How Big is Your Sandbox? aka Player Decision Leeway

I started a discussion last night on G+, where I simply asked the question "how big is your sandbox?" I also clarified that I wasn't referring to geography.
Some great responses were posted, but no one really mined the vein I was thinking, because I wasn't very specific.

How much leeway or freedom do your players have in the sandbox?

I have recently decided to think of sandboxes as varying in size. Here is a rough breakdown:

• Infinite breadth of options
• In this type of sandbox, players are given a literal "anything goes" card. The DM either has invested a ton of time in preparation, or is (like me) relying on his ability to build on the fly.
• Players are not given any scenario or issue to consider. They are merely placed in a world, given descriptions of that world, and asked "What do you do?"
• There is no starting point or ending point for adventures in this type of world.
• Limited breadth of options
• While the DM may have a world planned (or created on the fly) that can accommodate the "infinite options" type of game, for some reason he or she has chosen to limit the PCs in some way.
• Examples of this include my recent Savage SciFi game-- I created a world, gave the PCs vast input in its creation, but set up a specific starting scenario. No goals were laid out by me, but there were a few more obvious possible outcomes of the initial scenario. Because I gave the players full freedom at every turn, though, they surprised me at every game session.
• There is a definite starting point for adventures in this world, which naturally precludes some options, but can help set up a particular style of adventure. No end point is laid out.
• Railroad with options
• I think of this as analogous to most RPG video games, like Final Fantasy. While there is freedom to explore the world, level up, pursue side quests, the DM still has a definite "win scenario" in mind (or maybe two or three scenarios.)
• I hesitate to use the term railroad for this type because it is still not a set in stone type of plot. It is probably much more flexible than the stereotypical railroad.
• You can think of this type of sandbox as having a line laid in it, showing a start AND end point.
• Railroad (aka Not a Sandbox)
• Do I really need to define this one?

NTRPGCon: An After Action Report (of Sorts)

So, NTRPGCon was this weekend, and it was legen... wait for it...
...dairy.

(Note: I have thrown out my ability to write properly this evening. I'll find it again tomorrow.)

What I played:
- 30 minutes of austinjimm's (of K&K:A) OD&D game with home brewed stout
- B1 run by Mike Badolato (one of the convention founders)
- More OD&D run by Chainsaw (of K&K:A) with more of the stout
- LotFP (Tower of the Stargazer) run by Lars Larsen (a local)
- More LotFP with Lars (Death Frost Doom) in the lobby
- EPT run by Dr. Victor Raymond
- Continued the LotFP with Lars after midnight

Breakdown by day-time..
Thursday Night
The best thing about a convention? Talking to people. Within minutes of checking in at the hotel I had run into a couple people I knew on G+ and K&K:A. We talked up a storm and had a few beers at the bar.
I was able to hang out for a bit at the K&K:Alehouse social up in a hospitality suite and roll up an MU for austinjimm's game. Jim brought a home brewed stout up from Austin that was, quite frankly, amazing. We played for a bit before I had to bail, since Mike B's B1 game started later. Mike runs a great game and we all had a blast.
When I returned to the Alehouse Social, Chainsaw was running some level 5 OD&D. We played, we talked, we drank. It was excellent.

Friday Morning
I had no games scheduled for Friday morning, but had signed up for Kyrinn's Urutsk game starting at about noon. Since Kyrinn (sadly) couldn't make it to the con at the last minute, I had free time. I met Lars Larsen the night before in Mike's B1 game, and he had said I was welcome to join his LotFP game--great choice.
Lars ran us through Tower of the Stargazer and we completely DESTROYED the module. Yes, it is a dungeon or location-limited module... but it is non-linear. We grabbed enough treasure to make level 3 without even confronting the big bad!
Naturally, we went back, and fought the Wizard. More than fought, in fact, we ended up blowing him, and his tower, to bits, narrowly escaping. Nick Mizer's MU had to Spider Climb out the top of the building and rode the roof as it collapsed down--epic.

Friday Afternoon
After lunch, Nick Mizer and I were going to put together a pickup game for one of us to run, but found Lars was willing to keep running LotFP for us! We gathered a few at the big table in the lobby and played Death Frost Doom.
Best surprise of the session? Jeff Dee walked up to the table and just said "Sure, I'll play." I hope he enjoyed it. We liked having him there, even though he was also working his table.

