Hey guys,

Some of my favorite computer games are [Day of the Tentacle], [World of Warcraft], [Warcraft 3], [Diablo/Torchlight], [Killing Floor], [Half Life 1 and Minerva for HL2], [Left 4 Dead], [DooM original], and obviously [Deathspank]. Deathspank is awesome, especially Thongs of Justice.

Of those games, besides neat stories, the good parts are the interactive parts. The aspects of the game which just involve going from point A to B to C in a set order bores me, there's no freedom or choice, there's no more interactivity than there is in turning a page. Neverwinter nights 2 and Dragonage origins have this problem- their linear and you're prodded along.

The parts that lure me in are the ones that give me a ton of freedom and a range of interesting choices mixed with huge challenge. Take original DooM for example: I can rampage those levels however I like, solve the puzzles in whatever order I like (within limits), learn the mazes, etc. In Warcraft I can develop my own strategies and I don't have some jerk constantly telling me what to do. In Half Life I can run through Black Mesa at my own pace, and in WoW there's not a single required quest- I can go wherever I want and take whichever quests I want. In Day of the Tentacle (epic game) there's dozens of puzzles and you can solve them in whatever order you like, wandering without being pushed this way or that. In Diablo or Torchlight you delve into the dungeons at your own pace, delving deeper if you want it to be harder, or keeping in shallow areas if you like; and all the quests are pretty optional with a few exceptions.

Bearing this in mind, I think a good table top RPG maximizes player freedom and provides a lot of choices that interest players. A sandbox, player-driven campaign with hooks, mystery and challenge mixed in seems to me to be an ideal gamist game design plan. However, this is HARD TO DO! You have to improv and plan a lot to manage it- further, the players might do stupid things for a while and get bored. Lastly, it's really hard to plan a story for the campaign if it's player driven without stealing the reins from time to time.

How much player freedom do you guys use in your games? How have your sandbox campaigns went? Do you have more success with more structured story-driven campaigns? I begin a campaign in the morning that will be as open and player-driven as I can manage, but it's gonna challenge me to balance the freedom and direction I want to use...

Hi Nate,

I am a computer game fanatic and I love and have played most of the games you've described. I'm currently playing Red Dead Redemption, and the open-world and sandbox aspects of the game are fantastic. However, the term "sandbox" can be problematic. It means a lot of different things to a lot of different people when describing RPG play (as opposed to video game play). Could you give us some examples from the campaign you're doing now or perhaps a campaign of yours in the past that you feel illustrates what you mean by sandbox play, or an example of when you had a difficult time structuring a story around this kind of play so we can have a better idea of what you mean?

Currently the campaign is in the introductory phase. I tried to arrange it in as open a way as I could.

There's a fame system in my game where people won't give you quests if you have too little fame. They found out about a treasure hunter in the area and want to work with him but he refuses because they're nobodies. Then they plugged the area for information so they could figure out how to become famous. They found out about a cannibal island, a slaver island, a dragon island and a few others; they got vague directions and have been roaming the seas (on a hex map) trying to find the spots- they keep finding the wrong islands including the dragon island and were nearly eaten!

I have a central island with a few important things on it, with many peripheral islands with little notes attached to them. Orcs, halflings, etc. Many represent factions with goals rather than specific quests, so that players can play these factions against each other or attack them at their leisure. Instead of prodding them towards the next objective I simply ask "what do you do now?" They're enjoying the exploration aspect so far.

To make up for players doing boring things I'm careful to add SMART goals in the form of quests- if the players fail to set and achieve their own goals the NPCs offer quests (goals) that are Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Rewarding, and Tangible.

I view gamist games as achievement simulators so this seems to work well. So far the campaign is going perfectly, though I hope they stop stumbling upon the super hard islands and find the easier low-level islands soon. I may send a few hints their way. They got lost and think they're on the slaver island when really they're on the Hydra island- it'll kill them all if they screw up.

Natespank wrote:
How much player freedom do you guys use in your games? How have your sandbox campaigns went? Do you have more success with more structured story-driven campaigns? I begin a campaign in the morning that will be as open and player-driven as I can manage, but it's gonna challenge me to balance the freedom and direction I want to use...

Later, I tried it again, and it bombed. That group didn't want to chart its own path. They wanted the guidance of a traditional, quest based game where they grabbed the plot hook and did what they they were "told." So it really seems to be a matter of taste. Subsequently, I've found the most success in this kind of game by giving the character something they want in an early, scripted scenario that establishes certain characters and conflicts. Then I turn much more control over to them. Once they are oriented in the campaign world, many more of my players seem comfortable charting their own course.

The last D&D campaign I ran was pure sandbox (I created an entire world, populated it with towns, dungeons, and quests, and set them loose in it, with an additional caravan type quest that would take them past the first four or so dungeons, each of which, conveniently enough, was the objective of sidequests offered in the first town) and honestly the players did not seem to like it that much. Basically, I noticed that 4E D&D was tabletop WoW and tried to embrace that. I think they may have preferred there to be an overarching metaplot. Actually, there was, but it was completely hidden and optional, and the hints to it that they found were pretty subtle. I think they may have liked things better if I'd started off with a main story to begin with.

