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View Full Version : What Makes You Want To Explore A World?



AlchemicalJoe
2017-03-25, 05:18 AM
The worlds of games like Legend of Zelda and Hyper Light Drifter have a naturally drawing feeling about them; I think emulating these qualities would be interesting for a tabletop game-- rather than being prompted to adventure with the promise of treasure and titles, players would be inclined to adventure for the sake of exploration. What makes you want to explore a world? What incentives would you give to players to give the game like this a compelling narrative despite its disparate style?

Amaril
2017-03-25, 12:19 PM
One thing that always bugs me about video game open worlds is when they have too much stuff in them.

Bethesda's games, much as I've enjoyed them, are supremely guilty of this. You can't walk five feet without stumbling on a quest, a dungeon, some big thing that asks you to stop and take time to check it out. It makes the space feel more like an amusement park than a real, living, organic world. In an open-world game, I want the journey to a place to be an experience in itself; I want to spend time just traveling through locations, appreciating the sights, without the game feeling like it has to throw new activities in my path every minute to keep me interested. Shadow of the Colossus did this well, though the graphical limitations of the time do make the world kind of boring to look at.

usorer
2017-03-25, 12:52 PM
I think the problem about video game open world is that they have a massive world but not much interaction between character and the world, because interaction only happens when it is programmed in.

Yora
2017-03-25, 12:55 PM
The most important thing to make discovery interesting is that the world lets you discover things that you didn't expect. Things you donn't have seen before many times, at least not in this way.
Which is why Morrowind, despite it's weaker gameplay, easily beats Skyrim as the much better exploration game. Cold land with vikings, wolves, and bears is the second most repetitive thing ever, only beaten by medieval England.

A particularly well made setting would allow players to become more efficient at dealing with situations as they get to see the patterns of how the world is ticking.

AlchemicalJoe
2017-03-25, 06:11 PM
You can't walk five feet without stumbling on a quest, a dungeon, some big thing that asks you to stop and take time to check it out. It makes the space feel more like an amusement park than a real, living, organic world. In an open-world game, I want the journey to a place to be an experience in itself; I want to spend time just traveling through locations, appreciating the sights, without the game feeling like it has to throw new activities in my path every minute to keep me interested.

A tabletop game does seem to be an amusement park in some ways though-- in that everybody involved is participating in the activity for the sake of having fun, and in my opinion that necessitates some amount of "laid out activities" to give an incentive for exploring the world. These activities don't need to be as overt as The massive tower looming in the distance but you need something for the players to do in for the game to be well a game rather than the GM's audiobook. I'd be interested in knowing what you would find natural in a world, what sites you might appreciate, that lend themselves to player interaction.

Honest Tiefling
2017-03-25, 06:25 PM
1) Rewards. If stepping ten feet away from your door results in angry violent death, then screw it, I'm staying home where my tea is. Exploration must have risks of course, but if the risks are too great it's not going to happen. Make the plot such that there are battles conveniently placed in such a way that battles are still interesting, but not overwhelming too quickly if they take a wrong turn.

2) Flavor. I don't MIND the Viking-theme of Skyrim, because it felt like someone took time to flesh out the setting. Yeah, I'll agree it wasn't the most imaginative place to steal from but it felt like someone really put their heart into it. (And then messed it up with the marriage sub-system, but that's a rant for another time). Admittedly this has some personal bias, but if I poke at a thing, I want to learn about it. I'm the type of player to roll history skill checks to just know about old monuments. But if your players are like me, make a world and let them poke at it even if it is just an ol' rock marking a great battle. The little details can matter!

3) Interaction. I don't want a sight-seeing tour. Don't just have wonderful flavor for things, but have choices and battles. Do you go through the mountain pass with bandits, or the one higher up in the mountains with worse weather? Can we camp in places? Trade hides for food because our druid got sick?

