I’ve started to do open world campaigns, and I’ve quickly learned it's different than a normal campaign. My players take random detours and it’s difficult to prepare for everything. I’m just looking for some advice and what I should expect.
I am also running a semi-ish open world campaign... ok well actually its more like a "several open world" campaign because I have at least 4 or more worlds they can explore. Since most of mine is homebrew, I can pretty much just make things up on the spot, but my biggest piece of advice would be to only prepare a little, but prepare a little for a lot of different eventualities. Characters will ALWAYS do the unexpected, so if you prepare in one direction, it's 70% likely that it still won't be used. Rather, prepare several different directions, create rabbit trails that lead back to the start, and if you want to be devious, make several things that look like easy fun rabbit trails, but will actually bring them closer to the main story line. Another major piece of advice would be overly blatant about story hooks. If they aren't biting a certain one that you really want them to, add a few more things to drive them in that direction as you go. If they decide to hightail it in another direction(which is likely cause if they are in character, what person WANTS to go towards imminent doom?) then make it look like they got away and then spring the trap on them! My players love to overthink things, and they also enjoy being placed in impossible situations so they can escape daringly. My absolute favorite is when they start being paranoid about something insignificant and I make it out to look SO much worse than what it is! There is nothing more fun than to watch players whip themselves into a frenzy about something, only to find that it was really insignificant all along and then, suddenly, they are blindsided from a different direction!
So in short, if you get derailed from certain plans, keep the outline loose and let the players drive the story. Oh, and it's always good to have a few flexible encounters planned. If you get lost, the best way to get back on track is letting the characters interact while you plot, but I keep making the mistake of not putting in enough encounters. Without any encounters, the players get bored.
Ps: If you need a few rabbit trail adventures, Writing prompts are an excellent source for that. There are a ton of random things that pop up like, someone gets poisoned, a long lost friend shows up, or someone dies! There are so many and its easy to find one that fits the situation. I use several different random generators for things like names, cities, bars, shops, or writing prompts while I run. They are insanely helpful for flexible play.
this website has a few cool options that could be helpful:
One of my primary techniques for running an open world campaign is planning things around the current location that they players are in a bit at a time. Detailing the primary settlement that they are starting in, with general plans and ideas for the nearby surrounding area. Preparing the surrounding terrain, the few interesting features and places that they might go to, and also some potential random encounters for when they go off the beaten path. When planning larger encounters around specific "dungeons" (towers, caves, cabins in the woods, etc.) I will often keep the overall position in the world flexible so that you can deploy it where the players are, although afterwards recording the location of this specific region makes it locked in for if the players decide they wish to return.
When they are heading to a new location, guided or not, I will usually tried to have prepared some quick general information regarding the nearby settlements, a few important individuals, locations, and perhaps an interesting unique feature. If they are making their way to a settlement that is completely unprepared (which happens more often at higher levels with their fancy magical transportation methods), those lists of quick names of characters and locations especially taverns and inns can allow you to guide it through long enough until you have time to flesh it out further.
Once the players have been made aware of an important event in the world, even if they decide not to pursue it you can have the events move forwards. Allow them to hear of the changes that are happening in the world around them and making actual repercussions if they choose to not interact with it. Other changing and evolving events are also important, because it makes the world feel lived in, which encourages the player characters to become involved and care about the world so they will be more likely to engage in your planned main quest events.
Whenever I run a game I tend to do it more in a open world setting, following a campaign for me tends to get more tedious because you need to focus on every part of a city and make sure you are always planning for the next encounter and pushing them in the right way. For a lot I can see that being the other way around but I prefer the open world setting because you can let them go where they want and if you have a story in mind you can just hint at it and let them decide to go or not, you don't have to funnel them down a specific tunnel or towards a random cave.
Use your open world as a fog of war of sorts, maybe have a rough map of the continent in your mind with where the Big cities are, cities that everyone knows of; London/Brighton etc. then start mapping out the area around where they are starting like ShadowPhage13 said, think of some features around and maybe some dungeons etc then when they start travelling your opening it more and more, creating the world around them.
This way it feels abit more like a real world because you can put real detail into places as they start heading there instead of a general idea for loads of locations allover the world, Matt Mercer talks about this a little in one of the recent Talks when talking about humperduke? how once the party decided to go there he started to really flesh it out from just a general idea to a full and proper city.
