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Sand box requires MORE PREP; here is why 1) it’s a living world 2) there are factions and realms that have their own agenda and machinations 3) you have to set a specific goal or agenda that the players want to “do” in the campaign. This is ABSOLUTELY CRITICAL 4) you have to use consequences and have them noted and referenced often to use when things get a bit “well shit now what” this will happen no matter what you prepare or set up
@@mkklassicmk3895 that’s the beauty of this game. People can do it the way they want. If it works for you that’s great. But for someone that has never done them it isn’t bad advice and mirrors a lot of what Luke said
"Never present a client with an option you can't live with." I learned this in web design. If you have two designs you like and you throw in some rushed third design to pad things out, then sure enough, that's what they pick. Every damn time.
@theDMLair always blows my mind hearing this sort of thing from other DMs. Like they ask all the time in DM groups "I gave my players this item, what does it do?" or "I told my players X, Y, and Z about my setting... how do I make what I said make sense?" 😅
If they aren't following your plot hook then you aren't setting the hook deeply enough. Unless they are "that guy" and deliberately ignore it just because it's a plot hook.
@@blanesherman5434 Accepting the hook and being interested in the hook are two very different things. Unless they are changing their mind just because they think they have a better plan.
When starting a sandbox campaign I ALWAYS stress to the players to let me know what they are planing to do so I can do the needed work to make the game better for them. Open communication so important.
Running a sandbox right now, the trickiest thing is to know where to end the session. You need them to end with a plan for the next session, or you don't know what to prepare. For the rest, I don't know why people think sandbox games don't have a plot. They can have a lot of plot, you just don't know what direction the plot is going. That's dependant on the players.
That is why I call it a playground instead of a sandbox. Just design the interesting stuff well ahead of time instead of planning for the next session. Also, having some one-shots that are easily tailored to any situation can help with unexpected changes in direction.
Personally I end my sandbox games in following situations, depending on how the day's sessions goes : - if players had a harsh session to accomplish a goal : right after this accomplishment, I let it end in a burst of joy (+ 0~2 actions to sense their intentions for the next game) - if the day's session was "neutral" (= not harsh nor easy for the players, just the typical game) : when they enter a new field of the game (new place, new mechanic, unlock content locked before) to let them wonder about how the new element will unfold and let them think about the next content (and hear theirs theories, always a good inspiration for prep) - if the day's sessions runs smoothly and players were on an highway to their goals all along : I gave them hits of future obstacles or underlying troubles they can encounter later to let them wonder how to overcome them and let them prep between sessions (my least favourite type of session/end) - if the day's sessions was a little bit boring (it happens, don't be ashamed ! For example when you or your players are not well/not in the correct mood) : I bring a bit of chaos to reshuffle cards (for example I've got NPC that players don't understand quite well, even if I know the explanation, and maybe players will discover it in the future, rught now those are a little bit meta for my players as they don't get the rules behind their occurrences. Thos NPC takes the current situation and mix it up in a way that shambles the game -> put safe characters in difficulty, help those in danger, ...), this often brings some fresh air to end the session on a nice touch
I just usually let the players decide when to end the session. Often times, they leave one by one and they decide we should call it when nearly half of the players have left
One tip I can give is try and end the session on completing the task but before turning it in to the quest giver. This allows players to have a start in the following session while also planning a plot hook to show up right after they turn in the quest.
@@hardcorenacho1020 Thanks for the tip, but that's the opposite of what I'm finding so far. If a current 'adventure' is ending, I need my players to have 30 minutes of time at the end of the session to discuss what they want to do next and make their plans. Basically, I lay out loads of different tracks and invite them to lay tracks of their own. But I need them to railroad themselves a little bit before the end of a session so I don't have to lay down the whole rail network before the next session.
I run a lot of sandbox-ey games, and honestly for the "howw to start" problem, I've settled on having them start already on the first adventure -- which usually, nvolves them travellning to a place together, and running into trouble along the way. It also works really well as a way to give the group a tutorial level to establsh any house rules, stylistic stuff, try out their character abilities, get some world familiarity from the NPCs they meet along the way, etc. Once they get through the tutorial advenure, they have a bit of a sense of orientation in the world, know at least a couple NPCs, are in a location, and usually have come across a couple plot hooks or potential next adventures along the way. And then the sandboxy part actually starts. After the first adventure, which usually only lasts one or two sessions.
I have successfully started campaign with a couple of small 1-session published scenarios strung together, while dropping in the bigger plot hooks. Using character-creation motivations can work very well.
This is my approach, sort of, for the campaign I'm working on. I have prepped a couple of introductory adventures, and will add more, which are designed to give the players a feel for the world. These adventures address different campaign styles and I give players the choice of style. If they want epic fantasy then Intro A. If the want skulduggery then Intro B etc. The world was originally designed with BRP/Runequest in mind and so offers all of the background society types that the system uses in chargen. I dropped BRP, but the social systems are still there: Civilized, Nomad etc
That's fair. I respect that approach, but mine is usually, "welcome to this strange city. Someone approaches, are they here to manipulate, or assist genuinely?" Often it seems that the suspicion and work to earn an ally in those first days does the trick.
Things I’ve done in “sandboxes” include having the world map in mind and including NPC and villains in set points, nothing big, just “a dragon here” or “ohh lich tower” there. Maybe they get there, maybe they don’t. Open with about 3-4 sessions worth of the “inciting incident “ in my open world the first thing that happened was finding a half elf girl who’d been kidnapped by demons and told that they need to get her home. And of course, make the world feel alive. If they do X, then Y happens. (Two citystates in a cold war, both with pretty awful leaders, taking one down causes the Cold War to go hot)
I run an open world for my players. They specifically requested it, and didn't want to do some big story line. It's working great so far. They're creating their own stories, mostly by traveling from arena to arena, getting kicked out of cities, and being general menaces. It's relaxed and fun. Now I do have to prepare a bunch of stuff for the area, which only about 50% get used, but my players feel relaxed and happy to just muddle about. It certainly doesn't work for everyone, but for this group, it's been good.
@genericcatgirl exactly! That mysterious castle in the distance? Well now it's in the swamp. Oh they still didn't go to it? Cool. Now it's overlooking a city.
as an old time dnd player and GM, you can absolutely run a game without a story through line. this gets into the whole debate of role playing vs roll playing. both have advantages and disadvantages. I am currently of the opinion that todays market is skewed heavily towards role playing, and I find myself craving a good roll playing experience.
I agree with this. I actually had two games that I both enjoyed a lot neither of which had a large overall story. The "story" of the first one was that we were an adventuring party that joined an adventurers guild. Our DM would basically prepare a couple of Oneshots, and then they would appear on the guilds quest board. Of course those wouldn't always be as simple as they sounded, sometimes it was literally just "Our town regularly gets attacked by orcs. Make it stop", sometimes it would be a "I feel like something is wrong in my city, could you please check this out for me?". Usually we'd have like 3-4 listings on the board, and each session we picked one, tried to clear it, sometimes it would become 2 or 3 sesions for the bigger ones, and then we'd go back. And honestly the only "overarching plot" was that doing enough quests would get us a higher rank to allow us to take on more dangerous (and in turn well paying) quests. That was partly born out of the situation that we were all in college at the time and didn't always have time, so this allowed people to easily skip a session if they couldn't make it that week because then we'd just roleplay it as "they needed some time off and would skip the next quest" and that was it. The current one I'm playing with is kind of loosely based on the idea of One Piece, we're just pirates sailing the sea seeing what kinda adventures we can get into, and here too we don't really have an overarching plot. We arrive at an island, have an adventure there, then leave the island. It's more open ended, we are able to return to any island we have been to and sometimes we do that because they have stores that sells things we need only on that island or because our shipwright is on that island and our weapon smith is on that other island and sometiems when we return we find out that something there happened and we get a "follow up quest" of sorts. But there is also no real overarching plot there. And both of these are perfectly fun settings that we enjoyed a lot.
I ran a sandbox game that was based on trading and kingdom building. It went from level 1 up through level 12. It was the longest campaign I ever ran. There was plenty of dungeon delving and I relied heavily on adventure modules to gives some semblance of structure.
1. Determine the campaign structure (clear, obvious plot hooks or points of interest, hex crawl?, a base or travelling, tone) 2. Create a home base or originating location (this includes NPCs) 3. Develop the surrounding world (map of the locale, filled with places to explore, factions that aren’t static and also take actions) 4. Create some plot hooks 1. Clearly explains what the problem is 2. Motivates the players 3. Tells where or how to get started 5. Create some adventures (schroedinger scenarios and specific points of interest with adventures from the beginning, with options) 6. Track time 7. Develop (or use) a random encounter table 8. Be prepared to improvise
3:07 Plug for Lairs & Legends 4:20 What does it take to RUN a Sandbox? 6:16 Determine the Campaign Structure 7:54 Create the Home Base/Originating Location 9:56 Develop the surrounding world (11:05 Things to consider) 12:46 Create some Plot Hooks (13:52 What GOOD Hooks do + Ideal amount. 15:06 Pitfall) 16:55 Create some Adventures (19:08 Post-tangent; Progression. 20:54 Consequences) 22:05 Tracking *Time* 22:48 PLAN some Random Encounter/Point of Interest Tables (Exotic content; ranging from occurrences to combat) 23:37 Prepare yourself to IMPROVISE
First off this was a great sandbox video. It gives most game masters the basics of how to get started. I use many of these points and your video sets them out perfectly. I find sandbox games the best for players to feel they have freedom to do what they want when they want to do it. I have an entire world mapped out and have done a lot of prep work for the “major” areas. And when players head to an area without even an outline of how it is I then go to your steps that allow me to set it up. I usually have multiple adventures pre-prepped so I can throw them in the way that are short and allow me to flesh out the areas they ultimately want to get to and then I have a prepped area of my world waiting for them. Again great video. Anyone wanting to do a sandbox style game should see this
In one campaign I ran, they players all said they wanted a sandbox game. So I gave them a sandbox game. They couldn't figure out what they wanted to do. So I ditched the sandbox and just ran a normal campaign without telling them. They didn't notice.
Sometimes just knowing they CAN choose to do something else is enough. The call of adventure finding them and giving them a kick in the pants is good if they're listless!
My world is very sandbox-y, but once they find a specific quest that interests them the game tends to turn into a normal campaign in the sense that there's a plot to follow, but the players are doing it because they want to since they decided to do the quest in the first place.
Thanks for the video! I guess I run "sandbox" games, in a manner of speaking. Rather than come up with a story, I create dozens of significant NPC's/NPC groups and give each of them motivations and goals. I break down each of their goals by steps and determine how long each step will take. I then keep a game calendar spreadsheet with what each NPC has accomplished towards that goal by day. The party is also tracked on the same sheet. When the party helps or hinders one of the NPC's that gets noted and I change the steps the NPC now needs to take towards their goal (or if the party killed them and their progression ends there). The NPC's sometime have conflicts between themselves and outcomes that affect each other that the party never sees, except possibly the aftermath. It's fairly easy to start these games, as you can drop the party into an existing conflict between two entities. The downsides to this method is that sometimes it's not obvious what the party needs to do sometimes, especially deeper into the campaign where the party may be following multiple plot threads at once. One benefit is integrated world building. The players always have the feeling of a living works that exists independent of their characters, because it essentially does.
I have been running open world for a while. Some simple tips I have are 1. Give your players a map, let them see the world, and plop down unlabeled interesting things on it, even if it would not make sense as an in universe map. Plan either multiple villains or villain lieutenants and have them act simultaneously in different places. It makes sure something is happening everywhere while avoiding the quantum ogre. Otherwise, set clear boundaries, talk to your players about where they wanna go, and let the world develop deeper as you go.
“Bwahahaha… Sand box means planning nothing? Bahahaha. Laddie, you have to plan for EVERYTHING in a Sandbox.” Pre full listen- Sandbox is not the correct term. Emergent Storytelling.
@@mikeb.1705depends if when you say storytelling you think of one person or the collaborative. Seeing it’s a group activity my mind leans towards collaborative. One person you’re not a GM you’re an author.
