AnnJam
👁👄👁 *heavy breathing* 👁👄👁
No idea why someone responded to this but I'm changing the first post to let y'all know not to necro this topic.
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letin` y'all know not to necro this topic.
- Thread starter AnnJam
- Start date
Crayons
Iconoclast
OK I have done sandbox! I think that it's a good idea to set up a few NPCs who have quests, as well as things players can do just to meet, engage with the setting, and get comfortable. What you also need is player characters who have a stake in the setting and good motivations. This requires a certain amount of work with your players before they start IC. A player who has motives, values and goals will find something to do, and create a story themselves. Leave lots of roles in the setting open, but don't make any of them so vitally important that if the player ghosts you can't continue with the story.
You say "the" story hook. I think that's ... well ... if you want to have one overarching story then that's not going to be a sandbox. I think you need to set up multiple story hooks, and assume there will be multiple, if interconnecting, stories.
So for example, you have a setting based on a circus. Maybe you have one NPC who is recruiting people to work as clowns (there's one quest) another NPC who is a pickpocket gang boss who finds something they wish they hadn't pickpocketed from one of the audience, and instead palms it off on a player character. Maybe you could have a fortune teller who warns PCs of Things they might encounter etc. etc.
You say "the" story hook. I think that's ... well ... if you want to have one overarching story then that's not going to be a sandbox. I think you need to set up multiple story hooks, and assume there will be multiple, if interconnecting, stories.
So for example, you have a setting based on a circus. Maybe you have one NPC who is recruiting people to work as clowns (there's one quest) another NPC who is a pickpocket gang boss who finds something they wish they hadn't pickpocketed from one of the audience, and instead palms it off on a player character. Maybe you could have a fortune teller who warns PCs of Things they might encounter etc. etc.
FoolsErin
when you at the when you you when the
Phantom Thief of Hearts
We live in the Metal Gear timeline
Well, here's a trick I use to for a sandbox RP I run with
Count Gensokyo
, we have multiple plotlines running in the RP as the driving force and allow the RPers to make their own storylines. It helps make the RP feel like a proper universe.Basically the story hook is the lore. That's how Beyond Infinite Crisis started but it really depends how you want to frame it.
Kaihaku
The Once and Future Kai
The first sandbox that I ran was a complete disaster. I left things too open ended and the players had no idea what to do. So they ended up just sitting around and looking at each other. I was still pretty inexperienced so I couldn't save it...but I did learn from it.
Now I generally use a connect the dots approach and let the players draw the plotline. I decide on the big themes of the setting and develop a list of locations/people/subplots related to those themes. Then, as the players proceed on their own intiative, they either select or come across those plot dots. The nice thing with this is that the narrative agency and approach belong to the players but the big themes are not lost. It's also nice because it provides a lot of flexibility, it's very easy to add, remove, exchange, or adapt plot dots. By design plot points are usually not linear but you can toss in a few that are 1-2-3 and it actually makes the narrative feel a bit richer.
I agree with
Crayons
that it's very important to hook the character's motives into the desired narrative early on. That's true whether it's sandbox or not, unless you're providing external motivation as part of the narrative. Whether that's exploring a lost continent, unexpectedly gaining psionic powers, or waking up with collective amnesia on the far side of the galaxy... The characters need some point of engagement/commitment to the world. I usually do this during the sign-up thread for play by post or session zero for tabletop.
For my largest sandbox game, the three core/original players were each exploring a cursed continent for their own personal reasons. They formed an adventurer's guild to pool their resources and recruit the other players. Rules were entirely up to them and they decided on a few that they never enforced, so they stole and cheated on each other quite a bit. I mapped out 40-50 locations on the continent, thinking about how they connected and subplots related to them. Most got a paragraph or two long outline, a few got more detail. I'd go back and flesh a plot dot out completely when the group was going to interact with it. I also wrote up three settlements with distinct cultures on the periphery of the continent and mapped out factions, rival guilds, businesses, and so on. Then the group went to it. I added more plot dots based on their motives - for instance two were looking for people who had disappeared on the continent so I mapped out where those people had been, who they'd interacted with, and left clues about what they were up to. One player started a fight with the ratfolk in the settlement where they decided to base their guild and I added dots related to that. And so on. I'd say that 70% of my pre-game content never got explored but I added a ton of player inspired content and it means I could actually run the roleplay again even with the same people.
