Keeping Sandbox Interesting

[Myarelli 8]

Hey all!

I have recently opened my first ever RP site and so far I'm really loving it but I'm struggling. I've never been good at doing mass-plots that loop everyone in so I went into this pushing a sandbox type of RP where it's more individual driven than site driven, only now I'm starting to see a disconnect on site. There's no collective forward motion which is leaving everyone sort of stuck in their own little worlds. I want to do something to bring everyone together but I am the actual worst at these sort of things. It's making me feel like a total failure as an admin. What do you all suggest? I feel at a loss here.

 

Thanks a million,

Mya

[Elena 546]

Usually common events are festivals, holidays, disasters, balls, things which bring people together.

[Somniac 207]

We're also on the sandbox-esque end.

 

Group threads and festivals tend to be big, as do balls, sports, reunions, and other public gatherings.

[Mistress Of The Obvious 73]

Hello, @Myarelli.

 

Outside of group threads and events you can also do prompts to make the site more lively. This can be things like "Use these three words in a thread," "write a thread featuring heavily a character's pet." It can also tie into some sort of event like "create a super hero your character will cosplay as at the comic convention."

 

You can add currency if you want as a reward for people to partake.

 

How's your out of character community going? It feels like for me that you want a bigger sense of community. You can add movie night where members vote which movie they'll watch. Perhaps rotate who chooses a movie if your site is small enough. You can also start OOC threads similar to what you find here. "When did you start rping? Does your character have any pets? What video game are you currently playing?" You could have this on your site or your discord to answer. This I think will help members feel more connected to each other or will be more likely to branch out and write with someone they haven't before.

 

I see your site is Harry Potter based that takes place in America. I'll admit I don't know much about Harry Potter, so I can't make suggestions that directly apply.

 

Keep us all updated how it goes for you.

[Waug 12]

I feel/have felt the same way about events I've done in the past. I've always erred on the side of sandbox but struggled with things like site canons and site-wide plots. I now no longer make original canons, and it's been so freeing. Not sure if you have done that, but I recommend ditching them as much as possible if you do.

 

The ideas above sound great to me, I guess I'll just add that sometimes the ones in their own bubbles may just prefer it that way. Like they may have found their corner of the sandbox and just want to stay there, for many reasons. What I'm saying is that there's only so much you can do to encourage uniting IC things. If some people don't latch onto it, don't fret too much! 

[Xochiquetzal 9]

On my site is is part of the agreement that when you participate in my world, you must acknowledge regional or site-wide events.

Because I have a persistent, global world, I encourage people to have their own little plots and stories, but they absolutely must acknowledge "regional" or "global" events if they are affected. I might randomly generate an event that affects an entire board/continent such as a disaster, a political event, something they can use to incorporate into their already existing storyline (because ish happens, amirite?), or that they can use to launch their storyline.

Failure to acknowledge a site-specific event will have consequences.

If it's a party, festival--something they can choose to participate in but opt not to--no consequences for that.
But things like--say, a Volcano erupting, an earthquake, a dragon attacking, etc--if it something that
1)  has received the greenlight from staff to happen
2) is publicly posted by staff where everyone can see it is/has happening/happened (like a banner announcement)

 

And thread-owners and those participating in an impacted area simply ignore it? I'll lock their thread and reach out to them personally. If they still refuse, I'll allow them to continue their thread, but it loses its chance to be considered canon to the site and any end results or progress is acknowledged as null. If they refuse to accept that, they receive a ban. It is stated when you join that this is a must for user participation. RP is a collaborative hobby, after all. If you want to do your own thing without being bothered by anyone around you--I wholeheartedly and respectfully expect you to stop what you're doing and leave. My site is not the site for you.

I want people to be able to participate in what they want to do, with the understanding that agreeing to participate in a persistent world means they will have to adapt to setting changes, lore evolution, world-building, etc.

 

There are sites that have what I have come to call the Kingdom Hearts effect. There's tons of worlds...none of them participate with each other or even have anything to do with one another for the most part. They exist like their own little closed off paradigms even though they aren't that far from each other.

 

Here's where I encourage people to create plots between them that might lead one to another. Or I'll create a region-wide plot that forces them to interact with one another.

 

Here are some super basic ideas to help pull folks together (or drive them apart if that's what you also need). How frequently or infrequently this happens is totally up to you! I'd start with one or two that you do yearly or bi-annually and see what sort of success you have.

1. A disastrous storm (magical or mundane. I dealt with one that wiped out magic from 98% of a continent)
2. A creature attacks
3. Magic has disappeared

4. Magic has reappeared

5. A new villain appears!

6. A new hero appears!

7. An event has caused powers to manifest

8. An event has caused powers to go dormant

9. The gods got bored and did XYZ

10. Invaders! (Aliens? Robots? A neighboring town/city/kingdom/empire/planet?)
11. A new organization appears

12. A beloved organization has disappeared

13. Murder Mystery of High Profile Figure (this could lead to WAR)

14. Genius Loci change affects climate ( ABC spirit of 123 now leaves this region in tundra-like environment)
15. WAR
16. Political Election (users come together to vote on the running parties)
17. Refugees need help! Who will step up!?

18. FAMINE (this could tie in with genius loci changing the environment, or just mundane weather occurences)
19. DISEASE (magical, psionic, viral or mundane)
20. A Parade of Worlds - This is something I personally came up with, with enormous success. Users from various parts of the "world" come and create a "float" that showcases their culture, lore, etc. It's essentially free advertising for someone's city/town/kingdom/empire. Each user was allowed to create up to three floats. It could be territory they owned or territory they simply found interesting and wanted to draw users in with (with the lore owner's permission). Each float was written in a single post with links embedded to the appropriate lore or location to RP in, and other users could IC participate and establish a connection with learning about the float while OOC check the board or hunt down the lore and RP in that territory.

