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Kevin Closson
Adding An EMC XtremIO Volume As An ASM Disk With Oracle Database 12c On Linux – It Does Not Get Any Easier Than This.
Provisioning high-performance storage has always been a chore. Care and concern over spindle count, RAID type, RAID attributes, number of controller arms involved and a long list of other complexities have burdened storage administrators. Some of these troubles were mitigated by the advent of Automatic Storage Management–but not entirely.
Wouldn't it be nice if the complexity of storage provisioning could be boiled down to but a single factor? Wouldn't it be nice if that single factor was, simply, capacity? With EMC XtremIO the only factor storage administrators need to bear in mind when provisioning storage is, indeed, capacity.
With EMC XtremIO a storage administrator hears there is a need for, say, one terabyte of storage and that is the entirety of information needed. No more questions about the I/O pattern (e.g., large sequential writes ala redo logging, etc). The Database Administrator simply asks for capacity with a very short sentence and the Storage Administrator clicks 3 buttons in the XtremIO GUI and that's all there is to it.Pictures Speak Thousands of Words
I too enjoy the simplicity of XtremIO in my engineering work. Just the other day I ran short on space in a tablespace while testing Oracle Database 12c intra-node parallel query. I was studying a two-node Real Application Clusters setup attached to an EMC XtremIO array via 8 paths of 8GFC Fibre Channel. The task at hand was a single parallel CTAS (Create Table As Select) but the command failed because my ASM disk group ran out of space when Oracle Database tried to extend the BIGFILE tablespace.
Since I had to add some space I thought I'd take a few screen shots to show readers of this blog how simple it is to perform the full cycle of tasks required to add space to an active cluster with ASM in an XtremIO environment.
The following screen shot shows the error I was reacting to:
Since the following example shows host configuration steps please note the Linux distribution (Oracle Linux) and kernel version (UEK) I was using:
The following screenshot shows the XtremIO GUI configuration tab. I selected "Add" and then typed a name and size (1TB) of the volume I wanted to create:
NOTE: Right click the embedded images for greater clarity
The following screenshot shows how I then selected the initiators (think hosts) from the right-hand column that I wanted to see the new volume:
After I clicked "apply" I could see my new volume in my "12C" folder. With the folder construct I can do things like create zero-overhead, immediate, writable snapshots with a single mouse click. As the following screenshot shows, I highlighted "data5″ so I could get details about the volume in advance of performing tasks on the host. The properties tab shows me the only information I need to proceed–the NAA Identifier. Once I had the NAA Identifier I moved on to the task of discovering the new volume on the hosts.
Host discovery consists of three simple steps:
- Multipath discovery
- Updating the udev rules file with a text editor
- Updating udev state with udevadm commands
On both nodes of the cluster I executed the following series of commands. This series of commands generates a lot of terminal output so I won't show that in this blog post.
# multipath -F ;service multipathd restart ; rescan-scsi-bus.sh -r
After executing the multipath related commands I was able to see the new volume (0002a) on both nodes of the cluster. Notice how the volume has different multipath names (mpathab, mpathai) on the hosts. This is not an issue since the volumes will be controlled by udev:
After verifying the volumes were visible under DM-MPIO I moved on to the udev actions. The following screenshot shows how I added an ACTION line in the udev rules file and copied it to the other RAC host and then executed the udev update commands on both RAC hosts:
I then could see "/dev/asmdisk6″ on both RAC hosts:
The next task was to use ASMCA (ASM Configuration Assistant) to add the XtremIO volume to the ASM disk group called "DATA":
As the following screenshot shows the volume is visible as /dev/asmdisk6:
I selected asmdisk6 and the task was complete:
I then saw evidence of ASM rebalancing in the XtremIO GUI Performance tab:
With EMC XtremIO you provision capacity and that allows you to speak in very short sentences with the application owners that share space in the array.
It doesn't get any easier than this.
Filed under: oracle
Little Things Doth Crabby Make – Part XVIII. Automatic Storage Management Won't Let Me Use My Disk For My Files! Yes, It Will!
It's been a long time since my last installment in the Little Things Doth Crabby Make series and to be completely honest this particular topic isn't really all that fit for a LTDCM installment because it covers something that is possible but less than expedient. That said, there are new readers of this blog and maybe it's time they google "Little Things Doth Crabby Make" to see where this series has been. This post might rustle up that curiosity!
So what is this blog post about? It's about stuffing any file system file into Automatic Storage Management space. OK, so maybe this is just morbid curiosity or trivial pursuit. Maybe it's just a parlor trick. I would agree with any of those descriptions. Nonetheless maybe there are 42 or so people out there who didn't know this. If so, this post is for them.ASMCMD cp Command
The cp sub-command of ASM lets you stuff certain database files into ASM. We all know this. However, just to make it all fresh in people's minds I'll show a screen shot of me trying to push a compressed tar archive of $ORACLE_HOME/bin/oracle up into ASM:
Well, that's not surprising. But what happens if I take heed of the error message and attempt to placate? The block size is 8KB so the following screen shot shows me rounding up the size of the compressed tar archive to an 8192B blocking factor:
ASMCMD still won't gobble up the file. That's still not all that surprising because after ASMCMD checked the geometry of the file it then read the file looking for a header or any file magic it could understand. As you can see ASMCMD doesn't see a file type it understands. The following screen shot shows me pre-pending the tar archive with file magic I know ASMCMD must surely understand. I have a database with a tablespace called foo that I created in a non-Oracle Disk Manager naming convention (foo.dbf). The screen shot shows me:
- Extracting the foo.dbf file
- "Borrowing" 1MB from the head of the file
- Creating a compressed tar archive of the Oracle Database executable
- Rounding up the size of the compressed tar archive to an 8192B blocking factor
So now I have a file that has the "shape" of a datafile and the necessary header information from a datafile. The next screen shot shows:
- ASMCMD cp command pushing my file into ASM
- Removal of all of my current working directory files
- ASMCMD cp command pulling the file form ASM and into my current working directory
- Extracting the contents of the "embedded" tar archive
- md5sum(1) proof the file contents survived the journey
OK, so that's either a) something nobody would ever do or b) something that can be done with some elegant execution of some internal database package in a much less convoluted way or c) a combination of both "a" and "b" or d) a complete waste of my time to post, or, finally, e) a complete waste of your time reading the post. I'm sorry for "a","b","c" and certainly "e" if the case should be so.
