So, let me explain what I mean by this:

An Open World Campaign is one in which there is no "Great Big Story". That is, it is not about any of the adventures published, but could include them -- if the players buy into whatever hook you leave dangling. If they don't, fine, if they do, fine. The point of an open world is exploring the world, and that usually means player driven and random encounters and role play, nd very little time to prepare anything (or you prepare of a lot of things ahead of time just in case). There are commonly a lot of fetch quests, a lot of guard the caravan type things, and lots of travel. Encounters aren't always balanced against the party -- they may run into something much more powerful than they are -- or something super easy for them.

In other words, it is a campaign where the DM has no story that players *must* engage.

Just a group of folks  together in the world, making their way through it.

If you do or have:

What are some of the challenges you ran into doing this? 

Did you enjoy this kind of campaign as a player or DM?

What sort of House Rules did you have to create to enable it?

If it interests you, feel free to talk about why it does.

Your definition of 'open world' seems rather unduly strict, as only a few hexcrawls would qualify. I'm going to break up your points and address my experiences with each:

• An Open World Campaign is one in which there is no "Great Big Story"
  Every campaign I've run has the PCs 'cursed to live in interesting times' -- i.e. there is Stuff Going On, and some of that stuff is going to be hard to avoid. That said, I've certainly had campaigns where there were no default assumptions about how the PCs were going interact with that stuff.
• The point of an open world is exploring the world, and that usually means player driven and random encounters and role play, nd very little time to prepare anything (or you prepare of a lot of things ahead of time just in case).
  When I run exploration games, the areas the PCs can reasonably reach are all described at low levels of detail -- they'll at least know some rumors. Then, at the end of each session I ask the players where they're going next, and I'll use the time before the next session to flesh things out, based on the established skeleton, and maybe prepare some rumors for areas that are now reachable. Very few encounters are truly random, though they may not be pregenerated -- they'll be something that makes sense in context.
• There are commonly a lot of fetch quests, a lot of guard the caravan type things, and lots of travel.
  I don't consider any of those things fundamental or even very useful to exploration games. Not zero such things, but normal arc is "we arrive at a new place, various stuff is happening and the PCs can decide which, if any, of those things they want to interact with."
• Encounters aren't always balanced against the party -- they may run into something much more powerful than they are -- or something super easy for them.
  I've never done a game where the threats didn't escalate over time as the PCs increased in power, because if you don't do that either they die at the start of the game, or later in the campaign things get stale and boring. There is certainly the possibility of problems that are either trivial or unbeatable, but in either case it gets resolved narratively because a fight that isn't close isn't fun to play out.

I have a setting with some tweaks I want to eventually use, but it's not meant for an open world.

This made me think of two things. First, when I first started playing in middle school in the 80’s when all of our adventures were basically dungeon crawls and the only connective tissue was the fact that it was the same PCs. It was fun then, but I wouldn’t want to go back to it. 

The second thing is, when I’ve been a part of something like this, sooner or later, a story emerges whether we want it or not. The PCs pull on a thread, and once they find one they like, they kind of just keep pulling on it. It doesn’t end up some kind of classic 1-20 campaign with a single consistent narrative, but it often ends up being level 3-9 or something, then maybe they pick up on one of the other threads that had been dangling for a bit, and that takes you 10-12, and so on. It’s pretty much inevitable, you have characters, a setting, and the nature of the game means there’s plenty of conflict. The story just finds you.

Quote from Pantagruel666 >>

Your definition of 'open world' seems rather unduly strict, as only a few hexcrawls would qualify. I'm going to break up your points and address my experiences with each:

