A living world is one where actions have consequences and ignoring a threat is an action. Where threats persist even if the PCs don't get involved. I am advised this is a key component in a sandbox.
yes and no.... there should always be change I would say but not all change is a bad consequence... the necromancer killing and animating the orcs DID escalate the threat (so my level 4 adventure you ignore is now a level 7 adventure you may or may not take) but no I am not going to kill the PC members family cause they ignored orcs... I spent YEARS convincing players that it is okay to have friends and family and things you care about and I wont just take them away. Last thing I want is "ooppes you picked the wrong threat so uncle Jessy is dead" unless I very well forecast teh danger uncle Jessy is in (take that as dukes of hazard or full house...either way)
So hypothetically, if I'm a player and these three plot hooks are dangled, I can safely ignore the ones that I don't like/aren't interested in with the knowledge some other force is going to handle them?
to a point yes... my living worlds will of course SOMETIMES have something really bad happen but in general like I said I read the room. IF you reserched the cult and put effort in but went after the orcs first, I would escalate the cult so when you got back things got worse... but in general if you just ignore it I will spend LESS time on thhat plot.;
That's mighty convenient! That might even answer the "where's Eliminster during all of this?" Question: he's handling the plot hooks we chose to ignore!
oh gosd this is why I hate running superhero games in the comic worlds, and I hate the FR more... 'let the justice league midnight handle it' is my go to phrase for why the realms is not my idea of a well thought out world. (I am a FR hater fyi)
but also yes... sometimes a bigger fish (good or bad) may handle something... now that bigger fish is in play do you make friends or enemies or do you ignore them too?
Again, that sounds pretty good.
thank you it is an evolving concept of how I run and has been for 15ish years
If I don't want to fight demons or dragons, I can just focus on fighting the orc hordes and nothing bad will happen to my home or family.
with the caveat that things will evolve around that choice... but yeah I will spell out "Mama is in danger if something isn't done" but moveing moma to three towns over is as good as stopping the dragon from destroying were she lives... (I mean not really that is super evil but hey you saved your famility right?)
I will continue to perdue only the hooks I believe I am able to triumph over and ignore the ones I think will be deadly. All GP spends the same, whether it comes from an orc's hand or a dragon's hoard.
yeah, I have had players take the water route 'path of least resistance' However the orcs might have hundreds of gold and 1 or 2 minor items... the dragon and the drow working with her may have thousands of gold and 4-5 magic items 1 that is rare and powerful...
but if treasure is your goal D*D makes that easy anyway.
also xp (not to put too much a game spin on it) but hunting orcs is only xp worthy for so long as you level you are going to want bigger xp pay out to level quicker too.
Oh, I didn't EVEN get into high level, world shaking events.
by world I meant YOU the PCs world not the planet sorry... killing your family and burning the home you grew up in is pretty world shakiing to that person.
This isn't even the "save the world" stuff.
if the worlds in danger of really being destroyed there isn;'t much I can do to pull that punch, and I don't often have super high level NPC allies... but yeah, El-muchkin might just save toril.
I just wonder what happens when they don't bother to stop the evil plots of various monsters and groups. Sounds like things are pretty much under control though, so no big deal...
again it depends. diffrent situations are diffrent... in above examples I have towns loseing 90% of there guard/reserves... so now theives run amock there, or the next threat is worse cause no one can fight it, or the PCs take up being a protection wracket... or (and this one is a real example) the PCs take all teh items they can't use, find people train them to use them then send another group out to handle things...