Lost Songs of the Nibelungs Part 2: Playtesting 2025 (Setting up a campaign)

Hey, folks. How's things? It's 2025 now, and we can start making new promises to break them later this year. Fun times ahead, I'd say. Anyway. In this post I want to talk about how Lost Songs made its way back into my top pile to work at. I know, I'm slow. I also keep getting things done, so speed isn't all that if you eventually get to see results. Point in case: a revision of LSotN is underway and making progress, to a degree where I'm setting up a little online game with friends to give it all another spin to see where it wobbles. Here's how I set up that campaign ...

this is a lose series, but here is Part 1 anyways.

The Plan

I've collected some ideas over the last months and looked at what I got as well as what needs doing. Nothing serious, just some preliminary scouting. As one would when getting back into a project that actually was on pause for some time. It never left my mind, but other things piled up to a degree that Lost Songs took a back seat, like, waaay back on the bus.

As soon as I felt confident enough to get something started, I set up a doscord server for it and invited the couple of people that could be convinced to give this a shot.

That the first thing: I love working this on discord. Lots of nice ways to organize the information for the campaign with the revision running in the background. And I can do it on the road easily, which is a huge plus.

It's amazing how much changed in the last 10 years in that regard. Nowadays we have AI to help with research (I basically use it like I used search engines when that was still a thing) and it is a blast. Quick, too. Also something that can be done anywhere easily (I'm falling in love with Grok right now). For instance, when I wrote the Tribe Generator for the game, a quick discussion about what would make a tribe helped me getting the numbers just right enough to hammer it into a table.

Good show.

Wouldn't use AI to write or design a game for me (because I actually enjoy doing those things!), but it offers great research and reasoning on all kinds of topics. It is, just as with the art, a great asset to have on hand.

The plan, then, is to revise the game as I prepare and then playtest the game, adding stuff as need be while I'm at it. Right now setting and tribe are done. Here's what I did so far.

The Setting

What you see here is the result of the revised Sandbox Generator. Can't show the thing itself yet, as it'd contain information the players are not yet privy to. This is basically what their characters can know:

"This is it. After years of wandering around, your elders decide the spot to settle down: a huge chasm between mountains, hills and forests. Uneven land that doesn't see a lot of sun, but fertile nonetheless. The elders say waterghosts carved the grooves into the valley here, leaving only the hard rock to stand guard above the rich streams coming down from the mountains. It is land suited for miners and artisans, hunters and gatherers, not farmers. Here is your fate. The new roots your tribe is destined to strike. But you are not alone in this valley. Two other tribes have arrived here. One, a strange folk with even stranger mores, is indifferent to you. The other, a tribe led by powerful women, is outright unfriendly, although not hostile. You will make a home here either way. This is where your songs begin."

Typical longhouse.

"IMMEDIATE SURROUNDINGS & LIVING

Water created the extensive chasm your tribe located in by eroding all the soft stone and leaving harder stones throughout the valley it created. It created a hugely complex and fertile biome full of little lakes and rivers, cliffsides and little waterfalls, moss and forest as well as natural caves. Your tribe settled on the west side of this area, directly on the foot of a huge mountain you call "Grey Man" (Graumann) because clouds kept hanging on his peak like grey hair throughout the summer you arrived here. Since all of this is not easily accessible, longhouses are spread all over the place and in the strangest places, the chief's great longhouse having the highest position on the western slope. All of it is connected with little trails, but some tribesmen even made stone steps and little wooden bridges here and there to have those homes better connected. Many homes expand into the mountain as well, partially using natural caverns, partially carving new rooms into soft stone."

"Established routes lead west up into the mountain where several mining operations dot the slope, east into the valley, mainly for hunting, and north towards the closest settlement that will trade with you, four days travel away."

"Your immediate neighbors are a strange people on the north border of this chasm. They are quite elusive, but what you found of them are wooden frog figures and weird markings. Some of your tribe have seen them in the distance, but they mostly just ignore you and you have no quarrels with them. They seem to have settled on the lake that is mostly hidden in thick fog and forms a natural border before the land grows from chasms into thickly forested hills further north."

"The other tribe is situated close to the south border of this area, just where the chasms transition into forested hills. What you know is that it is a tribe led by female warriors, but other then that no contact has been made. Rumors among your people say that they despise you for your lack of warriors, but you know nothing for certain.
Other than the Graumann to the west, this area is nested between fertile hills with beautiful woods and rivers as well as more high mountains to the southwest, the predominant of them called "King's Crown" (Königskrone") by your people. This is good land, rich and fertile."

The Tribe

This part needed some more rules and tools to allow for some variety (I'll share them later in this post). The sandbox has always been the first strong indicator what kind of people a group's tribe consists of. Why would they settle where they ended up settling? What kind of skills and trades would come with the territory? What opposition (as far as they are aware of it) are they willing to face? Stuff like that could easily be deduced from the hex they are dropped in and the immediate surroundings.

But I needed some more meat on that, mainly how their migration there went, what they gained and what they had to leave behind. It'd change, to a degree, their reasoning for staying where they ended up staying, but not in a bad way. Beyond that I wanted to have some soft numbers for the size of the tribe (ended up going with "families"). If anything, it gives a GM more to work with while being set up quite fast.

Here's what I shared with my players:

"So what's your tribe like? Well, the place they chose to stay, despite the other tribes settling there, already tells us a lot. They are accustomed to living in mountainous areas, so miners and smiths they should be as well as hunters and animal farmers. The blight that is Christianity has not yet reached your people, so they believe in a variation of the old gods and follow their traditions. Migration lost you the majority of your warriors, but despite that your elders feel confident about your fate in this chasm. You can draw from a rich history of sophisticated craftsmen and you have among your people some very capable weapon smiths and artisans."

"Where the Chief's Longhouse was build

Your holy men had seen the place where you were to hold the ritual in their dreams, just two days before your track came across it. It was held that same night, under a huge thunderstorm. The mountains in the east, it seemed, fought the mountains in the west in the sky. Thor was busy drumming that night. It had been at the peak of the ritual when a massive lighting strike hit the side of the Graumann, the short bright light dotted with the rocks it detonated from the mountainside. The next morning, at first sunlight, they found among the debris a huge shattered quartz, all glitzy and pink. The biggest piece build the foundation for the chief's longhouse right where it struck the ground, the smaller pieces had been distributed among the nobility and brought much honor to their houses. They called that night the Invitation of the Mountain, and it has always been regarded as a good omen."

