Let's bring the party to the little trading fort of Brunswick, on the Androscoggin river, population 174. To tell the truth, this is a seasonal population number. About half have a bunk or a shack in Brunswick they use from time to time while trapping, trading or bearing their goods to a better civilization. 3/5ths of the remainder are groups that are just camping in the area, and won't be here by the end of autumn. That leaves about 35 actual inhabitants ~ traders, their staff, the fellow who makes whiskey, his dog and a collection of low sorts who haven't another place in the world to go. There's three shacks that poke onto Maquoit Bay, not 3 miles south of the settlement. Seven other permanent structures are scattered below the waterfall. There's no law, no order, no services other than whiskey and a will to sell very little and buy raw goods.
Is this the real history of the place? Hell, no, probably not. The true history probably has 174 pilgrims and a wooden church. But this is what I need for this post so this is what we'll go with.
There's no "wild west" feel. There's rather a sense of pure boredom broken occasionally by the arrival of a friend with two hundred pounds of beaver and mink pelts, fresh meat and news. After the party hikes from the dock at Maquoit Bay, they meet some strangers who direct them to where they can pitch their tents and visit the traders.
Outside the first trading post, they see a mule loaded with prospecting gear and other kit, what appears to be a heavy load. As the party enters, to get warm as much as anything else (which is a fair point for a DM to make), there's already a conversation going on. This is also a much used trope but it has proved its value for only 500+ years. Like with other recommendations I've made, the goal here is not to shove an adventure down the party's throats. We want a light, subtle feel that offers local color to the descriptions we've made so far; we're not broadcasting, "And now the adventure!"
The prospector is in conversation with the trader, which goes something like this:
Prospector (chuckling): I may have to give up prospecting at last.
Trader: If so, I wish you the best of luck.
Prospector: Have you heard from your sister?
Trader (glumly): Yes, unfortunately. Her husband has opened a larger shop in Boston. My sister wants me to join them.
Prospector: Will you?
Trader: I'm a god-fearing man, but there are churches in Boston. Do you see a church here?
The prospector will laugh and the trader will pay attention to the party. It should be plain from the above that nothing meaningful was said. That's what we want.
But there is much more going on, that we can tell the party at any time. The prospector has just come across a dead mastodon in the backcountry and has a load of 700 lbs. of good ivory on his mule. "Giving up prospecting" could mean he took up mastodon hunting instead. Of course, the party can't know this; but the party isn't going anywhere, so we can have the prospector, now a familiar figure, tell more of the story.
Think of it as a hook for the hook; we have a tendency to rush towards the adventure hook, and we don't want that. Once the conversation above is dropped, and the players begin asking their own questions, the moment might present itself to plainly say what's going on; in which case, we may drop the whole story casually or merely another hint, with a plan to finish the hook after yet another encounter with the prospector — which we can engineer anyway we want.
Shouting arises from outside and the players go to see what's happening. There are about a dozen people, all Europeans and one native Abenaki. A 15-year-old English boy is wrestling with the native, who is trying hard not to hurt the boy. The spectators are shouting for the fight to end but no one is diving in. After a few moments, the native easily throws the boy to the side and stands up, easy but wary. The boy draws a dagger.
At which point, a full grown Englishman, who looks a little like the boy, steps forward, grabs the knife and strikes the boy across the face. "That's enough!" says the striker — and the boy starts to cry and flees in anger and shame.
The Englishman says to the Abenaki, "I'm sorry. He's new off the boat and he doesn't know. He'll learn. I'll see to that."
The Abenaki shakes his hand and the crowd breaks up. For a moment, the Abenaki sees the party, regards the player characters, then heads off towards the river, where he has his yurt-like house.
Again, this is merely an introduction. The party will meet the Abenaki later, Whitebirch by name. This is an intelligent, very strong fighter (or mage, if that suits the party better), very familiar with the land from the Atlantic to Montreal ... but he has lately been in trouble over a woman he loves, who has been married to another man. That man, Waterrock, is hunting for Whitebirch with the help of Waterrock's two brothers ~ and these are deadly NPCs as well. None of this is the party's problem ... yet. But they could be.
If the party wants a guide, they'll turn up Whitebirch. When they learn more about the prospector, Elias by name, he'll explain he's going to Montreal because he can't get a price for his ivory from the trader. If the party offers to help with the journey, Elias will accept — and then he will hire Whitebirch to protect him from the party. If the party pays no attention to either, and decide to go hunt mastodon for themselves, Whitebirch will follow them and watch them, to be sure they're safe (he often does this for strangers to the land, which he'll recognize in the party).
