How "alive" should the world be - outside the scope of the PCs?

[Flexor the Mighty!]

If the PC's are not interested in your plot hook I'd just drop it. I'm not going to end a campaign over the players not following a potential hook. If its that big a deal you need to ram them in the face with it, and make sure they are interested in playing that kind of campaign.

Saying "well you ignored my Lord of the Rings hook because you really wanted to be Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser and adventure for riches and glory..so boom game over suckers! You should have been the type of PC I wanted in my story." No thanks.

If you are dropping hooks and letting them sandbox it why put in hooks that if they ignore will screw up the game? Otherwise just base the entire campaign around it and make sure they have to follow it. The game world really is there for a fun environment for the characters to explore and murderhobo in, and taking the living world too far will mess things up.

 

[neobolts]

I like to have events that happen outside of the PCs influence, but that could affect the PCs over time. The events aren't direct plothooks, but do give the world a sense of fluidity. These events can matter to the story if the PCs make choices that steer towards the events.

Some examples:
-A nearby kingdom is annexed by another nation, dramatically shifting the balance of power in the area.
-While away on a quest, the elderly king passes away and his inexperienced daughter inherits the throne.
-A well known merchant house abandons a less profitable trade route, leaving the locals struggling for supplies.

In all of these examples, it's important that the characters already have a connection to the people and places involved. They'd need to have some organic knowledge from earlier in the campaign to appreciate the changes, i.e. knowing the nations, knowing the departed king, knowing the merchant house, etc.

 

[Tony Vargas]

One common piece of advise to DMs - make sure the PCs experience the world as a living world.

This generally means make sure the PCs see that the world exists outside of them - things happen and progress whether the PCs are involved or not.

The question then, is how far should this be taken?

Thoughts?

IMHO, it's the appearance/impression of the living world and the pressures it puts on the PCs that's more important than the 'reality' of it in all it's impractical-for-the-DM-to-implement detail.

 

[Sunseeker]

IMHO, it's the appearance/impression of the living world and the pressures it puts on the PCs that's more important than the 'reality' of it in all it's impractical-for-the-DM-to-implement detail.

Very much THIS. Players only need to feel like the world is alive, the world doesn't actually need to be living.

 

[The Crimson Binome]

Say the PCs, early in their adventuring career learn of a hermit outside the city building a strange machine. They have other things going on, however, and don't bother with this hook. The DMs gives the PCs updates on the hermit's progress through other NPCs, snippets heard, etc - as they go up in level.

As the PCs get high level, the hermit is completing his machine, which the PCs have learned is a doomsday device. The PCs decide they have better things to do (let the king, rival adventurers etc. handle the hermit) and pursue something else. How justified is the DM in blowing up the world, right with the PCs on it?

It's probably a bad idea to design a world that is likely to blow up unless one particular group of people is in exactly the right place at the right time to stop it, unless it's a unique event that's the focus of the entire campaign. If any random hermit could potentially destroy the world, then it would have happened by now.

As for the topic of living worlds, I prefer to take a cue from Star Wars. Things should constantly be going on in the background of which the players are only tangentially aware, hinted at in conversation but mostly ignored as irrelevant. Going back to your example, maybe the hermit is building a golem, and failure of the party to intervene may result in the deaths of several innocent people; or maybe some other heroes will arrive in time to save the day. There should be enough going on in the world that the PCs can't handle everything by themselves, but nothing should be so dramatic that their failure to do so causes the entire campaign to end prematurely.

 

[Imaculata]

The world in my campaign is always moving. If the players fail/ignore a plot point, they will encounter the consequences at some point. Case in point, the players were in a harbor city, when they noticed one of their npc allies meeting with some sinister looking women.

-They spied on the suspicious characters, and noticed them receiving a mysterious box from the npc. They were unable to stop the villains from getting away with the box. The box contained the skeletal remains of a notorious pirate captain. The villains were able to find them due to the players removing the bones from an unscryable location, and giving them a proper burial, at the request of the pirate captain's daughter.

Result: Many days pass. Meanwhile, a powerful necromancer acquires the skeletal remains from her minions, and reanimates the pirate captain. They now have an undead pirate captain to deal with.

 

[Shasarak]

You shouldn’t blow up the world on an ignored plot hook if the players haven’t been given full warning that that is the consequence of inaction.

I must admit that would be a weird ass situation, half way through the game session just stop everything and tell the Players that their characters have just died.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

“While just moments before you had been standing before a door in a dungeon, you suddenly find yourselves in a sunny meadow surrounded by impossibly tall pines. All of the colors seem...impossibly, supernaturally vivid...”

 

[Shasarak]

Knowing my character that is not exactly what I would expect to be seeing if he died.

 

[Sunseeker]

I must admit that would be a weird ass situation, half way through the game session just stop everything and tell the Players that their characters have just died.

Not that death is by any means the end of a campaign. Oh sure you may no longer be on an adventure to rescue the Princess...but now you're on an adventure in the afterlife to uncover what happened and travel back in time and undo the future that is Aku.