When a sandbox is not a sandbox

[KidSnide]

Fair enough - I wasn't considering things said by players designed to be picked up by the DM.

Even if you're just using comments that aren't intended to be picked up by the GM, incorporating the player's ideas into your mysteries makes the PCs smarter than the players. For a lot of gamees, that's a feature (as opposed to a bug) - but, again, it's not the same thing as solving the mystery on its own merits.

Again, I'm not making a value judgment. I think incorporating player suggestions can make a lot of games more fun. (In fact, I sometimes think my own games would be more fun if I used that technique more often.) I'm just saying that using the technique changes the game -- and GMs should be aware of the effects when they use it.

-KS

 

[Celebrim]

I was just wondering what techniques you use when characters waltz out of the sandbox into un- or ill-defined terrain?

Cheers!

Random tables. Lots and lots of random tables. You can get alot of mileage out of a random table. The best random tables are half encounter generators, half ad hoc plot generators.

Keep them busy until you can get some time to start worldbuilding in front of their feet.

On the whole, it sounds like you handled it really well. It's rather impossible to tell how much you had (or hadn't) prepped from your session summary. What do you think went wrong in the session? How much panic were you secretly in? How much hand-holding/baby-sitting were you secretly doing? How off the map are they? What are you worried about?

 

[MerricB]

The major problem with the session was that it didn't give enough for certain characters (like Aidan) to do. My original outline had the characters interacting with NPCs that they'd met in previous sessions on Ezra, which meant that the wheeling-and-dealing of Aidan could really come out. When they stepped aboard the Fed shipyard, all of that went out the window, and I didn't compensate with a new character who'd interact well with Aidan. (In retrospect, it seems likely that there'd be a shady side to the shipyard he could have worked well with).

It should be noted that the Serenity game I'm running is very character-based and rules-light. There was a session when the folder with all the character sheets was missing, and a couple of players were panicking. Sarah (who plays Miss Roux) looked at them and asked them if they'd noticed how little attention I paid to the rules.

My complete madness and panic in the session came down to me giving them the "sealed orders" and describing them as a hunt for an experimental ship (i.e. the Jailbait) that had been stolen by "Doc's crew" - a gang of criminals they've run into in the past. I've had this ongoing thread about the Jailbait not being searched for by the general military, so after the session I was going, "What have I done?! What have I done?"

Thankfully, I did describe them as sealed orders (and they weren't opened in the session), so I'm going to have them be orders for looking for a covert asteroid base instead of the Jailbait. (My original plans for the next session involved such... as I said, I panicked). The other part was a "ridiculous" cover story. If no-one thinks about it that much, it should work. I hope.

The preparation I *really* need to do for this game regards NPCs. D&D may need monsters and traps, but Serenity needs NPCs and motivations more than anything else. A plan of the shipyard might have been nice, but I don't run this game in a detail-orientated way. Instead, an idea of what locations can be found and the NPCs within? That would have been nice.

Creating one minor NPC on the fly? Easy. Creating several major ones? More difficult!

Cheers!

 

[Celebrim]

The preparation I *really* need to do for this game regards NPCs. D&D may need monsters and traps, but Serenity needs NPCs and motivations more than anything else.

Yeah, although, it's worth noting that for some of my sandboxish campaigns, the random encounter table included a subsection that basically amounted to NPC generator - listing encounters not merely by type of creature, but by profession and possible motives. I'm not sure that would help in your case, but I'm thinking if I was sandboxing a space merchants campaign one of the first thing I'd be tempted do is have a 'random starship/captain' generator so that I could, when necessary, electro-prod my imagination by randoming a few spaceships, their affliation, and the motive and modus of their captain.

The problem with randoming up NPC's is that it tends to involve too many dice throws to resolve anything detailed enough to be usable, but you might make one and then half randomly prep 50 or so stock seven sentence NPCs that you can pull out of a folder when you need them (which I imagine will be frequently, as one of the problems with a space game is the amount of freedom of choice the players have). Obviously, you wouldn't do this all in one week, but probably you can prep NPC's faster than the players can consume them if you devote a little time too it.

A plan of the shipyard might have been nice, but I don't run this game in a detail-orientated way. Instead, an idea of what locations can be found and the NPCs within? That would have been nice.

Random shipyard resource generation is probably alot easier to do than random NPC generation. It probably wouldn't be too hard for me to brainstorm up a list of things that might or might not be in any given port of call, and then provide a table to prompt the imagination.

Creating one minor NPC on the fly? Easy. Creating several major ones? More difficult!

Absolutely. I think you did a great job handling that as well as you did. Prepared lists of names always help me in the NPC creation department, as it gets past the first major panic moment and after that I find I can usually wing it well enough that the players are unable to tell who was prepped ahead of time and who wasn't.

 

[Desdichado]

MerricB; I'm a little unclear; are we meant to answer the question that the thread title poses, the one that the body of the original post itself poses, or either/or?

