Campaigns

[Mordacc]

My friend is going to run his first ROS campaign and he will be GMing me in a solo game.  Hes having some trouble with adventure ideas and we were thinking of simply doing an "open-rpg", where he will make up plots on the spot based on my spiritual attributes, however there will be no actual "path" to travel and i make my own and just do whatever.  any coments on open-rpgs would be welcomed.  also, if you have any nifty campaign or adventure ideas of your own that might be good or that could be altered for a single PC, i would greatly appreciate it.

Thanks a bunch,
Mordacc

[Jake Norwood]

I'll just chime in to say that the "open RPG" approach is one of the best with TROS's SA system.

Jake

[Russell Hoyle]

I'll just chime in to say that the "open RPG" approach is one of the best with TROS's SA system.

Is there a discussion somewhere of this term? I get the general gist, but the way you two seem to be using the term suggests to me there is some sort of agreed definition...

Only asking because it intrigues me.

Rusty

[Jake Norwood]

I'm not aware of it being an established thing. I was going off his post. Anyone else?

Jake

[Mordacc]

Basically an open-rpg is a style of play where the players basically say "im gonna go there" and "im gonna kill this" and the GM tailors the adventure to what the players want.  It tends to lack the overall grand plotlines of standard campaigns but can be good for many things:

-screwing around and having a more casual game

-having a game where the players like to make the plot and the GM simply just describes the scenery and controls the enemeis

-making characters stronger and powering them up so when you play an established game they are up to par for the challenge

- if the players dont like following a set track, they can basically alter the world around them to a greater extent.

Basically, a good analogy would be that if playing a normal campaign is like single player on a computer game, an open rpg is kind of like a map editor, where the player has alot more control of interacting with the environment around him.  I hope that clears it up a bit.

[arxhon]

The map editor is a good analogy, but i would also say that the players have the ability to help write the story, rather than there being a set story line (a la many CRPGs, even Morrowind).

In some ways, it takes a lot of work off the GM's shoulders in terms of a lot of map making and prep, but the GM has to be really quick and on his toes a lot of the time.

[Mike Holmes]

Yep, this works.

Further, as it happens, I tried to get the term Open Play in officially as a term in the discussion a while back on Ilusionism (Open play being sorta the opposite of Illusionism). I think that Mordac used it in a way that's fairly common, and also intuitive. As such, I continue to use it.

The idea is, essentially, that the GM has no idea what sort of action is going to happen. The characters are just the characters, and the players direct them in any way they like. The GM responds to this by throwing whatever interesting stuff in the way. In TROS, presumably this would be stuff related to the player's SAs. Mess with the SAs enough, and interesting stuff will happen.

You don't need to pre-plot. Like Arxon said, co-opt the players efforts. This makes things more likely to be interesting to them, and is easier for the GM in general (assuming you don't mind winging details; Cut & Thrust die pool for Sir Morgan? Uh, 15).

Mike