Do people actually want a fantasy setting that's different?

[quanta]

It depends on the city, I suppose. In the case of Waterdeep, for instance, I think the idea of a mad archmage's dungeon to be kind of stupid and I prefer to adventure in a location that's not chock full of epic level characters (so that my PC can feel like a big shot, not just some big shot's errand boy).

Then why would you play in a game set in Waterdeep?

No, seriously. Leaving the city doesn't do jack, because your DM set the adventure in Waterdeep. You're basically just asking him to make shit up by leaving.

I agree that it's good to go off the rails to varying extents in most games, but not every GM is going to memorize or create a whole fucking world. Nor is every GM good at improvising. So if you just walk out of the area with all the quests, you should expect for nothing sensical to happen until the next session like 90% of the time. "I haven't thought about it" is a perfectly valid answer to a player question.

Seriously, if somebody wanted me to run a game where they could do literally anything they could think of in-character and expected me to do all the work of maintaining consistency within the setting and inventing all the NPCs and I had to run with it no matter how randomly off the beaten path it took them, they had better pay me fucking money. "Today I feel like traveling to the sea and looking for a boat to Xen'drik where I am going to start a bakery- What? Why would I care about the princess to whom I am betrothed being Gargamel's captive? Why are you looking at me that way?"

Sandbox games are a fuckton of work under the ye olde traditional DM model (a model I do not endorse but which many people are very attached too). I'm not running them unless people are going to be happy helping me invent new towns, locations, NPCs, plotlines, anything on the fly (and IME most people at least don't mind if not outright enjoying it). Basically, it won't look anything like normal D&D because I will demand players invent parts of the world. It will look silly, pasted together, and bizarre because collaborative storytelling will always be a bit less cogent. Because that way I can have fun too. But not every DM will joyously let players usurp part of the ye olde DM role. In most games I think you should expect to be on the tracks (totally locked in place) or on the interstate highways (there are branching paths and rest stops, but you still can't just get off anywhere) rather than off-roading.

[Wesley Street]

Seriously, if somebody wanted me to run a game where they could do literally anything they could think of in-character and expected me to do all the work of maintaining consistency within the setting and inventing all the NPCs and I had to run with it no matter how randomly off the beaten path it took them, they had better pay me fucking money.

+1

[Psychic Robot]

I want a system that actually has differences between the races. whoo elves gain +2 Dex, -2 Con that is bullshit, give me something that makes them feel different from the dude playing a dwarf aside from a weaker will save and a few less HP. 4e attempted to do this but pretty much shat it up (elves can reroll a ranged attack with a +2 bonus wowzers) except in the case of some of the more exotic races (eladrin, dragonborn, etc.)

[Lago PARANOIA]

I think that the whole 'what if players can do whatever they want, whenever they want' hand-wringing borders on being a straw man. Very few players, let alone groups, come to the game with absolutely no gameplay expectations or goals. Even though TTRPGs give you the option of abandoning your world-saving quest to go basket-weaving, almost no one actually does this.

The vast majority of players won't rebel once they agree to a gameplay experience unless:

A) They wanted to play something else to begin with but agreed only because the only person who offered to run something wanted to do something different. If it's just one person, fuck them, but if most of the people in the group are doing this then you should either retire the game or play what they want.

B) The suggested plot is just flat-out offensive. I have left games before that got too dark or gory, mid-session even.

C) The plot is overly restrictive, giving them little input. Amusingly and unpredictably people who put too much effort and thought into the plot whine the most about people derailing the game. And rather than realizing that you CAN'T have a cooperative storytelling RPG that does more from the DM than broad strokes they just try to tighten their grip even more.

[quanta]

Even though TTRPGs give you the option of abandoning your world-saving quest to go basket-weaving, almost no one actually does this.

That was just hyperbole. If PC's really do go to start a bakery on another continent, I expect them to build a baking empire and come back to reclaim their betrothed and their native kingdom.


More seriously, we're talking about situation (A) Lago. People shouldn't agree to a type of game and who DMs and then whine about what they agreed to or try to throw the game completely off the rails just because they don't like the setting.

They can kindly hit the road, and usually they would have saved a lot of time by expressing concerns more clearly in the first place or just not playing. If everyone hits the road, there is no game. And it would have saved a lot of time to just not play in the first place. Granted, sometimes what sounds good beforehand sucks in practice. Thus I agree with stopping play.