@@relicapex I understand what you are saying. However, I don't believe the term "storytelling" is quite the right word for an RPG that uses dice to determine a large number of outcomes. To me, the phrase "collaborative storytelling" sounds like a group of people sitting around a table and talking out where / how they want the story to go, sans dice.
@@mikeb.1705 this is pretty semantic, which is always a type of discussion I find to be fun. So, I get your point about the dice. Is it really storytelling if the outcomes are decided by a roll? I would answer yes. Its just more similar to a “choose your adventure” book than to a typical a to b novel. My basic point is that if all elements of the story are being told, than its still storytelling. You just need to think of the dice as a mechanic in the universe. If the party TPKs cuz of the dice rolls, at the end of the session, you still have a story thats been told. Its just a tragedy when you planned to write an epic. So, it’s still collaborative, but there are more “writers” than you had considered. Each time we roll the dice, its the dice’s turn to add to the story how it chooses(how it rolls) For instance: Bard: “i try to seduce the guard” *Rolls nat 20 and sleeps with guard* *party sneaks in while guard is distracted* Or: Bard: “i try to seduce the guard” *rolls 2+10 modifiers, with a DC of 15. Fail* *The bard gets arrested for trying to seduce the guard* Either way, a story is being told. We, the players, are just hoping for a certain outcome, and take it personally when we dont get that outcome.
I'm about to transition from an adventure module to more of a sandbox game. You always drop the video I need to see most when I'm starting to prep for my next game! Thanks!
I do like the flexibility of running a sandbox. Doing that now. But, yeah you need to throw out plot hooks until one sticks. And what is great is that sometimes the party creates their own plot hook. They did this in my game. I just created these books they found which had a story that created a side quest. They were kind of gruesome tales. (just a page and a half to 6 page short stories, well flash fiction) Well, they began to wonder who wrote the books and decided to look into that and find more books. So now I have a bad guy and an endgame. Well, unless they decide to do something else.
From the title, I was worried, but I'm relieved that I have been doing exactly that for a few months now. I'm a little less stressed out for the upcoming game.
Great video. It reminded about many mistakes I made myself trying to run "a sandbox"! Truly, lack of prep, over-prep and abundance of plot-hooks are "campaign killers".
I plan one session at a time. I improv when the party totally surprises me but I like to have some kind of a plan and they are free to explore the world or worlds now.
I build Sandboxes as a reactive world. If you want to do a thing, you will encounter others who don't want that thing to happen, or that want it for themselves. People usually enjoy feeling like they're free to do as they please, but the pre-established characters and factions are going to respond as people might. Other adventurers, merchants, etc.
My preference is to run Sandboxes, but you have to BUILD THE WHOLE damn world, and know what is where, what factions like eachother, what would provoke war, break generational feuds, etc... And MOST IMPORTANT THING, you cannot do this well without telling your players to build characters with self-motivated goals.
Absolutely NOTHING can be unfinished, I swear. I made a pricy Wizard Enclave who provided a service where they teleported you to one of their other towers, again, not cheap. Downside, again: They can, with money, go just about anywhere in the world on a whim.
Final piece of Advice, if you want to have an easy checklist of small details to flesh out, make a home for every PC background, on as small or large a scale as needed. Where might Acolytes study faiths? Which Deities are in use? Where could Barbarian Tribes thrive, without being wiped out? Are there hard colleges for Scholars, or kinda shady systems of information trades? How unified are criminal hives? Where can people slip into the Feywild, and get lost? etc. The list can make the world seem 10x more alive.
Damn you for pulling "left turn at Albuquerque" out of my childhood. So many Looney Tunes cartoons just went through my head. Also, as far as a "sandbox" game goes, I plan about a session and a half in advance. My players are kinda stuck in on a specific path at the moment, so I know what I need to plan for. Even if the players do occasionally call an audible, I have enough of the campaign in a pre-planning state in advance to be able to adjust. I've also mastered the art of the "random hook drop". Sometimes I'll throw a random name or a rumor about someone or something at the players, just to see if they bite. If they do, great. If they don't, no loss for me. Recently I had a random name I'd thrown at the party _two years ago_ come back in a reveal about one of the party members' father, who turned out to be secretly funding the mercenaries the group was fighting. The party member in question's player *wasn't even in the game* until about six months ago, but I used that random name to loop their father into the campaign's overarching plot. Talk about a loaded session. There was so much lore dropped, and many tears were shed by the player whose father was funding the mercenaries, as it was revealed that his reason for doing so was because he was trying to find a cure for their wild magic surges and these mercenaries were supposed to be working for him to find a cure. Turned out they were working for themselves and using his money to fund their efforts, so the party was able to convince him to cut his ties with them instead of working with them.
+Scorpious, writes _"Damn you for pulling "left turn at Albuquerque" out of my childhood."_ Except he got it backwards, Bugs was always saying that he *should* have taken the Left at Albuquerque. It's not taking the left that causes issues.
doesn't apply quite so much for sandbox games but I tell my players that i'm gonna railroad them a little bit during the introductory adventure. I'm not telling them what to do or say, but it starts off very simply. for my spelljammer campaign it was "you're on a space cruise ship. people have been disappearing from their rooms, give me a reason for your character to be on this ship and why they might be trying to solve this mystery." two of them were a detective duo, hired by the ship to investigate, one was a security guard for the ship, another was a nurse who grew up near the detectives, and the other two were stowaways who after being discovered had to clear their names. I drop a few plot hooks during the first adventure and then they're on their way.
This is similar to my approach. I ask what style of game they'd like. If, for example, they choose high adventure, then I would use the appropriate starting scenario and insist they create appropriate characters for that scenario. They might all need to be part of the King's retinue, for example.
Its important to build a living breathing world. If you make a map, and build it where things, and people exist within that map then no matter where your players go you already have events or people in place that they interact with.
I like to run a combination planned adventure/sandbox. Something that they can look forward to once the main adventure has been completed and they had several hooks they can pull from for the charracter's stories. My last campaign took them to Avernus, and ended up pulling some of the NPC out of it on a more personal effect. Little hooks in the story adjusting to specific players that later on can lead them down a satisfying road for their character. I'm able to plan easily with the planned adventure but use details for future encounters later down the line, with the consequences they have brought on themselves.
OOH! OOH! Regarding Random Encounters: I've tried mapping a list of monsters to a deck of cards. I draw one card for each party member and run the encounter. If I'm doing a random dungeon on the fly, one of these monsters is designated as the boss. Once the party finds and defeats the boss, the dungeon is complete. It's worked pretty well.
I'm planning a mostly sandbox campaign right now, with the idea being that the players have to collect eight ancient artefacts and take them to a central point. Each of these nine locations is a large dungeon, so I'm drawing out the maps of each ahead of time, and will populate them with traps and monsters as I go, depending on the order the players choose to do them. I know I'm going to need other objectives between those major landmarks, so this video was well timed.
That's not really a sandbox, unless you are comfortable with the PCs ignoring the grand quest and doing something different. If they do something different then whatever it is that bringing the artefacts together was meant to achieve will not happen and there are consequences.
Great video with great tips and tricks to pulling off a "guided sandbox" campaign! Yes, the PC can go anywhere and do anything, but it's up to the DM to give them some hooks to follow just in case the player's are unsure of what exactly they want to do.
Yo, You have the most personality of all the DND people on TH-cam I've seen. You were made for this man. I'd love to play a DND session under your campaign.
your videos have been super helpful to up my game as a dm, and helping me see I don't have to have it all figured out right away and there is some good humor to boot
I loved this video man, I have been playing sandbox styled games since 2000 when I switched to 3rd. I often start with a dungeon in the wilderness, an area to explore, and a town/city with conflict or a growing problem. The starting area is normally a village on the outskirts. Once the party picks a direction I make two more things in that direction that should be done by the time the party is done with the first one. Then I slowly build top 3 areas the party talks about the most. Before I know it I have 10 things and what is not used gets recycled either in the current campaign or saved for a future one.
When I started my Eberron campaign as a sandbox, I had my players not only flesh out their character but also other stuff. How they got to the starting level, the rogue had the criminal contacts feature from his picked background so he got to give me a list of criminal contacts from all the bigger cities. He got to decide their speciallity, their name, race, quirks and if he knew them personally or just by hearsay. He even got to invent some syndicates that way, kinda like the Boromar Clan in Breland which is part of the normal lore. They all also got a full calender of reacurring yearly events that take place all over the world and they got to add one or two days each that celebrate stuff their character would be into, like a big cooking festival in a specific city that a the chef halfling would be interested in. Or just pick a day of celebration of their deeds of their backstory. I added some events specifically to the main interests of the groups characters as well in addition to the lore given ones. Lastly they should all pick a long life goal. Something that can be archived in milestones that is also not trivial like "get rich". So for example "discover all animal life of eberron" is never finished but at least can be someone achived in milestones by having the character find a new spicies never heard of for them to study/capture etc. Now they have all something to work for which they can partially archive, which means plot hooks but also their personal interests in it or just wonder the land meeting npcs they created from their backstory or take part in celebrations they that they themself could add before the game. It helps them feeling connected and that they know something in this world. That they are part of something and are not just thrown in into this world with no connection at all.
This is exactly the game I am running for my players now, it’s so much fun. Planning on creating a map of the world, but only the locations they have currently visited, and adding to the map as they explore more based on the plot hooks I place down. I prepare three campaign concepts (three quests that take the players to the next level) and they choose which one, then I plan the story they want to play
I've been gaming a long time,my first intri to D&D started with a red cardboard box, and the trick I've learned: tent poles. Prep encounters to slot in where appropriate, and plan story based on reaching cool events rather then planning how they reach the event.
My campaign is Sandbox to the point that they are in Lankhmar, a huge city, and can go anywhere they like. I have tons of pins for points of interest and locations they have already visited; I have a town message board that they can get quests from as well as from NPCs in town (multiple factions); and if they get too far astray, I have a seer they can visit that helps guide their journey. They have been playing every Sunday from 5 to 9 p.m. for about 9 months now. They do like being able to murder Hobo, buttheir journey. They have been playing every Sunday from 5 to 9 p.m. for about 9 months now. They do like being able to murder Hobo, but there is a city watch and factions that can effect; I like to weave their back stories into the main plot. They made their home base, and they managed to take over a bar they called Caffish Tavern. (Oh, I like that Carnvel idea. Ive been working on a world setting and how to bring players together; them all starting as Carnvel members is a cool idea.) ... I gave up WoW as well; same-type quests over and over and then raids over and over to get the best gear for the next expansion to come out, and your gear will not be as good as the green shit that drops off common mobs. So you have to start all over again!
I felt the war craft tangent. My mom played, and likely still does. Play WoW like it's the key to getting picked in the rapture. I always asked her what she liked doing most, and her answer was always a resounding "I dunno."
Ive done plenty of pure improv sessions, but the main thru line in all of them is that they are all 100% *social* sessions with important npcs or locations that I already had some framework set up for me to build off of. That isn't to say I had entire dialogue trees but rather I knew what a town was, who lived there, what their names were and what the important people they were going to talk to wanted. I've ended up building some pretty strong adventures out of this kind of social sandbox, allowing my players to bounce around, investigate people, come up with their own ideas for what they think is going on and, oh would y ou look at that, *they just did my work for me* Next week I'd have a full adventure prepared, ready to go, based off of their ideas they spitballed. The most important two things I've found for improv is active, engaged players and a framework to work with. with out both, you cant do it.
A lot of the tips in this vid are things I've implemented in my current sandbox game. A shortcut for prep is finding a handful of short, old adventures from the 3.5 era. There were a lot of plug and play adventures in old Dragon magazines and Dungeon magazines. A ton of them were published online as pdfs, and it's pretty easy to change details to fit the party's motives, overarching themes, or recurring villains. Adding more locations to the module or an extra floor to a short dungeon is a breeze compared to making it up from scratch. Have three or four in your back pocket, and your players will love having options.
