Decline Critical role ruined PnP

[Alex]

(...)
Wrong: So you guys want to play a sandbox campaign in Savage Worlds (because DnD fucking sucks) where you hexcrawl from area to area in an open world and make your own story?
(...)

You have D&D and Savage Worlds mixed up.

How? You can easily do hexcrawl sandboxes with Savage World. I'm using Savage World Pathfinder to do a Keep on the Borderlands campaign. And it's very simple to convert any DnD specific statistics. And if you're doing something completely original it's not hard to make hexcrawl stats for SW.

Maybe, but it, unlike D&D, still sucks.

 

[Stella Brando]

Hombre if you got the patience for a play by post I'll play your game

 

[Caim]

Lo, I dub the brave trio of ERYFKRAD udm Stella Brando who will brave the fantastical world of beardalaxy as...

the Pity Party.

 

[Lagole Gon]

View attachment 40720

Lmao, AI smut. How many tits does she have? Six?

 

[Fedora Master]

View attachment 40720

Lmao, AI smut. How many tits does she have? Six?

I dont think that's AI actually

 

[Lagole Gon]

View attachment 40720

Lmao, AI smut. How many tits does she have? Six?

I dont think that's AI actually

1. Horn-headger-thingy fuses into hair on one side.
2. One pupil fusing with weird inward eyelashes.
3. Weird pupils in general.
4. Something around five tits.

If average bloke can't tell this is AI then we are truly doomed.

 

[VerSacrum]

View attachment 40720

Lmao, AI smut. How many tits does she have? Six?

I dont think that's AI actually

1. Horn-headger-thingy fuses into hair on one side.
2. One pupil fusing with weird inward eyelashes.
3. Weird pupils in general.
4. Something around five tits.

If average bloke can't tell this is AI then we are truly doomed.

Left arm is fucked up too

 

[Ismaul]

The best advice I can give to anyone running a sandbox campaign with new players is to actually not start it as a sandbox. Start in a small area with a tight narrative. A single street of the city, a small village, that kind of thing. Give them a clear cut object that establishes the world. Apprehend a dangerous wizard, find the missing jewels, etc. Funnel them down the first couple of leads in this small and controlled environment where their choices are limited and they still believe you're dragging them through a heckin epic story. The entire time you're still asking them what they want to do. And making sure whatever they pick gets them through what you've made. Then start gradually opening things up as the plot thickens.

Yup, that's how you start a game with a less familiar group.

Basically a tutorial area/quest, so they get comfortable, learn the ropes and figure out what they like, and tell you so you can adapt to them. 1-3 sessions.

Previous campaign, I started them off on a boat, going to the main destination (big city). Little murder mystery to solve, opportunities for making ally and enemy NPCs, and trying out combat, with some C&C. Shit went bad so I had them crash in a small town not too far from the main city they were going to. Same deal: meet the locals, arrange for transport, find a way to fund the trip/make money, some combat to foreshadow a plot that ties into their destination. But already the foreshadowed plot was based on their characters and interests they displayed during the boat trip.

 

[beardalaxy]

Watching broteam play Volcano High (around 1h50m mark) and when talking about the notDnD the dinos play the DM dinosaur talks about writing a character arc for the MC's character.
Raptor Jesus Christ How Horrifying

YOU ARE DESIGNING A GAME NOT WRITING A STORY! YOU DESIGN ENCOUNTERS! YOU DESIGN ENEMIES FOR THOSE ENCOUNTERS! YOU DESIGN INTERESTING NPCs AND WORLDS FOR THE CHARACTERS TO INHABIT! YOU ARE DESIGNING SOMETHING THAT IS THEN PLAYED AND REQUIRES PLAYER PARTICIPATION TO PROGRESS!

You are not writing a story. A predetermined series of events in a linear fashion. You are making A FUCKING GAME THAT OTHER PEOPLE PLAY! I fucking hate these ghoulish twats so much.

It's sad that all of my friends got super into CR and don't really enjoy the games I run anymore. They don't like playing the game nearly as much as they like being enveloped in some grand story. I definitely have an overarching story but most of my games are a lot more sandboxed, where there are pre-established objectives to accomplish but they're all about as important as anything else in the grand scheme of going to beat the big bad. I like the world to feel pretty natural and grounded and I think that turns people off. Everyone now plays in a different guy's campaign who is a lot more along the lines of something like CR.

I don't think it's necessarily a bad thing that people might want to play a game that's more like that, but I have to admit it's upsetting that no one wants to play with me because I don't have some insane story set up for them that's going to be just like they've seen in D&D media. I've had a lot of new players who watched CR or something similar join in on a couple campaigns I tried to get going, but it was only a few months before they all farmed out because they didn't actually like playing D&D. The truth is probably that they just didn't like my style of game, and would have preferred something with a lot more drama and pizzazz.

