Schrodinger's Dungeon as Sandbox Planning Tool

When I’m on the interwebs, I read about GMs and DMs that are constantly planning “story arcs” for their games.  They have this group of “important heroes” and then these heroes go out and do “important things” and that’s the big important story!  

If you like playing that way, that’s cool.  I’m not going to bash it.  I used to play that way -- but I’ve stopped.  

I’ve stopped for a few of reasons --

1. The prep was KILLING ME!  The amount of time it takes to put a “story” together is daunting.  I am an adult with a full time job now.  I want to spend my gaming time playing, crafting or painting minis.  I don’t want to plot out a story.  Personal preference.
2. If one of the players bails, you have a hole in your story that you have to fix.  The more important that PC, the bigger the hole.  The harder it is to plug.  This leads to massive re-writes of the plot and that goes back to #1 above.  HUGE TIME SUCK!  No thank you.
3. The railroad tracks must be strong and narrow.  If the PCs get off the path, the story suffers.  You have to make changes, re-writes, modifications, etc.  In one campaign, to keep “the story” on track, I had to resort to time travel for the PCs to wrap some things up…  Ack.  Too many ret-cons, to much re-writing.  Nope.

So that leaves sandbox play.  

If you run a sandbox, you have to be good at improvising.  Random tables are your friend.  You have to be good at tying disparate elements together on the fly or after the fact.  You have to weave some kind of world together from the bits you put out there.  You need to keep some good notes so that the random bits from three months ago mean something -- after all, that thing you made up about the blue fairy queen might just be the thing the adventurers want to follow up on!

So I had this initial idea -- why not create a set/series of random tables -- in advance -- that define the parameters of the sandbox?  These tables are all the prep you’ll need.  You keep going back to them, time and again, to determine what is going on in your game.

Yes, yes.  I know, there are literally an infinite number of random things out there (Abulafia, Wizardawn, Chaotic Shiny to name a few) plus all the dead-tree and/or PDF versions you can find (Judges Guild Ready Ref Sheets, Dungeon Alphabet, Wilderness Alphabet, Toolbox, Ultimate Toolbox, etc.)

I’m talking about something else.  A template or structure that you fill in to represent the structure of your world (or parts of your world.)  The template -- how you roll against it -- sets the dynamics of what appears, when it appears, where it appears.  

You could approximate this by using the resources available -- random wandering monster charts, random treasure tables, etc.  That might work out just fine.  How you apply those random rolls to your world would determine the flavor and structure of the place.  If your whole world looks and feels the same, you could keep using the same tables everywhere.

Of course, if the City of Ghouls is different than the Ankaar, city of Thieves, you might need some different tables.

If The Tomb of Sarkos is different than the Crypt of Worms, you might need some different tables.

Of course, of course you could just randomly roll up some more tables.  Fine.  That’ll work.  

What I’m proposing instead is a fixed structure, that always “works” the same, that you fill in with bits and bobs to make each place different.  You’d fill this out initially, you can add to it and/or modify it as you go.  Make changes.  Deletions.  Additions.  But the “structure” for a given site is fixed at the beginning.

This leads me to another part of my idea, what I’m calling a Schrodinger’s Dungeon.  Nothing is fixed until it is observed.  Everything is in flux, until you roll for it.  

This is different than the Quantum Ogre principle, which states it doesn’t matter which way you go -- you’ll always encounter the ogre.  That messes up player agency.

In a Schrodinger’s Dungeon, you don’t know what’s there until you roll for it.  James Maz came up with this idea too, way back in 2009.  Perhaps it’s been rattling around my head all this time?  Who knows.  I’m still planning to “build it” which I don’t think has been done yet!

Now that I’ve Googled it, The Angry DM has an article about it too.  His idea looks like too much work for me (too many stat blocks) so I’m citing it here out of fairness, but I’ll likely not read much more of it.  :)

“Go left?  Go right?  OK, right it is (dice rattle, DM notes what is there) What do you do now?”

As new information becomes available, “You smell the strong odor of brimstone…” the players are free to act on that -- “OK, so you’d prefer to go left?  OK, (rattle, rattle)...”

The map itself can be randomly generated on the fly or just the contents.  The DM can randomly determine in advance or at the table.  I’d probably do a bit of both…

So what does this structure look like?  How does the prep go?  What’s next?

Well, I’m not quite sure.  I have some ideas, but, well, that’s another post.  :)

[Petty Gods] Mico

I just got around to downloading the new revised and updated "Petty Gods" book.  I must say that it is AWESOME!  Richard LeBlanc, Jr. at New Big Dragon Games has done an incredible job.  Thank you.

Upon downloading, I looked up my contribution, Mico, the petty god of flaming oil.  I discovered that Mico got a new picture courtesy of Mr. LeBlanc (thanks!) and my writing was spruced up a bit also (another thanks!)

If you haven't downloaded this book -- do so immediately!  If you haven't visited New Big Dragon Games and bought all their stuff, do that too!  You won't be disappointed!

Making a World Globe

Happy Holidays everyone!  It's been a long time, but I'm going to try and post more often in the new year.  I know, I know, famous last words!  :)  I do have a Hulks and Horrors campaign going right now and it seems like there should be some things I could share.  :)  Wish me luck!

Not that anyone cares, but I changed careers (again) and I'm a 7th grade science teacher now.  :)  It's fun and I (mostly) enjoy the students, but the level of work required is daunting.  The last time I taught school, I was 13 years younger than I am now.  Things have changed -- a lot!