• An Open World Campaign is one in which there is no "Great Big Story"
  Every campaign I've run has the PCs 'cursed to live in interesting times' -- i.e. there is Stuff Going On, and some of that stuff is going to be hard to avoid. That said, I've certainly had campaigns where there were no default assumptions about how the PCs were going interact with that stuff.
• The point of an open world is exploring the world, and that usually means player driven and random encounters and role play, nd very little time to prepare anything (or you prepare of a lot of things ahead of time just in case).
  When I run exploration games, the areas the PCs can reasonably reach are all described at low levels of detail -- they'll at least know some rumors. Then, at the end of each session I ask the players where they're going next, and I'll use the time before the next session to flesh things out, based on the established skeleton, and maybe prepare some rumors for areas that are now reachable. Very few encounters are truly random, though they may not be pregenerated -- they'll be something that makes sense in context.
• There are commonly a lot of fetch quests, a lot of guard the caravan type things, and lots of travel.
  I don't consider any of those things fundamental or even very useful to exploration games. Not zero such things, but normal arc is "we arrive at a new place, various stuff is happening and the PCs can decide which, if any, of those things they want to interact with."
• Encounters aren't always balanced against the party -- they may run into something much more powerful than they are -- or something super easy for them.
  I've never done a game where the threats didn't escalate over time as the PCs increased in power, because if you don't do that either they die at the start of the game, or later in the campaign things get stale and boring. There is certainly the possibility of problems that are either trivial or unbeatable, but in either case it gets resolved narratively because a fight that isn't close isn't fun to play out.

 

Yes, all of this falls within the basic premise of an open world game, which is where the players drive the story through their actions, essentially "making it up as ya go along".

It is more than a hex crawl, and those encounters don't always have to be solved by combat -- role play is really the point, but you also add in the hazards of the world as a whole.

Quote from Xalthu >>

This made me think of two things. First, when I first started playing in middle school in the 80’s when all of our adventures were basically dungeon crawls and the only connective tissue was the fact that it was the same PCs. It was fun then, but I wouldn’t want to go back to it. 

The second thing is, when I’ve been a part of something like this, sooner or later, a story emerges whether we want it or not. The PCs pull on a thread, and once they find one they like, they kind of just keep pulling on it. It doesn’t end up some kind of classic 1-20 campaign with a single consistent narrative, but it often ends up being level 3-9 or something, then maybe they pick up on one of the other threads that had been dangling for a bit, and that takes you 10-12, and so on. It’s pretty much inevitable, you have characters, a setting, and the nature of the game means there’s plenty of conflict. The story just finds you.

This is my experience as well, which is why I asked, because I find it to be a lot of fun. I might have three campaigns created for such a place, but the basic idea is still "heres a bunch of people in a place. What do you do?

And letting them guide play as they explore and expereinc ethe world and do things to get money and come up with their own plans -- and yea, sometime spull on threads that were seeded because a nice story is still part of it -- and if they decide to back out mid story, that's fine too.

It is very much the opposite of the "here's an adventure, let's do this" kind of DM work -- even though you still have to have that adventure ready just in case.

One possible downside is that sometimes players want an adventure -- or they may not decide to take it as the speed or in the order it was laid out in.

I'm actually running one right now. A main story (BBEG) has emerged, but I don't make the players feel like they have to focus on it. I use it as background noise to push them when things might be getting slow. Random things connected to the main threat happen from time to time just to keep them aware the something is out there, but nothing clear enough for them to go face directly. So in the meantime they can go whatever direction they want. Travel between areas is not quick and that leaves lots of space for random things and exploration. It's also an early world setting so there's lots of reenforcement around the need to explore. I don't even know at this point if the BBEG is going to be the final BBEG or just a stepping stone along the way. 

What are some of the challenges you ran into doing this? In the beginning, I had to come up with enough random things for them to do that made sense for their situation. I mean that's always there in a homebrew setting, but it's just a lot more when there's no direction. I also chose to weave their backstories into each other and made those stories their primary motivation that now coinsides with the bigger story overall. It was fun, but took some thinking to make it all workout. Probably my biggest challenge is keeping ahead of my players. It's like I'm building a ladder as someone is climbing up it. 

Did you enjoy this kind of campaign as a player or DM? I do enjoy it as a DM and a player. The last two campaigns I was in as a player felt open but the DM kept a bigger story running in the background. There were multiple ways the story could unfold and different "endings" depending on our choices. So maybe not truly open, but darn close. I'm not a big fan of any of the published adventures. 

What sort of House Rules did you have to create to enable it? I'm running it mostly RaW. I do have some homebrew items that are tailored to the player's characters that will grow with them as they level. Some of the items are keys for minor plots because that's fun. The BBEG isn't following normal spellcasting abilities to do his evil deeds. None of this is super uncommon though. 