If people agree to (C) then they shouldn't complain about it. But yes, if the DM lies to you, we agree that is bullshit.

If people want to do cooperative storytelling (and I by all means encourage this), then they need to bring more shit to the table than just their character and do more than just play their character (and like I said, I think most people are happy to do this, but I may be wrong). It's not reasonable to expect the DM to have to plan how the world will react for all roughly reasonable possible courses of action.

I think the problem is really avoided most easily by playing shorter campaigns or just one shots. That way you can try something without the fear that it will involve a waste of planning or 10 sessions of mind-numbing tedium.

[TheFlatline]

To be honest every time I've tried to do a sandbox game it falls apart almost instantly because players assume that Mister Cavern is going to give each of their characters a reason to adventure. Usually railroaded down their throats.

Player-driven games are incredibly rare. Usually when you tell folks this will be a player driven game they get decision paralysis and stop functioning. Even in Vampire, which in theory was supposed to be a highly player driven game, you ran into players who couldn't or wouldn't come up with agendas for their characters. I ended up creating a house rule stating that each character needed a 6-month goal and a 5 year goal before I'd let them into the game, simply because I got tired of spoonfeeding a pantheon of characters.

And don't even get me started on the player type who brings a new character every week and expects to be integrated into the story each and every week.

[shadzar]

Player-driven games are incredibly rare. Usually when you tell folks this will be a player driven game they get decision paralysis and stop functioning.

which is funny in the world/age of "player agency", they can make anything come up with for creating a character, then have no idea what to do with it....

player created hooks, often wont fit well with each other and become a disassociated collection of mini-one-shots.

sadly played driven games are about as "different" a setting can become...but players, even when tlakign the talk dont walk the walk, for actually wanting to develop through play the setting in a way that it could have something for them.

you always need a railroad available for them to ride on....

[Chamomile]

player created hooks, often wont fit well with each other and become a disassociated collection of mini-one-shots.

This is easily overcome if the GM provides even a very small amount of direction for the campaign in advance. For example: "The campaign takes place in the homebrew setting Generica, which is made up of seven good kingdoms with various one-note cultural differences and one evil, frozen kingdom to the far north, which is ruled by the Dark Lord and his four dastardly mini-bosses. Write up a character with an ax to grind with the Dark Lord or one of his four dastardly mini-bosses and then give them a reason to be sitting around at an inn in the port city of Port in Newbie Kingdom."

[shadzar]

the problem though becomes again the players just seize up and stop providing hooks and player-driven is lost...

[Chamomile]

Well, yes, trying to run a player-given game with players who have no creativity is an exercise in futility. Assuming they are creative, though, it only takes a few broad strokes of overall plot or theme to make the character motivations tie together.

[Blasted]

I like Spirit of the Century method where the players add to each other's "story". I find it provides a bunch of plot hooks and so forth. Of course, missing any type of real advancement mechanic, it's not as suitable for long campaigns.

[Chamomile]

I like Spirit of the Century method where the players add to each other's "story". I find it provides a bunch of plot hooks and so forth. Of course, missing any type of real advancement mechanic, it's not as suitable for long campaigns.

Not actually familiar with that method. Elaborate?

[hogarth]

It depends on the city, I suppose. In the case of Waterdeep, for instance, I think the idea of a mad archmage's dungeon to be kind of stupid and I prefer to adventure in a location that's not chock full of epic level characters (so that my PC can feel like a big shot, not just some big shot's errand boy).

Then why would you play in a game set in Waterdeep?

I wouldn't. That's my entire point.

If the GM says "Our game will take place in Waterdeep", I can say "No thanks" and decline to play. If the GM says "This guy wants to hire you to travel to Waterdeep", again I can say "No thanks" and either take a different adventure hook (e.g. "Or you can go dragon-slaying in the wilderness") or leave the group.

BUT...if the GM says "Our game will take place in my homebrew game's big city", that gives me no idea whether I would want to play in that game or not; I'd have to ask the GM about a whole laundry list of adventure tropes that I'm not interested. Or, even worse, if the GM says "Our game will take place in a small town", that small town my happen to be chock full of epic level characters with a mad mage's dungeon underneath the town. And if I take something that's supposedly a different adventure hook (e.g. dragon-slaying in the wilderness), it may turn out that the city of Waterdeep happens to be located wherever it is I choose to travel.