My regular Shadowrun game is um...sort of in the middle. There is certainly an overarching plot. The PCs are (usually) welcome to reject any mission at the table, at which point I scrap the game I'd planned and just run a bull session of the characters doing what they'd like to do instead, perhaps with some of their Enemies and other Negative Qualities coming into play. They have yet to reject a run. Once they accept the run, on a typical game session, I like a model where HOW to do it is completely up to them, with very few hints. I design the opposition "in a vacuum" ignoring their strengths and weaknesses as best as I can. The challenges they're up against are not tailored to their characters' abilities, but to the verisimilitude of the world in question (this kind of simulationism makes sense with the general fluff and flavor of Shadowrun). They have to come up with a Mission Impossible style plan and execute it as best they can. A good plan is more important than dice luck, and every security system has some kind of weakness. To be perfectly blunt: they're pretty bad at this, especially the planning part. But I love them anyway, and everyone seems to be having a good time. PC attrition is very high and those who do survive generally only make it by the skin of their teeth. I hope that this makes it more rewarding for them. Certainly things would be easier

I have run lots of other games but most of them are semi-complete games I have designed and never released that you would not know anything about, or established games that I'm running in a way that has little or  nothing to do with their basic setting and premise (nWoD).

I have yet to run any game that was completely linear: most of my games are somewhere in the middle, leaning towards nonlinearity.

To make up for players doing boring things I'm careful to add SMART goals in the form of quests- if the players fail to set and achieve their own goals the NPCs offer quests (goals) that are Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Rewarding, and Tangible.

Hi Nate. 

You are on the right track with your sandbox idea, and the problem is that without you pushing the players, nothing happens, right?

There is a game called sorcerer by Ron Edwards which addresses exactly these issues with some stuff that could be applied to any game. 

see the sorcerer link 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sorcerer_%28role-playing_game%29

Oh, I should add - the relevant bit is Kickers and Bangs

Thanks for that rubric! It will be amazingly useful to me in the future, as my LARP is based around making sure that at every game session each PC starts with goals that are exactly that. Whether or not the mnemonic is yours, thanks for mentioning it. : )

You are on the right track with your sandbox idea, and the problem is that without you pushing the players, nothing happens, right?

Oh, I should add - the relevant bit is Kickers and Bangs

The last D&D campaign I ran was pure sandbox (I created an entire world, populated it with towns, dungeons, and quests, and set them loose in it, with an additional caravan type quest that would take them past the first four or so dungeons, each of which, conveniently enough, was the objective of sidequests offered in the first town) and honestly the players did not seem to like it that much. Basically, I noticed that 4E D&D was tabletop WoW and tried to embrace that. I think they may have preferred there to be an overarching metaplot. Actually, there was, but it was completely hidden and optional, and the hints to it that they found were pretty subtle. I think they may have liked things better if I'd started off with a main story to begin with.

Basically, I noticed that 4E D&D was tabletop WoW and tried to embrace that.

and honestly the players did not seem to like it that much

So Kickers are player written bangs that are baked into the character, I think you can look at it that way.  Presumably the player is interested in this type of character motivation because they wrote it themself.

The problem I had with World of Warcraft, and I think it's a concern for the sandbox style play you are describing is the static nature of the world.  Doing these quests does not really matter, play is just a mechanical hamster wheel to get your character levelling up.  It doesnt matter if you succeed or fail in a quest the world goes on the same.  I think thats a problem with subtle hints of side quests along the way type scenarios, they dont really captivate. 

Now if instead you make the world active, with threats that have to be beat back or the sandbox will be messed up.  Have incursions of Orcish armies that can be beaten back or they could succeed and capture a few towns where they set up occupation.  Have a wizard doing research into strange mixed montrous creations that occasionaly rampage the area.  Have goblins getting bolder and bolder about sneaking in and stealing livestock, foodstuffs.  I find that more interesting than the dungeon tourism that seems to be the standard idea of "sandbox".

The problem I had with World of Warcraft, and I think it's a concern for the sandbox style play you are describing is the static nature of the world.  Doing these quests does not really matter, play is just a mechanical hamster wheel to get your character levelling up.  It doesnt matter if you succeed or fail in a quest the world goes on the same.  I think thats a problem with subtle hints of side quests along the way type scenarios, they dont really captivate. 

The problem I had with World of Warcraft, and I think it's a concern for the sandbox style play you are describing is the static nature of the world.  Doing these quests does not really matter, play is just a mechanical hamster wheel to get your character levelling up.  It doesnt matter if you succeed or fail in a quest the world goes on the same.  I think thats a problem with subtle hints of side quests along the way type scenarios, they dont really captivate. 

I find that more interesting than the dungeon tourism that seems to be the standard idea of "sandbox".

I should add one thing: my greatest pet peeve about pre-built modules and computer game RPGs is that the player's choices don't matter.

You can choose various dialogue options, but it's revealed that the set result happens anyway. Same with various decisions- only the path might differ. I hate that so much! Neverwinter nights was AWFUL for that.

In my games I go out of my way to make player choices affect the world, at least in small ways, but still ways that affect future story/gameplay/setting.

Hi all

Natespank, I'm confused by your premise in the original post. For me, a sandbox style game is all about wanting to explore the fictional world, as if it were real - embracing the right to dream (simulationism if you will).

Gamism is about play focused primarily on stepping up to meet and overcome challenges. A sandbox style game does not, in my experience, facilitate pure challenge and step on up as well as a more focused game. 

To return to the computer game analogy take Grand Theft Auto – yes it is a sandbox game you can roam around as you please. But randomly killing cops and hookers gets tired very quickly. The main 'game' thrust are the missions, that's when you step up.

I'm currently playing in an epic sandbox RPG, using Rolemaster. It's been running for over a decade now – though we only game once or twice a year. It is hands down the best RPG I've ever played in.
The game is all about the right to dream. Our GM, Matt, has crafted his world over the years and for various different gaming groups – some of whom are running in concurrent campaigns and sometimes the actions of one group affect another – how cool is that?

