Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="LostSoul" data-source="post: 6382565" data-attributes="member: 386">Yeah.  I think random encounters have a place in your typical sandbox, but I don't think they're a good stand-in for a lack of content.When I play I make a wandering monster check every four hours in the wilderness (1 in 6 chance).  The PC in the game set up a camp in a forest hex.  She used the camp to spy on two nearby towns that had been taken over by two different (but allied) duergar lairs (using binoculars that she found on her rocket ship).  She directed her followers to attack one town while she and some other followers took the other.  In town she directed the villagers to head back to their camp on their own by following their footsteps (it was December in the north and the random weather rolls determined that it hadn't snowed for a while).Anyway, she takes care of the duergar in town and heads back to the camp.  She spends the night there but I roll a wandering monster - wolves.  She wakes in the night hearing screams as the wolves have killed two adults and dragged off their children.  She finds the wolves and kills the alpha and drives off the rest (failed morale check).  Then she performs funeral rites on the dead to make sure they don't come back as undead.Here we have a wandering monster but it interacts with the system in various ways (the town system, the monster lair system, the weather system, the morale system).  I think these factors really help avoiding the fact that wandering monsters on their own are generally boring.I like sandboxes these days because most of the D&D I've played hasn't been in a sandbox.  It's been fun.  I can see how that enthusiasm could look like elitism (or is elitism - people being people, that sort of thing happens).  It took a long time to figure out how to play, run, and design a sandbox system and the threads and blog posts extolling the virtues of sandbox play really helped out.  I think the elitism - this is how you do it, this is why it's better than this other way - is helpful for people who are/were in my situation.1. "Railroad" means different things to different people; it's a confusing term.  For me, it means that the players can't make meaningful choices.  Using my definition, that means railroad = bad.  However, I don't describe linear games or even heavily DM-plot led games as necessarily being railroads.  I was playing in a d20 Modern game where the DM was leading us around pretty heavily; in that game, I knew the choices I made were about characterization, not about plot or goals or tactics & strategy, and that was okay.  As long as there is a space in the game to make meaningful decisions, and the game doesn't try to trick or deceive you about what those decisions are, you can avoid a railroad.2. That you get the impression that sandbox DMs are lazy surprises me.  There's a lot of work that goes into preparing a sandbox for play; it just generally happens before play begins.  Between sessions or during play most of the work is determining how the setting has changed in response to the player's actions, and that's generally pretty easy.3. The thing about sandbox play that interests me is that the players get to determine what they want to do.  If they want to engage in pointless dialogue, then they can.  The last session I played revolved around two reasonably pointless events: the PC meeting and talking to a randomly-generated "rootless wanderer" (someone who is designed to become a henchman, if the player wants) and reuniting with an NPC she hadn't seen for a long time, making dinner for her, and having a feast.  These were both reasonably pointless, though the system I use limits that somewhat (the PC gained a henchman and gained XP for that, and she increased her "reaction" in town - which is important because it determines how NPCs react to you, since I use random reaction rolls - and got more XP).One of the procedures I use for sandbox play is to drop a lot of "rumours" on the PCs - I tell them what's of interest nearby (that is, the hexes I've prepped) and, since the level of those hexes is based on terrain, they can get a pretty good idea of the level of risk & reward.  I tie this to the reward system: players choose a Quest based on those rumours and a Goal for their PCs, which nets them about 90% of the XP they are going to get.  Quests are limited to certain broad categories, like "explore a hex feature" and "defeat a specific named NPC".   (The others are "increase reaction or influence in a settlement", "discover a new power or ritual", and "harass a monster lair".  Dungeons have a whole bunch of specific Quests based on the dungeon, like "Reach level 2" or "Kill the gibbering mouther" or "Find the bio-lab" or "Take the treasure from the vault".)  Goals are longer-term, like "Build a keep".  Quests are what you are doing today, Goals are what you eventually want to accomplish.Without procedures like those, I can see how it would be difficult to know what to do.  The Quests give the players something to do right away and since they're tied to the reward system, completing them gives them more power and more ability to explore and change the setting in accordance with their Goal.  It's usually pretty easy: "So here are the rumours; which one sounds interesting?"  "The standing stone where it's always winter seems pretty cool."  "Okay, make it your Quest to check it out.  So what are you doing now?"  "Well if it's winter there we'll need cold-weather gear, so we buy that, and then head out."  "Okay."And since the hex generation system ties each hex to at least one other, whatever they do there will have an impact somewhere else.  As DM I make a note of the player's actions and how it will affect other hexes, and the system promotes a lot of downtime (getting HP and powers back), so there's time for that change to make its way through the setting.I personally wouldn't classify that as a "railroad".  I don't know what I'd call it, since you're building your adventures based on what the players want to see and incorporating the player's choices into future adventures.  It actually seems close to the "indie" style, though on a larger scale (where "indie" seems to imply that the next scene will be built from the player's choices in the previous scene, you're building the next adventure from the player's choices in the previous one).  Which just goes to show you that different people (well, me, at least) have different understandings of the term "railroad".Is that a fair assessment?How do you use published adventures in this way?  Is it something like, "Oh, this adventure would be a perfect follow-up for what has just happened?" Or in some other way?</blockquote>

Verification