Pondering The Bottom-Up Sandbox

[raikenclw]

I had a thought, regarding how so many sandbox games tend to start with a group of 1st [or even 0th] Level PCs, all of them young and from the same small medieval village. People like this would know very little about locations beyond their homeplace and most of that little would be inaccurate. When they venture forth into the wider world, it's thus easy to make that world up as the game unfolds. E.g. the Bottom Up approach.

I have always assumed that this specific approach would only work in a medieval (or pseudo-medieval/post-apocalyptic) milieu. But a science fiction novel I'm currently listening to on Audible.com [The Lost Fleet, Book Four: Valiant] presented me with another possibility. The protagonists encounter a star system which had been abandoned ~75 years previously by the megacorp which had started to develop it, when said system was bypassed during the creation of a new FTL travel system. Officially, the system was completely uninhabited and therefore had not been visited by anyone after abandonment. But actually, the cheap megacorp had left behind all "non-essential" employees. These people - having spent three generations without any contact with the wider universe - are functionally equivalent to medieval villagers. Building the wider universe for PCs who are rescued from this isolation would be just as unlimited.

What other circumstances might support such a Bottom-Up approach?

[hengest]

Apr 5, 2021 0:44:38 GMT -5 raikenclw said:

I had a thought, regarding how so many sandbox games tend to start with a group of 1st [or even 0th] Level PCs, all of them young and from the same small medieval village. People like this would know very little about locations beyond their homeplace and most of that little would be inaccurate. When they venture forth into the wider world, it's thus easy to make that world up as the game unfolds. E.g. the Bottom Up approach.

I have always assumed that this specific approach would only work in a medieval (or pseudo-medieval/post-apocalyptic) milieu. But a science fiction novel I'm currently listening to on Audible.com [The Lost Fleet, Book Four: Valiant] presented me with another possibility. The protagonists encounter a star system which had been abandoned ~75 years previously by the megacorp which had started to develop it, when said system was bypassed during the creation of a new FTL travel system. Officially, the system was completely uninhabited and therefore had not been visited by anyone after abandonment. But actually, the cheap megacorp had left behind all "non-essential" employees. These people - having spent three generations without any contact with the wider universe - are functionally equivalent to medieval villagers. Building the wider universe for PCs who are rescued from this isolation would be just as unlimited.

What other circumstances might support such a Bottom-Up approach?

Weiss and Hickman did something like this with some of the Sartan in their Death Gate books. 

I dig it as an idea. 

Others will come up with better answers to your question, but my re-skinning of it might involve a "lost tribe" on Earth (say, in the 1940s or the late 19th century) who venture out.  It could be an exercise in estrangement to describe the "modern" world as they see it, although the effect would easily be overworked.

One might take inspiration from the real-world Lykov family who spent over four decades in (apparently close to total, but not quite total) isolation in the Russian mountains.  So not a "lost tribe" but people who were already on the outskirts of society and fled, raising a set of children in near-total isolation.  One might write in the development of a specialized hunting technique or even a magic system (the Lykovs did not practice magic, I am simply going off this idea).  The "founders" of the micro-colony were pushed there because they were holders of / users of / believers in X, and preserved it for decades while it was extinguished in the wider world.  The most obvious thing is a magic system, either opposed to or different from the dominant one, or perhaps the only magic system.  The users might be particularly vulnerable to the outside magic and vice versa.  Although now this sounds more like fiction than a setting or game, I think it could bear fruit.  Or perhaps they are the only non-magic users.  

Adapted wildly from Weiss and Hickman -- the descendants of group of prisoners kept in a magical prison complex (perhaps a large valley) begin to escape as the magical wards (the "electric fence") start to fail spectacularly and draw their attention to the edges of their world.  

[Admin Pete]

I like this and I would call it "The Rip Van Winkle Effect." You could have a few or a lot of people that were in stasis for a short time (a few hundred years) or a long time (tens of thousands of years) and run that in almost any setting you want to.

[raikenclw]

In the vein of rare/unusual magic systems:

I've just started reading The Parasol Protectorate series, by Emma Newman Gail Carriger. Her setting is a 19th century where magic and magical creatures are a fact of life, although still something only rarely encountered by the Person In The Street. One of Newman's protagonists is a very rare (literally one in a million) "cursebreaker." This is someone who can disrupt any[?] magical spell or effect with a simple touch. A bloodline like that in a magical setting would be in for some high drama!

UPDATE: Emma Newman is the narrator for the Audible audiobook. Gail Carriger is the actual author.

[Admin Pete]

Apr 23, 2021 20:51:42 GMT -5 raikenclw said:

In the vein of rare/unusual magic systems:

I've just started reading The Parasol Protectorate series, by Emma Newman. Her setting is a 19th century where magic and magical creatures are a fact of life, although still something only rarely encountered by the Person In The Street. One of Newman's protagonists is a very rare (literally one in a million) "cursebreaker." This is someone who can disrupt any[?] magical spell or effect with a simple touch. A bloodline like that in a magical setting would be in for some high drama!

The Parasol Protectorate series

I hope the library has this.

Soulless (novel) - Soulless is the first book in the five-novel "The Parasol Protectorate" series

Soulless is set in an alternate history version of Victorian era Britain where werewolves and vampires are accepted as functioning members of society. Alexia Tarabotti is a woman with several critical problems: she is still searching for a husband, her late Italian father complicates her social standing in a rigid class system, and she has no soul. The fact that she is "soulless" leaves her unaffected by the powers of supernatural beings which only further complicates her life when she accidentally kills a vampire that had attacked her. Queen Victoria sends an investigator, Lord Maccon, who is himself a werewolf. As disappearances in the vampire population of London's high society increase, Alexia becomes the prime suspect. She must solve the mystery, all while maintaining proper decorum and a delicate social balance.

[raikenclw]

I'm reading the series in chronological order, starting with the novella "Meat Cute" [numbered "Book 0" in the series]. "Meat Cute" centers on "the Hedgehog Incident," an encounter which is referred to but never actually explained in the full-scale novels. The author says in her foreword something along the lines of "it is recommended that one read the first three books in the series before reading this one. Those of you who ignore this advice have no excuse for feeling adrift while attempting to follow the plot."

So far, I haven't felt "adrift." But then, I've read quite a lot of "gothic punk" fiction, as well as the Sherlock Holmes canon and several related works. Newman Carriger fits right into that wheelhouse.

[Admin Pete]

Apr 23, 2021 21:40:44 GMT -5 raikenclw said:

I'm reading the series in chronological order, starting with the novella "Meat Cute" [numbered "Book 0" in the series]. "Meat Cute" centers on "the Hedgehog Incident," an encounter which is referred to but never actually explained in the full-scale novels. The author says in her foreword something along the lines of "it is recommended that one read the first three books in the series before reading this one. Those of you who ignore this advice have no excuse for feeling adrift while attempting to follow the plot."

So far, I haven't felt "adrift." But then, I've read quite a lot of "gothic punk" fiction, as well as the Sherlock Holmes canon and several related works. Newman fits right into that wheelhouse.

I prefer to read things in chronological order and when starting an existing series I do that. If you start reading on day one, then you have to try to follow the out of order chronology that is often/usually used.

[Morton]

The Bottom-Up Sandbox is the only way to go. Embrace Chaos and run a Bottom-Up Sandbox.