Tight focus versus a sprawling playground

[Ffej]

What I love about GURPS is the open-endedness. The fact that whatever the players and the GM agree on is indeed possible. However, the game just needs a certain amount of focus because of the way it's typically played: a group of people all sitting at a table sharing a collective vision of an imaginary world. The characters all need a reasonable amount of motivation to stay together and work with each other. The GM needs to be somewhat prepared for whatever the players decide to do. And you don't want to have players get too upset when their character ends up in a situation where he's useless.

So I guess my answer would be that I'd be up for playing as unfocused a game as we could possibly get away with and still have fun.

What I've been contemplating doing (I'm not sure it's a good idea) running a Play by Post campaign that isn't at all focused. The PCs can all have different motivations, be in different places and sometimes have conflicting interests. I'm thinking the PBB format just might make this possible. No need to send someone off to another room because his character isn't with the rest of the party. And the GM can always take time out to adjust and plan according to what happens. I'm thinking it may be especially rewarding when characters who haven't met but have been influenced by each others actions finally come face to face. Anyway, it's what I've been thinking about lately and it kind of relates to this thread. I think.

[whswhs]

Originally Posted by Mailanka

Compare and contrast the templates found in GURPS DF and GURPS Fantasy. Look first at GURPS Fantasy. If you handed that book to players and said "You can pick any template in this book, but you all have to work together to protect a kingdom from the evils that beset it," nothing would prevent one player from choosing to play as the True King, while another chose to play as an Assassin. Mechanically, they have almost nothing in common: the True King is almost entirely politically focused, while the Assassin is a combat character with great stealth ability. The True King isn't going to be very useful in storylines that focus on the Assassin, and vice versa. On the other hand, that doesn't mean they can't work together (the Assassin works to protect the True King from unseen threats and quietly eliminates his rivals while the True King works directly to improve the kingdom), and their two different focuses will add different dimensions to the game. A "sprawling playground."

That is because GURPS Fantasy was not written as a guide to "how to run the standard fantasy campaign" but as a guide to "how to build the fantasy campaign that you want to run, based on different subgenre options." Using everything in the whole book in a fantasy campaign would be mad. The GM is supposed to read it, say, "I like this and this and this," and then present the players with a list of options.

Now you can use a lot of them. In my last fantasy campaign, the PCs were three gods descended to walk the astral plane and have adventures (Aeolus, Miacha, and the deified Errol Flynn, god of swashbuckling and piracy); a young rakshasa who had been sent out to prove herself, whose powers included changing into a tiger; a Canadian métis shamaness who was fleeing the wendigo; and an Atlantean privateer who had The King's Two Bodies with his ship. We managed to make it work. On the other hand, the players showed a remarkable reluctance to use any form of spellcasting.

That's why I chose to contrast the tightly focuses genre-emulation books with the more generic genre books. I want to get a sense for what people prefer and what they think of the two approaches.

The confusion comes because there are at least two different "tight/loose" questions here: the campaign is focused on combat versus covering more than combat; the book is focused on running a combat focused campaign rather than on designing a campaign with the emphasis you want. If not more. What exact question do you want to ask?

Bill Stoddard

[Purple Haze]

Originally Posted by Mailanka

"You can pick any template in this book, but you all have to work together to protect a kingdom from the evils that beset it,"

This is your problem. This is too vague. When I start I say: this is the culture you come from, this is what an adult male is expected to be able to do, this is what an adult female is expected to be able to do, these are typical archtypes, these are common senarios you must be able to participate in.

[Ulzgoroth]

Originally Posted by Mailanka

If you handed that book to players and said "You can pick any template in this book, but you all have to work together to protect a kingdom from the evils that beset it,"

Why would you ever even contemplate doing that? That's not what the templates are for, not what the book is for, and I can't think of any other reason to suspect it's a good idea.

DF is designed so that you can to some degree just let people each pick a template and play it, and you've got a game. This is a special feature of the DF/Action/MH semi-precooked game style, and even then you would do much better coordinating things. Fantasy is not that type of book. The purpose of the True King template is entirely different from the purpose of the Experiment template.

