Lots of shit going on / Sandboxes

[squeen]

Scenario A leads to Scenario B, and though it can also lead to Scenario C or even Scenario D, the fact is that it still leads to Scenario B.

I don't use a lot of pre-written modules, it's true (but I do pre-write my homebrew stuff like it's a module). However, almost universally I can't say DP's statement (above) was ever true. The party decides where and how deep it wants to go.

Take B2 for example---they didn't go in every cave. Pod Caverns---they never went past the 1st level. T1/Hommlet---never went towards the Temple. They generally do some "stuff" in the dungeon...and then skee-dattle when it looks like the poop has hit-the-fan. They only go back if there is something they really want there. (They also like to return bumped-up several levels and/or with allies and clean-house.)

The Earth Temple scenario I've trying to submit for Footprints 25 played out this way too---PCs never went to 1st-level, visited 2nd-level to do something specific, went elsewhere for over a year or two, went back and finished some business with the Goblin King on the 2nd-level, figured out there was a 3rd-level, left...and then a bit later planned an exposition into the submerged 3rd (polymorphed as Merfolk). Got what they wanted from there, and then left before exploring most of that level. As DM, I wrote 80% of it in 2015 and just let is still there to be picked-at whenever the party got the itch. There are still open paths down there not explored---some written, and some to-be written (if-and-when I think they might be needed...e.g. the troll and the Night King example I once posted). This is how I am (re)writing the Temple for submission too---intended for multiple-visits/exploratory-play at a variety of levels.

That's my understanding of the Old School Play Style in a nutshell.

Lastly, I have always maintained good Adventure Design (and these forums) goes beyond the desire just to publish modules. Bryce will tell you everything written here that is not about his future Book is all rubbish. (He's right.)

Still, I am getting a whole lot of good use out of the community's collect brain. I've learned a lot. I think my DMing has improved over the last 2 years just by virtue of being able to ask questions of the seasoned DMs here what they are doing at their table. Folks like EOTB and Melan who have been majorly active in the OSR for over 20 years now are invaluable resources. Sure, I have my own goals and style (e.g. no Inevitable Ogres), but I have still picked up a lot even when we disagree. The sample of how I am writing today (over in the Illusions thread) is very different than when I started in 2013 (let alone 1988!). It's now easier FOR ME at the table, and I think a better experience for my players because I'm avoiding some common DM pitfalls. What's more, I believe they are becoming better players because of my increased adherence to the strictures of the (original) game and the things I've learned from Bryce and people like yourself. I've up my game---runs smoother, more interactive, focus on environment over plot, better resource management tracking, codifying house rules to handle DMG/PHB holes, etc. And our game's "true challenge level" (i.e. not monster HD) has increased to match the elevated real-world XP level of my players (and their characters).

(...Like Huso, I am even starting to enjoy higher/mid-level play...Well...dislike it less!...but I will always remain a stingy DM.)

Make no mistake, this job ain't easy!...but a this moment in time it feels like a win-win.

(OK, sometimes they grouse. EOTB is right about another thing---players just want Victory. )
EDIT: But it's the meaningful challenges that keeps them coming back.

 

[squeen]

...the RPG social contract...

Re-reading your post, I've not sure we are on the same page about this either.

You are right that a Contract exists (suspension-of-disbelief, at the very least), but I think you are suggestion that your definition of "well behaved players" (i.e. not meta-gamers) comply to a bit more than I demand of mine. (I think that came out in the example play.)

i.e. your Contract has more sub-clauses! ;P

A sandbox module sets a destination, regardless of player choices. If the players want to go somewhere where something interesting is happening, then they'll need to go to the destination eventually, otherwise it's all just aimless wandering.

Also disagree. I would not call that a sandbox. A sandbox just has destination(s). If players go off-map---sandbox just gets bigger.

A "sandbox module" is a bit vaguer to me. Does B2 qualify?

 

[DangerousPuhson]

The party decides where and how deep it wants to go.

Take B2 for example---they didn't go in every cave. Pod Caverns---they never went past the 1st level. T1/Hommlet---never went towards the Temple. They generally do some "stuff" in the dungeon...and then skee-dattle when it looks like the poop has hit-the-fan. They only go back if there is something they really want there. (They also like to return bumped-up several levels and/or with allies and clean-house.)

That sounds like a nightmare, TBH.

Your players honestly sound like they don't want to comply with anything that already exists in the game, and just want to faff around as imaginary people - OK fine for them, but I assure you this is not the norm I've seen or expect. We should not be catering adventure design to fringe groups of player weirdos.

You know what the best part of B2 is? THE FUCKING CAVE! 99% of KotB players went to the Caves of Chaos. Going to the caves is expected. It was not exactly wrong for Gary Gygax to have fleshed out the caverns at the expense of... well, wherever the hell your players ended up, because honestly who could blame him? If you can take a paragraph of peripheral worldbuilding and turn it into a fully-fleshed campaign, then kudos, but that's not why you bought B2, is it?

