Starting a new campaign (integrating sandbox and metaplot - mutually exclusive?)

[Nagol]

Done properly there's no difference from a player perspective between choice and the illusion of choice.

Cooked properly, there is no taste difference between a chocolate pie and a chocolate pie with human excrement in it either (cf. The Help).

The difference is the level of regard and respect I am willing to grant to my players and their considered choices.

There is one other difference as well. The players can answer "Yes, we understand and stand by our choice to blow up the world." At which point the meta plot continues to its logical next step and the campaign takes a dramatic shift.

 

[Gilladian]

As everyone says, the metaplot sandbox is a very fun way to run the campaign.

One thing I suggest; get bunches of small adventures (WOTC has a lot, there are a ton you can find and download from various sources, though you may have to convert from 3rd and even 2nd edition), or raid things like Paizo's adventure paths.

Plop lots and lots of these mini adventures into the world map you're creating. Or at least list out somewhere WHERE they are in your world. Don't try to connect them to the metaplot, yet.

Sketch out a rough timeline of your metaplot, and create some of the villains, factions, etc... you want in the world. If there's a clear overlap, write up how some of the "sites" and the "factions" might interact. Don't try to push things too far along, as lots changes very quickly with the PCs involvement.

Add players. As they interact with sites and factions, you'll be able to "stitch" the two together. A lot of the time, the PCs will come up with things that will do the work for you.

"Aha! The reason the villain had that pearl necklace is because he's trading with the mermaids! We need to destroy their alliance!" means you just found a major connection that you had no idea existed.

So much fun!

 

[jedavis]

Don't try to push things too far along, as lots changes very quickly with the PCs involvement.

Add players. As they interact with sites and factions, you'll be able to "stitch" the two together. A lot of the time, the PCs will come up with things that will do the work for you.

"Aha! The reason the villain had that pearl necklace is because he's trading with the mermaids! We need to destroy their alliance!" means you just found a major connection that you had no idea existed.

So much fun!

This. Stay light on your feet. No plan survives contact with the PCs. Make stuff up, or better yet let the players make stuff up for you. Use their crazy ideas as-is sometimes, and invert them sometimes. My players were convinced there was a morlock lair on the fourth level of the dungeon, had a logical reason for believing it, and I hadn't stocked that part yet when they got there... so lo and behold, there were morlocks in bulk. And then fun was had, everyone died, and we got a good story out of it.


@Olgar Shiverstone - I'm somewhat curious what advantage illusionism has over actual choice. Is the main payoff less prep, or that things always turn out the way you want, or something else entirely?

 

[Li Shenron]

I agree that some videgames work a little bit like that, at least that was the feeling I got for example from Baldur's Gate series. It felt like exploring around would trigger some important dicoveries and events, but only at a later stage you would really go straight towards where the metaplot was leading.

Also, how about "sketching" the metaplot rather than "writing" it? Meaning that you decide some milestones and forks beforehand, but also let the player's suggestions drive your design (without them knowing you're using them as suggestions...).

 

[Olgar Shiverstone]

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@Olgar Shiverstone - I'm somewhat curious what advantage illusionism has over actual choice. Is the main payoff less prep, or that things always turn out the way you want, or something else entirely?

You've got it -- it's basically a preparation crutch for the DM. Let's say you've got three plot hooks ready, but have only detailed two adventure areas. If the plot hooks and adventure areas are planned well, you don't need a one-to-one correspondence of hook to adventure, as the PC's choice can lead in any case to the adventure you've prepared.

What separates the "illusion of choice" approach from a railroad is that you give the players the option to follow up the other plot hooks and they lead to other, different adventures ... but by the time they back up to follow hook #2 or #3 , you've had time to prep the other alternatives.

This works even at the individual dungeon level. Players need meaningful choices -- taking the left fork or the right fork in the passage should have different, meaningful outcomes. But since the players don't know beforehand what lies beyond the two forks, it doesn't matter which fork leads to which encounter, and in fact you may only need one encounter despite the two forks (in general -- there might be specific geographic or other environmental differences that render the two options distinct). Unless the PCs back up and take the other fork, they don't know their choice was only an illusion -- and if they do back up to take the other fork, the DM has an obligation to ensure that it leads to a different outcome, so that the players' choice has meaning and is not an illusion, retroactively.