Sadly, if you describe a creepy old fortress inhabited by ghosts, the party may decide to set up a fortress there once they got rid of those pesky ghosts. You should really make it clear that exploration of the WORLD is the goal of this game, but consider having the players work with some city or colonists or religion. So once they explore a place and get rid of the former inhabitants, they can send word for their allies to settle there. This also means they keep exploring, rather then having to hike all the way back to civilization to replace horses or gear.

In fact, in many systems, mounts are disadvantageous as they don't fit in dungeons well. A good bribe for a party to stick to wilderness areas are good mounts that will continue to grow stronger so you don't get attached to a war horse that is later eaten in one chomp by a random monster.

Stryyke
2017-03-25, 06:37 PM
There might be a scientific answer to this question. Studies have shown that winning, in any form, release varied doses of "happiness" chemicals in the brain. The study showed that games that reward you frequently are the most addicting. Those goofy phone games are one example. Why did minecraft become so huge? Because you get a reward almost constantly. Since it takes a second or two to break a block, the brain sees each broken block as a "victory." Then each wall. Then each building. Then each community. And all the while, you are getting a steady flood of highly addictive happiness chemicals.

The most interesting worlds do this. Early on, there are lots of victories and rewards. That get's you hooked. In that early part, the writer must set the hook by establishing a long-term goal to work toward. And that breaks down into a series of goals to get you there. Which breaks down into smaller goals. By constantly giving you victories, and establishing a purpose for the world to exist, the hook gets set. If you notice, people often complain that games get boring towards the end. It's because you aren't "winning" as much as you were in the beginning. Without a good, well paced plot, there comes a time when the time it takes to get another victory is longer than the average attention span.

For me in particular, I need a good story. Properly spaced revelations about why I'm bothering to be in the world. Some people don't need a good story, but they still need the victories. Lacking those, the world becomes boring.

Amaril
2017-03-25, 09:35 PM
A tabletop game does seem to be an amusement park in some ways though-- in that everybody involved is participating in the activity for the sake of having fun, and in my opinion that necessitates some amount of "laid out activities" to give an incentive for exploring the world. These activities don't need to be as overt as The massive tower looming in the distance but you need something for the players to do in for the game to be well a game rather than the GM's audiobook. I'd be interested in knowing what you would find natural in a world, what sites you might appreciate, that lend themselves to player interaction.

Yeah, my thoughts definitely don't apply the same way to a tabletop game, since travel time is entirely based on how long the GM talks. For the record, though, I'm not advocating for open-world video games having no stuff to interact with--I'm not a fan of pure walking sims. I just think they tend to benefit from having longer sections of walking sim in between the exciting stuff.

For tabletop games, the thing that gets me interested in exploring is, as others have already said, curiosity and the unknown. Trouble is, a lot of game settings don't really have much of an unknown, because so many of them lean so heavily on "standard" fantasy tropes that it's hard for it not to all feel familiar. Show me early on that a world is weird and different from anything I've ever seen before, then stop before fully explaining anything important--that'll always get me interested.

Not too weird and different, though. There has to be enough of the familiar for me to identify with my character, and feel like I have enough in common with them to understand what they're feeling and thinking. The big offender on that front for me is Eclipse Phase. I can't manage to be interested in that game's world because it's so completely alien to any human experience I can imagine (no death, no scarcity) that I feel like any character who had lived their life in it would have a mindset fundamentally incomprehensible to me.

Vitruviansquid
2017-03-25, 09:50 PM
I want to explore worlds I don't know.

It's really that simple.

I can't stand when a GM puts the player party in a city full of magical, non-human creatures, only for everything in the city to be an analogue of a generic, modern city of the country from which you hail.

RazorChain
2017-03-25, 10:32 PM
For me it's usually the NPC's that make the world. I like politics, intrigue, strategy and mystery...and that is clearly reflected in the games I run which don't tend to focus on travel. "You buy supplies and 2 weeks and a couple of encounters later you are there and meet interesting people"


So I should say..people and different cultures, their histories and myths.

Yora
2017-03-26, 02:45 AM
Yeah, my thoughts definitely don't apply the same way to a tabletop game, since travel time is entirely based on how long the GM talks.