I think arguing about the semantics of what it means to be a sandbox is a fruitless exercise, and one that (some of us, at least) we've been down before to little avail. What people mean when they say 'sandbox' is often quite vague, and difficult to nail down. And, it may have lots of baggage from their experiences and home games. I think whether or not you play in a sandbox or not has more to do with whether you like the theoretical approach and identify with the attitude than it does with any actual concrete elements of the game itself. Plus, as Fifth Element alluded to, its often difficult to know exactly what's going on in the 'background' of a game; two GM's could be handling things very differently in their minds, and the players may not have any way whatsoever of telling from where they sit.

If you want my advice, I'd not pursue that discussion at all, frankly, and focus on the other question that you ask.

Although, sadly, I don't have nearly as much to say there. My "technique" is to make stuff up really quickly. It's not really so much a technique as an art that I do without a ton of thought.

I do prepare for the unexpected, though. Lots of potential NPC names, sorted by region, are essential. A map with enough detail that I can tell where they could end up depending on what they do. Maybe some old Dungeon Mag issues hanging around so I've got site maps handy that I might need to pick up in a pinch. Statblocks of monsters or NPCs that I think might be interesting if the PCs fought, that I can have ready to go in case it looks like where they're headed could make such a thing happen.

An older gentleman once told me that if you don't keep your apple barrel full, when you reach into it to get an apple, you'll come up empty. This was specifically in regard to this type of question; I just make sure that I've got enough ideas crammed somewhere into my subconscious that I've got something there when I reach into it to grab an apple unexpectedly. I read a lot of modules, not to run them, but just to see how they're constructed, what the ideas are, what kinds of locations, plot ideas, NPCs and monsters they've got in them. Then, as needed, I raid this larder of raw materials to keep the PCs occupied.

 

[MerricB]

MerricB; I'm a little unclear; are we meant to answer the question that the thread title poses, the one that the body of the original post itself poses, or either/or?

Well, the title isn't a question. It's a description of the situation I found myself in: I'd determined a problem for the characters to solve (lack of fuel), and designed a "sandbox" setting which then they could interact with and change things. Only, my sandbox wasn't big enough...

Consider the effects on the sandbox setting when you go beyond them. I think The Shaman had a great point, which I'm going to express as followed: they haven't walked out of the sandbox, they've extended it.

What then happens in the game? What techniques should the GM use in such an instance?

If you're not interested in this, please don't post in the thread.

Please see my comment in the next post. ~ PCat

 

[Desdichado]

Admin here. This is just a misunderstanding where I think Hobo originally misread the thread title. Definitely not worth overreacting to on anyone's part. Carry on with the thread, por favor. ~ PCat

If you're not interested in this, please don't post in the thread.

Uh... Whiskey Tango Foxtrot? Did you even read my post, or just snap off a reply after reading the first two lines? That's exactly the response I gave you.

 

[MerricB]

Even if you're just using comments that aren't intended to be picked up by the GM, incorporating the player's ideas into your mysteries makes the PCs smarter than the players. For a lot of gamees, that's a feature (as opposed to a bug) - but, again, it's not the same thing as solving the mystery on its own merits.

Again, I'm not making a value judgment. I think incorporating player suggestions can make a lot of games more fun. (In fact, I sometimes think my own games would be more fun if I used that technique more often.) I'm just saying that using the technique changes the game -- and GMs should be aware of the effects when they use it.

-KS

As an addition to this, I seem to remember that Gary Gygax once put a Horn of Blasting as a treasure in his dungeons because one of the players really wanted it. Of course, when the player reached the door marked with "HB", he interpreted it as Hydra Barracks and ran screaming...

When does something need to be defined? It's an interesting point this thread has raised. To which the glib answer, "when it needs to be", isn't really illuminating. What effect does the time of creation have on the campaign and how it runs? I know that for as long as I've played RPGs, I've tended to start out loose and define things later. I'll have a basic idea for my character's background, and I'll define more and more of it as we play. It might not always be relevant when I do so - nor may it ever be - but I do this rather than having it all defined when I start, as other friends do.

Cheers!

 

[MerricB]

Obviously, you wouldn't do this all in one week, but probably you can prep NPC's faster than the players can consume them if you devote a little time too it.

Ah, time. I remember free time to prepare campaigns.

Good advice though. Thank you!

Cheers!

 

[howandwhy99]

I was just wondering what techniques you use when characters waltz out of the sandbox into un- or ill-defined terrain?

Cheers!

Well, I try and keep the space capable of being entered during a session mostly extrapolated in the session's scenario. But that's hard depending upon the system one's using.

I guess I'd either stop the session as I was out of prepared material or attempt to prepare it on the fly, if I felt it possible for me to do so at the speed was going. If they really jumped ahead on the timeline, I would really have to stop though.