Other then that my main advise would be to just be flexible and go with the party, have different ideas for what the party could run into along the way, maybe come up with 5 encounters for forrest areas, 5 for plains, 5 for cities etc. So no matter where they go you have something to pull out of the hat. Also try to drop hints to something bigger going on, again like Matt Mercer does in Season 2 (Slight spoiler) drop hints to something big happening in a local town via 'news' or town criers then as they head towards it have people who are trying to escape, families in caravans leaving the town because they are scared of what's happening.
I've ran every campaign and world I've designed or used as open world. That's over 22+ years. That includes both public play, Open Game day, flgs League play, Adventurers League, homegames, and private fill in games. Itcs a tricky venture without some basic knowledge of your gameworld you have selected. The first thing I do when picking up a published world is read the overview of each ralm and decide what key events would be going on during the adventure/encounters for that session. You can focus it down to areas right around your projected location for adventuring. Keep it simple, who, what, where, why. A few for possible sidetrek players, and we know they like to explore their worlds. That is what we want. Explore until your hearts content. Then make sure you know enough about your world before your first adventure that you can pick a location and detail it. Simple things like "there are mountains there, dwarves and giants at war, dwarf lord is Bruenor". Three key points to help spark your imagination. There is nothing wrong with having to pick up a book for reference in such instances where they deviate. Know what book you need and take a few moments to familiarize its layout. Content can be absorbed in time. The more you do, the more you can assimulate into memory. The more memories, the more you imagination grows. Develope a system that works for you and don't be afraid to be different. I devised a toolset that organizes this info in a unique way. It can be used by old and new, even used as a teach and train. When you say "What's next.... oh yeah" It helps to get you back on track. When your on track, the explorative players in your world become less and less a test of your ability, and more and more on how well your going to wow them and let them really play in that world.
There's a lot of information to an open world game, the hundreds of possible NPCs, the dozens or more cities, the untold number of plots, side quests, and stories that the players have available to them...or maybe not.
Some simple bits of information that make open worlds super easy to run, and the posters above have mentioned as much, will do the trick. All of this information can simply be written down in a notebook, on the computer, or a wall full of post it notes, whatever works best for you. I just use a bullet point list, similar to this, as my collection, it helps to simply have the information to grab things from.
Example flow:
Write down the major civilized areas
Names of cities, hamlets, villages, and necessary plot locations. That's it, just the names.
General description: Eastcliff, port town, major commerce to and from the capital
Any plot hook or unique information you might want to have there: possible pirate problem, population worships bones of a kraken
Write down some major plot/story arcs
These events happen whether the players are involved or not
These events can happen simultaneously, one after the other, or both
These events are not related to the players, instead they're simply just happening
Villain/Group's name
The goal
The method
Write down important locations
Plot locations based on 2's information
Landmarks you want the players to use as world lore
Exploration locations for random "just because" things
Create a simple story arc for your players
Ask for a back story from each player
Tie the back stories into the world
Create new locations or alter locations to accommodate the stories
Let the players' actions influence where the story goes
Flesh out the city/location the players are in right now
City/Location Name
NPCs
Important buildings/locations in the area
Any plot hooks
Any encounters
Begin detailing surrounding areas where the players may go
Start adding to the information you have from #1 and #3 if they're near by
If you know where the players are headed, give it all the attention
Craft at least 3 different NPCs to use as your in game "Go this way" actors
One NPC in a "home/hub" location
One NPC that roams the world
One NPC that can mysteriously pop up anywhere
Just as with games like Fallout, Red Dead Redemption, Grand Theft Auto, and all those other "Open World" games: you can miss out on tons of content and still spend hundreds of hours in the game. The game doesn't have to render those images, the game doesn't have to trigger any of those events, and the game doesn't have to use any of it's energy on the stuff that isn't on screen. Some of those events are still happening, and you'll see the progress, but all that's happening is a little clock is ticking, the players still don't know anything beyond the visible changes. You have a notebook, post it notes, and a computer to track the stuff that your players are unaware of, and until they make it important, you don't have to put a lot of energy into it.
