Shasarak said something in https://www.therpgsite.com/showthread.php?41392-Why-are-so-many-fantasy-frontier-towns-tactically-indefensible&p=1112977&viewfull=1#post1112977 that tipped off something I'd been thinking about

Quote from: Shasarak;1112977Fantasy frontier towns are tactically indefensible because they only ever get attacked if the DM wants them too.

When you run a campaign in a world, particularly in a sandbox, how much of that world state do you model at once? Do you stick to updating/changing what is in the players' field of vision (or close to it), or do you update broader sections? Do you primarily use dice rolls to see what happens to the world state, or do you move things along an intentional path?

For example, let's say you have a section of a world with 4 small villages in it. The PCs are in one village right now. As a GM, would you track/create events in just the village the PCs are in (e.g. roll dice to discover that owlbears attack); all 4 villages; or this area plus more of the larger world?

Quote from: insubordinate polyhedral;1113110When you run a campaign in a world, particularly in a sandbox, how much of that world state do you model at once? Do you stick to updating/changing what is in the players' field of vision (or close to it), or do you update broader sections? Do you primarily use dice rolls to see what happens to the world state, or do you move things along an intentional path?

I follow the Lazy DM style of DMing so mostly I just update things that the PCs interact with.

But that does make me think, for those people who believe in the Simulation, it could be a result of someone who wants an ultra detailed "realistic" campaign setting.

It depends. If the PCs' actions or inactions would have ramifications for what happens in other areas I try to play that out in my head and figure out what the result might be (possibly with a random die roll or two). For example, they see an orc army marching across their path. Don't know where they are going, but they have a chance to impede them in some way. If they choose not to do so, then maybe a village they need to visit later on was raided or destroyed by the army before they get to it.

If it's something totally irrelevant or non-adjacent, like some village they've never been to is having elections or two thieves' guilds are at war, no, nothing like that happens or progresses until they encounter it.

Quote from: Joey2k;1113140It depends. If the PCs' actions or inactions would have ramifications for what happens in other areas I try to play that out in my head and figure out what the result might be (possibly with a random die roll or two). For example, they see an orc army marching across their path. Don't know where they are going, but they have a chance to impede them in some way. If they choose not to do so, then maybe a village they need to visit later on was raided or destroyed by the army before they get to it.

If it's something totally irrelevant or non-adjacent, like some village they've never been to is having elections or two thieves' guilds are at war, no, nothing like that happens or progresses until they encounter it.

I think something along these lines is what I would do. I tend to be lazy and only worry about the immediate environment the PCs are in, but yea, if they encounter a marching orc army and don't wipe it out, the orc army SHOULD do something.

One could handle it by deciding on an immediate consequence, or one could handle it by logging any significant encounter like this, and later if the PCs are in the same area, infer some consequences of that encounter continuing to ravage the countryside.

Quote from: insubordinate polyhedral;1113110Shasarak said something in https://www.therpgsite.com/showthread.php?41392-Why-are-so-many-fantasy-frontier-towns-tactically-indefensible&p=1112977&viewfull=1#post1112977 that tipped off something I'd been thinking about



When you run a campaign in a world, particularly in a sandbox, how much of that world state do you model at once? Do you stick to updating/changing what is in the players' field of vision (or close to it), or do you update broader sections? Do you primarily use dice rolls to see what happens to the world state, or do you move things along an intentional path?

For example, let's say you have a section of a world with 4 small villages in it. The PCs are in one village right now. As a GM, would you track/create events in just the village the PCs are in (e.g. roll dice to discover that owlbears attack); all 4 villages; or this area plus more of the larger world?

I normally model the localized area where initial adventures are supposed to occur. Some might stray outside of that area - so I'll model as much as I feel comfortable with (which in my case can be overboard).