Now I generally use a connect the dots approach and let the players draw the plotline. I decide on the big themes of the setting and develop a list of locations/people/subplots related to those themes. Then, as the players proceed on their own intiative, they either select or come across those plot dots. The nice thing with this is that the narrative agency and approach belong to the players but the big themes are not lost. It's also nice because it provides a lot of flexibility, it's very easy to add, remove, exchange, or adapt plot dots. By design plot points are usually not linear but you can toss in a few that are 1-2-3 and it actually makes the narrative feel a bit richer.
I agree with
Crayons
that it's very important to hook the character's motives into the desired narrative early on. That's true whether it's sandbox or not, unless you're providing external motivation as part of the narrative. Whether that's exploring a lost continent, unexpectedly gaining psionic powers, or waking up with collective amnesia on the far side of the galaxy... The characters need some point of engagement/commitment to the world. I usually do this during the sign-up thread for play by post or session zero for tabletop.For my largest sandbox game, the three core/original players were each exploring a cursed continent for their own personal reasons. They formed an adventurer's guild to pool their resources and recruit the other players. Rules were entirely up to them and they decided on a few that they never enforced, so they stole and cheated on each other quite a bit. I mapped out 40-50 locations on the continent, thinking about how they connected and subplots related to them. Most got a paragraph or two long outline, a few got more detail. I'd go back and flesh a plot dot out completely when the group was going to interact with it. I also wrote up three settlements with distinct cultures on the periphery of the continent and mapped out factions, rival guilds, businesses, and so on. Then the group went to it. I added more plot dots based on their motives - for instance two were looking for people who had disappeared on the continent so I mapped out where those people had been, who they'd interacted with, and left clues about what they were up to. One player started a fight with the ratfolk in the settlement where they decided to base their guild and I added dots related to that. And so on. I'd say that 70% of my pre-game content never got explored but I added a ton of player inspired content and it means I could actually run the roleplay again even with the same people.
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RavenSong
<3
Only recently discovered sandbox ! I’ve been sort of falling on my face lol but I’m getting the hang of it! Certainly as stated before the way to go is to make plots that stand on their own and take it from there.. I’d be into joining another rp if anyone is up for it ^^
nerdy tangents
One Thousand Club
So to give a bit more of a specific example to the advice everyone else is giving. Write up some “scenes” before you open the roleplay.
To use an example I made a school roleplay years ago where the “plot” was basically just running through an entire school year. With the idea that once you ran through one year you would just keep going onto the next year.
So I started out with scenes covering an entire year at school and then encouraged my players to help me come up with scenes for the next year (and also just worked on them off screen as I got a feel for what scenes the players liked).
(For context this was a miliartistic school where classes where kind of hands on missions showcasing specific skills)
So how the scenes work is :
Scene 1. Students arrive at school and are placed in randomized teams for missions going forward. (IRL length : 2 weeks to allow people to post their intros)
Scene 2. Students must defuse a series of bombs in the schools mock village while dodging fire from an NPC group of rival students (IRL Length : 2 weeks to allow everone to post at least once)
And basically you go from there. Now I made sure not only to have a mini description of the scene (usually written as if one of the teachers was speaking to the characters) but I also included information on how long you had to post IRL before we would move to the next scene.
As a key to keep things moving along is time skips. The scenes will only get you so far if you don’t keep the players moving forward.
Now the nature of the scene you make will depend on the setting. I made I think 8-12 before I kicked off my roleplay but it’s kinda easy to break a school year into specific chunks of time. If you just doing some kind of fantasy world then you’ll need to figure out what a “year in the life” would look like. Mini quests is actually a good example of things to move the story forward with that.
To use an example I made a school roleplay years ago where the “plot” was basically just running through an entire school year. With the idea that once you ran through one year you would just keep going onto the next year.
