Why we like plot: Our Job as DMs

[CharlesRyan]

But I do wonder what you think could not happen in a sandbox style game?

You've touched on it yourself when you've talked about, for example, foreshadowing. Putting those statues in front of the medusa's lair lets you foreshadow on the encounter or perhaps adventure level. But it's hard to do it on a larger scale if you aren't willing to work from an outline for the game.

I've enjoyed a few instances when players' jaws almost literally hit the floor at the point of some grand plot twist or reveal. (Both from behind the screen and as one of those players.) A point where the events of an entire lengthy campaign were cast in a whole new light; where connections began to appear between events from the game's early days that seemed insignificant and unrelated at the time. The point at which the players start looking back and say "oh my god, that was about that!"

These moments can only occur if they're set up in advance. In an environment where the GM has no idea where the campaign will be in a few months, things like that might happen here or there, but more by chance and never (or very rarely) with the sort of impact or resonance I'm talking about.

It's worth pointing out that the impact is an important part of the experience I'm describing. A given event or encounter, objectively, might happen just as easily in either campaign style. But the resonance it has with the players varies greatly depending on what has happened before in the campaign.

 

[Raven Crowking]

You've touched on it yourself when you've talked about, for example, foreshadowing. Putting those statues in front of the medusa's lair lets you foreshadow on the encounter or perhaps adventure level. But it's hard to do it on a larger scale if you aren't willing to work from an outline for the game.

Sorry, but I don't believe that a sandbox prevents one from having an outline of how the game world progresses. It just prevents one from outlining how the PCs will react to that progression.

I find no difficulty with creating foreshadowing in a sandbox.


RC

 

[CharlesRyan]

The key is letting your players approach either the world or the plot in their own way without railroading them.

This is really well put; I wish I'd thought of stating it that way. It goes to the heart of my original point (that plot does not equal railroad).

Plots can be explored, just like maps. A GM worth his salt doesn't force players through a set of preconceived scenes with preconceived outcomes any more than he designs a dungeon that's just a straight line of rooms.

In fact, the plot-oriented GM probably has more leeway than a GM running the classic dungeon; the players aren't constrained by walls and can run off in unexpected directions. As I've said many times before, the good GM doesn't just allow this, he welcomes it. Keeps the game interesting. He can always go back to his notes between sessions and see how the new direction impacts things and what changes, if any, he needs to make to keep on course down the outline.

(Note that the latter is a comparison of plot to dungeon, not plot to sandbox. Yes, I know that a sandbox is not the same thing as a dungeon, Ariosto, nor am I saying it is.)

 

[CharlesRyan]

Sorry, but I don't believe that a sandbox prevents one from having an outline of how the game world progresses.

Of course not. But exactly how many plot threads are you going to outline from the beginning of your campaign? 50? 10? 5? 2?

If the answer is 1, is it still a sandbox?

How do subplots fit into all of this? If you're managing 1 main plotline and, say, 4 or 5 related or dependent plotlines, is that a plot game or a sandbox?

I don't mean to imply that sandbox campaigns don't have ongoing events. But if you aren't deliberately focusing on a limited subset of those events, I don't think you can use the full suite of story structure tools to their fullest. (Just like you'd argue that a story oriented campaign doesn't make full use of player agency tools.)

 

[Raven Crowking]

If you're managing 1 main plotline and, say, 4 or 5 related or dependent plotlines, is that a plot game or a sandbox?

You know from our previous discussion that I don't believe in the dichotomy that this suggests. I would argue that a sandbox can have any number of ongoing plots, and that it is how those plots are implemented, rather than their existence, which determines whether or not the game is a sandbox.

See, this

Plots can be explored, just like maps. A GM worth his salt doesn't force players through a set of preconceived scenes with preconceived outcomes any more than he designs a dungeon that's just a straight line of rooms.

In fact, the plot-oriented GM probably has more leeway than a GM running the classic dungeon; the players aren't constrained by walls and can run off in unexpected directions. As I've said many times before, the good GM doesn't just allow this, he welcomes it. Keeps the game interesting. He can always go back to his notes between sessions and see how the new direction impacts things and what changes, if any, he needs to make to keep on course down the outline.​

sounds sandbox-y to me, so long as the PCs have the opportunity of exploring whatever plots they want, so long as whatever plots they choose to ignore continue to impact the setting, and so long as they are free to devise plots of their own.

I agree that the more the players are allowed to choose what to do, the less the GM can constrain their actions to a narrow path (and, therefore, the less the GM can structure that path).

This doesn't mean that there is anything that could not happen in a sandbox game, with the sole exception of a railroad. The only way to use the "full suite of story structure tools to their fullest" is to eliminate player agency altogether and write a story. I don't think any of us are advocating that.


RC

 

[Raven Crowking]

The fact that he's the last Timelord and nothing he does can change the fact that he's alone, for all time.