Schroedinger's Dungeon, if you will. The path ahead is only defined when the choice is made.

 

[Doug McCrae]

I think there's quite a big difference between a static metaplot* and a timeline advancing metaplot that includes major negative changes to the world. The former is more sandbox-y, in the sense that it puts less pressure on the PCs. I'm dubious about advancing the latter type of metaplot if the PCs aren't showing any interest in it.

Old school sandboxes are more static. Evil can grow more powerful if the PCs do nothing, but it won't take over or destroy the world.

*By static metaplot, I mean pieces of the world that are connected, but aren't necessarily going to do anything until the PCs interfere.

 

[Quickleaf]

I'm dabbling with ideas for a new campaign. There are a few objectives that I want to accomplish and I'm trying to figure out how to combine them all:

- A sandbox, exploratory feel
- Some kind of underlying metaplot that the PCs find themselves further and further involved in
- A mixture of homebrew setting and both homebrew and pre-published adventures
- Light to moderate planning required on my part; I'm OK with a bunch of planning up front as I'm a teacher and have the summer off, but once September comes around I want to be able to do minimal preparation, not much more than reading pre-published adventures and tweaking them to suit my campaign.

I'd say your best bet would be to focus on a region/kingdom with several highlighted "dungeons" (read: adventure sites). I would get these supplements as the "dungeons": Madness at Gardmoor Abbey, Halls of Undermountain, Neverwinter, Slaying Stone, and whatever other supplements appropriate to your setting.

Maybe sit down and think up some potential adventure sites and then dig around in your collection for an approximate fit. IOW do your campaign prep geographically.

The basic idea I have at this moment is that the campaign will start off relatively traditionally: the party is pulled together to fight some kind of humanoid incursion of the village they're in, and somehow they gradually get involved with Big Events. But the key is that I want the feeling to start out as sandboxy, but through their exploration they piece together a much larger story. Right now I'm imagining that they find artifacts and objects that point to some kind of unknown history that they will put together over time, like a puzzle.

Be careful about deliberately switching gears from a sandboxy game into a more linear story-driven game. It's fine if that happens naturally and comes from the players, but as a top down DM directive it sounds like a bad idea.

As far as this thread goes, I'm looking for suggestions about how to do this, as well as recommendations of resources, adventures, etc.

I swear by AEG's Ultimate Toolbox as a resource for planning and running an improvisational game where i need to come up with stuff quickly when the players take an unexpected tactic. Ultimate Toolbox has tables for *everything*, and is well worth the cost. Ultimate Toolbox

 

[Loonook]

I actually wrote up an article on the Sandbox game using FATE style aspects for locations. It is a simple model, but it allows for you to see how the party can 'ripple' effects across the world/country/state.

I discussed the addition of stresses to the system. Creating a running time-sensitive metaplot is NOT against a sandbox feel... Indeed, the story of "During X the following occurred in my life" is pretty much the basis of any historical novel.

Wars, famine, religious movements, riots, murders, terror, and the unexplained go on every day in the real world.... Why not in your game? The players may ignore their poxy brethren walking through the streets... Or decide to assist in the treatment of the plague. They may join on either side of the war... Or just keep on keeping on. In theory you could create a program/database/spreadsheet that allows you to put together a sound 'ripple effect' that determines the current stresses across the board, and then isolate for the party's effects on these various plots, and there may come a time when the players become too big to be ignored.

The party weaves their story, and at some point they may cross paths, pens, or swords with a larger plot. Don't reject, embrace .

Slainte,

-Loonook.

 

[Mercurius]

Great suggestions, thanks everyone - I'll revisit this thread as I get deeper into planning.