"The place of that ritual is where your people hold official gatherings.  It is a stone platform floating over the valley and it offers a great view of the Graumann as well as the chief's majestic longhouse at the base of it. At the beginning it was not easy to get to the plateau, as it stands somewhat isolated. Now there is an ornate wooden bridge leading to it. Three holy sheep are held on that platform to keep the grass short."

"Other then the player characters' families, the tribe is 167 families strong. Around 120 of them have build their longhouses close to the chief's house, the rest is scattered all around, equally distributed towards mountain, the valley itself and along the trading route you established north."

Ideas like the ritual, the other two tribes close by and the trading route all spun naturally from tools used to set up the sandbox and the tribe. 

New Rules: The Tribe Generator

The revised Sandbox Generator still needs some more work, but what I can share today is the Tribe Generator. It might even be useful in other games. Either way, it'll tell you something about Lost Songs, so here we go.

Like with character creation, all it needs is a roll of 3d6. It'd be used right after completing the sandbox. Everything else follows from that. The individual results will give you:

TRIBE GENERATOR (3d6)

Your tribe is …

1 barely there (lowest column)
2 weak (lowest column)
3 quarreling (middle column)
4 desperate (middle column)
5 confident (high column)
6 strong (high column)

Your ancestors are …

1 primal (+10 families)
2 secluded (-10 families)
3 odd
4 honorable (+20 families)
5 noble (+30 families)
6 sophisticated (-10 families)

Your tribe lost …

1 the weak (-30 families)
2 the warriors (-20 families)
3 the royalty (-10 families)
4 spiritual leadership (+10 families)
5 wealth (-10 families)
6 history

The sum, now, will give you a base number of families that needs to be modified by the individual results:

             High   Middle   Low

3-5:          80        60        40
6-8:        140      120      100
9-12:      200      180      160
13-16:    230      220      210
17-18:    260      250      240

The sum also reduces the base number further. In the end, each player character adds one family to the result. Example:

"This tribe is (5/6/2) confident with sophisticated ancestry to build on, but lost their warriors on their migration to this valley."

That gives us a Base Number of 200 (high column) modified by -10 (for being sophisticated), -20 (for losing the warriors), and -13 (the sum itself), resulting in 167 families PLUS the number of players.

It's quick while offering lots of little details to work with and a rough estimate of how big a tribe actually is (a "family" would have an average of four people).

That's it for now

This is where we are at. Next is character creation and the final touches on the sandbox, as well as a calendar and elements for all the hexes ...

But about this we will talk another time. It'll be an interesting year in that regard, I think. I wonder how much my sensibilities changed since I last touched the game. And if I'm finally able to overcome the road blocks that made me shift my focus on other projects.

For now I can say I'm having fun with it. And I'm again and again surprised how much was already done. Anyway. More to come.

I wish you guys all the best for 2025!

The Sandbox vs. Player Agency

What happens when people are allowed to do what they want? They do exactly that. What happens if you emphasize that fact? They start thinking that there are no (social?) rules at all and - in a worse case scenario - you'll get anarchy. Natural Story development: bye-bye. Without the proverbial golden thread to follow, everyone is on their own and the game can get dysfunctional within hours. I've seen it happening and today I want to talk about preventing those problems. Bring a cup of coffee, it's a long one again ...

The "True" Sandbox

My thoughts always wander back to Morrowind when pondering what a perfect sandbox looks like. I'm sure it's not the only example, but it's the one I know. In Morrowind you start as a weak level 1 character. Weak is crucial. There is a story line worth following, but it is useful (at some point even mandatory!) to "gather experience" before you are allowed back into the main plot. For that you are left with absolute freedom.

It's at that point in the story (at the latest) when we start experimenting with what we can get through with. Killing a guy in public? They'll come for you in force and that's nothing you would survive in the beginning. So: restart from the last saving point. Stealing stuff? Might work, but if they catch you, you'll at least loose everything you stole and make jail time or try to resist (and most likely get killed again) or pay them. Entering any kind of ruin or cave you may come across? Deadly beginner mistake. Again, restart from your last saving point ...

Over time you'll either get bored or you get busy working the challenges they offer for low level characters. If you do the latter, you'll have to talk to a lot of people. You start learning about the world and how things work. By choosing what you want to do, you get involved. You choose agency (like becoming an assassin, mage or drug dealer ...). With those choices you get drawn in even further. You gain opinions and positions towards those pixels.

And at some point you'll ask yourself what your character would do if given a certain set of choices. Not what you would do, but what the fictive collection of data with a face would do. At that point you are fully involved and invested in the game. You have gained in-game agency.

Morrowind being a sandbox in the truest sense, getting involved is just an offer and there is no guarantee that you'll get invested, too. But there is a very good chance. Because once you get involved and you start to care, you'll stay around even if you've reached a point where your character is independent enough to actually do what you tried in the beginning and get away with it. But you won't (as much), because you have better things to do.

[source]

The "True" Agency

What is agency*? Without any context it's basically the ability to do what you want because you are a conscious being. And that's just that: without any context. That's like, say, a free market. It's only a piece. There is a classic metaphor about three blind men describing an elephant. Each is touching a different part of the elephant and describing it as the real deal. They all are right, in a way. But still, they only describe the part they are aware of**.

The phenomenon described here goes a bit further than just agency, but it still illustrates the point: you can describe agency without context, but it still won't be what it actually is in a living environment, which of course offers choice but also limits it. To what degree this is true is, obviously, very, very debatable. And people will do so on a regular basis (anarchism has a very different idea of what we can do than, say, socialism or democracy ... and that's just one direction we could run here).

A problem of agency ... [source]

But at its core it's just that: consciousness allows us to recognize a choice and act according to it within the limits given by the environment.