Perfect timing! We just had session zero for my sandbox game yesterday and I was trying to figure out where to start and what the whole thing will look like
The biggest thing with the Sandbox idea is planning the map. It's good for players that like to explore, and it requires a massive list of encounter and loot tables. It's also the best for making player-run games. You look at the backstories and intended futures for all of your players, and you craft something that gives your players challenge and glory. (Example: I once played a character that healed instead of taking damage from poison because of a subclass, race, and feat combination in pathfinder. A sandbox DM could see this and introduce a poison swamp to the world. Maybe the entire campaign takes place in a jungle town with all manner of poisonous animals and plants)
Amazing video. As someone that prefers to give the players many options, you've hit the nail on the head with this one. Many of the lessons freely shared here were hard-earned for me through experience and I am certain that someone smart is going to take advantage of them and save a lot of time. The humor sprinkled over is nice and refreshes the listener too, although it may be a little overdone.
I'm running a sandbox game (my first campaign ever) that I started out 3 years ago with these same ideas in mind, before I even knew of your videos! My players love the world I've built. Follow this advice, new DMs! Also, have CONFIDENCE in your world, remember the rest of the world is still moving along without your players interacting with it, and have fun.
love running sandbox games. planning individual encounters is difficult without context, and giving life into the entire world gives me that much needed context for good encounters
I'm currently running a somewhat sandboxy game, but there is an overall story line and goal - the characters can just go about solving it in many ways. That, of course, means that I have to prep all of those ways for them. I might regret starting this campaign, if I didn't enjoy prepping so much 😊
Before I even watch this the way I always ran sandbox was knowing what my party or parties intend to do next at the end of a session and plan with those assumptions in mind. Because as you say, if I know they’re going to do something, I can give them a more fleshed out experience if I take the time to plan for it.
In a Sandbox game I ran for two years, I would prep by preparing roughly five encounters (foes and treasure) that I would theme according to what was going on for each session, I would also make sure that the underlying story would be moved forward by one of those encounters per session.
I use a homebrew mechanic - the rumor roll. Players roll a d60 and I have 60-plot-hook chart. NOT 60 separate unique plot hooks. I make maybe 10-15 options of plots to follow but the sources of the rumor color the interpretation of what they hear about it, which can end up being misleading or absolutely insane sounding, but that provides more entertainment for everyone. And from there they can decide what hooks them and splash around in that part of the sandbox. I make a different chart for each town, and sometimes rumors will lead to another town. Planning all these ahead of time is a pain in the rear, and I really only plan the general arc and major NPCs/Monsters/etc involved in the plot, so I do end up doing a decent chunk of making things up on the fly to fill in the meat of the plot until I have another chance to prep, and I have to take meticulous notes to keep up with them. Sandboxes are so much harder than train-track campaigns, but worth it for my chaos goblins who wanna subvert any and all expectations....
My very first time DMing resulted in a three-year-long campaign (soon to complete with an epic final battle, hopefully!!) that started as a sandbox. I prepared a bunch of hooks and places and had almost no idea what the bigger plot would be. In the first six months, the players artached to certain plot points and NPCs that then developed into an overarching plot. As I saw what the characters were interested in, I was able to scaffold around it and "yes, and" the players. It's been a really fun, satisfying campaign. My second campaign I ran was a module, and it took me a year to complete, so everything was planned for me. And my third campaign (currently at 1.5 years) has always had backbone of plot and is A LOT more linear than the first, but it still has a little room to flex... Though I often wish I had more freedom. The players don't seem to be at all opposed to the linear plot because they can do the "pieces" in any order... Kind of like a videogame, I guess. All of this is to say, when it comes to prep: the module took the least (but still SOME; I think the idea that you don't have to prep a module is a huge lie). The linear game takes a fair amount to prep. The sandboxy game took BY FAR the most prework and has actually become less time-consuming to prep as the main plot has crystallized.
I tend to start every campaign in the sandbox. The world is a young and green adventurers oyster. But, that will leave a young group, once together, without direction. So, I'll draw from my current campaign to explain how I go from there. First, I have a highly detailed world, and every character has the ability to make small or vast changes to it. So, in the current, I gave them three hooks, then added some motivations to do something based on their backstories. They actually took all three hooks and ran with the back story stuff. Perfect. Two hooks gave me time to flesh the details of the main hook out and introduced them to potential rivals to the main hook. The backstory stuff was simply motivation for them to leave the starting city and head out into the world and find their way. They are about halfway through the main story and have found that everything they've done up to this point, no matter how unrelated, has been another clue towards the endgame of the campaign. They picked up a big one last night. However, they have also had a group goal and personal goals that I've let them explore and develop. In this case, they have put a lot into building their group as a D&D version of the Avengers. Each one has been working on his own heroes' journey towards that goal and has reached personal milestones. Everyone feels like the main hero, and everyone is an important part of the group. They are one session away from being able to say "Arson Hobo's, Unite!" That's generally how I do it.
I just gotta say, as a DM who specializes in running sandbox campaigns, I feel so seen. Your part about peppering plot hooks is what i call plot fishing. I use session zero and before to determine tone and theme the players want and then declare a tone and theme for the campaign and open up sign ups. Session zero i work out characters and what attachments exist and the impetus for them to ally, and then session one, I just pepper plot hooks around the town for things they wanted and see what lines they bite. Also, I improv a ton, but I have a bunch of prepped encounters and dungeon layouts that I can use as a seed to keep the game moving while fudging the details. over the course of a session, 80-90% of the content I prep won't be touched, but over the level, I probably use about half of the content I prep. The trick is to leave your prep generic enough to be adaptable, and then add the flavor through improv after you've picked the best prepped content you have. You also have to be ready to either take a short pause or end the session for the night if the players truly break your world. The goal is to keep the world open and adaptable outside of where they know and keep the world close by where they explore fairly defined. If they make a mad dash outside of the world you've prepped, and you can. throw in a few encounters related to the hook they're chasing to end the session seamlessly and then prep for their new direction. Thew whole trick is to prepare more open ended with adaptable content and then use to time in between sessions to adapt when they throw you for a loop. When you get good at this, you create the illusion that you're always prepared for anything and they don't realize your stalling tactics that run out the session because the improvs you've prepped can fill in any gaps when they stump you.
'Dragon of Icespire peak' Is one of my favourite modules to explore running a sandbox game; combine it with bob worldbuilders gm guide for it and you'll have a good base structure to try it out as a new gm.
I run something in between these two styles, hopefully I do it well. : ) I have something like a sandbox world where my players are essentially mercenary heroes that can take up quests from a centralized office or do about anything else they want including building renown and businesses. But behind all of this, I have a few plots running that I drag across my players story and let them engage, ignore, or otherwise choose their involvement. These plots range from local issues to cosmic dangers or backstory resolution. It ends up feeling like a combination of preparation and improv for me which is ideal.
Best Sandbox I ever ran was me, and two buddies from HS. They each wanted to be competing merchants in some kind of naval trade battle thing, so that's what I did. Each spent the game hiring adventurers to sabotage the other, bribe navies to protect their trade routes, etc. It was a pain to run, but they had fun, and they never even saw each other, in game. Lived on nearly opposite ends of "Ambrosia Bay," which was home to 4 trade centric countries. The hardest part for them was overcoming the tax-collector patrols in the bay, for the first like 10 sessions.
Each of the four countries have every right, and a neutral agreement to be allowed to tax the waters, only immunity was to have a "National Commerce Vessel" card, which limits what, and how often you can ship, past just contraband, of course. Eventually they *kinda* united under a single banner to effectively economically ruin one of the Cape centric Trade Baronies, and rebuilt its 'economy' as two competing halves of super capitalist government. If the people didn't like HIS rules, they'd go live in that guys half of the capital, but he has less work available, etc. Got too hard to run, so I asked them how they would end the story, they said that their heirs and their heirs keep this up, until division splits the country into two separate nations, which in post I named East Indea, run by the Trading and Governing Company, and the Western Goldpyle, run by Silk Sailing Collective. Characters still never saw each other, each was too afraid of assassination.
I totally wing it in FATE, World of Darkness, Savage Worlds and such. The only thing that stops me from doing so in D&D is complexity of game mechanics. Only the first couple of sessions get prepared, the rest is just rolling with consequences of earlier player actions. Prep takes half an hour or less.
My sandbox has a bulletin board in every town. There are at least 5 adventures advertised. (almost always, one is a missing cat... nobody goes after the missing cat.) The adventures on the board are prepared. If they go searching for something else to do, that's likely going to be improvised. (Or something that I had prepared but hadn't decided where to put it yet) But I have several binders of prepared adventures. So, I would have a hard time running out of stuff to drop wherever seems appropriate.
Gotta say, as a guy who is working on doing his first ever campaign as DM, and is also planning on making it a sandbox style game, I genuinely can't imagine not planning any of it.
I am an improv GM big time; but that doesn't mean I have no plans. When I sit down at the table, I have no less than 100 ideas of where things will go. Sure, my players are deciding where and when to go, what their goals are - but I have my folder of dungeons and a wide knowledge of monsters (complete with page numbers). How you prepare is very much up to you as a GM, but you need the prep time.
I create a number of adventures in concentric rings around the starting area, that increase in difficulty as they range further away. These are all dynamic locations where the enemies are not static in rooms, waiting until encountered. Using percentile rolls to determine where the enemies are when the PC’s approach. Running away from difficult encounters need to be an option in a sandbox campaign. Factions are excellent sources of info necessitating meaningful choices of who the PC’s will aid.
I started my campaign by asking each player what their character's thoughts were on five key things, each connected to a different quest that corresponds to an axis on the alignment chart. When it comes to villains being active, my players were at a dungeon away from their home base city, they came outside and saw refugees from their home base city fleeing because the city was being taken by the villains' army.
Number 7.1: When you roll for random encounters, don't just skip ahead because the d20 says "there wasn't an encounter" -- roll on the table anyway, and allow the players to find evidence of the encounter that could've been! "Three lizardmen charge from the bushes!" becomes "you notice footprints across your path; they are about your size, bipedal, unshod, and clawed."
My Sandbox strategy: Make up the relevant factions 2 to 7 depening on the story, but not much more. And also their goals Plan the background events: The events that will happen if players do not interfere. Make up the history of the important story element, Not the rest, dont make a real world A few point of interestes before hand. A castle, a wizard tower etc. This is how i do it. Because I have the involved parties clear, its easy to build random encounters as well.
I admit it, I'm guilty of creating a world and not running any game in which I could use it for literal years. But hey, when I was bored I used to just grab some dice and play by myself...ha ha...I really need more friends
I do that too. But for me "it's not a bug, it's a feature". My players know I do this, and it's become part of the campaign(s). Our table plays sporadically; maybe 1-2 sessions a month, maybe a couple months between sessions. Went over 2 years without one during lockdown. So I have Lonely Fun advancing faction plots about once a week, keeping an ongoing background narrative in motion, and updating a player-facing "newsletter" they can consult if they want. So they're up-to-date on the machinations of the Smuggler's Flotilla, the maneuvering of the Dowager's Clique and the Prince's Cohort, the last sighting of Slicin' Higlee, et cetera. Nothing that'll torpedo a live plot-hook or drastically alter the balance of power, but small changes happening off-stage, as it were. I get to have some fun and they've said my updates are entertaining. During the 2-year+ hiatus it kinda became a soap opera; I made up a silly romance between NPCs Sister Gabrina and Skibbin the Sausage-Seller, and we all got really invested in the storyline (I *had* to give them a happy ending, of course, after two years of "will they/won't they?")
For "sandbox" like campaigns, I like to draw from a few sources. 1. The party are students/graduates from a mercenary academy similar to the SeeD Gardens in Final Fantasy VIII. Some of the players can choose to make their characters students and get certain starting bonuses, and other players can make non students who get other bonuses. Students and non students meet in a dungeon at the start of session one. After the dungeon, they all go back to the academy where the students get their graduation reward, and the non students start auditing classes. By level 4, the players get the bonus they would have gotten if they started as the other option. 2. The Academy has a network of teleportation circles and bounty boards set up all over the world. Players go to the board at the end of sessions and pick the adventure they want to do next. In the next session, they take a teleport circle or their airship or whatever to the city where the npc posted the mission on the board and off they go. 3. During character creation, I don't ask for novel length backstories. I ask for a paragraph explaining their character's deal and a list. The list is basically the reason they need to adventure to make money or find whatever, and at least 5 npcs. I want their closest family members, a mentor, a rival or powerful villain, and any other npcs that mean enough to the PC that the party can seek them out in times of needs or come running the the npc's rescue if they're taken hostage. Basically, load the players up with extra Bonds so that every time the game lulls because "no one knows what to do" I can roll on a table of names and say one player's 1st, 3rd, or 5th favorite npc is in trouble or just invented/found something that will soon cause trouble. There's a number of games like Fabula Ultima where session zero includes group world building. Basically, each player comes up with a few of the races, societies, fought over resources, and villains that exist in the world. Some DMs may chafe at this, but having players give you hooks to later swing at them right up front is a huge time saver.
