanage gets more and more nervous the longer the PCs are around, thinking they are hunting it down, and sends out assassins).

Tsotha-lanti
2008-06-28, 07:03 AM
Okay, but how is it realistic? You're going to wind up with a situation in which a bunch of complete strangers living on different sides of a continent mysteriously decide to seek each other out and team up to fight evil.

It gets even worse if there's NPC adventurers out there. If you're assuming that "adventuring parties" exist, and that people meet each other and form them, then what's going to wind up happening if people are being realistic instead of metagaming their asses off to get the party together, is that everybody is going to team up with a bunch of NPCs.

The odds of five complete strangers meeting and forming an adventuring party are so astronomically small that it's never going to happen if you try and run things "realistically".

Of course "realistically" 99% of PCs should be farmers and commoners anyway...

This. You can only bring complete strangers together by clever plotting (see all the books in William Gibson's Sprawl and Bridge trilogies for great examples of how storylines that start nowhere near each other come together), and that's obviously the very opposite of the point of this campaign.

Dan_Hemmens
2008-06-28, 07:12 AM
I was mostly thinking about castle-building rules and such... but it'll probably work out fine with 4e. I'm doing it on the forums, mind you, so I won't be having "sessions" as such .

Ah, this makes a lot more sense.

What you're basically trying to do, then, is to create an MMO? A world that a bunch of individuals can wander around on their own and have adventures?

I'm not sure *any* version of D&D is the best way to do this (I don't think tabletop mechanics make sense for something in the online format).

nagora
2008-06-28, 07:14 AM
It's all about NPCs and "dungeons". Make a list of important NPCs: leaders or wizards or other adventurers, and what they're doing. Some will be pottering about doing adventuring things, some will be trying to gain power at any level from villages up to kingdoms or the entire world.

These guys are the "movers and shakers" and any of them can be monsters.

Then place a few old towers, ruined castles, abandoned graveyards. These can form powerbases/beachheads for some of the more "outsider" groups like orcs, bandits, necromancers etc.

Then some particularly secure areas where normal life continues and which can provide some solid social base for the PC's actions. These will probably form a core area and the further from that the PCs go the more likely it is that they'll run into the threats that society faces as well as almost purely random monsters like trolls or owlbears which would be hunted down quickly in places where law and order are strong.

In addition to providing a base of operations, the towns and citys will be the seats of many of the more powerful non-monster NPCs, good and evil.

Throw in at least one major story arc which threatens the status quo. Decide what the major NPCs are doing about it.

That's it all wound up: now start it off with the intro scenario. You will want some reason why the PCs are together eventually. Perhaps they're all related. Perhaps they're all attending the same university. Perhaps they live in the same city and something local brings them together (a murder, a fire, a siege, a car boot sale!). Perhaps they're all slaves on the same estate. Having them playing separately and then brought together by an event is logistically difficult but I've seen it done.

The background you've developed will give them a source of rumours if they're looking for trouble, and the major arc(s) will give you a logical reason to push stuff at them from time to time if they're too passive.

The main idea is that all these NPCs and monsters have goals and are looking to achieve them. The PCs are there in the middle of all that and can choose sides, not choose sides, play them off against each other, ignore them all and do something else, or whatever. The world is dynamic and changing whether the PCs like it or not. If they don't like it, then what are they going to do about it? If they do like it, are they going to help? Once they get some levels under their belts they will draw attention from people who want to use them as allies or pawns in the games you set up earlier. Change implies reactions implies new actions implies change etc.

Make a framework, then detail things that you think are likely to be used soon. But, if the PCs wander off somewhere else the framework should let you wing it for a while until you detail where they have gone.

Just run the NPCs as if they were your own characters and you can keep this up for years (in 1e anyway, in later editions you might have problems with the players advancing in level too quickly).

1e was designed with this style of play in mind, so ignore those who say it can't be done - many people have done it, including myself and two others in my current group and I know of two people up the road in Belfast who are currently running such games.

Talya
2008-06-28, 07:58 AM
It's easier to do a game like this in a setting that's already very developed. The more detail, the better. If every little town over 100 people is already mapped, there's a hundred already well developed iconic NPCs, etc. (Read, Faerun.)

With homebrews or less developed settings, not only does the DM have to do more work in creating an entire world in great detail, but the players don't know where they want to go because they don't know anything about the world.

playswithfire
2008-06-28, 07:58 AM
I've been trying to think of a way to do this programmatically.
Given a region and a list of nation states with their origins and relative power, generate a map of influence which would determine the position of various cities.
The makeup of the cities would be determined by the 'personality' of the nation state and its geographic position e.g. a city on the ocean would have a port and a larger market place than a city near a mountain which would have more items made from whatever they're mining

Etc, etc. It gets sticky when you try to define the politics of the situation and have that probabilistically determine what quests and other opportunities would be available where, particularly if you want the PCs actions to influence their reception in the various town.

With less computing and more people, I'd probably want one co-DM per major power in the game world, to simulate high level diplomatic negotiations the PCs would have no direct knowledge of etc.

DeathQuaker
2008-06-28, 08:07 AM
Also, make sure your players are up for it/in the proper mindset. I tried to run a very free roaming game, and my players started looking around for a quest giver. I ended up having to write a plot of sorts, but made sure that there was still plenty of freedom in how to go about it.

Word. If you have players that tend to break the plot anyway and run with what they want to do, perfect. But not all players are like that.

My luck tends to be is if I expect the players to be adventurous and just go seek out stuff on their own, they'll sit around and stare at me going, "So, um, where's the dungeon with the goblins and the traps already?" If I have an elaborate plot that I'm really excited about playing through, the players will ignore it completely and decide to go to the city next door and fight trolls for fun, and I find myself frantically looking up troll stats.

That said, all the advice about being detailed w/ your world is dead on and it looks like you have a good start to your project. What I'd do (and I'm probably repeating people) is make sure you have a few loosely developed "plots" going on in the background--political power A is fighting with political power B, Wizard Steve has created a horrible monster in his lab, etc. The players don't have to seek these out but they'll exist so they may hear rumors of them and find stuff to do that way, and still feel empowered because they found the thread THEY liked and went with it, rather than be forcibly railroaded down a particular line.

Conners
2008-06-28, 08:27 AM
@Dan_Hemmens: 1) I'll make sure that if two PCs come to the same place there is an actual reason for them to talk. 2) Preferably, however, I'd like the PCs to work out a plausible reason. They're related, old friends, or he's a flirty bard and sees the charismatic elf sorceress. That sort of thing.

This isn't necessarily a bad thing. The PCs are meant to join up with NPC adventurers a lot in order to do anything with a chance of success. Therefore, it isn't unusual to go up to the tough-looking PC half-orc and say, "Hey, I need help with saving Y whose kidnapped. I'll split the reward 50-50 with you if you can be helpful," because you already say that a lot to NPCs. I hope my players can be a bit more creative, though.

That seem OK?


@Dhavaer: That's a good idea, thanks:smallsmile:.


@Tsotha-lanti: I can always lure PCs to each other, even if they aren't forced to by a rail-road-plot (they hear that a tournament will take place and all warriors are invited, sort of thing).


@Dan_Hemmens: Not exactly an MMO, since there will be 12 players tops. It's a DnD game that allows players to do what they like in a world that changes by their actions.


@nagora: It'll take me a while to digest all this in my mind :smalltongue:.