Why the term "player agency" isn't cutting it

Some of the same goes for the term "player agency". Player agency is generally described as giving players choices and having that somehow expressed in the rules. It is as much a good example for how agency needs context as it is a bad example of how to create a functional terminology for our hobby.

Let's start with the "good" part. Players want agency at the table. They want a choice or ideally:

They want an agreed upon limitation and/or expansion of imaginable choices that relate to what they'd expect in a real life environment.

There's a lot of "what if" in there, like, what if we could cast spells or what if we were stinkin' rich. A role playing system can do that but still must be agreed upon, as opinions what constitutes a "real choice" might differ quite a bit from case to case (some people like Vancian magic, some don't, to give one example). You don't want to give your players the impression they've lost agency ...

Now for the bad part. I think "player agency" is bad terminology because it only describes part of the picture (that elephant again!). It implies that agency in a gaming environment is something individual, something like a right a (one) player has that needs protection. A perspective like this will, no, has to lead to misunderstandings and unnecessary discussions. 

The definition I gave a few paragraphs above illustrates the problem quite well, I think: no player is alone, they are part of a group. And every group will have a Gamemaster of sorts, so it's actually about all the participants of a game. But there is yet another dimension to the whole affair, as characters could actually demand agency on their own (a narrative agency, maybe?).

You might question the "demand" part here, but it's actually something quite common, as it is the form of agency a Gamemaster would summon on a regular basis when he says something like "A paladin wouldn't/can't do this or that, because ..." or "You can't do that because you just lost your legs ...". It's a bit abstract (and maybe worth a post on its own), but a characters imposed limitations will also to some degree mean a shared agency, which makes him an entity of both the player and the Dungeonmaster ...

Let's get back to my observations about Morrowind in the beginning. There was a palpable difference between the choices you'd do playing the game (do what you want: pure player agency) and the choices you'd have playing the character (accepting character limitations: in-game agency). The first held the danger of getting bored and losing interest, the second had a good chance of leading to immersion. Immersion is what I want in the game.

But to get this kind of connection in something as analogue as tabletop role playing games, you first have to accept that this kind of gaming is a collaborative effort first and foremost. And that strongly implies that the same is true for the amount of agency all participants have in a game. A player unable to accept that his idea of agency (a "right" granted by definition) might be disruptive for that very reason, should keep playing computer games.

Conflicting player agencies ... [source]

Sandbox versus Agency

To make matters even more complex, we have to consider how all of this not only works in the more traditional*** role playing games, but also how it works in a sandbox. "Traditional" first, I'd say. The core of the traditional game is purpose. Characters have goals, quests, backgrounds and clear bounds that help limiting choice in a gaming world in a way that puts an emphasis on the story told at the table. Different games explore different options of this for as long as the hobby exists, from completely scripted to completely DMless.

Still, the focus in all of those games is (arguably) to emulate genres into narratives and those narratives into stories. The rules are used to emphasize and limit choice to a degree, just like described above (the Paladin as class is always a welcome example here, but the same goes for the limitations of abilities in form, power and accessibility or limiting a game to genre conventions or the race-as-class approach ... take your pick).

A sandbox game is different to those traditional games in that it takes away as many limitations as possible, beginning by the world and going as far as designing rules towards the same principle. And that results in an abundance of choice, beginning as early as with character creation****. A game like this needs a conscious effort of collaboration to work. The DM should provide a strong sense of place and culture, so they know where they come from and a just as strong sense of the stories people tell, so they know where they are headed.

A bit crazy, but very concise ... perfect world building! [source is Pratchett, of course]

It just as much demands the players to get on the same page, to not (or not only, depending on the game) match and connect on a system-level, but more on a personal level (ideally as a group, but mainly character-wise). It is important that they as players agree on characters that allow them to tell the stories they all want told on the backdrop the DM is offering.

But it just might not be enough. The problem I've encountered a few times now is that if it's not the rules but the world players have to consult for guidance and quests, it also demands a level of involvement that many players aren't willing to invest readily*****. There is nothing wrong with that, actually, and I think it's something a system needs to address somehow. 

It's a bit like what I described for Morrowind above, but different in that group effort aspect. You meet Morrowind at your own terms and you either get along or you don't. But with a group it's far more difficult. The problem, in my opinion, is that it is accepted to limit a character's choices (because that's something you choose to do with the options you get) but not so much those of a player.

And this is where player agency rears its ugly head and smiles ... We are so concerned about limiting another person's agency, that we shy away as soon as it's just implied. Or people feel it's personal if they can't have their personal snowflake ideas realized of what the character should be.

It sure happens in other games, too. Especially if they come with point buy systems. But if you take away the traditional consensus that a certain type of stories is going to be told and reduce the character creation to being a platform for all kinds of possibilities, you will have that problem emphasized. And it will continue to be problematic as the narrative emerges from actual play. If you have strong personalities at the table pulling this, it can get outright disruptive.

The next thing you know is other players getting unsatisfied with the game.

Conclusion

I won't be the one changing the very popular term "player agency". But I hope that I was able to shed some light on another perspective regarding the issue. Tabletop role playing games aren't computer games and what is deemed totally all right when done on your own in a game, will be far more complicated to do in a group where you actually have to work together. I think it's important to recognize this if we are to formulate a working terminology for our hobby, as it's the only way to find a deep understanding of what we are actually doing here.

As far as agency in a sandbox game goes, I'll have to think more about how to root characters more in a world to limit player agency without limiting the freedom of the sandbox. It's that shared agency bit that I believe to be an integral part of every role playing game and it's something that needs to be agreed upon. How to do this is an entirely different matter. I've explored some ideas regarding this in the past, if for other reasons.

To make a sandbox really work it doesn't only need to breathe and grow, it also needs rules that root characters deep enough in the setting that a DM has enough agency about them to ensure player agency doesn't run amok in his campaign. Forcing players to accept limitations to their character (as they would anyway) is one way to achieve this. Another one could be to connect xp awards with certain behavior like cultural habits and so on. If a culture is well defined, it will simulate the social limitations we experience in real life and that will lead to acceptance regarding limitations to a players agency. It needs to happen.

The group and collaboration aspect is also something worth exploring further. Maybe it's not enough to tell people they need to find a way to form a functioning group, maybe it needs some sort of system, formula or rules, too. A form of contract, maybe? But all that needs more thought and will finally find its way here (and hopefully into Lost Songs of the Nibelungs).