The whole thing is like a complicated puzzle I think there is two halves the building of the adventure and the playing of the adventure, And another important aspect is how to resolve the results of how it plays out. ill start with how to resolve what happens first in any game with open world that has a group who defeats a monster in order to decide who wins loot they will roll a dice if you use a 1000 sided dice most likely the rolls will be between 1-999. So it seems like that number is just random fate of the roll but what if it has to do with the levels of three different spheres like a people crystal, a land crystal, and a item crystal -- These are what modifiy each digit of the dice roll. So how does someone setup these crystals? To set up the adventure its like setting up a guild for each level people they can train a certain amount of points in strength for the people crystal, Or a amount of points of constitution for the land crystal, Or wisdom for the item crystal. But the job of the builder is not to train the points themselves its to decide how they want the points to modify the players fate. Then when the adventure is played each level of the game is based on what quest the players players are doing and they will get a certain number of bonus's to increase the the result of that their roll depending on how they deal with the key points in that quest that were build like if you say let them train 5 points over a course of 6 quests and if they get all the quests right they get 30 points of training so that it matches with where you want them to be at level 9 but maybe if they get 4 out of 6 right they get 20 points like they only made to level 6 and 2 out of six made it to level 3 with 10 points. so if your building it this way the guild at level 3 might have 3 points of str to train at each level from 1-3 so that they can have 9 strength ( I know missing one point from 10) or they can choose to train 3 points of con from each level 1-3 or the same thing with wisdom its like they are making a quest choice every three levels. and then they make another quest choice that will let them do the same thing again till level 6 where they can bring strength up to 18 or maybe pick constitution this time instead making it up to 9 even though strength is already 9 and maybe that will give them the random modifier to win the final result or maybe the person who picks wisdom to 18 and strength to 9 would have the highest modifier.
another thing that might be fun to try is the adventuring guild itself is where the quest is completed by training the points they get out in the open world by working together but everyone can spend their points differently resulting in a different person winning a role for the reward there out there tryin to get.
I have found that every long term game that I have ever run that was in what I would call a open world format had one thing on common. That was a player decided to use the game to run his story. Open world to me mean player drive story. My goal in a open world game is to set the ground work so the players can run with it.
So what I do is size up my players. Let's say I have three players, one is a wizard and just wants to hit 5th level and cast fireball. One just wants to have shinny armor, and a big sword, and the third want to rule a the criminal underworld. Bingo set up your world to allow for that possibility. Talk with that player, how will he rule the underworld ? You may find your open world is nothing more then a major city, that you can detail for days.
It's still a open world the players can do what they want, but I would bet in makeing the world fit your driven character you will keep the other players happy and you just have to detail out that area rather then what's over every mountain range. Then as the players grow you can see the signs and know what direction they will want to push their story, and you can react accordingly.
Thanks for the advice guys. I do have a very detailed map with its own book to go with it, so I have that covered. All the other advice is great ill definitely use it!
very nice, looks like a fine world map a lot of detail and I like how the mountains have little spots of snow, they bring out the darker area's contrast and there is lots of names of places there some are bigger and stand out but some are to small to see what they are I wonder if I look at that map key if I learn what some of those are when I look at the bigger image from downloading.
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I’ve started to do open world campaigns, and I’ve quickly learned it's different than a normal campaign. My players take random detours and it’s difficult to prepare for everything. I’m just looking for some advice and what I should expect.
Hey GaryLarson!
I am also running a semi-ish open world campaign... ok well actually its more like a "several open world" campaign because I have at least 4 or more worlds they can explore. Since most of mine is homebrew, I can pretty much just make things up on the spot, but my biggest piece of advice would be to only prepare a little, but prepare a little for a lot of different eventualities. Characters will ALWAYS do the unexpected, so if you prepare in one direction, it's 70% likely that it still won't be used. Rather, prepare several different directions, create rabbit trails that lead back to the start, and if you want to be devious, make several things that look like easy fun rabbit trails, but will actually bring them closer to the main story line. Another major piece of advice would be overly blatant about story hooks. If they aren't biting a certain one that you really want them to, add a few more things to drive them in that direction as you go. If they decide to hightail it in another direction(which is likely cause if they are in character, what person WANTS to go towards imminent doom?) then make it look like they got away and then spring the trap on them! My players love to overthink things, and they also enjoy being placed in impossible situations so they can escape daringly. My absolute favorite is when they start being paranoid about something insignificant and I make it out to look SO much worse than what it is! There is nothing more fun than to watch players whip themselves into a frenzy about something, only to find that it was really insignificant all along and then, suddenly, they are blindsided from a different direction!
So in short, if you get derailed from certain plans, keep the outline loose and let the players drive the story. Oh, and it's always good to have a few flexible encounters planned. If you get lost, the best way to get back on track is letting the characters interact while you plot, but I keep making the mistake of not putting in enough encounters. Without any encounters, the players get bored.
Hope this helps!
