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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Raven Crowking" data-source="post: 5021928" data-attributes="member: 18280">Yes.This is one of the reasons that a sandbox is better, IMHO, in a game with a power curve that is less steep.  That said, though, there is no reason that the higher-level PCs cannot have fun.  And, if they are not having fun, they are always free to go and do something else.In RCFG, players are encouraged to keep a "character stable", so that higher-level characters have henchmen to go do smaller stuff while they tackle larger problems and engage in changing the world/area to suit themselves.Thank you.In one game, the players knew the following going in:Selby-by-the-Water was once much larger than it is today, for more than half of the town now lies beneath Lake Elidyr. Locals now call this area “Selby-beneath-the-Waves.” What remains is still a bustling town, but folk avoid the ruined areas at night, including the docksides where Selby-beneath-the-Waves can still be seen. Selby-by-the-Water was founded to protect a deepwater harbor on Lake Elidyr. A great wall surrounds the town proper from Weirwood the Great, but farms and small businesses arose outside of the village wall.  There are now wooden partial walls and watchtowers that protect these areas. The village has grown in a radial pattern from the harbor, with several canals cutting through the central village. Forty-seven years ago, Selby-by-the-Water was wracked by tremors, and more than half the town was destroyed. The tower of Amoreth the Arcane collapsed in smoke and fire. Underground explosions damaged buildings. Whole sections of the town subsided, and were covered by the lake.  Amoreth the Arcane was never seen again – some thought he had died in some dangerous experiment, but others thought that he fled the disaster he had caused. In the aftermath, the sewers and undercity of Selby-by-the-Water have been broken and partly submerged, with new entrances appearing and old ones becoming lost. Entry into the Wizard’s Tower is forbidden upon pain of death.One player decided to use this background.  He wanted his gnome bard to be an orphan, whose parents were confederates of Amoreth the Arcane.  He believed that his parents were evil, and had abandoned him at birth.Now, I knew that Amoreth the Arcane had actually been trying to stop an enclave of aboleth from undermining the town, and that he had partially succeeded at the cost of his tower, his reputation, and his life.  Therefore, I also knew that the gnome's parents were not evil, and had sacrificed themselves to save their newborn child.If the PCs had not eventually entered the ruined tower of Amoreth the Arcane (after another collapse, and their discovery of an aboleth), they never would have learned the above.  And that would have been okay.  In my notes for the tower, I only made one change -- I added the spirit of the gnome's mother, so that she could one time tell her son that she was proud of him before fading away.  Had the gnome not gone there, the spirit would linger still, but not manifest.In no other way did that area change.  And the story of Amoreth the Arcane, although embellished by the addition of gnome assistants, did not substantially change.If the spooky old castle on the hill is the abode of ghouls, it is the abode of ghouls regardless of what level the PCs are when they get there.  If a PC's father, mother, or brother went in there and never returned, I can pretty well extrapolate that the ghouls got him or her, either rendering the character a ghoul or a pile of cracked bones.  And, either way, that becomes a part of the sandbox.  If that PC doesn't go to the spooky castle, that's okay.  If other PCs slaughter the ghouls there, and the first PC never learns what happened to her family member, that's okay too.  If the PC goes there, and gets killed in the first encounter, that's also okay.But, once I have accepted a character background, I will do what I can to make that background make sense within the world.  If a player suggests a background that I know cannot make sense within the world, I will offer a revision that does make sense.I encourage players to get caught up in the pieces of the sandbox.  Discovering what happened a generation ago, a century ago, or an age ago is one of the thrills such a setting can allow for.  Linking characters to the setting's past and present in no way diminishes the players' interest in the setting's future.  If anything, it increases their ardour to form that future.IMHO, and IME.(And, Hussar, did that answer your question?)RC</blockquote>

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