Orthopraxy

I've Been Thinking About Starting Things: Lessons in starting open world campaigns from Skyrim

How many campaigns have you started that you've never finished?

If you're anything like me, your answer to this question is probably "most of them." While I have started more games than I care to count, I can say with certainty how many have ended with a satisfying resolution. But when I specifically think about how many old school open world games have had satisfying tidy endings, that number plummets to an absolute 0.

And you know what? I don't think I have a problem with "abandoning" an open world game. We've all played Skyrim, yeah? You know--the hit 2011 open world RPG by Bethesda Game Studios? OK, you do! Good. Well, have you ever finished Skyrim? Like, actually rolled credits on it? I've never done it, and frankly I don't know many people who have (my darling girlfriend being a major exception). The "main quest" of Skyrim is almost vestigial to the main game experience--it's there because games are expected to have a main story. But nobody actually plays through most of it (again, except for my girlfriend); they just live in the world, and when they lose interest, they move on to something else.

In a way, I think that abandonment is actually the ideal way to end an open-world campaign. After all The world doesn't roll credits when you've done your main quest--things move on. Even once you do that thing you set out to do; get your dream job, purchase your forever home, or see your children off to a happy life-- you remain. Until you don't, that is. Death is certainly a type of credit roll, but I don't think many people would think of a TPK as a "satisfying narrative resolution".

So, I don't really think about ending a campaign much. When it ends, it ends. Life moves on.

But I have been thinking a lot about starting things

The other day, I saw a post from Ryan Lynch on Bluesky:

My favourite way to "railroad" a TTRPG is as an initial one-time launchpad into an open world. There is no "where should we go" awkwardness at the start of the session. You're in medias res, an action-packed thing happens with actionable information and as the dust settles the world opens up

In my experience, I agree with this wholeheartedly. And I should know--as should you if you've been keeping up with this blog. I've started quite the number of open world games this past year (my blog post on running open world games for children is still upcoming BTW), so I've had quite the opportunity to think about this topic. Heck, as we write this I am planning for an upcoming campaign of Pirate Borg that I'll be running for my FLGS.

But Lynch's post made me think of Skyrim.

Remember how I said that nobody plays through Skyrim's main story? Well, there's one part that you must play through--the often maligned "You were trying to cross the boarder" wagon sequence. Mods even exist to entirely cut out this section of the game. And I can see why--for the experienced Skyrimmer the experience is extremely tedious. First, there's a full four minutes and forty two seconds before you even get the ability to move, followed by an extremely railroaded section where you escape from a dragon attach.

But what most experienced gamers forget is how effective this section is at getting players invested into the world of Skyrim. I also think that this sequence has some key takeaways that can be applied to any open world game--both analogue and digital. Let's go through this sequence bit-by-bit, and afterwords we can see if we can extract a set of lessons here we can apply to our own games.

Pt 1: You're finally awake!

The opening of Skyrim begins, as I've mentioned, with over four minutes of dialogue delivered directly at the player as they are carted through some nice scenery. Now, don't get it twisted--I'm not advocating for dialogue. But if we look at what the dialogue is talking about, it answers pretty much every basic question a player new to an open world might have:

  1. Who am I? [You were trying to cross the border into Skyrim and were captured.]
  2. Skyrim? What's that? [It's a land in the middle of a civil war]
  3. Who are the factions? [The Imperials and the Stromcloaks]
  4. What's the deal with the Stormcloaks? [Ulfrik, the Jarl of Windhelm, has declared himself High King]
  5. What's the deal with the Imperials? [They have ruled here for a long time, but General Tillius' deals with the Thalmor are alienating the locals]
  6. Where are we going now? [To be executed]

It's really an efficient, if inelegant, piece of writing. But it does do its job--it situates the player immediatly in the crisis, and introduces you to the major players in the conflict all in one go.

And then it is in this exact moment that you are told to define your character.

Pt 2: Character Creation

So, on the literal chopping block, you are told to make your character. The actual process is simple enough, nut I really want you to think about the context that the new Skyrim player is in right now. They have just been injected with Lore, and have an immediate threat ahead of them. They know the factions, and can now start to consider their character in relation to them. Do they have anger at the Imperials? Are they sympathetic to the Stormcloaks?

Even if the actual character creation screen doesn't ask you to start making decisions about your place in the world, the player is already thinking about these things at this point. And, as any seasoned old school referee will tell you--character creation happens off the character sheet as well as on it.

Pt 3: Immediate action

And the second that you are done with character creation, the dragon attacks.

This sequence is notable for a few reasons. First of all, the dragons are the big plot of the game. You will discover, eventually, that you are the Dragonborn, and are linked somehow to the dragons. As I type this, I am realising that I don't actually know how this plot line develops--I've never finished the main quest, as I've previously mentioned.

But, secondly, the sequence is cool, and gives the player an immediate goal--escape the dragon. And as you escape from the dragon, you get your vertical-slice tutorial. You also get to make a decision which may have some lasting consequences--which NPC do you side with? Do you side with the Stormcloak, or with the Imperial? Already, just a few moments into the game, the player is asked to make a decision based on their current understanding of the game state.

Our Takeaways

As I see it, the reason this sequence works (for first time players at least), is due to the following factors:

  1. It immediately sets up the stakes of the world, and introduces the players to the major factions and conflicts in play
  2. It allows the player to shape their character in response to the world, rather than prior to contact with it
  3. The player is given an immediate task to complete which allows them to immediately make decisions which will impact the world.

I don't think I need to tell you why this is more impact than "we meet in a tavern". One of the great detriments to the classic "tavern" start, which I don't think gets talked about enough, is the mental load it places on the players. There's so much that they need to think about at the start of an open game. Who are they? What relationship do they have with the world? What should their goal be?

Skyrim is one of the most successful video games of all time, and I believe that one of the biggest factors to this success is the way that it takes that cognitive load away from the player at the start. It is just enough of a railroad, but lets go once you get your bearings straight, to mix a few travel metaphors.

If you want your players to come back hungry for more of your open world, you would do well to follow Skyrim's example.