SPOILER ALERT
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
Just as an aside, Timothy Dalton (once played James Bond) has been photographed wearing a Time Lord costume filiming the final David Tennant two-parter, The End of Time. The rumour is that the Time Lords are, indeed, coming back. So perhaps the Doctor can do something after all?

 

[Doug McCrae]

The crpg Morrowind is a sandbox, a very large one, but also has a main plot featuring, imo, at least one brilliantly jaw-dropping reveal.

In the same way I can see how a pnp sandbox could contain one or more adventure paths, reaping the benefits of build-up and more meaningful climax that that brings. I understand some people run APs with elements of sandbox, allowing a certain amount of deviation from the path.

 

[Doug McCrae]

Some examples of what I regard as sand boxes:

The West Marches campaign. The classic example of the sandbox online.
Necromancer Games' The Vault of Larin Karr
The Ruins of Undermountain. A mega-dungeon is a subset of sandbox, in my view. All megadungeons are sandboxes but not all sandboxes are megadungeons.
Morrowind
World of Warcraft

An example of a non-sandbox, in fact an adventure path, is G1-3 Against The Giants. These modules are intended to be played in order. The reveal of the drow in G3 doesn't work very well if you play that module first. Also the sense of progression from hill giants to frost giant to fire giant to drow is important.

 

[Janx]

The crpg Morrowind is a sandbox, a very large one, but also has a main plot featuring, imo, at least one brilliantly jaw-dropping reveal.

In the same way I can see how a pnp sandbox could contain one or more adventure paths, reaping the benefits of build-up and more meaningful climax that that brings. I understand some people run APs with elements of sandbox, allowing a certain amount of deviation from the path.

I've only played a little of Morrowwind, but I've put in 200+ hours on Oblivion. Great game.

However, one aspect I don't like about Oblivion (which also seems true in Morrowind), is that the PC can pick up a ton of quests and the passage of time does not affect them (for the most part).

The initial problem is that many of these hooks should have a consequence for too much time passing. In turn, this would cause the side effect of with all these problems happening effectively at once, the PC is not able to solve them all. This in turn would lead to the bad guys winning a majority of these quests, by virtue of the world only having 1 character who actively solves quests.

This gist if you have too many simultaneous evil plots that can only be solved by the PCs, then evil will win a majority of those plots and dramatically change the campaign world.

Part of the solution is that for any quest the PC doesn't undertake, an NPC hero MIGHT do it, thereby preventing disaster.

Another part of the solution is to only present a limited set of available quests any given time. In Oblivion, once the PC has 3-4 quests, don't present him with any more (assuming the PC can accept a quest or refuse to add it to his list). Thus, there's only a few quests that could "time out" as opposed to all of them.

All of this is supposing that too many quests that are in danger of timing out (i.e. the bad guys win) is a bad thing. I would argue that unless you want to dramatically change your game world to a state where the bad guys now have the upper hand, that this would be a problem then.

Now one side argument I think I saw from Hussar, was the assumption that a sandbox could entice 6-7 players more than an adventure path style game. I suspect that's not the problem at all.

If you have 4-5 players, it is easier to get them to reach a consensus on what to do next than a party of 6-7 players. Regardless of play style. The more people you have the more different directions folks are going to tend to want to go.

You're either going to split the party or they'll be timeswapping between goals they're pursuing. I don't think the problem is exclusive to either style.

Having run a game in my style with 6-7 players before, what helped me was setting the starting state of the PCs. When I did it, the initial state of the campaign was that the PCs were members of the navy or marines serving on the Sea Sprite. I told the players the way the campaign was going to start (y'all are in the military, serving on this ship). They then made characters that would fit in this starting state, and we played.

The part I cheated on, was having them be military, they effectively worked for somebody and took orders (went on quests), solving some plot hook buy-in. It would be easy to stay in a rut, but my goal was to take that framework and have the PCs pursue more personal goals and challenge their loyalty, to see what they'd do.

My core point though, is if you have a party of unrelated people, you'll have a hard time getting them to agree to do anything. This means the game will bog down. There is value in setting some parameters of character creation to get them pulling together so the group can have a game. And if you've got 6-7 players, you can easily afford to lose a few who don't want what you're running.

 

[CharlesRyan]

The crpg Morrowind is a sandbox, a very large one, but also has a main plot featuring, imo, at least one brilliantly jaw-dropping reveal.

I don't really know Morrowind, so I can't comment directly. But I will concede this: It's certainly possible, I believe, for an enterprising GM to outline 10, or 100, or 1,000 plotlines, place them in a sandbox environment, and then take advantage of story structure tools with the result of a brilliant campaign with an incredible storyline incredibly rendered. Without any sacrifice of player agency, because the players can get that experience no matter where in the sandbox they wander.

But to get there, he's creating 10, or 100, or 1,000 times as much content as his players will ever encounter (not actually, since a lot of the content will cross storylines, but you get my point).

That's fine for the R&D department of a CRPG studio, assuming that's part of their design goals and they have the budget for it. It can be pretty onerous for a single GM, however.