Quote from: gleichman;627745First, what would have happened if they didn't go at all?

Then those events would play out as if the character never existed. Although to be fair, something would get changed as the players would still be doing things as their character.

But if a player make a character with a background and motivations, the referee has a good rough guess as where they are going to be headed. He can then use that to come up with some rough idea as how the players actions will impact the larger events.

And if you read my NUMEROUS previous posts on the topic of running a sandbox campaign, you will know that I do a pre-game where I ask the players as a group and individual what kind of character they want to play and what they are like. I am not in the dark as to what I need to prepare for in the first few sessions.

I suppose the players is an asshole, he could be lying to me and show up at the first session and roleplay his character completely different than he how he wrote up with me. At which point after the session, I would talk to him and ask him did he decide to change his character concept? And if he says something completely dickish. Then I will probably ask him to sit out the campaign.

However I rarely run into this problem. The problem I run into more often is either the player playing his character like a maddog. Or the player goes overboard in making huge elaborate plans for their characters.

Both are a result of player realizing the freedom that they have in setting the direction of the campaign. The first think because he can do anything, he can do whatever he dame well pleases not understanding that the inhabitants of the settings have lives their own and are quite capable in taking care of themselves.

The second is just giddy with the possibilities and have to learn that they are starting at the beginning. That the key to achieving what they want is to pursue their goals in the game so that in the end they achieve their goal. Which at times is surprisingly mundane.

As Lord Vreeg points out earlier, consequences spins off consequences and for good or ill the characters have to live in the situation of their own creation. I will also point out if you read my previous posts on the topic, that it is important that referee fairly decides what the consequences are that in all likelihood that the result of any action will be a mix of both the good and the bad. That novice sandbox referee tend to focus too much on the bad ones and not enough on the good ones.

Quote from: estar;627781Then those events would play out as if the character never existed.

That question wasn't directed at you.

I do however have one that is. Your players have decided to forget about the war, and build an inn. You claim this completely took you off guard (which puts the lie to your claims of talking to the players before to make and thus being sure of what they want to do).

Will the result of that war have any chance of preventing them from building that inn? Not merely make it difficult, prevent it (or destroy it)?

If the answer is yes, your Sandbox is as railroaded as any typical game.

If the answer is no, and I expect to be so, than your plot hooks are trivial as I've previously claimed.

Quote from: gleichman;627776If they don't want the change, it's a punishment.

If they want the change, it's a reward.

If they don't care, it's insignificant.

What if you set up a situation where two different hooks both have qualitatively different rewards associated with them?

Like, say "Here are 15 places on the map you could level up by looting, pick one"?

Or equal punishment: "Here are 15 wrongs to right, any one you do not address will be addressed by someone else and we'll flip a coin to see whether it comes out well or poorly"? Pick one

Quote from: gleichman;627787That question wasn't directed at you.

I do however have one that is. Your players have decided to forget about the war, and build an inn. You claim this completely took you off guard (which puts the lie to your claims of talking to the players before to make and thus being sure of what they want to do).

Will the result of that war have any chance of preventing them from building that inn? Not merely make it difficult, prevent it (or destroy it)?

If the answer is yes, your Sandbox is as railroaded as any typical game.

If the answer is no, and I expect to be so, than your plot hooks are trivial as I've previously claimed.

Alternatively, neither, since all of your conclusions are the result of you getting high on your own farts, and have no bearing on the real world (or any imaginary world besides the one you inhabit).

Quote from: gleichman;627787That question wasn't directed at you.

I do however have one that is. Your players have decided to forget about the war, and build an inn. You claim this completely took you off guard (which puts the lie to your claims of talking to the players before to make and thus being sure of what they want to do).

The pre-game takes play prior to the start of the campaign. I said this in in previous post on sandbox campaign. However I guess  I didn't explicitly state this in my reply. However I did mention it as part of character creation. Which obviously occurs prior to the start of a campaign.

We are now twenty sessions into the campaign when the players decided to build an inn.

Quote from: gleichman;627787Will the result of that war have any chance of preventing them from building that inn? Not merely make it difficult, prevent it (or destroy it)?

So it clear there are three factions involved in the war. City-State of the Invincible Overlord(an empire), Nomar(a feudal kingdom), and the Skandians (vikings). The players are part of Nomar. In the absence of any player doing anything then the war will result in the conquest of both Nomar and the Skandians by City-State.

Quote from: gleichman;627787If the answer is yes, your Sandbox is as railroaded as any typical game.

I disagree, for several reasons. I can justify the entire course of the war as a reasonable extrapolation from the circumstances at the start of the campaign. The course of the war was played out by myself using GURPS Mass Combat and GURPS reaction rolls as a wargame.

Now one could argue "Rob you stack the deck by setting up the right initial circumstances." However whatever the merits of that arguments may be, that not applicable to the Majestic Wilderlands. Because I ran this setting for thirty years and the circumstances of Nomar, City-State, and the Skandian at the start are all the result of what various groups of players did sometimes in the last 30 years.

When I start up a new campaign in the Majestic Wilderlands, first question I put to the group is "What you guys want to do in general terms?" Everybody talks and then they tell me. This time they wanted to be in a situation like Game of Thrones.

