Pathfinder 2E (WIP) Secrets of Old Pandora, Drafting my vision for a Pathfinder 2e West Marches

[kenada]

After several false starts at exploration-based games, I’m glad my current one finally got going. The amount of up-front prep is a bit much, but I love how the players set the agenda, and then we see what happens. Admittedly, it’s transitioned between three systems, which hasn’t helped with the prep (since I need to convert setting material over between systems).

 

[The-Magic-Sword]

After several false starts at exploration-based games, I’m glad my current one finally got going. The amount of up-front prep is a bit much, but I love how the players set the agenda, and then we see what happens. Admittedly, it’s transitioned between three systems, which hasn’t helped with the prep (since I need to convert setting material over between systems).

How is that game going? What kind of things motivate your players to actually do stuff?

 

[kenada]

How is that game going? What kind of things motivate your players to actually do stuff?

It’s going pretty well. The mistake I made before was trying to avoid the up-front work. I tried to wing it on exploration and avoided having a keyed wilderness exploration map. This time, I did the work (although keying the hex map is still a work-in-progress, especially with the scale change in OSE). It also helps that we have a strong default motivation (explore and report back on what you found).

I’m not really sure what motivates my players to do stuff. There are a lot of unknowns and things to discover out in the world. I’m also a simulationist-immersive at heart, so I try to keep the focus at a consistent level and on the PCs. Even a trip to down to town to go shopping gets narrated out. Last session, they started off with a meeting and then went to town to get supplies and hire retainers.

I pinged my group about what motivates them, and I got a few responses. One player said doing things that sound fun motivates him. Another is motivated by loot and interesting story. The last one is interesting because there’s not actually any story. What stories there are have emerged through play. I have some stuff about the setting that I’ve sprinkled around, mysteries to uncover and so on, but there’s no overarching narrative. And yet, that’s how the players see it, which is pretty cool.

When we were running in-person, I kept a copy of my agenda and principles next to meat the table (see end of post). I adapted them from Apocalypse World. Even though the kind of game I run is way different, they still work pretty well. Following them has helped me to portray an interesting setting and to make sure the people my PCs meet are actually interesting. It also keeps me honest as a referee (e.g., being a fan of the players’ characters means letting go of plots and not having an emotional investment in any particular outcome, which is what you need in a sandbox).

I should also note that some (many?) of the things I do are at odds with a West Marches game. Town is not safe. There is adventure to be had in town, and factions in town may act against you. Sessions are not self-contained. There’s no gradient of danger (not even in the 5e or PF2 iterations of the campaign). There are NPC adventurers (whence else come retainers?). There’s a rotating cast of PCs, but the group (players) is constant. While I try to follow the spirit of the referee’s role in OSE, I’m not dispassionate. Finally, combat is war. If you get into a fair fight, you’ve picked the wrong fight.

Agenda

• Make 5e/PF2/OSE seem real.
• Make the lives of the players’ characters not boring.
• Play to find out what happens.

Principles

• Barf forth fantasia.
• Address yourself to the characters, not the players.
• Make your move, but misdirect.
• Make your move, but never speak its name.
• Look through crosshairs.
• Name everyone, make everyone real.
• Ask provocative questions and build on the answers.
• Respond with fuckery and intermittent rewards.
• Be a fan of the players’ characters.
• Think offscreen too.
• Sometimes, disclaim decision-making.

 

[The-Magic-Sword]

That was actually a very interesting post for a few reasons.

The first is that I'm kind of interested in the player who likes interesting stories as well, because 'stories' can mean a lot of things. Is it that they're enjoying the emergent narrative that's arising at the table in the way they would enjoy any other story? are they enjoying uncovering the narratives that you've scattered around the world? (environmental storytelling simply fascinates me, as an exploration player myself.) They might not even be sure themselves, or it might be a combination of elements, or they might just be vibing off of the various characters and their interactions, its neat.

The second is actually what you say near the end about deviating from the West Marches. I feel as though what's most interesting about the format of these games is that there aren't any real 'maps' of how to do them. Ironically, the very act of running open tables, west marches, and similar gameplay styles is itself something every individual game is sort of discovering by itself, in the same way that players might make their own maps in a west marches that is only semi-accurate. Ben Robbins and Justin Alexander obviously exist, and so do some of the records of the early games when such play was the default (I recently mined the ADND Dungeon Master's Guide to help me develop my own thoughts on how to handle time.) But not all of the ingredients each individual game utilized is necessary for all games, and changing them can lead to different outcomes that are mutually desirable in their own ways. You're using a consistent, small gaming group which lends the proceedings a natural continuity-- everyone mostly knows what's happened to all the characters in the overall narrative without any fancy emergent information sharing stuff, for instance, which likely has advantages.