The game is an exploration of character within a dynamic and credible world – what the PCs do matters, there is no pre-ordained plot, the future is unwritten. That said there is a vast depth of backstory and intrigue surrounding the setting; ten years in we're only just figuring out who the major powers are!

The point is, though we enjoy a good scrap and levelling up is always rewarding, the gamist aspects are not what makes play so compelling. If the challenge focus was ramped up then I believe the game would suffer for it.

Sandbox play is not conducive to gamism – how many sandbox boardgames are there? 

A sandbox is a toy, games (especially gamist ones) have goals.

Cheers
Joe

Nates distinction is between the GM having a cast iron plot made before hand  and making it up as he goes along on the other, and his term for the latter is 'sandbox'.

and youre right, neither has much to do with GNS.

I don't particularly subscribe to GNS (I hope that is not a bad thing to say here) but I found this interesting:

To return to the computer game analogy take Grand Theft Auto – yes it is a sandbox game you can roam around as you please. But randomly killing cops and hookers gets tired very quickly. The main 'game' thrust are the missions, that's when you step up.

I'm currently playing in an epic sandbox RPG, using Rolemaster. It's been running for over a decade now – though we only game once or twice a year. It is hands down the best RPG I've ever played in.

The game is all about the right to dream. Our GM, Matt, has crafted his world over the years and for various different gaming groups – some of whom are running in concurrent campaigns and sometimes the actions of one group affect another – how cool is that?

The game is an exploration of character within a dynamic and credible world – what the PCs do matters, there is no pre-ordained plot, the future is unwritten. That said there is a vast depth of backstory and intrigue surrounding the setting; ten years in we're only just figuring out who the major powers are!

The point is, though we enjoy a good scrap and levelling up is always rewarding, the gamist aspects are not what makes play so compelling. If the challenge focus was ramped up then I believe the game would suffer for it.

I think presenting a game world like a menu of gamist challenges works out. With my experience of grand theft auto (with it's many jumps, side missions and the ability to flip a car upside 10 feet after stealing it (I have done this...the shame!), driving insanely fast down busy streets and more), it's a menu of challenges. You could possibly just piddle about, walking in the surf, or, freakishly, stopping at red lights and driving around below top speed, I'll grant. So there are gaps between challenges where you could go all simmo, I'll grant. But really it's a menu presented in the form of a world (awesome!). Also the games mercenaries 1 and 2 were like this, as well as fallout 3 and to a degree, fallout 1 & 2. I remember in mercenaries 1 there was this enemy base that wasn't actually a set mission, but I just loved to destroy. It had killed me before, and given me even more close shaves, but I loved demolishing that thing. It was more of a menu entry I wrote myself. Along with all the other enemy bases I'd wail on...or they'd wail on me, just sometimes... >:)

However, just sandbox, by itself, like "You start in a street in some town in the game world, GO!"? It wont just somehow provide the grist of gamist play. I'll agree with stefoid that just trying to be sandbox by itself supports simulationism first and foremost. I think the gamism essay talks about expecting spontaniously generated challenge.

Maybe I should be more careful with terminology, the thread's could grow into an argument about definitions and terms. I appreciate GNS theory but I don't want to be bound by it... so I'm not trying to make a "gamist" or "simulationist" game, I'm trying to make a fun game that uses some of these ideas.

To risk confusing terms even moreso though- to address the last few posts- does anybody remember the original Legend of Zelda? Let me briefly describe it:

1- I've never seen a manual for it, so I didn't even learn the story until the end. I ended up referring to one type of enemy as "the hamburgers."
2- You begin in the middle of the screen and have no directions. There's a nearby cave and 3 ways to exit the area.
3- Your sword is in the cave- god help you if you don't explore it first because you'll be unarmed.
4- The world is hard to navigate, tis easy to get lost, and the monsters will kill you dozens of times just getting from A to B. I can't exaggerate how many times you die playing this game.
5- There's no map, and you don't have to do the dungeons in strict order, though they get way harder one after the other and most require items from previous ones. The dungeons are numbered though.
6- It's the hardest game I've ever played and beaten.

There's no story or complex setting, it's just a wide open world of set challenges for the player to explore how he or she wishes, and best of luck to them. For the first 50 deaths the game is a pain in the ass- then you start getting really good and it's one of the greatest games ever. Wide open world, do whatever you want, but it's hella-hard with extremely unreasonable enemies and puzzles- I can't convey how absurd some rooms and dungeons are. Excellent game though.

It's all about "step on up"
======================================================

Terminology aside, hopefully... how have you all structured your "open ended, player driven" campaigns? I mean in technical qualities.

1) I'm debating making a greater world with only level 1-5 enemies in it, with the 4 and 5s being rare; all the rest of the challenges will occur in optional quests or dungeons or the like. That way there's no invincible barrier preventing the players from travelling where they like. Zelda does this.

2) The alternative is a world with randomly distributed difficulty areas, which I accidentally did this time- there's one hard area on the map and the players bee-lined to it by bad luck. It's bad for the players to hit a wall of difficulty (they can't possibly kill the stuff here) so early without having more chances to hook into the setting.

3) Is the DM's role primarily to develop an intriguing setting with many nuances? Could you tell us more about your 'sandbox' campaign Joe J Prince?

4) Is a DM attempt to weave stories an infringement upon player freedom and enjoyability? Should storys be left to the players and NPCs, perhaps like Sorcerer's... I forget the term, you use a mystery novel or something to create a SITUATION and then turn the players loose, using bangs and such to keep it rolling.