Anyone who thinks teaching is a cakewalk should try it for a week or a month.  Sometimes you hear people suggest teaching for a day.  Anyone can do anything for a day.  A week or month would require real commitment.  End of rant.  :)

Some time ago, my friend DB gave me an awesome gift -- an actual GLOBE of my home-brew game world, Queston.  See post here.

Several people asked for a "how to" on it, so I asked DB if he would be a "guest poster" on my blog.  He obliged (some time ago) and sent me this info.  Enjoy!

-=-=-=-=-=-

Hello! My name is Dave… also referred to as DB in some of Jim’s posts. I am an artist and art teacher. Jim was kind enough to post pictures of the globe I made for him as a gift. He had said there was chatter about how I made it and asked if I’d be willing to do a “guest post”… so here I am!

    I have been a long time player in many of Jim’s campaigns, many of them set on his “world” of Queston. I had seen many of his maps of the world and was surprised that he never translated it to a globe before since he is a pretty handy/crafty guy himself. It started off to be a homemade Christmas Gift… but I ran out of time and the project got put on the back burner and ended up coming over a year later, but I am pleased with the result. Alright… On to creation!

    I found an old globe through school sources. Try thrift stores if you don’t already own one. I started by carefully removing it from the stand so I could paint it easier. This one was an old vacuum formed plastic globe from the 80s, so the plastic had some give, but it also had low relief mountains which I didn’t care for. I toyed with the idea of removing them somehow or coating the globe with another material to cover them to make a clean slate. I figured that these would be far too difficult, costly and take too long, so I let them be but I chose the smoothest section to apply a majority of the land masses. Once it was off the stand I suspended the globe with wire and primed it with spray paint then used a nice blue color spray paint as a base surface.

    I knew Jim had a digital copy of his word map… one I believed he made on an Apple 2E back in the day (he might correct me). He sent me the file without asking why, which was nice because it added to the surprise). It was in color but had patterns to denote various environments… swamp, forest, hills, etc. which were helpful since I intended to print it out in B&W. I measured my globe from pole to pole so I knew how big to make the land masses and then used Photoshop to enlarge the map to the dimensions I needed. After enlarging it I then broke the map into chunks with overlapping sections from chunk to chunk so that could be printed on standard 8 ½ X 11 white copy paper. I printed each section multiple times out in black and white. I knew I was going to be cutting them up, gluing and painting them down so standard copy paper was just what I wanted… cheap, easily cut, flexible for gluing, and the surface is perfect for accepting acrylic paint. I printed them out on a laser jet which uses toner. I would not recommend using a standard inkjet printer or color printer. The ink will bleed when glue or paint is applied. With everything printed out I set about cutting it up into pieces that would be overlapped here and there and were small enough to allow to conform to the curve of the globe without much buckling or folding as it conformed. Now the hard part…

    Jim originally designed the world as a flat rectangular map… not a true globe, so as I set about gluing sections of the map onto the globe using Mod Podge and a 1” wide stiff bristled brush I had to tweak the position of areas… Things that were once close became a little more separated. Areas that were once level with one another became skewed. I tried to keep things as close to the original map as I could, but liberties had to be made. I used Mod Podge to glue the map to the blue globe surface and then used a layer of it on top to help seal edges and prevent curling of the paper. I let this then sit until completely dry. Now the time consuming part…

    I printed off a small version of the map in color to act as a guide for the painting process. I started with the coast line, painting blue acrylic color matched the spray paint base to define the edges of the main continent and around all islands. This covered up the excess white paper I left because I didn’t want to die cut around the coastline. I found it easier to glue down as well with a cleaner, straighter edge on the map chunks. I made sure to color match the blue spray paint color with the acrylic I used for the cover up to make it as seamless as I could. Because of the intricacies of the coast, painting the edge took the longest. After that was done I set about painting each of the biome types. This made it easier to paint because I only had to deal with one color at a time. Because the map had pattern denoting each type already, it became basically paint by numbers. I chose colors to represent each biome that fit that environment best.

    For city/area names, I painted as close to the printed words as I could then on a scrap piece of paper I would redraw each area and label each city or title. Then I’d paint over the words on the globe. Once dry, I’d use a fine point sharpie to hand write back in the names. I did this practice in blocks as I moved around the globe, being sure to relabel each city/area as I went so I wouldn’t get mixed up. For areas that were dark in color I used a white gel pen to label areas to they could be read. I also used sharpie to draw the various icons Jim used to denote cities of certain sizes, square, circle, starburst, etc.

    Painting in the biomes required adjustment of the map as I mentioned before. Gluing it down in chunks there where places where the same area of city existed twice and I had to make judgment calls as to which to eliminate and where to put it so it made sense. Borders changed some, mostly vertically to shift with the curve of the globe. At the poles, I “rounded” off the land masses since they were cut off on Jims map.

    For the third of the globe that didn’t have any part of Jim’s world on it I decided to put a label. I went to Michaels and bought two sets of stickers in a font I liked and labeled the globe “Jim Pacek’s Land of Queston” to fill the space. With everything completed I did another coat of Mod Podge over the entire globe to seal the paint, stickers and give a consistent shine to the thing.

Gaming Crafts (Pic Heavy)

I've been making a bunch of stuff for my games during my time off.  Here are some pictures.  If you have questions about anything, please ask in the comments.  :)