Gaming in an open enviroment

[LostSoul]

Here's how I think you can do it:

You get the players to come up with characters who have a reason to adventure. (Maybe not adventure, but they have some kind of hook that needs to be addressed right away. That's where the game begins.)

The DM comes up with a bunch of NPCs that are related to the PCs and to each other. These relations should be rife with tension.

Play begins when the PCs interact with the NPCs. The DM has no plot in mind; he sits back and plays his NPCs to the hilt with the intention of drawing out the PCs into interesting situations. With well-made NPCs this should be easy to do.

 

[barsoomcore]

You get the players to come up with characters who have a reason to adventure.

It is impossible to overstate the importance of this. Trying to DM a character whose primary motivation is to be safe is a lesson in frustration and pain. It is incumbent upon all players to develop characters who have reasons to go adventuring. This is why so many PCs are orphans, or outcasts, or whatever. Well, it's one reason.

PCs without reasons make open campaigns impossible.

Example: my buddy is running a Grim Tales game set in 1807 Italy. So my PC is a Kazak warrior who ended up in Napoleon's Mamelukes, fought in a half-dozen battles and blah blah blah. But long ago he lost his lady love in a fight in Alexandria, and has searched for her ever since. The only token of hers he has left is a brooch she once gave him.

The campaign starts with him discovering the brooch has been stolen -- tracking the thieves has drawn him into an international conspiracy.

The DM didn't have to do anything else -- because I'd given him this great big hook, it was simple for him to set something up he knew I'd go after. And if this adventure resolves and he has nothing else prepared, you can bet that I've got things I want to do -- I have to find my girlfriend. So this will never be a campaign where we're struggling with what to do.

Players and DMs have to support the game. You get more out of it if you put more into it.

 

[Crothian]

It is a fun way but it does rely a little bit more on the players. Just becasue you are playing in an open enviroment like this does not mean you don't have to put in plot hooks. I tell my players that the plot hooks they are given are not the only ones there and their characters are free to do as they choose. But sometimes the players like the wease of the plot hooks, can't think of something better themselves, or really like the ideas I come up with. By allowing the players these options it gives them the best of both campaign types.

 

[Justin Bacon]

If you want to have an "open ended" game, you MUST not have a plot line.

Well, not any well-developed plot lines. But it can be very beneficial to have several metaplots mapped out for the setting.

For example, when I run my Freeport campaign I've got four metaplots going on: The demonic rites of the original Freeport trilogy of modules; an opium war (adapted from the CITY OF LIES boxed set for L5R); a massive slaver operation; and (later) the power struggle resulting from Milton Drac's death.

I didn't have any of these plotted out in any particular detail (with the exception of the first; and that only by virtue that somebody else wrote the modules). But I had some rough notions about the direction they'd take IF THE PCs DIDN"T INTERFERE.

For example, I didn't want the world destroyed if the PCs decided not to bite on the plot hooks for the original Freeport trilogy, so I know that there'll be a different set of heroes who take it upon themselves to stop the world from being destroyed... but they wouldn't do a very good job of it and there'd be an Abyssal rift left open in the wak of the lighthouse disaster. So if the PCs don't do anything with that plot, I know that they'll hear about these young heroes who are distinguishing themselves; hear about their disgrace (say, maybe they could help try to catch them?); and then learn that they saved the city... well, kind of. Now there are devils all over the place.

Of course, in reality, the PCs tend to start getting involved in things. And as the campaign progresses, more things get layered in. Lift a little bit of material from the Focus on Freeport web features; hook it up to a heavily-modified PIT OF LOCH-DURNAN... What happens if they don't take that bait? Well, the demon power grows and eventually decides to spread its operation to the main land... Et cetera.

Which isn't to say that you can't run a campaign completely off-the-cuff. I've done that, too. But there can be a happy medium between "don't prepare anything" and "trying to prepare everything".

You MUST let the player do what they want to do and fill in from there. Impossible to pull off in a "canon" setting IMO, unless ALL the players are VERY well versed in the setting already.

Or none of them are. Or only the DM is.

