Filling the Sandbox

Pulp Cthulhu #3

In the last two posts we went over the story hooks and my rules for how to handle the players and their freedom of choice. In this short post I will talk about the behind-the-scenes methods to keep it all in the air.

Mainly I’ll be talking about timelines and intersect webs.

Or what we generally call “walls of crazy.”

I’m sure that we have all seen a movie or TV show wherein a character has put pictures and events all over a cork board and then started to attach strings between all of the items and seeing where they cross and meet up.

I will not be doing that… but it is a great image to have in mind.

“An ounce of preparation….” No, more like a ton.

The old saying is “An ounce of prep saves you a pound of pain.”

Well in this case we need to invert that. The initial startup is where we have to invest a LOT of pain, for little pleasure. But over time it will flip.

But I’m getting ahead of myself. There are two phases for Intersect Web and Timeline. Over-planned Startup and Midgame Flow.

Over-planned Startup

It’s exactly what it says on the tin.

Before the game even starts, I need to start filling the setting with various NPCs. Not just the NPCs for the initial story hook (The Reunion), but for future storylines and hooks. And I need these NPCs to take the players to various locations. And I need to know how these other NPCs cross each other. Maybe you’re starting to see the web?

This would be easier with artwork, but I’m a writer not web designer. So, I’ll try to work through it with words and I hope it’s easy to follow:

Visualize the Chart

We start with our first hook, the missing character. Circle in the middle.

We then put out two obvious suspects and two hard to find suspects. Four squares around the middle circle. (these could represent a single character or a whole group, for my story these are groups).

We then go to each of the squares and flesh them out. Name a full cast of villains, figure out their motives, figure out what they actually want and how they interacted with the Circle. Each of the squares breaks down into a number of characters, and each of these characters in turn are then explored for motives, wants, needs, and goals.

Each of the “Squares” (Groups) are then tied to locations in or near Boston. Those locations then get mapped out on their own off to the side of this initial web.

Timelines

With all of this information in front of me I then need to figure out the timeline of interaction between the Circle and the four squares (and what clues will connect the Players to investigate these groups). The timeline will serve a second purpose as well, besides charting where everyone was before the investigators arrived, I can use it to project what the various groups will do if the players DON’T interact with them.

So, for example, if the party goes after group 1 and thwarts their plans, group 2, 3, 4 are still free to pursue their goals. Or, this being CoC, if the players go stark raving mad and have to spend six months in a sanitarium then, when they come out, I know where all the villains are at and what they’ve been doing.

Yeah, this sounds like a lot of prep, and it really is. Because point blank almost all of this is going to go out the window once the players start to interact with the game. Seriously. All of the timelines and plans will fall apart. “No plan survives contact with the enemy,” not that the players are my enemy.

Mid-game Flow

This is the second half of the intersect web. You need to adjust and move things as your players burn through your NPCs. That villain that you planned to be recurring, yup they were killed accidently in their first scene. Players walked away from all of the hooks and left Boston for Dunwich (that’s north western Mass… almost at the point where Vermont, New Hampshire, and Mass all meet). That’s a new game!

It’s bound to happen. Those and many other strange things. Players befriend the ghoul community and start an uprising against the Cultists who pushed the Ghouls out of their graveyards. (Very likely to happen).

Instead of being seduced by the most powerful, and yet unknown, gang leader in Boston, I’m sure one of my players would shoot the woman in panic that she was coming on to him. (And by “unknown,” I mean she’s secretly in charge of huge gang while pretending to be a nice young widow).

In short. You can’t plan for everything. You can just prep for the bulk of it and learn to go with the flow.

Another Use for Timelines

Besides using the timeline to keep track of what happened before the game started, and projecting what could happen without the players intervening. The next best use for the timeline is injecting real history and giving it a twist.

For example, my game takes place in late 1947 and looking ahead at events in Boston I have the opening of a new branch of the Library, lovely. But then in 1951, we have a freak blizzard that freezes the harbor and closes down much of north Boston. The year before was also a harsh winter. Now I don’t know if my game would survive multiple years of story-telling, but if we do reach 1950, I have an idea for a story of creatures that come with the winter. If the players don’t handle the ’50 winter, then the blizzard of ’51 will be even worse.

A Lot of Work = A Smooth Game.

Smooth is what you want. Make it seem seamless. Don’t let the players know when you slip from carefully planned to completely improv.

The ability to create story on the spot is amazing. And I spent the first 10 years running games completely made up almost entirely on the spot. There were times when I didn’t see my players until the summer, when we were off of school and we’d all get together to spend a weekend together. I would be expected to remember where we left off… last year. And just pick up the story and start running again. It was crazy.

While I admire my tenacity back then, and it did help me with the improv. Planning is now the rule of the day. I like having a lot of material before me. Ready to go… and get blown apart by the players. But at the same time, I like being able to segue seamlessly between planned material and ad-libbed. My goal is to make the players think I truly planed it all. I really know them so well I knew exactly what choices they might make.

Now, I have given you the tools to try and make that possible.

To Recap:

Script a starting point for the players so that you have a limited amount of control of the characters. This allows you to guarantee an easy start. All of the characters can start with a link between them and “on target.”

Second, even a sandbox has limited rails. These rails usually take the form of a “hook-to-scene.” In other words, if the players accept a hook then they are accepting that it will place them into a planned scene(s) and they are accepting moving along that rail until the opportunity to depart arrives.

I’ve given you the main tools of my Arsenal:

1. The 3 Rules of Three (Plan 3 Exits/Options, Offer 3 Hooks, Place 3 clues to any 1 scene).

2. Intersect Webs (How the NPCs interact with each other)

3. Timelines.

4. Keep a notebook to make up names or places as the Characters take Option 4… the unplanned option).

Outro

I hope that this has been interesting and informative. I’ve never really put these thoughts into writing before. And I want to clarify, or reinforce, that this is not how I plan every game. This is unique to the idea of a fully open world sandbox Pulp Cthulhu game. A game that is meant to be slow burn and all about the role playing and less about the dice. I want characters to feel free to ignore plots for a month and then react to the aftermath, or doggedly pursue the case until every villain is rounded up and every clue is exhausted. Whatever THEY want to do.

I want hours of sitting around a table talking and moving a story forward with atmosphere and character interaction, but also if they want to go in guns blazing they could.

Thank you for reading through all three of these posts. There were plans for a fourth essay, but I think I’ve covered the basics enough. I might come back with some thoughts or reviews on other Cthulhu books/adventures. We’ll see how things look this time next month. Maybe this will have gone from theory to actual played game?