5) Is it best to arrange difficulty by geography- for example, the level 6-9 stuff is in region X? Or is it best to put it everywhere?

6) What's the best ways to engage the players if they're new to this?

I play again Sunday, I'll post about how it goes on Monday. Have a good weekend!

think presenting a game world like a menu of gamist challenges works out.

Does help to have "quests" and such to take over between them though.

Huh? Quests are another entry on the gamist menu, rather than between gamist menu entries? Quests add to the variety of the menu. Or atleast I'm describing how I look at it. Perhaps it'll seem that way for you too now I describe it, or do you mean something else?

I think I agree with you on that! In GTA the missions were like an overall spine, but the shit players would get up to provided the meat. I used the missions exactly as you say, I'd have enough of doing whatever, or couldn't think of anything, then I'd think "I'll knock off a bit of the main mission arc!". Usually after going through the rigid structure of the mission, I'd be keen to get to more freeform trouble making and avoiding.

Something I especially liked about GTA 3 was the optional missions- the ones I accidentally found while I wandered the city.

I ran my weekly game. I'll summarize it in "quotes" format, and analyze it below. Play reports are pretty handy for learning about gameplay styles.

We have 3 players and 1 DM- to the dismay of some of our friends we prefer that group size. The region is mostly water: the adventure areas are typically islands and the party has a crappy sailing ship. In the previous game the party had discovered the adult blue dragon's island and the lizardman's island, thinking they were the slaver's island from rumors back in town. At the end of the session they'd lost their first character to drakes and the dragon had forced them to agree to bring monthly food sacrifices. Them having mixed up the islands was a nice side effect of vague directions (earned through streetwise) combined with player mapping (on hexes)- I'm gonna use it all the time now.

The game began back in town at "The Rusty Aye" tavern where the party recruited 2 new members due to Bartok's death (he's a ghost and haunts/pilots their ship now) and one character remake- I encourage character remakes for the first few levels so they get one they want to stick with. They recruited a crazy shifter paladin and a gnomish street magician and, still believing it was the slaver's island, returned to the lizardman island to actually find the slavers.

They raided a rat-infested cave network and discovered a rogue who the rats were eating. They bandaged him up and won his trust- he told them why he was on the island. A princess from the West had shipwrecked nearby and the lizardmen had captured her. The rogue was part of a group of adventurers whom the dragon had attacked- the dragon demanded that he capture this princess and feed her to him in exchange for his and his friends' lives. He revealed that he'd died many times on this quest, but because he had earned entry into the "cult of the Parrot" he was able to respawn- he showed them the tattoo. The players asked how to join and he said that it was full- you could only get into it by replacing a current member. I decided to make the respawn mechanic a little exclusive- they're determined to get in now, next weeks session they will investigate the cult.

For foreshadowing, inside the rat cave were various dead men wearing matching tabards.

The rogue said the princess was in the lizardman village. "Are they cannibal or slaver lizardmen? I think we're on the wrong island..."

The party circled the island to find the village; they rolled some knowledge checks and discovered that lizardmen don't speak common so only the paladin could communicate with them. They also discovered that they frequently trade with others, though not if they're a raider group. The PCs decided to try negotiation and walked into the village to speak to their leader, since they'd learned the lizardfolk are hierarchical. All this stuff is in the Monster Manual and I was unaware of it until it popped up- spontaneously incorporating it greatly spiced the interactions up.

The paladin marched into town and searched out their religious leader. Since the princess spoke common and the lizardfolk spoke draconic, they'd actually failed to communicate with her. The chieftain said they planned to ransom her off and the paladin offered his services as a translator. The chieftain accepted the offer and, long story short, the princess came from a kingdom that had sunk under the ocean except for the highlands. She had fled, and was essentially heir to a wasteland. She signed a contract in blood giving over her kingdom in exchange for her freedom. The lizardfolk, by contrast, felt that an underwater kingdom was ideal- the leader renamed himself to King Grimscale (or something, my notes are elsewhere), and he began summoning the other lizardfolk tribes for an eventual mass exodus which will add a new faction later in the campaign when they travel to this kingdom.

With the princess in tow, they decided to save her instead of feed her to the dragon; they tied up the rogue and went to town where they planned to keep her at the tavern in disguise as a serving wench. The rogue broke free and told the story to the barkeep though and he refused to accept the princess because it might summon the dragon's wrath. The party left town and went to the dragon island; they gave the princess a haircut and boys clothes, and then badly disfigured the rogue, put him in a dress, and spent hundreds of gold disguising him as the princess. I figured that most humans look alike to the dragon, and since technically the princess had given up her claim upon her homeland the dragon couldn't use magic to tell if she was the princess anyway- he'd have to rely on memory, clothes, presentation, etc. They cut the rogue's tattoo off to prevent his respawn and fed him to the dragon, who rewarded them with magic plate armor and an optional quest to capture an orc bloodrager from a far off island and feed it to him.

The party set sail for the lizardman island again; the princess revealed that her sunken ship had a lot of treasure aboard, but they couldn't find it- it was too far underwater. She mentioned that she had retainers aboard who may have survived, so they dropped her off at the tavern (promising potential nobility to the dwarf barkeep in exchange for his hiding her, which is plausible) and returned to the lizardman island to search for retainers. The ended up in a dungeon where somebody was conducting experiments on zombies- a story/setting issue I'm introducing. We ended the game after they cleared the first floor.

We'd played from 3-9pm, 6 hours total, and only wrapped it up because our wizard had to study for her new job in the morning- she's a "professional fundraiser" as of tomorrow.