[Nymdok]

Mark me down for narrow focus in your spectrum. I run a fairly linear story with few sub-plots and regular action beats.

It helps us get a story told, it keeps loose end to a minimum and it keeps us rolling along and engaged in the story. That's how we have fun.

When we first started playing GURPS, I tried 'sandboxing' a game, and it largely ended up just being them wandering around and feeling like nothing was getting accomplished. It was sub plot overload.

Now we keep it tighter with simpler stories and fewer plot distractions. The plot 'clues' I leave are numerous and normally non-vital hints that they are on the right path. We get more story told, more bad guys drop dead and more swag is in the bag. :)

It aint for everybody, but it sure seems to work for us!

Nymdok
Enabling Rootin, Tootin, Lootin, PCs since 2005.

[Mailanka]

Originally Posted by whswhs

The confusion comes because there are at least two different "tight/loose" questions here: the campaign is focused on combat versus covering more than combat; the book is focused on running a combat focused campaign rather than on designing a campaign with the emphasis you want.

The first one, though replace "combat" with whatever. Would you rather run a poltically oriented game where every character was tied into the political mechanics of the game and focused exclusively on their political acumen to the point where other traits are mostly fluff, or would you rather run a game that's ostensibly centered on politics (and perhaps a few other elements besides) but has room for characters that have little to no skill at politics. Would you rather run a mystery-oriented game where every character was tied to the mystery-solving mechanics of the game and focused exclusively on their ability to solve mysteries... etc.

(Understand, please, that I'm presenting a choice and I'm trying hard not to make one side of that continuum worse than other. Obviously, you can have a rigidly focused, neurotic game that nobody would want to play, and games where "You can take anything in the book that you want!" tend to end in chaos and disaster, so I understand that people are going to be on a continuum here, and I'm trying to get a sense where on that continuum they lie)

[Wraithe]

Originally Posted by whswhs

That is because GURPS Fantasy was not written as a guide to "how to run the standard fantasy campaign" but as a guide to "how to build the fantasy campaign that you want to run, based on different subgenre options." Using everything in the whole book in a fantasy campaign would be mad. The GM is supposed to read it, say, "I like this and this and this," and then present the players with a list of options.

What he said, +1.

Now I will note that GURPS: Fantasy does contain a ready-made campaign, "Roma Arcana" so if that's what your asking, you need to clarify that a bit more, as that campaign is literally only one tenth of the GURPS:Fantasy book.

For myself, I'm more inclined to create a world, with possible seeds/situations happening, and then drop the players into the situation. I've always inclined more to the "sandbox" approach, although I recently read on Penny Arcade of an amazingly open sandbox method, which, if I had more players in the area, I'd try.

Now what I thought you were asking about was more of the question "adventure on rails" vs. "open-ended sandbox".

I'll note that I fall even more strongly on the sandbox end of the spectrum there. I've let players completely blow off the main "quest" in an adventure. Of course...that means that there are consequences....

[whswhs]

Originally Posted by Mailanka

The first one, though replace "combat" with whatever. Would you rather run a poltically oriented game where every character was tied into the political mechanics of the game and focused exclusively on their political acumen to the point where other traits are mostly fluff, or would you rather run a game that's ostensibly centered on politics (and perhaps a few other elements besides) but has room for characters that have little to no skill at politics. Would you rather run a mystery-oriented game where every character was tied to the mystery-solving mechanics of the game and focused exclusively on their ability to solve mysteries... etc.

Okay. Let me give you just a quick review of all my fantasy campaigns, as a sample:

Griffin Mountain: A party of soldiers and civilian professionals (ranging from a scribe to a courtesan) go out to Heathen Balazar to carry the Lunar flag and get involved in varied encounters with the locals.

Jesus Magus: During a time of troubles in the Roman Empire, several wealthy residents of Burdigala recruit an Impossible Mission Force to protect the city against natural and supernatural threats. (Yes, this was the inspiration for Roma Arcana.)

