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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Nameless1" data-source="post: 5291639" data-attributes="member: 83379">I didn't mention The Westmarches because it requires a pretty huge up front investment, and I am not sure that it gives the kind of mystery for the GM that was a goal of the OP. The Westmarches is a great way to sandbox, but I kinda feel like a true sandbox is counter to the stated goals of the OP. Sandboxes are basically a pre-planned campaign without any overarching "plot" built in. They require that the world "exist" outside of what the PCs are doing. They require a lot of up front planning in a effort to make the world wide open for the players to explore. They are not improvisational in their design, they are improvisational in that you already have the heavy lifting done, and all it takes is PC action and you can wing it based on the volume of material that you already know about the world. The more you pre-plan about the world, the easier it is to improvise, at least supposedly. Sandboxes conserve some mystery because the what, when, why, and how things happen is not planned, just the who and where are planned. This is in contrast to more linear "plot" based play. The event are pre-planned, but just the places and characters that relate to the events of the "plot". Lots of pre-planning, but the world is left sketchy. Sounds like this is not what the OP wants. The mystery is not conserved at all because the who, what, where, when, and why are all predetermined, and it is just the how that remains to be determined.Then there is situation generation. Still some pre-planning, but the mystery is conserved because what, when, how, who, why, or where it happens is not pre-planned. A dynamic tension is created, with lots of motivation to resolve the tension, but the events remain to be determined. What I thought the OP wanted was to be a perticipant in the exploration, not the architect of the world or the plot. To do this, he will have to release a major amount of authority over the world and the events within it to gain that participation. One way that he obviously knows about are random charts. Good stuff, but occasionally can feel very random and incoherent. Another is to give more authorship to the other players so that they can surprise him. There are a ton of tricks to get this experience, ranging from the Mountain Witch Trick on the most conservative side, to a fully GMless game like The Committee for the Exploration if Mysteries. With the stated goals of sandbox and exploration/wonder/mystery for all the participants at the table, the 3 games that I suggested at the top can achieve this very well. In each, a world is loosely sketched by everyone at the table, and then the game starts and everyone explores this world. Surprising things are emergent from play. No one is stuck with prep work or denied the fun of the surprise. This would be my prefered way to accomplish these goals. My second suggestion was more conservative, and was a hint at techniques of relinquishing the sole authorship rights of the GM in an effort to limit both prep and allow for the possibility of mystery for the GM.The Westmarches does not seem to get at this too well without the use of these other tricks.</blockquote>

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