If the DM wants absolutly to write HIS story with the players improvising the "lines" it must be accepted up front by all the players in which case the more or less are consiously "railroaded". If you want them to all total freedom, writting a "story" up front is a sure way to meltdown and frustrations.

Again, I think you're ignoring the happy medium ground.

Another campaign I ran had a simple hook into it: The PCs screw up badly and unleash a horrible evil. A powerful mage moves in to contain the evil, but he can't actually stop it without three magical seals. He's going to be busy, but the PCs are low-profile, handy, and thoroughly tied up in the business already. There are those aware of the evil who think the PCs deliberately unleashed it, but this wizard thinks otherwise: But if they can't or won't help him out, he won't do anything to help them, either.

Right there you've got a bifurcation point: The PCs are quite free to decide NOT to help. In which case they become hunted fugitives from the secret coven of arcanists who think they're to blame... and also from the demonic forces they unleashed, because (having started things) they're essential for finishing them.

But, more likely, the PCs take the obvious plot hook and accept the campaign premise: The Quest for the Seals has begun.

But even here the PCs have a lot of latitude: They know where the seals are. How do they get there? What do they do once they get to where the seals are? Et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

Again, there's a huge middle-ground between "having the players do nothing but speak lines of dialogue" and "have nothing resembling a plot in mind when you create the campaign".

On the open ended format, the NPC "becomes" a doppleganger (to the DM only, to the PC he would've been a doppleganger all along!!!) and then the DM pulls out a pre-generated doppleganger and the story ends.

That's actually not the same thing at all. It can be a useful tool to pick up on the theories the players are spinning and using them to fill in the blanks (or even replacing your own plans if their theories are cooler), but there's no reason why a dominated wizard should suddenly become a doppleganger simply because the PCs decide it must be true.

Justin Alexander Bacon
http://www.thealexandrian.net

 

[LostSoul]

Right there you've got a bifurcation point: The PCs are quite free to decide NOT to help. In which case they become hunted fugitives from the secret coven of arcanists who think they're to blame... and also from the demonic forces they unleashed, because (having started things) they're essential for finishing them.

But, more likely, the PCs take the obvious plot hook and accept the campaign premise: The Quest for the Seals has begun.

What if the players don't have any interest whatsoever in your story? They could care less about the demonic forces that they unleashed. What they really want to do is deal with the dwarf PC's long-lost clanhome, return the elves to their ancestral forest, and restore the human PC to the throne.

If you start throwing things that are not related to this at all, and penalize them if they ignore it, you're saying: "Sure, play the game you want. But if you don't play my game I will hurt your PCs, and through the hurting we'll still be playing my story."

So if they don't accept the plot hook (and it has to be a valid choice, not "Say no and the world will end" but something like "Say no and you can do what you really want to") you have to be willing to totally scrap your plot hook and the storyline that went along with it.

Which isn't the same thing as saying before the game begins, "This will be about the Quest of the Seals, which means X, Y, and Z. Who's in?" Then the players have grabbed the plot hook before the "real game" even started.

 

[BrotherDog]

Odd. I've DM'd for about 20 years off and on, and I wouldn't even know how run a campaign that wasn't "Open". How would one even run one that wasn't?

I do not mean to belittle those who do. I'm just truly curious about this.

By the way, not meaning to get off subject. Is there thread for finding fellow gamers in my area? I'm looking for players in the Cheyenne, WY area.

 

[Bastoche]

A lot of things was written since my post and I read most of them until I fell on an issue I think most people don't understand the way I see it.

First I want to make it very clear to everyone that I have been actually playing such a campaign for 2 years. Second I want to make it very clear that it plain just does not work. And for many reasons. Third I want to make it very clear that we are all very experienced players.

The game is either open-ended or it's not. Providing numerous plot hooks to the players for them to "choose" is NOT an open-ended game. At some point, the players realize it's just a serie of plot hooks and the fake "open-ended" feel disappear. If the players agrees before hand that the game will feature a "choice" of plot hooks rather than an open-ended feel, there's no problems. It's a healty (and fun) way to play. However, if the players pretend that it's an open-ended game, it will end up in frustration. And the very reason is that the DM won't agree with the players as to which decisions the PCs makes which are actually important. For example, suppose the PCs in one given playing session makes 12 decisions (turning down or picking up hooks and or making "other" (improvised by the players) decisions). The DM will take for granted that the picked up plot hooks are important. The players may feel that one of the "improvised" decision was really important. Then the next session or a few session afterwards, these "decisions" are never adressed again. Very frustrating.