To contrast my game, which will have the rotating player cast, we're looking at using Heroes to create a miniature social network of players and adventurers, which will doubtlessly be a different dynamic than the Ben Robbins blueprint even while it strives for some of the same elements. One of the things that keeps me coming back to this board is actually the handful of other people who are kicking at the same tires as me in different ways, I love the idea that we're all doing our own little permutations of this game type, and exploring how our variations affect these larger scale, exploration centric gaming experiences. Everything from the type of system we're using, to how we handle different elements.

It really is ironic, we're like a loose community of explorers, exploring a territory that isn't well charted but certainly has a history to uncover and learn from (e.g. Robbins, Alexander, Gygax's writings and so forth), while our own journeys are shaped from what and how we choose to pursue it, the people we pursue it with, and our perception of what a game like this should even be like.

Also, I need an Agenda and Principles, it reminds me of an old article by the Angry GM on defining themselves as a GM.

 

[kenada]

The first is that I'm kind of interested in the player who likes interesting stories as well, because 'stories' can mean a lot of things. Is it that they're enjoying the emergent narrative that's arising at the table in the way they would enjoy any other story? are they enjoying uncovering the narratives that you've scattered around the world? (environmental storytelling simply fascinates me, as an exploration player myself.) They might not even be sure themselves, or it might be a combination of elements, or they might just be vibing off of the various characters and their interactions, its neat.

I got a few more responses from my players. The one who said he likes stories mentioned a couple of things he thought were interesting or cool. He liked the singing sword they’d found as well as having to find gems to get access to a locked door. He also liked the experience when he drank a potion of shared memories, which I had used for worldbuilding and foreshadowing. Another player chimed in agreeing about liking to pursue mysteries. The guy who said he likes doing things that sound fun also added later that he enjoys digging into the roleplaying element, imagining how his PC would react and then acting it out.

The second is actually what you say near the end about deviating from the West Marches. I feel as though what's most interesting about the format of these games is that there aren't any real 'maps' of how to do them. Ironically, the very act of running open tables, west marches, and similar gameplay styles is itself something every individual game is sort of discovering by itself, in the same way that players might make their own maps in a west marches that is only semi-accurate. Ben Robbins and Justin Alexander obviously exist, and so do some of the records of the early games when such play was the default (I recently mined the ADND Dungeon Master's Guide to help me develop my own thoughts on how to handle time.) But not all of the ingredients each individual game utilized is necessary for all games, and changing them can lead to different outcomes that are mutually desirable in their own ways. You're using a consistent, small gaming group which lends the proceedings a natural continuity-- everyone mostly knows what's happened to all the characters in the overall narrative without any fancy emergent information sharing stuff, for instance, which likely has advantages.

Grognardia has been another big influence (and hoo-ray for its resuming after a nearly decade hiatus). James writes about a lot of different things, but his stuff on old-school play really changed how I looked at things. That’s not to say that there haven’t been other influences. I got the idea for the rotating cast from West Marches even though I’d otherwise rejected it. Our group is constant, but attendance is not, so it’s nice to be able to roll up new characters and go do something else. That’s even how we handled the conversion to OSE: it’s just another adventuring party in their expedition (the old PCs are still around even if they’ve retired from play).

To contrast my game, which will have the rotating player cast, we're looking at using Heroes to create a miniature social network of players and adventurers, which will doubtlessly be a different dynamic than the Ben Robbins blueprint even while it strives for some of the same elements. One of the things that keeps me coming back to this board is actually the handful of other people who are kicking at the same tires as me in different ways, I love the idea that we're all doing our own little permutations of this game type, and exploring how our variations affect these larger scale, exploration centric gaming experiences. Everything from the type of system we're using, to how we handle different elements.

Many years ago, I tried to get my players to be more engaged. We used Obsidian Portal. Players could post as their characters. One player posted a couple of times, and that was it. If we had to rely on out-of-session participation to keep things together, we would have been doomed a long time ago. However, everyone takes notes. We pick who recaps randomly, so it behooves you to know what happened based on your notes. This was an idea I got from one of my players when he was running Call of Cthulhu. I shamelessly stole it for my game.

I recently mined the ADND Dungeon Master's Guide to help me develop my own thoughts on how to handle time.

My mining OSE for procedures is what eventually drove me to pitch it to the group. When I was burning out on PF2, I was like: well, I’m already using a lot of this stuff anyway ….

It really is ironic, we're like a loose community of explorers, exploring a territory that isn't well charted but certainly has a history to uncover and learn from (e.g. Robbins, Alexander, Gygax's writings and so forth), while our own journeys are shaped from what and how we choose to pursue it, the people we pursue it with, and our perception of what a game like this should even be like.

Something I really appreciate as I try to get more into the OSR community is how much people share about how they run their games. I like a good discussion on how to key a map or on what hex scale is best. I just switched my game over to 6 mile hexes from 12 mile ones, but we didn’t even make it out of the city.

 

[The-Magic-Sword]

I meant to respond, but got hooked on the Grognardia link at the time, reading more about mega dungeons. It does feel like that entire community (OSR) sees itself as game designers, which I really appreciate.