When I started this current effort, I was presented with a dilemma – which approach will give a group of extremely imaginative (but completely inexperienced) gamers the most satisfaction: a linear, adventure-module-type campaign, or an open-ended sandbox?
It’s probably not too shocking to find that, so far, I’m doing a bit of both. I started out, however, by going hard in the “sandbox” direction.
Using Land of Nod as a guide, I stuffed a ton of adventure seeds and hooks into my 400mile x 400mile region of the world; all told, it was easily forty or so, not including more complex locations like cities. It was, frankly, a bit overwhelming for me as the DM… I could only imagine what it was going to be like as a brand-new player, being inundated with an avalanche of material to pick through…
At present, as I said, I’m doing a bit of both: I’m stitching together a couple of long-term storylines using modified versions of boxed adventures, but I’m peppering the environment with a selection of adventure hooks that can send the PC’s off on flights of tangent.
I have also found that there’s a third option. As a fan of Jungian synchronicity, I’ve been delighted to discover that random encounters can be made to fit a wide range of storylines if you’re willing to throw caution to the wind and embrace the madness. Dire wolves are no longer just a range of numbers on a chart; to the players, they automatically become obvious agents of Evil Genius X (whether or not that’s true, of course, is borne out over time). Taken to an extreme (and using suggestions such as Daddy Grognard’s that involve the tracking and mapping of major random encounters), you effectively have a sandbox environment that generates itself…
This is all undoubtedly “old hat” to a lot of folks who might read this blog, along with much of the material that’s going to be posted here. All I can say is that this is all either new or fresh to me, so I hope it’s interesting to read about somebody progressing through the various stages of discovery…
No comments:
Post a Comment