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Lord_Kimboat
2008-11-08, 09:08 AM
Hi Everyone

I've been playing a lot of Oblivion, Morrowind and Fallout 3 lately and I have to say that I'm really quite impressed. The thing that gets me the most though is the freedom factor that these games offer and I wonder why that is left out of D&D - especially in published material.

Everyone's seen how it is, you buy a module and it gives a nice linear path for your PCs to follow. Wouldn't it be better for someone (I'm even willing to give it a try) and write say 10 modules all in the same area and let the PCs choose which quest they would like to take at any given time.

"Tired of fighting the goblinoids in the woods, how about trying the orcs in the valley over the mountain or maybe we've advanced enough to take on the bandits that have taken over the fortress on the cliffs?"

It doesn't seem that complicated an idea but I haven't really seen it before. Has anyone else?

Eikre
2008-11-08, 09:23 AM
Probably the reason you never see group-mods published is because, as with Oblivion, most of those quests would suck. You would have three fetch quests, six kill quests, and a nice escort quest. See, what you really do- and you're onto this- is buy ten solid, dark-brotherhood-caliber modules, pop 'em into a single country-side, and then start the PCs at the provincial garrison.

They call them "modules" for a reason, apparently...

Morty
2008-11-08, 09:26 AM
It hasn't been done before because when you do that, you end up with 9 quests PCs won't do, which is well and fine in a computer game, but in tabletop one it's a waste of GM's time. It's much easier to present PCs with one challenge, and unless players deliberately want to make GM's life miserable, they'll go and face it as long as it's not too railroaded. Well, unless by "quest" you mean simple "go and kill/fetch/talk to X" like what we see in Oblivion.

Hal
2008-11-08, 09:56 AM
Sandbox games are difficult in D&D because it requires laying out the entire world ahead of time, something most DMs just don't have time for. On top of that, in a computer game it is rather simple to interface with the environment, but in a D&D game you only know what the DM tells you. This means that either your players need to know a lot about your game, or you have to spend hours describing each scene in detail. Should you name every NPC wandering the streets?

It's best to have a story in mind, but let your players drive it. If you give them a chance to drive the story, they'll almost always be interested.

Optimystik
2008-11-08, 10:28 AM
It sounds like CRPGs are more your thing (mine too!) so really all we have to do is wait for Bioware to continue fine-tuning D&D-based engines and we'll have our sandbox environment with near-PnP rules. :smallcool:

For instance, I play a lot of NWN still, and am currently on the PW City of Arabel. There are scripted quests for levelling purposes, but generally both the DMs AND the players have a number of plots going at once, and the DMs reward xp and other goodies for participation in and design of the well-executed ones.

jamroar
2008-11-08, 10:39 AM
Everyone's seen how it is, you buy a module and it gives a nice linear path for your PCs to follow. Wouldn't it be better for someone (I'm even willing to give it a try) and write say 10 modules all in the same area and let the PCs choose which quest they would like to take at any given time.

"Tired of fighting the goblinoids in the woods, how about trying the orcs in the valley over the mountain or maybe we've advanced enough to take on the bandits that have taken over the fortress on the cliffs?"

It doesn't seem that complicated an idea but I haven't really seen it before. Has anyone else?

Well, I can only think of one. The sadly never completed Fabled Lands (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fabled_Lands) series does world sandbox in a solo gamebook format, but using a simple ruleset and rather short quests and encounters, tracking world flags using passwords. I'm not sure it would work so well in a full-fledged TRPG.

Knaight
2008-11-08, 10:43 AM
I wouldn't say that the freedom isn't in D&D, as D&D has more freedom by virtue of being a tabletop game and not having many of the limits. The modules don't, but they are modules, and you can't really write one up before the game that has a huge amount of openness. The GM has to use their own setting for it, and then you have a huge, huge amount of open-ness. There are sandboxy modules like Fabled Land, or Quest, but those usually also have their own system.

Talic
2008-11-08, 11:45 AM
I wouldn't say that the freedom isn't in D&D, as D&D has more freedom by virtue of being a tabletop game and not having many of the limits. The modules don't, but they are modules, and you can't really write one up before the game that has a huge amount of openness. The GM has to use their own setting for it, and then you have a huge, huge amount of open-ness. There are sandboxy modules like Fabled Land, or Quest, but those usually also have their own system.

Theoretical boundary. Once nobody goes to the undefined areas, or only rarely, the options don't close up so much. Whereas, the added information that can be provided by the animated picture can convey more images, more possible options. Eventually, the CRPG will surpass the tabletop in versatility and options.

Project_Mayhem
2008-11-08, 12:03 PM
Well, I can only think of one. The sadly never completed Fabled Lands series does world sandbox in a solo gamebook format, but using a simple ruleset and rather short quests and encounters, tracking world flags using passwords. I'm not sure it would work so well in a full-fledged TRPG.

That was a truely spectacular series. I held on to my books in case someone finishes it.

AmberVael
2008-11-08, 12:07 PM
Personally, I think creating multiple modules for DnD games is a good idea. If you make them flexible enough, it doesn't matter if the PCs don't go for it or don't see it at all- you can just whip it out later with a few changes, and no one will ever know. Unless you're just blatant about it.
All else fails, you could use them in a different game altogether.

InaVegt
2008-11-08, 12:18 PM
My general GMing style is very sandboxy.

I have everything planned way into the future, but in a general tree shape.

If the PCs decide to help this person out, that results in these things, changing the world like that.

[hr]

A concrete example from a real game:

PCs were on a crashed ship, I had set up one NPC as a traitor.

The PCs main options were to help the people out survive on the land they stranded on, or go out with a few others in a small ship to find help.

If they went to help out survive, they'd have to deal with the traitors trying to take command and such.

If they went to get help, they'd return to a traitorous group that would be very offensive to them.

SeeKay
2008-11-08, 12:34 PM
It's hard to make a module style adventure for multiple people be multi-directional. At best, you'd only use like 3/4th of it and at worse only 1 of the adventures. Also, if there were multiple quests, they would have to scale up and down because some people might enter them at low levels and others at high levels.

The best way to do this is to be able to come up with your own adventures and not use modules (or use modules as a guide, but not directly). Most good DM's get a feel for their party and can have 5 to 10 ideas in their mind and flesh them out after the party shows interest in following one of them. Of course, you need some amount of free time to do it that way....

Keld Denar
2008-11-08, 03:47 PM
I've run the scenario "A Night Below", which is an old 2nd ed box set module. Its really easy to convert most of the stuff to 3.5 with a little creativity. The entire first book is all sandbox. There are a few timeline triggered events, and a whole lot of random encounters and locations that the PCs can experience "just because they feel like it today". It takes place in a relatively small area, couple hundred square miles, so as long as they don't express too much interest in leaving that area, there is plenty of stuff for them to do. It become slightly more linear as they head down into the underdark, with part to being relatively straightforward until they get to the end (which is a very interesting and flavorful area) and again, part 3 starts off linear, but then fans out like a massive river delta until the PCs figure out how to complete it.

Amazingly diverse, and pretty complete out of the box. There are a few websites with suggestions for conversion, although I just threw some stats on the page for major encounters and fudged the rest of it. I didn't have a problem at all running it.

Kris Strife
2008-11-08, 06:03 PM
Whereas, the added information that can be provided by the animated picture can convey more images, more possible options. Eventually, the CRPG will surpass the tabletop in versatility and options.

I doubt it. Because unlike a CRPG, a table top can change on the fly. Unless they open up the whole globe to you, let you kill anyone, buy anything, build your own weapons and spells, choose any race, persue wenches, etc you're still limited in CRPGs. Human creativity > programming