[fectin]

To be honest every time I've tried to do a sandbox game it falls apart almost instantly because players assume that Mister Cavern is going to give each of their characters a reason to adventure. Usually railroaded down their throats.

Here. Here is the problem.
If the characters really can do whatever they want, they will also wander off and play Smash Brothers. You have to get your players' and characters' motivations aligned. I think this is actually much easier to do with evil parties (or at least morally challenged ones), but YMMV.
Send them on an adventure on rails tight enough to chafe, have a couple powerful NPCs that screw them over, and railroad them away from that place. Turn them loose once they're struggling to do their own thing, and they have a reason to care.

Wheel of Time is actually a great model for this. The main characters start out being shoved around, basically forced to follow the plot railroad, then eventually broaden out to having their own goals, that they go after in less obvious ways (not that WoT is good in other ways, just as an example here).

[K]

I still don't see the point.

I mean, even a pre-set setting is going to vary wildly based on DM. For some DMs, Waterdeep is just a generic fantasy big city while for other DMs it's going to be all about Undermountain and Blackstaff slapping his cock on your face all the time while epic-level fighters serve beers.

A bad DM can turn a good setting into a bad game and the converse is equally true.

[tzor]

No, seriously. Leaving the city doesn't do jack, because your DM set the adventure in Waterdeep. You're basically just asking him to make shit up by leaving.

I think I can give a good counter example: As a old Nehwon DM, I often had situations where the players traveled between Lankhmar and Ilthmar, for various reasons. In addition, each section of Lankhmar was unique. Sometimes the players might have been interested in going to the seedier sections of the city, and other times the noble sections. There is something to be said for some degree of vartiety in the adventure routine.

My complaint was when it happened in the middle of an adventure.

[Blasted]

I like Spirit of the Century method where the players add to each other's "story"...

Not actually familiar with that method. Elaborate?

SotC is a pulp adventure, where characters come from pulp stories. Each player writes a blurb to their story and at least two other players add their characters to it.
It creates interesting interactions and usually leaves a fair few hanging ends with which to draw characters in with.

[Chamomile]

I like Spirit of the Century method where the players add to each other's "story"...

Not actually familiar with that method. Elaborate?

SotC is a pulp adventure, where characters come from pulp stories. Each player writes a blurb to their story and at least two other players add their characters to it.
It creates interesting interactions and usually leaves a fair few hanging ends with which to draw characters in with.

Interesting. Is there an example on the internet I could see? I'd like to know what it looks like as a finished product.

[Count Arioch the 28th]

Side-argument about the East Coast: Having been to Manhattan, New York City, Rahway NJ, having spent my formative years half on Norfolk, and half on Gwynn's Island VA, spent a nontrivial amount of time in Baltimore MD and Washington DC, and having visited Orlando FL, I could say that the respective places I have visited aren't really anything alike. The bustle of Manhattan was different than the industrialized squalor of Rahway, which didn't resemble the mix of decrepit slums and unimaginable wealth of Baltimore, which isn't the same as the history and bustle of DC, which doesn't resemble the naval city of Norfolk, which didn't resemble the idyllic island life of Gwynn's Island, which was different from the glitter and gaudiness of Orlando.

I'm sure I could tell stories in each of those places I couldn't tell elsewhere on the east coast.

[Chamomile]

Side-argument about the East Coast: Having been to Manhattan, New York City, Rahway NJ, having spent my formative years half on Norfolk, and half on Gwynn's Island VA, spent a nontrivial amount of time in Baltimore MD and Washington DC, and having visited Orlando FL, I could say that the respective places I have visited aren't really anything alike. The bustle of Manhattan was different than the industrialized squalor of Rahway, which didn't resemble the mix of decrepit slums and unimaginable wealth of Baltimore, which isn't the same as the history and bustle of DC, which doesn't resemble the naval city of Norfolk, which didn't resemble the idyllic island life of Gwynn's Island, which was different from the glitter and gaudiness of Orlando.

It would depend on what kind of story you're telling. Most of these probably come down to different coats of paint on what is effectively the exact same setting as far as a murder-hobo campaign is concerned (though there are some exceptions, Baltimore sounds like it could play host to class conflict on a scale the others couldn't, for example). But I haven't really been to any of these cities long enough to notice anything other than yes, it's a city.

[Swordslinger]

To be honest every time I've tried to do a sandbox game it falls apart almost instantly because players assume that Mister Cavern is going to give each of their characters a reason to adventure. Usually railroaded down their throats.