Now you must wonder why I put this in the Little Things Doth Crabby Make series. That's simple. I don't like any "file system" imposing restrictions on file types :)
Filed under: oracle
Scrutinizing Exadata X5 Datasheet IOPS Claims…and Correcting Mistakes
I want to make these two points right out of the gate:
- I do not question Oracle's IOPS claims in Exadata datasheets
- Everyone makes mistakes
Like me. On January 21, 2015, Oracle announced the X5 generation of Exadata. I spent some time studying the datasheets from this product family and also compared the information to prior generations of Exadata namely the X3 and X4. Yesterday I graphed some of the datasheet numbers from these Exadata products and tweeted the graphs. I'm sorry to report that two of the graphs were faulty–the result of hasty cut and paste. This post will clear up the mistakes but I owe an apology to Oracle for incorrectly graphing their datasheet information. Everyone makes mistakes. I fess up when I do. I am posting the fixed slides but will link to the deprecated slides at the end of this post.We're Only Human
Wouldn't IT be a more enjoyable industry if certain IT vendors stepped up and admitted when they've made little, tiny mistakes like the one I'm blogging about here? In fact, wouldn't it be wonderful if some of the exceedingly gruesome mistakes certain IT vendors make would result in a little soul-searching and confession? Yes. It would be really nice! But it'll never happen–well, not for certain IT companies anyway. Enough of that. I'll move on to the meat of this post. The rest of this article covers:
- Three Generations of Exadata IOPS Capability
- Exadata IOPS Per Host CPU
- Exadata IOPS Per Flash SSD
- IOPS Per Exadata Storage Server License Cost
The following chart shows how Oracle has evolved Exadata from the X3 to the X5 EF model with regard to IOPS capability. As per Oracle's datasheets on the matter these are, of course, SQL-driven IOPS. Oracle would likely show you this chart and nothing else. Why? Because it shows favorable, generational progress in IOPS capability. A quick glance shows that read IOPS improved just shy of 3x and write IOPS capability improved over 4x from the X3 to X5 product releases. These are good numbers. I should point out that the X3 and X4 numbers are the datasheet citations for 100% cached data in Exadata Smart Flash Cache. These models had 4 Exadata Smart Flash Cache PCIe cards in each storage server (aka, cell). The X5 numbers I'm focused on reflect the performance of the all-new Extreme Flash (EF) X5 model. It seems Oracle has started to investigate the value of all-flash technology and, indeed, the X5 EF is the top-dog in the Exadata line-up. For this reason I choose to graph X5 EF data as opposed to the more pedestrian High Capacity model which has 12 4TB SATA drives fronted with PCI Flash cards (4 per storage server). The tweets I hastily posted yesterday with the faulty data points aimed to normalize these performance numbers to important factors such as host CPU, SSD count and Exadata Storage Server Software licensing costs. The following set of charts are the error-free versions of the tweeted charts.Exadata IOPS Per Host CPU
Oracle's IOPS performance citations are based on SQL-driven workloads. This can be seen in every Exadata datasheet. All Exadata datasheets for generations prior to X4 clearly stated that Exadata IOPS are limited by host CPU. Indeed, anyone who studies Oracle Database with SLOB knows how all of that works. SQL-driven IOPS requires host CPU. Sadly, however, Oracle ceased stating the fact that IOPS are host-CPU bound in Exadata as of the advent of the X4 product family. I presume Oracle stopped correctly stating the factual correlation between host CPU and SQL-driven IOPS for only the most honorable of reasons with the best of customers' intentions in mind. In case anyone should doubt my assertion that Oracle historically associated Exadata IOPS limitations with host CPU I submit the following screen shot of the pertinent section of the X3 datasheet: Now that the established relationship between SQL-driven IOPS and host CPU has been demystified, I'll offer the following chart which normalizes IOPS to host CPU core count: I think the data speaks for itself but I'll add some commentary. Where Exadata is concerned, Oracle gives no choice of host CPU to customers. If you adopt Exadata you will be forced to take the top-bin Xeon SKU with the most cores offered in the respective Intel CPU family. For example, the X3 product used 8-core Sandy Bridge Xeons. The X4 used 12-core Ivy Bridge Xeons and finally the X5 uses 18-core Haswell Xeons. In each of these CPU families there are other processors of varying core counts at the same TDP. For example, the Exadata X5 processor is the E5-2699v3 which is a 145w 18-core part. In the same line of Xeons there is also a 145w 14c part (E5-2697v3) but that is not an option to Exadata customers.
All of this is important since Oracle customers must license Oracle Database software by the host CPU core. The chart shows us that read IOPS per core from X3 to X4 improved 18% but from X4 to X5 we see only a 3.6% increase. The chart also shows that write IOPS/core peaked at X4 and has actually dropped some 9% in the X5 product. These important trends suggest Oracle's balance between storage plumbing and I/O bandwidth in the Storage Servers is not keeping up with the rate at which Intel is packing cores into the Xeon EP family of CPUs. The nugget of truth that is missing here is whether the 145w 14-core E5-2697v3 might in fact be able to improve this IOPS/core ratio. While such information would be quite beneficial to Exadata-minded customers, the 22% drop in expensive Oracle Database software in such an 18c versus 14c scenario is not beneficial to Oracle–especially not while Oracle is struggling to subsidize its languishing hardware business with gains from traditional software.Exadata IOPS Per Flash SSD
Oracle uses their own branded Flash cards in all of the X3 through X5 products. While it may seem like an implementation detail, some technicians consider it important to scrutinize how well Oracle leverages their own components in their Engineered Systems. In fact, some customers expect that adding significant amounts of important performance components, like Flash cards, should pay commensurate dividends. So, before you let your eyes drift to the following graph please be reminded that X3 and X4 products came with 4 Gen3 PCI Flash Cards per Exadata Storage Server whereas X5 is fit with 8 NVMe flash cards. And now, feel free to take a gander at how well Exadata architecture leverages a 100% increase in Flash componentry: This chart helps us visualize the facts sort of hidden in the datasheet information. From Exadata X3 to Exadata X4 Oracle improved IOPS per Flash device by just shy of 100% for both read and write IOPS. On the other hand, Exadata X5 exhibits nearly flat (5%) write IOPS and a troubling drop in read IOPS per SSD device of 22%. Now, all I can do is share the facts. I cannot change people's belief system–this I know. That said, I can't imagine how anyone can spin a per-SSD drop of 22%–especially considering the NVMe SSD product is so significantly faster than the X4 PCIe Flash card. By significant I mean the NVMe SSD used in the X5 model is rated at 260,000 random 8KB IOPS whereas the X4 PCIe Flash card was only rated at 160,000 8KB read IOPS. So X5 has double the SSDs–each of which is rated at 63% more IOPS capacity–than the X4 yet IOPS per SSD dropped 22% from the X4 to the X5. That means an architectural imbalance–somewhere. However, since Exadata is a completely closed system you are on your own to find out why doubling resources doesn't double your performance. All of that might sound like taking shots at implementation details. If that seems like the case then the next section of this article might be of interest.IOPS Per Exadata Storage Server License Cost
As I wrote earlier in this article, both Exadata X3 and Exadata X4 used PCIe Flash cards for accelerating IOPS. Each X3 and X4 Exadata Storage Server came with 12 hard disk drives and 4 PCIe Flash cards. Oracle licenses Exadata Storage Server Software by the hard drive in X3/X4 and by the NVMe SSD in the X5 EF model. To that end the license "basis" is 12 units for X3/X5 and 8 for X5. Already readers are breathing a sigh of relief because less license basis must surely mean less total license cost. Surely Not! Exadata X3 and X4 list price for Exadata Storage Server software was $10,000 per disk drive for an extended price of $120,000 per storage server. The X5 EF model, on the other hand, prices Exadata Storage Server Software at $20,000 per NVMe SSD for an extended price of $160,000 per Exadata Storage Server. With these values in mind feel free to direct your attention to the following chart which graphs the IOPS per Exadata Storage Server Software list price (IOPS/license$$). The trend in the X3 to X4 timeframe was a doubling of write IOPS/license$$ and just short of a 100% improvement in read IOPS/license$$. In stark contrast, however, the X5 EF product delivers only a 57% increase in write IOPS/license$$ and a troubling, tiny, 17% increase in read IOPS/license$$. Remember, X5 has 100% more SSD componentry when compared to the X3 and X4 products.Summary
No summary needed. At least I don't think so.About Those Faulty Tweeted Graphs
As promised, I've left links to the faulty graphs I tweeted here: Faulty / Deleted Tweet Graph of Exadata IOPS/SSD: http://wp.me/a21zc-1ek Faulty / Deleted Tweet Graph of Exadata IOPS/license$$: http://wp.me/a21zc-1ejReferences
Exadata X3-2 datasheet: http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/server-storage/engineered-systems/exadata/exadata-dbmachine-x3-2-ds-1855384.pdf Exadata X4-2 datasheet: http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/database/exadata/exadata-dbmachine-x4-2-ds-2076448.pdf Exadata X5-2 datasheet: http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/database/exadata/exadata-x5-2-ds-2406241.pdf X4 SSD info: http://www.oracle.com/us/products/servers-storage/storage/flash-storage/f80/overview/index.html X5 SSD info: http://docs.oracle.com/cd/E54943_01/html/E54944/gokdw.html#scrolltoc Engineered Systems Price List: http://www.oracle.com/us/corporate/pricing/exadata-pricelist-070598.pdf , http://www.ogs.state.ny.us/purchase/prices/7600020944pl_oracle.pdf
Filed under: oracle
Recommended Reading: Oracle Database 12c NUMA-Related Topics
This is a short post to recommend some recent blog posts by Nikolay Manchev and Bertrand Drouvot on the topic of Oracle Database 12c NUMA awareness.
