Post by Adminenkainen on Dec 12, 2017 17:20:57 GMT
[The following is an article from the upcoming issue of TTC that I'm releasing early. Since I don't have a session 1 write-up that explains the set-up, I'm offering this as a substitute.]
H&H IN THE SANDBOX
Building a Different H&H Campaign
By Scott Casper
Before launching my latest HIDEOUTS & HOODLUMS campaign, I set an ambitious goal for myself -- to prove that I could run a whole campaign that was not just moving from scenario to scenario, but run from a preset environment where the Heroes can go anywhere and do anything, without being directed anywhere by the Editor. This type of campaign is an open-ended campaign, also known as “sandbox campaigns.”
Typically, in a fantasy sandbox campaign, the environment sets the limits of how far the characters can go, like being ringed by impassable forest or mountains. That is really hard to do in a modern-day (or even 1940s) setting where there may be planes and jeeps, and Heroes may be able to fly or leap over any obstacle. Without these barriers, the Heroes can go anywhere and do anything, which makes having a preset environment large enough impossible.
The solution I came up with was to create artificial barriers around the campaign area, while making removing that barrier the main goal of the whole campaign. My inspiration was the TV show Under the Dome, but people have cited other examples of this to me since, including the TV shows The Prisoner and even The Good Life. In my campaign, the barrier was a mysterious Fog Wall.
The Fog Wall is a perfect square five miles on a side and appears to be only vertical barriers, but it includes an invisible layer above as well, as the players learned in the first session when an airplane crash-landed after coming down through the fog wall’s invisible ceiling. The Fog Wall was later discovered not to be a full cube, as it was possible in session 11 to dig under the wall and reach the other side, though after a few days the Fog seeped down into the hole and sealed it off. Walking into the Fog Wall causes you to reappear at another random point inside the Fog Wall, at some later random time -- possibly days later.
What year would I choose to put up this Fog Wall? I knew I wanted to start my campaign in 1942 because it was a year I had never ran a campaign in before (having done 1939, 1940, 1941, and 1943, filling the gap seemed obvious).
Where would I erect the Fog Wall? I knew I planned on using real world locations, so keeping it local was going to be make it easier to do lots of research. I chose Mount Prospect, Illinois because it is the home of Games Plus, one of the best and possibly the oldest gaming store in all of Chicagoland. The choice turned out to be a particularly fortuitous one -- the Chicago suburbs were very rural and spread out back in 1942, so it was conceivable to center the square of Fog Wall so only Mt. Prospect would be inside. Further, a really good real-life plot hook came up in my research (see the end of the very next article).
The Heroes all started the first session in random Chicago suburbs on the evening of December 31, 1941, but blacked out and woke up on the morning of January 1, 1942 in random locations in Mount Prospect. All of the Heroes woke up with a plot hook character nearby or strange circumstances around them to investigate. Before looking for bad guys to fight, the Heroes had to get the lay of the land, meet up with each other, and compare notes on what little they knew so far.
Mount Prospect’s small downtown offered some resources to the Heroes, but not too many. I would sprinkle the population with a few classed individuals of mostly low level that the Heroes would have to work hard to look for, but could then recruit as Supporting Cast. It would offer some homegrown antagonists too. Not every local was going to be a good person; one of the farm families would be bad people running dog fighting (and later trying to start up a brothel) on their land (this plot line was all wrapped up by session 3).
There would be a hideout -- in fact, a mega- hideout -- to explore, but it would be in a wilderness area attached to the Mt. Prospect area. This wilderness would come from “somewhere else” and have seemingly random locations throughout it (actually, they were inspired by the Talisman game board). Most of these locations would tie into a big puzzle for the players to solve, if any of them were interested in puzzle-solving. Unfortunately, my players figured out a way to “break” the puzzle early and got their intended high-level reward for it when they were still levels 3-4.
The players soon learned that there were layers to this mystery -- or at least layers of Fog Walls. I had hidden ways to open the Fog Wall throughout the campaign setting so, when the Heroes found them, they could “unlock” a new quadrilateral region hemmed in by Fog Wall. They did so early in the campaign, finding the magic lever in the mega-hideout on the first level that opened the way to the southeast and the Des Plaines/Park Ridge region. They also found a shaft that led up from the same level into the Orchard Place region to the south (where the O’Hare Airport would later be built).
Each area would bring new resources to the setting (the Orchard Place region included the Douglas Aircraft Factory, which the Heroes may raid for parts later), but also new problems, like the police captain in Des Plaines who I decided really did not like vigilantism (but was later won over by lucky Supporting Cast recruitment rolls). Each new region would also have a new, smaller hideout (or two) inside it for the Heroes to explore if they got tired with the mega-hideout.
We are only 16 short sessions and 48 hours into the campaign so far, but the Heroes have been lucky and the players have been smart and they have been leveling quickly -- much quicker than I anticipated. One of the downsides of an open-ended campaign is that I can not just point them to the lower levels of the mega-hideout where more appropriate challenges wait for them and tell them to go there; I have to wait for them to want to go there on their own…and maybe lay out some subtle enticement with a juicy plot hook or chance of reward. For now, they are still having fun dealing with the low-level problems that are no longer so challenging for them anymore.
Another disadvantage of this type of campaign, for me, is that it does not emulate any actual comic books. It does not always feel very comic book-y, for we have taken the tropes of the comic book genres and moved them into a setting that is new to them. So, at the same time as I am disappointed at the un-comic book-ness of it, I can still be excited to see how far we can stretch the genres before they break.