I'd like to here your thoughts on this as well AEDorsay. 

I run what I consider to be an Open World, where the players can direct their characters any which way they like. There is still a big plot going on, but it is not compulsary and they could drop it if they choose to. I've aimed to intertwine many plots to create the world around them, which involves their characters personally.

However, I am aiming to create a world to play in, and that means letting them roam. I have hooks for every which way, so realistically they will seldom travel to somewhere without me luring them with a plothook. I hope to finish a world map at some point that they can have, so that they can roam a little more spontaneously.

The most recent development is their desire to explore the wilds to the northwest of the world, to find the road to an ancient dragon-ruled stronghold which one of the characters hails from - meaning I need to write it all up for them! 

Not sure you are that interested in my answer given our interesting interactions on the forum but I have been running the same open-world campaign using the Mystara campaign world as a core setting for about 30 years.

I agree with one of the above comments that running an open world has a bit more to it than simply filling a map with interesting locations to explore.  I have found over the years several things kind of happen naturally and there are several aspects of running such a game that are kind of key to success.

* History, Lore and Bookkeeping are critical: While it can take some time for players to become personally involved in an open world, over time what I discovered is that players have an uncanny memory and they make your world their home.  As more and more campaigns and characters traversed my world, they remembered stuff I had forgotten, places, people, events.  In addition, your players add to the world, they establish strongholds, create families and lineages, and establish their own history and presence in the world.  Keeping good notes becomes quite critical quite early and at this point I keep very detailed chronicles of everything.   At this stage I have over 2,000 pages of chronicles, timelines, characters, key events, political notes, and conflicts.... it grows and grows as time goes on and this place becomes as much your world as it becomes your players.  So having a good system for keeping notes is quite key.

* Emergent Stories:  The shocking discovery I made early on when I started my open world which became the basis of how I run it today was how quickly unintended/unplanned stories emerge.  You start out thinking that an open world is just a place for players to explore but they get wrapped up in it quite quickly and see plots everywhere, even though you had no such plans.  Those plots are pursued, even though they are imagined and in the end you end up essentially having to invent the plots that the players imagined are there.  A couple of years back for example a player found a black steel ring in a random treasure chest and I described it as an unusually deep black ring with a strange heavy weight that clearly had magical properties.  The player became obsessed with trying to figure out what this ring was for.  I meant it to be a simple +1 Ring of Protection but the group initially had a hard time identifying it.  The obsession to find out what this ring was and the excitement they built around discovering gave it much more importance to the players than intended. It became the central story of what would develop to be a 3 year campaign. I had to create lore for that ring, redefine what its for etc.. to fufill the imagined "plot" surrounding it the players had invented in their heads.  Stuff like that happens a lot in this type of campaign and I think, that is what open-world gaming is all about.  Letting the players sort of create a story that emerges from their explorations and the assumptions they make about what they discover.

Let them set the pace: Another thing I realized quite early on is that when players have an open world without an adventure sort of handed to them is that the game slows down and the players start seeing the world as a place they live rather than a place where they adventure.  The distinction is that players want to establish themselves in the world, so they personalize it in a way.  I had entire campaigns dedicated to players starting up their own tavern, which included raising money for building it, designing it, setting up trade routes to bring rare ales and building its reputation up.  It was almost a SIMS like experience where very little adventuring took place for long periods of times, they just wanted to work on their tavern.  It has become a famous place in my world and the players are quite proud of it, but yeah, it became a whole different thing than what you would expect out of a D&D game.  

The point is that part of running an open world is that you have to be prepared for the players to set the pacing of the game, as soon as they realize that it really is an open world and they really can do whatever they want, they are not nescessarily going to seek out adventuring work and start exploring using D&D tropes.  They may and often will come up with stuff you never thought would happen but if you play out it and see what happens, entirely unique and interesting things can start happening.  