Nikolay provides a very helpful overview on Linux Control Groups and how they are leveraged by Oracle Database 12c. Bertrand Drouvot carried the topic a bit further by leveraging SLOB to assess the impact of NUMA remote memory on a cached Oracle Database workload. Yes, SLOB is very useful for more than physical I/O! Good job, Bertrand!
These are good studies and good posts!
Also, one can refer to MOS 1585184.1 for more information on Control Groups and a helpful script to configure CGROUPS.
The following links will take you to Nikolay and Bertrand's writings on the topic:
Filed under: oracle
SLOB 2.2 Not Generating AWR reports? Testing Large User Counts With Think Time? Think Processes and SLOB_DEBUG.
I've gotten a lot of reports of folks branching out into SLOB 2.2 large user count testing with the SLOB 2.2 Think Time feature. I'm also getting reports that some of the same folks are not getting the resultant AWR reports one expects from a SLOB test.
If you are not getting your AWR reports there is the old issue I blogged about here (click here). That old issue was related to a Redhat bug. However, if you have addressed that problem, and still are not getting your AWR reports from large user count testing, it might be something as simple as the processes initialization parameter. After all, most folks have been accustomed to generating massive amounts of physical I/O with SLOB at low session counts.
I've made a few changes to runit.sh that will help future folks should they fall prey to the simple processes initialization parameter folly. The fixes will go into SLOB 18.104.22.168. The following is a screen shot of these fixes and what one should expect to see in such situation in the future. In the meantime, do take note of SLOB_DEBUG as mentioned in the screenshot:
Filed under: oracle
SLOB Data Loading Case Studies – Part II. SLOB 2.2 For High-Bandwidth Data Loading.
This is Part II in a series. Part I can be found here (click here). Part I in the series covered a very simple case of SLOB data loading. This installment is aimed at how one can use SLOB as a platform test for a unique blend of concurrent, high-bandwidth data loading, index creation and CBO statistics gathering.Put SLOB On The Box – Not In a Box
As a reminder, the latest SLOB kit is always available here: kevinclosson.net/slob .
Often I hear folks speak of what SLOB is useful for and the list is really short. The list is so short that a single acronym seems to cover it—IOPS, just IOPS and nothing else. SLOB is useful for so much more than just testing a platform for IOPS capability. I aim to make a few blog installments to make this point.SLOB for More Than Physical IOPS
I routinely speak about how to use SLOB to study host characteristics such as NUMA and processor threading (e.g., Simultaneous Multithreading on modern Intel Xeons). This sort of testing is possible when the sum of all SLOB schemas fit into the SGA buffer pool. When testing in this fashion, the key performance indicators (KPI) are LIOPS (Logical I/O per second) and SQL Executions per second.
This blog post is aimed at suggesting yet another manner of platform testing with SLOB–specifically concurrent bulk data loading.
The SLOB data loader (~SLOB/setup.sh) offers the ability to test non-parallel, concurrent table loading, index creation and CBO statistics collection.
In this blog post I'd like to share a "SLOB data loading recipe kit" for those who wish to test high performance SLOB data loading. The contents of the recipe will be listed below. First, I'd like to share a platform measurement I took using the data loading recipe. The host was a 2s20c40t E5-2600v2 server with 4 active 8GFC paths to an XtremIO array.
The tar archive kit I'll refer to below has the full slob.conf in it, but for now I'll just use a screen shot. Using this slob.conf and loading 512 SLOB schema users generates 1TB of data in the IOPS tablespace. Please note the attention I've drawn to the slob.conf parameters SCALE and LOAD_PARALLEL_DEGREE. The size of the aggregate of SLOB data is a product of SCALE and the number of schemas being loaded. I drew attention to LOAD_PARALLEL_DEGREE because that is the key setting in increasing the concurrency level during data loading. Most SLOB users are quite likely not accustomed to pushing concurrency up to that level. I hope this blog post makes doing so seem more worthwhile in certain cases.
The following is a screenshot of the output from the SLOB 2.2 data loader. The screenshot shows that the concurrent data loading portion of the procedure took 1,474 seconds. On the surface that would appear to be a data loading rate of approximately 2.5 TB/h. One thing to remember, however, is that SLOB data is loaded in batches controlled by LOAD_PARALLEL_DEGREE. Each batch loads LOAD_PARALLEL_DEGREE number of tables and then creates a unique indexes and performs CBO statistics gathering. So the overall "data loading" time is really data loading plus these ancillary tasks. To put that another way, it's true this is a 2.5TB data loading use case but there is more going on than just simple data loading. If this were a pure and simple data loading processing stream then the results would be much higher than 2.5TB/h. I'll likely blog about that soon.
As the screenshot shows the latest SLOB 2.2 data loader isolates the concurrent loading portion of setup.sh. In this case, the seed table (user1) was loaded in 20 seconds and then the concurrent loading portion completed in 1,474 seconds.That Sounds Like A Good Amount Of Physical I/O But What's That Look Like?
