Pathfinder 1E Sandboxes? Forked from Paizo reinvents hexcrawling

[Raven Crowking]

1e Oriental Adventures has an "Event Generator" system that can be modified to work in any setting. I would encourage any GM to use it, or something similar. Get used to things changing; it makes it so much easier to allow for the impact of PC changes!


RC

 

[catsclaw227]

It is true that players retire characters in the sandbox, but that doesn't mean that the sandbox itself is concluded, or that the "campaign" is concluded. Some characters may retire, while others go on, for instance. And even the "retired" characters may be brought out to influence later events in the sandbox.

I agree with Ariosto; if you are thinking about a single group of characters having a single set of adventures, you are probably not thinking of a "sandbox" in the way I mean the term. A sandbox, to me, includes multiple parties (even if the players are the same), each of which represents the distinct interests (or a distinct subset of the interests) of the players involved.

Events may (and, with any luck, often do) lead to satisfying conclusions; the campaign (and by extension, the campaign milieu) does not. There may be some exceptions to this. A sandbox in the Last Days of the campaign milieu, where the end of the world will occur whatever the player characters do, and the interest lies in what they decide to do in the face of it, might be well worth playing. Likewise, a sandbox might include the PCs intentionally bringing about the end of the universe.

These are is not typical sandboxes IME and IMHO, however.

My understanding is that this is how Gary's campaigns worked. I agree that these are not typical sandboxes and the term today might have taken on additional meanings over time.

Most of the sandboxes I played in "back in the day" were kinda like the one described far, far upthread by Umbran.

Though it almost always had a few hooks for adventure, some somewhat fleshed out adventure threads, and a little nudging by the DM. I never played in a game where the PCs were plopped down in a town/tavern/wilderness/etc... and the DM said, "Now what? North, South, East or West?" Mostly we started a game because there was a single hook getting us started and then it blossomed from there.

 

[Raven Crowking]

I don't think blossoming from a single hook disqualifies a game from being a sandbox; rather, I think that is a good technique to give players enough information to make meaningful decisions.

It's tough to explain why something is good to someone who has only had poor examples of it, I suppose, but the Gygaxian sandbox (what you understand is "how Gary's campaigns worked") is (IMHO & IME) what the modern interest in sandboxes is about. Maybe you didn't experience it "back in the day", but there is no reason you cannot experience it now.

(And I meant "end of the world" scenarios are not typical sandboxes; the Gygaxian sandbox is, IMHO, what is typically meant by folks who run sandbox games .... if not by folks who do not run said games and cannot understand why they might be popular! )

RC

 

[catsclaw227]

I don't think blossoming from a single hook disqualifies a game from being a sandbox; rather, I think that is a good technique to give players enough information to make meaningful decisions.

I totally agree. That is how we sandboxed back in 1e days.

It's tough to explain why something is good to someone who has only had poor examples of it, I suppose, but the Gygaxian sandbox (what you understand is "how Gary's campaigns worked") is (IMHO & IME) what the modern interest in sandboxes is about. Maybe you didn't experience it "back in the day", but there is no reason you cannot experience it now.

(And I meant "end of the world" scenarios are not typical sandboxes; the Gygaxian sandbox is, IMHO, what is typically meant by folks who run sandbox games .... if not by folks who do not run said games and cannot understand why they might be popular! )

Ahhh... I misunderstood you.

I was referring to the way a Gygaxian sandbox would be multiple PC parties or adventuring groups in a single campaign world, maybe up to 20 or 25 players all running around the game world at one time in different parties.

I agree that modern sandboxes may be single campaigns that have many generations of PCs, related or not, but they are usually the same 5-7 gamers (or 3 or 4 or 8, you know what I mean ). This is what we did, I had my campaign running for 7-8 years with timeline jumps, or other continents, sometimes with players running the grandchild of their older PC, seeing the results of grandpa's glory days. Though, in our case, we did call them different campaigns, just set in the same campaign world.

What I haven't seen or heard of, are many modern sandboxes described as 25 different PCs (maybe even 25 different players) all running around a game world at the same time, in different parties.

But if there are a lot like that, and I am just ignorant of them, then I am JEALOUS of the amount of time these DMs have to run a campaign like that!

 

[Raven Crowking]

Live in Toronto? I am going to be starting just such a game this summer, using the RCFG ruleset. There will also be a pbp component in another part of the same sandbox.

 

[Ariosto]

The goal of a sandbox is never, IMHO, to lead to a "campaign conclusion" of any type.

I don't see why players could not agree in advance to play until some condition is met. From what I have seen and heard, most campaigns do in fact end. To plan on that does not make any critical difference that I can see.

What would make a critical difference, in my view, is the GM arranging the course of the game. "I decree that in Chapter LXVI, they shall at last confront the Priest-King in his very throne room," is not "sandbox". That is neither here nor there as to whether it would be awesome in a non-sandbox game. Nor does it preclude a game that is sometimes a sandbox and sometimes not.