@Talya: .... You do have a very valid point. The problem is, I'm a writer, and part of the reason I like to play DnD is to improve my writing skill. I've already been developing the setting for quite a while, though, so it might be OK... I hope.


@playswithfire: Oh yes, I have to keep track of the environment to define nearby towns, thanks for the reminder!
Well, I was already planning to have one co-DM per player group, so it should be fine.


@DeathQuaker: *Nods* there have been a lot of awkward pauses in DnD games I've played in that ruined everything...

.... Are the players in question the same guys O_O?

Thanks very much :smallbiggrin:. I'll make sure to have some background plots the players will deal with, the most obvious one being the ever-expanding Empire.

Dan_Hemmens
2008-06-28, 08:36 AM
@Dan_Hemmens: 1) I'll make sure that if two PCs come to the same place there is an actual reason for them to talk. 2) Preferably, however, I'd like the PCs to work out a plausible reason. They're related, old friends, or he's a flirty bard and sees the charismatic elf sorceress. That sort of thing.

This isn't necessarily a bad thing. The PCs are meant to join up with NPC adventurers a lot in order to do anything with a chance of success. Therefore, it isn't unusual to go up to the tough-looking PC half-orc and say, "Hey, I need help with saving Y whose kidnapped. I'll split the reward 50-50 with you if you can be helpful," because you already say that a lot to NPCs. I hope my players can be a bit more creative, though.

That seem OK?

Seems fine. I think it's be insane for a tabletop, because everybody is sitting around together, but for a forum game it should work fine.


@Dan_Hemmens: Not exactly an MMO, since there will be 12 players tops. It's a DnD game that allows players to do what they like in a world that changes by their actions.

That makes sense. Given that, I actually think your initial assessment was right, 4E would suck for the project (you can't run 4E combat over a forum). I'd seriously consider coming up with a homebrew, diceless system if you can be bothered.

nagora
2008-06-28, 09:20 AM
@nagora: It'll take me a while to digest all this in my mind :smalltongue:.

When starting out imagine you're zooming in on the world using GoogleOerth: you start with the big view and just the most broadly important stuff (continents, large countries, ancient history of migration patterns), then you zoom in onto a particular continent and fill out all the countries, large and small but only in terms of their shape and capital cities and major wars, which races are dominant in each.

Pick a country and zoom in a bit more: fill in the other large towns and cities; put in major roads and rivers, outline the important historical leaders, civil wars etc. for a century or two, set up a few legends.

Pick a town a bit further out than most and zoom in on it: who's in charge of the town; what's the racial mix; why is it where it is; what's nearby; where does it fit into the history. Who there can the PCs turn to for help or aid if they seek it?

Pick a village near the town: map it out with the surrounding area. Are there any leveled characters here? If the PCs are from here then how did they get started on their adventuring? List every adult who has a trade; list other possibly interesting characters. Is there anything nearby which might draw unwanted attention to the area - an overgrown temple of elemental evil or perhaps a tomb full of horrors? Maybe a hill giant chief has a steading nearby and someone or something is stirring up trouble? Maybe the local kobold tribe just fancy a raid - or maybe they're in trouble with the orcs and are desparate for food and other resources, perhaps they would accept aid themselves. The world is literally yours to fill.

If you have developed NPCs then the PC's actions will inform your decisions as to what those NPCs will do in response to the PCs and then the campaign almost writes itself.

The more detail you add, the smaller an area you'll need to cover, normally. Bite-sized pieces eat the whole cake in the end :smallcool:

nagora
2008-06-28, 09:28 AM
Another thing: having more than one group playing in a campaign can be great fun when they find the things each other have done.

I remember one group in my old CSIO campaign spending hours trying to work out why there was a shrine to Athena on the top of a hill in the middle of nowhere.

In fact, another group of players (who included a dwarf who had worshiped Athena ever since meeting an avatar of hers in the form of an owl) had built it in thanks to their victory over a black dragon, which the first group had released a couple of (real) years before.

A DM can run a MM-style game much better than any computer, although clearly they are more limited in the number of players they can handle, but the quality makes up for it.

Conners
2008-06-28, 10:26 AM
@Dan_Hemmens: *Nods*

That's troublesome... hopefully it'll work out, though.

@nagora: O_O.... That is a lot of work, and I'm no good at drawing maps. I think I'll just get the overall storyline set-up, then mostly wing it. I don't have enough time or energy to go into that much detail for a whole continent...

@nagora: That's actually how PCs are meant to find each other, listen to gossip about the famous adventurers.

nagora
2008-06-28, 10:31 AM
@nagora: O_O.... That is a lot of work, and I'm no good at drawing maps. I think I'll just get the overall storyline set-up, then mostly wing it. I don't have enough time or energy to go into that much detail for a whole continent...
My point was not to do much detail on the continent. Just as Google Earth does it: detail the point of interest and sketch the rest.

Conners
2008-06-28, 11:08 AM
My point was not to do much detail on the continent. Just as Google Earth does it: detail the point of interest and sketch the rest. The problem is, I don't want areas to stick out too much as points of interest, the PCs are meant to explore the whole world. Sure, the imperial city will stick-out more than the dirt-town, and the temple of evil will be very special in comparison to most other places, but that's only to be realistic.

ColonelFuster
2008-06-28, 12:17 PM
Maps, I find, are essential. even if they're just a sheet of paper that says, "Elflorien, 30 miles from placezhul in the south." and similar non-artistry, just to have an answer to "how long does it take to get there?"

CarpeGuitarrem
2008-06-28, 12:37 PM
Here's (http://www.errantdreams.com/static/rpg) another excellent resource for running a free-roaming RPG. The key, it seems, is to make sure the players' characters are strongly developed. Once that's set up, you've got all sorts of little strings that you can pull. Does a character have an arch-nemesis that he's sworn to take revenge on? Drop a few rumors about that arch-nemesis amongst random townspeople. Is there a special weakness one character has? Use that weakness to lure them into an adventure. Once they've gotten into a few adventures, they'll start generating their own plots.

Also: remember a very important rule. Everything is fluid. (More or less) Essentially, this means that if the PCs don't know the precise location of XYZ, then you can stick XYZ anywhere on the map that makes logical sense. This particularly helps when building castles. All you have to do is construct them modularly. Build a few entry-way rooms, a great hall, maybe a kitchen, and various other plot-related rooms, and introduce them in a creative way. If you mapped out a castle concretely, and it was important that the PCs enter a specific room first, but they came in another way, do a quick swap. They'll be none the wiser. (Of course, once they've gone there, that room is set in stone, so you can't fiddle around with its placement any more)

nagora
2008-06-28, 12:53 PM
The problem is, I don't want areas to stick out too much as points of interest, the PCs are meant to explore the whole world. Sure, the imperial city will stick-out more than the dirt-town, and the temple of evil will be very special in comparison to most other places, but that's only to be realistic.

Yeah, but they don't explore it all at the same time. Fill in the detail where they start but have a sketch of the rest in case they go there unexpectedly. The detailed areas follow them about. The players don't know that the capital city of the next country over exists only as a name and population size until they get there, by which time it won't!

Tsadrin
2008-06-28, 06:47 PM
Conners - I apologize for not responding sooner.

If you really would like some solid, yet not overly complex rules for empire building and a good way to resolve combat on a mass scale with only a few dice rolls I HIGHLY recommend finding a copy of the D&D Companion boxset. The War Machine rules for mass combat are excellent. The stats should be easy to convert to D&D 4th.