It may be premature, but I like to think the experiment has been largely successful so far.
H&H IN THE SANDBOX
Building a Different H&H Campaign
By Scott Casper
Before launching my latest HIDEOUTS & HOODLUMS campaign, I set an ambitious goal for myself -- to prove that I could run a whole campaign that was not just moving from scenario to scenario, but run from a preset environment where the Heroes can go anywhere and do anything, without being directed anywhere by the Editor. This type of campaign is an open-ended campaign, also known as “sandbox campaigns.”
Typically, in a fantasy sandbox campaign, the environment sets the limits of how far the characters can go, like being ringed by impassable forest or mountains. That is really hard to do in a modern-day (or even 1940s) setting where there may be planes and jeeps, and Heroes may be able to fly or leap over any obstacle. Without these barriers, the Heroes can go anywhere and do anything, which makes having a preset environment large enough impossible.
The solution I came up with was to create artificial barriers around the campaign area, while making removing that barrier the main goal of the whole campaign. My inspiration was the TV show Under the Dome, but people have cited other examples of this to me since, including the TV shows The Prisoner and even The Good Life. In my campaign, the barrier was a mysterious Fog Wall.
The Fog Wall is a perfect square five miles on a side and appears to be only vertical barriers, but it includes an invisible layer above as well, as the players learned in the first session when an airplane crash-landed after coming down through the fog wall’s invisible ceiling. The Fog Wall was later discovered not to be a full cube, as it was possible in session 11 to dig under the wall and reach the other side, though after a few days the Fog seeped down into the hole and sealed it off. Walking into the Fog Wall causes you to reappear at another random point inside the Fog Wall, at some later random time -- possibly days later.
What year would I choose to put up this Fog Wall? I knew I wanted to start my campaign in 1942 because it was a year I had never ran a campaign in before (having done 1939, 1940, 1941, and 1943, filling the gap seemed obvious).
Where would I erect the Fog Wall? I knew I planned on using real world locations, so keeping it local was going to be make it easier to do lots of research. I chose Mount Prospect, Illinois because it is the home of Games Plus, one of the best and possibly the oldest gaming store in all of Chicagoland. The choice turned out to be a particularly fortuitous one -- the Chicago suburbs were very rural and spread out back in 1942, so it was conceivable to center the square of Fog Wall so only Mt. Prospect would be inside. Further, a really good real-life plot hook came up in my research (see the end of the very next article).
The Heroes all started the first session in random Chicago suburbs on the evening of December 31, 1941, but blacked out and woke up on the morning of January 1, 1942 in random locations in Mount Prospect. All of the Heroes woke up with a plot hook character nearby or strange circumstances around them to investigate. Before looking for bad guys to fight, the Heroes had to get the lay of the land, meet up with each other, and compare notes on what little they knew so far.
Mount Prospect’s small downtown offered some resources to the Heroes, but not too many. I would sprinkle the population with a few classed individuals of mostly low level that the Heroes would have to work hard to look for, but could then recruit as Supporting Cast. It would offer some homegrown antagonists too. Not every local was going to be a good person; one of the farm families would be bad people running dog fighting (and later trying to start up a brothel) on their land (this plot line was all wrapped up by session 3).
There would be a hideout -- in fact, a mega- hideout -- to explore, but it would be in a wilderness area attached to the Mt. Prospect area. This wilderness would come from “somewhere else” and have seemingly random locations throughout it (actually, they were inspired by the Talisman game board). Most of these locations would tie into a big puzzle for the players to solve, if any of them were interested in puzzle-solving. Unfortunately, my players figured out a way to “break” the puzzle early and got their intended high-level reward for it when they were still levels 3-4.
The players soon learned that there were layers to this mystery -- or at least layers of Fog Walls. I had hidden ways to open the Fog Wall throughout the campaign setting so, when the Heroes found them, they could “unlock” a new quadrilateral region hemmed in by Fog Wall. They did so early in the campaign, finding the magic lever in the mega-hideout on the first level that opened the way to the southeast and the Des Plaines/Park Ridge region. They also found a shaft that led up from the same level into the Orchard Place region to the south (where the O’Hare Airport would later be built).
Each area would bring new resources to the setting (the Orchard Place region included the Douglas Aircraft Factory, which the Heroes may raid for parts later), but also new problems, like the police captain in Des Plaines who I decided really did not like vigilantism (but was later won over by lucky Supporting Cast recruitment rolls). Each new region would also have a new, smaller hideout (or two) inside it for the Heroes to explore if they got tired with the mega-hideout.
We are only 16 short sessions and 48 hours into the campaign so far, but the Heroes have been lucky and the players have been smart and they have been leveling quickly -- much quicker than I anticipated. One of the downsides of an open-ended campaign is that I can not just point them to the lower levels of the mega-hideout where more appropriate challenges wait for them and tell them to go there; I have to wait for them to want to go there on their own…and maybe lay out some subtle enticement with a juicy plot hook or chance of reward. For now, they are still having fun dealing with the low-level problems that are no longer so challenging for them anymore.
Another disadvantage of this type of campaign, for me, is that it does not emulate any actual comic books. It does not always feel very comic book-y, for we have taken the tropes of the comic book genres and moved them into a setting that is new to them. So, at the same time as I am disappointed at the un-comic book-ness of it, I can still be excited to see how far we can stretch the genres before they break.
It may be premature, but I like to think the experiment has been largely successful so far.