Nate (just as a side question, is that your actual name?) I'm looking back at your first post

Some of my favorite computer games are [Day of the Tentacle], [World of Warcraft], [Warcraft 3], [Diablo/Torchlight], [Killing Floor], [Half Life 1 and Minerva for HL2], [Left 4 Dead], [DooM original], and obviously [Deathspank].

Actually, Nate, Callan makes a good point.

Let me riff on it. The difference between, for instance, Half Life 2 and, say, the single player campaign of any of the last three Call of Duty games isn't actually one of linearity. Both games are linear. The difference is that HL2 has a SLOWER PACE that allows for MORE EXPLORATION.

Better examples of actually, truly non-linear video games are Fallout, The Elder Scrolls, and Grand Theft Auto.

My point was about the presence or absence of some overall objective - in diablo and torchlight there's a big badguy at the end who needs splatting. In warcraft RTS there's beat the other army. In half life there's an alien invasion to fend off. Doom, a demonic invasion to fend off. Left for dead, gotta survive man (I haven't played it, just guessing), etc. In other words, they are pretty much like the player of Thunder says - they hand you a goal to complete. Perhaps you try for a bunch of sub goals, but your handed the main goal - if you don't like the main goal, don't play the game at all.

Nate, you said you liked these games, but does your sandbox campaign share what they all pretty much have in common - a main goal that is set by the game itself, not the players?

Nate (just as a side question, is that your actual name?) I'm looking back at your first post

I know a few of those and they all, upfront, give some overall objective (well, perhaps not world of warcraft...). Does your campaign share that quality that all those games you like had in common, as in some overall objective that's stated at the start?

I think it's partially a matter of the game requiring

1) Unity
2) Direction
3) Because we're social animals, I think external goals and approval is important. I can't fully explain why in only a few words though- maybe later!

Gnight!

There is an interesting CRPG that is truly sandbox and has no overall goal, and so its an interesting comparator for this discussion.  Warband (previously Mount & Blade) has no plot of any kind; the nearest that there is to this is that you might try to make yourself king.  The main draw is entirely the gameplay itself, which is unique in several respects - proper mounted combat, developing your own mini-army, the eponymous warband, and fighting battles and sieges featuring large numbers of combatants.  It also has dynamic factions whose fortunes wax and wane.

Now, these features certainly are enough to keep players engaged for a long time.  This is pure challenge for its own sake (and of course the uniqueness value).  But there is ultimately a question that all these games pose, including MMO's, which is, what really is the point of spending all this time making imaginary money?

The quest/pseudo-story structure provides a suitable answer to this almost "existential" question.  It endows action with meaning beyond merely repeating the same actions over again for their own sake.  If those actions are entertaining in themselves, you can do that for a long time, but ultimately there's a certain hollowness to it all. When there is a main quest line, and engagement with the sandox environment becomes a form of preperation for the main event, all that activity is endowed with a greater significance.

The quest/pseudo-story structure provides a suitable answer to this almost "existential" question.  It endows action with meaning beyond merely repeating the same actions over again for their own sake.  If those actions are entertaining in themselves, you can do that for a long time, but ultimately there's a certain hollowness to it all. When there is a main quest line, and engagement with the sandox environment becomes a form of preperation for the main event, all that activity is endowed with a greater significance.

Nate, I think your avoiding just deciding the objective, like "You must kill diablo himself!", which is easy enough to do.

I think you've shown some interest in what the characters would choose to overall do before, with your example of the character who started building an empire in one of your games. Have you considered whether you like to see how characters act in various situations?

Nate, I think your avoiding just deciding the objective, like "You must kill diablo himself!", which is easy enough to do.

I think you've shown some interest in what the characters would choose to overall do before, with your example of the character who started building an empire in one of your games. Have you considered whether you like to see how characters act in various situations?

Nate, I think your avoiding just deciding the objective

Are you suggesting a narrativist bent or something?

On a tangent:

In my experience, players like certain things in their games. I can't say this list is comprehensive but I think these are crucial:

The players must be:
Stimulated
Challenged
Important and doing important things
Curious
Badass
Respected and acclaimed
Free

and they must care about what's going on.

This list is in NO WAY exhaustive. Regardless, what does this mean for "sandbox" games?

Player Importance, Player Driven Games and Shared Authorship

As I said, I think the players have to feel their characters are important or special in some way. Few RPGs are about Joe the mundane who works at a factory his whole life, who retires and spawns a legacy of factory workers who fill middle management positions in various fields, never leaving the town they were born in. They also crucially have to feel that their actions, mission or project is important.

A player can always say that they matter and that their actions are important. For most people though they're less able to convince themselves than others are able to convince them. They doubt themselves- and even if they're self-sure, people are still social animals. We learn socially. Typically we're more sure of something if it's believed by masses of extremely-certain reputable people. Especially if these people are leader figures.

What this means for game design is that player-driven games are inherently tricky- they'll certainly repulse some people. It's like what contracycle says: after a while the actions themselves, the PCs and their activities, take on a degree of hollowness.

As a design issue I think that everyone's right- a game can't normally be entirely player-driven. The DM has to provide some sort of end goal for the campaign- an ending and ways for the players to pursue this end.