PM me if you are still interested in a table for random political events. I may be able to help you out.

To those who have questions about the idea of starting PCs off in different areas I believe I can answer a few questions/concerns. The advantage is that players don't feel railroaded into being forced to group with adventurers their characters may not like or normally deal with.

If a character has a need for assistance they can advertise or request such assistance from the campaign organizations (various guilds, political powers, etc.).

Example - John decides his fighter (and two henchmen and 4 men-at-arms) are unable to crack the a lower level of the Generic Tomb of Darkness. He goes to the local tavern and lets the innkeeper know that he's looking for some experienced hands to explore said Tomb. In addition, he asks that his thief henchman drop a similar message off at the Thieves' Guild as he really needs an experienced rogue to disarm that nasty trap he heard rumor about on the 3rd level.

The DM lets any player know through the rumor mill about these notices John has posted. Perhaps, out of the three to five rogues in the campaign one or two might respond, not counting the number of PCs that may respond to the innkeepers hiring board. So, after a week or two game time there may be five to nine PCs (and/or NPCs if the DM desires) ready to help John's fighter out.

A few pints of ale during the interviews and *bam* you've got yourself a party. Perhaps if everyone gets along they'll keep in touch when later adventures become available, or perhaps they'll loathe each other and begin to plot revenge from some wrong committed (the wizard let the fighter's favorite henchman die or the cleric turned out to be an evil cultist of Set and led them into a trap).

There is nothing worse, for me as a player, than to be informed you must work with the people you're sitting at the table with, just because you share the same timeslot with the GM.

A player should have his or her own goals. If the player decides his character needs more help completing those goals then other players may be invited to assist. Never should a player feel that he MUST help another character just because that character is run by another player. In my time we called that the 'PC Glow'.

This is not a new style of play. MMORPGs do not have a monopoly on sandbox settings. Before plot driven modules and books appeared on the scene most games of D&D were played in this manner. Read the section on Time Keeping in the AD&D DMG for a great example of how this sort of game plays out.

For anyone worried about huge numbers of NPCs remember that 99.9% of the time henchmen and men-at-arms will be controlled by the player of the character that hired them. Dungeoncrawls and Wilderness adventures are not safe and when you go into an area that is dangerous it's generally advisable to travel in numbers.

A decent sized dungeon party will be around four to six PCs and each PC should have one or two henchmen. A handful of men-at-arms will help round out the overall party size to around 20. While traveling overland in areas unknown a party will consist of six to nine PCs and the NPCs accompanying the party will round out the total to around 30 to 50 total people.

This is why it's VITAL that combat not get bogged down. 3.x made this style of play difficult, if not impossible. In D&D and AD&D it was trivial. Given the simple stat lines of D&D 4th I believe it is again possible to use modern rules to play in such a manner. Miniatures would be required though.

Glyphic
2008-06-28, 06:55 PM
As a side-escapade.. Is anyone interested in DM'ing or Co-Dming such a task? I'd be up for it, having multiple parties and DM's. Perhaps even playing second edition :smallwink: (but most likely, 3.5)

erikun
2008-06-28, 07:43 PM
If you're having trouble detailing the various areas in your world, then I have a real simple solution - don't.

As the link in the second post pointed out, sweeping generalizations can work well it defining one area from another. The forest of Riverfelt in the north? It's full of rustic, natural noises, with birds chirping, squirrels running around, deer moving through the underbrush. There's a river running through the northern end of the forest, and people travelling through can prequently see wildlife throughout the forest (in the form of nonagressive animals up to territorial beasts). The forest of Stilleaf to the south, though, is another story. It is unnaturally quiet, with wildlife rarely seen. Unlike the babbling brook in the northern forest, the center of Stilleaf is dominated by a calm lake, and turns into marshland further west.

While I did not map out either forest, you can get a good sense between the two. Sticking appropriate encounters in each forest (animals and beasts in Riverfelt, plants and fey in Stilleaf) keeps the two distinct from each other. And while you'll want encounter maps for the forests, you can worry about those as needed - the "general maps" for each locale are simple to make (forest with a river? check).

Also, the consistency will help players familiar with the forests. If Riverfelt suddenly falls silent, the PC's will know that something is different there. On the other hand, if they hear rustling of the underbrush in Stilleaf - a otherwise common occurance in Riverfelt - they know to expect an ambush. The don't know what to expect, but the unusual sounds can alert players as well as dropping a dragon in front of them.

Conners
2008-06-28, 08:06 PM
@ColonelFuster: I'll have a good description of the land layout (I tell them, "you can go to X*, Y* and Z*" * = spoiler tab, filled with the information you have on said area).

@nagora: Ah, I understand what you mean. I was planning on using this narration technique to a degree--it helps to stimulate the fact the players don't really know much about the world till they go and find it out themselves.

@Tsadrin: That's OK, Tsardin, no rush.

Hmmm... can you tell me the name of the books in said box-set? My family collects a lot of books cheaply, so there's a chance we might have it already.

I'll work on the PM now :smallbiggrin:. On that note, when the time comes for me to DM my massive game, would you like to be one of the co-DMs? It's OK if you can't, I just thought you might be interested.

Wow, to think I didn't see that reason to split them up :smalleek:... maybe I did subconsciously? Meh, who knows, I'm probably still too new to notice this kind of thing.

[Reads example] Good example, I think I'll do it pretty close to that.

Yeah.... I hate the "You all meet in a tavern" gig.......

While I expect that my players will have the PC-instinct to group together, even when it's not necessary, I hope some will embrace the fact they aren't forced to go either way, never really forced to do anything, actually (except ICly, like if they're taken prisoner by orcs).

Interesting that I'm going back to basics in so many aspects XD.

At first your expected to join caravans, until you can afford to hire some muscle. Get enough men, and rich merchants will ask you to protect their caravan and take it to Y (unless you're notorious for stealing).

I generally expect PC groups to be smaller (since there are still NPC adventurers they can join up with). Still, they can travel along with whole armies of 100,000 men, later in the piece.

Since I'm doing it online, it makes no difference whether I have miniatures or not :smallbiggrin:.

@Glyphic: Once I have everything set-up, I plan on DMing. I'm not sure I'd be much of a co-DM, however...

@erikun: That's a great idea, I'll have to keep that writing technique in mind. Thank you very muchly :smallsmile:!


One thing that's come to my attention, is that I don't necessarily have to pre-make all the NPCs and dungeons myself--there are already many that have been made by the official company and various other DMs.

Does anyone have any good links to pre-made NPCs and adventures?

Tsadrin
2008-06-28, 08:43 PM
Hmmm... can you tell me the name of the books in said box-set? My family collects a lot of books cheaply, so there's a chance we might have it already.

http://home.flash.net/~brenfrow/dd/dd-cbox.htm

The two books are the Players Companion: Book One and the Dungeon Masters Companion: Book Two.


I'll work on the PM now :smallbiggrin:.

I look forward to it.


On that note, when the time comes for me to DM my massive game, would you like to be one of the co-DMs? It's OK if you can't, I just thought you might be interested.

If you plan on doing this as a PbP game I may need to pass. I don't keep up with forums in a timely manner. If you ever want advice or have questions I'd be happy to help out where I could though.

