Lessons Learned: Experiences in a Sandbox Game

[Sparky McDibben]

The problem is that the players aren't in a position to refuse, because the core premise of the game is that they have to band together on this ship. This player was taking advantage of the meta-context to take the resources that were allotted to the other players in character creation, with no potential recourse other than exiting or breaking the campaign.

Yep!

I'm surprised that no one has said this yet, as far as I can tell. Part of the issue here is that massive-scale events like these are not realistically optional. Any faintly good-aligned character is morally obligated to engage with a preventable danger that threatens millions or billions of people. A counterpoint is that if they don't want to be morally obligated to do things, they should have made a hardline selfish character, but that's just not a reasonable expectation. If you want players to play actual characters, you have to accept that what the player cares about and what the character cares about will not automatically align, and that it's inevitably the DM's responsibility to make what the character cares about not boring to the player.

Well, that's an interesting point. I disagree with most of what you said, notably because the planet was only in peril because of the PCs' actions. This evolved out of their meddling in a dynamic situation.

In fact, you say you don’t run plots, but I’m confused about what you think a plot is, because this kind of important event that is difficult to justify not participating in is exactly what I would call a plot.

A plot is defined as, "The plan, scheme, or main story of a literary or dramatic work, as a play, novel, or short story." (Source: dictionary.com).

This generally aligns with my own definition, which can be roughly stated as, "The events that play out in a story, deriving from the interactions of the characters and the environment."

Now, let's break down some of the assumptions you're using:

1) The planet being in peril was planned by the DM

2) The PCs could not realistically avoid participating, or could only avoid participating with great difficulty

As stated above, the planet was only in peril because the PCs had interfered in a particularly nasty corporate scheme with an insane AI. The corpos decided to glass the planet after the PCs interfered to avoid witnesses (they figured the PCs could be bought off, silenced, or discredited). So I didn't plan anything - my notes never mention the possibility the planet could get ganked. I set up the dominoes, and the PCs kicked them over.

As for assumption 2, the PCs could have bugged out, no problem. And half of them wanted to do just that! Only one player decided to force the issue and intervene. But they didn't have to shoot it down. They could have jammed the bird's tracking, pushed something else in the missile's way, evacuated some of the populace, etc. So they could have very easily avoided participating, even accounting for the one character with a strong moral compass. Hell, they could have just left the system alone, too.

If you're curious about my philosophy on plotting in RPGs, let me know and we'll start a new thread on that. God knows those never blow up in insane wrangling debates.