Building Wide Open adventure settings?

[moticon]

I'm curious how other DM's build their adventure settings as it regards the flexibility of the PC's to choose their own path. No one likes to be led by the nose, but if you've spent lots of time designing an adventure and it's really the only thing you've got prepared for them, how do you design it and play it so the PC's aren't led by the nose, yet still play the adventure you have spent time writing?

Do you have several threads they can chase that relate to the same challenge?

Do you let them chase wild geese and just make stuff up on the fly if they do?

I've got my ideas on how to do this, but I'm betting others have some better ones. How do you enable the PC's to make their own decisions and still have them play in a well prepared adventure?

Moticon

 

[JDJarvis]

If the adventure is setting based i detail the setting and don't worry about where or when the PCs get to certain points.

If the adventure is more "plot driven" I make sure it is driven by the NPCs and the goals of the NPCs , it is up to the players to discover and interact with the npcs not for me to lead them by the nose from one unraveling of the plot to another.

 

[kigmatzomat]

if you've spent lots of time designing an adventure and it's really the only thing you've got prepared for them, how do you design it and play it so the PC's aren't led by the nose, yet still play the adventure you have spent time writing?

Oooh, hard question, but relevant to my last session. I'll get back to it.

Do you have several threads they can chase that relate to the same challenge?
Do you let them chase wild geese and just make stuff up on the fly if they do?

Yes and yes.

I generally try to have several antagonists in mind. I generate a plot and a timeline for each of them. Some events are triggered (e.g. whenever Baron Rothschilde appoints a successor) and others are timed (e.g. the fall fair).

I then don't worry so much about what the players do. They can choose to ignore them, but their plots advance until they result in something the PCs can't ignore. But it does sometimes end up with "dead" time where all the antagonists' plots are simmering and no one is currently out for blood or screaming for help.

On saturday with one exception, my players avoided the nice, juicy hook I had set up. The rest of the group decided to take winter off and commission magic items. This required reworking the hook for a 20-minute solo-session while the rest did bookkeeping. Afterwards I flat out told them they'd dodged my plans for the session and that the game might slow down a bit if they did something that required any planning on my part. (I.e. "storming the castle.")

The rest of the 4-hour session consisted of them arguing about what to do next. The players know if they say "we sit about for six months" I'll eventually interrupt their characters lives with something. But their characters aren't like that, so a few months of down time and the adrenalin starvation sets in.

They've come up with the roughest idea of what they want to do and it's given me plenty of material for the next 4-8 game sessions, stuff I hadn't really expected them to be involved with. The best part is they know they're in charge of their character's lives and this session was full of them RPing with little to no interaction with NPCs.

 

[Brandigan]

I try to make it seem the hook is totally random. I also had an idea to have three adventures prepared at the same time and determine which one would best fit their direction at the time. But I didn't have the time to pull that off, so I disguised the adventure hook as a random encounter and I think it worked out pretty good.

 

[Henry]

I build three or four rough plot sketches, and let them choose. As they go, I ad lib material based on the loose notes, and write down any details which may come back later to haunt me.

 

[Derulbaskul]

I typically design adventures with the following as fixed:

- NPCs
- maps
- important encounter areas
- important treasures

and make up everything else in response to how the party reacts to pieces of the plots (plural) that they uncover. This allows both a lot of flexibility but also an underlying structure for every to hang off (and also a sense of direction for when just wandering around becomes a little pointless).

 

[Shallown]

Double post with the second one spell checked at least

 

[Shallown]

I usually do a lot on the fly. This is where knowing the system extremely well is useful. Knowing how many feats and hit points and equipment a 10th fighter needs at a moments notice is a required skill in my mind. Now defining those things is not needed until, basically, they are needed. If I describe him as having a long sword and shield what pluses if any t hey are is not relevant until it comes to a fight. Which may not be my intention but is the players. You just never know.

I also use the Caltrop method of plot engagement. If the players suddenly head off in X direction and I don't have something pre-planned (which means I have at least thought of it as a possibility) I throw some Plot caltrops down to slow them down while I think ahead of them. Plot caltrops are harmless if you slow down and clear them up, mainly an annoyance but enough to give me thinking room.

Example
Such as the character's suddenly decide to hunt down the thieves guild. Now I usually can answer at a moment's notice in anyplace and time if there indeed is a guild but not always have I planned out who and what and how they operate. So I will throw out a plot caltrop, someone in need of aid (bartender needs help with a beer barrel etc..not a rescue type aiding which is a whole new plot thread.) , a family or friend comes to visit. Something that slows them down while I fill in the holes. Usually this takes only a few minutes since I have run like 4 times longer than most my players so I can always draw off some previous Guild and fit t into the campaign. So Plot caltrops usually aren't even thought of as a hindrance by the players just something happening in everyday life. A) it slows them down so I can think, B it aids a sense of reality to the game since life does go on around the players and not everything that happens to them is a crisis.

I think running this way ,for me at least, is a matter of confidence. I know I can run the game and I know the world. I'll do things, thinking at the moment I am backing myself in the corner, but I know somehow after the session is done I can figure a way out of that corner or at least make it an interesting mystery of why I went into the corner. I also know that I spend all week thinking about what if's. So in most cases the players surprising me is picking one of the paths I didn't expect them to more than picking a path I didn't think of at all. I run my best games on the fly. Whatever Idea I have in the middle of the session is gonna beat out every idea I had that week before when I was thinking of What If's. Maybe its the adrenalin clearing my mind. Who knows.

Also this is why I don't run anything but homebrew worlds. I need that freedom of not having contradictions with written material. I know I can change whatever I want when using a purchased world but then I gotta remember I changed it and all that. I do buy settings but mainly to steal ideas and absorb useful. new thoughts. As I said in the above example I can as easily steal a Thieves guild from Forgotten realms as use one I have used before. Pre-fab settings are useful for a lot of things besides actually running in them.

later

 

[Derulbaskul]

I use "plot caltrops", too, and I also use the "all roads lead to Rome"/Henry Ford approach: you can choose any direction you like 'coz they end up in the same place.

Of course, I'm careful enough that when I do this I also have a back-up plan if they then go back to a previous hook.

Echoing one of Shallown's comments, one of the great joys of using a campaign setting that you know well is that you can much more easily "wing it" in a manner consistent with the world and your plot than if you're also having to invent macro details as you go.

 

[RFisher]

Multi-prong attack:

Make stuff up on the fly.

Try to prepare for the next session based on what they were planning to do at the end of the last session. (Although it seems like they always manage to change their minds at the beginning of the next session.)

Prepare multiple adventures & let those the PCs don't choose just stay there until someone finally tries them. Supplement this with published modules.

One way to create a campaign world is to get a bunch of the classic modules. Choose a keep/village/town/city from one of them to be the home base. Place the dungeon/adventure opportunity area from each module on a map around the home base. Put together a unified list of rumors about the various adventure opportunities (along with some red herrings) for PCs to uncover. Still, be prepared to wing it.