I like a slow burn adventure through a world that reacts to what the players do in a natural way. It seems like a lot of players want a Marvel movie style of adventure where they are truly the main characters and are treated as such at all times, where they story affects them more than they affect the story and most of it was planned from the beginning. That's also part of why 5E has some nasty power creep when it comes to PCs and you have to buff your monsters' HP by like 2x or 3x and give them more resistances/immunities if you want them to be able to do anything at all.

Okay I've actually been in your exact position of wanting to run sandbox games whilst everyone wants to be dragged through heckin valid le epic stories. The trick is in presentation. If you want players you have to stop autistically describing exactly what you're wanting to run.

Wrong: So you guys want to play a sandbox campaign in Savage Worlds (because DnD fucking sucks) where you hexcrawl from area to area in an open world and make your own story?

Right: I got this new kind of game I would like to run. It's very different to what you're used to. If you like Critical Role you'll be surprised at what this is.

You have to understand that even without Critical Role shitters, the majority of RPG players are not familiar with sandbox games. And find them intimidating. ("I have to make my own decisions? What if I make the wrong one and ruin the game?) Whilst you can always say "Well I just won't have those people at my table." I feel it's better to introduce them to the concept slowly. There are way more of them then there will ever be of you. Make it sound mysterious and cool. Something new without sounding hostile. They will be intriguied without being intimidated.

The best advice I can give to anyone running a sandbox campaign with new players is to actually not start it as a sandbox. Start in a small area with a tight narrative. A single street of the city, a small village, that kind of thing. Give them a clear cut object that establishes the world. Apprehend a dangerous wizard, find the missing jewels, etc. Funnel them down the first couple of leads in this small and controlled environment where their choices are limited and they still believe you're dragging them through a heckin epic story. The entire time you're still asking them what they want to do. And making sure whatever they pick gets them through what you've made. Then start gradually opening things up as the plot thickens. The wizard was working for a shady guild of demon worshipers, the jewels belong to a notable merchant. Where do you go next? Intriguing choices are made and resolved. Then you open things up a lot more suddenly they have three different objectives, one in a nearby cave, another in a lord's manor, and one more in a different neighbourhood. By the time they've completed a couple objectives, they start to really make decisions for themselves. By about the tenth session you've resolved the plot thread you started in the first session in such a way that you open things up even more with a map and several plot threads to pursue. It's the party's choice on what to do. They're now playing a sandbox campaign with the confidence to make decisions.

Peep my signature, sorry in advance lol.

The basic gist is that I'll work with each of my players individually to build up a cool character with their own motivations, and then bring everyone together so we can find out how they all met each other and where they start their journey. From there, they are more or less railroaded into one of the character's subplots that helps usher them into the main plot (whichever is most convenient and gets us there the fastest). Along the way other subplots will open up that they can choose to delve into a little bit more or not, and whether they decide on doing so or not they are always running in the background. After they finally get to the main plot and wrap up their original quest (or at least the first arc of it), they are given a few avenues on what to do next and can proceed from there. At no point do I actually force them in any particular direction, but I've definitely always got pointers to help guide them around because I think plopping the players down in a completely open zone from day 1, especially new players will be way too overwhelming. By the point they are actually set free on the world, they have obtained a means of transportation and are usually level 3, so they're getting into their subclasses and such.

That's usually when I see the group fall apart and players not wanting to play anymore, and the only meaningful criticism I've ever received was that the world wasn't diverse enough. I do prefer a bit of a lower fantasy setting, so that first run of the campaign I did was made up of mainly humans for the races. It didn't help that all of my players chose humans and none of my players were full casters, so a lot of racial and magical stuff just wasn't applicable. I have definitely worked on that a lot to spruce up the world and make it seem a bit more whimsical though because I know that creates a lot more dynamism. Anyway, most of the time I have players just saying they don't think they like playing D&D, and that's all they'll really tell me. 3/5 of the players in my last group said that, 2 of them said "we don't really want to play with 2 people" which is fair, I'm borderline on that as-is.

Rest assured though, I wouldn't ever drop an entire open world on a group of players for the first campaign unless it was something they actively pursued. I have plenty of story leads and side quests always there for them to follow and most of the time they do follow them. It's the difference between the players being the real storytellers VS the DM being the real storyteller, and I prefer the former because I find it more interesting to see what players do with my world. In my first ever campaign, one of the players made up an entire mountaineering quest and we went for it. Another player created his own games to play at a festival and we didn't actually use any of the ones I planned. Again, I don't really think one style of play is objectively better than the other, I just think that with the new influx of people playing TTRPGs (namely D&D) most of them are of a more casual breed and want to focus on the dramatics of it all as if they were reading a story that they could manipulate a little bit. I'm relatively new to D&D as well, so I don't speak as an oldfag or anything like that, I'm saying it as someone who is new to TTRPGs in general and what I observe from other people who are also new players.