As I reach DMing maturity more and more I find the lines between different styles of game blurring. I statt with plot ideas, then the party wrecks them and picks the threads they want to follow (and out their own twist on them) and I craft the road infront of them as required by their actions.
My two main tools for a sandbox are a notepad and a calendar. All my villians and factions are in the calendar and have things they will do on such and such a date, [unless], the players interfere with those plans. As for notes, anything the players do that interact with NPC's that is interesting [to me], I will expand apon. Players are rude to a magistrate, well that magistrate was having a bad day and they [the players made it worse], minor villian coming up. Steal something from a shopkeep, maybe someone saw it, other than the shopkeep, adventure coming up. I create Encounter tables like a one shot adventure [very small but expandable if the players want to pursue it], as an example I have one rural encounter where the players are deluged with trash and excrement from a passing by dwarven skyship, [don't ask], if the players want to they can pursue leading to an adventure or just find a place to wash thier clothes out.
My current campaign is a sandbox, and honestly, you can start one out much simpler. * You need a map with interesting locations to explore: dungeons, ruins, towns/villages (some lawless or non-human, etc.), landmarks, etc. I started with an area map at 6 miles per hex, then made a zoomed in 1 mile per hex map around the home town for lower level adventures. * I have some general notes about various power centers (local lords, crazy martial arts masters, wizards, powerful monsters) but didn't develop them more than a general idea of who they are and what they want. * Create some detail for the home town. Shops, a few interesting NPCs, services, etc. * Fill in full details for four or five of the closest dungeons/lairs/points of interest, and a few events going on in the town. * THIS ONE IS IMPORTANT: Give the players a default goal to follow if nothing else seems interesting to them. I run Old School D&D, so that goal is treasure (1gp = 1xp). Maybe it's working towards overturning the evil empire, or searching out long lost histories for the local sage, or finding rare ingredients for the alchemist, or driving off some rampaging monster force... Give them the freedom to explore where they will, but make sure all the players know that they can always default to pursuing this goal. * THIS ONE IS ALSO IMPORTANT: Make sure you have a structure for rewarding XP for pursuing this goal, and make it something that they can't simply complete in a few sessions. Make the players aware of that goal. * Between sessions, keep preparing more and more of the dungeons/adventure locations. I run a session once every two weeks, and I try to get one new location developed between each session (I'm actually so far ahead, I often skip this). Don't worry about "prep that won't be used." You're the DM. Prep should be half of the fun for you, even if the players never go there. That's all you need to get started. The emergent story, the reactions of the population or powerful NPCs/monsters, all that you can develop as you play.
Making a sandbox isn’t about planning for every possibility. It is built on three main components: a populated world with an internal narrative and cool things in it, great random encounter lists, and the sensitivity to make the world respond to player choices.
Running a sandbox right now and it's the best campaign we've done. Each area is like a mini campaign with some overarching plots that connect the regions. Definitely requires more planning, but ai generation has taken out a lot of the legwork, and I just tweek it for the creative aspect.
I feel like starting with a skeletal outline of the world, including points of interest, is the way to go. Flesh it out as much as necessary in your prep depending on how likely it's going to be used, when it's going to be used, and if anything has changed due to the players' decisions. Lots of barebones points of interest or plot hooks can be seeded (dungeons, lairs, ruins, bandit camps, neighboring polities, noble seats of power, cities, mountain passes, etc.), but only a few are fleshed out and revealed directly to players (unless they investigate or stumble into them). So that when you do need to improvise, you still have some sort of structure to it.
There's a lot of up front prep with a sandbox, but once its set up prep time is a lot shorter (if you do it right). I tend to just ask my players at the end of a session what they plan on doing next session, where they're gonna go, and so on, so I have some idea as to what is going to happen, and I prep that, and anything random that needs to be whipped up I just rely on random tables to fill in the gaps. Works pretty well. I liked my old story game quite a bit too, but the prep time was significantly longer.
I feel like the most important thing as a DM is finding out what kind of DM you are. Some people like preparing a lot, some people need to prepare a little and some of us don't. I usually have a world idea, set the players in it, see what they want to play to get a feel of them. Then I probably get a feeling of a kind of story start, I might have ideas of fun things that could happen eventually but it's all loose and undefined. Then we start playing, I describe things, the players react and describe what they do, I react to that and describe more stuff. Players seem to get stuck or directionless I point them in a direction or two (or more) then depending on what they chose I'll go for it. Between sessions I might or might not get inspired of previous events and think of a new cool fun whatever thing but generally I just make it up on the fly. After they've done a few quests I usually find a few things in previous sessions that tie together and voila the real campaign is born. The players think I prepped it all and I smile and nod and pretend I did ;) The point is, this style works for me because I'm good at making things up and finding patterns in the random stuff I +the players make up to then tie it together. I COULD definitely be better at taking notes myself though since, you know, every npc and place and so on is made up on the fly means if I forget it and the players forget it and then ask about it.. It's lost and bad. For others there's probably a need to make a few notes, maybe places to visit with some plot hooks and so on, while others like a friend of mine likes to write down extensive notes on certain places. Which can accidentally end up being wasted effort when the players sidetrack. That said I think the video gives a lot of good ideas and help for many DM's and I honestly believe most DM's will need some kinda prepp to be better (even if they're already great!). It's just not for everyone. I did try prepping a full adventure once, it just got me confused and lost track of who was where and so on. Good video anyways!
I could add that I usually don't even use monster manuals either.. While I do use orc, goblins and so on now and then of course, I make up their stats instead of looking at Stat blocks or something. But for the most part I make up monsters too, now and then with abilities and traits that aren't in the monster books anyways. Of course I don't run in a specific setting like faerun, if I did that I might reconsider to keep it more to the lore, at least look them up or something
I love how well your videos are setup. You have concise points that are easy to follow and keep up with. Please don't stop making dnd ttrpg how to videos.
Can confirm my non-vetran players saw castle Ravenloft and knocked down it's door, at level 2. That was a wild time, we still played it through! It was a lot of running but they had fun and escaped with a chest of gold haha
The hardest part about building a sandbox is being prepared. I've learned to make sure to give "boundaries" when doing a sandbox. My current sandbox the players received the info that the game is contained to an island chain. That the theme of hte game is capitalism , the goal of the game is to make as much money as they can , the game ends when the PCs or someone else finds the 3 orbs the party was hired to find at the beginning of the game. I create a hex map of the world and dot the world with various random long and short adventures. I don't put set rewards or even set npcs , allowing these things to be easy to edit as i take notes on the pcs desires and what their trying to do. Player 3 is trying to become a lich. Great adventure 44 now has something needs for it. Towns have similar rumors to give PCs direction without hitting them on the head. IN the mean time, as someone said you got to have your factions and stuff moving as well. I'm 1/4 through my current campaign with 2 different parties going through this campaign world and only 1/4 of the factions have been interacted with and the PCs have already made enemies they dont even know about. One party soley cares about establishing agriculture technology in the reason, the other are on the opposite end, attempting to create a mafia racket on the island. As the party goals become clear i place more adventures and npcs that could aid and hinder that goal. while still performing all the other machinations in teh background.
A comment. As asked. Cause I love you Luke. Plus you (and a few others like the dungeon dudes) have helped me a lot on my DMing journey. We started in august 2023 (as I type this its april 2024) and this coming friday will be our 23rd session (i track the session and events on discord) - and this kind of content has helped a lot. I have 7 players. Me and 3 buddies got bored of our normal weekly video game of 5 years (sea of thieves) and couldnt agree on a new video game. So my 3 buddies of course had friends interested and I called it at 7 players. My dad raised me on tabletop games so I spoke up about DMing and got invested. Here I am. Thanks is what I’m trying to say.
I like how "wondering around" is the main idea of OSR games, as the characters are motivated by gold out of the box, due to the xp=gold leveling abstraction. It also has exploration procedures required for that, unlike 5e. But it requires all the prep time to be spend on developing interesting environments (dungeon/wilderness). Solves a lot of issues for me. And for a heroic fantasy I play Chasing Adventure (Dungeon World hack), where the narrative right are passed from the dm to player quite often, so it requires almost no prep either. I guess, "sandbox" in a 5e campaign is a huge challenge, that's why almost everyone I know runs it "by the book"
Inspired me to incentivize players to "use the world," i.e. engage in flavorful downtime activities to win inspiration points (also stolen from you). E.g. wizards study at a library, clerics attend to temple duties or go on a pilgrimage, rangers hunt bigger game, bards perform for greater audiences, etc. These predetermined activities will earn them 1d6 inspiration points. The idea is to create bonds to the world.
"Don't give them options for something you don't want them to do." My players entered a crypt that was intended to be one room and when describing it, I accidentally said "door" and instead of backtracking, I just said it was locked. They went at it for so long I knew I needed to put something behind it. Never make a door from thin air, worst mistake of my life.
"Who wouldn't want that." [Raises Hand]. Your job as DM is to have something for us to ... do. If we take a detour, you might have an NPC you can drop in to give us a "fun" ten or fifteen minutes, but I, for one, don't want to wander around all evening and just stumble on a random encounter over and over.
One note on this. Make sure you hold the players to their decision on what to do next. I can't tell you how many times I asked the players what they were going to do next time, only to have them totally change their mind when the session started.
Sandboxes work best when the players have a deep understanding of the world around them. (Even if part of that means “the world is mysterious”). Any group planning a new sandbox campaign should strongly consider playing a game of “the quiet year” to set up the starting village/home base and countless adventure hooks, NPC’s, points of interest and best of all the players will feel like they have a big stake in the world since they creatd it
I would recommend more prepwork than what is being suggested here, but less intense. Yes, you DO want to make all the available adventures. But not to the depth a "On Rails" campaign would. Make locations, enemies, NPCs with motivations, and that's about it. You don't need complex encounter planning, all you need is to know who, where, and why, getting that for a few dozen things in each major city is easily do-able in a week or two. Also, plan for failure. As in the PCs either failing in an adventure, or failing to hook, plan out what will happen if the PCs don't complete the task. Maybe this means a bad end for the npcs involved, maybe another group of people come along and succeed, taking the public glory for doing so. Also, make use of existing resources. There is a 2nd edition boxed set called "The city of Greyhawk" that I can't recommend enough. Contained in it are a series of "Adventure cards" that are short, single session adventures that you could expect to find in a large city. Even if you don't run 2nd ed (but you should) they're still useful as the only thing you'll need to change are stat blocks. As for campaign structure: I ask the party to give me one session "on rails" to start them out. I use this to: 1. bring the party together 2. introduce them to the setting and important NPCs thru a low level adventure (normally a fetch quest for a powerful individual who doesn't have the time) 3. establish other hooks. After that, they can do whatever they want, leave the city and go to a completely different place if they want, or stay in the starter city forever, it's fine. But this is why I flesh out all the major cities on the continent in advance, if they go further, you can have some high seas adventures while you work on the rest.
For me, the first games starts wide open. I have hundreds of prepared scenarios and linear quest lines of various degrees. And every area has something going on. I also have hundreds of npc completely fleshed out. From here, player decisions make minor and major quests. Even if on what seems the main quest at the moment, has a rabbithole of a sidequest possibility. Like a partial map on some bandits attack while on the road somewhere. My players learn quickly the importance of these decisions. Sometimes, they save the town and go on to be heroes. Sometimes, they return after getting lost for years but return as heroes and return the towns urn that went missing before the players arrived. Of course, a good DM should know what their players want. No use doing a plane hoping campaign with a player hafling that wants a harbor city of intrigue and subterfuge. A big part of random encounters are natural disasters and weather events. Pitfalls, caveins, and avalanches... things that negate character skills and makes everyone feel vulnerable. Even make them run for their lives.
