When I started this campaign for my players I told them that
even though they are on a long quest it is not one big rail. Look at it like Video games like Skyrim or
Fallout or even Grand Theft Auto. There
is a main plot that is sprinkled in here and there. But where they go what they do is totally up
to them.
I told them. “You do
not have to help every beggar with a sob story, or jump at every hook I present
you. Do what your characters would do.” Granted some of the hooks have been too hard
to ignore so far, but that won’t be the case much longer.
So many times in pen and paper roleplaying games you are
obligated to bite at the hook. You have to.
That is the adventure your GM planned.
If you don’t do it, you will probably just end up wandering most of the night
while your GM rolls on a random encounter table or something (I’ve played in
those sessions). There is nothing wrong
with this kind of design. It’s a bit railroady
but you came into the game wanting to have fun so will probably have the most
fun with the adventure the GM prepares even if it goes against your idea of
your character.
That is not the fault of your GM, in most cases it is the
fault of the system. Usually the GM has
already spent hours preparing the session ( where you the player are only
spending the hours playing it) because the system requires hours to prepare to
get things right.
Unless of course you fudge.
I have always been a seat of my pants GM where I hide behind my GM
screen making up rolls, usually it’s because I really didn’t spend the time to
Stat out the NPC or I didn’t have time to look in 4 books to find out what their
abilities actually do, or I am just trying to make the game interesting. Recent systems have made the life of a GM a
lot easier. The 4E monster statblocks
were a godsend(though I won’t talk about the rest of the system) Numenera makes
it even easier in some regards. I give
it a level I am done. I can make up
whatever I want just assign it a level and away we go. Usually though I have been giving things different
levels. As in the monster attacks at
level 2 but defends at level 3. That
kind of thing. I add other elements like
Special attacks, or other ideas, just fun to throw in. Like when the Synthspinner Juggernaut
(thanks Scott B for the name, that write up is still coming I promise) attacked
all the characters in front of it at once.
Just because I thought it was interesting. With Numenera you can fudge that kind of
thing.
What I can’t fudge however is Dice rolls. Uggg.
Dice rolls. We use Roll20’s dice
for this podcast. I have to say I have
been unimpressed with its randomness. We
get more 1’sand 20’s than anything else.
Not sure why. But with the
players rolling all the dice the outcome is out of my hands. That scares me as a GM. I believe I have been WAY too lenient on my
players so far in combat. The actual
fights have been a breeze. Well except
for that Synthspinner I tried hard to make that one atleast challenging. I’ve
been easy on them because I have no control of their fate. A couple bad rolls and they can go down
early.
Even in social situations the dice are fickle. Which have led to interesting results.
But anyway back to my original topic. I have tried my best to make this an open
world game. There is a story there is character
hooks, but the players are free to do what they want.
We’ve seen it already.
The murder plot on the caravan the characters weren’t particularly
interested in. They tried a couple
things, those didn’t pan out well but they didn’t press the issue. That’s their prerogative. It doesn’t harm my game at all. Obidark’s lair was another example. They never even went past the first room of
the place before they left. They got
what they wanted and they left. Was it
poor design on my part? Maybe. I could
have had Cali buried deep inside the facility but I did not. I didn’t feel it matched the nature of what
Obidark was doing and the purpose of the silo.
That and I really didn’t have much more planned. There would have been a power source, some weird
control room type thing that may hint to other facilities of Obidark’s race,
and probably a living space. I had a
few small ninth world details scribbled down but nothing major. But if I thought of something better while
playing I would have had it. Maybe ‘transporter’
type room that makes Obidark substantial or the players ‘trans-dimensional’
that would have been cool (might have to use that later)
Back to the main topic.
Creating open world games is daunting but not very hard. There is one thing I heard on a podcast once
that changed my whole philosophy of GMing. It was an Old Episode of the Order
66 Podcast where they talk about something they dub the GM’s Holocron. They have since done an episode with it for
Edge of the Empire, but you probably should go and listen to the original in
the Archives if you’re interested. What
they came up with was the idea of a GM’s notebook. Where you are not stating out each encounter and
taking meticulous notes on what goes where and who everyone is, but instead you
design encounters as set pieces. You
just list scenarios with brief descriptions of layout and enemy types. You do a ton of these, the most interesting things
you can think of. Nothing too
detailed. A Fight at a waterfall, an
ambush at a market, an attack while scaling a cliff. Then when the story leads you to a place
where you can throw one of them in you quickly fill in the blanks. Who’s attacking them in the market? What do they want? What is their goal? And bam
you have an encounter. This type of GM
styling makes it so I don’t sweat the fights, and I can spend most of my GM
prep time in designing interesting stories that would lead to one set piece or
the other. Most set piece are
system/setting agnostic too which means you can use them over and over in different
games. It really makes open world
gaming a lot easier.
However it does lead to some awkwardness from time to
time. Where you have an idea you set it
up and the players back out at the last minute.
The lynch mob was kind of
that. I wanted to have a confrontation,
but then couldn’t justify it. Asura wasn’t
being insulting. They HAD just come back
with the kid. It just didn’t work out.
I will say I am having a hard time judging my characters. Things in town didn’t go as I thought they
would. The GM intrusion with the White
pyramid. I knew Asura would go look at
it. He’s at least reliable for that kind
of thing. I didn’t expect the players to
be superstitious about touching him though.
That was how Lyulf was going to first suspect something was up with his
father. A little foreshadowing I had
planned that didn’t pan out. However
Thank you Theron! Your next Judgment
will be wrong. I can see that paying dividends
later on. Do I even know what his next judgment
will be? Nope. I have no idea how things are going to play
out. I won’t give away what Annalee
would have heard. I’ll keep that one for
later. Asura’s prophecy sounds a bit
lame. People paying attention probably
have figured out some of the meta-plot going on in the background. Asura’s did tie to that, but it may also tie
a bit closer into Asura’s story in the future.
I have wheels turning. I have
idea coalescing.
That brings me to another point of open world GMing. Plan what you can. Weave some through plots when you can, when
they make sense and don’t be afraid to have them too obvious to your characters. You will be surprised how much they DON’T
pick up on. However you also should leave
a lot of loose ends. Things that don’t
get wrapped up tightly. And when you do
NOTE THEM. That way sessions down the line
when you are working on another plot and look through your notes you might have
the chance to pick up one of those loose ends and pull. And
when your players realize that odd strip clear synth actually can see a hidden
messages scrawled on the wall of some underground compound it’s going to blow
their minds. Not that you thought about
it in advance when you made the oddity.
But they won’t care, they will congratulate themselves with even
thinking to look through the plastic and how cool they are and in that moment
they will be having a blast which as a GM is my Number 1 goal.
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