 

[outskrt 0]

i love sandbox rp. im not a site roleplayer to be honest, but i do play sandbox games and roleplay.

[Byrn 102]

So we have a sandbox-ish site but I guess you could count it as sandbox.

 

- Fantasy races members are able to create is pretty much wide open.

- Our world plot is just used to set the stage and provide an environment for the characters. We move it, create events, but there is no canon list or things our members need to be responsible for. 
 

I think, even with a sandbox, it is important to create a world and setting that has inspiring background. You can have a world plot but it takes a backseat to what members are doing and is only there to compliment their own storylines and development. It keeps things from being stagnant and helps bridge a gap to prevent a situation where characters are just existing witching their own little world.

[Myarelli 8]

Thank you to everyone who answered this question! I decided to do a generic summer festival for my players. (We tied it in with an end of quidditch season thing). 🙂

[drake Lere 1]

I also play sandbox games and  roleplay. I think MMORPGs are worth playing, too.

 

 

 

 

[Neowulf 5]

I feel something similar with the sandbox-y site I'm helping to run, though in our case it's not a lack of site-wide participation events - I fear it's more a lack of tangible goals? You can level up your character through interactions and certain feats, but that's.. that's it?

 

I feel like we would benefit from something else. We've been meaning to introduce a system for creating essentially guilds, since that gives you something else to work towards and "show off", but I'm wondering if anyone else here has any good suggestions? The setting is urban fantasy, currently contained to a large city. Being able to come into the top-most power (head of a noble house etc, they're supposed to be unreachable figures - kind of like gods in a fantasy rpg, I guess? just showing up on occasion to wreak havoc) is off the table, but we do want to facilitate rising in the ranks to hold actual power.

[Caramia 1]

I enjoyed the answers on this thread as they were good suggestions!
My own suggestion to help would be to organise smaller scale group things, to help people come together who may not have done so by themselves.
An example would be, for an urban type of roleplay, creating clubs. Like in real life you can join the local arts and crafts club, make that a thing for characters.
If you have any sort of school thing going on, make the students attend classes.
The trick is to make this something that's recurrent, and not a one time event. Knowing that every tuesday your OC bob has to/can attend his HOA meeting can help new players too by giving them something to do without feeling awkward trying to introduce their character I feel!

[Flahme 44]

I also run a sandbox site. Our group events, centered around festivals, holidays etc took a while to take off. Now it gets crazy up in these events and I love it. They all seem to get withdrawals in the 2-3 weeks between the next event. Plus it really helps make connections, find potential romantic partners and give a nice place for slower characters to find a place and head off being picked up in the activity check.

 

One thing I would like to add, and thanks for the ideas here, is to have global and local events that people can then use for plotting. I'm going to introduce that. We have it to some extent but I would like to do so more regularly.

 

We have also just started doing monster fights. You need to sign up for that and we used one D20 for a simple damage roll. The first try was somewhat successful but I need to work out better rules to make it more dynamic. But there is interest to do another. We effectively quarantined an area so it became a boss fight.

 

Lastly if you have something you would like to introduce you could do it much like the smaller events. At some point I want my site to be open to humans knowing about supernaturals. I set it that they were close to this but haven't progressed this plot as I feel it has such far reaching implications politically and socially that I'm not sure anyone wants to get in on those aspects. I would do it like @Xochiquetzal  mentioned and make it so it needs to be used/acknowledged as the norm from there on.

 

Oh and don't be afraid to throw curve balls into your events. Our Valentine's Bash had cloned cupids that shot tiny arrows at random people and it made them want to kiss the closest person to them. The kiss could be platonic or more. It was a riot.

 

Also get ideas from your playerbase. Mine are full of fantastic ideas that I add in or note down for later use. Of course I make sure to credit when it isn't my own idea.

[nemesis 2]

Let it change with the activity and input of members. To me, the biggest killer in a sandbox is when the setting is inflexible—I’ve seen sandbox mods stay married to their own ideas and try to force everyone else to cram their roleplay into a mold that was increasingly too small and limited, and that was just exhausting to be a part of.

 

Basically, let your setting breathe. And don’t be afraid to kill your darlings—if a part of the setting isn’t working, one of the best things you can do for it, rather than try to salvage it, is to use it as kindling and burn it to the ground. Destroying parts of a setting can be just as cool as adding new stuff, it keeps a setting dynamic and helps to keep players from feeling too complacent or getting too settled into routines they won’t want to break.

[huntandmoon 5]

On 4/1/2023 at 2:16 AM, nemesis said:

Let it change with the activity and input of members. To me, the biggest killer in a sandbox is when the setting is inflexible—I’ve seen sandbox mods stay married to their own ideas and try to force everyone else to cram their roleplay into a mold that was increasingly too small and limited, and that was just exhausting to be a part of.

 

Basically, let your setting breathe. And don’t be afraid to kill your darlings—if a part of the setting isn’t working, one of the best things you can do for it, rather than try to salvage it, is to use it as kindling and burn it to the ground. Destroying parts of a setting can be just as cool as adding new stuff, it keeps a setting dynamic and helps to keep players from feeling too complacent or getting too settled into routines they won’t want to break.

Man this hits home a lot right now for me -- learning to adapt to the fact that no, the site can't be what it was 10 years ago and still thrive. I've always been a very strict admin and I'm learning to let go of that for the sake of the rest of the site, what little is left of it, in hopes it can be brought back from the brink.