To help you visualize the physical I/O load this manner of testing places on a host, please consider the following screenshot. The screenshot shows peaks of vmstat 30-second interval reporting of approximately 2.8GB/s physical read I/O combined with about 435 MB write I/O for an average of about 3.2GB/s. This host has but 4 active 8GFC fibre channel paths to storage so that particular bottleneck is simple to solve by adding another 4 port HBA! Note also how very little host CPU is utilized to generate the 4x8GFC saturating workload. User mode cycles are but 15% and kernel mode utilization was 9%. It's true that 24% sounds like a lot, however, this is a 2s20c40t host and therefore 24% accounts for only 9.6 processor threads–or 5 cores worth of bandwidth. There may be some readers who were not aware that 5 "paltry" Ivy Bridge Xeon cores are capable of driving this much data loading!
NOTE: The SLOB method is centered on the sparse blocks. Naturally, fewer CPU cycles are required for loading data into sparse blocks.
Please note, the following vmstat shows peaks and valleys. I need to remind you that SLOB data loading consists of concurrent processing of not only data loading (Insert as Select) but also a unique index creation and CBO statistics gathering. As one would expect I/O will wane as the loading process shifts from the bulk data load to the index creation phase and then back again.
Finally, the following screenshot shows the very minimalist init.ora settings I used during this testing.
The recipe kit can be found in the following downloadable tar archive. The kit contains the necessary files one would need to reproduce this SLOB data loading time so long as the platform has sufficient performance attributes. The tar archive also has all output generated by setup.sh as the following screenshot shows:
The SLOB 2.2 data loading recipe kit can be downloaded here (click here). Please note, the screenshot immediately above shows the md5 checksum for the tar archive.Summary
This post shows how one can tune the SLOB 2.2 data loading tool (setup.sh) to load 1 terabyte of SLOB data in well under 25 minutes. I hope this is helpful information and that, perhaps, it will encourage SLOB users to consider using SLOB for more than just physical IOPS testing.
Filed under: oracle
How Do I Know I Have The Latest SLOB Kit?
This is a quick blog post to show SLOB users how to determine whether they are using the latest SLOB kit. If you visit kevinclosson.net/slob you'll see the webpage I captured in the following screenshot.
Once on the SLOB Resources page you can simply hover over the "SLOB 2.2 (Click here)" hyperlink and the bottom of your browser will show the full name of the tar archive. Alternatively you can use md5sum(1) on Linux (or md5 on Mac) to get the checksum of the tar archive you have and compare it to the md5sum I put on the web page (see the arrow).
Filed under: oracle
Announcing XtremIO Performance Engineering Lab Report: Facts About Redo Logging And NAND Flash.
I invite you to please read this report.
NAND Flash is good for a lot of things but not naturally good with write-intensive workloads. Unless, that is, skillful engineering is involved to mitigate the intrinsic weaknesses of NAND Flash in this regard. I assert EMC XtremIO architecture fills this bill.
Regardless of your current or future plans for adopting non-mechanical storage I hope this lab report will show some science behind how to determine suitability for non-mechanical storage–and NAND Flash specifically–where Oracle Database redo logging is concerned.
Please note: Not all lab tests are aimed at achieving maximum theoretical limits in all categories. This particular lab testing required sequestering precious lab gear for a 104 hour sustained test.
The goal of the testing was not to show limits but, quite to the contrary, to show a specific lack of limits in the area of Oracle Database redo logging. For a more general performance-focused paper please download this paper (click here). With that caveat aside, please see the following link for the redo logging related lab report:
Link to XtremIO Performance Engineering Lab Report (click here).
Filed under: oracle


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Rural Health Open Door Forum
The Rural Health Open Door Forum (ODF) addresses Rural Health Clinic (RHC), Critical Access Hospital (CAH) and Federally Qualified Health Center (FQHC) issues, as well as some inclusion of other questions and concerns that occur in clinical practice pertaining to other CMS payment systems that also extend into these settings. Topics that frequently arise on this forum often deal with payment & billing for services subject to Health Professional Shortage Area (HPSA) and/or Physician Shortage Area (PSA) status, cost report clarifications, classifications for & qualifications of rural provider types, and the many special provisions being implemented for improving rural health in the Medicare Modernization Act of 2003. Timely announcements and clarifications regarding important rulemaking, quality program initiatives, and other related areas are also included in the Forums.
**Update February 24, 2015 – The proposed agenda for the next Rural Health Open Door Forum is scheduled for Thursday, February 26, 2015 from 2:00pm-3:00pmET is as follows: Announcements & Updates: Opening Remarks: a. The Veterans Choice Program Update; b. New Model Announcement: CMS Oncology Care Model (OCM): OCM Website: http://innovation.cms.gov/initiatives/Oncology-Care/; OCM Inbox: firstname.lastname@example.com; c. PQRS Letters-CAHs Payment Reductions. If you wish to participate, dial 1-800-837-1935 Conference ID 12634026. Please see full participation announcement in the Downloads section below. Thank you for your continued interest in the CMS Open Door Forums.
Related Links
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- Rural Health Open Door Forum Mailing List Sign-Up - Opens in a new window
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Enforcement of FDA qualified health claims: Who's on the case?
A recent false advertising case against Gerber promises to shed light on whether competitors, consumers, the FTC, the FDA or perhaps nobody at all is on the case when it comes to challenging overstated qualified health claims.
Morgan Stanley fires data thief
The employee in question, 30 year old Galen Marsh, was able to access hundreds of thousands of accounts, most of which were not ones he managed.
Think you're not subject to HIPAA? You might want to think again
Do you think of HIPAA as a law that applies only to health care providers? If so, the good news is that you're not alone. The bad news is that you may have some work to do.
Illinois enacts Pregnancy Fairness Law, making pregnancy a protected status for all companies
Your labor and employment policies may need to change following the implementation of the Illinois Pregnancy Fairness Law.
Hotel chains gear up for the fight to block personal Wi-Fi hotspots
Open comment on the petition closed on Dec 19, and the battle for hotel Wi-Fi is looking to be a contentious arena in 2015.
Study shows executive pay not driven by company value
A new study from research firm CFA UK and the Lancaster Business School sheds some light on the topic of executive compensation, and the results were discouraging.
Alstom to pay $775 million in criminal penalties for decade-long bribery scheme
The U.S. Department of Justice knows how to go out with a bang — slapping French industrial giant Alstom with the largest criminal penalty for bribery in U.S. history.
The importance of clear and conspicuous disclosures in national advertising and social media campaigns
Assuming disclosures are required, such as to identify product limitations or additional purchase requirements, the sufficiency of the advertisements should be evaluated by analyzing whether they pass the four P's test.
Will the landslide bring it down? Health care consequences of the Executive Action on Immigration
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Blog Entry
Duke is making jumpers, which is good for Duke
Posted on: March 22, 2008 2:36 pm
BIRMINGHAM, Ala -- Duke is hitting its 3-point attempts early against West Virginia, and that's the biggest difference between the Blue Devils that nearly won the ACC regular-season title and the Blue Devils that nearly lost to Belmont in the first round of the NCAA tournament. I realize that sounds simple, but it's arguable no elite team relies on its ability to make jumpers to be successful more than Duke.
Because contrary to what a roster full of McDonald's All-Americans might suggest, Duke is not the type of team that overwhelms opponents with talent and athleticism the way a North Carolina or Kansas or Memphis does. For Duke to be great it needs to make jumpers and really defend, and anything short of that could have the Blue Devils struggling with anybody.