More when I get there. Opinions, comments, experiences and ideas about all of this are, as always, very welcome. Please share your thoughts.

* Now, that's a deep bunny hole, I'd say. Start with Wikipedia, as they actually have some decent entries about the topic: here's the sociological variant, here the philosophical and here it's structure versus agency. Deeper yet would be reading this here essay about morale agency. Just follow the bread crumbs. Kant is in there somewhere and Descartes' Cogito ergo sum. 

** You could say now, that they are wrong because they don't realize that they only experience part of it ...

*** I might need to write a word or two about how I define "traditional" in this case: although you could argue that the first role playing modules strongly suggest an open world kind of approach (Keep on the Borderlands, Village of Hommlett and all that jazz), the preeminent style of play was more the more or less framed telling of stories (as evident in everything from AD&D onward, going as far as completely scripted adventures for the Dragonlance line). My impression that this is what is recognized as the "traditional" mode of play comes from seeing the problems players will have with an completely open world. For one, it is an easier mode to play.

**** Lost Songs of the Nibelungs has a character generation that establishes a characters bloodlines (the roots, if you will) and the connection to the other players. No classes, no direction, just a number of points to buy a selection of equipment, skills and advantages. Characters also start at level zero and will only as they advance find out what they are.

***** Yeah, well, sorry, it's one of those posts. What I'm talking about here is not only those players who only think about the game as they sit down at the table (although those are meant, too, of course). What I'm thinking about here is something that happened two times in just as many months now: players told me they had no other choice with their characters than to do what they did (in both cases I strongly disagree for the reasons stated above, as they ignored character agency and just saw what they wanted to do or the lack of choices thereof). In all those cases, interaction with the world would have helped avoiding character harm and/or death ...

Talking to myself: Culture vs. the Sandbox (June 2014)

Still quite busy and the blog has to take a hit for it. But I'm not or out of ideas. Just busy. Anyway, I had an idea that might be a fun exercise, doesn't mean much work (I hope) and will result in something that requires a cup of coffee and a bit of muse: I'll re-examine a two year old post of mine and add what my thoughts are about it now. Maybe it even starts a discussion. We'll see. The basic premise:

"A lack of story in a game is always derived from a lack of culture represented in a sandbox/setting/gaming world ..."

I'll c/p the original content here and write my current thoughts about it in between, marked as [Today: ...]. This being a post from two years ago should mean that most of my current readers might not be aware of it or totally forgot about it. That's a plus, I think :) Well, here we go:

Yggdrasil 1: Classic interpretation [source]

I've tried, you know [Today: Still trying ...]

All those random shenanigans I've tried, the tables I used to create content with in the last few games, the random maps and names, all this left me feeling, well, unprepared at the table. A strange feeling for a DM indeed and most unwelcome, to say the least. Although I had everything I needed (as far as content goes), I struggled with an apparent defect of connection between what was generated randomly and the interpretation of that content during the game. In other words: as soon as I had rolled what the players were encountering next (a specific creature or event with a motivation and reaction to the characters, etc. ... you all know what is possible), I started to feel the urge to make a story out of it, the result being not random at all but, in the contrary, totally my design, so to say. Exactly what I had tried to avoid in the first place and not even with the luxury to have a developed story arc at hand, but with the need to pull it all out of my arse as I needed it.

Usually I have no problem with generating connections, interpretations and new content as I need it on the table, but this felt different. This Tyranny of Randomness forced me to think about the people present in a tavern and there motivations at any possible given moment the characters might be entering the locale. It asked for weather and day-to-day routines of peoples, current politics and their effect and all those little nooks and crannies that are really really needed (and in a huge amount, no less) to produce the necessary amount of information that could result in a satisfying variety of adventure hooks needed in a "true" sandbox to make it work.

Because, if you just use a shortcut and make a table with all the funny things you think possible in a specific sandbox, you might as well admit that all this is not random at all, but a random assortment of exactly all the things that could possibly happen. There is a difference.

[Today: Yeah, Tyranny of Randomness, here we go. Main reason for this being so intimidating at the time had been that the tools I used back then were not ideal for what I was doing. You see, the classic D&D game (I used a heavily modified D&D Rules Cyclopedia at the time) completely relied on the DM being somehow prepared or using an official product, so it never intended to produce a random chain of events and instead a random chain of turns ...]

Take for example rumors of a bear attacking wood cutters near a settlement. A good enough adventure hook, I think. But where is that bear coming from, why did he leave? A bigger predator claiming his territory, maybe? Why is he attacking people? Is it for a lack of other prey? What's with all that, then?

So you see, every event has a chain of relevant causalities (of connected events, if you will) leading to it. The results of these events (if you dare going as far as producing that much information, that is) might be random, but you have to start somewhere. And that place is so totally unimportant and insignificant for what happens at the table, with so much small and moving pieces in between, that it doesn't seem worth to even try to figure out where to start.

But if you were looking for where to start with those chains of events, cultures would be the way to go. It might seem counter-intuitive, especially with the example of the bear above, but stay with me. I'll get there.

[Today: Funny, right now I'd say you have to go with stories instead. That being said, I'd like to stress that the way we tell stories is indeed derived from culture. So the bonus content here would be that if you try to emulate a certain culture, you should learn how they told their stories and use that in your game ... But on with the text.]

Causality goes both ways ...

It's a good thing that causality can go both ways from an established point, if that point is well chosen. Constants and varieties are the base criteria for such an endeavor and that's exactly what the term culture enfolds. Following that link to Wikipedia will only help in realizing how big a topic culture can be, this is the variety. On the other hand it shows very well how all those cultural variety is labeled, so there are your constants. That all cultures are a product of their specific surroundings is where causality comes into play. If you have a social group of sentient apes living on a shore, you'll have some fishing and legends and rituals connected to the sea, stuff like that.

So this might be a point from where an interpretation of causality easily goes both ways. The characters encounter a settlement at a shore and a DM just knows there will be forms of cultural representation regarding that fact. Going the other way would mean, if the surroundings change for the settlement (say, they were forced to leave, for instance), they will take some of their cultural achievements with them (maybe some legends and stories and names remain in their songs, stuff like that) so that at a later point it can be recognized and traced back again, etc..

