Outside the Sandbox: The Challenges of GMing a Large Scale Game

Tonight, my buddies and I are going to embark on a new game that I'm GMing. We're playing Fading Suns with the Spirit of the Century Rules (instead of that crappy victory point system or D20). I've played in a 6 month campaign of Fading Suns before, and I love the setting. It's Middle Ages in space, with a touch of Roman Empire thrown in, and a huge array of different planets and campaign possibilities. The setting is also politically explosive, and it's explicitly aimed at having large scale political repercussions for PC actions. With source books galore, it's maybe one of the most well supported settings I've ever seen. But there's a potential problem that I've quickly run into: With so much source material and options for players, it can be demanding on the GM.

Contrast this sort of game with the sandboxy old school games that are all the rage right now. I'm actively playing in one of those right now (using the Savage Worlds system), and I'm really digging on it. We can go wherever we want, and every little thing is a struggle. We've been playing for about a year, and we still had some serious problems with well positioned goblins not so long ago. The map is set, and the GM doesn't force any plot hooks on us. I know this took a whole lot of preparation on the front end to get this sandbox up and running. But in game, things seem to be more straightforward for the GM.

On the other hand, part of the appeal of Fading Suns is that players can move from world to world, and city to city on these worlds. As a GM, I have some plot hooks for players, and Spirit of the Century is set up to give players incentives for characters to follow the GM's lead (there's a really cool mechanic for this, called invoking aspects). Some degree of player buy in to what the GM has planned is necessary for this sort of game. But the last thing I want to do is railroad the players. After all, I get most of my fun from GMing from trying to flexibly respond to the unpredictable things players do. On a very large scale.

In fact, the large scale nature of the game is what appeals to me so much. It's just how my mind tends to work. It's what fascinates me. But it sure makes for tough preparation and on the spot GMing sometimes. As we play, I'll keep posting.

If you dig sandbox campaigns, check out the comments at Ars Ludi

This probably doesn't need to be said, but Ben Robbins' marvelous West Marches series is an ever-evolving resource for players and GMs alike. Do yourself a favor and check back periodically to read the comments (and the timely responses from Ben and his players) that just keep piling onto this fantastic group of articles.

The wrap-up piece, West Marches: Running Your Own, has no fewer than 137 comments, probably more by the time you read this. They're from players and GMs wanting to know more about Ben's fantasy sandbox. He's responded to most queries, which of course prompts even more questions from his readers. You'll even find a few of my own comments mixed in among the discussion.

Gaming and music: Firing on all cylinders

For last week's Autumn Frontiers campaign, I queued up about 70 assorted metal songs and let 'em rip over the course of our 5-hour game. Among those was a record that I consider to be my campaign's muse: Wintersun, an album by a Finnish metal band of the same name.

Back when I was originally brainstorming ideas for my Points of Light-derived fantasy sandbox, I listened to Wintersun a lot. The songs, with their Viking/dreamland-inspired imagery, really juiced my imagination, and even today, it's easy to travel back to the halcyon days of that worldbuilding effort simply by putting on track 5, "Battle Against Time." That song—the melody, really, and the stadium-rock vocalization that opens the tune—never ceases to fire my creative pistons, evoking images of adventurers roaming across a vast, uncharted wilderness, exploring the ruins of past civilizations and spending hard-earned coin in shabby frontier villages—before heading out into the unforgiving lands to do it all over again. Good stuff.

As an aside, I glanced at the tracklist from last week's game. As near as I can tell, Wintersun came up toward the end of the session, as the party's wizard PC was fighting for his life on the windswept cliffs of the Darkwater Keep. In fact, his death very probably coincided with a Wintersun song titled "Death and the Healing," which boasts some very apropos lyrics.

Time is the death and the healing Take your last breath, 'cause death is deceiving Time is the past, now and tomorrow Days fly so fast and it leaves me so hollow

A snowstorm blew inside a wolf's eyes and the frozen tears covered all the mountainsides But then the time got by and the wolf died and someday that wolf would be I.

Sage advice indeed. UncleBear touches on designing a campaign soundtrack, and d7 over at the Seven-Sided Die compares rpgs to musical genres. It seems music is in the air. What type of music juices your campaign?

