So, metawhimsy and I have been discussing how to do sandbox campaign stories involving political intrigue, multiple actors, and in general non-storyline oriented games. He thinks you guys might enjoy the conversation, and some more input is always nice to have.
Posted Feb 6, 2011, 6:40 AM UTC
The Sandbox campaign I ran once involved a locked down city that was plagued. The people were pissed and massive riots frequently break out. The city was completely in lawlessness so money had no value. It was sheer bartering. Food and basic necessities were valued higher than basic +1 items.
Anyways, the way I ran that campaign was sort of a forced deus ex machina. There was a scheduled chain of events that will more or less happen no matter what the players do or go.
The events went as such:
Day 1. Plague and lockdown. Keep the players stuck inside.
Day 2. Riots
Day 3. The King gets assassinated. Government breaks down.
Day 4. The rioters form into factions. They begin to war on the street for supremacy. Most of these factions have their own reasons to keep the city locked down. There was a faction that did want to open the gates back up. Players can elect to help which ever faction they want.
These are really the larger scale of events that are beyond the player character's scope. So it's not really a campaign where player character choices don't matter. The little events around the player characters is what really matter. They were encouraged to go out and about and be apart of the events around them. If they wouldn't seek out trouble, then I'd simply have trouble seek them out.
Rioters begin looting their dwellings or light it aflame.
Plague victims swarm the area forcing the unafflicted to flee. Or become afflicted themselves forcing them to desperately find a cure.
They witness something they should not have.
A faction seeks to hire.
Within the city there was a set location and gallery of antagonists preset before the campaign begins. These are the orchestrators of the plague and the break down of the government. The players can use any means necessary to hunt them down or even join them. I'd have a series of prewritten modular encounters with them in case I need "trouble to seek them out" to push the campaign forward. Of course one of the other options is that the player characters simply escape the city leaving it to solve its own problems.
Fun campaign. I had a pretty good organizational structure. Sometimes though, the party would accomplish too much in a session and I would be racing my mind for more things that can happen. The hardest part is definitely setting up the campaign. You have to have lots of stuff prewritten. Interesting key NPCs and get their key information down (who what and where... sometimes why) and locations (what's there, who frequently goes there). In this particular campaign, I had to get lots of the city premapped because large scale street fights between factions requires extensive use of the environment. The party ended up befriending a notsointeresting NPC who I in turn had to construct him into an interesting NPC (local weaponshop owner who the PC's saved and now he let them stay at his home as well as "rent" weapons in exchange for protection).
Anyways I'm rambling about this venture. The key for me was early prep work as well as keep the setting small. A large dungeon, a city, a tunnel network, etc. Have premade encounters at your disposal. These encounters should lead the players into the intended plot. You will never know when you have to dangle a carrot in front of them. Know some relatively fine details of your world (which is why I prefer to keep the setting small). Finally, have things happen with an ultimate goal in mind. The idea is to at least give the impression that there is total free reign on this campaign.
Anyways, the way I ran that campaign was sort of a forced deus ex machina.
I actually disagree, that's the exact kind of campaign I was talking about. The PCs are playing people who are unique. I always joke with my players about the world Happening To Them purely because they're PCs. (I'll look at them after the game. "You know why that happened, right?" "Why?" "It's because you're all PCs.")
Anywho, this is exactly what I was talking to. Also, amazingly awesome idea!
Yea my players took an unorthodox approach. Rather than explore the streets during broad day light, they went roof hopping or sewer crawling at night. They were playing the "eye in the sky" spy approach to see what's going on with all the people. The only real clan I had them make major dealings with was the thieves guild.
The result was they pushed into the plot a lot faster than I thought they would. They found the antagonists and actively outed them fast (i'd say within 5 sessions). I think I should have put more of a resistance in the narrative. The carrot I dangled was too sweet and therefore they carried out the campaign way faster than I wanted them to (Ideally I wanted this to last at least a half a year's worth of gaming). I sorta felt unfulfilled because I put a lot of work into it and the story ended too soon. I had used merely a third of the content I had prepared.
