Captain Joy wrote:
Are there any guides for creating sandbox / open world campaigns?
I'm not very good at this, but the other GM in our group is. Based on
my observations of him, I'd advise the following. Be aware this advice
comes 2nd hand.
1. Expend to spend significant amounts of time and effort fleshing out
your campaign world.
2. Come up with several big threads/arcs that are affecting the game
world allow them to come to the attention of your PCs.
3. Provide your players with lots of background material so that they
can make informed decisions.
4. Get your PCs to decide what they want to do next (e.g. via e-mail)
*before* the next gaming session.
5. Have ideas in place to force the action if they seem bored or
unsure about what to do next.
6. Have some exciting (random?) encounters at the ready to slow them
down if they start down a path you're not ready for yet.
7. The motives of your NPCs is of paramount concern; you should alway
be confident about who your NPCs will react to any situation.
--
I've run this style of game since about three months after I started
playing D&D in the late 70s. My goal when I develop a campaign is to
have a couple big threads, several medium threads, and a fair bit of
small threads for the players to interact with. As a friend one said, "I
run a world when I DM, not some boring linear B follows A module." If
the players don't pick up the hints and rumors early on for the "big"
event, they'll get them sooner or later and the time crunch will be more
pronounced.
Usually I map out an area, create some towns, villages and a city or two
(if its fantasy, larger areas in slightly less detail if it's modern)
and create a number of NPCs. I have no problem creating NPCs on the fly
or developing new towns or encounters because I know my world. Some of
my best story elements have been developed this way and NPCs that were
created with 30 seconds of thought often become integral to the story -
more so than the ones I spent time and effort developing.
I've found, for me, that planning things out in detail often makes the
game behave like a car with wheels that are severely out of alignment;
I'm fighting just to keep it going straight.
For me, there's a sense of "what's over that hill?" that's present in a
"sandbox" style game that isn't there (for a player or a GM) in a linear
campaign. As a player, I absolutely detest when I have to do things and
don't feel like I have a choice in the matter. So why would I subject my
players to this? In the 30 years or more that I've been gaming, I've had
very few people complain about my games. Those couple who did usually
wanted a waiting line of "monsters" so they could kill them for
experience and treasure and didn't care about role playing.
Just my views.
--
Kurt Feltenberger
[email protected]/[email protected] // http://www.teotwawki.net
“Before today, I was scared to live, after today, I'm scared I'm not living enough." - Me
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