A few of you, including [MENTION=20323]Quickleaf[/MENTION], recommended dropping adventure sites into various locations, sort of a "best of" 4E adventures/dungeons/sites. That's the general plan, although I may still guide the PCs towards specific adventures, with the sandboxing occurring between sites and as a general theme of exploring a region and gradually piecing together a lost history. But what I'd like to know is this: what are the best adventure sites published for 4E? Or, for that matter, any edition? 4E is easier as it would require little adjustments, but I'm OK with quick conversions of other adventures.

Let's divide it into half-tiers: Lower Heroic, Upper Heroic, Lower Paragon, Upper Paragon. What are the best for each? I'm especially looking for adventure sites, or adventures that don't have a heavy plot to them - that are "old school" in that the primary focus is exploring a dungeon, finding an artifact, etc.

(For the sake of context, the setting for most of Heroic tier is going to be somewhat similar to the North of the Forgotten Realms, with other regions being explored later on - or whenever the PCs choose to do so)

 

[Tovec]

Yep, totally doable, and in fact IMO a good sandbox should have a couple of metaplots running in the background. The important hings to remember when doing this:

(1) Don't be disappointed if the players choose not to "bite" on the metaplot -- let them follow their preferences;
(2) Resist the urge to railroad them back to the metaplot;
(3) Let the metaplot continue to run to its logical conclusions if the PCs aren't involved, revealing bits of it from time to time. It will make the world seem more realistic and dynamic if you do -- but:
(4) Be careful not to spring the "You're screwed! You ignored the metaplot!" ending on your players, even if that's the *logical* conclusion, since that violates rule [URL=http://www.enworld.org/forum/usertag.php?do=list&action=hash&hash=2]#2 [/URL] . It's a fine balance between having a realistic world that does its own thing in spite of the PCs while still giving players the illusion of choice.

The key to sandbox-with-metaplot is maintaining the illusion of choice.

This reminds me of my first campaign when I was VERY fresh to the rules and to DMing. Only, I voilated #4 because it totally was how the game ended. It was actually pretty funny that way.

I had a big sandboxy area for the players to explore, interact with and play around in and then Wham! The party kicked off the adventure of their choice. The followed this up by traveling from one major city to another, never staying anywhere very long and preferring to stay under the radar.
Eventually though, I had the consequences of their unfinished adventures (or jobs) come back and bite them.
For example, they eventually decided to settle down only to be attacked by a thieves guild who they had wronged earlier in the campaign. The city was attacked by forces from another city, declaring war and whatnot, due to provocations a PC had done in said city. It was made funnier by that character no longer being around (or in the party, I forget which) at the time.
Hell, the entire campaign ended with them finally completing the final mission of their first quest after everything had gone all wrong. Only to have them mess up the instructions they were given concerning said quest and releasing the big bad. In a dialogued cutscene I described how the BBEG (in this case G represents Gas) consumed them and started to spread and eat its way across the world. Not only did they screw up but they ended the whole world in screwing up. It was a very fun game and stories are told years later because:

- I was willing to let my party pick what they wanted to do. I only decided on a "metaplot" after they picked the adventure in the first place.
- I was willing to let their actions have real consequences, good and ill. Their reputation followed them from two different cities, they were able to start war, lay down roots and by poorly managed actions even end the world.
- I had a lot of interesting places to explore. Some were preconceived but a lot was just winged when they got there, adding elements or subtracting them as needed and as the party used them.

In general all three points I listed here would help in the metaplot-sandbox game you are talking about. Railroading is necessary to a certain extent if you want to have consequences, a plot or anything "meta" about the game. But just make sure they doing see the rails and everything is fine. Make the PCs important and allow them to be the movers and shakers, or at least the ones with the major changes. If it happens that they ignore the plot they start that is fine, just have the effects catch up to them. If you've ever played RPG video games you'll get what I mean. They can do all the side jobs they want, but real plot advancement only occurs when they deal with X or Y. If they fail to deal with X or Y, or take too long, have Z happen instead. It adds excitement and helps things move along - a solution that video games rarely (if ever) consider.

Hope this helps, quite possibly doesn't.