I create "set pieces" - For example - The Seven Veils Inn, a tavern/inn/brothel which I populate with all the NPC's which all pertinent ones have their own motivations and goals. My setpieces always have deeper "things" going on in them. For example the Seven Veils is run by a half-elf named Malikka, of unspecified parentage, she's actually a spy for the Crown. The Seven Veils is a fully operating front for the Crown's secret police. But very very few people know the truth. So criminals mix with the wealthy, and they hobnob believing their secrets and machinations are safe. Malikka and her cohorts's jobs are to ensure that.

So I sprinkle setpieces around like monkeybars for the PC's to swing from/destroy/take over/RP in - whatever they feel like.

I draw connections between the Set Pieces as needed. it can be historical, via the NPC's, or whatever. These all become fodder for coloring the perceptions of the player. The more you know about these major locales in your own mind, the more real they are - the more your world breathes in play.

I personally do not comport the setting to the players assumptions - that is handled before we start playing. That happens when I pitch the campaign before session zero. "It's going to be a game about taking place in a location like and you're doing to do things like ) - you guys interested in playing that?" I'll take their feedback and decide what I can incorporate or not to my desires or interests.

In play - sure I'll use random tables for all the little stuff, most of the time I can do it on the fly. But if you do it right, and *you* as the GM get into the spirit of your own game, and you know the setpieces and NPC's like the back of your hand - your game will usually get off to a good start.

In between sessions - you can start fleshing out the larger surrounding areas. I generally operate taxonomically. So in your example above, if I were starting out with those 4 villages... I'd do it like this:

Villages #1-4 - NPC's, Places of Interest, Lore, Secret Lore. Connections between Villages/NPCs?
Region - NPC's, Places of Interest, Lore, Secret Lore
Kingdom (or whatever) - NPC's, Places of Interest, Lore, Secret Lore

You can endlessly add stuff and draw connections. And be *FEARLESS* about letting your PC's wreck all of that or grow it, or just inhabit it. Let the world react to your PC's actions/reactions accordingly.

I go with the assumption that the world isn't static, but does maintain a "status quo": so you're not encountering the *same* slavers when you go to pirates cove, but generally there are slavers *there* doing their nasty business. And they generally map to the stats of the pirates I keyed there.

This changes in big, slow and obvious ways (to the players). So an army on the march is something that's disruptive to their experience of the game; they hear rumors about it, and the encounter charts morph to show the presence of more troops and their influence on the countryside.

This cuts both ways; if the players start rallying armies, the world responds to that. So if you start marshaling an army or rabble-rousing in King Jerkbeard's domain, you'll have to deal with some pissed-off knights barreling down on you to "quash the seditious elements" (IE: you, dumbass).

The size of a campaign map directly corresponds to how long I want a campaign to last. One big dungeon and a border town? You're sufficiently isolated that the larger setting just will not show up and the campaign will wrap once the dungeon's plundered to my satisfaction or I get bored. Hexmap with entire kingdoms? Bunker down, this our new Saturday night thing.

I'm certainly not going to roll for stuff that couldn't possibly affect the PCs. And I'm generally only rolling for stuff they have touched/affected. Eg the Skandik-CSIO war was sparked by pc actions down in Altanis but was resolved with a couple d6 rolls.

I have a table of politics and local events that I use wherever PCs are.  If staying somewhere for extended periods, then I provide a constant background using it and whatever other inspiration comes that makes sense.  This provides both big and small picture stuff.

If going into a new area, then I'll roll up what's going on in that area.  If they leave that area then I don't continue to roll on the table for that area.  Although I do make up big-picture stuff that would circulate around a region as "news", but this is often just chosen instead of rolled on a nitty-gritty table.  I will often extend previous local work-ups into the regional news as they play out in the theater of my mind, and I consider what would have come out of the situations put together; but this is using grist for the mill more than a system - I don't really care where the grist comes from.

If PCs return to somewhere I previously worked out local happenings for, which hasn't come up since, then I'll roll up new table results, look at previous point A and the new point B, and consider how the two might be connected (if at all).

