Aaron Berger okay, I won’t side-eye you about this not-fight. 😉

TOR feels different than SWN mmmaybe because I chose to play it in a more character-focused way? I’m usually pretty good about sussing out my own play, but that particular compare/contrast is hazy for me. But let me think about that a second.

TOR has much more stuff baked into it that promote character-driven play, in particular the Shadow traits/economy. And the Fellowship phase feel heavily character-focused: go home and visit with family/friends, build relationships with the communities of the free lands, all that. So those tools are already there.

When we ran SWN, I had an amazing sector worked out. Awesome outline of a meta-plot sitting in the background, conspiracies and alien invasions and all that. But, like, during actual play it’s all just D&D: here are some stats, here are some skills, state what you’re doing, gain XPs, get some new benefits. There’s nothing there other than getting cash to run your ship to do more jobs to get more cash. Beyond that, it’s 100% on the players and GM to push character stuff.

I did think about mentioning Pendragon in my list of “sandplot” games. That’s how we played The Great Pendragon Campaign for sure: here’s stuff that’s happening, but that’s in between the character-driven action, and then your character-side game is modified by the end-of-year stuff. And again there are mechanical aspects to the game that I feel like they prompt more character-driven play, specifically the personality traits, the end-of-year moves, the Manor Tycoon minigame, and the need to raise your heir. It would be beyond depressing to turn that shit into spreadsheets. (I know this because one of my players did exactly that, and it was depressing as shit to grind through in that way.)

I guess the tl/dr would be that “sandplot” is plot that your characters can meaningfully react to, and that meaningfully adapts to their reactions while still providing the skeleton.