Savage Worlds fantasy sandbox, session 12

Last weekend saw the continuation of my Savage Worlds fantasy sandbox campaign, the evocatively titled "Autumn Frontiers" campaign. It's the longest-running campaign I've ever GMed. We hadn't played in a couple months, so I took the liberty of advancing the game clock ahead one month, plunging the wilderness into an icy winter.

As with previous sessions, the direction of this adventure was left up to the players. I had generated a few more random rumors that would have enticed them to explore new areas of the campaign map (which at this point is about halfway explored, more or less) but in the end they chose to follow up on some cyptic clues pointing to the Darkwater Keep, a ruined castle on a promontory overlooking a river a day or two east of their home base.

I'll quickly summarize the rest of the adventure: a PC died as the rest of the characters scouted the surface ruins of the Darkwater Keep. This was only the second PC death in the Autumn Frontiers campaign, and it was one of the most experienced players (he had only missed one of the last 12 sessions). But this particular player took it all in stride, and he embraced his death with gusto. Here's how it went down:

Jalez (the player's wizard, who is "seasoned" in Savage Worlds parlance and was actually quite powerful at this point) was keeping watch along a lonely cliff while the rest of the party hammered on a solid metal door. This door was one of two entrances the party had discovered leading into the dungeon proper; the first was well guarded by hobgoblins, so they opted to try this way in.

A half-hour's worth of incessant hammering on the door brought out a scouting party of troglodytes from the river 50 feet below the sheer cliff. Jalez was overpowered, and the troglodytes quickly started scrambling down the cliff face, carrying their arcane prize.

Upon seeing this, the rest of the party began desperately trying different tactics to slow the troglodytes and free their comrade. Prometheor the paladin spewed cones of flame from his perch on the cliff ledge. Kez the druid caused entangling roots to spring forth from rocky bluff, slowing the troglodytes' descent. Atabraxes the barbarian shapeshifter turned into a crow and plunged down to the water's edge, hoping to find Jalez struggling to the surface.

In the end, it was all for naught. Jalez, grievously wounded, was hauled below the dark river and torn to pieces by the hungry troglodytes.

Nico, Jalez's player, was a great sport during all of these tribulations, and it made me feel a lot better for killing a PC. By the end of the evening he was already talking about rolling up a ranger for next time.

In an email after this session, we were all hashing out the various events that led to Jalez's death. As GM, I can rest easy knowing that I did a very good job telescoping the danger surrounding the Darkwater Keep. Here's an excerpt from that email:

It ain't like you guys walked blindly into sudden danger; virtually everyone you spoke with warned you away from that place, and yet you still pressed on. Twas a true sandbox moment!

I also thought it was very interesting how some characters found their usefulness reduced by the particulars of the cliffside battle. Prometheor, for example, can go toe-to-toe with a marsh troll in single combat, but he couldn't scale the cliff face or swim in the river to save Jalez. It's a very important reminder that no character is an everyman, and that the Darkwater Keep will demand more out-of-the-box thinking if you guys want to delve deeper into its depths.

This is an example of something that Ben Robbins expands on in his West Marches writeups: the players must be given fair warning when approaching areas of the map that are really dangerous. They must understand that, so they have only themselves to blame when things go awry (sorry guys!).

That's not to say that the Darkwater Keep is an outrageous PC slaughterhouse; in truth, the troglodytes were fairly standard bad guys who unfortunately scored crazy good rolls on their dice. But adventuring there was just one option among many that were bandied about at the outset of this session. Doubtless the PCs will be interested in going back there soon to settle the score a little bit.

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.

Sandbox Recap: Into the Wilds

I gamed twice in the last couple weeks, most recently in Chgowiz's OSRIC/1e game, which is modeled after the West Marches approach to group adventuring. So far we've played three sessions in that campaign, and the player mix has been different each time. In fact, Chgowiz and myself have been the only two static players; everyone else has rotated in and out.

Prior to that, I refereed the 7th session of Autumn Frontiers, my own sandbox fantasy campaign we're playing with the Savage Worlds ruleset. We've reached an interesting point in the game; several of the players are about to move into the "seasoned" experience bracket, which is my signal to start weaving a few of the disparate plot threads together.