This makes sense in a few ways: I'd argue that the DM is absolutely the group's leader, both in terms of rules and in terms of most social contracts. He can create an entire world where certain areas and things have great significance, and he can create a mass of reputable people who will assign acclaim and significance to the PCs and their quests. To build a campaign goal the PCs may see this as a "extremely important, big goal" and it will not only unify the entire campaign but will validate the PCs investment in the game. Success ought also to be doubtful- that way it's a challenge ;)

I'm going to insert a heroic goal, a paragon goal, and an epic goal, and break my game into 3 distinct campaigns merely with the same characters. Thus, the "end goal" of the heroic campaign can be achieved at around level 10 +/-2. I'll decide on the specifics in a day or two- probably a level 15 dragon at level 10 or so.

As to the player-driven aspect of the game- I need to dilute it until it's at a level where the PCs truly thrive on their choices and goals. However, I have a devious workaround as well: I can reward player initiatives and tangents by bestowing the players with more importance from the world. At first their actions might be arbitrary and slightly bored but they cause ripples and gradually get caught up in some important stuff- everything keeps getting more mixed up and dangerous. I'd like to use this approach in parallel to the DM-provided campaign goal method.

I'd love criticism.

I forgot! About shared authorship and man as a social creature.

(btw, I mean "man" as genderless; our language sucks, i'm just defaulting to the male pronoun)

Since importance is most strongly assigned by those outside the player, I was thinking about how shared authorship works. In my games I absolutely encourage my characters to come up with ideas and run with them:

"My grandfather was a duke, a lycanthrope." -the paladin says. I respond by making the princess familiar with him and his family's history- the player just created a branch of nobility in the land that I'll incorporate.

I reserve the final say though- I refuse a lot of ideas too.

What I'm thinking is that, since self-importance is relatively weak, shared authorship may weaken the game in ways. I think the other players can riff off another player's ideas like magic, but to that player he may feel less stimulated than by ideas coming from outside himself.

I'd like to continue to use shared authorship, but I think I'll tone it down a bit. Ironically, denying the players their every wish may increase their enjoyment.

I apologize if this is off topic but I discovered this last night: a remake of the original Legend of Zelda plus custom modules for PC.

http://www.zeldaclassic.com/what.php

The NES version is slightly better- faster projectiles, better controls, slightly harder- but as long as I'm talking about the game so much this way I can show you something awesome.

ahem, sorry.

A lot of more recent games have firmly rejected your model of the GM as the necessary "leader" of the group.  What you are describing is not an automatic or necessary structure, it is just one way or arranging authority wqith the game.

Take for example a game that is still pretty orthodox in methods, like Rune.  In this case the GM is a rotating chair in which players take turns; whats more, when GMing a player gets points for constructing appropriate challanges, and these points can then be plowed back into their character when the hand the GMship on to someone else.  so in the bcase of each adventure, there is still a GM in the form of there being an admionistrator, an opponent of sorts, and a guiding hand, but there is no GM in the sense of a singular influential personality.

The GM is really just another player.  They may have a different set of executive powers, as it were, to those held by the "regular" players; but the various components of what the GM is empowered to do can be split up an distributed among several people.  And the existance of a unifying goal is not actually dependent on the existence of the GM, or indeed the GM's individual and personal inspiration.

Unifying goals can actually be rules-based and programmatic.

In my experience it's up to the DM to organize the games and ensure participation; lay down ground rules for play; keep things on track, and, well, design the adventures. For me it's been a leadership role. The DMs I know who don't do the organizing quickly lose their players; those who don't keep things on track lose their players to smirnoff; those without ground rules lead to some real chaos. It'd be interesting to play without a GM leader role.

Honestly, in my experience the role of DM is primarily as roleplay group leader. You've shocked me! I wonder what those groups are like! :D

the existance of a unifying goal is not actually dependent on the existence of the GM, or indeed the GM's individual and personal inspiration.

Unifying goals can actually be rules-based and programmatic.

Well, it's worth remembering that you have played without a GM already. The zelda example and the other games.

Also I think in those games you can just lead yourself, and you'll do fine. You don't need someone else to lead you.

This might apply to my history as well, but heres a hypothesis: if you take up the leadership position, then players will cease leading themselves.

This is further exacerbated by the fact that traditional RPG designs have shit procedure design - someone can end up doing shit at the table, mechanics wise, no one else previously agreed to (as a contrast, that can't happen in chess - you know everything that can happen, mechanically). The traditional example of this is where some player goes to backstab another player, because the rules don't preclude it. Then the other players bitch about it and this player who was leading himself gives up leading himself, cause he doesn't know when someones going to crack the shits the next time he decides to actually follow his own lead. So he gives up. I've done that - I just sit there, waiting for my cue for what I do get to choose that's just fine with everybody (apparently). If I get a cue at all. Even then I've sometimes been told X worked really hard on it - like I'm supposed to start bouncing around excited about doing nothing and waiting while the other five players pretty much do everything which seems fine to do.

It's a narrativist example, but Ron gave a story once where a player was required to give some sort of background for his character, but kind of tried to shirk it onto the GM and say whatever the GM wants. He'd given up on leading himself (and given the standard RPG culture/texts, as noted above, I can understand that). So the GM politely said no worries, you don't need to turn up to the game.

I know that goes against your idea of "Must retain players at all costs!" - it certainly goes against mine. But apparently the guy calls up the GM latter on, having put alot of effort into that background and started leading himself.

Recently I've been mulling over RPG's that can be played true solo (one person), or with more, simply because A: That's how zelda worked and B: it gets rid of this bullshit. There was even a competition for solitare RPG's on another site recently - I should have entered, but I just crashed on that opportunity.

Also I think in those games you can just lead yourself, and you'll do fine. You don't need someone else to lead you.

This might apply to my history as well, but heres a hypothesis: if you take up the leadership position, then players will cease leading themselves.