-thechimericalcookie
Ps: If you need a few rabbit trail adventures, Writing prompts are an excellent source for that. There are a ton of random things that pop up like, someone gets poisoned, a long lost friend shows up, or someone dies! There are so many and its easy to find one that fits the situation. I use several different random generators for things like names, cities, bars, shops, or writing prompts while I run. They are insanely helpful for flexible play.
this website has a few cool options that could be helpful:
http://writingexercises.co.uk/plotgenerator.php
-thechimericalcookie
One of my primary techniques for running an open world campaign is planning things around the current location that they players are in a bit at a time. Detailing the primary settlement that they are starting in, with general plans and ideas for the nearby surrounding area. Preparing the surrounding terrain, the few interesting features and places that they might go to, and also some potential random encounters for when they go off the beaten path. When planning larger encounters around specific "dungeons" (towers, caves, cabins in the woods, etc.) I will often keep the overall position in the world flexible so that you can deploy it where the players are, although afterwards recording the location of this specific region makes it locked in for if the players decide they wish to return.
When they are heading to a new location, guided or not, I will usually tried to have prepared some quick general information regarding the nearby settlements, a few important individuals, locations, and perhaps an interesting unique feature. If they are making their way to a settlement that is completely unprepared (which happens more often at higher levels with their fancy magical transportation methods), those lists of quick names of characters and locations especially taverns and inns can allow you to guide it through long enough until you have time to flesh it out further.
Once the players have been made aware of an important event in the world, even if they decide not to pursue it you can have the events move forwards. Allow them to hear of the changes that are happening in the world around them and making actual repercussions if they choose to not interact with it. Other changing and evolving events are also important, because it makes the world feel lived in, which encourages the player characters to become involved and care about the world so they will be more likely to engage in your planned main quest events.
Whenever I run a game I tend to do it more in a open world setting, following a campaign for me tends to get more tedious because you need to focus on every part of a city and make sure you are always planning for the next encounter and pushing them in the right way. For a lot I can see that being the other way around but I prefer the open world setting because you can let them go where they want and if you have a story in mind you can just hint at it and let them decide to go or not, you don't have to funnel them down a specific tunnel or towards a random cave.
Use your open world as a fog of war of sorts, maybe have a rough map of the continent in your mind with where the Big cities are, cities that everyone knows of; London/Brighton etc. then start mapping out the area around where they are starting like ShadowPhage13 said, think of some features around and maybe some dungeons etc then when they start travelling your opening it more and more, creating the world around them.
This way it feels abit more like a real world because you can put real detail into places as they start heading there instead of a general idea for loads of locations allover the world, Matt Mercer talks about this a little in one of the recent Talks when talking about humperduke? how once the party decided to go there he started to really flesh it out from just a general idea to a full and proper city.
Other then that my main advise would be to just be flexible and go with the party, have different ideas for what the party could run into along the way, maybe come up with 5 encounters for forrest areas, 5 for plains, 5 for cities etc. So no matter where they go you have something to pull out of the hat. Also try to drop hints to something bigger going on, again like Matt Mercer does in Season 2 (Slight spoiler) drop hints to something big happening in a local town via 'news' or town criers then as they head towards it have people who are trying to escape, families in caravans leaving the town because they are scared of what's happening.
Hope this helps and makes sense!
Snooze.
I've ran every campaign and world I've designed or used as open world. That's over 22+ years. That includes both public play, Open Game day, flgs League play, Adventurers League, homegames, and private fill in games. Itcs a tricky venture without some basic knowledge of your gameworld you have selected. The first thing I do when picking up a published world is read the overview of each ralm and decide what key events would be going on during the adventure/encounters for that session. You can focus it down to areas right around your projected location for adventuring. Keep it simple, who, what, where, why. A few for possible sidetrek players, and we know they like to explore their worlds. That is what we want. Explore until your hearts content. Then make sure you know enough about your world before your first adventure that you can pick a location and detail it. Simple things like "there are mountains there, dwarves and giants at war, dwarf lord is Bruenor". Three key points to help spark your imagination. There is nothing wrong with having to pick up a book for reference in such instances where they deviate. Know what book you need and take a few moments to familiarize its layout. Content can be absorbed in time. The more you do, the more you can assimulate into memory. The more memories, the more you imagination grows. Develope a system that works for you and don't be afraid to be different. I devised a toolset that organizes this info in a unique way. It can be used by old and new, even used as a teach and train. When you say "What's next.... oh yeah" It helps to get you back on track. When your on track, the explorative players in your world become less and less a test of your ability, and more and more on how well your going to wow them and let them really play in that world.
