Free Form Sandbox Forgotten Realms - Interest Check

Started by Schwarzepard, December 23, 2008, 10:38:12 PM

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Schwarzepard

Who would be interested in a Freeform Sandbox type of game set in the D&D setting Forgotten Realms?

Elven Sex Goddess

I be interested in this.   So where would the setting take place.  A city like Waterdeep, or someplace else. 

Desan

what is Freeform Sandbox mean?

And I'm interested as well.
And I don’t really give a f-ck, and my excuse is that I’m young.


Schwarzepard

Thanks for the interest :)

It would be set anywhere the players wanted it to be, and wherever the characters go.  People could play in solo threads or create a group thread if their characters meet each other and adventure together, and then return to their solo threads when they part company.

Sandbox would mean plots and adventures are player-driven.  From basic needs and desires to goals for the future, the character's background, personality, and choices would be the driving force in the directions his or her story would take.  Future goals might include becoming captain of the Waterdeep guard, owning the most merchant ships on the Sword Coast, traveling around the world and writing a book about it (like Marco Polo), or founding a new chapter of the Thieve's Guild while taking over from the old one.  In reaching for the sky, characters will probably reach the top of some pretty interesting mountains.  You know how the original Conan stories were really just episodes in Conan's life?  They were filled with adventure, to be sure, but it wasn't like Lord of the Rings, Wheel of Time, etc. where everybody was locked into an epic quest whether they liked it or not.  The characters would have opportunities, not scripts.

Freeform would mean exactly that, no ruleset or game mechanics.  Since Forgotten Realms normally is intimately bound up in the D20 ruleset and there won't be any rules, certain things would have to be addressed: 

Characters would start out as concepts, the more developed the better.  What is the character good at and bad at?  A teenager leaving the farm in search of a better life? Fine.  A veteran warrior released from service and looking for meaning? No problem.  Characters would not be restricted to a particular 'level'.  I want to get away from levels, hit points and other game mechanics and explore character development in the setting.  At the same time, characters with godlike powers would have such an effect on the setting I want to stay away from that.

Character ability improvement would be handled through actions:  Does your character want to learn the skills of the rogue?  Then he or she has to get someone to teach them... and pay the price.  How about heavy armor or mounted combat?  Join the Army of Cormyr and serve the King.  Learning these skills to any kind of proficiency would take quite a while.  The story would be the journey, rather than the destination. 

Combat and conflict:  The character's abilities (the good at and bad at) would be taken into account by the GM/player and compared to the NPCs concepts.  OOC cooperation and discussion would be highly encouraged.  Veteran warrior takes on three average guardsmen?  He'll probably win without breaking a sweat.  The farm kid taking on the same guardsmen would probably go down with one punch to the gut.  In cases where the character is evenly matched or in a bad situation, it'll depend on the creativity of the player to write him or her out of it, limited by being Realistic:

Realism:  Forgotten Realms is high fantasy.  There is so much magic that characters could spend their whole lives not sure if they're really who they think they are.  People can get killed by falling dragon scales.  All that is pretty much normal and realistic for the Forgotten Realms reality.  What I mean by realism... is suddenly more difficult to explain than I thought it would be  :-X but I'll give it a try:

     It's got to be internally consistent or, I guess, believable;  a character who is honorable and dedicated to his duty isn't suddenly going to become corrupt for the sake of providing a convenient opponent for the player character.  If a character is a treacherous scheming Drow priestess, she's not going to suddenly start keeping her word unless it's somehow worth it or furthers her web of treacherous schemes.  People can change, but it needs to make sense.  That farm kid isn't going to be able to leap from chandelier to chandelier with one hand while battling evil henchmen with a two handed sword in his other.  The old innkeeper isn't going to suddenly have incredible magic powers because the GM decides the player characters need to stop smashing up his bar.  A longbow arrow through the eye kills, instead of being a nuisance like in the ruleset.  If things happen or are a certain way, they need to be that way for reasons which would believably exist in the setting and be relevant to that situation.  Players need to accept the limitations of believability as they accept their characters' capabilities.  As writers, it's up to us to turn defeat into a story opportunity.  Forgotten Realms is filled with a variety of cultures and societies.  I want to get as far away from present day contemporary modes of thinking and write from the point of view of characters immersed in their social fabric.  They would care about they own society's rules and morals, and the great majority of values present day society holds would make absolutely no sense to them.

