Sandboxing
So I haven't been posting a whole lot recently because I've been designing and running my new game for the last few months. We're building the world from the ground up and it has a loooooong history, so it's taking up most of my spare mental cycles.
But I wanted to pause and remark on something here. In my last campaign-- Nobilis-- my episode titles were usually "Something Something, Parts 1-3." Stories were generally discrete entities with a clear beginning and ending revolving around dealing with one central problem, and I named the stories in advance. But in this campaign I've been naming episodes after the fact; stories bleed into each other and there's always multiple strands going at once, so I don't know what the common theme of an episode is until after we've been through it.
Partly this is because we're still in early days and don't know clearly what story we're telling, but I get the feeling it goes deeper. This is in some ways the most open storytelling game I've ever run (Anomaly was more open but wasn't a narrative.) My job is mostly just to let the players run and make sure the consequences are entertaining and consistent.
It's different. I love it dearly, but I'm having to build whole new GM-ing muscles and skills for this one.
This entry was originally posted at http://kilroy.dreamwidth.org/380199.html. Please comment there using OpenID.
But I wanted to pause and remark on something here. In my last campaign-- Nobilis-- my episode titles were usually "Something Something, Parts 1-3." Stories were generally discrete entities with a clear beginning and ending revolving around dealing with one central problem, and I named the stories in advance. But in this campaign I've been naming episodes after the fact; stories bleed into each other and there's always multiple strands going at once, so I don't know what the common theme of an episode is until after we've been through it.
Partly this is because we're still in early days and don't know clearly what story we're telling, but I get the feeling it goes deeper. This is in some ways the most open storytelling game I've ever run (Anomaly was more open but wasn't a narrative.) My job is mostly just to let the players run and make sure the consequences are entertaining and consistent.
It's different. I love it dearly, but I'm having to build whole new GM-ing muscles and skills for this one.
This entry was originally posted at http://kilroy.dreamwidth.org/380199.html. Please comment there using OpenID.