True to form, Autumn Frontiers is set up like a traditional sandbox, with location-based encounters populating a largely unexplored wilderness setting. But each region of the map is rich in detail and mystery, and at this point the players have explored perhaps 30 percent of the whole wilderness.

I'm also handing over a few in-game tasks to the players. The shared table map, which I've been tidying up between games, is now theirs to use or ignore. It's got most of the main stuff penciled in already, but the rest is up to them. Same with dungoen mapping--next time we delve into some ruins, it's up to them to keep a running map of where they've been and how to get out. This particular task is quite a lot of fun, actually, as last Saturday's game with Chgowiz showed. My character has been mapping out the kobold-infested mines as we go along, and there's certainly a sense of accomplishment when the referee's description matches up with your own hand-drawn map.

In any case, that 30 percent (a relatively small area) has yielded up a lot of hooks, encounters and characters. There are a few common threads holding everything together, and over the next few sessions I'll start investigating how it all fits together. If the players show interest, we'll advance the plot together. If not, well, there's always another adventure waiting just over the next hill--quite literally in this case.

Safety behind walls...for a price

I spotted a pretty nifty little mechanic in a recent session of Chgowiz's OSRIC/1e game last weekend. I'm playing a thief, and I mentioned to the DM that I'd like to run a few errands around town between sessions. No need roleplay it all out, especially since we're trying to run a wilderness sandbox setup that focuses on getting the players out the door and into the wilds.

So we just talked over what I wanted to buy (a new sling for starters; my old one had gone sailing off into the forest when I rolled a critical failure vs. some goblins). Then he rolled randomly to see how many days elapsed between sessions (3 days). He ruled that each member of the party would spend X gold in those three days, either on supplies or food or lodging or what-have-you.

The idea of charging players hard money for every day they tarry in town struck me as a really neat, concise way of keeping up the pressure to explore in a sandbox setting. Sure, towns are extremely safe and a good source of supplies, but characters in a sandbox game shouldn't get too comfortable. It's a cinch to charge 'em a few gold for the material comforts of a town. The key is to make sure the gold isn't spent idly; GMs should offer up new rumors, improved reactions from NPCs, or even interesting material goods. Then the players don't feel like they're getting cheated out of their gold -- but they do feel the pressure to get out and explore to find more.

Cautionary Tales from the Sandbox

Ripper X over at Advanced Gaming & Theory wrote yesterday about the trials and tribulations of running Isle of Dread as a pure sandbox module — as in, the players wander around a map, discovering cool stuff and fighting off foul beasts. Sounds like fun, right? I’ll quote Ripper X:

On paper, a complete wilderness adventure sounds great! Wandering around blind, not knowing where in the hell you are going, or really what you are looking for. In actual play, this was SLOW!!!! So slow that I was getting bored, and it was all the same thing. I thought that it would be fun, but plotting a coarse and deciding of where to go that day is frickin boring! I don't know if it was my fault, or if I did something wrong, or what. I thought about it! I really did. How can I spice this up? But with such a large map to explore, I really couldn't prep anything or describe a scene more clearer then what I was. I really didn't want to spend too much time talking about a day where nothing happens. I did give the place a lot of sounds and smells, but the players weren't all that interested, and I kept failing my random encounter checks.

His post serves as a cautionary tale about what to avoid in a sandbox campaign. It seems Ripper X was a little too wedded to the sandbox concept and could probably have been a bit more liberal with his random encounters (as in, fudge the die rolls so they actually happen, or adjust the rules so you’re rolling more frequently) without infringing too much on the spirit of the game. Moreover, it’s important to note that sandbox games are defined by their lack of a linear plot — but not necessarily their lack of story. Time spent exploring should be time well spent; the PCs should learn something important about the area, uncover a villain or stumble across a previously unknown map feature.

Plus, those villages aren’t just set pieces. The natives travel the lands, send out patrols, hunt, trade, etc. There’s no reason why a large percentage of ‘em can’t be on the move, thus increasing the chances that the party might encounter them. The island itself was a bit limiting — it’s a finite bit of territory, and if you treat the published module as canon, it’s entirely possible for the players to bumble their way through the least-interesting parts of the map.