I ask myself how and why questions about settings, like how does the city of Waterdeep feed its people?  What do dragons eat in their cold craggy mountains?  What effects does the constant violence and physics-warping magic of the setting have on the people and their societies?  How do people and societies react when gods are real, unpredictable, and horribly evil as often as they are benevolent?  How does this affect the family?  Do people even risk emotional attachments when those they love the most can be taken from them in an instant, or even turned against them by magic?  I want to explore these kinds of themes, to have them woven into the setting with a writing partner(s) who finds this kind of stuff interesting.


My characters, alot of them, are complex people.  I've never been able to play them, tabletop or on forums, for a variety of reasons, usually because candyass PG-13 forums can't handle them, people don't care about the character focused stories I'm interested in, or because the centrifugal force of the game mechanics inevitably draws the situation into revolving around getting experience points.  It's like I never got to get off the leveling merry-go-round and explore a really interesting setting.  No one else even wanted to.

I welcome everyone's thoughts and discussion.

Mnemaxa

As a point of curiosity, what about psionic powers?  Would the 'witchcraft' of psychic ability be available for a character who wanted to develop the secretive and suspicious talents of the mind as opposed to the potent learning of wizardry or the innate power of sorcery or the blood-line and pact driven powers of warlocks? 

The idea sounds lovely, to be honest, and I've played in such games many times before. I may or may not join in depending on the states of my current stories, but I'll definitely follow along at the very least.

The Well of my Dreams is Poisoned; I draw off the Poison, which becomes the Ink of my Authorship, the Paint upon my Brush.

Desan

Kat, I applaud you at your explanation. In fact, I think this would be the best time to develop my character

*points to Avatar*

Whom I've been developing in E-chat a little bit.

However, are lycanthropes in the forgotten realms? Is it possible? I definitely am very curious/eager to see how Desan became what he is, and how his adventure began and what he plans to do now.

and when you mean "People could play in solo threads " mean's we just basically write a back-story on our own individual character?

Of course there will be a set-setting so at least the players have an opportunity to meet each other/adventure together before returning to their own stories correct?
And I don’t really give a f-ck, and my excuse is that I’m young.


HairyHeretic

Tentative interest. I spent a lot of time wandering around the Realms in 2nd ed AD&D :)
Hairys Likes, Dislikes, Games n Stuff

Cattle die, kinsmen die
You too one day shall die
I know a thing that will never die
Fair fame of one who has earned it.

Schwarzepard

@ Desan:  I guess One on One would've been a better way to describe what I meant by solo thread.  One player character by himself or with NPC companions, interacting with the setting as written by a writing partner.  What I was thinking when I started this thread was something like this:  I would have my character in one thread and my writing partner would have a character in a separate thread, and each of us would "GM" for the other's thread.  My explanation didn't sound like that, I know, because it's very rare that I do one on one rp's.  I just wasn't thinking in those terms and I was talking to everyone who expressed interest. 

Here's a similar one on one idea I did with Thalia:  https://elliquiy.com/forums/index.php?topic=14431.50 
I did all the NPCs (who were like my characters, really) and she looked after her player character.  It was set in a boarding school instead a whole world, of course.  I would like someone to do something similar for me, and if he or she would like, I would do the same for them.

With several of us responding, I began to think of a group of people doing that cooperatively.  When two or more players characters would come together (of course it would be arranged OOC), a new group thread would be created for the 'party', and they would go where adventure took them.  When they decided to split up, then writers and partners would just start posting in the character's one on one thread again, and the character would be wherever he left the party.  The thought occurred to me to just GM people's stories in one on one or group threads, but that would be a very big endeavor and I already have a group roleplay in the works.

There are werewolves (and alot were - other things) in Forgotten Realms.


@ Mnemaxa

I would prefer to stick with magic rather than adding psionics.  I never had the psionics supplement and my lack of familiarity wouldn't make for convincing writing.  I only have the three basic books and some Forgotten Realms supplements, so I wouldn't be able to accurately portray materials from the supplemental the books.

@ HH

The Realms is such a rich setting :)

HairyHeretic

You thinking of setting it in any particular time period? Given how often things have gotten shaken up in the Realms, it wouldn't hurt to have a reference point.
Hairys Likes, Dislikes, Games n Stuff

Cattle die, kinsmen die
You too one day shall die
I know a thing that will never die
Fair fame of one who has earned it.