Either way, there will be two plots running ... the players looking for their own ivory or helping Elias move his, AND the native being helpful and being hunted by three jealous men. Once these two plots are in place, we can add further features to the plots as they come to us. Does the girl, Quickotter, find Whitebirch, and the party, first? Does the party stumble across Waterrock before they find Whitebirch? Basically, we have five groups wandering around the wilderness, plus a potential mastodon and who knows what else, in a Midsummer Night's Dreamscape, all of which keeps the party uncertain about what's to happen next. Meanwhile, the resolution of one plot does not depend on the resolution of the other ... and Elias might have enemies and friends as well out in the bush.
Finally, even if the plot with Whitebirch is resolved, that doesn't mean we can't just create another plot with different perameters to replace it, before the mastodon/Elias plot is resolved.
Now ...
Much of the difficulty in comprehending an "open world" comes of this notion that we're "presenting an adventure" rather than the presentation of a setting. An adventure is time-dependent — it consists of a series of events strung over a period of time, which is therefore dependent on a cause and result relationship that depends on the players acting in a particular way and making particular choices. We don't want this. We want a non-temporal framework that spontaneously develops rational and logical events, thus manifesting an unknown adventure of the future.
Settings are accomplished through mapping. We're perfectly comfortable mapping out the forests and mountains of an area, designating a river and coastline, plunking down a settlement, even sketching out the hovels, trading posts and tents of that settlement. But somehow we forget that we also have to plot the people as well, in the same way.
Coming back to Elias and the trader (let's call him Samuel). We can plot Samuel as standing behind two kegs with a plank laid over them, serving as a bar, with Elias across from him. We can plot the party at the trading post's entrance. At the same time, outside, we can plot the location of the mule. We can also see the father and the son, and Whitebirch, are moving simultaneously towards the front of the trading post for the confrontation that will take place in a few minutes.
We can then take this further. 17 miles to the northeast, Waterrock and his two brothers are steadily making their way towards Brunswick, searching for Whitebirch to kill him. Quickotter is 35 miles upstream upon the Androscoggin river, paddling furiously towards Brunswick. Three miles away, along the trail to Montreal that Elias plans to take, an owlbear is stripping the bark off maple trees and licking the sap. A mile and a half south of Brunswick, a moose is ambling its way towards the settlement. And so on until we have a clear idea of whatever else is going on, precisely at this moment, recognizing that each of these elements is moving with its own purpose towards an unknown series of potential encounters.
The series is unknown because we don't know what the party is going to do. If the party leaves with Elias, they'll miss the moose and we don't need to worry about that. If they stay in Brunswick, somehow insult Whitebirch (so that he ceases to care about the party) and let Elias go, eventually they'll meet with Waterrock ... and then potentially Quickotter. If they head out with Elias, they'll meet the owlbear. If they follow Elias six hours after the prospector leaves, they'll find Elias's dead carcass, killed by the owlbear, and two free mastodon tusks. If the party leaves Brunswick immediately, they'll miss everyone; and whatever movement the party makes, we'll take note of new things that might fall across their path. There is a killer brown bear nine miles to the northwest. There is a murderer named Liam who is wanted for killing his wife and her brother in Cape Elizabeth, right now lost and scared about two miles north of Yarmouth. We don't need more information that this, because we'll see what the party thinks, first.
To get a better grasp over the interaction between the party and their setting, we need to zoom still further. Inside Trader Sam's mind, he's wishing that Elias would just get out because these strangers look like buyers of whiskey; and he knows Elias is a born liar anyway, so he is dubious about the mastodon tusks. Inside Elias's mind, he's anxious to leave because he never actually saw a mastodon, he actually stole the tusks from a campsite 25 miles to the east and he wants to unload them and get moving to new places; Elias knows this is the last time Trader Sam will ever see him. Inside Whitebirch's mind, he knows that as soon as he finds Quickotter, their joining will give him the status he needs to confront Waterrock in single combat. Inside Quickotter's mind, she only wants the two of them to flee and seek a place where they can live alone without any others around them. And so on. Each person has their own motivation, their own agenda.
As the scenes play out, the players will be dragged into the subsequent conflicts that are materializing. But how they materialize will depend on the player's choices and actions. Our goal is to ensure the players choose a side; and that they will act in accordance with those choices. It is on us to make the situation interesting enough that the players want to invest themselves in what they see ~ whether it is opportunity to acquire something or because they want to put an end to some injustice.
We are not, however, "presenting" an adventure. We don't know yet what the adventure will be. We only know what is happening, what is going to pass across the party's viewpoint. Think of it like a series of bumper cars (if those are still a thing), on an immense field, each moving in their own random direction, while the players are operating just one more car amid an infinite number of others. And each time the players turn left, we put other bumper cars across their path, consisting of nothing but a few phrases of description, a motivation, and a duly attached hook to get the party interested.
