Today, 01:11 AM
Something I've been rotating in my mind is the role of troupe play in big sandbox campaigns. I say "troupe play" in a very broad sense: really, I just mean "you don't always have the same characters in the party each session." And I've realized that, with relatively few exceptions, pretty much all of the big long sandbox campaigns I've run have ended up involving troupe play or something much like it:
Likewise, while this isn't explicitly tied to troupe play, I find two common knock-on effects of troupe play are 1) you need a home base or other place to leave your dudes that aren't out on an adventure, and 2) that you need downtime activities for those homebound dudes to do "off-screen." And both of those together encourage a much larger, richer field of play. (As a tangent, watching the Quinns Quest video about Stonetop, I was struck by how much of his praise focused on the longevity of the game and the effect of giving players a home base situated in the world—both things that Stonetop does by default, true, but also don't seem terribly unique.)
These elements combined—a wide range of dangers and threats, a home base, and prominent downtime—all feel like they really enable a proper sandbox game. One that's focused not just on "where your party is traveling at this exact moment," but one that exists and persists within a wider, broader world. And so now I'm wondering, for whatever future big sandbox campaign games I run and big sandbox campaign projects I make, how I can best support and enable and encourage troupe play.
Any good ideas?
- I've run West Marches and open tables, for both overland crawls and dungeons, usually with a roster of ten to twenty players or so.
- In my Seas of Sand, Mothership, and Wolves Upon the Coast campaigns, there have been crews aboard the ship(s), which provide an easy list of extra NPCs who can go on adventures or serve as replacement PCs.
- In my long-running Heresy campaign, we ended up with four "main PCs," the primary heroes of the campaign and the leaders of their rebel heresy, and then ten-ish "minions," who got substituted in and out on various adventures. I think by the end of the game, the average adventuring party had like one-and-a-half main PCs.
Likewise, while this isn't explicitly tied to troupe play, I find two common knock-on effects of troupe play are 1) you need a home base or other place to leave your dudes that aren't out on an adventure, and 2) that you need downtime activities for those homebound dudes to do "off-screen." And both of those together encourage a much larger, richer field of play. (As a tangent, watching the Quinns Quest video about Stonetop, I was struck by how much of his praise focused on the longevity of the game and the effect of giving players a home base situated in the world—both things that Stonetop does by default, true, but also don't seem terribly unique.)
These elements combined—a wide range of dangers and threats, a home base, and prominent downtime—all feel like they really enable a proper sandbox game. One that's focused not just on "where your party is traveling at this exact moment," but one that exists and persists within a wider, broader world. And so now I'm wondering, for whatever future big sandbox campaign games I run and big sandbox campaign projects I make, how I can best support and enable and encourage troupe play.
Any good ideas?