non-linear, non-site-based adventures - your thought process?

[MetalBard]

Free will is not so important as the illusion of free will...

That's my take on it, as well!

 

[Rystil Arden]

You can absolutely have too much going on. It's not hard to get there.

Occasionally, it behooves the DM to introspect a little and ask "does this element go too deep". If something doesn't fit well or is too hard to work in, and makes it way too complicated to work in, it might be worth considering taking it out.

Of course this varies according to your group. Players who are thinkers/problem solvers relish in deep mysteries more than players that likes to sit down with some cheetos and kill monsters.

I used to keep a card file program (CorelCentral, if anyone cares) that could hyperlink secrets, and let me map them to NPCs and campaign sessions. Before the campaign session, I would pick out four events/elements/secrets that I wanted to highlight. It was pretty effective; I might consider doing that again. (The program was just buggy and didn't like to shut down correctly. )

You can use real, physical index cards. Ray Winniger recommended something to that effect in his excellent Dungeoncraft series in the pre-3e Dragon. What he recommended is that whenever you make an element to your campaign, make up a secret associated with that element. Then, at the beginning of your planning for every session, pull out one of your secret cards and highlight it. (This is what, in fact, inspired the above computer card file system I was using.)

I'm going to second the recommendation of Winniger's old Dungeoncrafts. As a fledgling DM, those and the tips on "power matrix campaigns" in the 2E Complete Villain's Handbook were the main sources that helped me progress to the highly nonlinear style that I use today

 

[devilish]

And that breaks one of the DungeonCraft adages, "don't create more than you need"

An exception to this rule is "unless you can get a computer to do it." I have a nosy
bunch of players that love to investigate a town, so I took Jamis Buck's NPC generator,
generated 1000 NPCs, printed them in 8pt font and have them as town reference.
Yes, more NPCs than I will ever possibly need and more for wagging at the players
and saying "Go ahead....introduce yourself to *everyone* in town." It's handy
because it gives the illusion of free will: PCs walk into a bar and there
are 8 people there for dinner; thief wants to go to the table of 5 and chat them up...
instead of my poor improv "Uh...well, you meet ... Bill, Joe, Steve..." ... I have them
all statted out (and can easily write on the page any important notes that occur
in the encounter).
{Same speech applies to town generators, magic item generators, etc.}

 

[Psion]

An exception to this rule is "unless you can get a computer to do it." I have a nosy
bunch of players that love to investigate a town, so I took Jamis Buck's NPC generator,
generated 1000 NPCs, printed them in 8pt font and have them as town reference.
Yes, more NPCs than I will ever possibly need and more for wagging at the players
and saying "Go ahead....introduce yourself to *everyone* in town." It's handy
because it gives the illusion of free will: PCs walk into a bar and there
are 8 people there for dinner; thief wants to go to the table of 5 and chat them up...
instead of my poor improv "Uh...well, you meet ... Bill, Joe, Steve..." ... I have them
all statted out (and can easily write on the page any important notes that occur
in the encounter).
{Same speech applies to town generators, magic item generators, etc.}

Absolutely. Though I would note that if you run with a laptop (not a luxury everyone can afford), you don't have to do anything ahead of time. I have a copy of NPCGen and some cusotmized tables on JHNameGen Gold, and I keep them in a gaming folder on my desktop. If I need to insert a random element, I generate it on the spot, copy and paste it into a word processor, and add notes.

I do, however, keep a few pre-generated files on hand to this effect, including some pre-generated names (when I use a name, I edit in how I used it, so my name file becomes a running NPC record) and pre-generated planar NPC concepts for my planar game.

 

[Rodrigo Istalindir]

I tend to think running an RPG is like making a movie. Lots of sets, not a lot of depth except where I need it. Improvise on the spot if you need to, and trust the players to understand that you can't possibly have everything mapped out in advance.

You need a kind of gentleman's agreement with the players that you'll provide a playground where they can go where they will to some extent, but they have an obligation to go with the flow a little and not wander outside the fence.

I'm generally more worried about inadvertant red herrings than I am about the party wanting to talk to everyone in the bar.

 

[Hand of Evil]

Things to remember:
...Timeline
...Groups
...Goals
...Plots
...Random Events
...Players
...Reactions

Timeline can be as detailed as you want it, day-to-day or week-to-day or month-to-day, etc and will reflect when events are taking place.

Groups are the power groups in the game, they can be your guilds, your cults, your BBGs, governments, etc. They all need to be listed out.

Goals are what the groups are after, money, land, to be king, to be married.

Plots are how the group gets to their goals, murder, adventures, loot, etc. And can span the timeline.

Random Events cover the unexpected; things like floods, fires, monster attacks. This adds an air of excitment to the timeline.

Players, you will need to know where they are at in the timeline.

Reactions, when something happens you have to look at the events on the timeline and answer a few questions - does this effect event? how does it effect the event?


Okay, now to bring it all together, build a matix, accross the top is your timeline, down the left your groups with their goals, in the middle the plots. The players move through the matix from day-to-day crisscrossing plots.

 

[GuardianLurker]

Allow the players to skip around

Brent_Nall, Janx, and Rel already covered the basics (as far as I'm concerned) in their earlier posts.

But the key thing to building the "non-linear" adventure is to build multiple ways to your key points, let the players pick their avenues of approach, and be prepared for "wasted" effort.

An example:
My players are currently wandering around the Imperial Capital, trying to find a demon cult that has their next MacGuffin.

I had three basic approaches - the court angle (a lot of the cultists are disaffected nobility), a crime lord angle (one of the cult leaders heads a kidnapping/slavery ring that supplies the necessary sacrifices), and a long shot undead disturbance (one of the oldest graveyards is located over the cultists ritual room).

Now, I had a certain plot in mind. The characters would get introduced into the Imperial Court, spending a significant amount of time there, and allowing me to start transitioning them away from the hunt-and-kill setup. In the court, they'd find the necessary hooks to lead them to the crime lord. Who'd flee down the secret passage just as they burst into his inner sanctum. The secret passage would lead to a maze where they'd encounter all kinds of oozes and abberations (an entire cave filled with maxed out Gibbering Mouthers, for instance). That in turn would eventually lead them to the cult's ritual room, just in time for them to (possibly) interrupt the cult's final ritual. All kinds of time-induced tension goodness.

My players however.

Decided to smack the Undead Trouble for fun, ignoring the great big "go to court" hints. So instead of the plot I had intended, they literally waded through zombies and skeletons to kill a Bone Ooze, then down cramped catacombs filled with Wights to kill some Boneyards, to the Undead BBEG - a Vilewight Alienist. Whose Sanctum was (intentionally, I'll admit) built right over the Cult's Ritual Room. And they discovered it.

Skipping over all the rest of the plot, straight to the main encounter. At that point, I had to stop the session early, because they had just skipped over about a session or two, into stuff I hadn't prepared. And I have to think things through with the consequences.

I guess what I'm saying is that if you don't railroad your players, non-linear adventures take care of themselves.

 

[the Jester]

Drop tons of plot hooks, let them bite at the ones that look tastiest to them. (Yeah, some of them lead to site-based/dungeon adventures, but only some of them.)

Use social and environmental challenges, and give rewards for overcoming them. For instance, the harsh mountains must be crossed; given the DCs of the checks you have to make to get through, we'll call it a CR 2 journey. Or maybe the pcs need to make allies at the ball. Or maybe they need to investigate what happened to the city's founder, requiring research and investigation. Give minor xp for succeeding, even though it isn't a combat challenge. Or... etc.