Friday Evening
EPT! Dr. Victor Raymond is a delightful person to talk to, and to have run EPT. Due to some people being unable to travel to the convention, we had only two players, Duke Barclay and me.
We learned a lot about Tekumel, and Professor Barker, and had a ton of fun. Duke lost three characters, but we made it out of the Jakallan underworld alive!
After we wrapped that game, at about 11:30, we rounded up the LotFP group plus a few extra, and resumed the Death Frost Doom adventure!
Let's just say we got out alive, but doomed a large part of the countryside. Woops? Maybe.

Saturday Morning
I got in bed at 1:40am, rolled out at 6:15am, and went to Buon Giorno--the best coffee shop in the metroplex. Chris Cain, Marshal Mahurin, and I enjoyed coffee and breakfast.
At 8:00am I was able to play in Matt Finch's megadungeon: Mythrus Tower. Our group ran from 9 to 11 players, depending on the time. We had several from K&K:A as well as G+ and even Dennis Sustare (creator of the original Druid class for D&D!)
We were the first group to reach the fifth level of Matt's dungeon! Shenanigans were had and PCs were turned to stone.
Tons of fun. Matt signed my S&W: Complete book (so did Bill Webb a bit later) and noted on all our character sheets that we were the first ones to reach level five!


All in all, it was a phenomenal weekend, and I wish it could have gone on forever.

The Sci Fi Game

While Houses of Stone is on hiatus and I am a bit burned out on its creative flow, I have decided to run at least one game of Savage Worlds in a sci fi setting. It'll last 5 sessions.
I already have players lined up (in excess, surprisingly) for this game but I need to iron out world details.

The plan is to have one game session for world description from me and group character creation. Savage Worlds is fairly lightweight but has more to it than OD&D or B/X, and those are the only systems I've done character creation on G+ with. At a real table, it's fairly easy to talk to three or four people at once, pass around books, notes, and sheets of paper, and so on. I'm hoping that, with good people and patience, we'll be able to create characters as a group and establish the world properly on a G+ Hangout.

Right now I'm debating and designing the world. It's not going to be fantasy in space (i.e. Star Wars), but it definitely won't be hard sci fi, either. I tend to lean a bit toward the Mass Effect style--it's not about inter-ship combat, it's about people, doing stuff, on stations, planets, and ships. Interactions and shootouts.

Today's idea is that in the late 21st century, humanity is visited by a dying race, on their last pilgrimage across the universe before evolving into non-corporeal beings. Some handful of millions of them travel in convoy/flotilla. They were visited by a race from our solar system 50,000 years before, and that is how they gained the ability to travel the stars.
I'm also thinking that not long after this visit, humans realise they need to leave Earth, and are planning for the fact that a few hundred years later they will need a planet to settle. Perhaps the players will take on the role of a party scouting the galaxy for a New Earth. Or maybe they finished scouting and have been in stasis for the journey home--arriving on Earth 200 years or more later.

The thoughts... they drown out everything else in my brain. It's a good thing.

Houses of Stone: News / Events / Rumours for 5 March

Some of the interesting news, events, and rumours floating around the village for tonight's Houses of Stone game...

- The spirit of the headman's great-grandfather has been seen wandering the village every fortnight. Some say they see him walking toward the old stone city ruins after he leaves.

- People in the Mchlanga farm valley are disappearing. Reports of giant creatures carrying them off at dawn abound, but no one can substantiate these. (See below for an "approximation" of these creatures.)

 

- One of the local witch doctors has put out a call for brave souls to test a new spell. Does not care if volunteers test on themselves or others.

- A shaman has been holed up in a cave for 100 years. The village headman will pay well if someone can get him to tell stories of the village's past.

All the World's a... Dungeon?

Disclaimer: This may be (and probably is) old news to many. Humour me and read it anyway?

I have been pondering the nature of dungeons recently. I love them. They can be an absolute blast to play in and to run, and the presence of their name in the name Dungeons & Dragons is no paltry attribution to alliteration.
Lately I have been thinking there are several elements that make a dungeon (especially the more old school type, less the modern "naturalistic" and "real" (hah) style of dungeons) so enjoyable, mysterious, and such great locations for adventure.
I think most people agree that "dungeon" in game terms can be a dungeon, a mine, ruins, a castle, etc. What I'd like to do is expand that working definition to include the entire world.