If however you happen to live in Northeast Ohio (more specifically in the Kent/Akron area) I'd be happy to work with you on this project in a more direct capacity.


One thing that's come to my attention, is that I don't necessarily have to pre-make all the NPCs and dungeons myself--there are already many that have been made by the official company and various other DMs.

Does anyone have any good links to pre-made NPCs and adventures?

Be sure to keep copies of PCs that retire or whose players leave the game to use as NPCs. The players will oftentimes be the best source of important NPCs. A minor barmaid may become an important focal point just due to the attention of a PC. The Chaotic henchman of Barney's M-U may be a spy for the secret cult trying to undermine the local church. The more players try to blow off their henchman as fodder be sure to inject some personality into the stats you've already got. The players will grow attached to these people.

Glyphic
2008-06-28, 09:25 PM
The pixie has lots of useful advice. If you need a helping hand to make npc's , locations, plots and things, I'd be glad to help. The only stipulation is that it cannot be 4E. I've a vow to players that the first 4E campaign I participate in, will be as (finally) a player instead of DM.

Pm'd you abit of contact info, if you'd like to get together online and hash things out.

Thoughtbot360
2008-06-28, 10:45 PM
I'd just like to say that this is the kind of world I'm talking about when I discuss things like "at what rate do NPCs gain experience". I mean, the "stats are dictated by the plot" philosophy is just, in my opinion, fuzzy and disconnected.(You say the Orc village Chief is 10th level simply because the plot says "he's a really tough guy who can challenge the PCs" and the PCs are 5th level?) Ancient Dragons and Destruction Parasites walked the earth even when the strongest human being of the fledgeling race was just 3rd level, so how did they survive? There is no "barrier" that segregates low-level monsters from high level monsters (although if there is, then humans and the other PHB races would probably want to build their civilization in the low-level) and a rambunctious Tarrasque can come trample your city-state without even noticing it was there, and shortly afterwards, the visiting tribe of nomadic giants (or whatever) can swoop in and exploit the chaos by taking the survivors as slaves long before they can right themselves. And this can happen, when the PCs are underleveled or even just not in town. Actually, even with power the PCs might not even be able to do anything (short of making a huge force field surrounding the entire kingdom) about the destruction until after it happens (Because, you know, a group of 3-6 medium size creatures are like an unscaleable wall to a speedy Colossal size creature :roy:).

Sorry, ranting. Anyway, the idea that there are other "heroes" besides the PCs implies that the society that raised the PCs is actually relatively secure and can cope with the existence of monsters better than any number of level 1 warriors ever can. The Western marches article at ars ludi (http://arsludi.lamemage.com/index.php/78/grand-experiments-west-marches/) actually said that there shouldn't be any NPC adventurers, but since "there are no adventures in the civilized lands, just peaceful retirement", I imagine that society's territories have chased out most of the monsters.

In general, I love the whole "simulationist" concept of a game like what Connors is proposing here, or the western marches (in that one, other players can explore a ruins before you and steal treasure that you yourself could've had). Even if the players only "experience" dungeon x, then visit y, to solve mystery z, they will notice that there is an actual world, not a set of plot hooks, for them to interact with. When you actually get your name recognized and the world's newspapers (or equivalent) had so many other stories that usually easily drown yours out, its a good feeling. Well, probably. I've never experienced it myself. But there is still a sort of coolness factor to a "living" world.

playswithfire
2008-06-29, 12:26 PM
I"m definitely interested in any project like this that gets going, though I do not have much in the way of DMing experience (almost none), but I may be useful in the generation of NPCs and background info etc.

nagora
2008-06-29, 05:03 PM
Anyway, the idea that there are other "heroes" besides the PCs implies that the society that raised the PCs is actually relatively secure and can cope with the existence of monsters better than any number of level 1 warriors ever can. The Western marches article at ars ludi (http://arsludi.lamemage.com/index.php/78/grand-experiments-west-marches/) actually said that there shouldn't be any NPC adventurers, but since "there are no adventures in the civilized lands, just peaceful retirement", I imagine that society's territories have chased out most of the monsters.
There's a couple of points against that: firstly, there are areas outside of the PC's home area. Other countries, city-states, tribes etc who can generate adventurers; they won't necessarily stick to their own areas. Secondly: cities are the natural base for thief characters and also recruitment areas for people who don't agree with the current definition of "civilized" or "peaceful" seeking those who will further their ambitions (ie, freebooter adventurer-type characters).


In general, I love the whole "simulationist" concept of a game like what Connors is proposing here, or the western marches (in that one, other players can explore a ruins before you and steal treasure that you yourself could've had). Even if the players only "experience" dungeon x, then visit y, to solve mystery z, they will notice that there is an actual world, not a set of plot hooks, for them to interact with. When you actually get your name recognized and the world's newspapers (or equivalent) had so many other stories that usually easily drown yours out, its a good feeling. Well, probably. I've never experienced it myself. But there is still a sort of coolness factor to a "living" world.
Absolutely. It's the only way to real play D&D, IMO. There are, of course other ways, but I think the full depth only comes across in this type of game, which is actually the main basis of the "Advanced" tag in AD&D. Before 1e, OD&D had very little material or guidance for campaign play; it changed the default assumptions from a series of dungeon crawls where the players basically just appeared outside the adventure every session to an on-going world where PCs built castles, found followers and henchmen, and brought civilisation to the wildlands.

If Connors is still reading this thread, here's another tip if you don't like/aren't good at drawing maps: Take part of the real world in an atlas, rotate it, trace it, and label it "1inch=10miles" or whatever without any reference to the original scale. The fractal nature of landmasses means that, with a little bit of shading out of lakes or sketching in of new ones and a free and easy approach to mountain ranges you can have a new campaign map very quickly using minimal drawing skill.

For example: make a map of Borneo, rotate it 90 degrees and scale it so that it's the size of North America. Hey-presto: starting continent. Chuck in some of the nearby island chains and you have the Many Nations of the Sea Kings or whatever! Trace Laos out as an individual island and move it about a bit and you have the Lost Continent of Golden Lemurs: no real skill required.

EGG did a similar trick with Greyhawk, which is based on the Great Lakes area of North America.

Chronicled
2008-06-29, 06:11 PM
You mentioned doing it on the forums. Word of advice: Play by Post campaigns are absolutely notorious for falling apart. I've had a lot of personal experience in this matter, having been in only 1 PbP game that made it to a meaningful stopping point (and even that was sooner than initially intended), out of many many games joined. In a campaign like yours, without quick snappy plot to keep players posting speedily, it will be difficult to make much progress.

Might I suggest IRC? I've recently tried it, and with some of the map programs available it's quite effective. It proved to be very condusive to a more freeform style of play (for instance, the plot offered a caravan to get to our destination. We decided to go via airship, so the DM took a couple minutes to draw an encounter--and only a couple--while we planned and prepared. It flowed very nicely.). I also think it would be easier for multiple groups/DMs to make a similar amount of progress than they could via PbP. The biggest benefit is that it's much, much faster--around the speed of a RL session. While a PbP game might take months to get a session's worth of activity accomplished (if it ever gets accomplished at all), an IRC game can have it done in a night.

Since you're doing a freeform, there isn't as much concern over a player dropping--the character, not dependent to a plot, simply departs and another can take their place.

Good luck in this endeavor, however you decide to pursue it.