May I ask what people's experiences with player-mapping is? I've taken a board-game style approach: if they're in a hex, they're in the middle of it and they can travel to the center of another hex in 1 hour. Grossly simplified, but it made player-mapping practical using hexes.

As for in dungeons- I can't imagine how this would be practical, but I'd love to be able to do it. It's another way to put the game in the player's hands, making him responsible for what happens to him.

Nate, to genuinely do it, then I think every mechanical action a player takes either takes them mechanically closer to the end, or mechanically closer to the start. Imagine 1000 is the end and you start at zero, and each mechanical action you take increases your number up or down (possibly back to zero). If you think about it, that's how zelda was - every movement got you closer to something, either that gets you nearer to the end, or sets you back/further away from it.

Mollases and murk. What happens in roleplay, I think, and makes people cease leading themselves, is that play ends up just alot of talk. "I go to the tavern" "Okay, you go to the tavern, it's half full". Did going to the tavern get you closer to the final victory? Or did it send you further away? Or are we just talk, talk talking and have ceased to go forward or backward at all? Are we wading through molasses or stumbling blind in murk, not getting toward either direction? Hell, even if we roll dice, did a pass get us closer (or even further away)? In traditional design even dice rolls aren't connected to the win/lose track/even the dice have no traction.

Now to me, that first paragraph is the genuine way to do it. The non genuine way is that players already were self leaders, they talk fiction about what their character 'does' and they think and feel they are getting somewhere. And the GM humours this feeling, unless it gets too big when they aren't that close to the GM's decided end, in which case he swats down their self leading with something, but not too much, don't want to extinguish it. To me, it's pretty illusionist. And I mean illusionist whether you wanted it to be or not. I've run games that way without wanting to be illusionist - and that west marches would fall into this as well, barring it having some overall mechanical spine like in the first paragraph and traveling on it on every single mechanical action the players take.

Even if you wanted to take up the illusionist option, if your players aren't self leaders, you can't. They are disillusioned! They have given up the belief they can decide their own destiny - and rightly so, in an illusionist campaign.

In a genuine win/lose track - it might become apparent to them that their destiny is back in their hands. Maybe. Or maybe they are burned out on the idea forever and just come for social reasons.

And finally, the more you really want the PC's to pursue their own goals, probably the more your drifting toward narrativist inclinations. If it's a gamist game, they are NEVER going to genuinely follow their characters own goals - it is always going to be contaminated with the pursuit of the final win of this real life game. If contaminated PC goals aren't good enough for you, then you'll just have to go full on narrativism. If contaminated PC goals is okay, then I've given my suggestions above :)

Nate, to genuinely do it, then I think every mechanical action a player takes either takes them mechanically closer to the end, or mechanically closer to the start. Imagine 1000 is the end and you start at zero, and each mechanical action you take increases your number up or down (possibly back to zero). If you think about it, that's how zelda was - every movement got you closer to something, either that gets you nearer to the end, or sets you back/further away from it.

Mollases and murk. What happens in roleplay, I think, and makes people cease leading themselves, is that play ends up just alot of talk. "I go to the tavern" "Okay, you go to the tavern, it's half full". Did going to the tavern get you closer to the final victory? Or did it send you further away? Or are we just talk, talk talking and have ceased to go forward or backward at all? Are we wading through molasses or stumbling blind in murk, not getting toward either direction? Hell, even if we roll dice, did a pass get us closer (or even further away)? In traditional design even dice rolls aren't connected to the win/lose track/even the dice have no traction.

ow to me, that first paragraph is the genuine way to do it. The non genuine way is that players already were self leaders, they talk fiction about what their character 'does' and they think and feel they are getting somewhere. And the GM humours this feeling, unless it gets too big when they aren't that close to the GM's decided end, in which case he swats down their self leading with something, but not too much, don't want to extinguish it. To me, it's pretty illusionist. And I mean illusionist whether you wanted it to be or not. I've run games that way without wanting to be illusionist - and that west marches would fall into this as well, barring it having some overall mechanical spine like in the first paragraph and traveling on it on every single mechanical action the players take.

If it's a gamist game, they are NEVER going to genuinely follow their characters own goals

In a genuine win/lose track - it might become apparent to them that their destiny is back in their hands.

And finally, the more you really want the PC's to pursue their own goals, probably the more your drifting toward narrativist inclinations. If it's a gamist game, they are NEVER going to genuinely follow their characters own goals - it is always going to be contaminated with the pursuit of the final win of this real life game. If contaminated PC goals aren't good enough for you, then you'll just have to go full on narrativism. If contaminated PC goals is okay, then I've given my suggestions above :)

Natespank wrote:
In my experience it's up to the DM to organize the games and ensure participation; lay down ground rules for play; keep things on track, and, well, design the adventures. For me it's been a leadership role. The DMs I know who don't do the organizing quickly lose their players; those who don't keep things on track lose their players to smirnoff; those without ground rules lead to some real chaos. It'd be interesting to play without a GM leader role.

I'm afraid that's a little vague. Could you clarify and use an example?

The molasses situation even arises in chess, when neither player makes useful moves for a while. It never lasts forever, but can kill a game. Molasses is sort of where DM quests come in- when the players are doing "stupid" things you offer them something better to do.

What if you make it painfully obvious that a useless action IS useless?

in which case he swats down their self leading with something, but not too much, don't want to extinguish it.

I disagree with dividing gamism out of sim/narr. You can make a situation where the game IS fulfilling the character's goal; or where the game IS playing as competitive adventurers. You can combine them a lot, imho. You still get incoherent games- D&D early editions, Rifts, omg!- but you CAN combine them.