Travel time is actually based primarily on how many things are happening to the party before they reach their destination.

2D8HP
2017-03-27, 12:06 PM
Motive to explore?

Treasure!

If you don't recognize this then you should read more of "Appendix N" (now incorporated into "Appendix E").

“In the Year of the Behemoth, the Month of the Hedgehog, The Day of the Toad."

"Satisfied that they your near the goal of your quest, you think of how you had slit the interesting-looking vellum page from the ancient book on architecture that reposed in the library of the rapacious and overbearing Lord Rannarsh."

“It was a page of thick vellum, ancient and curiously greenish. Three edges were frayed and worn; the fourth showed a clean and recent cut. It was inscribed with the intricate hieroglyphs of Lankhmarian writing, done in the black ink of the squid. Reading":
"Let kings stack their treasure houses ceiling-high, and merchants burst their vaults with hoarded coin, and fools envy them. I have a treasure that outvalues theirs. A diamond as big as a man's skull. Twelve rubies each as big as the skull of a cat. Seventeen emeralds each as big as the skull of a mole. And certain rods of crystal and bars of orichalcum. Let Overlords swagger jewel-bedecked and queens load themselves with gems, and fools adore them. I have a treasure that will outlast theirs. A treasure house have I builded for it in the far southern forest, where the two hills hump double, like sleeping camels, a day's ride beyond the village of Soreev.

"A great treasure house with a high tower, fit for a king's dwelling—yet no king may dwell there. Immediately below the keystone of the chief dome my treasure lies hid, eternal as the glittering stars. It will outlast me and my name,"

I don't like my PC being "Locked into Lameness" (i.e. forced to fight other PC's in an arena), or in an "Empty Room" (very little DM provided content, if the DM asks me "what do you want to find there", my response is "A setting, not a blank page!").

What first got me hooked on RPG's was this set-up:

100 years ago the sorcerer Zenopus built a tower on the low hills overlooking Portown. The tower was close to the sea cliffs west of the town and, appropriately, next door to the graveyard.
Rumor has it that the magician made extensive cellars and tunnels underneath the tower. The town is located on the ruins of a much older city of doubtful history and Zenopus was said to excavate in his cellars in search of ancient treasures.

Fifty years ago, on a cold wintry night, the wizard's tower was suddenly engulfed in green flame. Several of his human servants escaped the holocaust, saying their rnaster had been destroyed by some powerful force he had unleashed in the depths of the tower.
Needless to say the tower stood vacant fora while afterthis, but then the neighbors and the night watchmen comploined that ghostly blue lights appeared in the windows at night, that ghastly screams could be heard emanating from the tower ot all hours, and goblin figures could be seen dancina on the tower roof in the moonlight. Finally the authorities had a catapult rolled through the streets of the town and the tower was battered to rubble. This stopped the hauntings but the townsfolk continue to shun the ruins. The entrance to the old dungeons can be easily located as a flight of broad stone steps leading down into darkness, but the few adventurous souls who hove descended into crypts below the ruin have either reported only empty stone corridors or have failed to return at all.
Other magic-users have moved into the town but the site of the old tower remains abandoned.
Whispered tales are told of fabulous treasure and unspeakable monsters in the underground passages below the hilltop, and the story tellers are always careful to point out that the reputed dungeons lie in close proximity to the foundations of the older, pre-human city, to the graveyard, and to the sea.
Portown is a small but busy city 'linking the caravan routes from the south to the merchscant ships that dare the pirate-infested waters of the Northern Sea. Humans and non-humans from all over the globe meet here.
At he Green Dragon Inn, the players of the game gather their characters for an assault on the fabulous passages beneath the ruined Wizard's tower.


My favorite setting genre's are (in order):
1) Swords and Sorcery
2) Swashbuckling
3) Arthurian
4) Gaslamp Fantasy
5) Planetary Romance
6) Steampunk
7) Raygun Gothic
8) Viking

My least favorite genres are:
1) Modern-day anything
2) Dystopian Near Future
3) Dystopian Far Future

What I like/want:
1) Exploring a fantastic world.
Playing a superpowered PC in a mostly mundane world leaves me cold (I didn't like Villains and Vigilantes, Champions, Cyberpunk, or Vampire).