Player-driven games are incredibly rare. Usually when you tell folks this will be a player driven game they get decision paralysis and stop functioning. Even in Vampire, which in theory was supposed to be a highly player driven game, you ran into players who couldn't or wouldn't come up with agendas for their characters.

PC driven games are very tough to do, and you require very experienced PCs who are willing to make concessions for the game.

Another problem is that they often don't have reasons to work with each other. Different PCs have different goals, and they feel like they're wasting time working on the other PCs goals and not their own. Some PCs don't have goals at all, and just aren't interested in the other PCs plots, wanting some kind of more important global plot from the DM.

[Almaz]

Then why would you play in a game set in Waterdeep?

No, seriously. Leaving the city doesn't do jack, because your DM set the adventure in Waterdeep. You're basically just asking him to make shit up by leaving.

I agree that it's good to go off the rails to varying extents in most games, but not every GM is going to memorize or create a whole fucking world. Nor is every GM good at improvising. So if you just walk out of the area with all the quests, you should expect for nothing sensical to happen until the next session like 90% of the time. "I haven't thought about it" is a perfectly valid answer to a player question.

I remember a game where I was the battle-mage on a team of magical investigators (actually we all kind of were battle-mages, but that's a different subject). We were supposed to investigate and imprison renegade wizards, basically. There was a plotline where the villain was basically guilty of making half-living half-construct war machine abominations that generally tended to go crazy due to not being able to feel anything but still using human parts, and using them to attack what amounted to the state. So, after a few fights where we tried to interrupt what were basically crimes in-process, I announced my intention to go scour the city and turn up any information by simply asking around.

And then... nothing.

In spite of playing a troupe of what were ostensibly agents of the magocracy, we couldn't actually talk to anyone, undercover, out of cover, or otherwise. The thought that we would attempt to interact with variables outside his carefully constructed plot was astounding to him.

His plot was so mindless that we bypassed one of the final traps with a disintegration-hammer, by just hewing a path through the wall next to the main passage to the Final Boss. Because he seriously did not expect people to do anything but go straight through the trap, and thus obviating interaction with it at all completely disabled both it and him.

[quanta]

Oh, wow... that's bad. You do something genre and plot appropriate and he doesn't hand you anything. He should've improvised a little even if it would've been a bit goofy or inconsistent. That definitely falls along the perfect railroad type of game, which is the other evil.

Also, to be fair, in 3e there are a lot of things the designers seem to have expected people to confront that you can bypass by tunneling or turning into a gaseous form. It's actually really hard for traps to matter when the party can just dig their own tunnel. Which actually gives me an idea for a party playing sappers in a war. That would be cool.

[Swordslinger]

Also, to be fair, in 3e there are a lot of things the designers seem to have expected people to confront that you can bypass by tunneling or turning into a gaseous form. It's actually really hard for traps to matter when the party can just dig their own tunnel. Which actually gives me an idea for a party playing sappers in a war. That would be cool.

Yeah I've always considered that one of the biggest problems with 3E. It's one thing to not want purely linear adventures, the 3E ability set allows too much freedom, to the point that it's difficult to predict at all what the PCs will be capable of doing at high level.

Even a 3rd level barbarian with power attack can tunnel his way through dungeons given enough time. The rules to removing walls are really crazy stupid in 3E.

[Almaz]

Oh, wow... that's bad. You do something genre and plot appropriate and he doesn't hand you anything. He should've improvised a little even if it would've been a bit goofy or inconsistent. That definitely falls along the perfect railroad type of game, which is the other evil.

Also, to be fair, in 3e there are a lot of things the designers seem to have expected people to confront that you can bypass by tunneling or turning into a gaseous form. It's actually really hard for traps to matter when the party can just dig their own tunnel. Which actually gives me an idea for a party playing sappers in a war. That would be cool.

Well, we weren't using 3e but rather a point-buy system, and my powers were really quite tame... whereas the majority of the party had built up combat wombats that maxed out their damage dealt, I happened to have one of the few characters that simply had a small suite of powers. But one of the combat effects I did have was a hammer that could basically be set to Stun or Kill, Star Trek style. The system was fairly irrelevant compared to the fact that in the source material we were using "blow a hole through several walls, it's an effective tactical ambush! Nobody'll expect it!" was appropriate.