Other things that become necessary is addressing the how of certain game elements that are often out of the scope of a typical D&D campaign/adventure that becomes relevant in an open-world campaign where the players can presumably do anything they want.  In the above example I had to figure out where ale comes from and what sorts of ales there are and the prices for them and how trading works in my world because those elements became a focal point of questions the players had about the world.  These unexpected elements often don't have rules and can't always nescessarily be handled without rules, so yeah.. its a creative process which is why I think its helpful to plan ahead.

* How does kingdom management world.  The players may establish stronghold, want to build castles, govern land, have local politics (nobility packing order), they might want to raise armies and use those armies to wage war.  These elements while they can be handled narratively, you quickly discover that the players will want this to be a mini game (think modern Pathfinder Kingmaker). 

* Whats out there?  Players are going to very quickly outgrow and go beyond exploring local areas (early level play).  They are going to need to know what is going on in the world beyond the limits of their immediate view.  As such you are going to eventually need to know how the whole world works.  In short, you need a setting.. What is to the north, what is across the ocean, who are the gods, what is this world.  Players are going to ask questions and you need answers and its hard to make that stuff up on the fly and everything you make up, becomes cannon so you need to track everything.  As such, you really need to think about how this world works as a whole (people-cultures, gods and all the things that come with a setting).

* Levels are a problem:  One issue you run into really quickly is that the longer you run a world the higher level the players become and the less the game becomes about exploring and the more it becomes about everything else.  Low level characters will be willing to "adventure", higher level characters are going to be looking to do something a lot more involved (politics, kingdom management etc..).  As such, managing XP and leveling, keeping it slow and not making the game about "power increases" is key to a good long healthy open-world setting.  The game can't be about leveling up, it needs to be about everything else.

All of the games I run begin as open world, but as the players move around and fixate on a few hooks / stories, the open-ness falls away in favor of digging into The Big Plot based on whatever they decide is worth their time. Honestly I really like this method, as it feels natural to me and my groups, but I've never really considered a full West-Marches esque open world game beginning to end. 

I'm not sure how I would approach that, honestly. I guess it's just collections of smaller scale or shorter plotlines? Things that can be resolved in a handful of sessions rather than 3 years of playtime, lol

So, everyone so far is explaining what an open world is and what the value of it is.

Yes, the players do essentially create the story, and they do get drawn into the day to day life stuff that a lot of folks think they don't want to do, lol.

That's the point of an open world.

OSR -- it was thinking about Mystara and how an ERB/Howard/Wells inspired world can get dropped off the map that reminded me of the concept about 15 or so years ago. Back then, if you said Mystara around a bunch of gamers maybe 1 in 50 would perk up, the rest just going "huh? What?"

I was asked my take on this.

IN my last game, I created a super simple (for me) setting. Closed off, isolated,  but large and varied and I set some basic stuff up and I knew that there was a nexus of worlds and an Ancient Demon Lord who was manipulating things.

That was the sum total of what I did.

three years later, the final fight comes along, and the story has progressed to a point where it became obvious some of the player would have to sacrifice themselves so others could live.  I didn't set that up. They had become so invested that they were willing -- and out of the 28 players, three walked out. But all of them celebrated.

IT was an open world basis. Taking that and expanding it more was asked for when I solicited for my next world, which I start using next year.

Everything OSR describes is exactly what happens in an Open World concept -- and when you add in things that are unfamiliar or seem sorta like something you know but don't, it becomes even more interesting.

Yes, that means having a way to develop strongholds and all that, big whoop.  But it really drives home the point, imo, that everything is the Player's stories, not the DMs, and shows how *not* to railroad better than anything else, lol.

As a world builder, a mythopoet, it is the most fun for me, personally -- more fun even than creating my wickedly evil and barbarously cruel complex dungeons, lol. because if I seed enough, I can have all of it.

I still do my outline for a two to three year campaign -- but it is one of many little setups I have, and is always little ore than a highly developed outline, not an adventure with all the details because those aren't needed-- they come from the interaction of the players with the world of my imagination.

Now, I will say that part of the reason I asked is that I don't see a lot of it. Forgotten Realms is totally able to be played that way, as a published world, and I know a lot of folks are deeply invested in the lore, so it should be something fairly easy -- it needn't be a homebrew world (i hate that term, lol).

