Pathfinder 1E Sandboxes? Forked from Paizo reinvents hexcrawling

[Windjammer]

I think the thread could be salvageable if we chuck Hobo's stipulation that it must only be about agreeing that his misconceptions are actually the Truth.

I think the thread is salvageable. I'm trying to wrap my head around other people's experiences with sandboxes as hard as others, but I find them well worth my time brooding on them to reflect what I'd take into my own campaign.

In other words, this thread has absolutely gravitated towards a helpful, insightful discussions despite of and not because of the OP. Quite rare, that, in online discussions.

That said,

Look, the guy's premise is rigged to be wrong.

"I define chocolate pudding as made of liver and beets, and yet there seems to be a sudden radical change of taste toward that among American children."

It's an "Emily Litella" sketch gone bad because the attitude from the start was so hostile.

I lol'ed, I agree with this, but lemme say this. The best way to keep the actual discussion on track is to waive the OP's propriety conceits on what the thread should or shouldn't be about, and simply not address them any further with the I-quote-you-and-then-you-quote-me-back button.

Nothing personal against Hobo, and I have absolutely no doubt that he can (and in the past has, on multiple occasions) initiated constructive discussion. This one, though, I'm sad to say strikes me as not an instance thereof. I stopped reading this thread after page 2 a couple of days ago and hit it today when I saw Melan's name in it. I find it helpful despite of people engaging Hobo, an exercise which has lost its utility to outside readers (or at least some thereof, can't speak for everyone) at square 2.

 

[Ariosto]

(Naturally, not even the Wilderlands is a full sandbox - e.g. it tells you what is in Byrny, but only in extremely brief notes. If you are a theoretical purist, this will drive you up the wall, which, mind, serves you right.)

The original Wilderlands of High Fantasy packet is a lot less detailed than the Necromancer Games boxed set. The latter not only compiles material from a pile of later modules but adds much new material (very little of it 3e-specific). The difference is 32 pages -> about 450 pages (plus maps).

You don't need, as it is sometimes proposed, a game world with a lot of complex NPCs and lots of detail to achieve complexity or establish a focus; you can get it painlessly from the process of play in a game based on regular adventuring.

Darned right. The relationships that players develop in play are the main focus.

Is there a plot? Yes, there may be.

That's a difference from the assumption that there is THE plot, provided by the GM!

The prevailing mode in scenario design is basically to answer the question of what is going to happen to the players. Turning that around, one gets a design that asks the question of what the players will do.

Any scripted sequence of events -- such as a program of 'encounters' in the WotC sense -- must depend at multiple points on the PCs doing certain things and not doing others. Anticipating the more likely things that might happen can be useful, certainly. However, laying down not a script but an environment that operates on general principles facilitates a lot of agility in response to the players' initiatives.

The fundamental issue is that which plot out of a dozen possibilities emerges is up in the air at the time of play, and you, the player, or you, the GM, are making it happen together with your friends.

That might sometimes be the current state, in broad strokes. I mean that as a caution against taking too literally the upper bound of "a dozen possibilities" (or assuming it to be at a certain level of resolution/ precision).

I think it important, not as some "ideal" but as what I have found to be good practical advice, to distinguish "plot" in a very loose sense ("stories" as hypothetical courses of events, and as narratives told after the fact) from buying a ticket on a pre-existing roller-coaster.

If one really cannot break a habit of thinking of an 'adventure' as necessarily "this or that series of encounters the GM has planned", then I am afraid one is likely to shoulder a very heavy burden of work in trying to run an otherwise free-wheeling campaign.

Even without that, one may sometimes find it prudent to tell players wishing to explore the Lost Continent of Emu that it is really not so much misplaced as still mostly a blank even on the referee's map -- so their expedition can be scheduled no earlier than next week, if it is going to be up to snuff.

 

[KidSnide]

The prevailing mode in scenario design is basically to answer the question of what is going to happen to the players. Turning that around, one gets a design that asks the question of what the players will do.

I just want to call attention to this particular point by Ariosto, because asking the question of "what the players will do" instead of "what is going to happen to the players" is also a crucial step in designing good story-based games.

I strongly suspect that it is good advise in general, whether or not you're running a sandbox.

-KS

 

[WizarDru]

That's a good one, but here is something else to consider: if the same thing ("you screwed up, got captured and thrown into the caves beneath the volcano") happened as a consequence of meaningful player choices, it would be an awesome development from a sandbox perspective. Not because of the exact content of the events, but rather in that it was earned.

That's a very good point. The point there was that it's a railroad because regardless of what they players did or want to do, that event will happen and it will happen exactly as the module says it must. The module requires a specific event and outcome and the players are forced to enact it.

And to be clear, I am not saying that the railroad is necessarily a bad thing, under the right circumstances. The Slaver series was originally meant for tournament play, ideally in 4 hour slots. It required such railroading to be effective and fulfill it's intended purpose.

