Day 14 of #RPGaDay 2017.
Which RPG do you prefer for open-ended campaign play?
Most of my RPG experience has been running open-ended campaign games. Some of my most memorable games were in Advanced Dungeons & Dragons 2nd Edition, Cyberpunk 2020, and Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay. To be honest I can't think of a specific system I think is really best for this style of play. Obviously not some of the indy one shot games, but most traditional RPGs are designed for this.
For my official answer, I'm going to have to go with AD&D 2nd Edition. Not because of the rules themselves but because of some of the amazing supporting products that were released for that edition of D&D. Products that let me run an open ended sandbox game that went on for more than 10 years and had probably hundreds of characters adventure through our shared world.
These products included but were not limited to: The Deck of Encounters Set One, The Deck of Encounters Set Two, The Book of Lairs, The Book of Lairs II, Dungeons of Mystery, Cardmaster Adventure Design Deck, The AD&D Trading Cards 1st, 2nd and 3rd edition, Treasure Maps and The World Builders Guidebook. I'm sure there were more.
What these products let me do is run my game on the fly. While I did prep work, a lot of prep work I used these tools to be able to react to what my players did during the game. As most of them involved random elements it means that my players and I experienced the game and the evolving story together. It was "playing to see what happens" before that was cool. I guess I'm an RPG hipster eh?
When the PCs traveled between two areas I would draw from the appropriate deck of encounters (based on the terrain type they traveled through). When that encounter noted that the dead Ogre the party just found had a lair nearby I would grab a dungeon out of the Book of Lairs. When the party found a prisoner in the Lair I would draw a card from my sorted trading cards to give me an NPC. When the party was rewarded for returning the NPC home I gave them a treasure map from the Mystara Treasure Maps supplement. Using these tools I was able to run a game set in the same campaign setting for almost 10 years.
For those wishing to play along at home, here are the topics for this years #RPGaDay. Feel free to use these cues in your tweets, facebook posts, g+ threads, blog posts and more.
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