I say all this not to condemn Ripper X — quite the contrary. I’m glad he posted his concerns, because I’m running a sandbox campaign myself, and any wisdom that can help me avoid such pitfalls is useful. I’d be grateful for any advice from DMs out there: What have you gotten right or wrong in your sandbox game?

Back in the Hot Seat After a Long Absence

More than a year after I GMed my last multi-session RPG, I sat down with a group of friends last night to delve into Autumn Frontiers, my new fantasy sandbox campaign.

It’s difficult to express how much my gaming ethos has changed over the weeks and months that I’ve been brainstorming and sketching out this setting. In years past, I produced self-contained adventures that — while drenched in detail and very engrossing — offered little in terms of sandbox play. This was fine, because the players I gamed with were part of this paradigm as well. With few exceptions, they expected a “plot” and were only too happy to move along it.

Since then, though, my sentiments have changed. Starting with a chance encounter at Ars Ludi, I’ve voraciously sought out articles and blog posts from the likes of James Maliszewski, Jeff Rients, Ben Robbins, Rob Conley and Sham the Quixotic Referee. Their quirky return-to-yer-roots notions really set off a cavalcade of ideas in my head — made all the more relevant when you consider that I missed old-school D&D entirely, having started playing RPGs in 1994 with d6 Star Wars. The whole effort was made manifest when I picked up Goodman Games’ Points of Light supplement (co-authored by Rob Conley, btw). My game grew legs and took off, if only in my head. And even if the players barely scratch the surface of the world, it was certainly worth it.

And so, on a Thursday night in October, we met at Ben’s place in Chicago. Four players showed, including two I’ve never gamemastered for. With little more than character sheets, a rulebook and a blank hex map, we cranked up the heavy metal and got to gaming.

It ranks as one of the most singularly satisfying GM experiences of my life. Everyone was in-character and one the same level — namely, a semi-campy mashup of Conan-style swaggering, played out against the backdrop of a frightened, depopulated medieval frontier village. The “tavern” where the party met was just few rough-hewn benches tucked in the corner of the village blacksmith’s shop; Garron, the one-armed forgemaster, sold ale by the mug and kept his smithy ringing late into the night, helping weary travelers shake off the cold with beer and helpful gossip.

Each player had received a randomly generated rumor via email in the week prior to the session, and they eagerly presented these hints in-character as the PCs gathered in Garron’s workshop. There was a great moment when the highborn wizard harumphed about not wanting to go risk his skin exploring the ruins of Tora Norrith, but the spirit of adventure on out in the end. The PCs agreed to depart at sunrise, and we had a nice little scene where the characters bedded down in an abandoned barracks.

The overland trip to Tora Norrith (just a few hours' hike, given the topography) was an absolutely golden wilderness scene, festooned with Survival rolls, foraging attempts and even some discovery (the druid stumbled across an ancient quarry site carved with dwarven runes; the thief had the presence of mind to make a charcoal rubbing of these runes, which will help out immensely if they choose to investigate further).

We had a few stumbles with the Savage Worlds rules, including forgetting all about the soak roll when the druid took a crossbow bolt to the chest (he survived). And I’m still learning how to effectively run NPC enemies in Savage Worlds. But all in all, it was a great first adventure and — get this — our next session is scheduled for this Saturday! So soon — gotta go prep!

Putting Points of Light through the creative meatgrinder

This past weekend, I went ahead and put Goodman Games’ Points of Light through the ringer. I gutted the setting, redrew the map, discarded a quarter of the content, reworked another quarter, inserted my own goodies — and had an absolute blast in the process. In retrospect, I think the Goodman team would be proud of my efforts. After all, Points of Light is nothing if not immanently gameable, as Jeff Rients so eloquently put it.

Most of this weekend, you see, was spent sitting in a coffee shop in St. Louis, killing time while my fiance busied herself as a bridesmaid for her friend’s wedding. I had no role in the wedding, which meant I had huge blocks of downtime while the bridal party shuttled around the city for photos, hair appointments, champagne brunches, etc. So I plopped myself down in a coffee shop, pulled up Points of Light on my laptop and started hacking.