In my view a good sandbox game is often a set of shorter linear games with opportunities for player choice. That gives the benefits of a sandbox with more engaging stories that you get with a linear game. It also dramatically helps the GM prep too, because when the PCs are in one of the linear parts, it’s not necessary to prep a ton of possibilities that don’t get used. BioWare games are often like this-they have an intro on rails to set the stage and then start opening up more choices, finally converging on the end goal.
I always champion Blades in the Dark as a system to read (and tbh steal from) if a DM wants to run a true sandbox campaign. It's something that is going to take an extremely long time to write, but once it is done and you've started the campaign proper there should be very little needed prep time between sessions
I write a framework of story beats that I want my players to hit. But I don't go too indepth beyond a few NPCs and what they want with at least 1 or 2 encounters pending the players choices.
Pro tip: your "sandbox" game can easily be constructed as a "modular" game. It can then be run over and over even by the same players. You just make your world, and how it will progress if the players don't exist. You populate it with adventure modules. The players can pick up or drop these adventures flawlessly, and their proximity determines what you may need to prep. ...this works so well. You can simply turn off adventures you don't want, and amplify the hooks to those they're looking for. You can now set up a endless sandbox adventure, and it can literally be the ONLY game you ever make, that can service endless adventuring parties for endless levels.
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Sand box requires MORE PREP; here is why
1) it’s a living world
2) there are factions and realms that have their own agenda and machinations
3) you have to set a specific goal or agenda that the players want to “do” in the campaign. This is ABSOLUTELY CRITICAL
4) you have to use consequences and have them noted and referenced often to use when things get a bit “well shit now what” this will happen no matter what you prepare or set up
Completely agree, I have no idea why the guy in the video talks that sandbox requires no prep, it was annoying to listen to
I only run "sandbox" games and I totally disagree with you.
What could be a good goal or agenta for the players?
yeah, I only run "sandbox" and the OP doesn't know what they are talking about or is wasting prep time@@mkklassicmk3895
@@mkklassicmk3895 that’s the beauty of this game. People can do it the way they want. If it works for you that’s great. But for someone that has never done them it isn’t bad advice and mirrors a lot of what Luke said
"Never present a client with an option you can't live with." I learned this in web design. If you have two designs you like and you throw in some rushed third design to pad things out, then sure enough, that's what they pick. Every damn time.
I learned the same thing as a tech writer. Never show them an option you're not willing to implement.
Also never let them roll for something you don't want them to fail.
@@sjonnieplayfull5859 ... or that you don't want them to succeed at.
@@MonkeyJedi99 Of course. It's important to stay alert for that side of the coin as well
@theDMLair always blows my mind hearing this sort of thing from other DMs. Like they ask all the time in DM groups "I gave my players this item, what does it do?" or "I told my players X, Y, and Z about my setting... how do I make what I said make sense?" 😅
Players if you have accepted the plot hook, follow it the next session. AKA don't waste the DM's prep.
If they aren't following your plot hook then you aren't setting the hook deeply enough. Unless they are "that guy" and deliberately ignore it just because it's a plot hook.
@@mkklassicmk3895My entire previous party.
@@mkklassicmk3895 RottenRogerDM's statement was based on the players accepting the plot hook which means it was set deep enough.
@@blanesherman5434 Accepting the hook and being interested in the hook are two very different things. Unless they are changing their mind just because they think they have a better plan.
@@mkklassicmk3895 Sure, but that is not what RottenRogerDM said.
When starting a sandbox campaign I ALWAYS stress to the players to let me know what they are planing to do so I can do the needed work to make the game better for them. Open communication so important.
Running a sandbox right now, the trickiest thing is to know where to end the session. You need them to end with a plan for the next session, or you don't know what to prepare. For the rest, I don't know why people think sandbox games don't have a plot. They can have a lot of plot, you just don't know what direction the plot is going. That's dependant on the players.
That is why I call it a playground instead of a sandbox. Just design the interesting stuff well ahead of time instead of planning for the next session. Also, having some one-shots that are easily tailored to any situation can help with unexpected changes in direction.
Personally I end my sandbox games in following situations, depending on how the day's sessions goes :
- if players had a harsh session to accomplish a goal : right after this accomplishment, I let it end in a burst of joy (+ 0~2 actions to sense their intentions for the next game)
- if the day's session was "neutral" (= not harsh nor easy for the players, just the typical game) : when they enter a new field of the game (new place, new mechanic, unlock content locked before) to let them wonder about how the new element will unfold and let them think about the next content (and hear theirs theories, always a good inspiration for prep)
- if the day's sessions runs smoothly and players were on an highway to their goals all along : I gave them hits of future obstacles or underlying troubles they can encounter later to let them wonder how to overcome them and let them prep between sessions (my least favourite type of session/end)
- if the day's sessions was a little bit boring (it happens, don't be ashamed ! For example when you or your players are not well/not in the correct mood) : I bring a bit of chaos to reshuffle cards (for example I've got NPC that players don't understand quite well, even if I know the explanation, and maybe players will discover it in the future, rught now those are a little bit meta for my players as they don't get the rules behind their occurrences. Thos NPC takes the current situation and mix it up in a way that shambles the game -> put safe characters in difficulty, help those in danger, ...), this often brings some fresh air to end the session on a nice touch
I just usually let the players decide when to end the session. Often times, they leave one by one and they decide we should call it when nearly half of the players have left
One tip I can give is try and end the session on completing the task but before turning it in to the quest giver. This allows players to have a start in the following session while also planning a plot hook to show up right after they turn in the quest.
@@hardcorenacho1020 Thanks for the tip, but that's the opposite of what I'm finding so far. If a current 'adventure' is ending, I need my players to have 30 minutes of time at the end of the session to discuss what they want to do next and make their plans.
Basically, I lay out loads of different tracks and invite them to lay tracks of their own. But I need them to railroad themselves a little bit before the end of a session so I don't have to lay down the whole rail network before the next session.
I run a lot of sandbox-ey games, and honestly for the "howw to start" problem, I've settled on having them start already on the first adventure -- which usually, nvolves them travellning to a place together, and running into trouble along the way.
It also works really well as a way to give the group a tutorial level to establsh any house rules, stylistic stuff, try out their character abilities, get some world familiarity from the NPCs they meet along the way, etc.
Once they get through the tutorial advenure, they have a bit of a sense of orientation in the world, know at least a couple NPCs, are in a location, and usually have come across a couple plot hooks or potential next adventures along the way. And then the sandboxy part actually starts. After the first adventure, which usually only lasts one or two sessions.
I have successfully started campaign with a couple of small 1-session published scenarios strung together, while dropping in the bigger plot hooks. Using character-creation motivations can work very well.
This is my approach, sort of, for the campaign I'm working on. I have prepped a couple of introductory adventures, and will add more, which are designed to give the players a feel for the world. These adventures address different campaign styles and I give players the choice of style. If they want epic fantasy then Intro A. If the want skulduggery then Intro B etc.
The world was originally designed with BRP/Runequest in mind and so offers all of the background society types that the system uses in chargen. I dropped BRP, but the social systems are still there: Civilized, Nomad etc
Kind of like starting the movie The Magnificent Seven at the scene when they arrive in the beleaguered village.
That's fair. I respect that approach, but mine is usually, "welcome to this strange city. Someone approaches, are they here to manipulate, or assist genuinely?" Often it seems that the suspicion and work to earn an ally in those first days does the trick.
Things I’ve done in “sandboxes” include having the world map in mind and including NPC and villains in set points, nothing big, just “a dragon here” or “ohh lich tower” there. Maybe they get there, maybe they don’t.
Open with about 3-4 sessions worth of the “inciting incident “ in my open world the first thing that happened was finding a half elf girl who’d been kidnapped by demons and told that they need to get her home.
And of course, make the world feel alive. If they do X, then Y happens. (Two citystates in a cold war, both with pretty awful leaders, taking one down causes the Cold War to go hot)
I run an open world for my players. They specifically requested it, and didn't want to do some big story line. It's working great so far. They're creating their own stories, mostly by traveling from arena to arena, getting kicked out of cities, and being general menaces. It's relaxed and fun. Now I do have to prepare a bunch of stuff for the area, which only about 50% get used, but my players feel relaxed and happy to just muddle about. It certainly doesn't work for everyone, but for this group, it's been good.
It seems pretty efficient if you can reuse a lot of the content that doesn't get used in some other area, later on
@genericcatgirl exactly! That mysterious castle in the distance? Well now it's in the swamp. Oh they still didn't go to it? Cool. Now it's overlooking a city.
Good thing about sandbox prep (and it applies to a normal campaign too) is to just reuse the stuff they don't engage with.
as an old time dnd player and GM, you can absolutely run a game without a story through line. this gets into the whole debate of role playing vs roll playing. both have advantages and disadvantages. I am currently of the opinion that todays market is skewed heavily towards role playing, and I find myself craving a good roll playing experience.
I agree with this. I actually had two games that I both enjoyed a lot neither of which had a large overall story. The "story" of the first one was that we were an adventuring party that joined an adventurers guild. Our DM would basically prepare a couple of Oneshots, and then they would appear on the guilds quest board. Of course those wouldn't always be as simple as they sounded, sometimes it was literally just "Our town regularly gets attacked by orcs. Make it stop", sometimes it would be a "I feel like something is wrong in my city, could you please check this out for me?". Usually we'd have like 3-4 listings on the board, and each session we picked one, tried to clear it, sometimes it would become 2 or 3 sesions for the bigger ones, and then we'd go back. And honestly the only "overarching plot" was that doing enough quests would get us a higher rank to allow us to take on more dangerous (and in turn well paying) quests. That was partly born out of the situation that we were all in college at the time and didn't always have time, so this allowed people to easily skip a session if they couldn't make it that week because then we'd just roleplay it as "they needed some time off and would skip the next quest" and that was it.
The current one I'm playing with is kind of loosely based on the idea of One Piece, we're just pirates sailing the sea seeing what kinda adventures we can get into, and here too we don't really have an overarching plot. We arrive at an island, have an adventure there, then leave the island. It's more open ended, we are able to return to any island we have been to and sometimes we do that because they have stores that sells things we need only on that island or because our shipwright is on that island and our weapon smith is on that other island and sometiems when we return we find out that something there happened and we get a "follow up quest" of sorts. But there is also no real overarching plot there.
And both of these are perfectly fun settings that we enjoyed a lot.
I ran a sandbox game that was based on trading and kingdom building. It went from level 1 up through level 12. It was the longest campaign I ever ran. There was plenty of dungeon delving and I relied heavily on adventure modules to gives some semblance of structure.
1. Determine the campaign structure (clear, obvious plot hooks or points of interest, hex crawl?, a base or travelling, tone)
2. Create a home base or originating location (this includes NPCs)
3. Develop the surrounding world (map of the locale, filled with places to explore, factions that aren’t static and also take actions)
4. Create some plot hooks
1. Clearly explains what the problem is
2. Motivates the players
3. Tells where or how to get started
5. Create some adventures (schroedinger scenarios and specific points of interest with adventures from the beginning, with options)
6. Track time
7. Develop (or use) a random encounter table
8. Be prepared to improvise
3:07 Plug for Lairs & Legends
4:20 What does it take to RUN a Sandbox?