I mainly don't.  Instead, I've got NPCs and organizations with goals, and I'll extrapolate from those anything that might have a ripple effect that the PCs will feel.  For example, I've got a set of characters in the campaign that have produced quite a bit of animosity in a pirate group (and more, because the pirates are mostly a front for something nastier).  Through several past events those PCs have given the pirates the slip for now, but the pirates are definitely interested in settling some scores.  So I've been rolling to see when rumors get back to the pirates, and then determining if anything the pirates do will show up as a symptom where the characters are now.

This campaign does have a little bit of "things happen in a far location that the players probably don't know right now."  I've generated most of that by starting at a high level, randomly picking how I drill down to a lower level, and then determining what happens in that location.  Though usually when I get down to the local level, I pick something rather than generate it randomly.  Some of the areas are war-torn.  Thus random village in random region gets an "event"--Hmm, it's overrun, survivors flee, a few travel far.  What I end up with as gameable material is a few rumors and maybe a local NPCs that used to be from somewhere else.  Every now and then, something bad happens to a spot the characters have visited.

Quote from: insubordinate polyhedral;1113110Shasarak said something in https://www.therpgsite.com/showthread.php?41392-Why-are-so-many-fantasy-frontier-towns-tactically-indefensible&p=1112977&viewfull=1#post1112977 that tipped off something I'd been thinking about


When you run a campaign in a world, particularly in a sandbox, how much of that world state do you model at once? Do you stick to updating/changing what is in the players' field of vision (or close to it), or do you update broader sections? Do you primarily use dice rolls to see what happens to the world state, or do you move things along an intentional path?

For example, let's say you have a section of a world with 4 small villages in it. The PCs are in one village right now. As a GM, would you track/create events in just the village the PCs are in (e.g. roll dice to discover that owlbears attack); all 4 villages; or this area plus more of the larger world?

Well, as it pertains to the cited quote, yes, I'm making checks to see what goes on there. The 1E DMG have a section on clearing a hex to build your stronghold which includes chances for random monsters once it's cleared. Checks are few and far between, so it's not too much trouble to update the "world"--understand world =/= planet. "World" consists of anyplace the PCs have been, are likely to go in the near (or maybe not so-near) future, or any place whose goings on affect the PCs, or places PCs are visiting. That is beyond the players' field of vision--a world isn't really a world without something beyond field of vision--but again, it is not a planet, it's generally small enough an area to be manageable.

I'm a big believer in conflicts upon conflicts, mostly caused by NPCs with clashing objectives.  Thus, after each chunk of time, I review the NPCs and roll some dice to determine if their plans are moving forward, stagnant or slipping backwards. It's usually a basic D6 with 1-3 plans move ahead one step; 4-5 stymied by something; 6 plans pushed back one step.  

Also, I love oracles. Thus, I pre-plan random events for places that will happen if the PCs don't intervene. So I know that demons will eat that village in the 10th month of the year before the campaign starts. Now its a question whether the PCs figure that out before its too late.

Quote from: insubordinate polyhedral;1113110When you run a campaign in a world, particularly in a sandbox, how much of that world state do you model at once? Do you stick to updating/changing what is in the players' field of vision (or close to it), or do you update broader sections? Do you primarily use dice rolls to see what happens to the world state, or do you move things along an intentional path?

I mainly keep in my head and outline of where each region is going but only detail things when it impact the current campaign.

For example the Principality of Lenap in my Majestic Wilderlands. A handful of details existed on it starting with the fact it was a colony of the now defunct Ghinorian Empire. I knew that it was more commercially oriented than the other colonies where the Ghinorian state religion of Mitra plays a better role.

Then came a small write up for when I ran a campaign where everybody played a mage. I noted it was a place where the local groups of mages were corrupted by demons and the Order of Thoth had to purge these groups. But that was never followed up on nor did I think there was a good chance of it coming into play.

So by 1995, I had some date, and notes about mage of Lenap. In the late 1990s, I came up with the idea of the Desert Tribe being united under the god Horus which if it came into play would have effected Lenap. I also developed the idea in my head that Lenap itself was known for corruption beyond what happened to the Mages.