Players telling the referee that "in our next session, we plan at last to confront the Priest-King in his very throne room" is another matter. If a judge really is running a campaign with dozens of players, I would not be at all dismayed if some such brief were required in order to schedule a session in the first place. The GM, if not getting paid for her or his labors, deserves at least some entertainment as well, and players without a plan might not be as much fun as some who have an adventure organized.

 

[catsclaw227]

Seems to me you've pretty much got it. I turn from "stasis" again to the term that was used for a long time: "status quo". As in the Latin status quo ante - the state of affairs that existed previously.

The farmers keep farming, the miners keep mining, the rulers keep ruling. The socio-political-economic arrangements keep on running as they have been. If two nations historically have bad blood between them, there's skirmishes along the border, but nothing that actually shakes up the situation. If the party kills off a few orcs, well, orcs breed rapidly. Soon enough, there's more orcs to replace them. If someone kills the king, well, he's got a son to take the throne, and the son acts pretty much like the father did.

Yes, yes. Status quo is really what I meant. I didn't mean stasis, like temporal stasis, where everyone and everything just stops and hovers lifeless.

But, unless the DM is trying to create a hook, we don't see post PC reactions to relatively mundane goings on. Or in some cases, in some campaigns, there aren't post PC reactions to even actionable events. Like successfully stealing from a shopkeeper may just be a one-off thing. He made the pick-pocket roll, and the party moves on. But in 4 days when the accounting doesn't line up or he sees the book missing from his shelf, there isn't often an investigation that pops up 4 or 5 sessions later.

 

[Ariosto]

"Gygaxian sandbox" may be a handy term, as he is the most famous game master of that sort. Of course, his Greyhawk was preceded by Arneson's Blackmoor (and that in turn by Dave Wesley's slightly more structured Braunstein games).

Gygax's magnum opus Dungeon Masters Guide (1979), on point after point, echoed Hargrave's Arduin Grimoire (1977-78) and Simbalist's and Backhaus's Chivalry & Sorcery (1977). Arneson's The First Fantasy Campaign (1977) offered a patchwork of accounts of the conduct of that pioneering affair (the Introduction especially giving a peek at the earliest developments).

Looking back to my own introduction to the hobby, my impression is that, by late 1976, the major techniques of the game form (details of implementation that had not been spelled out in the LBBs) had already been widely arrived at by independent experience and were getting shared referee-to-referee and via such media as the Alarums & Excursions APA.

 

[The Shaman]

As a thought experiment, you could create a world which has certain things happening, and those events get resolved regardless of player involvement. And then of course other characters/groups within the world react to that, again whether the players are involved or interested. If that's the 'pure' sandbox in question, then I'm not surprised it's considered impossible.

What you call a "thought experiment" and consider "impossible" is how I run games.

 

[The Shaman]

I never played in a game where the PCs were plopped down in a town/tavern/wilderness/etc... and the DM said, "Now what? North, South, East or West?"

Traveller.

You're in the starport lounge of some jerkwater world. You've got a scout ship that gets free fuel and maintenance at a scout base, but those bases are scattered around and otherwise you've got no means of support: you need to find a patron and a job if you want to keep flying. You've got a merchant ship and a big-arsed mortgage hanging over your head: you need to start hauling and trading or face the repo guys. You're an ex-military type with a load of saleable skills in the ballistic solutions business: you need to find a merc ticket.

Traveller makes seeking out adventure the initial premise of the game.

What I've never understood is why so many D&D games don't begin with the same premise. From the adventurers' perspective, you've got armor, weapons, maybe a spell book, and some gear, and a handful of coins in your purse if you're lucky. On the most basic level, what happens when those coins run out?

But more importantly, why'd you take up the profession of arms, or the priesthood, or the arcane arts, in the first place? To serve as a guard on the town gate, collecting tolls? Cast cure light wounds on some farmer who falls off a ladder while thatching his hovel? Serve as court wizard, casting comprehend languages for some petty lordling? Or to make something more of yourself? If the latter, why are you standing there looking at your effing shoes?

To be fair, the referee needs to do her part as well. There need to be things going on, current events, rumors, the moment the adventurers hit the ground. The world should feel lived in, and more importantly it must provide grist for the adventurers' mill. A sage who can point the players in the direction of some old tombs, or a guard who tells you about the goblins raiding the farms west of town, aren't spoon-feeding plot hooks: they're the search engines of the game-world, spooling out information which the adventurers can turn to their advantage.

For my own game, the players start off with some of the current events of the day: the fair at Saint Germain is open, and it's a great place to see and be seen by the aristocrats of Paris; there's a new play at the hotel de Bourgogne tonight, and the players will be performing on the Pont-Neuf during the day to drum up an audience for the evening's performance; et cetera. The adventurers may start with contacts, who can provide helpful advice should the adventurers solicit it. And there are taverns and gambling houses and fencing schools and salons and palaces, all of which are places for the adventurers to stir up trouble, make friends, chastise enemies, impress patrons, as bravos, as sharps, as courtiers, as duelists, or whatever.

In the games I run it's my role to fill the world with all sorts of resources with interesting applications. It's up to the players to locate and apply those resources available in the game-world to fulfilling the goals of their characters.