Conners
2008-06-29, 11:47 PM
I'm afraid I must tell you Connors isn't reading the thread.... however, there is someone called ConnERS reading this thread :smalltongue:.

You guys are all posting some great advice, but I feel too sick to reply to it, sorry. copying real-world maps is a good idea, and I might be better off with IRC (I actually found a good DnD IRC tool, if I can get it to work).

I'll try to reply later, sorry.

Chronicled
2008-06-30, 12:37 AM
Here's links to several good, free map/chat programs for IRC D&D:

Maptool (http://rptools.net/doku.php?id=maptool:intro)

GameTable (http://gametable.galactanet.com/)

OpenRPG (http://www.openrpg.com/)

nagora
2008-06-30, 02:10 AM
I'm afraid I must tell you Connors isn't reading the thread.... however, there is someone called ConnERS reading this thread :smalltongue:.
Sorry, it's Wimbledon fortnight and I guess I just had a flashback :smallsmile:

valadil
2008-06-30, 05:32 AM
It's easier to do a game like this in a setting that's already very developed. The more detail, the better. If every little town over 100 people is already mapped, there's a hundred already well developed iconic NPCs, etc. (Read, Faerun.)

With homebrews or less developed settings, not only does the DM have to do more work in creating an entire world in great detail, but the players don't know where they want to go because they don't know anything about the world.

Good point. I kinda botched my first game by putting it in a homebrew world. Even though I did a good job writing up the world I didn't push that information to the players well enough, so the world was pretty hazy from their perspective.

I usually run the type of sandbox game you're aiming for, though I prefer to do it IRL. The biggest thing you'll need is players who are motivated to make a story. Players who sit back and let you tell the story will be detrimental to this sort of game.

This may seem contrary to a sandbox style, but you want plot hooks all over the place. Not full railroads mind you, just hooks. Basically you want lots of NPCs who are doing things in the world. When the players reach the NPC his plot triggers and he starts acting on it. The PCs are free to go with him or ignore it. Evaluate how the NPC's plot goes during each session depending on PCs and other external forces. Doing this will help make your world a much more dynamic place for the PCs to be in. Yes, it's important that they get their say in what goes on but you don't want the PCs being the only ones to push things around in the sandbox.

hamishspence
2008-06-30, 08:06 AM
isn't that what makes MMOs like Ultima Online popular: the whole go anywhere, do anything, its a big big world theme?

So, in effect, thats an MMO trope you are actually asking for more of. Biggest difference is you are not facing hordes of PKers.

I go with that style, but it is something to remember, that its world exploring, more than dungeon-crawling.

valadil
2008-06-30, 08:46 AM
isn't that what makes MMOs like Ultima Online popular: the whole go anywhere, do anything, its a big big world theme?

So, in effect, thats an MMO trope you are actually asking for more of. Biggest difference is you are not facing hordes of PKers.


By doing this in an RPG your players will have much more opportunity to affect the world around them. MMOs are designed to handle any character that gets thrown at them. The character's personality never matters and there's no storyline based on the character. A well done sandbox RPG will let players not just go anywhere, but they can affect anything. In an MMO you're stuck with whatever options the developer thought of ahead of time.

Tsadrin
2008-06-30, 01:12 PM
isn't that what makes MMOs like Ultima Online popular: the whole go anywhere, do anything, its a big big world theme?

So, in effect, thats an MMO trope you are actually asking for more of. Biggest difference is you are not facing hordes of PKers.

As I pointed out earlier, this style of play is not unique to MMOs, nor is it new. If you played D&D (or any other RPG) before 1980 this is how you played. The idea of starting a campaign with a specific goal in mind was pretty much unheard of.

Dragonlance was the first D&D product to introduce the idea of an extended series of games that culminated in fighting a BBEG which upon completion ENDED the campaign. Earlier games may have had confrontation with a BBEG, but it was presumed that play would continue long afterwards and there would be other goals the players were more interested in (building a dominion, spell research, founding a religion, etc.)

I've noticed more and more these days that younger, or newer I should say, players believe that a campaign should last a few months, a semester at college or similar. To me, that's absurd. Campaigns last years. I know of at least two campaigns in my area that have existed in the same world and use characters developed in those games that have gone on uninterrupted for over three decades.

Most MMOs these days are not sandboxes (the industry term for an open world design that allows players to ignore scripted objectives while still playing the game). EvE Online, and UO are great examples of sandbox games. WoW and EQ are not sandbox games. If players (as a whole, not necessarily individuals) have a large influence on the game world and events then you've got yourself a sandbox. Modern game designs shy away from the sandbox formula because the majority of players don't want to RP or do anything but ride the rails to max level in the shortest time possible.


I go with that style, but it is something to remember, that its world exploring, more than dungeon-crawling.

Depending on your world design this may be true. In my campaigns it is usually safer to spend your first few levels exploring the local ruins. You're generally only going to encounter orcs or goblins and other low level threats in the first few levels of a dungeon. Wandering around the hills and forests blindly is a good way to stumble onto a nest of griffons or a village of hill giants.

nagora
2008-06-30, 04:26 PM
Modern game designs shy away from the sandbox formula because the majority of players don't want to RP or do anything but ride the rails to max level in the shortest time possible.
That's a bit harsh.

But it is true that WotC/Hasbro decided that the best way to compete with computer games was to, well, compete with computer games. From this came the assumption that the players would be "casual", meaning that they would be uninterested in long-running games. No one plays a computer game for years at a time, so the reason that RPGs were losing audience to computer games was obviously that the games took too long to "win". Stands to reason, if you're an idiot marketing droid. The very concept of a game that you don't win simply can't fit into a head that small anyway.

Anyway, it's not the players' fault that they've had years of the railroady "next power-up" style of games thrown at them; what choice have they had? What else have they seen? It's like complaining that kids like eating McDonalds' pap - it's not their fault and they're not stupid, but their palattes are knackered from years of abuse and it takes time to adapt to anything subtler than four ounces of salt thrown over a pound of growth hormones that was delivered in a cardboard box marked "beaf" from the lowest bidding sub-contractor.

I find that when "modern players" are shown a full-on RPG setting and given the chance to play characters in depth that they generally get into it fairly quickly, but it's harder for DMs who are used to simply looking up the formula for the next adventure in a big book: this number of opponents, this amount of treasure, that amount of overall weath for the party, that number of magic items, x encounters per day, y encounters per level.

It seems much harder to actually design the world: why are these opponents here and how much care would they have taken to protect their goals from interference, what magic items would they have brought to protect themselves and what form would their treasure be (gold, copper, jade, slaves, magic beans etc.)? And it is harder, but it's also much more fun!

Marketing people judge everyone by their own example and so assume that everyone's a retarded jerkwad who gets distracted if they're not given new shiny things to play with every five minutes, but in reality most gamers actually enjoy more sophisticated material. That's why people in suits call us "nerds" and are boring enough to make a sloth run away.

The ironic thing is that MMORPGs don't do sandbox games well at all, in fact they're crap at it. They use the large number of players as a way to give the illusion of a dynamic world, but actually they're almost all turgidly rigid with their re-spawns and static story lines that never feed back into the gameworld until there's a server upgrade and everything gets nerfed or buffed depending on how badly the game was designed when it was released. No computer in the world can come close to matching the ability of a bad DM, let alone a good one, and as a result the term "MMORPG" is really an example of fraudulent advertising: they're not role-playing games, they're just graphical chat rooms with combat.

