Sandbox vs. Railroad spectrum as applied specifically to Transhuman Space

[Keiko]

One suggestion I read for GMing Transhuman Space was too look at it like running a game set in the modern world. You generally wouldn't say "Make up any character you can imagine would work." and try to come up with something for them to do. You'd come up with a framework, possibly one borrowed from other media or franchises, to give the game some structure and direction.

So you might get

CSI+ Transhuman Space

Leverage+Transhuman Space

The A team+Transhuman Space

(mine falls somewhere between those last two)

Suits+Transhuman Space (wasn't there a TV show that was kind of like this?)

Or even

Fringe+Transhuman Space if you want to throw in some non canon elements.

[johndallman]

The two THS campaigns I've played have been more crucible than anything else. In both cases the GM defined a role for the party as a whole (one Vacuum Cleaner ship crew, one diplomatic services team) and left the players to figure out a set of characters who might fulfil that role as a team.

Both campaigns had mission frameworks, either "The most profitable-looking contract on offer at present is..." or "This EU citizen has got into trouble and needs help..." How we dealt with the missions was up to us and the resources we could lay hands on, although I suspect after a while the GMs could have made good guesses as to how we'd start.

Sometimes one mission would give rise to others; in both campaigns characters could start threads that weren't based on missions, although how much they amounted to depended on how interested the GM was, which was how at last one character's holiday turned into a session of play.

I'm pretty happy with playing in this kind of framework, and don't find it confining.

[Keiko]

I have to admit I'm biased here since I SUCK at sandbox both as gm and player.

[vicky_molokh]

Originally Posted by Keiko

I have to admit I'm biased here since I SUCK at sandbox both as gm and player.

I had bad experience (i.e. had bored players due to not knowing what to do next) running sandbox, and seem to be doing best as a GM on what whswhs termed crucible. As a player, experience seems to vary, but I generally want more/more free-roaming side quests and clearer/less what-to-do-anxiety-causing main quests. Notably, I had very bad experience with some GMs who maintain 100% pressure nonstop all the time (with all sidequests being always detrimental to main quests) and in such a way that it's never clear which of the choices will turn out to be disastrous in retrospect.

[Keiko]

Sandbox games pretty requires for proactive, almost aggressive players and a gm that's good at improvisation, has an encyclopedic knowledge of the setting or both.

[Sunrunners_Fire]

Originally Posted by vicky_molokh

What are your opinions on the spectrum as applied to Transhuman Space?

That a middle-of-the-road approach, preferably with sandbox leanings, is most likely to produce a viable campaign. THS drowns you in complexity if you try to go pure sandbox, and pure railroads aren't especially entertaining for me to run. (Moderation in all things.)

[sir_pudding]

I'm utterly unable to conceive of how a pure sandbox (like I think that Peter Knutsen describes as the only "sane" and "competent" way to run a game) could even actually work in practice and still maintain some kind of cohesiveness for more than one player. It seems to me that if you don't specify some kind of campaign premise (you are all cops in LA, you are all former college buddies that meet every summer, you are the owner and employees of a small business, you are mercenary adventurers who meat in a tavern, ect.) you'll just end up with a number of simultaneous single player games that may or may not happen to occasionally intersect. So I'm just going to keep being insane and/or incompetent and specify a premise of some kind when I start new campaigns, regardless of setting.

[vicky_molokh]

Hey, I warned that sandboxes tend to require a cohesive party.

[sir_pudding]

Originally Posted by vicky_molokh

Hey, I warned that sandboxes tend to require a cohesive party.

How do you achieve that without some kind of established premise to the campaign and some restrictions on character creation? I've been trying to get Peter to explain this to me for years, and I still don't get it. If you just say, "Here's a world. Make a character." then unless the players decide to create a premise on their own (or assume one as given as in the 'You all meet at a tavern' chestnut) why should they have anything to do with each other or any kind of situation that you plan to introduce in the game (short of a global crisis)?

[vicky_molokh]

Originally Posted by sir_pudding

How do you achieve that without some kind of established premise to the campaign and some restrictions on character creation? I've been trying to get Peter to explain this to me for years, and I still don't get it. If you just say, "Here's a world. Make a character." then unless the players decide to create a premise on their own (or assume one as given as in the 'You all meet at a tavern' chestnut) why should they have anything to do with each other or any kind of situation that you plan to introduce in the game (short of a global crisis)?

Yeah, it's the one spot where I think you *have* to at the very least tell players to pick their own way to make a cohesive group. Which actually can be anything from 'met in a tavern and fell in deep love at first sight' to 'been buddies since childhood'.