To quote Inigo Montoya, "Let me 'splain. No, there is too much. Let me sum up..."
Dungeon Key Elements:

• Sense of dread/fear/wonder
• The dungeon is out to get you
• Traps, doors not opening automatically, wandering monsters
• Exploration and mapping
• Hidden rewards / treasure
• Big bad pulling the strings

I do not see how any of those elements are NOT present in the above-ground. Obviously, there's a tradition within D&D and other RPGs of hexcrawl-adventure and such, which is much the same, but who's to say an urban adventure is not a dungeon crawl? The timing may be a bit different--it has a different beat or rhythm--but streets are corridors, buildings are rooms, and there are still treasures to be found and big bads to topple. (In fact, a city might be considered the equivalent of a megadungeon, as buildings, castles, sewers, dungeons can all be part of the city.)

Again, this is probably old news to you, but it was a sort of eureka moment for me recently and has made laying out adventures for my upcoming game way easier.

We now return you to your regularly scheduled internet.

AD&D After Action Part I

On Saturday, we started a new AD&D game. The group was a natural growth of a small monthly thing I put together by scouting for a DM online. I met up with Chris (Flambeaux) Cain and he ran a couple of OD&D sessions for me and a friend, then a session of Flashing Blades (which I wrote about a couple weeks ago.)

Our group needed to grow--we invited a couple of friends from various circles. One had only played some 3.5 and some 4e, but not very much and not for very long. The other newer player was someone I met while playing some Pathfinder--though his primary experience is in the Savage Worlds system. The original two of us playing with Chris DMing, however, have been playing for years and have experience in a broad set of rulesets.

So, we gathered, we discussed playing Chris's OD&D hybrid, but determined the structure of classes and races in AD&D would be more up the alley of most of the players. None of us had ever played a true AD&D 1e game before--one player learned on 2e and played that for years, and one player had experienced some Labyrinth Lord, but none of us had any real experience with AD&D.

Anyway, without further ado, here's an in character summary of the events. We spent about two hours making characters then something like 1.5-2 hours on this gameplay. Primus is my character, and I'm going to use this as an exercise in writing a slightly stuck up character (roleplaying that 6 Charisma and 17 Intelligence.)

Dramatis Personae:

Frank, a human ranger

Mog, a dwarf cleric

Garen, a human paladin

Primus, a human magic user

From the quill of Primus, first Mage of the West Bend order:

I found myself holed up at a keep in what seemed to be the midst of nowhere—I was drawn there by rumours of wondrous lore and the possibilities of ancient magical presences. Unfortunately, I had spent all my time until this point at the keep, trying to learn what I could by talking to those venturing into the nearby ruins, caves, and such. I made no progress for some weeks.

Today, however, my fortunes changed! Several men, and a dwarf, all of whom I had met previously around the keep, decided to make a foray into the ruins, merely a two hour trek from the keep. I hastily accepted the offer to join their party, and we wasted no time in supplying and preparing to depart this morning.

Garen—a holy warrior—negotiated with a man at arms to have him accompany us in exchange for a half-share of any spoils we would find. Next Garen found a young lad willing to help us by carrying equipment and leading a pony with supplies, oil, lanterns, and so on.

We launched forth and, as expected, reached the ruins within two hours. We were greeted by what can only be described as the walking dead. They were neither man nor corpse, and seemed intent upon finding flesh to feed upon. Apparently, we were to be the main course. My compatriots strung bows, readied slings, and loosed missiles upon these foul undead. I was even able to lob a rock at one or two, causing them to stumble. Needless to say, they did not have a feast today.

Beneath the ground the undead were scouring for scraps we found a spiral staircase, made of stone, with wide and deep steps. Treading lightly, we made our way down, passing a brass plate overhead which simply read “Store Room.” Upon entering said room, we found it to store nothing but air, and the oppressive feeling of being unwelcome. After scouring the room, we made our way out, finding a large room with paintings—lovers at play, happy scenes. The middle of the room was home to a fountain, flowing with cool water, and statues dancing in it. All of us were able to perceive that this room felt more peaceful, and calm. Though we could not determine why, there were half a dozen silver spoons in the fountain. I took one for examination at a later date, and Mog the dwarf cleric took the other five.

Before long we pressed on, eager to find the purpose of this subterranean structure. We moved on and rounded two corners before finding ourselves facing a door with four monstrous giant centipede-like creatures crawling out of it. Quickly the party backtracked, hoping to keep the fight at range, while the link boy helped me pour oil on the ground in front of us and light it, hoping to delay some of the beasts. Two of them pursued us, crawling on the walls of the passageway, and attacked the party. The link boy and I quickly moved back, behind the pony, to let the men with swords do their part.