As far as creating content for a role playing game is concerned, this means basically:

Every point of entry in a campaign is legit. It's either created up to the point of entry, from that point onward or somewhere in between.

[Today: What I'm saying here is that you can start wherever you want to create random content, as long as you keep straight what's established as fact and what is just known by the characters. As long as the construct you are ending up with retains credibility, it'll hold in a campaign. That's causality derived from constants and variety ... ] 

Yggdrasil 2: Esoteric interpretation [source]

Perception of a world, the players view (an intermission).

This occurred to me some time ago and maybe it's worth a post of it's own, but for this argument I deem it important to have it at least mentioned as food for thought: the flow of information in a fantasy setting (or in every setting, if you think about it) prevents a complete and true understanding of the world surrounding a player character. All characters can know is interpretations and stories, distance being one main factor regarding the accuracy of the information gathered, culture being another one.

So even if you start a campaign with nothing but an idea for a starting area and tell the players tall stories about what the world around them is filled with, nothing of this needs to be true and might be challenged entirely in the next village. Even if a DM did do all the work to create a complete world, the only chance for the characters to know it with some kind of certainty should be by exploring it, because it's not about what's a world comprised of, but about how a culture interprets and communicates it.

So the "true" sandbox is not the world/map itself (the board, if you will) but the amount of interpretations (or stories!) of said world. And that is the amount of cultures in a setting.

[Today: This really should be a post of its own. And I really can't exaggerate this enough: Nothing we tell our players needs to be true. It just needs to be connected. As they explore their surroundings they'll update their knowledge with what they think is the truth and so on. It's the classic "No one goes into this forest, there are demons in there!" and then it's just some creative savages or a curse with a tragic story. Or both and the players just find one aspect. The relation between what is known and what the story says is happening just needs to be nourished constantly. Stuff like "You thought that it was dark magic, but it just had been ..." or "The elders had been wrong about that foreign land to the east and that sea they talked about had just been a giant lake after all ...". As long as you are able to establish meaning and connections, it'll keep credibility. We rely far to much on the maps we use as being true and base our games on them, but that's a very young idea in history and an illusion on its own.]

It's evolution, baby (Creating a Sandbox 101)!

Let's get back to that bear again. What we like to perceive as culture is more often than not a direct result of our natural heritage. Opposing thumbs, courtship display, all that stuff. This is, again, about capabilities resulting in behavior in accordance to its surroundings. To phrase it another way, it's easier to create a possible pattern of what a bear might do than it is to do the same for a human being, but ultimately it's the same basics. Evolution allowed for the development of cultures with the intelligent apes, for the bear not so much, which leaves him with what evolution is capable of.

This is where the relevant data is, this is where stories are developed. You'll need the lay of the land, that is true (and easy enough achieved with a degree of difficulty open to the top), but it'll mainly produce constants with almost no variety. So if that's done, you'll just have a board for all the parties involved to leave a mark on.

Layers and layers and layers of true randomness!

Next is where the DM decides how vanilla it gets. It is basically the decision how much culture a DM is willing to invent or how many memes and tropes he is willing to use.  It is a very broad spectrum, ranging from, say, the elves, dwarfs and hobbits how Tolkien described them to a complete new set of races, invented from scratch. Or a world having no moon, one moon or 5. But whatever is decided, I believe it is important for a DM to make the decision where to start consciously and up to a point where the number of former decisions, random or not, produce a pattern complex enough to carry a narrative.

This means layers and layers of decisions if he wants to have a sandbox-setting or a world-engine with a totally random, but traceable history. A huge task.

[Today: It actually makes me a bit happy to read this, as I really managed to build something like this two times since I wrote it. The first is a Random Territory Generator I use for Lost Songs of the Nibelungs, the second is a Mission Generator for The Grind ... both produce very specific results for the stories they want to tell, just as described above.]

Culture, memes and the story ...

Alright, let's connect some dots and get back to the thesis at hand. I think it's conclusive that it's almost irrelevant were to start with the randomness or what kind of map is used, as long as there's enough to work with (a few encounter and reaction tables and a map worth exploring, maybe). The available cultures, on the other hand, might be what really matters when a DM creates/prepares a setting, because it is what the players get confronted with as soon as they start creating characters and in the game it's their tool to interact with the world. And it is how stories emanate.

Memes can come in handy in this in as far as if, for example, a player has a more or less clear picture of  what a dwarf is, he can easily enough play one. Some familiarity with a setting can go a long way in helping the players getting some immersion. Another argument for using memes is that to recognize variety you need to know the source. So it helps when describing a set of random cultures if the source is still recognizable.

In the end, if you want to know what the people do and why they react the way they react, you need a fair idea of the cultural context surrounding the encounter to make a story about it. If the players live in a matriarchy, for example, all the roles they know might be reversed and if those roles are inspired by a medieval society, you'll have women knights courting men in fancy dresses and so on. So everything a DM establishes for a culture helps him telling the stories the characters encounter. The more work he puts in that, the better will be the stories he's going to tell.

[Today: There are two things happening here. For one, it's important that the decisions a player has in a game are informed by what the setting needs and by that it will enter the story. It's an idea I incorporated (for instance) into the character generation for Lost Songs of the Nibelungs and I can say with some confidence right now that it does indeed work. The second part is how cultures manifest in a setting and how that informs NPC decisions. I still need to do this and it had been the main reason to read this old post to begin with.]

Yggrasil 3: Marvel interpretation [source]

What next?

Those are the basics so far. Maybe it's able to start a discussion, exploring those ideas a bit further or even challenge them. Maybe not. Anyway, in future posts I'll further examine how a DM could utilize the idea of culture as a tool to carry the narrative of the game and I should give some examples, maybe a system how to randomly generate a culture. Right now I think it might be useful to have an index for a culture how obscure their idea of the world surrounding them is. Something like, the lower the index, the closer are those interpretations to reality ...

