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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Bedrockgames" data-source="post: 8248270" data-attributes="member: 85555">My heads been ringing since yesterday so I wanted to wait to respond to this, since it seemed to require a bit more thought. I think part of the problem with the example you gave for me is it is very involved and centered in a setting and system I am not very familiar with (like I said I have blades in the dark, and have been reading through it, but am not particularly familiar with the content). So I found myself getting very confused when I went back and tried to read through the situations you described and then draw a line from that to what it was you were asking for my input on about them.My head is still ringing by will try my best to do the second thing from above.I can't think of a situation off the top of my head. But I would very likely use a dice pool resolution method for something like this. For example if there were an outbreak of plague of some kind, then I might try to resolve how effectively the imperial bureaucracy handles that by a number of methods. First off, I might simply say: this is how it pans out: because the outcome seems very clear. I also might think through the situation logically and decide. But given that we are in the middle of a pandemic and we have all had more time to think about how difficult this problem really is, I would probably resort to more mechanics and rulings. I may say okay what resources do they have (in terms of money to spend on the issue, physicians, magic in the setting, martial experts who can help find or obtain cures guarded by immortals, etc). What I might then do is think about how the emperor and his council might decide to allocate those resources (and if there is some important political split on these matters, I may roll to see which faction wins the debate). Then I would probably turn those allocations into dice pools, and roll those against This to generate my outcomes. For simplicity let's just say they allocate all their resources to different prefectures but to varying degrees. And the results would probably be something like failure denotes significant number of deaths due to failure to stem the plague in region X. Success means they were able to keep deaths down. Total Success might mean actual progress fighting the plague (I would probably have this require a number of total success, over the course of months or years (just given how much a sudden miracle cure might not seem plausible to players given the present situation). Again, this is just me trying to provide a response. There may be something more concrete that came up in my campaigns that I can think of later. Like I said, I am not the best mouthpiece here. Giving people GM coaching tips has never really been my forte. But going to try to answer this as best I can. It is a little hard to say without knowing the setting and the specifics of the campaign. It may be living world sandbox isn't a good fit for your group's style. The players should be the ones really taking the initiative in a sandbox. I have had campaigns go over 100 sessions without a problem (in fact it should get easier not harder). But I really think truly figuring this out for you would require a conversation, not a post to post discussion (I just think it is the kind of topic where you say something, I respond, and if I am going in the wrong direction, you immediately correct me and I change course). On a forum, it is like driving an 18 wheeler on a BMX track sometimes. One thing I will say, just something I am kind of sensing form the post: living world sandbox assumes somewhat objective elements. Factions are pretty fleshed out. You can always make new factions as they occur to you or as you need (sometimes you just realize, oh, there should be more factions in this area, or you haven't got to a certain area yet). But when I did my wuxia setting the first thing I did was make a bunch of different sects. I established their hierarchy, their beliefs, their general involvement in things, I statted the leaders, I statted the disciples and sub chiefs, and I included their numbers. As I went forward I honed this process more. Subchiefs got more personality and fleshing out rather than just being stat blocks, I started assigning names to as many sect members as I could, etc. The point of this is yes you can always decide there is a bigger evil behind the scenes, but in a sandbox you don't usually begin by saying 'this is going to be the enemy' and this is the big bad. You let that stuff emerge naturally as the players have dealings in the world, so their choices matter (i.e. it is up to them how they handle their first interaction with the Chief of the Nature Loving Monk sect, and that may determine whether he becomes a staunch ally, an enemy or a disinterested neutral party: or maybe they just develop a working relationship with him). Like I said it is chemistry so it is a little hard to anticipate in advance all these things. But I would generally just have that sect leader using what resources he can against the party if they become enemies. Now that doesn't mean he is just going to kill them. He may just be trying to bend them to his will. It depends on the conflict. On character and player goals, I generally don't worry about making things players have written as goals come up. But if they are pursuing things in character, those things probably will come up. Like if a player is determined to join a criminal organization, if they look around enough they should eventually find a way into that (just like in real life if you were dead set on something like that, you'd probably find a way in). I think the thing to do here is prep as much as you can in terms of big picture stuff, but understand there will always be hidden underworlds in any setting. And the question in a sandbox is "is there a good reason for something like this not to be here?  and if not, what would this kind of thing look like in this place?". If you need to make things up on the fly, you need to make things up on the fly. Also you can always use between session time to prep things. Say the players decide after they read about some weed that grows in the northern mountains that is guarded by blood drinking giants, and it just came up in passing in some library or something, that they want to go obtain it but you have nothing prepped: it is entirely fair to say: look I don't have that area mapped yet, let's stop the session and I will have it by next week. Ideally you would have stuff like that but a living sandbox world is always capable of growing bigger than what you have written down, and you can't anticipate everything. But those kinds of riffs (where you invented the blood drinking giants guarding the weed) are something I find pretty easy to come up with in a way that jives when you have long enough familiarity with the setting (especially if there is setting cosmology that makes consistent sense: for example my setting the gods often make mountain gods to guard special things on mountain tops so it is an easy thing to extrapolate)But not every type of setting is suited to a sandbox. I run ravenloft living adventure style, but not as a sandbox, because I don't think I could (I just wouldn't know how to do that). For me wuxia campaigns just make total sense as a sandbox. But it is a little hard to explain why beyond how the fuel of those campaigns is the various martial sects. I think also the fact that I have seen hundreds of wuxia and kung fu movies, gives me a data bank of scenarios and I may be overlooking how significant that is. But my advice really is don't torture yourself. If living world sandbox isn't working for you, even after reading the linked materials. There is no law that says you have to run a living world sandbox. And maybe you might need to hack the concept more so it fits with what you like and what you find easy to run. Another piece of advice I always give with sandbox is relax. The thing that made me reluctant to do sandbox at first (and to be honest kind of scared me a little) was fear of the game crashing. But at a certain point I just said "screw it, let's just see what happens". The more relaxed I got, the more I found  myself comfortably running sandbox games. I think sometimes, putting pressure on yourself to make it perfect can have the opposite effect. If you really want to give it a go, I would definitely check out <a href="https://batintheattic.blogspot.com/2009/08/how-to-make-fantasy-sandbox.html" target="_blank">Rob Conley's guide to running a fantasy sandbox</a> if you haven't because that is the most step by step one I have seen: and he has a link to more posts on each topic at the bottom). His treatment is pretty deep and detailed. You might not need every step, but given that he covers each step in such depth, if there is something you are missing, there is a good chance it is there. In terms of solving this without player facing techniques, I am not sure. I don't use player facing techniques and it works fine for me. Maybe it won't work fine for you, or maybe you are trying to get something different out of sandbox than I am and we are talking past each other. Have you ever tried running a sandbox with evil PCs? I ask because I sometimes find that easier (evil PCs are sometimes better than good PCs at finding ways to stay entertained and have long term goals (i want to take over the city, is a pretty easy adventure to run for example, if they drop that kind of thing on you).</blockquote>

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