Reference The Game Group

Not a competition. Storyline games and sandboxes both have their respective awesome qualities, pros, and cons. This is just one that is more of a con for storyline-focused games. People criticized sandboxes a few discussions ago for not feeling like they are driving towards a conclusion.

They are both dope in their own ways, brother Fin.

 

Well I wasn’t hungry then, Mom!

 

If I may humbly interject I have a question for the GM council that sits on high. Not really sure what the format is for posting here as this thread has seemed to deviated slightly from the format prescribed in the first post. Seems people ask a question when there is a bit of a lull.

Anyway, as I begin to enter the complex labyrinth of GMing I was wondering if there was anything you (you being anyone that has GMed before) wished you knew before you started GMing? Anything you did not expect?

 

PM send

 

The reaction to the railroading thing made me laugh out loud.

But yeah, where are all the Sandbox games gone to?

 

What’s the appeal of a sandbox game? What is the GM’s responsibility? Just to create the world and set the players loose in it? I’ve never really participated in one or seen one done before.

 

Thought the same, but when I looked into the old „How we play our games“ thread from Saintheart the „Sandbox“ is considered the most dominant form within the RPF. So it seems it was once very popular. I do not fully understand why, to be honest.

 

Well a true sandbox game would be one where the world is created and then the players just go do things with very little GM direction. The players are the main story driving force and it is their ideas and buy in that propel the game forward. In a true sandbox, there would be no overarching plot... like at all. This would also be hard to manage if you don’t have creative, engaged players making things happen on their own.

Hence why this is hard.

The sandbox format we have here typically follows this direction: the GM provides the background and world and a general narrative of what is going on. The players are then free to join and dictate their own involvement in the main story and/or create their own narrative because something is driving the character. The general plot moves along with or without player involvement, but can be altered by player action. Saint was right: most games did and still do follow this structure.

A change has occurred where there are games created now that have a focus on the plot and telling a very specific story and the GM is looking to essentially cast roles in the game. My personal reasoning these have become popular is twofold:

1. People started to equate success with being able to end a game and tell a complete, concise story. Sandboxes can get large, bloated, and often hard to tell one complete, coherent story in that all the players have an interest in following.
2. A decline in players and player activity necessitated a change in the approach to what kinds of games are “viable”. If I create a game only needing 3 players to actually complete, it is relatively easy to gather that amount.

I like to think about it like this: if RPGs are canvasses, then heavy storyline games are color by numbers and sandbox games are blank canvasses.

 

Well, as a GM I am always having a blank canvas. If anybody paints by numbers, it is the GM who is putting the picture and numbers there. But I agree. It is one painter versus a group painting. The question is do you trust your GM to be good at painting the picture? A lot to do with ego and trust. These things take time, usually.

The truth about the Storytelling approach is: It is all about trust, really.



But back to topic: Why don‘t you start a sandbox game, Puma? Sounds like you are very passionate about them. We really did not have one in a while . . .

 

Well I’m running 3 games right now, so launching a new one is a no go.

But 10 ABY fills that void. It’s close enough to a sandbox that I’m okay with it when people refer to it as such.

 

All of my older RPGs used to be sandboxes, but I found that I myself would lose interest because of my own lack of direction. I thought the world that I created was cool, but then I wasn’t sure what to do with it, and with no goal in place, I often found myself with little motivation to press on to an unknown destination.

 

Hm, I was probably in the part of the game where that was less the case. I felt it was pretty much a chain of events set out by you as the GM.

 

*nods*

That was more because we agreed it was a guest role. If you were to join the game full time (which I really hope you do!) you would experience the narrative difference. I did not want to put you in a situation where the role would stretch beyond its intended time.

*nudges Claire*

The trick to sandbox games, I’m learning, and I kind of borrowed this from Sinre, is to have the universe continue on regardless of player involvement. Have the universe feel lived in. It’s the one piece thing: more is going on then just what you’re seeing. That was my goal with the Syndicate and the world building posts.

 

I think Paradoxical (and all my other Intervention games) is technically a Sandbox, but I have a firmer grip on the boundaries and story direction. Let the players built their castles in the sandbox and I adjust to the castle. Either way, the castles will ultimately serve my end to the completion of the game. The game & story may look different then what I had planned originally as GM, but the game still gets finished with the intended end.

 

By that definition every game I have ever GMed or played is a Sandbox. Which is fine by me. Just saying.