[Today: Well, I thought I'd agree less with something I wrote 2 years ago. What changed from then to now, though, is that I believe I found (almost) all the tools I need to make this work for me. The last piece in this puzzle, at least for LSotN, would be the Random Story Seed Generator I wrote about a few months ago. I'm right now working at an updated version (which will be posted soon, I hope), but it already works great as it is. I'm still missing a culture generator that'll help me bringing the Dark Ages to life in the game. And that's it. I hope you guys enjoyed this little re-post and maybe we get to start a discussion here or you'd like to share some of your ideas about randomness with us. Comments are, as always, very welcome.]

Thoughts on stories in open worlds (+ Morrowind: done)

Not that long ago, I talked about that RPG Bucket List of mine. Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind was on that list and I finished the main quest last week (yay!). But that's barely worth a post, I thought, so I'm going to talk a bit about open world concepts and how much story they allow. So: what happens when the toys in your sandbox have reached their usability?

The stories we tell ...

Here we are. Morrowind, main quest, way to powerful character due to excessive exploring ... my verdict: the ride was great, the end turned out to be entertaining but underwhelming nonetheless and I was left with nothing worth doing afterwards, open world or not. At least it felt that way and it was the end of the campaign for me.

Morrowind is beautiful ... [source]

There is, of course, an obvious connection to good old analogue role playing, because there seems to be an upper limit for the durability of a campaign and it is connected to the stories we tell. This is generally true and goes for open world as much as it does for more story-focused campaigns.

The problem is older than the hobby, actually, as storytellers of all sort usually get to a point where they need to ask themselves: should I go on  and if so, how should I do it. Especially with the public need for "sequels", which is a relatively old phenomenon (the bible, if you will, or medieval romances, for example), but new in it's massive scale nowadays. Dozens of media to consume, thousands and thousands of stories ... You know what I mean.

With this long history of writing sequels, it seems only logical that we have some ideas by now how to do it right. And there is evidence that there are people out there able to achieve seemingly endless streams of sequels with no end in sight. But it fails nearly as often.

The stories we know ...

Let's leave the classic story arc, like in the Lord of the Rings, the original Star Wars trilogy or the Game of Thrones series (just popular examples) use it, aside for now. They obviously work within limits and usually end in a way that would allow for spin-offs, but not necessarily for sequels. I think Star Wars is a very good example here, negative with the questionable attempt to expand the story by going backwards (chronologically speaking) and positive with several successful spin-offs (books, tv shows, comics and the new trilogy).

Anyway, let's leave it aside. Much more interesting are long ongoing stories within a more open context - like we have them (mostly) in role playing games - and our perception of them. Because there is something like an entry point, isn't there? Our understanding of stories develops individually over time and the more we have seen or read or heard, the more selective we get with the stories we find interesting. Or the more we tend to expect from a story.

I had a discussion with a good friend once about the movie Avatar. He found the story boring beyond believe while I had felt quite entertained and didn't mind that much about the story. The cause behind those opposite reactions had been the same: a simple story-structure. While I found other aspects of the movie interesting enough to get some entertainment out of it (that movie looked fabulous!), my friend got bored because of the simplicity and lost interest fast.

So many great ideas in Avatar! [source]

But there are those who experienced that relatively simple story as something new. They understood something they didn't before seeing the movie and took it with them. Different points of entry, different expectations. And if you add those loving the movie for it's message, you have the full spectrum of reviews about Avatar. Again, it's about where we are with that personal level of experience we have with stories and how far back that entry point is, that shapes how we perceive or choose stories in general.

The stories we get ...

I am meandering, but that's sort of the point. Sort of. By now we have established the need to expand on a story (or world) and different levels of experience with stories in general. We also have a constant in campaigns that will have an influence on the sort of stories we can tell: the characters. Knowing those three basic conditions, we get an idea what kind of stories we need to tell and tv shows are good examples how to do it (or not).

The first game I read that actually went and told me how to structure a story, was Vampire: the Masquerade (first German edition, which had been based on the original second edition) and it left an immense impression on me. I believe they'd been the first to make the whole idea popular to sensitize a DM about the stories he tells (they sure hadn't been the first to do it, though). In essence the storytelling approach taught me to understand how stories work and how I could use it in a campaign.

And yet, it wasn't that easy. This is where we return to the question how we learn about stories. The problem is (if we are as bold as calling it a "problem"), we mainly learn it from a consumer's point of view, not from a producer's and it most certainly reaches different areas in our brain (looking at something for entertainment or looking at something to find an understanding). Although both could be done and are useful in and of themselves.

As a matter of fact, seeing something for entertainment gives you ideas about what you like, reflecting about it gives you ideas about what you could use and analyzing it helps you realizing the structure behind the thing, which leads, in the end, to reproducing it with ease. No time wasted whatsoever.

Always explore different worlds and stories! [source and a great gallery here]

What we get is how we form our knowledge and understanding of stories. And negative experiences are as useful as positive ones. Twin Peaks is one of my favorite examples in that regard. The studio had forced Lynch to solve the murder mystery that hold the story together, early in the second season and effectively killed the show. People lost interest. End of story.

Or was it? It's only because of the massive cult following the show had managed to gather over the years, that they are actually making a reboot right now, with the original cast and all that. It's not really a spin-off or a sequel, in this case, as the original show never got finished in a satisfying manner and I believe it's a special case where we could talk about calling it a continuation of sorts (or seeking closure ... it's going to be interesting).

Every story like that can give us something. Morrowind and Twin Peaks are very similar in that regard: interesting worlds/characters/adventures or not, once the main plot got solved, there is a good chance that people will lose interest in a story. So it might be good to avoid such a thing.

The stories we need ...

I think we are done for now collecting the pieces and ready to talk results. The stories we need in role playing games to keep us engaged, should never have a too satisfying result, unless you want your campaign to end. What does that mean? It means the guy never gets the girl until the very last episode. Might come close, might happen and fail immediately, but never (ever!) before the end ...

... unless you want that change in pace. Then it's totally legit. That's the old schtick with playing D&D in more or less three stages: adventuring, domain game and epic level game. Every stage changes the perspective significantly and seeing the range in power levels in a game like D&D, it might really be the right thing to do. Of how many games have you heard by now that only played the first few levels and stopped because they couldn't (or didn't want to) make that next step.