Your group sounds like they go to a bowling alley just to play in the arcade. If your players ever complain that they didn't like an adventure then smack them in the mouth for me, because that would be like writing a movie review for a film you watched backwards, upside-down, and in the wrong theatre.

No wonder you have a hard time grasping my point - all your module experience up to this point has just been players faffing around ignoring the adventure! Maybe you'd do well to add some extra clauses to your contract after all...

 

[Malrex]

Still waiting for that Earth Temple adventure....it's like the sasquatch...you hear about it, but never see it....
*whistles innocently*

"I've read the discussion and it feels like there's some "talking past each other" going on here...." -- mAcular

Yep. Welcome to the group.

I'm trying hard to stay out of this argument. It has similarities to arguments that have been on all sorts of forums for eons...

I'll make the argument that if you don't want to have the quantum ogre or whatever ogre, then you should start your game like this:

"You are in a world....go!"

"Pre-written" is practically synonymous with "pre-determined" - the DM is going to know ahead of time the consequences of the players choices because he has those consequences written out, sitting in his hands. That's what modules are. " --DP

Yep. It's not a strange thing to say. It's pre-determined that kobolds are in the cave system A of Caves of Chaos. It's predetermined that if they walk down the passage in Cave A there is a pit trap there...because its written in the module.

Do you grab Ghost Tower of Inverness and start the players out at the entrance to the tower for the evening? That's all pre-determined....is it not? HOW is it NOT?

You should all be arguing about the term 'pre-determined' and how you use that term instead of talking in circles. Because DP has a point, as does the rest of you, but you all talk in circles and aren't hearing each other.

 

[squeen]

I get your point. But that's not how we played "way back when", and that's not how I'm expecting my players to play now. Maybe that's the 5e norm today. Dunno.

...and to be crystal-clear---it's not a nightmare, it's a beautiful dream-come-true. D&D is an amazing game if you let it be. I cherish my players and the nutty things they come up with.

Also, B2 came with the Basic set, so I didn't buy it...or a whole lot of other modules after I started playing with my "great" DM. I think that was the norm before the 2e+ eras.

Instead, he inspired me to start writing.
(...and I was horrible at it....but "If at first you don't succeed..." )

 

[DangerousPuhson]

A "sandbox module" is a bit vaguer to me. Does B2 qualify?

Not B2; think more like X1 Isle of Dread, or if you prefer urban, City State of the Invincible Overlord.

To no one's surprise, Isle of Dread is going to suck if your party just decides to build a raft and float out to sea, and City-State isn't nearly as awe-inspiring when the party refuses to enter the front gates.

 

[squeen]

Yep. It's not a strange thing to say. It's pre-determined that kobolds are in the cave system A of Caves of Chaos. It's predetermined that if they walk down the passage in Cave A there is a pit trap there...because its written in the module.

Well it's about time your joined in Malrex! I've been missing you.

Unfortunately you're way off-point about "pre-determined" in this context. Object-perminance is your pre-determined.

Having Cave A swapped with Cave D by the DM because he thinks the kobold's are more interesting (or level-appropriate) is the Inevitable Ogre.

 

[DangerousPuhson]

Having Cave A swapped with Cave D by the DM because he thinks the kobold's are more interesting (or level-appropriate) is the Inevitable Ogre.

If your party didn't know which cave had kobolds and were just picking random places to enter, what exactly is the harm?

 

[squeen]

To no one's surprise, Isle of Dread is going to suck if your party just decides to build a raft and float out to sea, and City-State isn't nearly as awe-inspiring when the party refuses to enter the front gates.

DP, you are a master at obscuring points you don't like, but it doesn't really gain you anything. The difference is, of course, "a plot that can't be side stepped".

Enter City-State or B2 (player's choice), but also leave when you'd like. Live to fight another day.

Clearly, I am wasting my breath again. (Told you I wasn't too bright.)

Just label me an outlier/weirdo if that make you feel comfortable. Doesn't bother me.
(Yeesh! You can lead a horse mule to water...)

 

[squeen]

If your party didn't know which cave had kobolds and were just picking random places to enter, what exactly is the harm?

None. Do what you will. Stick with your current blueprint---nothing else to see in the Big Wide World.
OK. Moving right along...

 

[DangerousPuhson]

The difference is, of course, "a plot that can't be side stepped".

In the majority of modules, the dungeon IS the plot. If you leave the dungeon, you are essentially putting the plot on hiatus to follow some different, improvised plot. Even sandboxes have borders - those hex maps end at some point, after which the DM is left totally on his own if the players cross that threshold. In campaigns, that's generally fine - players are expected to pick away at locations in their own way... but we are not talking about campaigns. We are talking about adventures, which are but smaller segments of a campaign.

The difference is that a campaign exists persistently, shaped by player action, but an adventure which is ignored is essentially dead... sure, you can throw vestiges of the adventure into the greater campaign (Lareth doing anything beyond sitting quietly in a room, for instance), but you're not actually playing through the adventure, and so therefore are not enjoying the part of the game which was specially designed to be enjoyable (one hopes).