In 2008 I fleshed it out to what now in my Majestic Wilderlands supplement.

QuoteThe city state of Lenap was founded as one of the western colonies of the Ghinorian Empire. After the Empire's fall, a thousand years ago, Lenap became an independent Principality.  Similar to other Ghinorian realms the Church of Mitra dominates. Here it has grown corrupt, more oriented to accumulation of wealth than of souls. Since its foundation Viridistan and Lenap have been rivals for trade in the Trident Gulf and the Sea of Five Winds. Since the fall of Viridistan, the reach of Lenapian commerce has been expanded. This only adds to the problems of corruption that Lenap suffers.

To the northwest are the Desert Lands. This great expanse of wasteland is home several desert tribes. For centuries they were content to trade spices and minerals with Lenapian merchants. Recently a new cult has risen among them. A prophet named Horus has begun uniting the tribes promising paradise if the world is cleansed of the corrupt and unholy.

This region is setup where the good guys, the Lenapian, in fact are the problem. If left unsolved, these problems will leave Lenap vulnerable to the serious threat emerging from the desert.

Then in 2010 I ran a campaign that had the PCs dealing with Horus and ultimately defeating him. However they never when to Lenap just to the Desert Lands via a different route to the north.

Finally last year, a group of PC based out of Viridistan decided to journey to Lenap. So I created a short write up and adapted a Harn map. It was in the midst of running a campaign, I wasn't sure the PC would stick around so I didn't spend the time making a custom map.

So I created several things to bring Lenap forward into the present.

A king's list
A overview
A player's map of the region.
A reference map of a smaller region that the PCs were investigating
A map of the city (adapted from a city map in Harn Pottage rotated and flipped

If interested you can download from the following folder
http://www.batintheattic.com/downloads/lenap/

So that where it currently sits, everything else I ad-lib and note. I use the Keep from nBos to record the names of people and locale details I make up. Eventually there will be a version 2 that incorporate this information. I have template of what Ghinorian cities are like in my head which is a variant of the template I have about Medieval cities. Basically similar to Italian Cities in the Papal States as Ghinorian Culture is very religious i.e. the Church of Mitra.

What make Lenap unique that for the most part it only pays lip service to the church.

Finally I am sure you wondering why I went through the trouble of making a king's list i.e. the Princes of Lenap. While I have stuff written down, I keep track of what where through a palace of memory technique. Specifically I am good at remembering timelines like king's list. So to zero in a historical detail I just figure out the time period (and region) I am looking at and it comes to me. Or in the case of tabletop which folder to find the information.

As for the process of deciding what happens next for any of this. I rely a on a loose system of logical extrapolation first and random dice roll second. Because I mostly push things forward because of what PCs do or don't do, and because I often set successive campaigns in different region. It interject a degree randomness.

However at various times I have resorted to more elaborate resolutions like the time me and my two oldest players played a wargame to resolve the outcome of the City State civil war.

The Overlord is Dead. Long Live the Overlord!

I model about as large as my scope. That said, it goes from broad strokes to details as it nears the players' PCs' viewpoint. One of the better techniques is shown in old Forgotten Realms' grey box -- the Calendar. ( It is also one of the reasons I don't get the online angina about FR box set history chapters. It does the Calendar of Events for you when you place your campaign in whichever time, to be "alt historied" as play emerges.)

So, though I don't do a full clockwork world, I did have a detailed Birthright province (campaign on hiatus). The province itself had several known towns and villages, and a handful of leaders each to bring feedback to the Provincial Sovereign, my player's PC. That light sketch  for that singular province domain came out to 40+ NPCs.

Next I had the broad outlines of the fellow immediate co-Regents (because each Province is co-managed into 5 facets: military, law, faith, trade, magic), AND some broad agenda of each against its neighbors. Then I had a Calendar of Events, both Hand of God Issues and Distant Foreign Affairs. And finally I'd let Regents react to all this and my player's Regent organically, taking their opportunities as they come and readying interference and counter-interference.