So i thought I would ask to see if there were others like me who enjoyed that style.

Please keep it all coming -- tell me about your stuff.

90% of my campaigns are open worlds. I love them in my own way.

Challenges? Just keeping ahead of the players as they can do what they want in character. I find this pretty easy, I talk to the players about their decisions and how much time I need to prep for any change in their directions. They then say, "We are going after this; how much time do you need?"

House Rules come and go based on the campaign. I use the MCDM Kingdoms & Warfare rules if they want a 'home base' or a light hand in local politics. I also use the 2e AD&D Birthright Campaign Setting rules if someone wants to be a ruler, high priest of a temple, thieves' guild master, etc. I consider them bonus layers.

My key concept, though, the one I reinforce regularly, is that my seetings are consequence engines.

I start the game with a lot of things in motion. Different factions having goals, needs to reach those goals, enemies, obstacles, etc. All the things that a party of adventurers can help with. The player part gets to see that in a broad sense and then decide if and where they want to get involved. Their adventures speak to the consequences of the choices they actively make and pursue.

Everything they don't touch is story fodder for me as a consequence of not helping. Do they raid the dragon's lair for gold after learning the dragon has been away for years, or try to stop marauding goblins who are attacking nearby villages? At some point that dragon might come home (tick, tick, tick...). The goblins might take over the village and enslave all the villagers. Or some NPC adventuring party may become the heroes that save the villagers.

I don't have a vested interest in any particular outcome. I just lay it out, let the players find their pathway, and update things as we go. It's fun.

That consequence engine element is a key point for certain, and something I think that should apply in many open worlds — perhaps not with the full scope of your efforts, but in terms of the understanding that because it is an open world, and not a video game, there are consequences for their actions that impact not just them but the world around them.

I never thought about really making that a firm thing — it was always presumed in my mind, but that may be a flaw of my expectations — so seeing it is a really cool thing and I will totally steal that.

One of my current games is more open world in the sense that the stories are entirely player driven. The world is populated with dungeons and plot hooks and political situations,  and several concurrent Bads that could all make a claim to Big Bad status, but the focus of the game always depends on what the players want to do. 

When running an open world, content queues and placeholders are key, so you don’t get completely overwhelmed.  Start with organizing your content (towns, dungeons, NPCs, 50x50 mile plots of land or water, encounters, etc etc, really whatever you feel is important for the game). into their own linear queue system, then add the placeholder indicators.  Whenever players encounter these placeholders, the queue spits out the next piece of content for them.  

You see, it feels like an open world to the players, but is actually far more manageable for you as the DM.  They could go North, South, East or West doesn’t matter- any way they go spits out the next queued 50x50 mile plot of land.  Whichever dungeon or town placeholder they encounter next in that plot, don’t matter just spit out whatever is next in the queue.  

Use random generators to take a lot of the legwork out of this process as you refresh your queues with more content.  Not that you can’t tweak it (you should) but have the random generators give you a baseline.  

As far as a story is concerned, one is forming around your content and the actions of your players.  It is not  set in stone from the get-go, like “Tiamat’s followers are collecting a horde of treasure to summon her”. 

Good advice.

Not super useful for me, as I don’t use a VTT, but for a LOT of players presently it could be a big help.

Which probably sounds strange, since all of my games are virtual (I use zoom mostly).

I generally have a really good idea of what is where (using a biome system) and have fairly extensive maps for my use that are little more than closeups of my continental one, but I rely very heavily on random tables that start simple, and get more complex (entirely on my side), but can still do it within 3 rolls at most.

But then, I used to run entirely random dungeons off the tables in 1e DMG, so….

Quote from AEDorsay >>

That consequence engine element is a key point for certain, and something I think that should apply in many open worlds — perhaps not with the full scope of your efforts, but in terms of the understanding that because it is an open world, and not a video game, there are consequences for their actions that impact not just them but the world around them.

I never thought about really making that a firm thing — it was always presumed in my mind, but that may be a flaw of my expectations — so seeing it is a really cool thing and I will totally steal that.

 I'm honored by your theft :)

I've found that players who realize there are consequences no matter what tend to invest even more in the world. Especially veterans who realize they can go that deep in their characters and see a reward.