Story-oriented games have a huge advantage here to open world concepts in that it is possible to plan a campaign more or less completely, which, on the other hand, brings the disadvantage of inflexibility (to a degree, of course, but if you play, say, the Temple of Elemental Evil, then that's what's going to happen ...).

Open world concepts, well, they offer opportunities and enough moving parts to keep it interesting and let the stories evolve from that. There is the disadvantage that the players take too much on and get disoriented, but the main advantage is the freedom to chose your own path.

Between those two extremes, any form of mixture is possible, of course. But all those variants hold the same basic truths. Here's my advice:

• Start simple (at best with something the complete group can agree upon) and build on your own story structure.
• Don't assume any level of experience with stories beyond consuming them or to any amount.
• Allow closure, but make it challenging to make the achievement feel meaningful.
• Always end a story with a "but" and never without having some sort of foreshadowing for it.
• Additionally the end of a story can have consequences in the future, but give it time to mature or the players won't feel the end of a story as an achievement.
• Allow and plan for loose ends, parallel stories and opportunities. It'll allow a world to come alive. If the game reaches a dead end, you did something wrong.
• Read stories, read about stories, see them, listen to them, write them, if you can. Find out how others perceive them. Make it a constant routine of consuming, reflecting and using. At some point patterns will emerge and you'll start seeing where to put that perfect cliffhanger or twist or change of pace.

[source]

The stories open worlds tell ...

... are all about the beauty of randomness. I think my first light bulb moment about open world concepts and sandboxing was about how random encounters don't mean that the encounter pops up in front of the group. It might be in the distance or in the past leaving traces or in the future, bringing rumors or some other sort of resonance with it's surroundings. It means a huge narrative flexibility for the DM.

Monster Reaction rolls had brought the second realization by doing the exact opposite. It forces randomness against my own preconceptions of how an encounter had to react by simply allowing (within limits) the complete scope of reactions, from positive to hostile, instead of me as the DM deciding it. Having to go with the flow here brings a certain freedom to that pressure and brings a felt realism to the game I can only appreciate.

It was after those realizations that I started exploring how to randomize everything I do as a DM in the game and simple rolls as how the weather was and changed over the course of a session or who is encountered and why, on the backdrop of a hugely randomized and evolving setting (where I can sneak in some of my own random ideas), led to some very satisfying gaming moments. Ann my players seem to dig it, too.*

Open Worlds, wild and untamed. [source]

And Morrowind? That game illustrates very well how a character/player as the focal point in an open world game automatically forms a narrative by interacting with that world and how stories emerge from that. Because that's the thing (and my final point here): players instinctively produce a narrative by interpreting their characters interactions among each other, actively seek closure (force it, even) and that will produce stories even in a completely random environment. It's a DMs tact and experience in handling those stories and expectations that can make a game great for all involved.

The stories you tell ...

And that's my piece. I think it's the first time that I try a complete explanation how I handle things as a DM and why. I know it's not the only way and some of the alternatives are in the post, too. But there are always different interpretations and procedures possible and I'd really like to hear about your opinions and experiences here.

So what are the stories you tell and why? Please feel free to comment and share your thoughts.



* Which is to some extent limited by the necessity that it's important to have players who actually want you as a DM and give you the freedom to play it that way ...

Two groups, one sandbox, some OSR musings and someone dies in the end ...

Dang, I'm busy right now. Started school again and I don't know how much time I'll have to post more regularly. But I'll work on that and experience tells me it's just a matter of time before I find a rhythm that allows me to write some more here. Anyway, testing LSotN is still on a good way and I have two face-to-face groups sharing the same sandbox. I wanted to share some thoughts.

Two groups ...

Originally I planned to have one group to test the game, but Leipzig is a great place for role playing gamers and I had way more feedback than I could have anticipated. After the first quite cozy session (I don't have that much room right now) we decided to split the group in two and see what happens. My main problem had been that they were from the same clan and were, after that first session, all headed in the same direction.

But more on that later. Another thing that came up during character generation and those first steps with the new characters were very different play styles. I knew only one player (my girlfriend) and none of the others. In this first session I was (naturally?) especially eager to make the game and my way of DMing work for each of them, not necessarily among each other.

It's a part of the whole deal, of course, but the way I saw it, the players needed to decide if they'd like to keep me as a DM in the first place, then there was me assessing with whom I will get along and only as a third part how they get along together as a group. In a way I could only tell by the feedback for the next session how the chips may fall. Again, this is to be expected if you start a new group in a new town.

Not the group, but some Frankish warriors that get the point across ...[source]

It would take until January to get them all together for a second session. By that time it had become clear that splitting the group would be the best option, having no room to play comfortably being the main concern. I also had some more requests of people to join the fray, so it turned out to be the only way to make it work.

It's good for a DM to have an idea (or feeling, if all else fails) how the dynamics are with a certain group of individuals might influence a campaign. So after that initial game, knowing that of the initial 5 new players 4 would like to keep going, with 2 more interested to join and a general idea who preferred which style of play, furthermore with the players themselves communicating their ideas openly, I ended up with two groups: one of 3 players with a more martial inclination and one of 4 players with what I may call a storyteller approach to the game.

I don't need to explain why I think that this is a rather perfect constellation for testing a game :) All in all there are 3 girls and 4 guys on the player's side and that's also something I'm happy to have. A good beginning.

... one historical sandbox

So this was the first time I planned on playing with the setting as a part of the experience. As much history as I could cram in my poor little brain and all that in a sandbox. Having two groups now in the same sandbox with the same background, the characters not only knowing each other, but also starting their journey to become heroes together, well, I really thought about not doing it, to be honest.

Anyway, both groups wanted to keep their characters and just go their separate ways. So that's what happened. And I gotta say, if you ever get the chance to do something like this, give it a shot. It brings the setting to life in a way that can be really satisfying for DM and players. But I shouldn't get ahead of myself here. We have a few sessions under our belts now, people will reach level 1 soon and both campaigns develop rather nice, if I may say so. Some of that is due to luck, another big part is having experienced players at the table that are interested in the setting.