2) Reasonably quick character creation without giving me options fatigue (GURPS and HERO, and a little bit in early D&D with initial equipment shopping).

3) The fantastic world should not be too surreal or seem like a cruel joke (Paranoia,Toon).

4) Random character creation should not result in widely disparate starting power levels (Runequest, Stormbringer, and sometimes rolling for HP in old D&D).

5) Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser, Robin Hood, the Seven Samurai, and Sinbad?: Yes!

6) Avengers, James Bond, and the X-Men?: Eh nah.

7) Swashbuckling? Yes!

8) Steampunk/Gaslight Fantasy? Probably.

9) Space Opera? Sometimes.

10) Time Travel/Alternate realities (Sliders)?: I'm intrigued.

11) Dark Future?: :yuk: seldom.
(though I did have some fun playing a few sessions of Shadowrun but I never bought the rules!)

12) Archers, Dragons, Knights, Magic, Pirates, and Swords: Yes! Yes! Yes! Yes!, and Yes!

13) Lots of dice rolling!
No I don't want to necessarily know why, I just like the suspense!

14) The rulebook should provide a template for character creation, as I find a catalog better sparks my imagination than a blank page.

Aftet character creation I'm fine with "rules" like this:

1) GM describes a scene.
2) Player says an action that their PC attempts.
3) GM decides if the PC has no chance of success, no chance of failure, or a partial chance of success.
4) If a partial chance of success, GM makes up on the spot a percentage chance of success.
5) Player rolls D100 (two 0-9 twenty-siders once upon a time).
6) If the player rolls under the made up number their PC succeeds in attempting the task, if over the PC fails.
7) GM narrates the immediate consequences until it's time to again ask, "what do you do".
8) Repeat.

Let's explore!

erikun
2017-03-28, 10:08 AM
Very roughly, I would say: interesting choices and meaningful discoveries. For choices, I would say they need to be interesting in that they should offer an obvious selection which sensible results. "Do you take the left fork or the right fork?" is a fairly uninteresting choice, because there is no distinction between the two, and because they likely will both have fairly similar results. "Do you travel along the riverbead, or climb along the cliff wall?" is a far more interesting choice, both because each path is clearly going to have different encounters, but also because the results of the choice are going to have some obvious impact.

For meaningful discoveries, I mean making the journey worthwhile and somewhat memorable. Finding a shiny gold coin underneath a tree along the right fork is forgettable, both because it is easy to forget about the reward (just put it in your pouch with the rest of the gold) and because it is hard to say you wouldn't find exactly the same from the other path. But finding a cave entrance as you are walking along the cliffs? That can be an interesting encounter (even if it is just an empty cave with some hints of who last stayed there) and because the river will likely have a completely different encounter, if the party wants to look into it.

Past that, I would say that setting and description matter, at least a bit. I do want some sense that this dungeon is different from the last five dungeons we've seen. Just a little something to indicate that the party is in a different location and doing something a bit different from what happened last week.

Amaril
2017-03-28, 10:52 AM
Travel time is actually based primarily on how many things are happening to the party before they reach their destination.

I meant "travel time" as "time between interesting game events that require player participation". As opposed to sequences of just traveling through landscapes, which, in my experience, are left to GM description (though if you know of a way to make Lord of the Rings-style travel descriptions an interesting, player-driven system, I'd love to hear about it, because I'm all about that stuff).

Yora
2017-03-28, 10:58 AM
That's true, but a long journey won't be interesting if it consists of the GM talking for half an hour about what the players see.

If you want to make a journey feel long and interesting it needs a good number of "interesting game events that require player participation". Wandering monsters, big obstacles that require considerable detours or work to overcome, villages where small side adventures happen, and things like that. Getting from Hobbiton to the Lonely Mountain is something like two thirds of The Hobbit and it feels like a long journey that has a lot of stuff happening along the way.