One of the useful and fun (well, for me and my folks) that I have done is created a group of folks who are the PCs, but all slightly different. Fairly standard trope.

In this kind of setting, they become a pleasant foil, used judiciously.  Oh, look, the players bought a keep.

Well, they bought a bigger keep.

The players want to do this thing -- oh, look those people alread y headed out to do it and on e way they poked fun at the party.

Key is that they also have to lose at times -- the party succeeded in that thing, and there's the bullies, sitting there, and one says that he would have done it better and easier if he hadn't been stuck with these folks.

They argue among themselves,  they pick on others (including the party, but not only them), they are louder and more boisterous. They are annoying and they are also just like the party in terms of personality stuff -- just the worst traits.

When the party has a really rough encounter and survives, though, the other guys will lose someone.

They become a benchmark, a way of introducing competition, a way of reflecting things back a the party, but always twisted. They show up during off times, random-ish, and can drop hints or pick up what the party doesn't.

In situations such as some of those mentioned -- where things are happening in the background -- their actions can have repercussions that can be shown -- and in a way that says the party could have done that better. "I told you you should have picked that one spell like those twerps do!" "Maybe if you used weapon X like those twerps, you wouldn't have broken yours!"

It becomes a cool way to do something that is just silly or fun, serious or sentimental, as the moment needs.  FOr maximum payoff, they should be in need of help one time, and then whe n the party needs help, they would return the favor (giving you a decent deus ex machina should you need one).

Quote from AEDorsay >>

 

If you do or have:

What are some of the challenges you ran into doing this? 

Did you enjoy this kind of campaign as a player or DM?

What sort of House Rules did you have to create to enable it?

 

I'm currently running such a campaign, and ... well, I should maybe give a bit of background: The world has no gold to magic conversion, you basically cannot buy magic items (except potions and maybe the occasional scroll). It's homebrew, so no one except my players would recognize anything much. Also, it's low(-ish) level, and the very vast majority of everyone including kings, nobles, merchants, bartenders and criminals are all classless mooks. If you have a class level, you're someone of note. It's like the Marvel universe, in that the mayor or president or whatever isn't a super.

Challenges: Players don't know what to do, and don't necessarily have the drive to build their own stories. This despite the fact that it was pointed out before recruitment that ... you're actually kinda required to find your own path, have your own ambitions. 

Do I enjoy it: Oh hell yes, I've tried several times, and succeeded a few. It's the most fun. I get to do what I do best - invent stuff. And the players get to set out on whatever strikes their fancy. It has high attrition, I'd recommend recruiting at least twice the number of players needed. 

Houserules: Barely any. As noted above, certain things are unusual, but I hardly consider it homebrew that you cannot pop down to the corner Magic Item franchise and buy whatever you feel fits your 'build'. I do realise some players certain do consider it homebrew. For that reason, I'm always upfront about it.

Open world games are kind of a trap. I mean, they're literally a trap. Whether they work is another question, but the open world game is definitely my way of luring players into my homebrew world, and feeding them interesting things so as to keep them there. A homebrew world really isn't worth much if I'm the only one who knows about it. 

it's not only a trap though. It's also how I work best. I paint all the broad strokes in my mind, lands and history and pantheons and so on - but fill in the blanks, create the details and minutiae through play. For instance, I didn't know the underdark was connected primarily through a network of underground rivers and lakes, until it came up during play, and that's what my mind conjured: Dark rivers, heavy barges rowed by scary characters, eerie lakes to cross (the one the players will pass is a flooded city, ruins of unknowable age crumbling into the shallow waters), locks manned by surly orcs, toll collectors and so on. 

All in all, it requires a very particular and rare type of player: One that enjoys text. 

I'm doing an open world campaign for my brother, He always finds a reasonable and logical way to take over a country. It's not a big problem till he declares war on another nation. the d&d lag is real. took me an hour to get the battling over with. afterwards I bombard him with questions on like how to split funding and affairs between his country and others to kinda discourage taking over land yet the same thing always somehow manages to repeat. At least we enjoy it and that is all that counts in my opinion.