There's a lot of information to an open world game, the hundreds of possible NPCs, the dozens or more cities, the untold number of plots, side quests, and stories that the players have available to them...or maybe not.
Some simple bits of information that make open worlds super easy to run, and the posters above have mentioned as much, will do the trick. All of this information can simply be written down in a notebook, on the computer, or a wall full of post it notes, whatever works best for you. I just use a bullet point list, similar to this, as my collection, it helps to simply have the information to grab things from.
Example flow:
Just as with games like Fallout, Red Dead Redemption, Grand Theft Auto, and all those other "Open World" games: you can miss out on tons of content and still spend hundreds of hours in the game. The game doesn't have to render those images, the game doesn't have to trigger any of those events, and the game doesn't have to use any of it's energy on the stuff that isn't on screen. Some of those events are still happening, and you'll see the progress, but all that's happening is a little clock is ticking, the players still don't know anything beyond the visible changes. You have a notebook, post it notes, and a computer to track the stuff that your players are unaware of, and until they make it important, you don't have to put a lot of energy into it.
The whole thing is like a complicated puzzle I think there is two halves the building of the adventure and the playing of the adventure, And another important aspect is how to resolve the results of how it plays out. ill start with how to resolve what happens first in any game with open world that has a group who defeats a monster in order to decide who wins loot they will roll a dice if you use a 1000 sided dice most likely the rolls will be between 1-999. So it seems like that number is just random fate of the roll but what if it has to do with the levels of three different spheres like a people crystal, a land crystal, and a item crystal -- These are what modifiy each digit of the dice roll. So how does someone setup these crystals? To set up the adventure its like setting up a guild for each level people they can train a certain amount of points in strength for the people crystal, Or a amount of points of constitution for the land crystal, Or wisdom for the item crystal. But the job of the builder is not to train the points themselves its to decide how they want the points to modify the players fate. Then when the adventure is played each level of the game is based on what quest the players players are doing and they will get a certain number of bonus's to increase the the result of that their roll depending on how they deal with the key points in that quest that were build like if you say let them train 5 points over a course of 6 quests and if they get all the quests right they get 30 points of training so that it matches with where you want them to be at level 9 but maybe if they get 4 out of 6 right they get 20 points like they only made to level 6 and 2 out of six made it to level 3 with 10 points. so if your building it this way the guild at level 3 might have 3 points of str to train at each level from 1-3 so that they can have 9 strength ( I know missing one point from 10) or they can choose to train 3 points of con from each level 1-3 or the same thing with wisdom its like they are making a quest choice every three levels. and then they make another quest choice that will let them do the same thing again till level 6 where they can bring strength up to 18 or maybe pick constitution this time instead making it up to 9 even though strength is already 9 and maybe that will give them the random modifier to win the final result or maybe the person who picks wisdom to 18 and strength to 9 would have the highest modifier.
another thing that might be fun to try is the adventuring guild itself is where the quest is completed by training the points they get out in the open world by working together but everyone can spend their points differently resulting in a different person winning a role for the reward there out there tryin to get.
I have found that every long term game that I have ever run that was in what I would call a open world format had one thing on common. That was a player decided to use the game to run his story. Open world to me mean player drive story. My goal in a open world game is to set the ground work so the players can run with it.
So what I do is size up my players. Let's say I have three players, one is a wizard and just wants to hit 5th level and cast fireball. One just wants to have shinny armor, and a big sword, and the third want to rule a the criminal underworld. Bingo set up your world to allow for that possibility. Talk with that player, how will he rule the underworld ? You may find your open world is nothing more then a major city, that you can detail for days.
It's still a open world the players can do what they want, but I would bet in makeing the world fit your driven character you will keep the other players happy and you just have to detail out that area rather then what's over every mountain range. Then as the players grow you can see the signs and know what direction they will want to push their story, and you can react accordingly.
Thanks for the advice guys. I do have a very detailed map with its own book to go with it, so I have that covered. All the other advice is great ill definitely use it!
heres a flying city with a tree propeller that has people to live inside while its spinning around i felt this might help
Thats pretty cool, but check this out.
If you want to REALLY look at it in all its gloriousness you need to download it but it's worth it.
https://www.deviantart.com/aumyr-it/art/Aumyr-World-Map-ENG-556518073
very nice, looks like a fine world map a lot of detail and I like how the mountains have little spots of snow, they bring out the darker area's contrast and there is lots of names of places there some are bigger and stand out but some are to small to see what they are I wonder if I look at that map key if I learn what some of those are when I look at the bigger image from downloading.