My last group that I ran went a little bit off the rails because they robbed a guy, but they failed some stealth rolls and ended up getting arrested. They were able to escape, but chose to steal the guards' carriage. They were able to run from the law for a decent amount of time but it eventually caught up to them and the campaign basically ended with all of them being arrested again and going to court. Another group I had before that chose to go into the dastardly forest with several verbal and nonverbal warning signs that they were not supposed to be here yet and they nearly got TPK'd. They chose to then go BACK to that same place with two new characters basically right after the fight and their new characters were designed solely to defeat this thing in the forest, and then the campaign ended when they beat the thing but were unable to retrieve the fallen characters' loot from the bottom of the lake they had been swallowed by.

That's what I mean when I say I don't think the people I've played with, especially recently, like my style of DMing because if they fuck around they're gonna' find out. Maybe I could make it more clear to them that although these things might be setbacks, they're only temporary and it isn't like I'm going to force them to play in a world they've doomed themselves in from the beginning or something. It sucks because in the court case, I was going to offer them a way out that was in tandem with the main story progression, but most of them stopped playing so we never got there. The forest/lake one was just pure stupidity, but it's not like them losing a bunch of gold and gear would have prevented them from continuing. They still had solid leads and just decided to not play anymore. Of course, nobody actually told me that this was the reason they stopped playing, but I think their assumption is that this is what playing D&D must be like universally, so they don't like D&D, and they haven't played enough other campaigns to actually realize they just don't like my style of campaign and they'd rather be in something else.

The case of my original group being swallowed up by a different one has plenty to do with my style of game versus the other DM's style of game, but it also has to do with some other stuff like personal relationships. If not for that, I still think they would have stuck around to see mine to the end (they were only a few sessions away, which sucks) but it's always been clear to me that they actually enjoyed the other campaign more than mine because they were willing to find more time for it and actually show up to it on time.

Maybe you can see some things here that are problematic that I don't. I'm still relatively new to this and have only DM'd for a combined total of like 3 years.

Hombre if you got the patience for a play by post I'll play your game

Noted!

I've been looking up some stuff about PbP and I think I would have the patience for it, but the main snag I'm running into is something like combat. It doesn't seem like 5E would work very well unless times could be organized where everyone was online at the same time and would be able to run realtime combat encounters. Otherwise, it would take an extremely long amount of time. Combat can already take an hour or more IRL, so stretching that to something like only 1 turn per player per day would just get agonizing. I think I'd have to go with a different system than D&D with much snappier combat and a lower focus on tactics. I wouldn't really know where to start, though. The only systems I've looked at have been 5E, Pathfinder (which is more complicated), and Shadow of the Demon Lord, which is probably simpler especially when it comes to initiative, but there is still definitely a focus on tactics-based combat. If anyone has ideas for TTRPGs that still have combat but might be better for PbP I'd be interested in looking at them to see how they'd work.

Something else I'd have to change would definitely be my approach to travel. I think I'd have to speed it up a lot. As it stands, travel in my games is played out and there are a lot of encounters along the way. I think with a PbP game it would be more like "you travel along this road going south toward the city for two days before reaching it. There were a few small encounters but you managed just fine," Rather than playing out every encounter. There are some that would be more important than others, and if players wanted to do something specific on their journey I'd let them, but the narrative rarely advances when people are just moving from point A to point B and there is only so much the PCs can actually talk about.

I'm still lightly interested in trying it out, just wanting to find ways around potential pitfalls.

 

[Nortar]

I've been looking up some stuff about PbP and I think I would have the patience for it, but the main snag I'm running into is something like combat. It doesn't seem like 5E would work very well unless times could be organized where everyone was online at the same time and would be able to run realtime combat encounters.

If you want an example, take a look at 5E PbP game hosted by Catacombs here at Codex:
https://rpgcodex.net/forums/threads/play-by-post-tales-from-fourtower-bridge.141378/
It was pretty fun, I enoyed my dwarf conspiracy theorist, haha.

We had a couple of combat encounters, and I would not say it was taking too long to deal with them.
The main time sink turned out to be (in my understanding at least) the huge number of possible solutuion to any given situation and no one really wanting to
take the responsibility of chosing which one to pursuit. In short, imo, a PbP party needs a leader who will have the final word. It could be even an NPC.

Anyways, if your setting has dwarves, I'd like to join too.

 

[ERYFKRAD]

The main time sink turned out to be (in my understanding at least) the huge number of possible solutuion to any given situation and no one really wanting to
take the responsibility of chosing which one to pursuit

I don't think we had that happen.
But sure, if we pin down one dude as leader who gets final vote, that could help.

 

[Catacombs]

I agree with Nortar. Someone who can take on the leadership role to make executive decisions when the party is paralyzed with indecision helps move things along. It can be annoying when most people -- not saying it happened in my game -- respond with "I'm down for whatever" or "Whatever the party wants" as the next course of action. That doesn't give the dungeon master a lot to work with. And, if the DM is devious, he'd just throw an army of trolls at the party to get their asses in gear.