From straight to sandbox

I'm also interested to hear about anyone about game direction (in your current adventures, you will meet bad guys who will form a rogues gallery and pop up from time to time, or in the case of really good villains - uh, is there such a thing? - pop up more often. Anyman will soon meet... ah. That'd be telling. And Frostbite will inspire... again... hehehe). if there's anything you want to see done or changed, holler.

I'm enjoying the ride and I asked for us to stick around WW 2 for awhile, so no complaints from me. One suggestion ... do a timeline of what's been going on so new players will have an idea of the history of the characters. Putty and me, for example, walked in on the middle of the adventure in Naziworld. We know something went wrong and the Vanguard is trying to fix it but we don't know what Earth-Normal and the Vanguard Normal were like and who they tended to fight or did before things went kablooey!

Besides, if you ever turn this thing into a Wild Cards sort of book some day, you will need those notes.

Thanks for the vote of confidence I must admit, sometimes I do feel I've railroaded you guys, but it's unavoidable. Without *some* kind of direction, or prodding, a game can stall as players wonder what to do and where to go next. Been there, seen games die from it, so I'll hold hands up and say "guilty as charged" from time to time. That said, on quite a few occasions now you guys have said or done something that has made me stop, think and point the game in a new direction entirely. For instance, David M's character Putty gave birth to a major alien race I had no idea about before he joined, and here they are in the past teamed up with Nazis (unless the Vanguard show them the error of their ways...) and the very act of the Vanguard going back in time has 'given birth' to the superheroes and teams of our games future. It does beg the question though - if the Nazis hadn't changed time, would the Vanguard have not gone back in time and how then would the superheroes of the game world come about...? Makes my head hurt to think about it....

I'm also interested to hear about anyone about game direction (in your current adventures, you will meet bad guys who will form a rogues gallery and pop up from time to time, or in the case of really good villains - uh, is there such a thing? - pop up more often. Anyman will soon meet... ah. That'd be telling. And Frostbite will inspire... again... hehehe). if there's anything you want to see done or changed, holler.

I have on a list of things to do:

Updated character sheets for all
A who's who of Wartime adventuring - good guys and bad
Smaug/Robs intro as Silver Sentinel
Update on what's happening in the world around the heroes - there is, after all, a war going on!

But first, bed time. 07.08 and need to hit the sack, having been up all night... Zzzzzzzz

For the longest time I've worried about what my character should do in a given situation. I guess at the back of my mind has been the thought that since this is a scenario, Paul must have a plot and scheme he wants things to go in, so as a result finding the right 'choice' will advance things. Going any other way will end up at a plot brick wall.

As things have gone on, this sense of (I won't say railroading, because that has never been the case as you'll see) that things are just bigger. Sandbox in the 'in' term for such a thing. Where the world is broadly defined by adventure waits in any direction, plots get dangled to pick up or not. And never have I seen this more clearly than in recent weeks.

Its not that any choice is ok, I'm sure stupid moves will end up with stupid consequences and even heroes can die (until they're out of the sin bin and re realised as a version 2.0) but I realised a while back with Lionheart Paul kept giving me dilemma's that involved a choice. I at first thought I'm going to be giving him a real headache if this (choice) isn't the way he intended me to go. But time and again he's rolled with my choices, and the consequences (that part is still scary) and kept me on my toes.

Now more than ever it feels the world (it might have always been this way, I'd just not seen it like this so had just followed the line NPC's gave me to walk, that the circumstance/plot appeared to dictate) is so much bigger.

I've had and continue to have so much fun, in fact hands down this is easily the best campaign I've played in and I've played in some pretty good ones before. But part of it is down to the fact that increasingly it feels that the world around us is really opening up and Paul is willing to take chances and let things go where they may.

I hope this doesn't sound all sucky, I'm grateful to Paul, but its more about realising how things (as I thought of them) have changed for the better.

So am I alone, what does everyone else think?

Sj