Well I've been doing a lot of work on the next adventure for my gaming group set in the feywild setting I've been mentioning. I've done a ton of work on it so far and I think it's beginning to come together rather nicely. The interesting thing, I find, is that it is, to a certain extent, rather like creating an RPG videogame in a way.
For example, the first thing I had to do was consider the overall story. I needed to get my head in order about the broad brush strokes of the overall plot and how it progressed without getting into fine detail. After all this adventure is intended to be a sandbox. Which means far less control by the DM for creating what comes next. Things could happen in nearly any order. And there's a certain mindset I've had to adopt while doing that. The most difficult one to get is that every place needs to be detailed.
What I mean by this is that... in a linear (or mostly linear) plot you can have characters jump all over the world visiting this lost temple here and then being pointed to this huge city all the way on the other side of the map there and... oftentimes all the bits in between get left blank. This is how I made my adventures most of the time - make a few set pieces and leave the rest blank since it had nothing to do with the plot.
In this sandbox setting *everything* has to do with the... frankly... many many plots that exist. Some plots follow the PCs around, some are localized in one small location, some a region-wide. All interconnect with one another. It's brilliant fun.
They key is to give the PCs compelling hooks for what they want to follow up on and have plenty of "quest givers" and, for that matter, quest opposers. Every NPC I make that the PCs will interact with has their own view on things that concern their faction, nation, town, family, etc. And at the rate I am going there's bound to be hundreds of them. o.O Also, each NPC needs to be statted out for combat. Depending on what the PCs decide they could raid the village and kill everyone in it or make it into their base of operations and adventure from there for a time depending on what they choose to do.
I've been playing a lot of Skyrim lately and this game accomplishes this to a certain extent. You have many different sides all with compelling reasons they are doing the things they are doing. You can choose to side with whomever you want and make friends and enemies as you choose, for the most part. The characters change the world around them as they go and they can decide where the balance of power will lie. But Skyrim has the disadvantage of being pretty static in the end. NPCs are only scripted to say certain things and so, for that matter, are you. You always have a choice, of course, but some of the gameplay makes little real world sense in how the NPCs act towards the character. You can join one side and then walk right in to the opposing side's main headquarters and aside from people being a little blunt there's very little standing in your way. It'd be like joining a terrorist organization and then running around in the president's bedroom. Or vice-versa. Doesn't hold up. I understand why they do what they do for the sake of the game. But that is its weak point in my opinion.
Anyway, what I've taken away as a DMing lesson from Skyrim is that it's good to have grey conflict in a lot of areas. One side versus the other with reasonable reasons on both sides that the PCs could see either way. This lets them have a lot of choice. I also have liked the very 3-dimensional dungeon layouts in Skyrim. With a flat surface to game on, getting that cool 3D effect is often difficult to do or is easily forgotten. Skyrim has given me some good ideas for breaking out of my environmental rut. Also it has encouraged me to put a little "dungeons" back into my Dungeons & Dragons game. So that'll be nice I think.
Also I plan to institute the practice of "fast travelling." More specifically I'm going to stop the process of fast travelling to areas the PCs have not been to before. If there's some creature or group that holds the way through an area then the PCs will have to try and deal with them to get where they need to go. Or take an alternate route. All routes will have something to see, someone to talk to, something to fight along the way. And this information will contribute to the overall plot, of course. A penned in general may have needed that pass the PCs cleared to get troops through which will change the dynamic in the regions beyond. That sort of thing. I'm actually really excited about all of this.
But I still have a long way to go... and Skyrim needs to stop calling to me so I can get more work on it done. Thankfully (sort of) I lost a bunch of my skyrim progress due to a external USB failure so I'm a bit disgusted with that and that frees me up to do more D&D. Better hop to it. People to meet, worlds to create! Later! ^_^
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