Does anyone have solutions for making a world feel reactive without

>>50629388
>How do I account for this without also making the PCs overshadowed by other, potentially more competent groups of heroes?

By keeping the focus on the PCs and their actions?

Do you not put news channels in modern games because the players might feel "overshadowed" by the war going on in Nofuckistan?

>>50629388
Instead of showing a living, breathing world by causing things to go to shit if the PCs don't intervene, show the living, breathing world by making things progress while the PCs are gone, so things are different when they return.

Instead of "you can do X or Y and the one you neglect will get fucked," do "while accomplishing X, you encountered these NPCs, some good and some bad, and when the PCs return a year later, those NPCs have moved on in their lives and adapted to what the PCs accomplished back then."

>>50629388
>based on what the PCs did and what they didn't do
This here is where you are wrong. You base what's changening in different storylines solely (or almost exclusievly) on actions of your players. It's no wonder that it feels like they are only ones acting out.

I think that you planned out all this groups and people storylines and they only change when players interact with them. It's not only causing you problems its also highly unrealistic. In normal environment all this groups would interact with each others and change each others actions. You should not have separate lanes of story arcs that change only on actions of your players, you should have spider webs of interactions, rivalies, wars etc, that change almost constantly and in which players are only one of the factors.


You might have also problem with world building, as in the world you've built would not actually "survive" in a form you are presenting your players. Let me give you example:
>you have town, 1000 years old
>it is located near plains where orcs roam
>big group of orcs are starting to gather on plains that could endanger said town
>players are the only thing that could stop orcs
>somehow players are the only thing that saved the town from a threat that is common in its region
You see the problem here? Town would never get to be that old if it has no reliable way of dealing with orc menace. It should have logical ways of surviving.

>>50629388
>world feel reactive without making it feel like the PCs are the only "actors" in the world.
>I try to figure out which ones succeed or failed at the end of every few sessions based on what the PCs did and what they didn't do

So you are basically fucking yourself?
Stop doing that

>>50629388
Don't just outright choose results based on player actions. Determine the success of the factions' plans with rolls. If the players influenced the outcome, add/detract from the score, depending on how much they helped/hurt. This way you can also take into account other factors, like the major faction helping out each other. After the rolls you can make up stories on why exactly a plan succeeded or failed (e.g. other actors being involved).

>>50629934
This.
Random fuzzing is the key.

>>50629934
Not a bad idea but I'd be tempted to just make it up.

What I would say is, make sure every agenda or faction or timeline leads to disastrous apocalypse that requires the heroes to do something about it. Leaders change, political maneuvers succeed or fail, cults or madmen commit atrocities... but the world goes on.

Part of what makes a sandbox intriguing is that there isn't always a "baddy of the week" coming over the mountains with an army of monsters.

Or sometimes there is, and there's nothing the players can do about it but cope with it.

If the players decide to get involved in a feud between two crime families, that becomes the "important plot". If they choose not to? It's just background.
>the Saleri family controls this quarter now--if you want to buy that black lotus extract, you'll have to look elsewhere... our only supplier was found flayed alive two weeks ago.

>>50630345
>make sure every agenda or faction DOESN'T lead to apocalypse

>>50629388
I just occasionally put a couple dead adventurers in an area. Like, look, there's a decapitated knight. Oh, that pile of ash used to be the cleric. Etc. etc.

Sometimes it's fun to have them meet another band of adventurers that did a couple cool things in the past. Then they usually get BTFO or instantly murdered by the BBEG for his dramatic entrance.

>>50629388

>But one of my players pointed out a weird quirk in this style of doing things - why are the PCs seemingly the only ones acting to stop these different groups from accomplishing these ends?

Because why would the players get involved in a plot that got choked in the crib? The antagonists are defined by them being in opposition to the protagonists. If an antagonist was defeated by a third party, they are by default not an antagonist because they never have a chance to encounter the protagonists.

Your major players are major players because they are the guys that survived all the other potential "stopping factors" such as internal strife and/or other adventuring parties.

>>50630529
Also--there probably are "heroes" involved--on both sides of the conflict.

The plot to overthrow the king might sound like an evil plot worthy of heroes... until you find out that the conspirators have some good reason to hate him, and a bloody coup was how he rose to power in the first place.

If you don't get involved, and the plotters get their guy on the throne... has much really changed? They might institute some reforms, or purge the court of loyalists.

But that's sort of business as usual. It's just a new set of circumstances for the players to deal with, rather than a game-ender.

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>>50629388
Alright so you've already got the timeline of wider world events going on which is hat first came to mind, but there's the layer's side to consider too.

If they aren't actively looking into other factions' business, they're not going to see anything that isn't right in front of them. If you Are going to put something right in front of them, it pays to usually have it plot-relevant so that makes it the PC's intervening with big events again.

Adventuring isn't a very common profession, as it tends to weed out the weak and incompetent early in their careers. There are probably other people willing and able to handle some of the stuff they do but it's the difference between hiring a mercenary company of dozens or scores of people vs hiring an experienced team of experts. You going to go with Blackwater, which comes with professional conduct, but also bigger fees, more fallout politically and socially, and the potential of them being bought out, or are you going to hire the zealot and his motly crew for half the price and deal with people you probably know by reputation at least and have made a name for themselves doing good deeds rather than sellswords alone.

