Intro
This is a direct companion piece to the ‘Running the Sandbox: The Living World’ piece that can be found Here.
I mention toward the end of that piece that there’s a few extra details I didn’t have the chance to dive into. It’s taken me a while but I’ve finally got them laid out here! This will take on a bit of a different structure to my usual write-ups since it’s more of a grab-bag of deeper takes and edge cases.
Go back and read The Living World first, then let’s dive in!
A Few Extras
1. The world should move even without the players, this includes in smaller ways that aren’t part of the ‘narrative’. Maybe they choose not to take a job guarding a caravan, later they find out the caravan was ambushed and many of the traders perished.
It’s also a good idea not to fall into a formula with this. Don’t have it always be ‘Well you didn’t pick up that questline, so now a Bad Outcome has happened’. That will start to get draining and will make the players dislike having to make decisions because it will feel like picking between who they don’t want to screw over rather than who they want to help.
2. Adding to the notion that the GM and the players are telling two different stories between them, there are a few ways to approach this. If you inherently want the players to get caught up in the wider narrative then plan ahead and think about ways their personal stories might spiral on into things taking place in the wider narrative.
An example: a character wants to find their missing brother. They find said brother. The brother is in a cult. The cult worship a deity that will supposedly stop the end-times. The brother dies for the cause and his last wish is for the character to take up the charge.
To that end, work with your players during character creation to help them weave in details that you are planning on using to draw them into the wider narrative. If a player wants to make a wizard and there’s a big conspiracy among the wizarding universities to usurp the royal family then give that player a nugget that might hint toward that. Maybe tell them ‘The dean of the faculty you specialised in always liked you and was a father-figure to you’. The player will gladly incorporate them into their backstory, then later in the campaign said dean contacts the player to induct them into the Big Wizard Conspiracy.
3. It is also possible for the party to affect the wider narrative without being actively involved in it (or perhaps even actively avoiding it). Maybe they don’t give a rat’s ass about the impending civil war, but certainly all the favours they’ve done for Captain Hemlock of the king’s army have tipped the balance somewhat. Yeah they were only doing it because the captain paid well and was giving them current info on Gideon the Rogue’s estate, but nonetheless it’s had an impact on the wider narrative.
This can be played for laughs. The party being hailed as heroes of the war they were never involved in purely because they kept unintentionally aiding one side over the other is a great bit.
It can also be played a bit more dramatically. Maybe the party never particularly concerned themselves with the war so it’s only after they unintentionally tip the balance in the king’s favour that they learn the king is a tyrant. His war was to stamp out a people’s rebellion, and now that the party have been regaled as heroes of the war the common folk all despise them. Maybe the party should have cared more about the wider state of the world…
By the way, this is a GREAT way to gently reign in murderhobos or ‘skip the text, get to the quest’ parties.
4. Not everything should be connected. If every player’s backstory eventually ties into the wider narrative it will feel contrived. Some things should stand on their own without being connected to wider events.
Player A’s missing brother doesn’t have to have anything to do with Player B’s dean friend and the Big Wizard Conspiracy.
5. Ideally, have more than one wider narrative taking place throughout the campaign. Over in Goodhopia Logan the Lich is amassing his forces to topple the kingdom, but elsewhere in Braveopolis a cult is trying to awaken an eldritch god, and way off in the deserts of Totally-Not-Persia a group of rebels is planning to overthrow the corrupt Sultan.
To take this a step further, have more than one narrative at more than one level of scale taking place simultaneously. On one level is the general Goblin Problem that has intensified in one area lately, implying there’s a new Hobgoblin warlord on the rise. On another level is the general propagation of new gunpowder weapons throughout the world, which will alter the balance of power in a number of places. On yet another level there is a cult trying to free the imprisoned Mad God who once led the deific pantheon. On yet another level the Gods themselves are fighting off an incursion from an alternate reality from which Eldritch beings made of raw emotion spew forth, warping the laws of the material realm around them.
A big advantage of this is as your characters grow the scale of their powers, the narrative will meet them. This method is much more organic than having the stakes of the existing narrative suddenly raise to match the PCs (‘Ok, that Hobgoblin Warlord is also now a cult leader trying to free a Mad God!’ ), instead it is the abilities of the PCs raising to match and join the ongoing narrative.
6. All of this is also a way for you as the GM to make a bit of a point with a particular piece of narrative, or generally have something to say. If guns are slowly propagating throughout your setting then maybe in one area you use their role in peasant uprisings to deliver commentary on the widespread access to the means of violence. Maybe, given that this is a fantasy setting, a mirror gets held up to the Wizarding Establishment who control the means of magical violence in a similar fashion to the way the Emperor used to control the means of physical violence…
7. Finally, when it comes to incorporating character backstories, don’t give it all away at once! One of the best things you can do is have different stages of the character’s overall arc take place within different wider narratives that take place across the campaign.
Here’s a great example from a campaign of mine. I had a Dragonborn Sorcerer character in a setting where they were exceedingly rare. He woke up with no memory, travelled with a band of traders for a while, then got caught up in the life of adventuring (i.e. meeting the party at the campaign’s beginning). A few arcs later he’s curious about his past, bumps into the trading caravan he used to travel with, they tell him where they originally found him washed up on shore.
This kicks off a whole narrative arc that ends with him learning he is a reincarnation of sorts of an ancient dragon who has since passed. He has some answers, but he also has more questions. ‘Who am I?’ is now replaced with ‘What is my purpose?’.
At another point, he acquires a magical cape that seems to be manipulating him toward small, inconsequential evils in exchange for meaningful increases in power. This seems accidental and unrelated…
Later in the campaign, we learn dragonkind is at the perigee of a wider reincarnation cycle. The last of the dragons will eventually die off with several leaving behind a chosen Dragonborn made in their image. Our Sorcerer is one such chosen. One of these chosen will sacrifice themselves to bring into the world a new generation of dragons. Our sorcerer needs to decide now if it’s going to be him.
But that maleficent cape of his has sunk its influence deep into him. Were he to be the one to give rise to the new age of dragons it would carry with it seeds of evil that would corrupt dragonkind.
And so on, and so on, and so on…
Conclusion
I dare say that final point may well be expanded into a wider piece, or perhaps I’ve made the point well enough.
Either way, I hope you’ve found the extra deep-dive into this particular topic useful!
And as always, if you like what I do please support me on Patreon!
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