Quote from: gleichman;627713With rare exception, few here ever talk to me. Like you they snipe and call names.

I'm amazed at how complete the lack of curiosity is here. Even Elliot Wilen had nothing to say after I answered a direct question of his. Conversation isn't on anyone's mind it seems unless they happen to completely agree with what is being said.

And yet you keep coming here and posting (after repeated claims that you were "leaving forever").. why would that be?

If you think this place sucks, why are you here? Is it to try to intentionally disrupt the place you hate?

RPGPundit

Quote from: RPGPundit;628504If you think this place sucks, why are you here? Is it to try to intentionally disrupt the place you hate?

RPGPundit

Try reading your own board. I've answered this question many times, most recently today to One Horse Town.

Quote from: gleichman;628505Try reading your own board. I've answered this question many times, most recently today to One Horse Town.

I can summarize: it's because a few posters here insist on trying to carry on a conversation with him, despite the ample evidence that it's a complete fucking waste of time and effort.

And Rob, if you're reading this, you're the worst of the lot. I agree with you that some of what Brian has to say about gaming is interesting, but the mopey middle-schooler lashing out and self-pity makes it like a piece of paste jewelry buried in the muck of a pig sty: the searching gets you covered in shit, and in the end it's not worth the effort to find it in the first place.

Quote from: jibbajibba;627808Yup 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.

I've had the same problem. I recently started a PbP that *shouldn't* go that route. I'm trying to balance letting people explore and do whatever strikes their fancy with keeping things clicking right along. I hate railroad plots where pretty much every avenue you take leads to the same damn place, but at the same time, I do like the game to be *about* something. I've been in sandbox games where it was just one orc or goblin band after another, and there was no apparent reason for them to be where they were other than some random table die roll. It felt pretty same-y.

Our sandbox is a somewhat more modern Greyhawk with the beginnings of steam technology in some areas. I don't build out every last detail. Some of it's randomly determined; some is left to an individual player to flesh out. I do the main framework of the world and what's going on. I'm using the Mythic GM Emulator and a few bits borrowed from Burning Wheel, built on top of my streamlined AD&D2e.

So far, so good. We're averaging a shade under 6 posts a day per player across IC and OOC threads.

Quote from: Elliot Wilen;626948How have you kickstarted a campaign? I would like to have a conversation with real accounts, not hypotheticals, and focused on so-called "sandbox" or "hexcrawl" campaigns. I think it's common to say that these campaigns "take on a life of their own" once the PCs start interacting with the gameworld, generating consequences from their actions and forming relationships. But how did your campaign start--what set things in motion?

You can read exactly how I started my Yggsburgh/Eastmark 1e AD&D sandbox chatroom campaign here:http://smonsyggsburgh.blogspot.co.uk/2011/12/session-1-log.html

Basically started with the PCs, who did not know each other, about to get on a stagecoach to Yggsburgh to seek their fortune, along with a couple noblewoman, one of whom ended up marrying a PC. There was an attempted hold-up of the stage coach (the highwaymen being one of the pregen encounters in the Yggsburgh book, AIR), and we went from there.

The Eastmark map is hexed at 1 square = 1 mile, but there was not much random hexcrawling. The PCs would seek out missions from contacts, from the bounties posted at the city gaol, etc, and choose the most attractive ones.

Sandbox games (like my current Arrows of Indra campaign) always go much slower than non-sandbox.  In the last year, I think my ICONS campaign has advanced 3 game years, Albion has advanced about 10 years, and Arrows of Indra has advanced about 9 months (and that only because we skipped forward while the PCs spend time training).

RPGPundit

I've seen that comment a few times on this thread - folks point out they've played a sandbox for months, and only a few game days have passed - that seems really strange to me, and perhaps campaign specific.  There are so many things like gaining new spells, or training times (if you use them), that will cause the days and weeks to roll along.

Quote from: Beedo;628821I've seen that comment a few times on this thread - folks point out they've played a sandbox for months, and only a few game days have passed - that seems really strange to me, and perhaps campaign specific.  There are so many things like gaining new spells, or training times (if you use them), that will cause the days and weeks to roll along.

I wonder if those are in play.
 
For those who have had that problem occur (spending months or years of play for only a few days of in-game time), do you use the rules for training and leveling? How does magic item creation work in your games, if at all? I'd like to know how that works for you.

Quote from: Beedo;628821I've seen that comment a few times on this thread - folks point out they've played a sandbox for months, and only a few game days have passed - that seems really strange to me, and perhaps campaign specific.  There are so many things like gaining new spells, or training times (if you use them), that will cause the days and weeks to roll along.