That said, having a couple forms of competition crop up can be fun; rival adventuring party undercutting the PC party bid. merc group for hire starting to take jobs before they get there, or even older, sharper adventurers looking into things related to the PC gig. Merc groups can turn plot-related by being subversive forces trying to shut down the PCs by putting them out of a job and then vanishing, having been contracted by the BBEG to do exactly that. Rival Adventurers can be both Worf types that get their shit wrecked to show the enemy means business or potential allies depending on the situation, maybe even cohorts to pick up or alternate PCs due to player demise and resurrection unavailability.

>>50629388

you could randomize it . behind the gm screen assign each group a chance of success if the pc's don't intervene directly.

then set up npc actors with their own agendas and ability to affect those odds in ways that line up with their agenda. If you want to get fancy differentiate between known and unknown plots, so if the PC's reveal a scheme others are more likely to mess with it.

the PC's are no long the only actor, but can still influence the world by a huge amount by stopping certain plans, or working to increase or decrease the ability of certain actors to influence the odds.

you could also run plots that are not just threats in the background as well, ie kingdom of whatever is bulking up its military, 50% chance of success to increase it's ability to influence the world. The pc's may chose to support or stop them if they like the kingdom or not.

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>>50630959
The Solo-Queue veteran can be investigating a plot related to the PC's current efforts only by tangent. Things like "The enemy orchestrating the things the PC is working on is an agent or asset to the one orchestrating the grander scale of the advancing darkness." It helps later on as a clue of "Hey this jackass is here again," when the PCs are either on the right trail or, worse still, have been mislead by the same enemy when the true BBEG catches on and honeypots the party and the veteran in order to shut them down. If they get out alive, Vet gives the PCs an idea of what they're really up against. If they die, the Vet's journal explains what they've been up to and what they knew so far, as well as giving the PCs the option to either take up the quest themselves or pass it to the appropriate authorities if they don't dig the whole save the world thing and just want to get paid for telling the White Knights of Indescribable Faggotry that some evil elf is committing atrocities to get her mortal husbando back from the dead.

>>50629388
>But one of my players pointed out a weird quirk in this style of doing things - why are the PCs seemingly the only ones acting to stop these different groups from accomplishing these ends? Why is it assumed that if the PCs have a choice to investigate an outbreak or kill ork raiders and they kill the orks, the outbreak will get worse? Why does no other adventuring group get put onboard to stop the outbreak? Do other people get hired and just always fail, making the PCs the only competent adventurers in the land?
Yes. Adventurers are exceptionally skilled people that instead of putting their skills to use to better society run around in old tombs getting almost killed every two weeks. It's sheer luck/plot contrivance that they stumble across half the important shit they do and survive/find the right places to make use of anything they learn.

>>50629388
The party is explicitly not the only adventuring party around.
Adventurers have a role in society.
Of course shit happens that doesn't involve them. It's just that most if it DOESN'T INVOLVE THEM OR AFFECT THEM, so it doesn't get told to them except in passing.

Otherwise, the game is a theater set. The PCs are actors, the players are the audience. The actors step straight onto the stage from their dressing rooms in the players' heads, and everything else backstage happens in my head.
I only bother to animate the set. The script can be rewritten on the fly, because the actors don't have a copy of it.

>>50629388
>In my player's word "for a game where we all agreed being the 'chosen one' is dull, it sure feels like we're literally the only ones who can do any good."

I don't know if there's an official term for it, but I've been calling this the "defeatist superheroes fallacy"; it's the idea that since a bunch of adventurers, heroes, or whatever you might have are always doing whatever they can do save the day- they eventually become jaded and ignorant of the world around them because it doesn't concern them immediately.

The problem with this is that there often times can be no solution because the sorts of people who think like this or complain about this often don't see the forest for the trees in the first place.
I'd bet you dollars to donuts that the moment you let something resolve itself without the adventurers help they'll bitch that they weren't really needed in the first place and that they aren't making a difference.

>>50629388
There are two ideas that can help that are blatantly stolen from other games.

From games like Apocalypse World and other Powered by the Apocalypse games, you have Fronts and the Clock. Fronts are essentially your groups/enemies. They have their own special moves, and some moves that are tied to the Clock. The Clock is essentially like a Doomsday Clock. It shifts depending on what happens in the games, the closer to midnight it is, the worse things are and the more powerful the group/enemy is against you.

The other is from Stars Without Number, which has a whole GM turn that is about the interaction of major groups in your world. Depending on the kind of group, and power of the group, they can do different things during their turn. They can hire a seductress to undermine a base of an enemy, or straight up send military units to fight/defend, or can set up bases of influence. The GM plays the GM Turn between games, and it helps decide whats happening in the world for the next game before the PCs come in and fuck shit up.

Last piece of a advice is to know what happens if the PCs were never there. How would events have played out if the PCs didn't exist? That can really help detach the world from the PCs existence. It doesn't really revolve around the PCs as it has a direction, just the PCs come in and screw things up.