6:16 Determine the Campaign Structure
7:54 Create the Home Base/Originating Location
9:56 Develop the surrounding world (11:05 Things to consider)
12:46 Create some Plot Hooks (13:52 What GOOD Hooks do + Ideal amount. 15:06 Pitfall)
16:55 Create some Adventures (19:08 Post-tangent; Progression. 20:54 Consequences)
22:05 Tracking *Time*
22:48 PLAN some Random Encounter/Point of Interest Tables (Exotic content; ranging from occurrences to combat)
23:37 Prepare yourself to IMPROVISE
First off this was a great sandbox video. It gives most game masters the basics of how to get started. I use many of these points and your video sets them out perfectly. I find sandbox games the best for players to feel they have freedom to do what they want when they want to do it. I have an entire world mapped out and have done a lot of prep work for the “major” areas. And when players head to an area without even an outline of how it is I then go to your steps that allow me to set it up. I usually have multiple adventures pre-prepped so I can throw them in the way that are short and allow me to flesh out the areas they ultimately want to get to and then I have a prepped area of my world waiting for them. Again great video. Anyone wanting to do a sandbox style game should see this
Thank you!
In one campaign I ran, they players all said they wanted a sandbox game. So I gave them a sandbox game. They couldn't figure out what they wanted to do. So I ditched the sandbox and just ran a normal campaign without telling them. They didn't notice.
Sometimes just knowing they CAN choose to do something else is enough. The call of adventure finding them and giving them a kick in the pants is good if they're listless!
My world is very sandbox-y, but once they find a specific quest that interests them the game tends to turn into a normal campaign in the sense that there's a plot to follow, but the players are doing it because they want to since they decided to do the quest in the first place.
Thanks for the video! I guess I run "sandbox" games, in a manner of speaking. Rather than come up with a story, I create dozens of significant NPC's/NPC groups and give each of them motivations and goals. I break down each of their goals by steps and determine how long each step will take. I then keep a game calendar spreadsheet with what each NPC has accomplished towards that goal by day. The party is also tracked on the same sheet. When the party helps or hinders one of the NPC's that gets noted and I change the steps the NPC now needs to take towards their goal (or if the party killed them and their progression ends there). The NPC's sometime have conflicts between themselves and outcomes that affect each other that the party never sees, except possibly the aftermath. It's fairly easy to start these games, as you can drop the party into an existing conflict between two entities. The downsides to this method is that sometimes it's not obvious what the party needs to do sometimes, especially deeper into the campaign where the party may be following multiple plot threads at once. One benefit is integrated world building. The players always have the feeling of a living works that exists independent of their characters, because it essentially does.
I have been running open world for a while. Some simple tips I have are 1. Give your players a map, let them see the world, and plop down unlabeled interesting things on it, even if it would not make sense as an in universe map. Plan either multiple villains or villain lieutenants and have them act simultaneously in different places. It makes sure something is happening everywhere while avoiding the quantum ogre. Otherwise, set clear boundaries, talk to your players about where they wanna go, and let the world develop deeper as you go.
“Bwahahaha… Sand box means planning nothing? Bahahaha. Laddie, you have to plan for EVERYTHING in a Sandbox.”
Pre full listen- Sandbox is not the correct term. Emergent Storytelling.
I dont' know that "storytelling" is the correct term either though.
I don't call it a sandbox, I refer to it as a playground.
@@mikeb.1705depends if when you say storytelling you think of one person or the collaborative. Seeing it’s a group activity my mind leans towards collaborative. One person you’re not a GM you’re an author.
@@relicapex I understand what you are saying. However, I don't believe the term "storytelling" is quite the right word for an RPG that uses dice to determine a large number of outcomes.
To me, the phrase "collaborative storytelling" sounds like a group of people sitting around a table and talking out where / how they want the story to go, sans dice.
@@mikeb.1705 this is pretty semantic, which is always a type of discussion I find to be fun.
So, I get your point about the dice. Is it really storytelling if the outcomes are decided by a roll? I would answer yes. Its just more similar to a “choose your adventure” book than to a typical a to b novel.
My basic point is that if all elements of the story are being told, than its still storytelling. You just need to think of the dice as a mechanic in the universe. If the party TPKs cuz of the dice rolls, at the end of the session, you still have a story thats been told. Its just a tragedy when you planned to write an epic.
So, it’s still collaborative, but there are more “writers” than you had considered. Each time we roll the dice, its the dice’s turn to add to the story how it chooses(how it rolls)
For instance:
Bard: “i try to seduce the guard”
*Rolls nat 20 and sleeps with guard*
*party sneaks in while guard is distracted*
Or:
Bard: “i try to seduce the guard”
*rolls 2+10 modifiers, with a DC of 15. Fail*
*The bard gets arrested for trying to seduce the guard*
Either way, a story is being told. We, the players, are just hoping for a certain outcome, and take it personally when we dont get that outcome.
I'm about to transition from an adventure module to more of a sandbox game. You always drop the video I need to see most when I'm starting to prep for my next game! Thanks!
I do like the flexibility of running a sandbox. Doing that now. But, yeah you need to throw out plot hooks until one sticks. And what is great is that sometimes the party creates their own plot hook. They did this in my game. I just created these books they found which had a story that created a side quest. They were kind of gruesome tales. (just a page and a half to 6 page short stories, well flash fiction) Well, they began to wonder who wrote the books and decided to look into that and find more books. So now I have a bad guy and an endgame. Well, unless they decide to do something else.
From the title, I was worried, but I'm relieved that I have been doing exactly that for a few months now. I'm a little less stressed out for the upcoming game.
Great video. It reminded about many mistakes I made myself trying to run "a sandbox"! Truly, lack of prep, over-prep and abundance of plot-hooks are "campaign killers".
I plan one session at a time. I improv when the party totally surprises me but I like to have some kind of a plan and they are free to explore the world or worlds now.
I build Sandboxes as a reactive world. If you want to do a thing, you will encounter others who don't want that thing to happen, or that want it for themselves. People usually enjoy feeling like they're free to do as they please, but the pre-established characters and factions are going to respond as people might. Other adventurers, merchants, etc.
My preference is to run Sandboxes, but you have to BUILD THE WHOLE damn world, and know what is where, what factions like eachother, what would provoke war, break generational feuds, etc... And MOST IMPORTANT THING, you cannot do this well without telling your players to build characters with self-motivated goals.
Absolutely NOTHING can be unfinished, I swear. I made a pricy Wizard Enclave who provided a service where they teleported you to one of their other towers, again, not cheap. Downside, again: They can, with money, go just about anywhere in the world on a whim.
Final piece of Advice, if you want to have an easy checklist of small details to flesh out, make a home for every PC background, on as small or large a scale as needed. Where might Acolytes study faiths? Which Deities are in use? Where could Barbarian Tribes thrive, without being wiped out? Are there hard colleges for Scholars, or kinda shady systems of information trades? How unified are criminal hives? Where can people slip into the Feywild, and get lost? etc. The list can make the world seem 10x more alive.
Damn you for pulling "left turn at Albuquerque" out of my childhood. So many Looney Tunes cartoons just went through my head.
Also, as far as a "sandbox" game goes, I plan about a session and a half in advance. My players are kinda stuck in on a specific path at the moment, so I know what I need to plan for. Even if the players do occasionally call an audible, I have enough of the campaign in a pre-planning state in advance to be able to adjust.
I've also mastered the art of the "random hook drop". Sometimes I'll throw a random name or a rumor about someone or something at the players, just to see if they bite. If they do, great. If they don't, no loss for me. Recently I had a random name I'd thrown at the party _two years ago_ come back in a reveal about one of the party members' father, who turned out to be secretly funding the mercenaries the group was fighting. The party member in question's player *wasn't even in the game* until about six months ago, but I used that random name to loop their father into the campaign's overarching plot.
Talk about a loaded session. There was so much lore dropped, and many tears were shed by the player whose father was funding the mercenaries, as it was revealed that his reason for doing so was because he was trying to find a cure for their wild magic surges and these mercenaries were supposed to be working for him to find a cure. Turned out they were working for themselves and using his money to fund their efforts, so the party was able to convince him to cut his ties with them instead of working with them.
+Scorpious, writes _"Damn you for pulling "left turn at Albuquerque" out of my childhood."_
Except he got it backwards, Bugs was always saying that he *should* have taken the Left at Albuquerque. It's not taking the left that causes issues.
@@fred_derf That's _right,_ he _does_ say it that way! I knew he did, but for some reason I just kinda forgot it in that moment.
doesn't apply quite so much for sandbox games but I tell my players that i'm gonna railroad them a little bit during the introductory adventure. I'm not telling them what to do or say, but it starts off very simply. for my spelljammer campaign it was "you're on a space cruise ship. people have been disappearing from their rooms, give me a reason for your character to be on this ship and why they might be trying to solve this mystery." two of them were a detective duo, hired by the ship to investigate, one was a security guard for the ship, another was a nurse who grew up near the detectives, and the other two were stowaways who after being discovered had to clear their names. I drop a few plot hooks during the first adventure and then they're on their way.
This is similar to my approach. I ask what style of game they'd like. If, for example, they choose high adventure, then I would use the appropriate starting scenario and insist they create appropriate characters for that scenario. They might all need to be part of the King's retinue, for example.
Its important to build a living breathing world. If you make a map, and build it where things, and people exist within that map then no matter where your players go you already have events or people in place that they interact with.
I like to run a combination planned adventure/sandbox. Something that they can look forward to once the main adventure has been completed and they had several hooks they can pull from for the charracter's stories. My last campaign took them to Avernus, and ended up pulling some of the NPC out of it on a more personal effect. Little hooks in the story adjusting to specific players that later on can lead them down a satisfying road for their character. I'm able to plan easily with the planned adventure but use details for future encounters later down the line, with the consequences they have brought on themselves.
OOH! OOH! Regarding Random Encounters: I've tried mapping a list of monsters to a deck of cards. I draw one card for each party member and run the encounter. If I'm doing a random dungeon on the fly, one of these monsters is designated as the boss. Once the party finds and defeats the boss, the dungeon is complete. It's worked pretty well.
I'm planning a mostly sandbox campaign right now, with the idea being that the players have to collect eight ancient artefacts and take them to a central point. Each of these nine locations is a large dungeon, so I'm drawing out the maps of each ahead of time, and will populate them with traps and monsters as I go, depending on the order the players choose to do them. I know I'm going to need other objectives between those major landmarks, so this video was well timed.
That's not really a sandbox, unless you are comfortable with the PCs ignoring the grand quest and doing something different. If they do something different then whatever it is that bringing the artefacts together was meant to achieve will not happen and there are consequences.
Great video with great tips and tricks to pulling off a "guided sandbox" campaign!
Yes, the PC can go anywhere and do anything, but it's up to the DM to give them some hooks to follow just in case the player's are unsure of what exactly they want to do.
Saving this video. Because I just fell into the trap of too many low-drag hooks.
Yo, You have the most personality of all the DND people on TH-cam I've seen. You were made for this man. I'd love to play a DND session under your campaign.
your videos have been super helpful to up my game as a dm, and helping me see I don't have to have it all figured out right away and there is some good humor to boot
You don't completely suck. You are good enough, smart enough, and gosh darn it people like you.
Thank you! that's a relief!
I loved this video man, I have been playing sandbox styled games since 2000 when I switched to 3rd.
I often start with a dungeon in the wilderness, an area to explore, and a town/city with conflict or a growing problem. The starting area is normally a village on the outskirts.
Once the party picks a direction I make two more things in that direction that should be done by the time the party is done with the first one. Then I slowly build top 3 areas the party talks about the most.
Before I know it I have 10 things and what is not used gets recycled either in the current campaign or saved for a future one.
When I started my Eberron campaign as a sandbox, I had my players not only flesh out their character but also other stuff. How they got to the starting level, the rogue had the criminal contacts feature from his picked background so he got to give me a list of criminal contacts from all the bigger cities. He got to decide their speciallity, their name, race, quirks and if he knew them personally or just by hearsay.
He even got to invent some syndicates that way, kinda like the Boromar Clan in Breland which is part of the normal lore.
They all also got a full calender of reacurring yearly events that take place all over the world and they got to add one or two days each that celebrate stuff their character would be into, like a big cooking festival in a specific city that a the chef halfling would be interested in. Or just pick a day of celebration of their deeds of their backstory.
I added some events specifically to the main interests of the groups characters as well in addition to the lore given ones.
Lastly they should all pick a long life goal. Something that can be archived in milestones that is also not trivial like "get rich".
So for example "discover all animal life of eberron" is never finished but at least can be someone achived in milestones by having the character find a new spicies never heard of for them to study/capture etc.