Oh, my mechanics for giaing new skills is very much like that, but the pcs so often get into the groove of playing almost every minute, and I tend to be very overly cause and effect in my sandboxing, so the PCs play almost every moment.  The pcs always end up with all sorts of rivals and adversaries, that they are loathe to give even a night of a headstart.

Different games.  I just know why mine are the way they are.

Quote from: Benoist;628822For those who have had that problem occur (spending months or years of play for only a few days of in-game time), do you use the rules for training and leveling? How does magic item creation work in your games, if at all? I'd like to know how that works for you.

if they need or want to do either they have to take the time. It not like they are not advancing it is just in-game rather than thru rules mechanics. Similar to how Traveller can work without a detailed xp system. in Traveller players count MCr , patrons, or noble titles than xp.

I will also add it just happens stemming from my willingness to follow up on what they decide to do. Also my ability to handle split groups helps as player not spectators for very long. Finally what keep it going is what I call the soap opera effect. The interest people develop in characters as their lives are developed in continuing serial rather than episodes.

Quote from: Beedo;628821I've seen that comment a few times on this thread - folks point out they've played a sandbox for months, and only a few game days have passed - that seems really strange to me, and perhaps campaign specific.  There are so many things like gaining new spells, or training times (if you use them), that will cause the days and weeks to roll along.

Usually in my sandbox games this is where we speed things along; however, there are times when events in the setting interrupt the training or other such downtimes.  Its part of having a living setting.

RPGPundit

Quote from: RPGPundit;629167Usually in my sandbox games this is where we speed things along; however, there are times when events in the setting interrupt the training or other such downtimes.  Its part of having a living setting.

RPGPundit

well said.

My recent Traveller game was originally scheduled for just one session, which went well enough. The second, though, provided an example of a problem that seems fairly common.

In brief, there came a point at which the players had pretty much accomplished the objective for which they had in the first place come to Research Station Gamma. All that remained was a departure that would either (a) have been resolved quite quickly or (b) have entailed excitingly dangerous complications.

What ensued however was "mission creep." Various players came up with various further goals to pursue in the station, but the team did not settle on a clear plan.

Eventually, one player expressed -- not in character, to the other characters, but to me as GM -- his boredom with the undertaking to which the players had chosen to devote some time. He suggested that I ought to rectify this by producing "a monster."

With the liberty of a sandbox game comes the responsibility of players for choosing to spend their time in ways they find entertaining.

Many GMs have trained their players in habits that interfere with this. Their games somewhat resemble old-fashioned computer "Adventure games" (or "interactive fictions"), or "pick your path" books. The environment is basically a puzzle with a limited set of solutions, and it may be possible to get stuck with nowhere to go except already visited situations until one figures out how to unlock the "next part" of the world or "next scene" in a story.

In the human-moderated RPG equivalent, permitted deviation might risk "spoiling the game," but everything is set up to channel players along the "right" path. Following what I gather is common advice to writers of screenplays, the GM presents little or nothing not relevant to that purpose.

As a consequence, players are prone to regard anything interesting as a hook that will reel them in on a plot line -- if only they devote enough time to it.

Their (perhaps unconscious) algorithm is not working on the question of how to entertain themselves. It is trying to identify the "right thing" to do in order to consume the next package of content. They are metaphorically looking for a button to push to start a ride.

This is obviously a problem when no such device exists!

The corollary to running a sandbox is being able to improvise... all these threads are out there dangling for the players, the players pull on one and start reeling it in, hoping there's a rolled up juicy ball of adventure at the end; the referee either has to telegraph which threads will obviously lead to danger and some challenge, or be willing to improvise a bit if the hooks are bland and nondescript.

I've had players opt to engage in mind-numbing behaviors, and needed to compromise; for instance, they're in a gold-rush frontier town outside the megadungeon, and thought what the town really needed was a gambling ring.  Rather than roleplay week after week of running blackjack tables, instead of, you know, adventuring, it morphed into them developing henchmen and retainers to run the gambling ring while they continued adventuring.  I developed some abstract rules for determining their house "winnings and losings" and have thrown a few complications and opportunities their way to keep the gambling ring meaningful and relevant.

It helped to have an out-of-game conversation that the sandbox game, despite being wide open, isn't really about running a business; they don't get experience for gambling income, for instance.  So now it's just something that runs on the side, has given some of the characters depth, but doesn't interfere with the dungeoneering.