 

[mAcular]

There's a distinction to be made between modules and campaigns.

A campaign world, where you're basically just free to wander wherever -- it's not really a big deal if you skip out on some locations.

But if it's a module, if you decided "we're all playing Tomb of Horrors tonight," then it makes sense that the players not going to the Tomb of Horrors would be a kind of strange thing to do. In fact, most adventures of this sort automatically start you at the dungeon entrance, with you going to it being assumed and built in.

Now, if you're inside the module and you're forced to Quantum Ogre because players went left instead of right and missed all the good stuff -- that seems like a problem with the module's writing to me. Why would it be written in such a way that it's so easy to miss everything that's actually in the module?

If the players just ignore the whole dungeon it's one thing, but if they're in it and a choice can make them miss out on everything then it probably needs to be rewritten to make it so the content can still be useful somehow.

But in any case, it sounds like DP is talking about the scenario of "we're playing ToH tonight" and the players skipping it? If you have a module then from the start there's somewhere you're "supposed" to go -- the module's contents.

If you take it and just drop it into a wider campaign world where anyone can go anywhere and it's just another location, then it doesn't sound bad to me, on the other hand.

 

[Beoric]

Anyway...

Let's say you're wandering around a dungeon. As the DM, you've pre-prepared an encounter with a monster. But you haven't decided where or when the encounter will occur. All you know is that at some point while the party wanders around from room to room, you WILL have them encounter it. You'll just decide on-the-spot when that time is. So in a way, you're still preparing, but the last bit of preparation is left to be determined live (improvising). This is similar to the ogre example, no? It is not nearly as limiting though.

I suppose you could even mechanize it, and just turn it into the first random encounter they get automatically, or the second, or whatever you want it to be in the order.

If you determine that the PCs are going to have the pre-prepared encounter no matter what choices they make, then you are negating their agency and you have a Quantum Ogre. If you put a pre-prepared encounter on the list of random encounters, and it comes up because the party is pixel-bitching, then they encounter it because of the choices they have made and the players continue to have agency. I suppose, if your pre-prepared encounter is with a particularly active wandering monster, you could give it priority on the random encounter list (a monster with a right of first refusal?) and it would still be encountered because of the players' actions.

Do be clear, I'm just trying to keep the definition clear; while I have an opinion, I have no interest in continuing to discuss whether a Quantum Ogre is a good of bad thing. Make whatever decisions you want, I just think you should make those decisions consciously.

@DP of course modules define the contents of the module at the start of the module. Many modules, especially old ones, will also point out that the monsters will react to intrusions, and dungeons will restock. B2 goes on about it at length, here is an example:

TRIBAL ALLIANCES AND WARFARE: You might allow player characters to somehow become aware that there is a constant fighting going on between the goblins and hobgoblins on one side and the orcs, sometimes with gnoll allies, on the other - with the kobolds hoping to be forgotten
by all, and the bugbears picking off any stragglers who happen by. With this knowledge, they might be able to set tribes to fighting one another, and then the adventurers can take advantage of the weakened state of the feuding humanoids. Be careful to handle this whole thing properly; it is a device you may use to aid players who are few in number but with a high level of playing skill. It will make it too easy if there are many players, or if players do not actually use wits instead of force when the opportunity presents itself.

MONSTERS LEARNING FROM EXPERIENCE: Allow intelligent monsters (even those with only low intelligence) to learn from experience. If player characters use flaming oil against them, allow the monsters to use oil as soon as they can find some. If adventurers are always sneaking up on them, have the monsters set warning devices to alert them of intruders. If characters run from overwhelming numbers, have the monsters set up a ruse by causing a few to shout and make noise as if there were many coming, thus hopefully frightening off the intruders. This method of handling monsters is basic to becoming a good DM. Apply the principle wherever and whenever you have reason.

EMPTIED AREAS: When monsters are cleared out of an area, the place will be deserted for 1-4 weeks. If no further intrusion is made into the area, however, the surviving former inhabitants will return or else some other monster will move in. For instance, a thou1 might move into the minotaur’s cave complex (I.), bringing with him whatever treasure he has.

But even if you have all the monsters in stasis until the door their room is opened, the fact that they are predetermined does not in an of itself make them Quantum Ogres. They only become Quantum Ogres if it is predetermined that the party will encounter them even if the party chooses not to enter the room.

 

[DangerousPuhson]

But even if you have all the monsters in stasis until the door their room is opened, the fact that they are predetermined does not in an of itself make them Quantum Ogres.

Never said they were... we jumped off the Quantum Ogre topic a half-dozen posts back.

Wasn't this thread about sandboxes? This is all squeen's fault somehow.

 

[squeen]

This is all squeen's fault somehow.

Feels like I might have heard that before...somewhere...now, if I could only put my finger on who said it...did it rhyme with T-rex?...or was it Bronosaurous?...Mallosaurous?...

Oh well! ... Like my marbles, it's gone!

I accept the blame.