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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Nytmare" data-source="post: 8082249" data-attributes="member: 55178">Think of a game set up more like a Plinko board instead of a sliding board.Yes, in retrospect, you can say easily point out what the string of events were and see what steps logically lead from one to the other.  But looking at it from the other end when you're starting out, especially when so many of those possible plot points are variable, or haven't even been written yet, all you're looking at is a sea potential outcomes.As an example, the sandbox I'm running right now is driven by exploration and rolling on charts.  I did some prep work:  the mountains are here, the deserts are over there, difficulty ramps up roughly like so.  I threw in some stand alone dungeons and populated some random encounter tables to describe how the map will be further populated, but any story that unfolds in the game happens as the players make decisions as to what goals their characters are setting for themselves.The group bounced hard off an intro "save a kid from an evil crypt" and party wiped.  Instead of picking up and continuing along that same thread, they decided to see where their new characters' starting rumors lead them.  Starting rumors are a direction, a distance, a random pick off the "36 Dramatic Situations" list, and three tarot cards.  The rumor they decided to follow was built off of:  South - 1 hex - sacrifice of loved ones - health problems in the past - has caused theft right now - which might lead to rebirth.  I decide that story hook will be that there's a cult paying people for corpses for some ritual to turn their dying cult leader into a vampire.  The character noticed that rumors of grave robbing and suspicious disappearances increased right about when they started hearing stories about a robed figure in a skiff who would pay you a bag of silver coins for a corpse.I have no end point for that story.  The players can play with it and do whatever they want to it.  The "B" plot point gets decided on after the fact, and in response to what the characters decide to do.  Do they rush off to stop it?  Do they become grave robbers?  Do they decide to roll the mysterious figure and rob them?Yes.  When it's all said and done, the story line will be linear, but the experience is just one path on an ever expanding tree of possible story lines.Even that intro adventure wasn't linear till the players decided on their goals.  The players assumed that the kid was dead.  Two of them were going in to recover the body.  One was just in it to loot the crypt.  One of them was trying to keep everyone else safe.  And the last one was trying to glean some kind of information off of the writings on the crypt walls which would have, had they deciphered the script, lead to a roll on a chart to see what other world-building information it gave them about the vast unknown wilderness.</blockquote>

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