When Gygax first talked about the idea of MMORPGs back in the early 80s I remember thinking that it was a fantastic idea if computers could be programmed to run a sandbox. I've given up waiting and I don't expect to see it in my lifetime.

Chronicled
2008-06-30, 07:38 PM
I've noticed more and more these days that younger, or newer I should say, players believe that a campaign should last a few months, a semester at college or similar. To me, that's absurd. Campaigns last years. I know of at least two campaigns in my area that have existed in the same world and use characters developed in those games that have gone on uninterrupted for over three decades.

Having started just a few years ago, I think I fall into the "newer" category here. Something I've noticed is that while I'd love to be in/run a campaign that lasts for years, it can be extremely difficult to actually accomplish. Keeping just 4 people meeting together regularly over several years is hard--people move, get other commitments, lose interest, and so on (this is especially true for PbP games, where the rate of player/DM drop is tremendously high). I've planned semester-long campaigns just so that I could guarantee player loss would be at a minimum, and there could be a sense of closure at the end of it.

valadil
2008-06-30, 08:34 PM
That's a bit harsh.

The ironic thing is that MMORPGs don't do sandbox games well at all, in fact they're crap at it. They use the large number of players as a way to give the illusion of a dynamic world, but actually they're almost all turgidly rigid with their re-spawns and static story lines that never feed back into the gameworld until there's a server upgrade and everything gets nerfed or buffed depending on how badly the game was designed when it was released.

The exception to that is Eve online. It works because all the big in game organizations are controlled by players, rather than by NPCs who hand off quests. If you want to be the CEO of a corporation you just gotta build one and convince people to follow you in that game.

Yahzi
2008-07-01, 12:54 AM
I'd just like to say that this is the kind of world I'm talking about when I discuss things like "at what rate do NPCs gain experience".
I agree - this is what I mean, too.

Although to be fair, the way he's described it - with it's fixed areas and re-visitable dungeons - sure sounds more like a CRPG than anything in 4e.

:smallbiggrin::smallbiggrin::smallbiggrin:

Yahzi
2008-07-01, 12:58 AM
That's a bit harsh...

The very concept of a game that you don't win simply can't fit into a head that small anyway.
Major points for irony. :smallbiggrin:

I basically agree with you, though: I find the idea of "scripted" campaigns to be novel and not entirely orthodox. Color me a groganard. :smallbiggrin:

nagora
2008-07-01, 02:42 AM
Major points for irony. :smallbiggrin:

One can not be too dismissive of marketing people - well known fact. Gamers, on the other hand, tend to be a bit smarter.:smalltongue:

Dan_Hemmens
2008-07-01, 08:33 AM
I'd just like to say that this is the kind of world I'm talking about when I discuss things like "at what rate do NPCs gain experience".

Ironically, this is also the kind of world I'm talking about when I say "you shouldn't worry about things like that."

If you start worrying about the rate NPCs gain experience, you're going to build yourself an administrative nightmare really, really quickly. If you've got a dozen PCs wandering around doing stuff, and two dozen NPCs wandering around doing stuff, it's going to be tough enough working out who's doing what without also worrying about getting NPC stats "right" according to some preset formula.

It's not about NPC stats being determined by "the plot" it's about NPC stats being determined by "the DM who is presumably in a good position to judge".

nagora
2008-07-01, 09:07 AM
Ironically, this is also the kind of world I'm talking about when I say "you shouldn't worry about things like that."

If you start worrying about the rate NPCs gain experience, you're going to build yourself an administrative nightmare really, really quickly ...

It's not about NPC stats being determined by "the plot" it's about NPC stats being determined by "the DM who is presumably in a good position to judge".
I agree. As with the other stuff in a campaign, detail only what the players can see and just keep a distant eye on the rest. If the PCs have henchmen or other ongoing NPCs accompanying them on adventures, then go ahead and track their XP. Anyone else can be rule-of-thumbed.

elliott20
2008-07-01, 09:32 AM
I actually run games like this all the time and I have found a lot of the success is dependant upon player willingness to work with you on this. This is primarily because in a game like this you have essentially handed the players a lot more narrative control in terms of their own actions and the story line they follow.

And in a game like this, it is almost imperative that your players all have very clearly developed and strongly laid out character traits that you can use to create environments that excite them.

a lot of this is hinged on the players being able to find things THEY want to do, have an agenda THEY care about that will drive them to adventure.

Remember, most adventurers are a cut above the average and are more than capable of say, making a very comfortable living without doing too much. In a sense, they can't WIN the game because by virtue of being who they are they have already WON. That means that there needs to be more there to get the characters adventuring. And that is something the player must supply you with.

What I would do is to get your players to sit down all together, and work out a list of traits that describes their character in some way and maybe even say what's important to them. The list should be an itemized list that is very short and sweet, but descriptive. Some of them could be good things, and some of them could be bad things, but this list should give you a very clear idea what these characters care about.

i.e. in a current sci-fi game I run, one of the characters is a mercenary warrior who wields a weapon that is actually a secret weapon developed by the government agency. He's basically Jaine with a sword. On his sheet, he has the following traits written down:

-Born in Zero-G
-Governments are not to be trusted
-Mercenary Tendencies
-Fear is the Mind Killer
-Black Projects & State Secrets
-Fool’s luck is all the luck I need
-Relics from the Void
-Follow the Money
-Beware of the “Chainers”

What do I get from this list? Well, he REALLY doesn't like governments for some reason. He is a merc by nature, and will sell himself to highest bidder. He's apparently seen several secret projects which could be the reason he doesn't trust governments. He was born in Zero-G, which means at some point, when I run and adventure focused on his character's backstory, the party will be revisiting his hometown. (a mining colony in space with no gravity controls) Oh yeah, and the last one mentions something about Chainers. We didn't actually figure out what they were at the time. But I'll be damned if he doesn't run into them as much as humanly possible.

so if I were to run a roaming adventure, what would put in the setting? Well, a black-ops society that works for some government who has wronged him in the past. They will be ever present, and always hunting him. There are going to be these "Chainers" showing up left and right as an influence in this world. And you can bet he will be running into them VERY VERY often. And those government projects that he saw? yeah, they're gonna start popping up to haunt him.

Basically, when the player wrote those things down for me, he's telling me "these are what I care about in game". Well then, sure, I'm not going to write his story for him, but I am going to shove those elements in his face as much as possible and I'll be leaving a bunch of hooks open for him to go pick at. Sure, he might not take it, but the opportunity for him to pick up on these is going to be there. And if he doesn't? well, what can I say? you can bring a horse to a river, but you can't force it to drink.

Tsadrin
2008-07-01, 10:52 AM
No one plays a computer game for years at a time, so the reason that RPGs were losing audience to computer games was obviously that the games took too long to "win".

This statement is false. It is easier to play a computer game for a long length of time than it is to keep a PnP game going on a weekly basis.

I personally played WoW on a near daily basis for three years. I played the original EQ for four years. I've a friend (a mother of four and grandmother of 10) who played UO for three years before I met her. She played EQ with me for another year and then played WoW with me until I we took a break this spring.

I had an old roommate in college that played Starcraft everyday from the day it was released to the time he moved out of the area (~5 years) and he may still be playing to this day for all I know. I know another person who has played The Two Towers (a MUD) for the last 12-13 years.