As I’ve mentioned in a few previous posts, I’m hoping to run a sandbox-style fantasy game using Savage Worlds as my system of choice. I took the Wildlands map from Points of Light and dumped it into Photoshop; an hour later, I had the beginnings of my setting: a savage frontier punctuated with crumbling castles and keeps, the population reeling from a recently-concluded military campaign that ended in defeat for the invading empire. The army has retreated, leaving a shocked populace that now has to deal with invading orcs, hobgoblins, ogres and more.

I tried really hard to avoid scripting plots or connecting too many dots — that’s for the players to do, after all. But the seeds are definitely there.

Update: Goodman Games may be the best game company on the planet. I was planning to write an email asking for blank maps of the various kingdoms for my players to draw on. They pre-empted my request by releasing said maps last Wednesday. Wow. Get 'em here (PDF).

Sandbox Play vs. Quicksand ... Box Play

All these recent posts about sandbox play around the rpg blogging community got me thinking. The posts about sandbox gaming are pretty much all positive. My first reaction is the same - I've read and played enough indie/story games that I get (and like) what they're about, but I've really been grooving on the old school lately. It's not just about nostalgia; it's also about the raw fun that these games facilitate. Pat's been talking about running a sandbox game for a while, and I'm definitely down. I have this image of a larger than life paladin burned into the back of my brain, and I want to play him dammit! But there must be some issues with this style of play too, right?

The main issue that I worry about is that such a game won't keep my attention for too long. My chronic gaming ADD aside, sandbox play tends towards the modular - visit the wizards tower here, clear the caves of chaos there. Level up. Like Pat said, sandbox play thrives on taking one's time in long journeys across a land. In practice, this means random encounters and a slew of events unconnected to a larger arc or to the characters. Instead of enjoying wandering around the sandbox, I worry about getting mired in portions of it.

I never played Grand Theft Auto before GTA IV. I expected the best when I shelled out 60 big ones for it. But despite its popularity, I really don't like it. The car chases are fun and the city's big as hell, but I just get bored trying to explore every nook and cranny of the city. There's just so much to do that doesn't matter. I'm impressed by the scope of the world, but once my awe fades, boredom kicks in.

So, I love the idea of sandbox games, and I don't know what the ultimate solution is. But it has something to do with the GM managing to highlight plot and character and those themes that connect game sessions while still managing to bring out the glory of the scope and detail of the world. Sounds like, well, just good gaming to me.

Taking the long way home

In the last couple of days, Joshua over at Tales of the Rambling Bumblers has offered up a couple posts about sandbox-style roleplaying that bear repeating. Today's entry in particular hit on a key theme.

In Sandbox play, it’s important not to gloss over travel with “And three weeks later, you arrive at the gates of Port Autumn.” If you do that, you’re robbing the game of one of the chief features of Sandbox play, the chance to interact with all the tiny details that make up the texture of the world.

Or, to put it another way: The party doesn't move at the Speed of Plot. Rather, the plot moves at the speed of the characters. Which is something like 6 miles per hour on foot, barring injury. Heh.

West Marches via Savage Worlds?

If I ever get around to sketching out my West Marches-style sandbox fantasy game, I’ll probably run it using Savage Worlds. When it comes to crunch, Savage Worlds and D&D 3.X are about the same (despite SW’s claims to the contrary). But for my money, SW is so much more fun, what with its exploding dice and playing cards and hyper-intuitive character generation. Plus, with the $10 Explorer's Edition, it's cheap and easy to equip your group.

My enthusiasm for running a character-driven sandbox game got a big boost this weekend, when I got my hands on the Savage Worlds Fantasy Bestiary Toolkit and the free 11-page PDF preview of Goodman Games’ Points of Light. Really, that 11-page preview is about as much as I need right now; it includes a detailed hex map and several dozen three-sentence entries for various map denizens. Combine that with a handful of critters from the Bestiary and the game pretty much writes itself. Which is the point, of course: the GM shouldn’t be doing much planning. Rather, the players should be driving the game forward by looking at the vast, empty, unpopulated map and making decisions as to where to go and what to explore.

I’m thinking I could get somewhere between 6 and 10 players to make characters for this game, then I’d run a session whenever any combination of three or more of them could get together.

Anyone else tinkering with a West Marches-type game right now?