why would a SuperHero campaign need a sandbox?

[Jack7]

4. The Old Fashioned or Mundane Way - police scanners, newspapers, radio, television, the Internet.

Works in real life and everywhere else too. But building your own Informant Network is always the best play in my opinion. Not just single informants, but real Networks.

I have in the past (and still do from time to time) experimented with methods of anticipating criminal and terrorist activity. In real life. Geographic profiling, beat and pattern analysis, psychological and socio-criminological analysis, covert fluctuating monitoring, unusual or remote surveillance techniques, etc. Some methods work okay, some are mostly useless, all have been inconsistent so far.

But I always encourage my players to try stuff like that in-game as well. One day I'm hoping one of em will come up with an ingenious idea, method, process, or system that I can sue in rela life.

 

[the Jester]

Off in the media thread, [MENTION=3398]jaerdaph[/MENTION]'s got a pretty snazzy city map he's making for his superhero campaign. He asked if it was a big enough sandbox.

That got me thinking back in the RPG space, rather than map space.

Why would you need to run a superhero campaign as a sandbox?

Why must you "need to" run a sandbox in order to run a sandbox?

I don't think you really ever "need to" run a sandbox, but I sure prefer to. And if it's my preference, doesn't the question rather become, "Why would you need to not run a superhero campaign as a sandbox?"

 

[Crazy Jerome]

In a big city, a hero group will have LOTS of choices because:

1) it is probable there are oth heroes at work, and/or

2) even without other heroes, there will be at least a few occasions when more than one thing in the city would be worthy of their attention.

Because of this, when I do sandboxy supers games, the heroes always have some kind of newsfeed or connections that flood them with options.

The Champions games we played in college were usually of this nature. Part of it was because of the rotating cast of heroes (darn, gotta study tonight!), but mainly it was because it was convenient for 7-8 players, 3 of whom might GM in a shared world. "Flood" with threats was exactly the word I was going to use to describe it even before reading the above. The idea was that making the hard choices when you couldn't do it all would add the drama, and then once choices were made, the more typical playing it out would have more punch.

 

[Relique du Madde]

Think of it in terms of a certain on line rpg..

The makers gave you a world you could explore. They set up thousands of plot hooks (quests) for your group to undertake. Yet your group spent weeks killing Pirates off the "Bloody Bay" because you randomly found out that they had pirate gear or because you made up your own story about being a pirate crew.

Then you accidently found out there was a secret quest a rival group of pirates offered...


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[Dannyalcatraz]

In my Champions:1900 campaign, the heroes were all part of a special branch of an Interpol type agency called GAIA, and the newsfeed was an internal memo/broadsheet, which I posted on our host's corkboard for all to see.

Each issue had major coveage of the PC's actions, plus some info of what happened after they got back or when they were gone- aftermaths to their own missions, missions that had been accomplished by other agents, etc. Plus there were just blurbs amounting to news of the weird (a.k.a. plot hooks a la FRPG tavern gossip).

And after each session, I'd update it.

 

[cattoy]

Fundamentally, I don't think open ended sandboxes are ideal for superhero games.

One of the basic problems with the sandbox is that the scope of superheroes, at least the higher end ones, is so vast that it runs the GM out of man hours to keep up with them. However, there's nothing wrong with playing in a sandbox style, by letting the PCs pick which clues to investigate, which events to react to, which places to go. Just keep dropping hints, clues and events in their lap that are linked to whatever villain is stirring the plot pot.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

It really depends on how many good plait hooks you deliver to your players via their newsfeed- my Supers:1900 game was based in the world of Space:1889, so its scope covered not just the Earth, but Luna, Mars & Venus as well.

With a sandbox that size, you'd figure they'd overwhelm me, but they didn't. After the initial few "setup" adventures, designed mainly as tuneups & introductions, they got hooked into my main story arc. While they were tracking down their main foe- who cunningly avoided capture, then got captured, escaped, etc.- I filled GAIA's newsletter with hooks that were either 100% my idea & setting appropriate or culled from PC backgrounds & the players' speculative table talk.

Result: beyond the main story arc, players were fed a steady diet of 2-5 hooks tailored to draw them into my vision of the campaign world and/or based on he stories they themselves told me. I never had to prepare more that a little bit each arc until they really set themselves on a path.

 

[Relique du Madde]

Fundamentally, I don't think open ended sandboxes are ideal for superhero games.

One of the basic problems with the sandbox is that the scope of superheroes, at least the higher end ones, is so vast that it runs the GM out of man hours to keep up with them. However, there's nothing wrong with playing in a sandbox style, by letting the PCs pick which clues to investigate, which events to react to, which places to go. Just keep dropping hints, clues and events in their lap that are linked to whatever villain is stirring the plot pot.

It really depends on how many good plait hooks you deliver
< snip >
Result: beyond the main story arc, players were fed a steady diet of 2-5 hooks tailored to draw them into my vision of the campaign world and/or based on he stories they themselves told me. I never had to prepare more that a little bit each arc until they really set themselves on a path.

I often think sandbox style is an art. For instance, the several times I ran a successful sandbox I created a bunch of villians up front and used them logically. Sure they often ended up being tied to one mastermind's schemes, but initially they were just placeholder villians tied to certain criminal motivations who waited to be used in an adventure as dictated by the player.


One villian always did crimes that involved X.
Another always did crimes involving Y.
A third was a random thug who I gave a name.

Yet they all worked for the big bad since that's what the players believe.

 

[Piratecat]

Even the first 3 seasons of Buffy: The Vampire Slayer have this feel, with nested BBEGs, some having long-term plots. But story & plot would be dynamically generated in play rather than pre-written.

Sure, but (as I understand it) that's not a sandbox. A sandbox is if Buffy explored every mausoleum in the graveyard and discovered next season's villain laying his plans in advance. She always finds the intended villain at the intended time. That's what I personally want my superhero games to feel like, too.

 

[S'mon]

Sure, but (as I understand it) that's not a sandbox. A sandbox is if Buffy explored every mausoleum in the graveyard and discovered next season's villain laying his plans in advance.

Uhm, there is a "hexcrawl" type of sandbox which may look a bit like that, but I've never run a sandbox campaign which looked anything like that.

Edit: A sandbox may, for instance, include a dynamic NPC relationship web; PCs may explore relations as well as geography. And events may occur even if the PCs stay put in one place. PCs are often reactive. It's still a sandbox. As I have repeatedly said, superhero-sandbox typically more resembles the "dominion rulership" phase of a sandbox campaign than the "wilderness exploration" phase.