So I started out with scenes covering an entire year at school and then encouraged my players to help me come up with scenes for the next year (and also just worked on them off screen as I got a feel for what scenes the players liked).
(For context this was a miliartistic school where classes where kind of hands on missions showcasing specific skills)
So how the scenes work is :
Scene 1. Students arrive at school and are placed in randomized teams for missions going forward. (IRL length : 2 weeks to allow people to post their intros)
Scene 2. Students must defuse a series of bombs in the schools mock village while dodging fire from an NPC group of rival students (IRL Length : 2 weeks to allow everone to post at least once)
And basically you go from there. Now I made sure not only to have a mini description of the scene (usually written as if one of the teachers was speaking to the characters) but I also included information on how long you had to post IRL before we would move to the next scene.
As a key to keep things moving along is time skips. The scenes will only get you so far if you don’t keep the players moving forward.
Now the nature of the scene you make will depend on the setting. I made I think 8-12 before I kicked off my roleplay but it’s kinda easy to break a school year into specific chunks of time. If you just doing some kind of fantasy world then you’ll need to figure out what a “year in the life” would look like. Mini quests is actually a good example of things to move the story forward with that.
Beckoncall
World-Weaver and servant to the most-holy PC
Some things I have going in my sandbox game that keep people interested and moving -- if you keep people interested and moving you can keep dropping hints or encounters with other plot seeds and cause cross pollination between different plotlines. Here's some of the tricks I use:
1) Drawing on character backstory. If the players have interesting histories, write intrigues about individual characters in at the start of the game... and have them open up into larger themes. For example One of my PCs had amnesia and following the trail of breadcrumbs she found out she used to have dealings with a Muurdaan agent. What's a Muurdaan Agent? Only a really big atagonist that threatens all the players and indeed the world. So they find out about larger intrigues crossing paths through more personal stuff.
2) don't worry about too many balls in the air -- it creates immersion and urgency over what to do next. In my present sandbox we have the amnesia plotline coming to a finish, everyone has learned about and wants to fight against the muurdaan, a separate player wants to join a secret society that fights against a doomsday event, and that's not even scratching the surface... everybody has a main goal and a couple of shared goals.
3) Have big antagonists in mind and what their plans are... as their plans progress, have the party notice. The party may want to frustrate some of these plans, or the bad guys plans will come to fruition and force a confrontation eventually. The idea that things go on without their attention adds to the feeling of a living world. My party is doing everything they can to handle personal quests while still preparing to face a big evil army on the horizon, and one of the players wants to get on "the immortal court" -- so they are doing their own things to see that happens.
4) Sandboxes are FREEING. You can always throw something new in front of your players to buy you time to develop bigger things behind the scenes. Not every "episode" or "arc" has to be about a main thing... use this to give you time to pace everything.
1) Drawing on character backstory. If the players have interesting histories, write intrigues about individual characters in at the start of the game... and have them open up into larger themes. For example One of my PCs had amnesia and following the trail of breadcrumbs she found out she used to have dealings with a Muurdaan agent. What's a Muurdaan Agent? Only a really big atagonist that threatens all the players and indeed the world. So they find out about larger intrigues crossing paths through more personal stuff.
2) don't worry about too many balls in the air -- it creates immersion and urgency over what to do next. In my present sandbox we have the amnesia plotline coming to a finish, everyone has learned about and wants to fight against the muurdaan, a separate player wants to join a secret society that fights against a doomsday event, and that's not even scratching the surface... everybody has a main goal and a couple of shared goals.
3) Have big antagonists in mind and what their plans are... as their plans progress, have the party notice. The party may want to frustrate some of these plans, or the bad guys plans will come to fruition and force a confrontation eventually. The idea that things go on without their attention adds to the feeling of a living world. My party is doing everything they can to handle personal quests while still preparing to face a big evil army on the horizon, and one of the players wants to get on "the immortal court" -- so they are doing their own things to see that happens.
4) Sandboxes are FREEING. You can always throw something new in front of your players to buy you time to develop bigger things behind the scenes. Not every "episode" or "arc" has to be about a main thing... use this to give you time to pace everything.