A Narrativist Sandbox?

Thought experiment: Imagine a sandbox type game with some serious narrativist elements thrown in. What would such a game look like? Would it work? Is Castle Greyhawk still Castle Greyhawk when utterly personal and non-tactical decisions repeatedly come into play?

I've been thinking about this lately because my group has been dabbling in two sorts of games - a savage worlds fantasy sandbox campaign in the old school vein (GM'd by co-blogger Pat), and a more narrativist streak of games like Burning Wheel and a more recently started Spirit of the Century game in Fading Suns space that I've been running. It's also worth mentioning that I've shown up at a couple of Chgowiz's old school fantasy games.

Upon the deepest of reflections, it turns out that I like elements from these various games, and I have problems with these types of games as well. I find "old school" games a little restrictive because the pc's are fairly powerless and every little thing takes so much effort. And while I love true sandboxes as the basic framework for games, I find that these games lack real connections between the characters and the world. Which makes all decisions a player based thing rather than a character based thing.

I find many narrativist games too foofy, for lack of a better word. In my current Spirit of the Century game, the world is so wide open that I'm forced to be a little too heavy handed (for my taste) with plot hooks. But I love how games like Spirit of the Century and Burning Wheel have mechanical repercussions for personal characteristics. For example, in SoTC, a character can have the aspect "disdainful to non-nobles." Pulling this aspect into a roll can give a character a mechanical bonus to do things where this applies (which could be a range of situations). The environment or reaction of the NPCs change accordingly, and voila - a plot starts to appear that's grounded in character sheets.

So, the question is now: Could a fantasy megadungeon fruitfully work with a system like Spirit of the Century? Would the balance of the old school and new school be just right? Or are we really talking about oil and water?

Piecing Together a Megadungeon

Like many RPG bloggers, I've lately been bitten by the megadungeon bug. As I mentioned earlier, my sandbox fantasy campaign is moving into adolescence, having hit a few important milestones recently. The story is now largely in the players' hands. With that in mind, I'm starting to think about a tentpole dungeon thematically tie together a lot of the threats they've faced so far in the wilderness.

The thing is, I've never designed a megadungeon, and right now I'm content to spend my free time actually playing our game, not necessarily creating stuff to put in it. My creative period was last summer, and it was grand. Now, I'm more excited about playing.

With that in mind, I'm going to start piecing together a multi-level megadungeon using various free dungeon levels available on the net. I'll fit these floors together as logically as possible, retaining the monsters and traps that "fit" with my overall idea (and there is one!), trimming off passageways and chambers where necessary and generally jettisoning the stuff that just ain't right.

The goal isn't to create a funhouse dungeon or a mishmash of rooms bereft of any logic, and I freely admit that I may have to take drastic liberties with the material. With any luck, though, I'll be able to string together at least a few floors to create a mysterious, scary dungeon to anchor a fairly large portion of my wilderness map.

I've got a lot of fodder to work with: Amityville Mike has been reliably cataloging his work on Stonehell; Jeff Rients offered up a wealth of information via Under Xylarthen's Tower; James M. started things off with The Ruined Monastery in Fight On #1.

Looking elsewhere, I hope to snag a level or two from Sham's Dim Expanses. Likewise, The Darkness Beneath (itself a collaborative dungeon) has been getting a lot of attention in the pages of Fight On! And Chgowiz's handywork will surely make an appearance via his nifty one-page dungeon adventures.

See what I did just then? I name-checked a bunch of prolific bloggers while casually informing them of my desire to take their creative works, pull them apart and reassemble the pieces in odd ways. I think that's the ethos of the old-school renaissance, and I flatter myself with the thought that they--and the other half-dozen gamers out there who will no doubt provide fodder for my megadungeon--would be pleased.