My qualities as a DM (meager as they are) aside, two other things are tested here: the rules, of course, and the setting. The setting will be to some extend part of the DM tools in the final game, but the ideas themselves need to work at the table. It bears the interesting problem that I try to learn a lot about how people lived back then and what world views they might have had and also try to reflect that in the rules wherever I can, but it will always demand a lot from a DM and his players.

So during the preparation of the first sessions I read a bit about Roman architecture, since the characters were headed towards one of the remaining Roman cities in the area. It is an interesting topic how the Romans planned and structured those cities and you could go to any kinds of depths just by googling it. To some extent it's important to just get a feeling for the topic and some of the Latin descriptions. The questions I asked myself had been what it looked like, what it might have felt like (or how was it different from what one would expect) and what they called it.

This is very close to what I ended up with! [source]

Add to that some Germanic culture(s) and a realistic idea of the surroundings, the weather, the gear ... you get my drift. It's a lot. And it needs to be or it won't feel much different from your basic fantasy setting. in the last session we had one player actually said that we had to stop for the day (after 6 hours game, but anyway), because it's so much information and connections that it needed some digestion.

It is hard work, I guess, and because of that and the open world approach, I feel unprepared most of the time. But when it clicks, it's a beautiful thing to behold. I can't go much into detail, since the groups only have vague or no intel about each other and I intend to keep it that way, but I can tell a bit of it at least.

I'd like to stress again that I knew nothing of any of it as the game started. if possible, I decide things with the role of a die, so the adventure seeds were all random and "spur of the moment" events that gained momentum over the last few sessions (more on randomness further below).

Adventures in a Roman city

I'll keep that one short (and hope people are still reading at this point). The group had their rite of passage with the Easter festival (which seems to be as old as time, by the way). There'd been lots of drinking and games, as one would imagine for the beginning of spring. Drinking contests, brawls shield runs, hot coals and reciting poems had been among the tests the characters had to struggle with to get their blessing for the journey ahead (every player was to come up with a test for his character and it had been great fun).

The next morning they were to consult the oracle and go out into the world to seek fame and glory and the direction they had to take was over the great lake that served their young settlement as main source of food. Across the lake (ca. 50 km) was an old Roman city that clung to the now defunct Roman ways and one of it's merchants had been in town for the festivities.

Barbarous radiate ... ancient copper coins [source]

With no money and no possessions to speak of (other than what they needed, of course), they asked the captain of the ship what they could do to gain passage and it turned out that the captain's son was AWOL. If they track him down and bring him back to the ship, they'd be allowed to travel over the lake with them. Their first quest turned out to be easy enough and the first session closed with them on the ship, heading through a rough sea towards adventure.

In between sessions the group split up, we lost one player and gained two more. They arrived with bad weather. Ice rain, hail, you name it. The captain offered everyone willing to help unloading the boat a few copper pieces, so the group earned their first coin, made some sailors happy and followed them into different taverns out of the storm.

The first group meets a prostitute that lost her child to evil men and so far they found a reluctant father, some criminal activity a pimp offering them work they wouldn't do because of their honor and a Christian underground organisation helping those in need. They start to see the big picture and something evil is stirring the dark, waiting for them.

The second group meets a merchant in dire straits. He owes lots of gold to a loan shark, but he lost the money to a dishonest tribesman who claimed to know directions to a lost Roman silver mine in the mountains. They are body guards of that merchant right now, investigating the whereabouts of said tribesmen. But he's difficult to find and that loan shark starts getting restless. And then there is a possible treasure hunt ...

It's old school, all right!

Lost Songs of the Nibelungs, at it's core, is all about rolling ability scores/skills and saves. Ability scores will change as characters get scarred, combat and magic are systems of their own (as with most game, actually), but that's it. Seeing it like that makes the D&D heritage quite obvious, I think. But the game felt very different to what I thought was OD&D and I started to muse that lost Songs won't be recognized as OSR in the end.

That changed after the last two sessions, though. The sandbox approach and the very idea of randomizing as much as possible on the DM-side of things, ability scores and saves, although named different, as the main source of player-world interaction, getting xp for treasure (sort of), the necessity for player skill and the brutality of it all really start to feel "old school". And not to me either, but to the players.

To some extent that's how I DM the game, for sure, but a lot of it is the game itself. So I will describe this as an OSR game. Definitely with a high difficulty, some new ideas and demanding in many aspects, but old school nonetheless. Not only due to the mind-set it originates from, but also because it does what those old games did, only a bit different.

And then someone dies ...

Anyway, the players seem to like it, too. They are careful, avoiding combat if possible and try to get a feeling for the world and how to explore (or exploit) it. That Roman city gains more and more depth every time one of the groups gets deeper into the plot lines they decided to follow.

Two things happened recently that really brought across how the sandbox lets them interact with the environment and from group to group. The first was about one player using a chimney to suffogate some bullies to break their hands and loot them afterwards. No fight, just calculation. And quite efficient at that. I personally think it was way more cruel than actually slitting their throats, but who am I to say.

The second thing was that one character actually died in a fight. He'd been led into a trap by some criminals working for that loan shark I mentioned before and he was dead meat after facing those five cutthroats and rolling a critical failure.

Well, the other characters swore bitter vengeance and gave the dead (and looted) character the proper burial and player made a new character. He'd been back into the game half an hour later. Nice as that is, way better was the reaction of that other group, as they, too, swore bitter vengeance (even without me telling what the others did) and went to see where he died to pay their respect. I thought it was great.

Not only to let them explore a place the others had visited before (though that had been nice, too!), but also that they really took the character from that other game as one of their own. We are already planning how to bring those characters together to help each other in an epic show down, whenever it occurs. I'm thinking dream messages and rituals here ...

I'm really having a blast with those people, if you haven't guessed yet.

Well, hear me rambling :)

Sorry about that huge wall of text just to say I'm still alive, playing and kicking. I hope to write something a bit more meaty soon. Maybe next week. I got some ideas, but most of the time I'm too drained out to get anything done after school. Well, it's getting better already. Expect more of the same soon.

And if some of you have experience with running more than one group through the same sandbox at the same time, please share your thoughts about it. How did it go down? Is it something that can work for a campaign?