How do I Deal with Sandboxes and Time? - Page 2 - OG Myth-Weavers

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How do I Deal with Sandboxes and Time?

   
Quote:
Originally Posted by Silentshade View Post
So from the advice so far it seems like the unilateral recommendation is, "force them to pass time at the same (at least close to same) rate, no matter what."

Taking things day by day like this only seems to work if all the players are staying in place. This may be my inexperience as a GM speaking, but wouldn't this make any player doing any kind of long distance travel spend an ungodly amount of time just waiting to get to their destination? Sure I can keep them preoccupied with distractions and social stuff, but that means a player may be waiting for weeks or even months to reach a destination they really want to get to when in a normal game they'd be there in a quarter of that time.

Maybe I'm underestimating myself or my potential players, but if one or more players actually did want to travel a lot (which the game I've had in mind not only would feature but encourage), then it could be very unfair if a player is doing a lot of stuff that they actually care about over the course of a single day (like holding a very long conversation with NPCs or in a long fight, or several) while the travelers are essentially passing time until they get to where they actually want to be. Essentially, one player can set the pace of the game's progression for everyone else to a drastic degree. This seems like it could be problematic.
You are correct. But that's just the nature of the beast. You can't timeskip a week or month for one player but not the others. And I honestly do not see any solution to your situation.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Silentshade View Post
To make a long story short, I want to run a sandbox style game with 2-4 players. The problem is that I don't want them to all be together in a group, but still persisting in the same game world so that their actions can have consequences and effects for the others, however, I do not know how to handle the discrepancy with the passage of time this would create. One player can decide to do an action that is really long and boring, essentially skipping several hours of in-game time, while another could be in the middle of an intense action or roleplaying scene where only a few minutes may pass in game, stretched over the course of several real-world days or even weeks.

I don't want to force players to keep pace with one another (posting more or less just to keep their characters temporally in the same place) since that can kill a player's desire to stay in a game, but I don't know if I can handle vast differences in the passage of time for multiple characters. Any suggestions or advice on the matter would be appreciated.
That's "the Rigger problem". Solution: Don't allow actions to be uninteresting and boring.
How? Well, roleplay what they're doing.
A hacking attempt isn't just a hacking roll. It's finding out passwords...which can best be found from people.
A crafting attempt isn't just a crafting roll. It's about finding tools, a workplace, materials, and achieving the right state of mind, free of distractions - and how often does that happen to PCs?
I'm sure I don't need to say anything about "a persuasion attempt".

Break up the long activities to keep players (and you) engaged.
For instance a long journey should be an adventure in itself - mysterious stone circles, mischievous sprites, interesting terrain features, hunting food, getting lost, random NPCs bearing hooks and of course random encounters.

Also check this out for using up time https://media.wizards.com/2017/dnd/d...A_Downtime.pdf if you feel some characters need to catch up on time spent.

I personally like to encourage the PCs to spend time together as much as possible - not only does it let them bounce roleplay off each other but you as DM post less scenes as they are sharing space (and can therefore craft posts better)

Quote:
Originally Posted by AsenRG View Post
I'm sure I don't need to say anything about "a persuasion attempt".
Yes! In the real world, persuasion (intimidation, etc) turns on understanding the personality and personal situation of the person you're talking to. There's no such thing as generic persuasion: an argument that works on one person won't work on another because it worked on the first person. (Think of, oh, any given election result that surprised you because you personally thought the winning candidate was unappealing.) This is why I loathe the term "social combat" - it imposes a really unhelpful model.

So a really important persuasion attempt should turn on finding out information about the other party, and that can be an adventure goal in itself. Social interaction shouldn't be as subtle, complicated, and interesting as combat - it should be more subtle, complicated, and interesting than combat.

With regard to the wilderness travel, there's not going to be an ideal solution there, beyond stating the problem up front to your players and asking them to behave like adults. I.e., if the story demands a time skip for some players, and...

1) There really is nothing for them to do while others are doing things. (You probably can't have every journey involve being attacked by bandits, finding mysterious ruins, or being diverted by the need to find a lost child. Although you can certainly do it once or twice.) (=Expand the story to match the other players' story.)

2) What the other players are doing can't be meaningfully summarized to make it take less posting time (=Compress the rest of the story to match the first players'.) As AsenRG has noted, you can expand activities, but you can also shorthand them.

...then (as long as you keep the timescales consistent, rather than having things move at the speed of drama - and I can absolutely see that "real" time might be essential to the sandboxy feel) -

- I think you might just have to establish in advance with your players that, when a situation like this comes up, you will all discuss how to avoid it, and at the end of the day, some solution will be found, by your GM fiat if necessary.

Either by the players who are going to be "absent" delaying their travel plans (or whatever) until a moment when the others can synchronize with them by doing some "compressable" activity. Or, alternatively, there will be some mysterious and narratively convenient delay that prevents the others from going ahead with what they were going to do until everyone can be synchronized. ("You were all set to explore the Lost Ruins of Doggone Evil, but then Sally the Warrior had news that her Aunt Meg was very, very ill, and you had to wait while she sat by her aunt's bedside. It was very worrying for Sally, but luckily her Aunt Meg is better now.")