Anyway, it's not the players' fault that they've had years of the railroady "next power-up" style of games thrown at them; what choice have they had? What else have they seen?

EvE Online, Ultima Online, and the original Star Wars Galaxies (pre-NGE) are all examples of sandbox games. There are no overreaching plotlines, no scripted raids, no railroads. Players can build structures, manage politics, command armies of other players (and in some cases NPCs), set up shops, corner markets, and a myriad of other activities that other more 'modern' MMORPGs are loathe to implement because such content requires developers to put some level of trust in the player population to run with the ball.


It seems much harder to actually design the world: why are these opponents here and how much care would they have taken to protect their goals from interference, what magic items would they have brought to protect themselves and what form would their treasure be (gold, copper, jade, slaves, magic beans etc.)? And it is harder, but it's also much more fun!

This to me is one of the biggest fallacies in gaming today. It started with those awful 'ecology of' articles 'The Dragon' published back in the day. Since when do fairy tales need a dose of reality. Stock your dungeon how you want and let logic be damned.


The ironic thing is that MMORPGs don't do sandbox games well at all, in fact they're crap at it.

Either you've no real experience in this form of game play or your experience is so limited that your judgment is clouded. There are multiple examples of MMORPGs that are more player driven and open than most PnP games I've seen. I named a few above and that's not counting the multitude of MU*s out there that are even better at creating sandboxes.


They use the large number of players as a way to give the illusion of a dynamic world, but actually they're almost all turgidly rigid with their re-spawns and static story lines that never feed back into the gameworld until there's a server upgrade and everything gets nerfed or buffed depending on how badly the game was designed when it was released.

This may be true of games like EQ or WoW but is patently false when it comes to EvE Online.


No computer in the world can come close to matching the ability of a bad DM, let alone a good one, and as a result the term "MMORPG" is really an example of fraudulent advertising: they're not role-playing games, they're just graphical chat rooms with combat.

First, you've missed out on some bad DMs in your day apparently. I've had games that were sheer hell compared to the joy a few hours in EQ brought. Second, MMORPGs have the same capacity for role-playing as PnP games, if the developers give the players the tools to do so. For many people it is easier to suspend disbelief and get 'in-character' in front of a computer.


When Gygax first talked about the idea of MMORPGs back in the early 80s I remember thinking that it was a fantastic idea if computers could be programmed to run a sandbox. I've given up waiting and I don't expect to see it in my lifetime.

While I respect Gary, I don't worship at his altar, and would never be so bold as to make a claim like the above. He was not the first, or even close to the first, to think about role-playing online. Like the wargaming industry in the 70's the RPG industry in the 80's was slow to accept the role of computers. Numerous software companies were rebuked in the early days when Gary was still around and it took editor pressure to get a few computer articles and ads in the early issues of 'The Dragon'. It wasn't until Gary was forced out that TSR was willing to see what way the wind was blowing (it was actually the huge success of wargaming with computers that turned the suits around).

The first MUD was created in 1979. The phenomenon of building Virtual Worlds and the impact of role-playing in such environments has been a serious study for almost three decades. Dig up some information on Richard Bartle if you want to find a real advocate of the medium.

edit: spelling

Tsadrin
2008-07-01, 11:04 AM
Having started just a few years ago, I think I fall into the "newer" category here. Something I've noticed is that while I'd love to be in/run a campaign that lasts for years, it can be extremely difficult to actually accomplish. Keeping just 4 people meeting together regularly over several years is hard--people move, get other commitments, lose interest, and so on (this is especially true for PbP games, where the rate of player/DM drop is tremendously high). I've planned semester-long campaigns just so that I could guarantee player loss would be at a minimum, and there could be a sense of closure at the end of it.

Chronicled, I believe you're correct. This is the exact mentality I was talking about. This is not something to feel bad about, but is just a consequence of modern life.

The issue, in my opinion, is that players (and I include DMs in this as well) don't think of the long term much these days. Ask yourself the following questions:

1) Do you need to keep the same players? If so, why?
2) Do you use the same game world from campaign to campaign? If not, why? If so, do you let previous events impact current games?
3) Why are you playing D&D in the first place? Are you there to tell a story? Create a world? Explore aspects of your personality/creative process?

Answers to those questions above may help people understand better how to approach the sandbox.

nagora
2008-07-01, 11:38 AM
Tsadrin, your post is a mixture of misunderstanding what I was saying and various statements which are so patently false that I can't be bothered to argue with you. However, I'd just like to point out that I was not suggesting that Gary was the first to put forward the idea of MMORPGs (that would be Harlan Ellison :smallwink:), just that when Gary first talked about it I thought he made it sound exciting. I have a much better grasp of AI today and can see that, like most 80's ideas about artificial intelligence, it was wildly optimistic and bordering on the impossible.

Eve is a nice game - MMO Elite - but still far too static and limited in long-term play value for me, and the RPG elements of the system are no different in anything but terminology from WoW or the Conan MMORPG or any of the rest of them.

elliott20
2008-07-01, 12:57 PM
MMO's with RPing capabilities? Okay, I can accept that. But saying that an MMO is on equal footing with a PnP game in terms of RP potential? Now THAT I find hard to believe. Call it whatever you want, but when a game has taken the liberty of rendering the visuals out of my hands, but is completely and utterly incapable of letting my character say, show body language beyond pre-scripted dances, the roleplaying potential is already less than any PnP game I can pick up.

Personally, I find RP servers on a lot of MMOs to be just god awful in the first place. Instead of encourage players to RP, you get these RP police running around calling anyone who is not trying to speak in faux Shakespearean prose "not-RPing", like you HAVE to act in a certain fashion to be RPing.

Tsadrin
2008-07-01, 03:32 PM
MMO's with RPing capabilities? Okay, I can accept that. But saying that an MMO is on equal footing with a PnP game in terms of RP potential? Now THAT I find hard to believe. Call it whatever you want, but when a game has taken the liberty of rendering the visuals out of my hands, but is completely and utterly incapable of letting my character say, show body language beyond pre-scripted dances, the roleplaying potential is already less than any PnP game I can pick up.

Personally, I find RP servers on a lot of MMOs to be just god awful in the first place. Instead of encourage players to RP, you get these RP police running around calling anyone who is not trying to speak in faux Shakespearean prose "not-RPing", like you HAVE to act in a certain fashion to be RPing.

Perhaps the issue is I define RP in a different manner. I do not and have never considered 'role-playing' as anything but playing a role that is not yourself. The difference between that and wargaming is minimal. but is distinct. If I say I'm Greg the elf and I attack an orc that's enough to qualify as role-playing. In a wargame or board game I don't claim to be my playing piece. I just say 'This elf here attacks the orc there.'

Using text and emotes is no less an outlet for expressing a role (and in many cases is better) than sitting at a table using your voice. In most MMORPGs the player is playing a role, not just moving a playing piece that they do not individually identify with.

If you are stitched in by the visuals that is a limitation you place upon yourself. Most people I know that RP using online formats don't have such reservations. It is easier to ignore the fact that Tiffany the sexy female elf cleric is played by Bearded Bob the IT geek when he's not sitting in front of you munching cheetos. Suspension of disbelief is higher when you use a computer to interact with other people.