And in some cases, railroading works extremely well when the players don't realize that they've been railroaded. If the DM is skilled enough, he can present the players with situations that will guide them without making them feel forced. This takes some degree of subtlety and skill, but players can still find it very rewarding. By the same token, the game may occasionally railroad players to their benefit and then return their freedom to them after the necessary railroading has occurred.

I've run games that were very railroady and I've run games that were very sandboxy. Both were fun, for very different reasons. In my one D&D game, they were on the rails for 2 years before breaking free and they loved it. In my one GURPS Japan game, the players wandered with little preset notion of destination, encountering ninjas, a crazy Tea Master and the Angry Stump God, all with no greater sense of meta-story...and it's still considered one of the best games I ever ran, many years later.

The only badwrongfun is when you Don't Have Fun, IMHO. Everything else is just rigor and bookkeeping.

 

[Ariosto]

Asking the question of "what the players will do" instead of "what is going to happen to the players" is also a crucial step in designing good story-based games.

I strongly suspect that it is good advise in general, whether or not you're running a sandbox.

I am not sure it means the same thing as what I meant, and "story-based games" can cover a lot of territory if it doesn't mean "railroads".

I am sure that I did not mean "a step in design". When I wrote of "a design that asks the question", I meant it as in that is what the final textual product effectively does, just as (from what I have read and played) recent WotC scenarios in particular work on the basis of "and then the PCs fight these bad guys in this place" (or whatever).

"There are some guys, and they're bad, and they're (at least sometimes) in this place, and they will fight for X or against Y." That does not presume any particular course of action on the players' part.

There can even be sequences of events, some of them repeated routines and others going from stage to stage of an NPC's plan -- if the players do not interfere with them.

(In a campaign matching the original advice that "the referee to player ratio should be 1:20 or thereabouts", a group of players might run into consequences of other players' actions.)

The first widely published RPG scenario (as far as I know) -- "The Temple of the Frog" in D&D Supplement II (1975) -- sketched a portrait of a place and its inhabitants in terms of their normal (well, as 'normal' as giant killer frogs and "simply an interstellar radio") living arrangements and commerce.

And in some cases, railroading works extremely well when the players don't realize that they've been railroaded. ... By the same token, the game may occasionally railroad players to their benefit and then return their freedom to them after the necessary railroading has occurred.

It can also, in my experience, work well when players know they've boarded a "commuter express" into an interesting environment (e.g., The Land Beyond the Magic Mirror).

I think one problem (not the only one certainly) with the capture in the penultimate Slavers module is that many players cannot in any case abide having their characters captured. The final module's introduction for the referee warns of the further psychological difficulty some players face when deprived of the gadgetry (weapons, armor, spells, etc.) that too often is their substitute not only for skill in play but for actual persona development. Take away the stuff, and they have no 'role' to play; their pawns lack character and identity.

 

[KidSnide]

I just want to call attention to this particular point by Ariosto, because asking the question of "what the players will do" instead of "what is going to happen to the players" is also a crucial step in designing good story-based games.

I strongly suspect that it is good advice in general, whether or not you're running a sandbox.

[I am not sure it means the same thing as what I meant, and "story-based games" can cover a lot of territory if it doesn't mean "railroads".

I am sure that I did not mean "a step in design". When I wrote of "a design that asks the question", I meant it as in that is what the final textual product effectively does, just as (from what I have read and played) recent WotC scenarios in particular work on the basis of "and then the PCs fight these bad guys in this place" (or whatever).

OK. Well, rather than try to explain what you meant, I'll just say why I thought your comment was good advice, and I'll let you explain if you intended it differently.

To my mind, a good story based design starts with the question of what the PCs are going to do, and then provides the support for the GM to adjudicate those actions. Typically, this would involve some well described situations, as well as some events that could take place in response to the expected PC actions. (Again, in a good story game, the PCs have meaningful options so there is a good chunk of material that wouldn't get used in any given implementation.)

In contrast, story games that are about things that happen to PCs tend focus more on the NPCs and the only role the PCs have is to foil the NPCs' plans (or, less common, to fail at foiling the NPC schemes). Alternatively, you get something very railroady where the GM/author wants the PCs to do something very specific and makes things happen to the PCs to induce the "right" actions.

-KS

 

[S'mon]

Hmm, I'd been avoiding this thread, but it seems to have got a lot better since Melan posted.

I think there are several fun sorts of campaign to which the sandbox moniker has been attached. None of these are badwrongfun.

From the 1e Dungeooneer's Survival Guide:

Open Campaigns - PCs can go anywhere, do anything. Play is episodic, 'Picaresque' and unconnected. The environment may be largely pre-created, created in the course of the campaign, or a mix.