Then we create what ought to happen next. We don't plan for the party to crash into Waterrock's party. We have them meet, have Waterrock's personality express itself, have the party react to that personality and then see. The party might be indifferent; they might be incensed; they might agree with Waterrock, and decide to help him. Waterrock thinks he's in the right, after all; he probably has a good argument for why he's trying to stop an ambitious man who wants to use Waterrock's wife as a road for power. That's not the story that Whitebirch gives ... but that's the POINT! Everyone is in their own bumper car, with their own desire to hit others and not get hit.
So when you're creating the setting, remember that everyone is moving as the party is standing around making up their mind. Opportunities are disappearing; new opportunities are emerging. Dungeon Mastering an open world is managing those opportunities, adding to them, discarding them, keeping the cars moving, acknowledging that some of the cars will miss while other cars are definitely on a collision course.
The prospector will laugh and the trader will pay attention to the party. It should be plain from the above that nothing meaningful was said. That's what we want.
But there is much more going on, that we can tell the party at any time. The prospector has just come across a dead mastodon in the backcountry and has a load of 700 lbs. of good ivory on his mule. "Giving up prospecting" could mean he took up mastodon hunting instead. Of course, the party can't know this; but the party isn't going anywhere, so we can have the prospector, now a familiar figure, tell more of the story.
Think of it as a hook for the hook; we have a tendency to rush towards the adventure hook, and we don't want that. Once the conversation above is dropped, and the players begin asking their own questions, the moment might present itself to plainly say what's going on; in which case, we may drop the whole story casually or merely another hint, with a plan to finish the hook after yet another encounter with the prospector — which we can engineer anyway we want.
Shouting arises from outside and the players go to see what's happening. There are about a dozen people, all Europeans and one native Abenaki. A 15-year-old English boy is wrestling with the native, who is trying hard not to hurt the boy. The spectators are shouting for the fight to end but no one is diving in. After a few moments, the native easily throws the boy to the side and stands up, easy but wary. The boy draws a dagger.
At which point, a full grown Englishman, who looks a little like the boy, steps forward, grabs the knife and strikes the boy across the face. "That's enough!" says the striker — and the boy starts to cry and flees in anger and shame.
The Englishman says to the Abenaki, "I'm sorry. He's new off the boat and he doesn't know. He'll learn. I'll see to that."
The Abenaki shakes his hand and the crowd breaks up. For a moment, the Abenaki sees the party, regards the player characters, then heads off towards the river, where he has his yurt-like house.
Again, this is merely an introduction. The party will meet the Abenaki later, Whitebirch by name. This is an intelligent, very strong fighter (or mage, if that suits the party better), very familiar with the land from the Atlantic to Montreal ... but he has lately been in trouble over a woman he loves, who has been married to another man. That man, Waterrock, is hunting for Whitebirch with the help of Waterrock's two brothers ~ and these are deadly NPCs as well. None of this is the party's problem ... yet. But they could be.
If the party wants a guide, they'll turn up Whitebirch. When they learn more about the prospector, Elias by name, he'll explain he's going to Montreal because he can't get a price for his ivory from the trader. If the party offers to help with the journey, Elias will accept — and then he will hire Whitebirch to protect him from the party. If the party pays no attention to either, and decide to go hunt mastodon for themselves, Whitebirch will follow them and watch them, to be sure they're safe (he often does this for strangers to the land, which he'll recognize in the party).
Either way, there will be two plots running ... the players looking for their own ivory or helping Elias move his, AND the native being helpful and being hunted by three jealous men. Once these two plots are in place, we can add further features to the plots as they come to us. Does the girl, Quickotter, find Whitebirch, and the party, first? Does the party stumble across Waterrock before they find Whitebirch? Basically, we have five groups wandering around the wilderness, plus a potential mastodon and who knows what else, in a Midsummer Night's Dreamscape, all of which keeps the party uncertain about what's to happen next. Meanwhile, the resolution of one plot does not depend on the resolution of the other ... and Elias might have enemies and friends as well out in the bush.
Finally, even if the plot with Whitebirch is resolved, that doesn't mean we can't just create another plot with different perameters to replace it, before the mastodon/Elias plot is resolved.
Now ...
Much of the difficulty in comprehending an "open world" comes of this notion that we're "presenting an adventure" rather than the presentation of a setting. An adventure is time-dependent — it consists of a series of events strung over a period of time, which is therefore dependent on a cause and result relationship that depends on the players acting in a particular way and making particular choices. We don't want this. We want a non-temporal framework that spontaneously develops rational and logical events, thus manifesting an unknown adventure of the future.