And by anybody, I mean Belmont.
Category: NCAAB
Tags: NCAA Tournament
Since: Mar 1, 2008
Posted on: March 22, 2008 3:36 pm
Duke is making jumpers, which is good for Duke
I don't know...Watching Duke in the second half, they have had a few three's scored on them and they look they might be against the ropes a little bit right now. Dare I say it but...could the great Blue Devils of Duke, coached by the great Coach K be...overrated?


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Last edit
Summary: tag:sandbox -> tag:Sandbox
< <journal search tag:sandbox>
> <journal search tag:Sandbox>
Sandbox gaming is currently my favorite style of Old School gaming. See RPG for a more general collection.
Johnn Four asked on Google+: "I haven't run a treasure-based XP game in a long, long time. I have also never designed one. What's the general process for planning out a treasure-based adventure?"✎
I said that I find the key to be the following:✎
Thus, if players are level 5 and want to keep fighting goblins, they will practically not gain a level anymore. If they want to level up, it's time to face those trolls or rob that castle…✎
It's harder to design the minimum number of rooms per levels for a megadungeon and the mean treasure parcels you want per level. You can do that, sure. I hate this kind of work. That's why I just design open ended dungeon (if at all): if you explore further, I'll add further! (Between sessions)✎
Tags: RPG Old School Sandbox Megadungeons
|Weighing the odds
|Take no risks
|Work together
My attempt at adding words to the venerable
reaction roll table.
I've been noticing of late that my campaign has moved into fewer dice territory and I don't know whether I should be happy about it. Today we had another session full of investigating and talking to humanoids, with maybe three or four reaction rolls. The party has main characters in the 5–9 level range, the party size somewhere between 15 and 20 characters. We used to avoid fights due to scouting, asking around, sneaking. These days we split the opposition, win some over, craft deals, build alliances and fight the rest when there is no more talking left to do. Also, my players have avoided megadungeons. Dungeon adventures are rare.
One player said at the beginning of the session that he wanted to go look for treasure. Then they all started talking about the closest crisis and how to resolve it peacefully and I interjected: "Well, one thing's for sure – there isn't any obvious ways to find treasure, here! Specially not by making peace." They all nodded and continued their plotting. And at the end of the day, no treasure, no experience points. I don't think anybody minded and next session it will all be about stone giants…
So, what now? Is it all good? Once players reach the mid levels of seven or eight, gaining levels is hard, and therefore it doesn't really matter if you gain experience points—leveling up will take forever no matter what?
I'm leery of giving experience points for other things because it gets closer to "get experience points for sitting at the table". I like the game aspect: If you want experience points, you need to do this. You (the players) need to find ways to do this, even though I (the referee) will distract you with other problems.
On top of it all I like the quandary of doing good and working for peace not increasing your power and influence. How good is the doing of good deeds if there's great reward that comes with it? Straying into philosophy and ethics, I know. Having no immediate rewards gives meaning to sacrifice and pain. If in-game altruism is out-of-game selfishness, then it won't work for me.
I think I'll uphold the rule that gold pieces spent result in experience points gained. Let there be temptation for evil deeds: At this level, attacking neighboring domains and loot palaces is the surest way to power. This might require the defeating of armies but it can also be achieved by sneaky means. There's also a heroic variant, picking fights with beholders and giants, looting their lairs. This is fraught with more danger on a personal level. Let there be save or die situations, level drain and other catastrophic consequences.
Also note Courtney Campbell's post, On Advancement Mechanics, Experience. There, he notes: "Basically this results in role-playing and planning heavy sessions with a large player buy-in and strong reinforcement for creative and intelligent play." (in Driving Player Behavior – Old School)
Even though I provide experience points for gold, Courtney later writes: "[…] but without an objective metric, it has moved too far away from 'game' for me and too close to 'unstructured play'." (in But what about my Character exploration role-playing feel-goodery?!) Strangely, my game still seems to be heading in this direction. All I have at the moment is the reaction roll. Courtney, on the other hand, has a $13 PDF, On the Non Player Character (also lots of posts on his blog). Back when it was released, I read a longer review by Brendan S. and decided that I was probably not going to need it and so I didn't buy the book. Now I'm no longer sure.
After all, the reaction roll is Why B/X Is My Favorite #10, says P. Armstrong. More in Reaction Rolls - My favorite sub-system.
Back in March, I wrote on Google+:
The last session of my campaign was all about preparing for a party of high elves and trying to identify one dude and getting him to join the cause of the party, or kill him, or make a third party take care of him using some blackmailing (which is how it turned out). Three hours and all we rolled was reaction rolls! Everybody cheered when we discovered that the new player who had brought a 1st level cleric to the table had also rolled an 18 for Charisma. 😊
I guess that unless I start thinking about the kind of adventure hooks I provide in my sandbox, this kind of player diplomacy—sessions dominated by talking and the occasional reaction roll—will become more prevalent. Do I want to add Courtney's minigame or do I want to engineer adventures that lead back to fighting?
Just recently, I looked over my reaction roll table and started thinking about adding some more words to help me improvise better. Add more words. More suggestive words. I also wondered whether I could turn it into a series of Moves, much like my thoughts on research and chases. Hm.
Feel free to comment here or on Google+.
A commenter pointed me to this blog post: The relative roles of conflict and violence (Fictive Fantasies).
Tags: RPG Old School Sandbox
Recently, Yora asked for Sandbox logs. Those are tricky to provide. After all, if you're looking for advice on how to run a game, the session report is filled with useless in-game stuff that nobody but the players will read (if at all).
What I've done instead is collect blog posts where I think I have some advice backed up by anecdotes from my game.