So if you want an open-ended game, it's either open-ended or it's not. That is, the DM provides a situation and using non verbal cues and even out-game conversation figure out what the players liked or disliked about the situation and builds up a story from those cues.

I don't ask anyone to believe or agree with. All what I'm saying is that I actually experience this and it has taken us about 6 months (of playing once a week) to figure out what was the problem and we still haven't adressed it (should be done next session).

We all agreed that the campaign was nice. We all like our characters. But each session is like torture. The DM is frustrated because we don't progress as quickly as we would like. We are frustrated because we meet many dead ends and we have the feeling that the challenges provided are all too difficult. We are looking for cues that aren't there and we are going nowhere fast. I strongly believe after playing this and reading a lot of things on another forum that it is impossible to have a DM right a story with "free" characters. The only way to have a DM story is through (mild to severe) railroading (voluntarily or not). Railroading is NOT a bad thing if the players expects it and have no problem with it. However if a DM wants to have "free" players, he cannot have "his" story. He must make the story "the PC's".

I'll try to give an example from our campaign. It was agreed before hand that each of our character would acquire a certain prestige class depending on our backgrounds. Basically, we are to inflitrate a city while joining a secret underground organization. Once I was introduced to this organisation, I went on doing "stuff" to help that organisation. For example, I went on trying to establish a false identity etc. I did some of it during the play session and some of "via email" during "down time". Nothing of these suggestions were ever taken seriously because it wasnt on "the mighty list of plot hooks". It was considered unimportant by the DM since the "road" to these goals had been predetermined.

I though we were going to have freedom in that game but no. We are to be actors in the DM's story but with a (limited) choice of lines to pick. It's either "scriptless" and open-ended or "multiscripted" and not open-ended. YMMV

Baldur's Gate 2 is a multi plot hook game (with one unavoidable mege plot though). Does it feel open ended?

Lost soul got it 100%.

Barroomscore: You are basically saying that players who don't create PCs that would be built such as they would follow plot hooks (provided via background by the players to the DM so the DM can build "a" story around this). It's NOT open ended. It a close ended game where players who writes "adventurous" background admits they are willing as players to follow plot hooks willingly.

Justin suggest something even more perverse IMO. I would hate to play one of your games unless you would say what lostsoul says "I'm going to send you on a quest for seals, who's in?" Your "happy medium" is exactly what I'm playing right now. And if I had agreed before hand that this was what I was to play in, I would be fine. But the DM wants to "pull us in his story" while giving us 100% latitude. It doesn't work. For it to work he either has to remove latitude by providing clear plot hooks (that's not open ended anymore) or by forgetting his story and letting us do whatever we want.

 

[Bastoche]

posts regrouped

 

[Bastoche]

posts regrouped

 

[Jupp]

Baldur's Gate 2 is a multi plot hook game (with one unavoidable mege plot though). Does it feel open ended?

I do not think that BG2 is a good example, like about every CRPG is not a good example for the term "open-ended". Perhaps Daggerfall is, but thats some years ago and pretty unique.

BG2 is not open-ended at all, its not even open-play anywhere, also mainly because of that small thing you called "plot merge". The end of the game is either you die or you win the main plot. That's it. I also do not think that BG2 can be compared to something like barsoomcore or others are doing with their campaigns.

My definition of open-ended is that the players choose what they want to do in the world. Instead of guiding the players through a series of events without letting them off the hook the DM creates places, events and people that the players can interact with -->if they choose to do so <--- They can follow a plot they have found, they can abandon it, or just let it rest for a while and come back later and take it back off (while dealing with the consequences of having it dropped back then). The world moves while the players are doing things. That is not the case in a game like Baldurs Gate. If you dont move there, the game just stops and waits for the next mouse click.