Settings are accomplished through mapping. We're perfectly comfortable mapping out the forests and mountains of an area, designating a river and coastline, plunking down a settlement, even sketching out the hovels, trading posts and tents of that settlement. But somehow we forget that we also have to plot the people as well, in the same way.
Coming back to Elias and the trader (let's call him Samuel). We can plot Samuel as standing behind two kegs with a plank laid over them, serving as a bar, with Elias across from him. We can plot the party at the trading post's entrance. At the same time, outside, we can plot the location of the mule. We can also see the father and the son, and Whitebirch, are moving simultaneously towards the front of the trading post for the confrontation that will take place in a few minutes.
We can then take this further. 17 miles to the northeast, Waterrock and his two brothers are steadily making their way towards Brunswick, searching for Whitebirch to kill him. Quickotter is 35 miles upstream upon the Androscoggin river, paddling furiously towards Brunswick. Three miles away, along the trail to Montreal that Elias plans to take, an owlbear is stripping the bark off maple trees and licking the sap. A mile and a half south of Brunswick, a moose is ambling its way towards the settlement. And so on until we have a clear idea of whatever else is going on, precisely at this moment, recognizing that each of these elements is moving with its own purpose towards an unknown series of potential encounters.
The series is unknown because we don't know what the party is going to do. If the party leaves with Elias, they'll miss the moose and we don't need to worry about that. If they stay in Brunswick, somehow insult Whitebirch (so that he ceases to care about the party) and let Elias go, eventually they'll meet with Waterrock ... and then potentially Quickotter. If they head out with Elias, they'll meet the owlbear. If they follow Elias six hours after the prospector leaves, they'll find Elias's dead carcass, killed by the owlbear, and two free mastodon tusks. If the party leaves Brunswick immediately, they'll miss everyone; and whatever movement the party makes, we'll take note of new things that might fall across their path. There is a killer brown bear nine miles to the northwest. There is a murderer named Liam who is wanted for killing his wife and her brother in Cape Elizabeth, right now lost and scared about two miles north of Yarmouth. We don't need more information that this, because we'll see what the party thinks, first.
To get a better grasp over the interaction between the party and their setting, we need to zoom still further. Inside Trader Sam's mind, he's wishing that Elias would just get out because these strangers look like buyers of whiskey; and he knows Elias is a born liar anyway, so he is dubious about the mastodon tusks. Inside Elias's mind, he's anxious to leave because he never actually saw a mastodon, he actually stole the tusks from a campsite 25 miles to the east and he wants to unload them and get moving to new places; Elias knows this is the last time Trader Sam will ever see him. Inside Whitebirch's mind, he knows that as soon as he finds Quickotter, their joining will give him the status he needs to confront Waterrock in single combat. Inside Quickotter's mind, she only wants the two of them to flee and seek a place where they can live alone without any others around them. And so on. Each person has their own motivation, their own agenda.
As the scenes play out, the players will be dragged into the subsequent conflicts that are materializing. But how they materialize will depend on the player's choices and actions. Our goal is to ensure the players choose a side; and that they will act in accordance with those choices. It is on us to make the situation interesting enough that the players want to invest themselves in what they see ~ whether it is opportunity to acquire something or because they want to put an end to some injustice.
We are not, however, "presenting" an adventure. We don't know yet what the adventure will be. We only know what is happening, what is going to pass across the party's viewpoint. Think of it like a series of bumper cars (if those are still a thing), on an immense field, each moving in their own random direction, while the players are operating just one more car amid an infinite number of others. And each time the players turn left, we put other bumper cars across their path, consisting of nothing but a few phrases of description, a motivation, and a duly attached hook to get the party interested.
Then we create what ought to happen next. We don't plan for the party to crash into Waterrock's party. We have them meet, have Waterrock's personality express itself, have the party react to that personality and then see. The party might be indifferent; they might be incensed; they might agree with Waterrock, and decide to help him. Waterrock thinks he's in the right, after all; he probably has a good argument for why he's trying to stop an ambitious man who wants to use Waterrock's wife as a road for power. That's not the story that Whitebirch gives ... but that's the POINT! Everyone is in their own bumper car, with their own desire to hit others and not get hit.
So when you're creating the setting, remember that everyone is moving as the party is standing around making up their mind. Opportunities are disappearing; new opportunities are emerging. Dungeon Mastering an open world is managing those opportunities, adding to them, discarding them, keeping the cars moving, acknowledging that some of the cars will miss while other cars are definitely on a collision course.
Wow! I'm completely blown away by this post. I'm signing up for your Patreon now.
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