Tags: Sandbox Old School RPG
OK, time to give my entry for the One Page Dungeon Contest 2014 a spin!✎✎
The entry grew out of my Recovering from a lame session blog post. You can get the SVG sources from my GitHub account. I've used the Noticia Text font by JM Solé (downloaded it from Google Fonts – click Add "Noticia Text" to your collection, then click the ⬇ down arrow, and choose to download the zip file). I've used Jez Gordon's DungeonFu to create the three little maps.✎
Right, got my 3d6 and I'm ready to roll.✎
Inn: Delikatessen. Remember the movie? Clearly something fishy is going on in this red-orange inn. Rumors of cannibalism, I say!✎
Name: Gorknok. Sounds like an orc to me. Too obvious? A redcap disguised as a gnome. He calls himself "Gorki", of course.✎
The faction leaders, traits, goals:✎
Looks like an all female cast to me, and all the positive traits. Androgynous Ali in her spider webs, white Sereine, lost in thought, and Patra the Good, the good … fighter? I'm thinking a strong, bulky woman. No nonsense. Thinking of the magic item with the Set connection, I'm going to say Sereina is a protegé of Set, maybe the campaign can find inspiration from the Legend of the White Snake? I guess Sereina is in love with a man that is currently imprisoned somewhere. A potential lead for where the campaign might go: "My husband has left to study a the Seven Harmonies monastery and not returned…"✎
The goals are weird. I guess Silent Sereina is the active one. She really wants back her book. I guess the two others are on the defensive. The first scene should be agents of Set attacking minions of Spider Ali, at Delikatessen, where the party is meeting up.✎
Who else is there? Rolling for a conspicuous person… Ælvig, a singing huldra looking for a man (HD 3). Another woman! She has a fox tail, but hides it. Of course the party members will spot it. Mentioning it, however, is a grave insult. Remember that a huldra is somehow hollow inside and lined with bark, open at the back. It's weird, and terrible. If any of the players is interested in the weirdness of faerie love and faerie courtship, this would be an opportunity.✎
Let's look at the magic items. I get:✎
Clearly, the book is not amongst the magic items! How about the The Investigation into the True Names and Habits of the Lords of Air. The person with the ring of djinn mastery – Ali — borrowed the book because it was necessary to learn more about the ring. A close encounter with a djinn resulted in great damage to the book. Spider Ali thinks its disgraceful to return this book and sent ample gold instead. Sereina feels there is more to this and decides to up the ante. So, Spider Ali has the ring.✎
Patra the fighter owns the elven sword and realizes that it might grant access to elven lands. But this would require some elves. Make a not for later. If one of the players is interested in elves, the campaign could go there. We need some elves nearby! The elves of Red Acorn forest are at war with pig men. Will you join them, hoping to win their favor?✎
That leaves the bane cards. They are in the hands of the redcap Gorki. Should the players spend too much time at the inn, the redcap will use the cards on one of the characters when they're alone and kill them, and prepare a cannibal feast for any who would join him. Uncovering these shape shifting recap is going to be a side quest.✎
I guess we're done? Get a monster book and write down some stats? As for maps, I'm not going to use the tower twice.✎
Spider Ali keeps tamed war spiders instead of animated objects in her tower. Let's say he has has the spell charm spider instead of charm object. The spiders' poison is not lethal. It paralyzes victims for an hour. Oh, and give Ali a web spell instead of read thoughts.✎
Silent Sereina is running a little temple and has ten followers and two acolytes (C1) with light spells they'll use to blind foes. Patra the Good has taken up residence in an old bakery and running a little protection racket in order to finance her visit to the Red Acorn forest. You'll have to bring gifts for the elven lords, right?✎
The thing took me a bit less than an hour. What do you think? A useful tool? Not efficient enough? It's probably faster if you don't spend time googling for images and writing it up as a blog post. 😏✎
Comments on 2014-04-28 The Village
Last edit
Summary: Whoops! Fixed. Thanks for the heads up.
> ----
> Whoops! Fixed. Thanks for the heads up.
> -- AlexSchroeder 2014-12-14 19:40 UTC
Paul Gorman I'm getting a 404 on the Download PDF link.✎
– Paul Gorman 2014-12-14 16:47 UTC✎
Whoops! Fixed. Thanks for the heads up.✎
– AlexSchroeder 2014-12-14 19:40 UTC✎
I recently read a Google+ post by Dallas M where he says that his game didn't go well. He suspects too many beers and considers nuking the game. Here's what I said:
It happens. I'm not sure what the exact fail moment was, so I'm just going to assume "players didn't know where to go and had no ideas so they got drunk and picked on each other and nothing interesting happened". I'm also assuming low level characters in a typical starting village in a frontier region. My basic advice is "send ninjas" except I'm going to be more specific than that. 😃
In order to get the campaign back on track, I'd prepare three mini-adventures consisting each of an interesting NPC boss, something they want (an item, a service, protection), and their minions. Basically one of these groups is going to attack the players, another group will seek the help of players, the other is there as you backup if one or the other needs help, or an additional complication. Trying to put the pressure on players, force them to pick allies and enemies, run it, and after the session you can build on that: add allies in need of help, enemy organizations grow, NPCs hide in strongholds (small dungeons).
Three sections for your notebook or for an index card each:
Make sure you use a reaction roll to determine how these NPCs react to players and surprise yourself as well as your players with unexpected results.✎
Minions need to be prepared. Start with one or two dozen minions. Thieves, kobolds, lobster men, hooligans (fighters without armor), mercenaries (fighters with armor). Split these up into groups of random size. Some will be easy to overpower, some the party will have to avoid, outsmart, split up, and so on. Being able to recognize bad odds and being able to do something about it allows players to use strategy, to decide when to pick fights. When in a fight, make sure you use morale checks in order to provide your players with surrenders, traitors, opportunities to show mercy or cruelty.✎
Locations need to be prepared. Start with very small maps. This is where you should have treasure, tricks, traps, and the NPC. Make sure you use reaction rolls if the party decides to parley in order to surprise yourself and your players!✎
At first, the sandbox elements happens between sessions. Players only get to choose between three groups that are actively engaging with the players. Player reactions determine where the sandbox will grow between sessions. We just need to make sure is that players always have a handful of things to do, always a choice to make.✎
Time passes and I decided to try and make it into an entry for the One Page Dungeon Contest 2014! You can get the SVG sources from my GitHub account or download the PDF. I've used the Noticia Text font by JM Solé (downloaded it from Google Fonts – click Add "Noticia Text" to your collection, then click the ⬇ down arrow, and choose to download the zip file). I've used Jez Gordon's DungeonFu to create the three little maps.✎
Recently I was responding to a Google+ post by Gavin. He was putting together a list of potential goals for the wizards in his campaign because he felt that players tend to shy away from doing cool stuff.
I started thinking about the cool things that have happened in my campaign, and the cool things I wanted to happen in my campaign but which didn't.
First, the failures. These were goals I had hoped players would set themselves but they did not.
In my games, I've been trying to let players find books on particular topics. I never went all out and maintained a page on the campaign wiki with the actual books they own. My idea was that the books would allow them to research spells related to these topics (one of my house rules says you can only learn spells from other casters, so this sort of research would be the only alternative). I'd say that "building a library" didn't happen.
Another thing I had hoped for was that players would actively seek out wizards with particular spells but as it turns out, I have not been placing a lot of rumors about particular spells. All the casters they befriended they befriended because of an adventure they were having and they happened to meet and connect on some level. I'd say that "meeting and befriending other casters" went well, but "actively seeking out other casters and befriending them" didn't happen.
There have been successes as well, though.
One character is sponsoring four sages (and plans to hire more, each costing about 2000 gold pieces per month; usually one week passes in-game for every session). For one, money spent generates XP (one of my house rules). At the same time, every sage writes a little something about the setting. It's great for me to provide rumors and adventure hooks. It also allows me to add new spells to the campaign. I'd say "hiring sages" has been a success. I think this worked because one of my players is interested in learning new things about the setting, and because of the rules that requires players to think of ways to spend their goal.
The need to spend money has resulted in a lot of public buildings in the domain of my players. We use An Echo Resounding for the domain game, so the gold spent doesn't actually grant mechanical benefits. But it generates a bit of setting: temples are built (and I can have pirates rob them and kidnap the priests), an ivory tower has been built for the sages, a hospital was built (and taken over by demon worshippers), a bath house has been built (and more are being planned as the backbone of a spy network), a unicorn station has been sponsored, a tavern has been built… "building infrastructure" and contributing to the setting has been a success powered by the rule requiring the expenditure of gold, a price list with various buildings on it, me listing the buildings on the campaign wiki for all to see (seeing the changes to the environment and "leaving your mark"), and events sometimes referring back to things built by players add to a sense of ownership.