Pure text MU*s are better, by far, than graphic laden MMORPGs but the functionality is still there. I have in the ~28 years of table gaming and ~17 years of online gaming have had better role-play experiences, as I've seen other people define the term (being fully in role, with emotion and actions dictated by character motivation and not just in-game advantage) online using MU*s and MMORPGs than I have had sitting at a table.

Again, this may be because I prefer and only run FTF games that do not force 'storylines' or require players to have extensive backgrounds when I'm playing.

edit: grammar

elliott20
2008-07-01, 03:36 PM
That's why had it not been for time constraints, I would be playing a MUD myself right now.

Tsadrin
2008-07-01, 03:48 PM
Tsadrin, your post is a mixture of misunderstanding what I was saying and various statements which are so patently false that I can't be bothered to argue with you.

nagora, you may in your opinion believe what I say is wrong, but under no circumstances would you be correct in asserting that anything I said was factually incorrect. People DO play video games for years at a time. More people dedicate far more time playing such games than they ever will playing PnP RPGs.

You may not appreciate, or understand, the industry definition of role-playing. The key component is the personal identification with a character or avatar. Once you express yourself in a role, no matter how it is conveyed (either through text, voice, or action) that is role-playing. Using a toolset makes it a game. Some toolsets are rigid and others are freeform, but by placing restrictions and boundaries on role-playing is what makes it a game and not a counseling session.

elliott20
2008-07-02, 12:54 PM
The primary difference, I'd argue, with an MMO, is that often the role of GM is absent and you can't really expect a story to really be tailored to you. A practical concern, that, as it's not reasonable for a GM to try to coordinate millions of users to form one coherent story.

A lot of the story telling structure becomes very over-arching and their effects tend to be applied world wide rather than effect specific people. But from day to day play? Characters will often do things that feel more like just a day of life to the character.

Unfortunately, this means that the player in question will not necessarily get the personal attention when faced with enough users. And often in games like that the only way you can really have a story for the player to enjoy is to write a story that EVERY player can experience. (i.e. in WoW, your character interacts with a story depending upon your level. But the story is pretty much an instance based event and your actions will for the most part not have a large effect on the world around)

However, for the OP, this is hardly the case. Rather, he wants to do a sandbox game that mimics some ideas of an MMO but let's not forget this is NOT an MMO. He's still GMing a game that has it's story tied around several people. The players are still the star of the show here. It's just that, instead of having players start in the same place (and they might not even stay together), and have a pre-conceived storyline for each character, there is far more flexibility in place.

This, I believe, can work. But I do think it's success will hinge quite a bit upon player cooperation and the GMs ability to dynamically create storylines to suit the players.

Thoughtbot360
2008-07-02, 03:27 PM
It's not about NPC stats being determined by "the plot" it's about NPC stats being determined by "the DM who is presumably in a good position to judge".

Okay, but by what measure is the DM "presumably in a good position to judge?" Ultimately, all he is judging is the level of the PCs and tries to make a scenario that balances with that. I'm addressing something that occurs outside the scenario.

I'm not talking about playing a counting game for every single NPC to see who levels up (I don't know of anyone who does), its more along the lines of asking "how long does it take to replace a lost high level"? Because, high level lethality is quite high. Because if an NPC is high level, he will probably be asked to fight the big monsters when PCs aren't around (or even haven't leveled that high). Attacks from high-level monsters (or even average seige equipment) can easily surpass 50 damage, and a constant string of 50's means that sooner or later, the NPC is going to roll a natural 1. Also, the alexandrian has this to say about the perils of high-level combat:


HIGH-LEVEL LETHALITY

Speaking of that -10 barrier, we come to a widely-recognized shortcoming in mid- and high-level play: The tougher you become, the more likely you are to die than you are to fall unconscious.

Why? Because, as the average damage inflicted by any given blow increases, the chance that any given blow will catapult you directly from positive hit points to negative hit points and death increases. For example, if you suffer a blow for 5 hp there is no chance that you'll be immediately killed by it. If you're suffering blows doing an average of 25 hp, on the other hand, the odds drastically increase for such an opportunity.

The solution for this is to increase the number of negative hit points a higher level character can suffer before actually dying. And the simplest solution for this is to give everyone the same number of hit points below 0 as they do above 0.

So lets review:


Its not just about the PCs: unless the gargantuan mindless eating machines of the world only exclusively attack the PCs, they are eventually going to go Godzilla on the Capital city of Human Empire X.
Its assumed that Human Empire X became Human EMPIRE X -as opposed to "Camoflauged Human village X that is too busy hiding from the rest of the world to do anything"- in spite of the existence of said gargantuan monsters. The best way to do this is through an army that really must go through some kind of Spartan method that produces super soldiers, because they have lots of high levels. Sure, constant fighting could also provide experience, but eventually, you are going to have some generations of relative peace and then all the high levels die of old age, leaving younger generations without an adequate "Godzilla" defense.
Even if nonhumanoid monster of animal-like intelligence can be chased off because humans have such mysterious things like "fireeeee" and "buildddiiinnngs" (ooooohhhh...), there are at least 60 creatures with human intelligence (or greater) and its not unreasonable to think of them as rival kingdoms potentially capable of whatever feats the human civilization is capable of (which is very bad because almost all of them are much stronger than the PHB races.)
We might need even more to make magic items. PCs have no real use for the mountains of gold they get in the usual D&D game other than to go buy magic items.
Said high levels are mortal, even with resurrection.

Therefore, these NPCs need to be replaced. Or civilization needs some other defense mechanism.

Some other food for thought:

Is leveling up easy? Is it hard? How do you become a PC class? Why aren't all the professional minstrels and musicians Bards instead of just experts with the Perform skill?

nagora
2008-07-02, 04:12 PM
nagora, you may in your opinion believe what I say is wrong, but under no circumstances would you be correct in asserting that anything I said was factually incorrect. People DO play video games for years at a time.
Some do. Very few play the same computer game for a decade, but many of my friends have played the same characters over such periods, and longer, in RPGs.


More people dedicate far more time playing such games than they ever will playing PnP RPGs.
Collectively, yes.


You may not appreciate, or understand, the industry definition of role-playing.
Is that the ISO definition or the ANSI definition? Or is it just the definition of a marketing department that slaps the word on robotic settings in order to make some easy sales?


The key component is the personal identification with a character or avatar. Once you express yourself in a role, no matter how it is conveyed (either through text, voice, or action) that is role-playing.
You have a point, but I would say that that is only part - albeit a big part. You also need a setting which is more than a backdrop. Character actions should make a difference. In games like Eve they don't really because that requires an intelligence running the game, and no computer game is close to that yet. As soon as you run up against the limits of what the programmer imagined you would do, your stuffed (for example, landing on a planet. If the programmer didn't program it, then you can't do it). That's what I see as the failing of so-called computer roleplaying: the lack of flexibility and responsiveness in the setting. Throwing more and more PCs into that static background does hide the problem but it's still there.

Put it this way: if you can tell the PCs from the NPCs, then all you really have is a complex chat room with avatars.*

Last time I looked, the Turing test was still over the horizon.


Using a toolset makes it a game. Some toolsets are rigid and others are freeform, but by placing restrictions and boundaries on role-playing is what makes it a game and not a counseling session.
Sure, but some restrictions are caused by a lack of imagination, not some clever plan to set boundaries.


*Which, I will grant, is a type of role-playing, just as dressing up as a nurse and her patient is "roleplay". But it's not really what I mean by "roleplaying game" in the context of these boards or the games we discuss.