However my player wanted to test it like a Paradox Game and skip yearly quarters of game time every half hour. Naturally that level of processing is impossible for humans to do real-time, and it also forwent many opportunities I was preparing. Naturally I stopped the game and explained that Birthright is not for such rapid 4X-style strat game conquests, and doing so is passing up an opportunity to play something richer in characterization.

I still do varying degrees of such preparation. I mainly do Lazy GMing for improv gaming, and if players are interested I will do the work of world building and maintenance, even to minor clockwork-interlacing. But it is more important to same page player expectations and interests with mine nowadays, as my playing time is more precious. Better to clear the air of confusion than shatter a beautiful interlocked mechanism.

Nowadays my biggest challenge is getting players up to speed on life basics, like: actions have consequences, there is no crying in baseball, and public speaking is not a fate worse than death. Because without the youngin's learning how to.do, there will be greater problems later when they must do. So I am there to give space as they experiment and learn.

Quote from: insubordinate polyhedral;1113110Shasarak said something in https://www.therpgsite.com/showthread.php?41392-Why-are-so-many-fantasy-frontier-towns-tactically-indefensible&p=1112977&viewfull=1#post1112977 that tipped off something I'd been thinking about

When you run a campaign in a world, particularly in a sandbox, how much of that world state do you model at once? Do you stick to updating/changing what is in the players' field of vision (or close to it), or do you update broader sections? Do you primarily use dice rolls to see what happens to the world state, or do you move things along an intentional path?

For example, let's say you have a section of a world with 4 small villages in it. The PCs are in one village right now. As a GM, would you track/create events in just the village the PCs are in (e.g. roll dice to discover that owlbears attack); all 4 villages; or this area plus more of the larger world?

I started thinking about this and it made me realize just how much plot affects my approach to world evolution.

Back in the day, I'm like 15 or so and all the games we run and play are EPIC in scope, ya know, with the fate of nations (or planets) up for grabs.  As I moved along and years pass, those stories started to fall away, replaced by more "personal" stories.  The scope shrank but the fun didn't.  I built my first world when I was 15 and it was geared for that, big, sprawling, epic plots where you may well be fighting gods.  My latest world has a couple of the same elements (what can I say, I like what I like) but the focus has become less macro and more personal.

As a result of all that, I tend toward having a stable(ish) area that only sees long-term change when it's part of some epic plot.  Short-term changes still happen and can be influenced by players but systemic change takes epic plot points.  For example, the ruler of a main country will not just be replaced randomly over-night.  It would require plot to do that, aka if I don't want it to happen it won't.

Then you have the less "stable" areas.  I do like to have things happen that are "random" in these remote places.  I don't have a set timeframe but just do it when I feel like it or when the players are returning to a place they haven't been in a while.  It's just a few basic things, natural disaster, famine, plague, invasion (win or lose), and unnatural disaster (magic).  I will say, that if some random event would screw-up my storyline then I veto it.

So to sum it up, in my youth, it was all about plot and really big plots to boot.  Today, it's smaller and more personal plots with a hint of random.

Quote from: Opaopajr;1113221So, though I don't do a full clockwork world, I did have a detailed Birthright province (campaign on hiatus). The province itself had several known towns and villages, and a handful of leaders each to bring feedback to the Provincial Sovereign, my player's PC. That light sketch  for that singular province domain came out to 40+ NPCs.

Next I had the broad outlines of the fellow immediate co-Regents (because each Province is co-managed into 5 facets: military, law, faith, trade, magic), AND some broad agenda of each against its neighbors. Then I had a Calendar of Events, both Hand of God Issues and Distant Foreign Affairs. And finally I'd let Regents react to all this and my player's Regent organically, taking their opportunities as they come and readying interference and counter-interference.

That seems similar to how I've treated sandboxy campaigns, though it's been a while since I've run one.

Having 5 co-regents seems like a nice grouping - but even if the structure isn't that neat, I'll generally outline 3 to 6 factions, and group events by what those factions as a whole are trying to do, rather than tracking individual characters or more detailed groups.