Toolbox So Far

So, I have tried to make a short list of what seems to me to be essential to running a coherent game in the style I am now calling a Toolbox approach. In keeping with The Alexandrian’s admonition to never prep plots, just prep Situations https://thealexandrian.net/wordpress/4147/roleplaying-games/dont-prep-plots.

Tools in the Toolbox:

1. PCs need a Clear Goal to guide the GM in making the adventure relevant to the players (Hooks for the PCs), and potentially a way to make this work with ANY group of PCs.
2. NPCs and their Allies, their Goals, Motivations, & Resources 
3. Plans to achieve those Goals
4. Locations 
5. Bangs and Twists for the GM to keep the action moving forward 
6. Web of Relationships
7. First and Ending Scenes as a Rough Guide to how this scenario MIGHT run, and how to shepherd it along (not Railroading, but not Utter Chaos either)
   
   
   
   
   So, the theory is, with all these Tools ready to go your adventure and/or campaign will proceed during the back and forth of play to a satisfying conclusion. Either the PCs or the NPCs/GMCs will achieve their Goals (or will change their Goals) and then your game will either end or start in a new direction.
   Is there anything else that needs to be on this list?
   
   
   
   
   
   
   I think I will next create an example of this and see how it goes...

Rethinking the term Sandbox

Sandbox???

This blog will be my attempt to get my ideas out of my head and into a useful form regarding the term “Sandbox” and how a modified version of it can inform the design of RPG adventures.

 Sandbox seems to mean “player freedom” but also “player character creation unlimited or unconstricted by almost anything” which is not the same thing . I need to coin a new phrase for what I want to do...

Having read the advice of well-known game designers, such as Kenneth Hite and Robin D. Laws, and many others, I am trying to formulate my thoughts into a workable structure. The concept I am concerned with would indicate: how to run a game in a non-linear and non-DND way. D&D adventures seem to be very linear or at least the individual sites of adventure tend to be linear. With rooms full of escalating obstacles or difficulty leading to a final big boss, very much like the video Games that have spawned from the creation of dungeons and dragons back in the 1970s. I am looking for a more narrative experience, but that’s not to say that the older models, not be negative, just do not lend them selves naturally to narrative. What I want is, as described by a previously mentioned authors, a set of tools and guidelines to help me create a game on the fly with the least difficulty, and with the least seeming contrivance of “just making things up“. I want maximum flexibility with the minimum preparation.

The elements that I have gathered from my reading that seem to be necessary to running an “improvised but within at least a slightly limited channel so that it is not a total free-for-all” , or what I am going to start calling a Toolbox approach, are as follows:

you need NPC‘s, 

with clear goals, 

and clear methods of achieving those goals, 

motivations for why they want these goals, 

resources including allies and tools and wealth for achieving the goal, 

their Plan for how to execute the goal, 

some locations where the adventure might take place, 

a web of Relationships between the characters locations and any other elements to seem relevant,
and character hooks and motivations for interacting with the goals of the NPC’s., 

And what I  have learned to call bangs (events or actions of the NPC‘s that force the characters to become involved in the plot in case they get lost or distracted too far).

This is not a complete list, and part of the point of this blog is to get input into what is critical to the style of role-playing and thus gives the game master the tools to run the game in the satisfying but not too difficult way.
What do you think of calling this style of play a Toolbox approach?