HairyHeretic

Hmm. I think I was playing in 1358 or so ... the Time of Troubles, and shortly after.

Looking at the 4th ed FR book, the current year is 1479, and a LOT has changed.

Which sourcebook you going by? 3.0, 3.5?
Hairys Likes, Dislikes, Games n Stuff

Cattle die, kinsmen die
You too one day shall die
I know a thing that will never die
Fair fame of one who has earned it.

Mnemaxa

Thanks for answering me.  It might be amusing to put together a warlock or magus of the Drow variety, perhaps....

No, bad! No tempting me!  *hides*

The Well of my Dreams is Poisoned; I draw off the Poison, which becomes the Ink of my Authorship, the Paint upon my Brush.

HairyHeretic

Hairys Likes, Dislikes, Games n Stuff

Cattle die, kinsmen die
You too one day shall die
I know a thing that will never die
Fair fame of one who has earned it.

Elven Sex Goddess

I have an idea to play a wood elf that is one of the Lythari.   Her pack is slaughtered, the soul survivor.   Yet fate, or perhaps Selune intervention,  her captivity is short lived as the galley she is being transported on wrecks along the cost from a storm. (think Kingdom of Heaven)  With that, it allow her to fit in anywhere.

Lythari are lycanthropes, werewolves.  However they do not take hybrid form, only wolf or elven form.    Desist from using metal abhor fighting unless pressed.   

As I plan to start her as equivalent of a human teen of 18 years of age  so perhaps just shy of a hundred years.   The growth is going to be the growing inner ability of magic in being a sorceress.    A more detail background be done a day or two, if this works.   

HairyHeretic

Ok, looks like I must have the 3.5 one, as its dated 2004. Probably not that different though.
Hairys Likes, Dislikes, Games n Stuff

Cattle die, kinsmen die
You too one day shall die
I know a thing that will never die
Fair fame of one who has earned it.

Desan

*Crosses fingers for this to work*

Though I'm sure ill be asking tons of more questions soon (i can't think right now xD) I hope this works out!
And I don’t really give a f-ck, and my excuse is that I’m young.


Transgirlenstein

Busy with freelance writing work.  Replies slow.  Feel free to prod me. 

Formally Tripping Satyr, Tripping Snake and QueenTrippingserpent.  Often known as Trip.

Ons/Offs: https://elliquiy.com/forums/index.php?topic=19217.0

Seeking Games!: https://elliquiy.com/forums/index.php?topic=71239.0

Desan

Quote from: Asherah on December 24, 2008, 07:20:34 PM
I have an idea to play a wood elf that is one of the Lythari.   Her pack is slaughtered, the soul survivor.   Yet fate, or perhaps Selune intervention,  her captivity is short lived as the galley she is being transported on wrecks along the cost from a storm. (think Kingdom of Heaven)  With that, it allow her to fit in anywhere.

Lythari are lycanthropes, werewolves.  However they do not take hybrid form, only wolf or elven form.    Desist from using metal abhor fighting unless pressed.   

As I plan to start her as equivalent of a human teen of 18 years of age  so perhaps just shy of a hundred years.   The growth is going to be the growing inner ability of magic in being a sorceress.    A more detail background be done a day or two, if this works.   

Gasp.

There can only be one

-bares fangs-

;P
And I don’t really give a f-ck, and my excuse is that I’m young.


Elven Sex Goddess

Quote from: HeretiKat on December 24, 2008, 10:30:08 PM
How powerful are you imagining her wolf form to be?

Not powerful in comparison to a werewolf lycanthrope.   They don't take the hybrid form.  They only have a bite.  Here is info on them.

Lythari are good-aligned lycanthropic wolves, similar in appearance to werewolves and often mistaken as such. Lythari differ from werewolves in that they have no hybrid form and are friendly and companionable when in lupine form. Although much less numerous than werewolves, a lot of Lythari are sponsored by the church of Selûne.

Lythari are true lycanthropes. They are born as were-creatures to lycanthope parents. All lythari are wood elves and lythari packs are almost exclusively found in wood elf lands or on the isle of Evermeet. Lythari propogate using a ritual of bonding that will turn the other party into a lythari. This ritual only works if both parties agree to the transformation. It leaves a permanent scar on the transformed, which resembles a wolf bite.