Another thing I had was a "master of anatomy" who could graft extra stuff on to characters. One of my players got a replacement arm and a replacement leg (he had lost limbs due to the Death and Dismemberment table I have been using), but the new limbs were gray and shriveled. I just don't feel like punishing players for missing limbs. If pirates can have a wooden leg, if captain Hook can have a missing arm, why can't player characters? If you're missing both legs or both arms, it's time to quit. I guess "body modification" has been a success.
The same player also got two dragon wings, which required an auxiliary brain to control them (so now he's a cone head) and the extra brain can act independently in an emergency (although I never remember to roll for it). The Frankenstein look sometimes provokes an explanation for negative results on the reaction rolls, but there is no Charisma penalty. I guess this worked because it was perceived as useful, it was cool and it felt special even if it didn't provide any real benefit (except for flight, which hasn't been an issue). I think I've managed to balance benefits and drawbacks on this issue. Great!✎
Another thing that happened was that the players befriended a devil worshiper who proceeded to invite them to a succubus party (a ritual, not a spell). I think this happened organically. I rolled up a random encounter with some hobgoblins carrying 5000 gold pieces. I decided that this was tax. The players defeated the hobgoblins and took the gold. They arrived at a castle and gifted the gold to the wizard, saying that they want to throw a huge party, not knowing that he is a devil worshipper. Excited, he agrees… This was unplanned, but "have fun with devil worshippers" definitely worked. I think the key was to have some lame idea and not being afraid to turn it up to eleventy one.✎
The key to pushing my campaign to eleven is to use every idea as soon as possible. Do not save good ideas for later! Use them now. You will have more good ideas in the future.✎
Another thing is that you need to take something the players are doing and amplify it. They want to throw a party? Think of something crazy and let it happen. They want to build something? Think of something crazy to happen to the building, a crazy person to visit the building, something, anything. Let there be cool consequences.✎
Being generous with cool stuff works even if you fear for game balance. Avoid mechanical consequences for characters, if you want to. That doesn't mean it cannot be crazy, something for your players to talk about in the future, something the non-players characters talk about in-game!✎
Always keep adding new plot lines. Minor things. Provide your players with three to five options at the end of the session and ask them what they want to do next. Prepare that. Having players choose allows them to influence where the story is going. My campaign is still about reviving a dead god because a long time ago, one of the players decided that his character was interested in all things elven. When I let it be known that they had a dead god, the player wanted to learn more. This is great. I keep adding stuff where ever the players start looking. To them, the campaign is infinitely deep. It keeps growing where they are most interested because it grows where ever their characters actually do something. Sure, they don't always follow the main plot and that's OK.✎
Some of the best moments happen when the older players are trying to explain past events to new players. They sound like kids. It's convoluted and confusing and oral history at its best.✎
I'm not sure these notes will make it easy for you to turn your campaign to eleven. If I had to list things to avoid, I'd say this: Don't be too cautious. You will be able to fix things later. Don't prepare too much, don't have too much seting detail or you'll be afraid to change it. You'll be afraid of rulers getting killed, shops getting burnt, characters having to leave towns, the campaign taking surprising directions.✎
Update: On Normalizing the Fantastic is similar.✎
We stopped play midway through year 510 of The Great Pendragon Campaign after a devastating battle in May and ended the campaign. Too much railroading, too many sudden death moments, too many fiddly rules that slow us down but don't further our enjoyment, too much leafing back and forth in the book… I'm both sad and relieved, in a way.
The discussion was kicked off by one player who felt like quitting the campaign and explaining all the things he didn't like. I agreed with a lot of it. I had written about it myself. Another player said he'd like to play on weekdays instead of weekends. Another player was missing. My wife wanted to continue playing but was suffering because of a recent string of character deaths. The last player was new and said he had been unable "to get into it" in the three sessions he had played with us.
An astonishing thing happened during the discussion. My wife and the player who had started the discussion are both players in my mashup game—the old school sandbox game using Labyrinth Lord, the Wilderlands of High Fantasy, Spelljammer, Planescape, and An Echo Resounding. They started comparing the Pendragon campaign to this other game. The other game is crazy ("I'd describe the atmosphere as killer clowns") but it has more player agency. Pendragon is more about how you deal with the events around you. My mashup game is about the things you do. I rarely need to pick up a rulebook and search for a rule. The NPCs are all strange and memorable. No king Leodegrance, Sir Cador, Centurion King and other faceless dudes that you haven't interacted with. Pendragon not only suffers from an inflation of NPC names that players haven't interacted with, it also encourages me to add names, exacerbating the problem. What are the names of the sons of Duke Ulfius? Who cares? I still feel compelled to look it up instead of making it up.
In a way, the big campaign provides a railroad that affects me as well. I am inspired by the campaign, I steer the players towards the rails, I entice them to stay on the rails, they are always present. Like those pesky Paizo Adventure Paths, they shackle my imagination and stiffle my improvisation.
So, where as I am sad to see it go, I am also happy to see how my players love the classic D&D sandbox and validate the choices I made for that mashup game.
Tags: RPG Pendragon Old School Sandbox
I've been enjoying a few days off and I'm having the hardest time not planning ahead like crazy. Plans change, the players decide where they will go next… and I prefer reading a book to preparing stuff that will never get used. Sometimes it's hard to adhere to my own advice. The next adventure is good enough!
Ian Borchardt recently wrote a lengthy comment in reply to Andy Standfield's Google+ post about determining CR/EL for monsters. He allowed me to repost it and all he asked for was me mentioning "that it was a G+ comment and therefore not a literary masterpiece – more a stream of thought." Slightly edited.
When creating a wilderness encounter table for a sandbox game don't bother with the details. Work out the likelihood of an encounter with creatures that feels right to you and use common sense in the application of the results. Encounters shouldn't be in "balance" with the party.
Remember that in a sandbox game, an encounter does not actually mean that the characters have an immediate direct combat encounter with the creature. For example, a party of 1st level characters are travelling through the wilderness and you roll up an ancient blue dragon. Instant party death. right?
No. Have them encounter the dragon on the wing, hunting food. The party won't have enough meat, magic or gold to be worth the dragon's bother so it will probably keep on the wing. Meanwhile the characters have definitely encountered a blue dragon and can relish the magnificence of the fantasy encounter (or more likely the terror as they huddle under a tree hoping the dragon hasn't seen them ["Ha!"] and won't eat them).
But what's the benefit of this encounter that wasn't, you may ask? I'm glad you did! The party now know that there might be a lair of ancient blue dragon somewhere in the vicinity (and by that I mean easy flight range) if you are in the wilderness. They might remember this for later, once they are powerful enough to feel they have a good chance of adding dragon slayer to their resume. But in the meantime the presence of the dragon is going to colour the region through which they are travelling. For example any herds in settlements are going to be small to avoid being a tempting target. Towns might even have an arrangement with the dragon were suitable "princesses" are offered up for sacrifice – and they might actually prefer visitors to one of their own daughters. The dragon might even need a set of human hands and be looking for a set of adventurers to do a task for them. Whilst a threat works everyone knows adventurers are mercenaries and will do anything (even kill) for filthy coin.