Now they have all something to work for which they can partially archive, which means plot hooks but also their personal interests in it or just wonder the land meeting npcs they created from their backstory or take part in celebrations they that they themself could add before the game.
It helps them feeling connected and that they know something in this world. That they are part of something and are not just thrown in into this world with no connection at all.
This is exactly the game I am running for my players now, it’s so much fun. Planning on creating a map of the world, but only the locations they have currently visited, and adding to the map as they explore more based on the plot hooks I place down.
I prepare three campaign concepts (three quests that take the players to the next level) and they choose which one, then I plan the story they want to play
I've been gaming a long time,my first intri to D&D started with a red cardboard box, and the trick I've learned: tent poles. Prep encounters to slot in where appropriate, and plan story based on reaching cool events rather then planning how they reach the event.
My campaign is Sandbox to the point that they are in Lankhmar, a huge city, and can go anywhere they like. I have tons of pins for points of interest and locations they have already visited; I have a town message board that they can get quests from as well as from NPCs in town (multiple factions); and if they get too far astray, I have a seer they can visit that helps guide their journey. They have been playing every Sunday from 5 to 9 p.m. for about 9 months now. They do like being able to murder Hobo, buttheir journey. They have been playing every Sunday from 5 to 9 p.m. for about 9 months now. They do like being able to murder Hobo, but there is a city watch and factions that can effect; I like to weave their back stories into the main plot. They made their home base, and they managed to take over a bar they called Caffish Tavern. (Oh, I like that Carnvel idea. Ive been working on a world setting and how to bring players together; them all starting as Carnvel members is a cool idea.) ... I gave up WoW as well; same-type quests over and over and then raids over and over to get the best gear for the next expansion to come out, and your gear will not be as good as the green shit that drops off common mobs. So you have to start all over again!
I felt the war craft tangent. My mom played, and likely still does. Play WoW like it's the key to getting picked in the rapture. I always asked her what she liked doing most, and her answer was always a resounding "I dunno."
I love ALL the DM Lair videos!!!! ❤
Ive done plenty of pure improv sessions, but the main thru line in all of them is that they are all 100% *social* sessions with important npcs or locations that I already had some framework set up for me to build off of. That isn't to say I had entire dialogue trees but rather I knew what a town was, who lived there, what their names were and what the important people they were going to talk to wanted.
I've ended up building some pretty strong adventures out of this kind of social sandbox, allowing my players to bounce around, investigate people, come up with their own ideas for what they think is going on and, oh would y ou look at that, *they just did my work for me*
Next week I'd have a full adventure prepared, ready to go, based off of their ideas they spitballed.
The most important two things I've found for improv is active, engaged players and a framework to work with. with out both, you cant do it.
A lot of the tips in this vid are things I've implemented in my current sandbox game. A shortcut for prep is finding a handful of short, old adventures from the 3.5 era. There were a lot of plug and play adventures in old Dragon magazines and Dungeon magazines. A ton of them were published online as pdfs, and it's pretty easy to change details to fit the party's motives, overarching themes, or recurring villains. Adding more locations to the module or an extra floor to a short dungeon is a breeze compared to making it up from scratch. Have three or four in your back pocket, and your players will love having options.
I'm a starting dm and your channel has been so helpful I thank you so much!
You are very welcome. Happy to be able to help!
Perfect timing! We just had session zero for my sandbox game yesterday and I was trying to figure out where to start and what the whole thing will look like
The biggest thing with the Sandbox idea is planning the map.
It's good for players that like to explore, and it requires a massive list of encounter and loot tables.
It's also the best for making player-run games. You look at the backstories and intended futures for all of your players, and you craft something that gives your players challenge and glory.
(Example: I once played a character that healed instead of taking damage from poison because of a subclass, race, and feat combination in pathfinder. A sandbox DM could see this and introduce a poison swamp to the world. Maybe the entire campaign takes place in a jungle town with all manner of poisonous animals and plants)
Amazing video. As someone that prefers to give the players many options, you've hit the nail on the head with this one. Many of the lessons freely shared here were hard-earned for me through experience and I am certain that someone smart is going to take advantage of them and save a lot of time. The humor sprinkled over is nice and refreshes the listener too, although it may be a little overdone.
I'm running a sandbox game (my first campaign ever) that I started out 3 years ago with these same ideas in mind, before I even knew of your videos! My players love the world I've built. Follow this advice, new DMs! Also, have CONFIDENCE in your world, remember the rest of the world is still moving along without your players interacting with it, and have fun.
love running sandbox games. planning individual encounters is difficult without context, and giving life into the entire world gives me that much needed context for good encounters
I'm currently running a somewhat sandboxy game, but there is an overall story line and goal - the characters can just go about solving it in many ways. That, of course, means that I have to prep all of those ways for them. I might regret starting this campaign, if I didn't enjoy prepping so much 😊
Before I even watch this the way I always ran sandbox was knowing what my party or parties intend to do next at the end of a session and plan with those assumptions in mind. Because as you say, if I know they’re going to do something, I can give them a more fleshed out experience if I take the time to plan for it.
In a Sandbox game I ran for two years, I would prep by preparing roughly five encounters (foes and treasure) that I would theme according to what was going on for each session, I would also make sure that the underlying story would be moved forward by one of those encounters per session.
I use a homebrew mechanic - the rumor roll. Players roll a d60 and I have 60-plot-hook chart.
NOT 60 separate unique plot hooks. I make maybe 10-15 options of plots to follow but the sources of the rumor color the interpretation of what they hear about it, which can end up being misleading or absolutely insane sounding, but that provides more entertainment for everyone. And from there they can decide what hooks them and splash around in that part of the sandbox. I make a different chart for each town, and sometimes rumors will lead to another town.
Planning all these ahead of time is a pain in the rear, and I really only plan the general arc and major NPCs/Monsters/etc involved in the plot, so I do end up doing a decent chunk of making things up on the fly to fill in the meat of the plot until I have another chance to prep, and I have to take meticulous notes to keep up with them. Sandboxes are so much harder than train-track campaigns, but worth it for my chaos goblins who wanna subvert any and all expectations....
My very first time DMing resulted in a three-year-long campaign (soon to complete with an epic final battle, hopefully!!) that started as a sandbox. I prepared a bunch of hooks and places and had almost no idea what the bigger plot would be. In the first six months, the players artached to certain plot points and NPCs that then developed into an overarching plot. As I saw what the characters were interested in, I was able to scaffold around it and "yes, and" the players. It's been a really fun, satisfying campaign. My second campaign I ran was a module, and it took me a year to complete, so everything was planned for me. And my third campaign (currently at 1.5 years) has always had backbone of plot and is A LOT more linear than the first, but it still has a little room to flex... Though I often wish I had more freedom. The players don't seem to be at all opposed to the linear plot because they can do the "pieces" in any order... Kind of like a videogame, I guess.
All of this is to say, when it comes to prep: the module took the least (but still SOME; I think the idea that you don't have to prep a module is a huge lie). The linear game takes a fair amount to prep. The sandboxy game took BY FAR the most prework and has actually become less time-consuming to prep as the main plot has crystallized.
I tend to start every campaign in the sandbox. The world is a young and green adventurers oyster. But, that will leave a young group, once together, without direction. So, I'll draw from my current campaign to explain how I go from there.
First, I have a highly detailed world, and every character has the ability to make small or vast changes to it. So, in the current, I gave them three hooks, then added some motivations to do something based on their backstories. They actually took all three hooks and ran with the back story stuff. Perfect.
Two hooks gave me time to flesh the details of the main hook out and introduced them to potential rivals to the main hook. The backstory stuff was simply motivation for them to leave the starting city and head out into the world and find their way.
They are about halfway through the main story and have found that everything they've done up to this point, no matter how unrelated, has been another clue towards the endgame of the campaign. They picked up a big one last night.
However, they have also had a group goal and personal goals that I've let them explore and develop. In this case, they have put a lot into building their group as a D&D version of the Avengers. Each one has been working on his own heroes' journey towards that goal and has reached personal milestones.
Everyone feels like the main hero, and everyone is an important part of the group. They are one session away from being able to say "Arson Hobo's, Unite!"
That's generally how I do it.
I just gotta say, as a DM who specializes in running sandbox campaigns, I feel so seen. Your part about peppering plot hooks is what i call plot fishing. I use session zero and before to determine tone and theme the players want and then declare a tone and theme for the campaign and open up sign ups. Session zero i work out characters and what attachments exist and the impetus for them to ally, and then session one, I just pepper plot hooks around the town for things they wanted and see what lines they bite.
Also, I improv a ton, but I have a bunch of prepped encounters and dungeon layouts that I can use as a seed to keep the game moving while fudging the details. over the course of a session, 80-90% of the content I prep won't be touched, but over the level, I probably use about half of the content I prep. The trick is to leave your prep generic enough to be adaptable, and then add the flavor through improv after you've picked the best prepped content you have. You also have to be ready to either take a short pause or end the session for the night if the players truly break your world. The goal is to keep the world open and adaptable outside of where they know and keep the world close by where they explore fairly defined. If they make a mad dash outside of the world you've prepped, and you can. throw in a few encounters related to the hook they're chasing to end the session seamlessly and then prep for their new direction.
Thew whole trick is to prepare more open ended with adaptable content and then use to time in between sessions to adapt when they throw you for a loop. When you get good at this, you create the illusion that you're always prepared for anything and they don't realize your stalling tactics that run out the session because the improvs you've prepped can fill in any gaps when they stump you.
'Dragon of Icespire peak' Is one of my favourite modules to explore running a sandbox game; combine it with bob worldbuilders gm guide for it and you'll have a good base structure to try it out as a new gm.
Your channel is awesome I find myself continually learning new and exciting things I bring to my campaign thank you for all you do
You are very welcome. Thank you!
I run something in between these two styles, hopefully I do it well. : )
I have something like a sandbox world where my players are essentially mercenary heroes that can take up quests from a centralized office or do about anything else they want including building renown and businesses. But behind all of this, I have a few plots running that I drag across my players story and let them engage, ignore, or otherwise choose their involvement. These plots range from local issues to cosmic dangers or backstory resolution.
It ends up feeling like a combination of preparation and improv for me which is ideal.
Best Sandbox I ever ran was me, and two buddies from HS. They each wanted to be competing merchants in some kind of naval trade battle thing, so that's what I did. Each spent the game hiring adventurers to sabotage the other, bribe navies to protect their trade routes, etc. It was a pain to run, but they had fun, and they never even saw each other, in game. Lived on nearly opposite ends of "Ambrosia Bay," which was home to 4 trade centric countries. The hardest part for them was overcoming the tax-collector patrols in the bay, for the first like 10 sessions.
Each of the four countries have every right, and a neutral agreement to be allowed to tax the waters, only immunity was to have a "National Commerce Vessel" card, which limits what, and how often you can ship, past just contraband, of course. Eventually they *kinda* united under a single banner to effectively economically ruin one of the Cape centric Trade Baronies, and rebuilt its 'economy' as two competing halves of super capitalist government. If the people didn't like HIS rules, they'd go live in that guys half of the capital, but he has less work available, etc. Got too hard to run, so I asked them how they would end the story, they said that their heirs and their heirs keep this up, until division splits the country into two separate nations, which in post I named East Indea, run by the Trading and Governing Company, and the Western Goldpyle, run by Silk Sailing Collective. Characters still never saw each other, each was too afraid of assassination.
I totally wing it in FATE, World of Darkness, Savage Worlds and such. The only thing that stops me from doing so in D&D is complexity of game mechanics. Only the first couple of sessions get prepared, the rest is just rolling with consequences of earlier player actions. Prep takes half an hour or less.
My sandbox has a bulletin board in every town. There are at least 5 adventures advertised. (almost always, one is a missing cat... nobody goes after the missing cat.)
The adventures on the board are prepared. If they go searching for something else to do, that's likely going to be improvised. (Or something that I had prepared but hadn't decided where to put it yet)
But I have several binders of prepared adventures. So, I would have a hard time running out of stuff to drop wherever seems appropriate.