I feel like this precludes shared authorship with the players. I think shared authorship in a gamist or sim game might be a bad thing to an extent- it pollutes the world in a way. I mean, they can endlessly enrich the world- but then it ceases to be an "external" challenge for them to overcome and react to.

However, I think we can make new designs that ensure that we are mechanically headed toward a result. We can work it out here.

Games like, say, My Life With Master are pretty tightly framed in the way they create a particular situation, and have them play out along certain patterns,  In this game the characters are all the minions of an sort of villainous overlord figure and have to resolve their own identity and relationship with the Master.  This doesn't mean identical play in every instance, of course, but the direction of play is implicit in the design itself.  It's certainly not the conventional sort of RPG which has a world, some loosely attached system, and then says "go figure out what to do to and how to do it yourself". 

On sunday I ran a game for 3 other players that lasted nine hours. Let me try to summarize the interesting points:

1. The Blue Dragon.

Earlier in the campaign the party sailed to what they thought was the slaver's island. Instead they found a rocky island with an adult blue dragon who tried to devour them. Somehow, while the level 1 party fled, the warden rolled a crit on a shield slam attack and backhanded the devil out of the sky, and caused it to tumble down part of the mountainside. Embarrassed, the dragon contented itself to blackmail the party, demanding periodic sacrifices in exchange for their safety.

The paladin outright dedicated himself to murder this dragon- a player-set goal. At the moment it's his major campaign goal. His current plan is to outrageously poison a sacrifice to the dragon- either let the poison kill it or kill it after the poison weakens it. The party's hunted down an orc bloodrager and now they're after the halfling pirates because rumor has it they can get poison. This quest drives him pretty well- it's exactly how the dragon was supposed to affect the players.

2. Resurrection mechanic.

One PC aims to be a god hunter. After the parrot cult hinted that the Great Parrot was divine he immediately dedicated himself to somehow murder it. Another player-set goal. He's highly dedicated to it. I'm pretty happy about it, though...

This thwarts my resurrection mechanic, but I have a new idea. Since a previous character's come back as a ghost and keeps persuading new dead people to join him as ghosts, I'm making this ghost into an NPC who will rescue the PCs in the case of a TPK. He'll probably just recover their heads and some basic items/gold- the party would have to sometimes recover their bodies and gear afterwards (raise dead only requires a part of the corpse). I can assign the ghost priorities (to build a ghost empire/army), and do a lot with this.

There needs to be a failure mechanic that allows combat failure- I hate dumbing down encounters to prevent TPKs. Next big fight, someone's gonna die again.

3. While they sailed around seeking the halfling's island (the 'Ire), they found a surviving retainer of the princess. Reunited, they stated that they needed 20 additional retainers returned to the princess- living or dead. They intend to raise the dead ones and become a dependable force again. Perhaps undo the harm the princess did with her contract and the lizardmen.

This is the DM-set-goal that will unite this section of the campaign. After this they'll add a massive new area to the campaign.

At this point, NPCs have given them about a half-dozen or more quests, though the bulk of the adventuring is strictly  player driven- there was never any problem of not knowing what to do. Every time there was slack they rapidly defaulted to a DM quest, or worked on a previous uncompleted, multi-part quest. These DM quests are sort of the thing the PCs tackle when their own plans get low on steam. All the PCs but one has major goals now.

4. Thwarting the PCs. There's a bottom level of a dungeon they explored that's full of water. They can't breath underwater and it's infested with ghoul lizardmen. They're actively seeking out a way to clear that level.

The dragon tried to eat them- they're dedicated to killing it now. Good luck...

There's missing corpses/retinue members that the PCs can't find. They're looking everywhere and getting creative.

The barkeep refuses to offer the PCs quests because they lack fame. He says they're nobodies. They hired a bard to tell their tale ;D They're building up fame.

They never know what island they're on- it's constant guesswork. They've taken to kidnapping NPCs and forcing them to identify islands and navigate for them- a good thing!

In short, by thwarting the PCs I'm making them dig in a bit and invest in the campaign. It's actually working! yay!

5. Few areas/monsters exist in my campaign in isolation. They're all part of factions and subfactions. Every action the PCs make stirs up the pot a little more, they're involved in a balancing act. This sort of acts as automatic plot tension over time without needing to intervene in the plot.

6. I decided to give out random treasure parcels. Since unwanted magic items sell for 1/5 of the original price, I'm giving out 2-3x the number of parcels per level. The net effect is that the PC's actions are more often rewarded, and it adds a suspense/gambling aspect to the game- "what will we get this time? Hope it's a bow this time..." I can more frequently reward desirable actions- like goal setting and cleverness- this way. Also, they get to use a variety of items they wouldn't normally experiment with.

By default in 4e, you're supposed to basically get the PCs to hand you a wish list and give them that stuff. Weak.

So, nine hours of playing. I ended it when I started to run out of material for that region of the map. Next session's gonna rock.

I think this style of game requires a few "training" sessions and, like you guys say, a DM goal of the 0-1000 sort. I'm going to encourage the last player to set some goals for her character, and I'm really optimistic about the next few games.

Plans are to tweak a few mechanics and create a more concrete world that I won't arbitrarily alter to accommodate PC ideas- cut out part of the shared authorship insofar as challenge and setting go, while keeping parts of it that help with story and characters.

I found a great link btw, credit to somebody in the balance thread:

http://angrydm.com/2010/08/schrodinger-chekhov-samus/6/