Oak and Ash and Thorn: Five British teenagers take a wrong turn on Midsummer's Eve and are stranded in the twilight lands, where they get caught up in a war among the Fair Folk.

Hong Kong Shadows: A bunch of mages from rival factions in Hong Kong, and their unAwakened allies, cope with the Chinese accession, the Chinese magical agency (a splinter from the Technocracy), and each other.

Zimiamvia: The new generation of avatars of God and Goddess wander around having adventures, and repeatedly running into each other. In the end, who marries whom or is in love with whom turns out to be a central issue.

Under the Shadow: Refugees from Sauron's takeover of Middle-Earth at the end of the Third Age band together as a resistance movement; subgroups of them go out on covert ops missions.

Manse: Residents of an isolated castle surrounded by magical wilderness cope with various threats, deal with political issues, and (in many cases) try to find people to marry. Everyone played a senior aristocrat, a cadet aristocrat, a soldier, and a servant, and cross influences were a big focus.

The King's Men: King Verence of Lancre recruits a Watch to help bring his kingdom into the Century of the Anchovy. Comedy ensues, along with social commentary. Everyone is in the Watch.

The Foam of Perilous Seas: The officers of a privateer in the service of Atlantis sail the Pearl Bright Ocean and have adventures.

It looks as if roughly half of these have a single focal activity (protecting a city, fighting against Mordor, law enforcement, privateering). One has everyone with a common goal—getting back to the mortal world—and four of the five PCs were musicians, which was important in many episodes, more so than combat overall. Two campaigns had some characters with a mission and a focus: The soldiers in Griffin Mountain and the soldiers in Manse (and the cadet aristocrats in Manse, if you count growing up and getting married as a mission). Hong Kong Shadows and Zimiamvia had nothing remotely like that; Zimiamvia was a total sandbox game. For that matter, aside from the assigned roles (one of this, one of this, one of this), Manse was a total sandbox, to such an extent that every player got to make up a lineage of aristocratic mages, with their hierarchy, marital customs, magical specialization, style of dress, favored nonmagical activities, and so on (I made up a fifth, founded by the twin brother of another house's founder, and one of the players took the role of an adolescent girl from it, whom she nicknamed "Hermione Abhorsen" after playing her a while).

I think, in short, the answer is Yes. Yes, I'd rather run a tightly focused campaign; Yes, I'd rather run a loosely focused campaign. Yes to all of it.

But even my loosely focused campaigns don't just throw the gates wide and say, "Play whatever you please!" Well, except Zimiamvia, which used the Amber Diceless rules that make that easy to manage. . . .

Bill Stoddard

[Kalzazz]

I tend to go very loose to start

'Okay, so like, its a TL 4 type setting, in a sorta kinda Rome inspired place called the Republic, and your going to be in the capital of this Republic called Primus. Airships exist. Alright, you have 300pts, anything goes, get to it'

Then focus occurs after chargen 'Hmmm, a Magic! using young archmage, a ninja with a dog, an alchemist with a steam mech, and a bow using cleric of Artemis . . . alright then, so, we now know the setting has ninja and steam stuff . . . . lets try to hammer out any other important setting details and what in the world these 4 are doing together'

I've _tried_ running games that start off with a tight focus, but they never get anywhere . . . . so it goes 'loose focus, chargen, tighten focus'

[Xplo]

Originally Posted by Mailanka

But how do you prefer to play? Do you say "This is a strictly political game with mechanics that work so, so X, Y and Z skills are very important, and you shouldn't bother with A, B and C?" or do the players generally have free reign to take what they please, within the confines of the concepts of the world?

There are middle grounds here, you know: the GM could ask his players what kinds of characters or stories they're interested in, and tailor the focus to that, or the GM could come up with some kind of scenario and demand that PCs fit somehow, without explicitly telling them what character types they may have.

I generally like something in the middle. I moved from D&D to GURPS to get away from the kind of tight focus you're talking about; I was sick of playing mass-produced action figures. At the same time I've been in player-driven sandbox games that generally break down because players were expected to be given some kind of plot to work with, or because the PCs all have different motivations and no good reason to stick together.