Within moments, two of the creatures had been slain, and I breathed a sigh of relief just in time to notice that I was trapped in the corner when a door opened. Two more of the walking dead shambled out the open door, ready to tear my flesh from my bones. I slashed at one with my knife, barely wounding one of them, and the link boy landed a sound hit with a torch, igniting the undead, which ran away in flames. The other walking corpse was able to swing with its claw-like hands and drew blood from my shoulder. I was quite staggered, and didn’t see much future for myself.

Frank, the ranger, dashed up the hallway and helped us slay the last walker, whilst Mog, Garen, and the hired man at arms dispatched the last two centipedes. (I must note here that, though it only bought time, it was my own quick thinking that cast oil down and ignited it.)

Harrowed but exhilarated, we retired back to the keep, in order to prepare for our next foray into the ruins! Who knows what we may find? Will the fountain in the tranquil room prove to be some sanctuary? Are there more of such things further into this structure? What manner of foul creatures will we encounter and have to vanquish in order to uncover the secrets of this place?

I'm in a 3e State of Mind

Yes, I'm using Billy Joel lyrics. You wanna fight about it?

I have, several times, recently found myself in a particular mindset or frame of mind about things related to gaming, putting together games, and so on. In fact, I've eaten my own words recently in a G+ discussion about FLAILSNAILS because I interpreted it from what I call a "3rd edition point of view" rather than reading it without preconceptions.

Let me 'splain... I began my delve into the realms of D&D and other pen and paper games in the year 2000--I never picked up an AD&D 2e book, as my library had several shiny new copies of the 3rd Edition Player's Handbook. In fact, nearly twelve years later, I've never even played AD&D 1e or 2e, though I've played in games that borrowed some of their concepts.

I have a friend, whom I game with quite often in person, who started playing in the days of 2e, but has spent most of his time, like me, playing and GMing 3e, 3.5e, and Pathfinder. I don't think this is bad at all--in fact, both of us agree that rules systems matter very little at the table, as long as you have a core mechanic to fall back on and agree that the GM has the final say over rules decisions and tries to keep it as simple as possible.

Now, flash forward to today. I was fascinated when I first heard of the "FLAILSNAILS" concept, but since I haven't had much free time on my hands, hadn't dug into very deeply. (I've played a handful of OD&D / Swords & Wizardry games and loved them, and it's at the top of my gaming priority list to get in on a G+ Hangout game using some form of those rules.)

FLAILSNAILS is, apparently, a super simple concept: GMs advertise their games as FLAILSNAILS friendly and as long as the character being imported is compatible (in the GM's view) it can be used. Easy, right?

Not according to my frame of reference, apparently. I read it as "FLAILSNAILS is a set of guidelines by which you can create a character that can then be imported into a game and then on to another later, as long as the GM running each game is using the compatible rules system." This misinterpretation of a simple way to allow players to play more often stems from a tradition in the 3e (and even 4e) era of D&D gaming that says "Here's the master list of all splatbooks I will allow automatically. Anything not on here must be approved by me."

Oddly enough, that's not how I like to run games. I usually say "Whatever's in the core book(s) is fine; anything beyond that...  just show me your concept and we'll find something mechanically that fits." This is readily evident in the Savage Worlds game I'm getting ready to launch in a custom setting. There's no prewritten "splatbook" or "campaign setting guide" that I wanted to use so I told my players to write character concepts based on their understanding of the world and anything not covered in the core Savage Worlds book would be house-ruled in as simple a way as possible.

I love the simplicity of this type of game creation. So why oh why is it so hard for me to let go of 10+ years of the splatbook-heavy mindset?

Flashing Blades

After the summer trails away in 1623, a gentleman and a foreign noble go to war...

I recently played a session of Flashing Blades, an RPG set in 17th century France, written in 1984 by Mark Pettigrew. Here are some thoughts and reactions I had to the game. We will continue (with additional players) on February the 11th and I hope to write here about the experience.

Read on for more...

Why Didn't I Think of That?

I have a lot of moments where I say to myself "Self, why didn't you think of that?"

Using Google+ Hangouts as a way to run pen and paper RPGs is brilliant! I am very eager to give this a try.

Some bloggers have put together a site called ConstantCon to help facilitate players and GMs meeting up and setting up games. It really is like the convention game signup sheet--only constant / eternal / perpetual / awesome / never ending. You get the idea.

Check it out at the link below. Also, if you're interested in seeing what games I might end up running in this format, add me to a circle on G+ using the other link here. Please post to me (Limited, + me only) to let me know so I can add you to my gaming circle.

ConstantCon: http://constantcon.blogspot.com/

+Ian Wheat: https://plus.google.com/106423294933249271024