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Message: <blockquote data-quote="The Shaman" data-source="post: 5416961" data-attributes="member: 26473">Forgive me for quoting myself, but I addressed this in another thread back in April.As part of preparing to run a game, I'm building the tools I'll need behind the screen once we're actually playing.Frex, I'm fortunate enough to have <a href="http://www.davidrumsey.com/xmaps10000.html" target="_blank">an exceptionally detailed map</a> of the setting for <a href="http://www.obsidianportal.com/campaigns/le-ballet-de-l-acier" target="_blank">my game</a>, but even with this as a resource, there is no way I can reasonably attempt to key every settlement, every church, every abbey, every fortress. So far I've focused on detailing certain cities which I believe are most likely to come up in play: Paris (the central city of the setting), Rouen (the gateway to New France), La Rochelle (the Protestant stronghold and another important port), Toulouse (an important cultural and administrative location, the 'Paris' of southern France), and Marseille (the gateway to the Mediterranean). The importance of thse cities is such that I reasonably expect the adventurers to visit at least two or three of them in the course of playing the game.But suppose the adventurers visit Bordeaux, or Clermont, or Lyon instead? Part of my prep focuses on being able to improvise so that a visit to each is distinctive in some way. Bourdeaux is home to the only significant population of Jews in France outside of Paris or Avignon and trades extensively with Portugal. Clermont is situated on the edge of one of the most geographically inhospitable regions of France, giving it the feel of a frontier town in the heart of the kingdom. Lyon is a historic banking center with strong cultural and business ties to the Swiss and the Italians. This allows me to take a generic random encounter and reskin it so that it's geographically appropriate to the setting and reinforces the cape-and-sword genre feel of the game.And that's, for me, one of the approaches which characterizes running a 'sandbox'-y setting. I'm not improvising encounters to 'steer' the adventurers on the 'right track.' I'm not improvising encounters, or features of the game-world, in response to something on a player's character sheet. I'm not improvising 'level-appropriate' encounters.Instead, I'm improvising encounters largely without regard to who adventurers are. If the adventurers head off cross-country in Provence, they may encounter a Roman ruin, and one of the more likely forms of wildlife to be found hiding among the fallen columns and crumbling foundations is a viper. That's about as close as I get to 'aiming' an encounter at an adventurer.The exception to this is encounters which occur as a consequence of the adventurers' actions. If the adventurers rescue Princess Pinkflower from the château de Bauchery, a random encounter with troops or guards gets assigned a chance of being the baron's henchmen trying to steal her back.</blockquote>

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