I had a big realisation when I was thinking about how my regular long-running OpenQuest Thursday game was going. A quick email was sent off to my players, of which the following is an excerpt.
It’s long struck me that although we’ve reached the stage where everyone is sort of attached to a magical path, no one has really advanced along it much.
This worries me. Is it because you don’t want to experience the joy of OpenQuest’s magic systems?
Then it occurred to me, after a quick check on the character sheets, you are so busy adventuring, you don’t get a chance to stop, and invest time and growth in advancing your characters along the magical path. There’s a lot of reactive advancement, where you increase skills that were used to counter a threat in the previous adventure.
I have a potential solution to this. In the playtest games of Wyrd Sword (my upcoming BRP fantasy game), we have the rather deliberate meta-plot device of the Hub Settlement. This is nicked from Middle Earth Roleplaying wayyyyyyyyyyyy back in the 80s. This is a safe place, where no adventure encounters occur (so no getting mugged as you head to the market, or being embroiled in some nasty cult plot), and players can train, equip and talk to their NPC friends and organisations. As well as access PC Services – such as healing, information gathering, divinination (aka Ask the Gods). Its where activity that is traditionally labeled as downtime, between adventures, occurs.
This is going to get enshrined in Wyrd Sword’s GM advice chapter in the section on adventure design. But one that can also be used in OpenQuest, perhaps using the name Safe Place (for branding reasons 😉 ).
So after the current adventure ends, the characters will end up in a safe place.
It’s got the working title of Garden City – and sits before the Ancient Zoo (the place whcih the characters have been aiming towards all this adventuring season), which, rather than an adventure on rails, is going to be a sandbox experience. I’m tapping my nostalgia for Pavis and the Big Rubble here, plus also the very positive experiences I’ve had with Wyrd Sword, where every adventure is a sandbox (or toybox). The idea is that you can use Garden City as a base for your expeditions into the Ancient Zoo, which will be mini-quests lasting one or two sessions, and then spend time growing your characters and accessing other PC Services. . Also both Belgara and Hethna, Goddesses that two of the characters are following, will have fairly major temples in the city (for reasons that become obvious). If all this tickles your fancy in advance, and there’s something you’d like in this Safe Place as a character development opportunity, let me know.
