Psavrosth Diary 2: Campaign Layers and Exploration

Howdy,

I've been working on the next update for Tourist which should contain a number resources and tools to assist GMs in running the game. Among these, I intend to include a number of tables for generating locations for the PCs to explore, as the game is meant to be a sandbox survival game with a focus on exploration. However, attempting to create these tables has made it blindingly obvious to me that up to this point, I have neglected to write much in the way of mechanics or procedures for exploration. 

I want the game to be playable by anyone who reads the book, not just veteran RPG players or those who've read a dozen blog posts about resolving travel in RPGs, and I want the intended playstyle of the game to be clear to the reader, which means I need to clearly communicate mechanics and procedures which facilitate the sandbox exploration playstyle. In this post, I wish intend to share my thoughts on the matter and decisions I've made up to this point. Hopefully someone out there finds this interesting, or I myself find it a helpful thought exercise.

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Firstly, as with any sandbox RPG, the players need a sandbox to explore. In the fiction of Tourist, the sandbox is by default one of the countless ruined cities on the planet Psavrosth. So, the GM needs to be able to create a ruined city and needs to be able to run it as a setting at the table. Next, the PCs need to be able to travel through, explore, fight, and survive in this setting.

This could be done with a thoroughly detailed map of the city showing every ruined building and debris-filled street, and the PCs describing their route street-by-street like one massive open-air dungeon-crawl, as one might actually navigate a ruined city. I love the idea in concept, it sounds amazing to be able to explore every street, building, and ruin.  However, to make such an endeavor engaging would require a tremendous amount of prep work for any GM, far more than is practical or perhaps sane, so that method needs to be tossed out as the "default" mode of play.

On the flipside, they could simply be glossed over with narration ("You travel for 4 hours before the arcing lights of the power substation come into view") before transiting into the third case/layer. This is the method that is currently in the Tourist Version 0.2 rules (such as it is) but as I have stated, I think travel needs to have more impact and focus than just that.

There seems to me to be a two part problem that must be solved: 

1. The GM needs to be able to create an engaging city which can be run at the table without requiring excessive amounts of preparation and organization.
2. There needs to be mechanics and procedures that make travel and exploration of the city meaningful and engaging.

In an attempt to solve this first issue, I'm borrowing ideas from OSR games and Kevin Crawford's Stars Without Number in particular. A traditional D&D campaign might have a regional map showing the entire kingdom in which a campaign takes place, various local maps of cities and counties within that kingdom, and dungeon maps of individual castles, dungeons, and cave systems in which the PCs do most of the adventuring. Each layer of map is smaller and more detailed than the layer above, with the most detailed being the locales the players are going to interact with directly, in-character. Stars Without Number in particular uses an abstract hex map for the overall sector, in which individual hexes are star systems which themselves contain various planets and space stations where much of the actual adventuring takes place. Thus, the GM can focus his or her efforts where it matters most, making the upper-layers only as detailed as necessary to get the party to the more interesting and important gameplay.

So, to make setting creation and organization more manageable, I'm planning to use a similar three-layer system for Tourist campaigns. These layers are: the Region, Zones, and Places of Interest, with each having its own map(s) as needed. 

The Region is the city and its surroundings. It is effectively the "world map" of the campaign, much like the Sector in Stars Without Number. Zones and the routes between them are indicated on the map as either points in a pointcrawl or hexes on a hex map. The PCs generally interact with the Region layer only when travelling from one Zone to another. 

Zones are the next layer down and are distinct areas within the region, such as a kilometers-wide industrial complex or sprawling sewer system. They are perhaps the size of a district or neighborhood, though it could vary wildly. Zone maps should indicate the relative locations of Places of Interest within them. The PCs generally interact with Zones by travelling through them or exploring them to find Places of Interest. 

Places of Interest are the lowest layer and are specific buildings and noteworthy locations within a zone, such as a damaged atmospheric control station or underground research facility. They are akin to a dungeon in a "typical" RPG, with appropriately detailed maps and information to run roleplaying scenes and combat encounters within them. This is where the core gameplay occurs, and as such these are going to require enough detail to be run in real-time, in-character. 

Both the Region and Zone maps could be run as a hexcrawl or pointcrawl (and if anyone is willing to put in the effort, the Places of Interest layer could be discarded in favor of fully detailed Zones). For my own playtesting, I intend to run both of these layers as pointcrawls, though I am beginning to think a hexcrawl may be more suitable to freeform exploration of Zones. 

To address the issue of travel and exploration mechanics, I intend to again take inspiration from old-school RPGs and use the same sort of "simulationist" system for my initial playtesting. These mechanics include:

• PCs travel at a given movement rate: 5 km per hour normally, half this when moving cautiously. Difficult terrain may also reduce the PCs' speed by as much as half. PCs may march up to 8 hours in a day. Marching longer than this increases the difficulty of fatigue tests or may force fatigue.
• Random encounter rolls are made each hour spent travelling or exploring to see if the PCs stumble upon something or someone during their travel. Random encounter tables should be unique for each Zone, and there should be a specified procedure for how such encounters are resolved (determining which party is aware of the other first, the distance at which the encounter occurs, etc.)
• A chance to become lost each day of travel depending on the terrain and familiarity of the Zone or route of travel. Likely dependent on a Fieldcraft test made by the pointman or navigator of the party.

I haven't entirely fleshed out the system (exploration within a zone is still quite fuzzy), as my focus has been more on the first issue and creating GM resources for creating zones, places, and so on. I intend to write another diary post discussing these procedures as I playtest them and they become more solidified. It is possible that, in playtesting, I throw the entire thing out in favor of some other system. 

Anyways, this post is long enough as it is. Let me know what you think about sandbox worldbuilding and overland travel in RPGs. Thanks for reading and have a wonderful day!