Ed Simbalist (one of the authors of Chivalry & Sorcery) wrote an excellent essay back in the day (1978): Monsters are people too which really is recommended reading [C&S Companion – hard to get though now]. Monsters aren't there as adventurer bait, but usually doing their own thing. Role-playing should be important for the monsters as well. For example, the party is at camp roasting a deer they shot earlier in the day, when they "encounter" a goblin patrol. Certainly this could devolve into a fight but what if the reaction roll is friendly? Perhaps the goblin patrol is actually lost and their leader doesn't want to admit it (but pretty soon his troops, tired and hungry, are going to revolt). And that roasting leg of deer smells sooooo good. Perhaps they can bluff a tax for travelling through "their" lands. Except the people around the fire seem to be rather hard-bitten warriors rather than peasants and are not likely to be particularly surprised or overawed by a mosquito-bitten goblin troop? You now have a role-playing opportunity – never underestimate the benefit of intelligence (in the scouting rather than goblin's lack of sense) and making friends. Even with goblins.
That's all up to how you apply the encounters you generate. But there is still the important part of the players reaction to encounters. And that is to use reason. The sandbox game, unlike the heroic story-path game, isn't there in the world for them. It's a living breathing world without them, and the encounter table should realise that. At times they are going to encounter stuff that is too tough for them to beat, in which case running away is an important alternative that often seems to be forgotten by a lot of modern players that think the world must be all about them.
Special small regional encounter tables are a good thing too, although they often develop in play – for example one region I kept on rolling dwarves, which lead to the fact that there was a big mining boom going on here, so the regional chart got created with a lot of dwarvish and mining aspects. Including an encounter of gold nuggets in a creek bed. As our different encounter tables for civilised, frontier, and wilderness areas. And don't forget all the non-monster encounters. For example, encountering an army off to war leads to "you have been recruited" or even "your horses have been recruited – here's a chit for them (accompanied by the soldiers laughter as they lead your food and horses away)". And affect the surrounding game. Good sets of encounter tables drive a sandbox game by presenting stuff. Also a good idea is to have a set of unique encounters on file cards. This could be stuff like villages, big monsters in lairs, and the like. When a "unique" encounter is rolled, shuffle and pull a card. That encounter is now there. Replace and top up these file cards occasionally, and remember to keep track of where the used ones were used.
Good stuff.
My own take on wilderness encounters can be found in my Swiss Referee Style Manual.
Tags: RPG Old School Sandbox
Recently, Gregor Vuga talked about the West Marches campaign model on Google+. He summarized the model as "one safe home base + lots of very dangerous wilderness" and wondered about adding cities that are "interesting places where there might be a lot to do".
Here's what I wrote, slightly edited.
I run a similar campaign. There are some small differences in how the thing is organized, but in terms of using many cities and other safe havens, I have had no problems. I treat settlements either as safe places and thus as not very interesting with the exception of one, two or three important non-player characters. Or settlements are treated as a simple adventure locale with a handful of "rooms" (one, two or three buildings) with a particular enemy and their minions need to be fought (were rats, cultists, evil tax collectors). The key is that once the adventure is over, the settlement returns to safe place status. There's never an invitation to spend more time in a settlement. Most adventure and all the treasure is found outside.
I think this is still compatible with the West Marches campaign model because it depends on what you want from it. I want to encourage players to choose a goal or a destination, and go there, and do something. The original West Marches did this by saying the starting village was boring and safe. If the city is teeming with intrigue, then adventure comes to the players. They did not "choose" this adventure. So that's what I want to avoid. If I treat other cities either like the starting village (boring, safe) or like a dungeon (remote, dangerous), then I am still achieving my goal. Whether you still want to call this "West Marches style" I don't know.
If I wanted to add cities as interesting places to my campaign, I'd make sure that cities are generally boring and safe but they contain adventuring locales. In my game, for example, the players visited Sigil. It's a big city, it has factions, it has adventuring locales, and so on. Not a problem, as far as I am concerned. Sigil wasn't their home base. Players came to Sigil in order to achieve something. They did that, navigated the dangers, visited interesting locales, got involved in intrigue, and left again. Had the players decided to stay in Sigil, perhaps that would have made things more problematic. Will the faction war catch up with them? Will they still get to choose their adventures, session after session? I tried to mitigate this by declaring their guest house to be safe and boring, for example.
I guess what happens is that I just redefine the sandbox. It's like a fractal. Once you get to Sigil, the thing is self similar: a safe place, adventuring locales, more dangerous when farther away, and so on. Basically "one safe home base + lots of very dangerous wilderness".
Tags: RPG Old School Sandbox


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Booked for 2 late afternoon and both had the bouillabaisse. Restaurant chosen because it is part of the Bouillabaisse Charter and it was delicious.
Highly recommended especially if you are not going to Marseille.
Mr Doudi served us a great bouliabaisse. We also had some fantastic gillardeau oysters and langoustine.
A great lunch experience after the cruise around the calanques.
Firstly this is located right next to the pier and has a lively atmosphere. The staff is very accommodating and nice even though we speak limited French. The owner even gave us extra soup for our dish bouillabaisse. The seafood is very fresh. We had amazing oysters, langoustine and fish soup. Will definitely come back next time!
Great location, like many of the restaurants on the water front in Cassis. We chose this one at random and wished we had not. Waiters are extremely rude and over familiar with the two ladies in our party, one of whom was French and so it was not just a cultural thing. Food was disappointing considering the fish should be...
Hands down the best soupe de poisson I have ever had in a restaurant (not ever because my mother makes the best)! Plus the service is really professional and nice and everyone has a smile on their face. You never know what you are going to get when you go to these very touristy towns but I assure you, this...
There are a very large number of nice looking restaurants overlooking the port in Cassis. The menus are very similar, as are the prices: all rather high, which is not surprising. We found Chez Gilbert welcoming, the food better than most of the others we tried. We sat outside, but the decor of the interior is smart and modern and...
Three unusually large and over cooked Rouget fillets that tasted of nothing. I expected the small Briney iodine tasty ones of old. They must be farming rougets now!
Our hotel recommended Chez Gilbert & we were not disappointed by our choice. Nice location on the harbour & comfortable seating arrangements. We chose the €29 menu with fish soup & melon + parma ham as starters followed by the Dorade & then exquisite desserts. The service was endearingly pleasant & the whole ambience of the restaurant excellent. My only...
Nice atmosphere, very effective staff. Received at first amuse bush that was not very tasty. As first plate eat langoustine and salmon tartar. Both portions vere excellent. Tha main dish duck was very good, but the st Jacques was disappointing, not extracting from it the wander full tastes it usually offers. The deserts were also mediocre
Broth at the bottom of the plates, fish butchered behind the scenes, pour broth late, unhurried service, higher price tag, in general league bouillabaisse is felt in many ways :)
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May I please make a reservation for dinner on Thursday, 11 June, for 2 persons at 8h00?
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