Physical combat is abhorrent to lythari. If they aid in warfare at all it would be in a scouting capacity or as a messenger, using their speed to their advantage. However, if cornered or forced to defend their kin, they have a powerful bite which they can use to great effect. Otherwise, they only attack when hunting, preferring deer, rabbit and wild boar, much like a wolf.

Lythari packs are small, usually numbering no more than 30, a dozen or so of which will be too young to fend for themselves. They do not fashion metal objects of any kind and the rare spellcasters amongst them tend to be priests of one of the nature deities. All members of a lythari pack are treated equally, with no real leaders. As such, these packs tend to be quite anarchic and are increasingly rare, as most lythari go to live in Faerie, travelling there through portals.

Lone lythari are readily accepted within normal wolf packs and treated deferentially but are left out of the pack hierarchy. Evil wolves such as worgs, werewolves and wolfweres will attempt to drive off a lythari or slay him or her if at all possible. They can sense a lythari's goodliness naturally.

Desan

You want me to give a small backstory of him on here?

And I'm not very knowledgable about toe forgotten realms and their stories/settings..so...bare with me on that part ><
And I don’t really give a f-ck, and my excuse is that I’m young.


Elven Sex Goddess

#19
Quote from: HeretiKat on December 26, 2008, 05:08:22 PM
Asherah, which book are the Lythari from?

Desan, do you have any more details about your character and the kind of stories you'd like to see for him?

Gideon, Tripping, Mnemaxa I'm interested in your thoughts.

HH, I'm interesting in any ideas you may have about characters, stories, and the methods of doing something like this.

I pulled up the information from wiki

http://forgottenrealms.wikia.com/wiki/Lythari

Through I say the power level is far less then a werewolf template.  Especially since don't have the hybrid form.  If is too much trouble. I have idea for another.  A sorceress, that either be elven or human.   

Desan

Quote from: Asherah on December 26, 2008, 05:31:53 PM
I pulled up the information from wiki

http://forgottenrealms.wikia.com/wiki/Lythari

Through I say the power level is far less then a werewolf template.  Especially since don't have the hybrid form.  If is too much trouble. I have idea for another.  A sorceress, that either be elven or human.   

Wait, I thought werewolves = human to werewolf transformation and vice versa. No "hybrid" form?...
(Wonders if his character can do that if thats ok...shapeshift at will)
And I don’t really give a f-ck, and my excuse is that I’m young.


HairyHeretic

Quote from: HeretiKat on December 26, 2008, 05:08:22 PM
HH, I'm interesting in any ideas you may have about characters, stories, and the methods of doing something like this.

Thinking on it.

Unfortunately my brain is in silly mode, and all I've got right now is a Dwarf ranger based off Steve Irwin (for that high poison save, you know? ;) )
Hairys Likes, Dislikes, Games n Stuff

Cattle die, kinsmen die
You too one day shall die
I know a thing that will never die
Fair fame of one who has earned it.

Mnemaxa

Okay.  Here is the important fact about running a freeform sandbox game:  Someone has to run it.  They don't have to actively GUIDE it like one would with a normal game, as it pretty much guides itself.  What the 'runner' does is provide the backdrops for the other players, a sort of cohesive  meta-world that the other players can move around it.  Now, in a standard play-by-email, that would eventually indicate the players 'teaming up' to interact on a regular basis.  So you have several small threads happening simultaneously.  

This is not really a bad thing but in a forum such as this, it means that you'll end up with four or five threads with little to no crossover between them.  The runner's job is essentially to run between the threads and put in various NPCs and noticeable situations that impact each of the individual threads and help promote multiple crossovers.  It sounds difficult, and that's because it is.  It is a thankless, sometimes annoying, sometimes unwanted sort of activity.  

Much of the difference in this situation stems from the fact we have a wide variety of players who are more or less mature and self motivating writers, which is not the norm, believe me.  This makes the runner's job a lot more palatable, if it's even necessary at all.  

Another problem with free form RP is the growth scenario.  Without an actual arbiter of some sort, it becomes very difficult to gauge a character;'s growth in power as well as character.  Who can say when a first level character who is being written as part of a story gains knowledge of his new spells, or the secret techniques of the Rose Sword Cultists Parry, or is given a visitation from on high to become a more powerful spokesperson for her deity?  This is where a runner or arbiter comes in handy.  If someone is interested in gaining new level abilities or multiclassing or gaining some interesting piece of treasure an arbiter can start them on a path that leads to their development as a PC as opposed to a character.  Character growth occurs in stories.  PC growth occurs as a by-product of these stories.  An arbiter has to be able to look at all the PC's abilities and traits and say, 'okay, he's looking a little weak for the scenario in general' or 'hmn, this guy's got some new stuff and abilities, and this person's lagging, I need to throw them a bone'  - not quite literally but an arbiter can help push a PC forward above and beyond the story the character is involved in.  