 

Will do. But, to be perfectly honest, all we've done is a very long prologue up to this point in the current game and I can catch you up in important bullet-point format over PM. With a new Commodore in play for our Star Destroyer (because our last one was killed), almost all of our past storylines are now wrapped up technically speaking with the prologue, which launches us into the Unknown Regions for "Chapter 1" of this game. Essentially we're starting the game proper with the prologue events having little impact for new characters going forward (for our current characters, it's a bit different obviously).

Right now would be the perfect time to join this current game, since we're at an Imperial port and adding new characters will be relatively easy. But alas, the call is yours and I respect it highly. So if not now, I'll PM you when we get going in that direction with the next two games (second & third installments).

 

Let us do something fun for a change . . . Everybody give me their TOP FIVE game ideas they never did. Or three or just one, if you do not have five. Let us say five is a maximum.

Mine . . .

Master and Servant

A story of a family through the ages told from the perspective of a droid, all the way from TOR to ABYverse.


Good Hunting, Sir

A world taken over by robots, where humans serve as second-class citizens and free humans are hunted on expeditions. When one robot is murdered by another, a human is tasked to investigate.


Murder on the Obsidian Queen

Whodoinit on a luxurious space cruiser. Set in the times of the Empire. A custom officer must investigate.


Call of Azathoth

From beyond the stars the eldest of all elder Gods awakens and will consume all of reality, of the players do not stop the ritual silencing the flute players, keeping the mad god at bay. Contemporary setting. Lovecraft.


Dead or Alive

A bounty hunter game. Feel with the Mandalorian, I was probably ahead of the times with that one. No Jedi, no Sith, just hunting criminals and other wanted people through the galaxy (okay, wanted a Jedi to be the final Boss for end of Season One). If I ever have time, I may do this actually.

 

Honestly, @Sir_Draco ... The titles of my launched games were better than the ones I didn't launch. I mean "Feather in the Foxhole" for a Harry Potter RPG... That's a fire title.

Also...Dead or Alive... *cough* If only we had a game *cough* That featured bounty hunters hunting targets and other players *cough cough*

And not to completely cut off your title exchange, but I have a weird topic to bring up when the floor opens back up:

1. What do the GMs assembled here think are their own deficiencies?

2. Who is a GM that GMs much differently than you but that you still admire their personal style?

3. Lastly, what GM have you never been in one of their games that you would like to, time permitting, in the future?

 

Well, answer to both questions:

@Sir_Draco I got a lot of those concepts lying around in my notes, but most of them I do not look at so kindly nowadays. They usually do not age well. Two I came up with.

28 Parsec Later

Before this novel Death Troopers someone said we should pick up a Zombie-game in Star Wars. That title above was kicked around. I actually had a pretty firm idea. Waking up on a medical ship after your ship mysteriously malfunctioned and then all hell breaks loose, when you realize the crew has been infected with a virus making them murderous crazies. That was probably the very first time I considered GMing. Did not have the courage to post it.

The Davenport Society

That concept was kicked around by several GMs. TSG tried it last and never put it up. I believe Fins also worked on it. Came from a tabletop game we all shared once. Cold War. A group of NATO specialists is tasked to hunt down occult tomes and supernatural creatures in an arms race against the communists who do the same.
Wanted to do the Episode structure I later adopted for Castaways. Run it like a six Episode BBC TV show.



@The Jedi in the Pumas, well not sure about the answers . . .

1. Too many to count. I feel I can improve in any and all aspects of GMing, but right now I feel like I struggle a little with scene suspense. Thank God we got players compensating for that, right?

2. Not sure what exactly you mean here. Who has a „much different“ style to me? Different how? I kinda feel all GMs play in the same toolbox, if they know it or not. @Trieste and @Imperial_Hammer come to my mind. They are very different to the general way of GMing around here. Cannot remember enough about IH, but I certainly admire what Trieste did there with his game. Had a blast interviewing him!

3. Not planning on extending my playing much, so probably none. But if a game bites me I usually cannot resist. Can‘t think of a GM I never played with, who I would join no matter what he posts . . .

 

So, I recently realize I have more or less retired from the whole GM thing. Doubt I will put a game up anytime soon. A game for younger GMs who got the fire.

You Draco recently announced you have come to the end of your road here, too. So all those nice little game tidbits you posted there are now history, too.

So what would be more fitting tonight then strolling down memory lane and answer that question above?