OK there are couple of regions in the Majestic Wilderlands that fit that. I let them know what each of them are like and then they pick. They chose Nomar and decided that they will start off by all joining the same mercenary group. I said fine.

Took a couple of days and organized my Nomar notes, updated since the last campaign I ran there (about a decade ago, and 8 game years in the past). I rolled a couple of events for everybody and Nomar did well by winning a short war with Skandian that stalled out because of in-fighting among the nobles. I wrote this up in a two page player packet sent it out to everybody and asked them who would they like to work for in Nomar. They picked a southern count on the Border of City-State.

So now that was settled they each made up their individual character and I worked with them to fit into the Majestic Wilderlands. These are older gamers so they are smart enough to talk among themselves to figure out how to make a group that would hang out together.

I ran the first session, allow the novices to adjust their character as it was their first time playing GURPS. And we were off. About ten sessions in they decide they had enough of the south and one of the players was able to convince a northern lord to buy out their contract and hire them for the war against the Skandian vikings. So off to the north they go on session ten.

I wasn't totally unprepared because because during session eight it was obvious what the one player wanted to do when learned of the visit of the northern lord. I wasn't sure if he would convince the rest of the group to go along but that on him. But as a precaution I fleshed out the northern frontier with the skandians. And sure enough he was able to convince the group to go north.

And as it happened the group just found out about City-State building a road through a untracked forest that they were going to use to launch a surprise attack on the skandian vikings. But because of the player convincing them to move north, they never told their former employer abou tit. However when they met the northern lord when they arrived at the Skandian frontier they did report it to him. But by then it was too late and City-State attacked the Skandian.

And it seemed like a good thing because the players arrived just as the Northern lord was going to launch his own attack on the Skandians. The player were assigned to go on Chevauchée to mislead the skandian to where the main attack was going to fall and to burn Skandian supplies. By session 16, they learned of the whereabouts of the Skandian King. Session 17 was spent setting up a plan to lure the King into an ambush. Session 18 they executed, did a pretty good job of it, and bagged the king.

Session 19, the group decides to sell the king's ransom to the Northern Lord. One players jokes that they should use the money to buy an inn. Somehow everybody winds up liking the idea and decides to do it. They spend the rest of the evening talking about where to build it and what to build.

Session 20, they leave the keep of the northern lord and head to the capital of Nomar with a letter of recommendation. They have a few encounters along the way (randomly rolled0. Once there they successfully get the support of the ruling Prince of Nomar and get the paperwork done.

So now I am working on regional map detailing the area around where they are building the inn. Combining the general notes, some ideas of my own,and random table results to create the local details. I am pretty sure two of the player are going to go around an introduce themselves to the nearly lords and villages and I have a list of what they know which will feed back into the local details I created.

There are settlements to the north and south with local lords that have some general notes. There are orc infested mountains to the west, and there is the Plain of Cairns to the east which is a very lightly wooded region (10% to 20% tree cover) dotted with burial tombs of a past culture destroyed by the orcs to the west. The people of Nomar are a later wave of folks who pushed the orcs back to the mountains and settled the land once again.

The original timeline of events still chugs along. Until the capture of the Skandian King, the player had only a minor impact on the original events. But now the entire Skandian Kingdom is thrown into chaos. I gamed this out a couple of weeks ago and it looks like the Skandians are going to get crushed by Nomar and City-State. However events that are going to cause Nomar to split apart in civil war still haven't been changed.

And so folks know, Nomar is my pseudo-Arthur land. I established this long ago in the late 80s. It largely due to the actions of PCs that Nomar held together this long. However the way is shaking out Prince Artos wife, Gwenifer is childess and is love with Artos' best friend and ally Count Alagon. Artos heir is his nephew Mordran who is pretty much same evil bastard in the original Arthur myth.  Gwenifer and Alagon are probably going to get caught in each other arms (I roll each game month) and Nomar will be descending to factionalism. And when the Skandian war is over the different sides will likely make a go at each other if not sooner.

Once civil war ensues, City-State will step in fresh from their conquest of half of the Skandian realm.

In the middle of all this are bunch of ex-mercenaries building an inn.

Quote from: gleichman;627787If the answer is no, and I expect to be so, than your plot hooks are trivial as I've previously claimed.

Well you can other can judge what I do based on what I wrote above. Feel free to ask further questions about specific. There are a lot of details I omitted.

Again I will stress that most of the notes I have are taken from previous groups did or details I created for them. It being going so long that there are some areas that had a half dozen player groups leaving an impact.

Quote from: gleichman;627775When Iluvatar redeems Middle Earth, he destroys it. It's covered in some broken detail in "Morgoth's Ring".

I read Morgoth's Ring, however remember in the War of the Ring, Iluvatar's weapon of choice were hobbits. In the second age, only Numenor bore the brunt of his wrath, the mainland of Middle-Earth was relatively untouched.

So it seems to me that he will try a less destructive alternative when he can.

Quote from: estar;627750I envy you, something about the way I referee my campaigns makes the player want to play each and every damn day. In my current campaign, I just now got them to consent, after 16 sessions, to fast forward six days while they waited for somebody armor to get finished.