Matrix Campaigns - PCs explore an environment, discover that lots of different elements are in fact connected together into an interacting matrix; this can form a 'web' at the centre of which might be a villain/antagonist, or something else - eg in Vault of Larin Karr it's the treasure vault itself. The matrix design allows for player freedom but also a sense of progression and building towards a climax, such as eventually confronting the BBEG in his lair.

Contrasted with: Linear campaigns - the adventure path model. I find use of the Railroad term here unhelpful; the term Railroading was invented to describe a GMing technique of invalidating player choices to force things down a predetermined path. Linear campaigns do not have to use these "You're all captured" techniques; eg my Willow Vale campaign uses a series of missions (based off modules, eg B5 Horror on the Hill) that build into an adventure path, but within the missions' play areas the PCs are free to do as they wish.
_________

From computer game design:

Sand box - a pre-created virtual environment in which the player(s) can explore, play, and do as they will. The computer game virtual environment is always bounded - perhaps a city (Grand Theft Auto), perhaps eight galaxies and two thousand worlds (Elite). RPG campaigns can use sandboxes, eg in Vault of Larin Karr it's Quail Valley. But unlike CRPGs the GM can continue to develop in play in accordance with player actions, so it's perfectly possible to run an Open campaign with no definable 'box'.

___________

A separate issue is:

PC/Tailored/Scenario based design - setting elements designed with the PCs' interests & their power level in mind, vs

Setting/Environment/Status Quo design - setting elements designed objectively without regard to what PCs may encounter it.
_________

You can have an open-sandbox-status quo approach (world sim); you can have an open-sandbox-tailored approach where the game is adapted to the PCs (Elder Scrolls IV).

None of these are bad or wrong approaches, they present different challenges and opportunities. Personally I think the Matrix approach is a good one for published campaigns, it gives much more player choice than a linear approach while still offering the opportunity to build towards a satisfying climax.

 

[Ariosto]

Open Campaigns - PCs can go anywhere, do anything. Play is episodic, 'Picaresque' and unconnected.

[Insert excluded middle here.]

Matrix Campaigns - PCs explore an environment, discover that lots of different elements are in fact connected together into an interacting matrix; this can form a 'web' at the centre of which might be a villain/antagonist, or something else - eg in Vault of Larin Karr it's the treasure vault itself. The matrix design allows for player freedom but also a sense of progression and building towards a climax, such as eventually confronting the BBEG in his lair.

What is there excluded is in my view the primary mode, and that exclusion sets up a false dichotomy of "player planned = unconnected" versus "GM planned = connected".

In the primary mode, the connecting matrix is the players' plans.

How is it that a non-player "villain/antagonist" is expected to be so much more truly a protagonist than the players? Why the assumption that they can only be either reactive or aimless? Wherefore not expect them to conceive and carry out bold schemes progressing and building toward objectives of their own choosing -- just as in any number of board- and card-games that do not even have anything to do with "playing the part of an adventurer"?

I don't know where this 'blinder' or prejudice comes from, but it seems stubbornly persistent and perhaps the biggest hurdle to 'getting' player-driven play.

 

[Ariosto]

you can have an open-sandbox-tailored approach where the game is adapted to the PCs

I think this vector heads off into "rather missing the point" territory (although there may be a frontier of interest to some). I suspect there will be much agreement from the FRPers (especially D&Ders) who wish to keep using 'sandbox' to refer to the strategic game at the historical root of RPGs.

Strategy requires dynamic range. It requires bad options as well as good ones, potential for defeat as well as victory. It requires decisions that make a difference.

As I personally found the enlarged scope for strategy a key part of the RPG's appeal when it was novel, and continue to delight in the possibilities, I for one can only be disappointed to see it reduced to less than in the board games it displaced.

I would not be too surprised if folks who prefer a steady diet of carefully balanced encounters tend also to see going far along this course as at least a little less than quite coherent.

 

[S'mon]

Ariosto - I gave you the definition of an Open campaign from the (1980s) 1e Dungeoneer's Survival Guide. It most closely resembles computer games like Elite - 'blast onwards through space' and emphasised exploration of the world/setting over building stuff/influencing the setting.

The approach implied by the rules & GM advice of 1970s OD&D, 1e DMG, and BX-BECMI starts with exploration as primary, then segues into building stuff as primary, eg dominion rulership or Thieves' Guild; I've seen this building-stuff stage called the 'end game' (although BECMI has 3 more stages beyond this 'end'), and recent editions (3e-4e) have been criticised in grognard circles for not addressing it.

Apart from that, I think you misunderstand the point of the 1e Open approach. It relies on player plans - where do we go, what do we see, what do we do. "In the primary mode, the connecting matrix is the players' plans" describes the 1e DSG Open approach just fine.

"How is it that a non-player "villain/antagonist" is expected to be so much more truly a protagonist than the players?"

Uh, nothing I said indicates that at all. Some linear campaigns default to that because it's easy to write.

I think you're bringing some unwelcome baggage into what I wrote.