Games I had in planning and then never did. Originally when the SotS-finale All the Sins of the Saints was up on the temp-boards, now a game for all eternity lost to the non-existent site from those dark days of transfer from one site version to another, I had a lot of requests for any kind of game set in the universe. A dozen, probably. So me and LordTroepfchen developed ideas. One almost made it to being posted with me as a Co-GM.

The Original Sin

Not the one I used later, that was reusing the title. This was a prequel to the original SotS storyline. Sebastian Falk finds in Africa the cave with those mysterious writing on it, from a time before humanity could write. What are those? He searches the world and finds Jacob Zinsky, a student with a start-up for a unique translation method to translate them. Zinsky travels to the dig and they begin working on it. Leading to the events triggering SotS. More a mystery/horror hybrid than the original SotS. Very different in style. A one storyline game. We finally decided against it, actually.



My next one was actually a Star Wars story, which I worked on for quite a while. I later handed that one to other GMs to see what they do with it, but nobody ever brought it up.

The Tale of Two Planets

A different kind of game, spanning thousands of years and roleplaying the main moments in the history of two planets, who both exist in the same system. One is a monarchy, one is a base democracy. They also have an asteroid field rich of ores. I had various storylines planned, which I would partially have written in parallel. Originally the two planets are enemies and after a Cold War they enter a hot war. Later in the timeline they need to work together to fend off enemies from outside the system, like a Republic pressuring them to join, an invasion by the Sith or an Empire occupying them. Had many ideas for plots that could develop over time. An ancient Sith trapped in an energy cage near the pole, a Jedi Academy that rises and falls over the year, being both savior and enemy of the powers to be on the monarchic planet, an alien species that originally lived there and has been exterminated by the first settlers, but might have left a very dangerous artifact, a. Romeo and Juliet storyline.

It was massive, so I never did it, because I felt the five years minimum commitment was too much.



I had another Star Wars project I found very interesting, called . . .

Heresy

Really more a working title. The idea is what does the Jedi Order of a peaceful future do when a heresy arises in their ranks? A new philosophy of the force, a new thought. How do they treat them? Are these heretics on their path to the Dark Side or would antagonizing them lead them there? All of this against the backdrop of a potential galactic civil war. Players on both sides. Never got too deep into that one, but I loved the original idea a lot. Wrote even an OP, but do not ask me where I got that one.

I had this chilling vision of a lightsaber duel between the Grand Master and the Head of the Heretics ending the first game, with the Leader of the Heretics winning and killing the Grand Master.



And then there is of course my long term project . . .

The Truth About Animals

I worked on this one for quite a while. I still do sometimes. Not because I believe I would bring it up and really do it, but because I kinda like the idea of doing so. It is an ensemble cast thing, that spread over the globe and shows many different people involved and affected by a mysterious science project. A techno thriller with strong science fiction elements, but told as a very, very personal storyline. No epic clash of good and evil, but many shades of grey with some being very dark greys. It shared a bit of DNA with SotS in the sense, that I wanted unexpected characters to be the lead. A coming-of-age story with teens, n auditor of a large international character finding a secret projector hidden in the books, a man on Kauai who finds out something is there that does not belong, a scientist recruited, a Doctor finding strange things in one of her patients, the patient of course etc.

The main reason why I never did it was because the original version was close to The Crossing in some aspects (time travel!) and when The Crossing came out I rewrote it and found another main element, which I never got entirely working to my satisfaction.

It all should have cumulated into two finales in two locations. One being an Island of the coast of Ireland and one being a research facility on Mauritius. All characters would have ended up there one way or another. Their journeys would have come to an end there. Each following his motivation. Love, revenge, curiosity, journalistic drive, pure survival whatever my players would have come up with.

And recently I played with a bold idea and have just decided it might not be a good idea in these turbulent times . . .

Cypherpunk

I am about to become a published author. I thought I might do a companion piece to my first book, that goes up on Amazon in a few days now. An update to Cyberpunk, actually making use of my real life job by showing the struggles and challenges of a fully digitalization world, where reality is constantly augmented and everything is anonymous to a degree technology in the future will allow us. This would have been a neo noir tale set in the future Dubai or Singapore. I kinda liked the idea of having a tale that is so to say RPF exclusive.


None of the above will probably happen, but I feel every one was a missed chance on my part. Yet, nowadays I am more a player than a GM and I probably simply do not have this last game in me, I always dreamt of.

Cool idea Draco. I appreciate the chance to spit those out at least once.