And it is not the first campaign that this happened. Although the present campaign is notable that at several point that between five characters there was stuff happening throughout all 24 hours of the game day. I could not say no because none of it unreasonable. Their collective actions meant we were lucky to get one or two game day out of a single session.

Right now I am in day 45 of the campaign after 20 sessions.

Yup i have this issue.
The Online Amber Game I ran on this site lasted 6 months and I think 2 days passed in real time.

Quote from: estar;627796I read Morgoth's Ring, however remember in the War of the Ring, Iluvatar's weapon of choice were hobbits. In the second age, only Numenor bore the brunt of his wrath, the mainland of Middle-Earth was relatively untouched.

So it seems to me that he will try a less destructive alternative when he can.

The point of Morgoth's Ring is that he can't (or won't). The world is corrupt, and must be destroyed (like the Ring of Power) and a new one rebuilt. The only question is if there would be any worthy of the rebuilt world.*



*Which actually isn't a question as Iluvatar would know how it all turns out, but I'd like to avoid a whole God and predestination debate. Better than I have written at length on the subject and their works can be consulted.

Quote from: estar;627769It is a pretty cool setting. I will never run it but I got some of the PDFs as part of one of those charity bundles and it was a good read.

I havent had an opportunity to run it but own the core book and it is one of those things I hope to get to one day. But the book itself is a good read like you say and shows how you can still have fun even if the players fail to stop an enormous, world changing threat.

Quote from: estar;627795Well you can other can judge what I do based on what I wrote above. Feel free to ask further questions about specific. There are a lot of details I omitted.

Didn't even read it, started to and it became plain that you refused to give me an answer to my question and simply dodged it. I suppose a wall of text justifying the war, indicates that the answer is yes, the war will destroy their inn.

So they'll pay for not following your plot hook. Beyond that, I don't care how you think you came to your result, in the end your Sandbox is no more Sandboxy than my own campaign.

Quote from: BedrockBrendan;627822I havent had an opportunity to run it but own the core book and it is one of those things I hope to get to one day. But the book itself is a good read like you say and shows how you can still have fun even if the players fail to stop an enormous, world changing threat.

That is if you don't really make it a world changing threat. Or not much of one.

The whole thing can off as a dodge to me, and the new one wasn't as bad as say what Jewish life would have been under a German victory in WWII. Darkness Lite as it were.

Quote from: gleichman;627825That is if you don't really make it a world changing threat. Or not much of one.

The whole thing can off as a dodge to me, and the new one wasn't as bad as say what Jewish life would have been under a German victory in WWII. Darkness Lite as it were.

That seems like a very narrow way of looking at it. World changing events can and do happen, and life continues when they do (unless your adventure focuses on a world ending event). If the conesquences of the pcs not stopping the bad guy, is he takes over and imposes his will on the world, that is still a playable setting. I think it is actually quite a bit of fun. You can make it as dark as you want. Depends on the nature of the threat.

Quote from: gleichman;627824So they'll pay for not following your plot hook. Beyond that, I don't care how you think you came to your result, in the end your Sandbox is no more Sandboxy than my own campaign.

So in essence anything the referee does that hinders the player's desire to build an inn becomes punishing the players and turns the campaign into a railroad because they are not following the "plot"?

By your logic, if I was playing Frodo and decided to build a inn in crickhollow instead of heading to Rivendell the referee is just railroading me when he has the Nazgul come after my character to take the ring?

Quote from: BedrockBrendan;627827That seems like a very narrow way of looking at it. World changing events can and do happen, and life continues when they do (unless your adventure focuses on a world ending event).

I seem to recall that Sauron's victory was (for the Free People), a world ending event. Shadow forever, and nothing but a life of slavery if there was life. Hardly a 'life continues, let's have adventures' outcome.

To be fair to Midnight, their villian wasn't Sauron and they can do as they wish. But I find the statement that it was to be a world where Sauron won laughable.

I have the books around here somewhere, one of my sons were briefly interested in the game. But even they quickly dropped it due to the D20 mechanics.

Quote from: estar;627828So in essence anything the referee does that hinders the player's desire to build an inn becomes punishing the players and turns the campaign into a railroad because they are not following the "plot"?

It's makes a lie of the claim that a Sandbox allows complete freedom. In effect they were building their inn out of the Sand and you walked over and kicked it down and told them they should have built something else.

Now mind, I would have done the exact same thing. But I wouldn't have called my campaign a Sandbox and bragged about how free my players are in what they can do.

In the end, a Sandbox can't exist. It can be a beginning, but if the concept is not abandoned, the world is effectively dead and the players are doing nothing more than some version of power tripping.

Quote from: estar;627828By your logic, if I was playing Frodo and decided to build a inn in crickhollow instead of heading to Rivendell the referee is just railroading me when he has the Nazgul come after my character to take the ring?

Middle Earth is not a Sandbox.

I personally wouldn't call what happened to our inn building Frodo a railroad, but that's actually a bit of a different subject and I'm sure there are some here would indeed call it that if I proposed doing something similar in a campaign.