Sometimes, the only solution lies in everyone's commitment to providing an enjoyable playing experience for others.

EDIT: Or - and this is the traditional tabletop solution and I probably should have said it first - have backup characters, so that a player whose "main" character will be out of the action for a while can play his or her "other" character in the meantime.

Alternatively, ask the character not doing much of interest about their childhood (or similar): it can simultaneously entertain the player and provide a better insight into who they are (to all parties).

Quote:
Originally Posted by Penchant View Post
Basically, instead of having a plot planned out and a clear path of travel to guide the players though it, the GM simply establishes locations, NPCs and world events and leaves it up to the players to find their own way. A sandbox like in primary school where you just play rather than have a directed and structured activity.

As far as time keeping, I go the opposite way. To me time is just flexible and abstract. I don't specify any time frames and ensure there are frequent breaks in the story bits that may intersect so they do so organically. I have even run parallel threads that occur in different time frames and just ensure that the prior one does not affect the latter (such as role play only scenarios where nobody is going to die). The rest we as a group simply agree to fudge and ignore the ugly seams. It's all just wibbly wobbly timey wimey stuff, after all.
I'd strongly endorse this way of running things. Keeping a calendar among 4 players all doing potentially very different things will be a logistical headache (not impossible, as others have posted ways to do it, but it will be a headache).

I run 2 campaigns that inhabit the same world at the same time. I recently had them cross-over, mixing the two parties and created 4 different threads where the co-mingled mini-parties each had a different sub-adventure revolving around a big cross-over siege of a town. Here are some things that helped to make it work:

Keep the timeline flexible. Some characters do things that take days, others will take only hours. That's okay, and
give your players the option to fill their character's downtime however they want (research, travel, fishing, writing, drinking, etc). PbP players usually like to write and want to write, so give them that opportunity.

Create small encounters to fill the downtime that help color the game. If you have the time/energy/will to, go ahead and create scenarios that help a character develop. If the druid was out in the woods meditating and that only took a few hours, throw in an interesting situation: on the road he sees a horse gets unnerved, causing problems for its young rider; the bard character and she has to deal with a relentless flirt; the wizard character finds a bit of intriguing lore while he's researching a spell (possibly a seed or clue to a future adventure).



This doesn't have to be all narrative either- let the players make rolls appropriate to the situation (Animal Handling (druid) or Insight vs Persuasion (bard) in the above examples). Have a few of these on hand to keep the momentum going and to let your players develop their characters as well as enrich your game.

And remember- players like to roll dice! Having to roll and await the outcome is a great way to keep up momentum in a game!

Insert 'orienting' or 'anchoring' events when you need to. If your plan is to have the character's actions impact events in the other character threads, make sure those events show up in some way in those other threads. If the fighter killed the leader of the orc bandits, make sure the bard overhears this news in the market square; the druid is talking to a farmer who says "it's a much safer trip to town without them orcs on the road".
The farmer will have a different take on it than an NPC adventurer) and will add verisimilitude- a sense of 'real-ness' to your world.
It can be as vague or specific as you need it to be



As Penchant says, if everyone is having fun, it's ok to fudge and/or ignore the ugly seams.

Best wishes!

Whilst I personally feel there is absolutely 100% nothing wrong with doing things your way I do have to point out that it is going to be as much if not more of a headache logistically. You still have to keep the whole world running in the background, track who did what and how it effects things and all that. And on top of that you need to come up with these random encounters to throw at the characters and how they fit into the grand scheme of things.

So like does it really matter if you also chose to include a date/time stamp in each post or not? Seems like we're essentially doing the same thing just without vs with the numbers.

Quote:
Originally Posted by PPQ_Purple View Post
You still have to keep the whole world running in the background, track who did what and how it effects things and all that. And on top of that you need to come up with these random encounters to throw at the characters and how they fit into the grand scheme of things.
Haha, I'd say that's a pretty accurate description of what a GM does anyway.

My point to Silentshade is that it's not necessary to keep a strict track of time, especially if characters are operating in the same adventuring world and also having an impact on each other. Keep it loose.

And it's not necessary to develop random encounters that fill time, but I think its a great opportunity to enrich and add depth to a game. Again- if you have the energy/time/will to do so. I'd much rather spend my time engaging the players with character-building encounters or creative writing opportunities than keeping track of who did what *precisely* when.

Basically I am just not sure why you consider keeping a timeline to be any additional effort if you are already doing all the other stuff. It's not like I am saying you should keep meticulous spreadsheets and calculate how long actions and events last. More like you just wing it and make up a number that roughly fits and than put a time stamp in your post every time a scene changes so players know roughly where they are at. Like you look at a fight they just had and decide it lasted about 15 minutes or like you spontaneously decide that the search for an inn they are on lasts half a hour and than you make a nice official time stamp for it. And when you have multiple players out on their own you try and tweak these times so that they kind of all happen roughly within the same general frame.




 

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