It's just what I tend to think about whenever I see the kind of first-world YOLO statements about pursuit of happiness to the abandonment of anything else. Probably just me though.
@Miniman what are those things, if you don't mind?
They get a new fort, they have to pay taxes, wages and defence costs
you can also use new bonuses as gold sinks which keeps the rate of growth normal
The obvious one is to make enemies harder, but you should also let the players feel like they've grown by facing them against an older opponent and letting them cream them in combat.
If they lost half the party to goblin raiders before, pit them against them again with their new levels and mcguffins
Well, I'm not sure if that is what I meant by pacing.
Or maybe I'm interpreting it wrong.
But the problem is that if I present the players a sandbox world.
Say, the players want to establish a base of operations. the Big Bad is somewhere to be engaged and there are Wizards and Warriors, as neutral NPCs.
If I establish for the players certain requirements on how to gain the favour of both neutral groups, and the one that's second is supposed to be higher stakes, how do I do that?
And what do I do if the players go out of their way to complete something very trivial, but the stakes need to be raised at the same time?
you've basically decided they need to fight against one or the other groups
sorry, forgot to ping @eimyr
(replace 'fight' with 'earn favour of')
You just do it like you would describing something in real life. Foreshadow how powerful / difficult something is by rumours
Really, my best advice to you is not to plan anything. Soon as you plan anything more than a game's general universe it's asking to be torn down and set fire to by your players.
To clarify - you are allowed to speak to your players in the meta and warn them that one is more difficult than the others if they don't pick up your subtle hints.
But it's still a sandbox game if you tell the players "this is a game about you doing X in a city against the BB. There are Warriors and Wizards there and you would need their help to fight the BB"
What I'm saying is there are sandbox games and there are campaign games. A 'sandbox campaign' basically means 'a sandbox game'. These are the words I'm using. I'm not trying to define the words.
To me the only distinguishing characteristic of a campaign is an end goal, which may or may not be apparent from the beginning.
Well, in that case all my sandbox games are campaigns and therefore not sandbox.
But it's a pointless formalism anyway.
in a pure sandbox of "this is the world, what do you do?" pacing would be entirely on the players, much like in Minecraft your engagement is a product of yours and yours only initiative
For this Illadmire game (so-called because it's set in a town called Illadmire) The players started in a tavern, as all the good ones tend to do, and they were given various props.
There were people talking of rumours and there was one with an abandoned dragon's hoard and the players latched onto it, so it went from there
I've played games before where they were slaves in an arena and they killed the emperor's favourite owlbear and they had to go out and find another. As soon as they were out of the gate they dropped that quest and went on their own adventure
which is good they did, because they didn't like the railroad of being slaves
Basically it takes a lot of the stress off my shoulders and lets them do what they enjoy - which is fine, because it means the story is more collaborative
The last time I did it, the players bumbled around without doing anything significant until a "quest" was given to them, when they sprung into action like nobody's business, kicking ass and taking names.
In time I wished I have given them a specific end goal. It could have been anything, say, replace country's king with a better one. Then they might have done something constructive themselves.
Thank you so much, @KRyan :) It's a city built on boggy land because nobody else would want to live there, just north of the swamp of despair. Another one I had to make up on the spot for the campaign.
"Campaign". If you have read the above I'm using the word loosely haha
@Smurfton @KRyan It's actually how a lot of English towns were named. They take a local landmark or a reason for it being there and corrupt it over time. I used to live in Isleworth which had a little island in the Thames in the middle of it
@Polyducks here's the bureaucracy table I was talking about https://www.dropbox.com/s/xq221a02ovg15xb/paranoia_most.oxps?dl=0
"Mixed security clearance room. Most of the floor is GREEN, except for the not-very-wide-at-all BLACK paths that wind circuitously and eventually lead to the various desks. Trigger-happy Vulture goons armed with laser rifles stand on either side of the paths and yell, 'Boo!'"
Paperwork in Paranoia, gentlemen.
That link is just the table, not the rest of the sourcebook
Last time one of the players were force-fed until they were sick, and then the nutrition officer had to feed them the sick so as not to waste nutrients. It was mega gross-out.
because A: You are legally required to be happy B: This is the lowest security clearance, so the computer has no trust C: Going off happy drugs at all is a privelege
You aren't 100% off happy drugs until BLUE clearance (INFRARED, RED, ORANGE, YELLOW, GREEN, BLUE, INDIGO, VIOLET, ULTRAVIOLET)
If you're INFRARED you're way too low down for anyone to care about. You're not likely to die unless in an industrial accident or Friend Computer reformats your sector.
On the plus side, you can afford to buy more clones. Everyone gets a pack of six, so the real life expectancy of your genetic material is... well, still a month.
Really high - but I didn't want to bring them up to UV. They need some leniency to be able to talk about the rules without overbearing observation from Friend Computer
You never know. @thatgirldm could be a commie. Wouldn't want to give them unrestricted access to Friend Computer's code.
@eimyr It's a luxury. All natural or non-synth foods are a luxury, and they're farmed and fed to the higher clearance personnel, more often the higher clearance they are.
5e is a bit like vegetarian bacon. It tastes a bit like bacon, is very healthy and there was a lot of thought that went into the recipe, but at this point you would be better off just having regular bacon.
Not long ago I stipulated in this chat that a game of DnD is from player perspective a game about choosing from a list. So far the list wasn't very long and there is surprisingly little synergy between the items.
In 5e they have lots of skills, they can cast a good amount of magic and have reasonably well equipped combat options. Their trademark ability is to boost another character roll.
Arcane, and generally about distracting and debilitating opponents, but a good half of the spells are more out of combat options
Price is a function of demand and supply. If you have 500 pounds of gems you might have a enormous surplus of supply, and the price should therefore decline. How much do they decline? That depends on a lot of factors. Do the villagers realise that it is the stolen tribute on it's way to the king ...
its hard to tell value by weight, and if there is any way to measure that in 5e thats basically what im looking for. we dont know anything about the gems, and we cant reasonably sort through them all