I had a whole system charting the progress of the faction they choose to support. I'd have a city map where the territories are carved by colors, each color representing different factions (if you ever read Batman: No Man's Land you'd know where I'm going). Anyways, they had a lot of fun with the campaign and the sandbox feel did work... too well I guess. They liked the campaign and I guess that's all that matters.
Well, two things. First, that's why I underplan mostly. But I totally understand where you're coming from.
Second.. if your group's still together, why not keep it going? The political fallout from that would be intense, and they could very easily mold and shape the city to their own whims. Once that's gotten tired, start throwing armies at it and let them help defend their creation. That much work seems like it'd be a lot of fun to keep playing in.
I always found the guidelines in Dynasties and Demagogues to be superb for planning non-linear political stories.
EDIT: Sorry, thought you were asking about how to do these kinds of things... Waay too early for me to be browsing Reddit. :/
It's possible, look into these popular systems:
World of Darkness
Pathfinder
Sometimes GURPS
Specifically LARP WoD and Vampire, those were always hardcore political sandbox to me.
WoD's actually what started the conversation in the linked thread. I've never gotten into it, myself.. most people involved in it are waaaay too hardcore. I'm a silly bastard. We never seem to get along. I'm currently running a Pathfinder game, playing in 3 Pathfinder games and playing in a Shadowrun game. Thanks for the tip, though! Go get some coffee. :-D
No problem, and sorry, read the thread wrong (or, read the first comment and made assumptions.)
Had the same problem when I joined a V:tM larp in the 90s. Solution? Read up on the (horribly complex and hard to get through) lore and find ways to stir the political machinations of other players up. People may (will) be adverse to it, but at the end of the night it's still a story and drama and a wrench (Ravnos) in the works is appreciated by good groups (imo).
There are two nightmarish ways a sandbox game can go, as I see it; it can stagnate, grow silly and pointless when characters lack sufficient dramatic impetus, or escalate in complexity, requiring consideration of a large set of details about the game world, faction trajectories, etc.
To avoid aimlessness and an abrupt Phildickian fog at the end of your reality, you have to quickly generate a detailed, believable world full of tensions, intentions and imbalanced (fire)power. So play Catan, and pause just when it's getting interesting. Transplant alliances, resources and borders. Write a dictionary of [Catan cards] -> [RPG system elements]. Maybe a played card represents a historical encounter, or maybe a permanent development.
You'll still have to improvise colourful encounters, but your players will have helped you by naming all the forts, appointing watch captains and detailing treasuries.
And perhaps the Thief is, in fact, an entire band of Merry Men? Or an OTYUGH!?!?!?!
I don't think you can do it except as a metaplot item. What I mean is that players capable of playing in a sandbox campaign cannot be lead around to anything (otherwise it's not really sandbox) and are like trying to herd cats. Basically, if they latch on to it you can run it just like a plot element in a regular campaign. If they don't latch on to it, you can have it all continue to go on in the background as a scripted plot that carries on and waits for them to become involved with it at some future point.
I had a war in one of my sandboxes that the players completely ignored. Then one day they're sitting in their tavern (they owned it) and a bard comes in an does a sort of news reel thing and they learn that the enemy has broken through on the western front and is razing villages. They decide that they can start getting involved, so they are now part of the plot and affect its direction.
I.. did you read the comment thread I linked? I guess putting "Sandbox" in the title was maybe misleading. I meant more Sandbox plot than anything else. Exactly the kind of thing you're talking about, having the plot happen to the players regardless of their involvement.
In my case, I probably would've had some scouts knocking on their door begging for their assistance setting up defenses for the local village.
I've tried running a sandbox campaign before, but the Players would NOT do anything without me dangling bells in front of their face.
Made out for a good game, but I think you need certain players too.
My players are actually similar. The answer's pretty straightforward, though.. if you read the linked thread, it's just a matter of having the Actors directly threaten the PCs. Whatever their actions are spell out bad news for the PCs if successful. Suddenly, they have a vested interest to either avoid it (adventure! You're beset by highwaymen! Things happen!) or fix it (there we go, go do things like an adventurer.).
To be fair, you're right. You need players that don't actively want to be spoonfed adventure. But this also isn't a sandbox campaign in a normal sense. There are things to do, you just have to want to do them. A normal sandbox is about locations. Mine is about plot and events.