Those are situations I have run into and seen happen as a long time player in chatroom, forums, and play-by-mail.  Being an arbiter SUCKS, a lot of the time, because it's almost impossible to maintain your distance from the stories.  We're all going to fall a little in love with one thread or another, and enjoy certain character's hijinks over another, and it's damn near impossible to keep from being accused of some form of favoritism or another.  

However

All that begin said, I must admit I have had an absolute blast playing arbiter and developing long term, overarching plots that the players helped build and make up their own side scenarios to overcome.  If you can overcome the immaturity and silliness of a group of gamers - and let's be honest, name a single gamer who isn't in some fundamental way immature, myself absolutely NO exception! - then you have here the finest opportunity to see played out an epic, grand, sweeping adventure that people will talk about for months, perhaps even years afterwords.....

And that is my four-and-a-half dollars worth of commentary.

P.S.: The stingray was an 8th level Ranger with Favored Enemy (Australians) and several levels in the Slayer prestige class.

The Well of my Dreams is Poisoned; I draw off the Poison, which becomes the Ink of my Authorship, the Paint upon my Brush.

Schwarzepard

Asherah, I'd like to hear about your other character concepts too!  I read the Forgotten Realms wiki you provided, and it's a great resource for learning about the setting.  Your Lythari character's youth gives her great potential, and her wolf form shouldn't be an issue. 

Desan, a werewolf in Forgotten Realms definitely has a hybrid form (as depicted very well in your avatar).  Asherah is talking about a specific kind of elf which has a wolf form but is not a 'werewolf'.  There are elves who are specifically werewolfs in the sense you mean, but they are not the same the elven subrace Asherah is describing. 

I wrote this thinking about Desan's character, but I guess it would be a good idea for everybody:  I'd like to read a short profile about your character ideas, maybe a short paragraph about origins, the situation you'd like to have him or her in at the start of play, goals for the future, and your storytelling goals for development.  These aren't any kind of requirements, but for sharing creative ideas.

It seems the Forgotten Realms always has a world changing catastrophe lurking around the corner.  I'm not going to use any of them that happen after the year 1372.  I'm also not going to use any kind of gunpowder development or Gnomish mechanization.  I'm not going to delve into Forgotten Realms theology much, or have any cosmology changing catastrophes, like War of the Spider Queen.  It seems to me epic events are meant to impress the reader and take away from the focus on the characters.

The Drow Situation:  Alot people really like Drow and I like them too.  What I'm not going to use is the supplemental material depicting the Drow as total mentalcases, as depicted in Dragon Magazine's Vault of the Drow article (which was heartily lampooned in the cartoon on the issue's inside back cover).  Their entry in the Forgotten Realms Wiki provides a good summary.  http://forgottenrealms.wikia.com/wiki/Drow

Another thing I'd like to put forth for discussion is the [Game Type].  Since each character will have an own one on one thread, they can be labeled differently, but it would be a good idea to talk about it.  A quick glance at my ons and offs will show... I don't have any.  I joined Elliquiy for the freedom to include adult themes if a story went that way, not because I had specific adult interests I wanted to write about.  My writing contains far less sex than most stories on Elliquiy, and when it occurs I generally spend alot less time on it.  Things I'll fade to black on are M/M and extreme things.  The question is, are an NPC's private issues relevant to the story?  What minotaurs do in their spare time really doesn't matter.  Of course site limits will be respected at all times, even if Jerry Lee Lewis did too marry his 13 year old cousin In Real Life(tm) and thousands of people in medieval times did the same.  I hope these things aren't a problem for any of our interested parties.  If it is, let's discuss it.

Mnemaxa's post is excellent and discusses some very important points.  It is also dinnertime, and when I return Mnemaxa's post will get a reply of it's own.

Desan

Well shit, I don't know werewolves as much as I thought . Perhaps I am influenced too much by underworld ^.^. What type of werewolves are those? ?

And my character story soon. Almost done watching the kids.
And I don’t really give a f-ck, and my excuse is that I’m young.