Gotta say, as a guy who is working on doing his first ever campaign as DM, and is also planning on making it a sandbox style game, I genuinely can't imagine not planning any of it.
I am an improv GM big time; but that doesn't mean I have no plans.
When I sit down at the table, I have no less than 100 ideas of where things will go. Sure, my players are deciding where and when to go, what their goals are - but I have my folder of dungeons and a wide knowledge of monsters (complete with page numbers).
How you prepare is very much up to you as a GM, but you need the prep time.
I create a number of adventures in concentric rings around the starting area, that increase in difficulty as they range further away. These are all dynamic locations where the enemies are not static in rooms, waiting until encountered. Using percentile rolls to determine where the enemies are when the PC’s approach. Running away from difficult encounters need to be an option in a sandbox campaign. Factions are excellent sources of info necessitating meaningful choices of who the PC’s will aid.
I started my campaign by asking each player what their character's thoughts were on five key things, each connected to a different quest that corresponds to an axis on the alignment chart.
When it comes to villains being active, my players were at a dungeon away from their home base city, they came outside and saw refugees from their home base city fleeing because the city was being taken by the villains' army.
Number 7.1: When you roll for random encounters, don't just skip ahead because the d20 says "there wasn't an encounter" -- roll on the table anyway, and allow the players to find evidence of the encounter that could've been!
"Three lizardmen charge from the bushes!" becomes "you notice footprints across your path; they are about your size, bipedal, unshod, and clawed."
Man it's like I'm being attacked personally by this. Way to call me out Luke hahaha. 😂
My Sandbox strategy:
Make up the relevant factions 2 to 7 depening on the story, but not much more. And also their goals
Plan the background events: The events that will happen if players do not interfere.
Make up the history of the important story element, Not the rest, dont make a real world
A few point of interestes before hand. A castle, a wizard tower etc.
This is how i do it. Because I have the involved parties clear, its easy to build random encounters as well.
I admit it, I'm guilty of creating a world and not running any game in which I could use it for literal years. But hey, when I was bored I used to just grab some dice and play by myself...ha ha...I really need more friends
I do that too. But for me "it's not a bug, it's a feature". My players know I do this, and it's become part of the campaign(s).
Our table plays sporadically; maybe 1-2 sessions a month, maybe a couple months between sessions. Went over 2 years without one during lockdown.
So I have Lonely Fun advancing faction plots about once a week, keeping an ongoing background narrative in motion, and updating a player-facing "newsletter" they can consult if they want.
So they're up-to-date on the machinations of the Smuggler's Flotilla, the maneuvering of the Dowager's Clique and the Prince's Cohort, the last sighting of Slicin' Higlee, et cetera. Nothing that'll torpedo a live plot-hook or drastically alter the balance of power, but small changes happening off-stage, as it were.
I get to have some fun and they've said my updates are entertaining. During the 2-year+ hiatus it kinda became a soap opera; I made up a silly romance between NPCs Sister Gabrina and Skibbin the Sausage-Seller, and we all got really invested in the storyline (I *had* to give them a happy ending, of course, after two years of "will they/won't they?")
For "sandbox" like campaigns, I like to draw from a few sources.
1. The party are students/graduates from a mercenary academy similar to the SeeD Gardens in Final Fantasy VIII. Some of the players can choose to make their characters students and get certain starting bonuses, and other players can make non students who get other bonuses. Students and non students meet in a dungeon at the start of session one. After the dungeon, they all go back to the academy where the students get their graduation reward, and the non students start auditing classes. By level 4, the players get the bonus they would have gotten if they started as the other option.
2. The Academy has a network of teleportation circles and bounty boards set up all over the world. Players go to the board at the end of sessions and pick the adventure they want to do next. In the next session, they take a teleport circle or their airship or whatever to the city where the npc posted the mission on the board and off they go.
3. During character creation, I don't ask for novel length backstories. I ask for a paragraph explaining their character's deal and a list. The list is basically the reason they need to adventure to make money or find whatever, and at least 5 npcs. I want their closest family members, a mentor, a rival or powerful villain, and any other npcs that mean enough to the PC that the party can seek them out in times of needs or come running the the npc's rescue if they're taken hostage. Basically, load the players up with extra Bonds so that every time the game lulls because "no one knows what to do" I can roll on a table of names and say one player's 1st, 3rd, or 5th favorite npc is in trouble or just invented/found something that will soon cause trouble.
There's a number of games like Fabula Ultima where session zero includes group world building. Basically, each player comes up with a few of the races, societies, fought over resources, and villains that exist in the world. Some DMs may chafe at this, but having players give you hooks to later swing at them right up front is a huge time saver.
As I reach DMing maturity more and more I find the lines between different styles of game blurring.
I statt with plot ideas, then the party wrecks them and picks the threads they want to follow (and out their own twist on them) and I craft the road infront of them as required by their actions.
My two main tools for a sandbox are a notepad and a calendar. All my villians and factions are in the calendar and have things they will do on such and such a date, [unless], the players interfere with those plans. As for notes, anything the players do that interact with NPC's that is interesting [to me], I will expand apon. Players are rude to a magistrate, well that magistrate was having a bad day and they [the players made it worse], minor villian coming up. Steal something from a shopkeep, maybe someone saw it, other than the shopkeep, adventure coming up. I create Encounter tables like a one shot adventure [very small but expandable if the players want to pursue it], as an example I have one rural encounter where the players are deluged with trash and excrement from a passing by dwarven skyship, [don't ask], if the players want to they can pursue leading to an adventure or just find a place to wash thier clothes out.
My current campaign is a sandbox, and honestly, you can start one out much simpler.
* You need a map with interesting locations to explore: dungeons, ruins, towns/villages (some lawless or non-human, etc.), landmarks, etc. I started with an area map at 6 miles per hex, then made a zoomed in 1 mile per hex map around the home town for lower level adventures.
* I have some general notes about various power centers (local lords, crazy martial arts masters, wizards, powerful monsters) but didn't develop them more than a general idea of who they are and what they want.
* Create some detail for the home town. Shops, a few interesting NPCs, services, etc.
* Fill in full details for four or five of the closest dungeons/lairs/points of interest, and a few events going on in the town.
* THIS ONE IS IMPORTANT: Give the players a default goal to follow if nothing else seems interesting to them. I run Old School D&D, so that goal is treasure (1gp = 1xp). Maybe it's working towards overturning the evil empire, or searching out long lost histories for the local sage, or finding rare ingredients for the alchemist, or driving off some rampaging monster force... Give them the freedom to explore where they will, but make sure all the players know that they can always default to pursuing this goal.
* THIS ONE IS ALSO IMPORTANT: Make sure you have a structure for rewarding XP for pursuing this goal, and make it something that they can't simply complete in a few sessions. Make the players aware of that goal.
* Between sessions, keep preparing more and more of the dungeons/adventure locations. I run a session once every two weeks, and I try to get one new location developed between each session (I'm actually so far ahead, I often skip this). Don't worry about "prep that won't be used." You're the DM. Prep should be half of the fun for you, even if the players never go there.
That's all you need to get started. The emergent story, the reactions of the population or powerful NPCs/monsters, all that you can develop as you play.
Making a sandbox isn’t about planning for every possibility. It is built on three main components: a populated world with an internal narrative and cool things in it, great random encounter lists, and the sensitivity to make the world respond to player choices.
Running a sandbox right now and it's the best campaign we've done. Each area is like a mini campaign with some overarching plots that connect the regions. Definitely requires more planning, but ai generation has taken out a lot of the legwork, and I just tweek it for the creative aspect.
Boy I wish I had you in my back pocket as a quick reference resource! Would love to bounce ideas off of you and get your advice!
I feel like starting with a skeletal outline of the world, including points of interest, is the way to go. Flesh it out as much as necessary in your prep depending on how likely it's going to be used, when it's going to be used, and if anything has changed due to the players' decisions.
Lots of barebones points of interest or plot hooks can be seeded (dungeons, lairs, ruins, bandit camps, neighboring polities, noble seats of power, cities, mountain passes, etc.), but only a few are fleshed out and revealed directly to players (unless they investigate or stumble into them). So that when you do need to improvise, you still have some sort of structure to it.
There's a lot of up front prep with a sandbox, but once its set up prep time is a lot shorter (if you do it right). I tend to just ask my players at the end of a session what they plan on doing next session, where they're gonna go, and so on, so I have some idea as to what is going to happen, and I prep that, and anything random that needs to be whipped up I just rely on random tables to fill in the gaps. Works pretty well. I liked my old story game quite a bit too, but the prep time was significantly longer.
I feel like the most important thing as a DM is finding out what kind of DM you are. Some people like preparing a lot, some people need to prepare a little and some of us don't.
I usually have a world idea, set the players in it, see what they want to play to get a feel of them. Then I probably get a feeling of a kind of story start, I might have ideas of fun things that could happen eventually but it's all loose and undefined. Then we start playing, I describe things, the players react and describe what they do, I react to that and describe more stuff. Players seem to get stuck or directionless I point them in a direction or two (or more) then depending on what they chose I'll go for it.
Between sessions I might or might not get inspired of previous events and think of a new cool fun whatever thing but generally I just make it up on the fly.
After they've done a few quests I usually find a few things in previous sessions that tie together and voila the real campaign is born. The players think I prepped it all and I smile and nod and pretend I did ;)
The point is, this style works for me because I'm good at making things up and finding patterns in the random stuff I +the players make up to then tie it together. I COULD definitely be better at taking notes myself though since, you know, every npc and place and so on is made up on the fly means if I forget it and the players forget it and then ask about it.. It's lost and bad.
For others there's probably a need to make a few notes, maybe places to visit with some plot hooks and so on, while others like a friend of mine likes to write down extensive notes on certain places. Which can accidentally end up being wasted effort when the players sidetrack.
That said I think the video gives a lot of good ideas and help for many DM's and I honestly believe most DM's will need some kinda prepp to be better (even if they're already great!). It's just not for everyone.
I did try prepping a full adventure once, it just got me confused and lost track of who was where and so on.
Good video anyways!
I could add that I usually don't even use monster manuals either.. While I do use orc, goblins and so on now and then of course, I make up their stats instead of looking at Stat blocks or something. But for the most part I make up monsters too, now and then with abilities and traits that aren't in the monster books anyways.
Of course I don't run in a specific setting like faerun, if I did that I might reconsider to keep it more to the lore, at least look them up or something
I love how well your videos are setup.
You have concise points that are easy to follow and keep up with.
Please don't stop making dnd ttrpg how to videos.
Can confirm my non-vetran players saw castle Ravenloft and knocked down it's door, at level 2. That was a wild time, we still played it through! It was a lot of running but they had fun and escaped with a chest of gold haha
The hardest part about building a sandbox is being prepared. I've learned to make sure to give "boundaries" when doing a sandbox. My current sandbox the players received the info that the game is contained to an island chain. That the theme of hte game is capitalism , the goal of the game is to make as much money as they can , the game ends when the PCs or someone else finds the 3 orbs the party was hired to find at the beginning of the game.
I create a hex map of the world and dot the world with various random long and short adventures. I don't put set rewards or even set npcs , allowing these things to be easy to edit as i take notes on the pcs desires and what their trying to do. Player 3 is trying to become a lich. Great adventure 44 now has something needs for it. Towns have similar rumors to give PCs direction without hitting them on the head.
IN the mean time, as someone said you got to have your factions and stuff moving as well. I'm 1/4 through my current campaign with 2 different parties going through this campaign world and only 1/4 of the factions have been interacted with and the PCs have already made enemies they dont even know about. One party soley cares about establishing agriculture technology in the reason, the other are on the opposite end, attempting to create a mafia racket on the island.
As the party goals become clear i place more adventures and npcs that could aid and hinder that goal. while still performing all the other machinations in teh background.
A comment. As asked. Cause I love you Luke.
Plus you (and a few others like the dungeon dudes) have helped me a lot on my DMing journey.
We started in august 2023 (as I type this its april 2024) and this coming friday will be our 23rd session (i track the session and events on discord) - and this kind of content has helped a lot.
I have 7 players. Me and 3 buddies got bored of our normal weekly video game of 5 years (sea of thieves) and couldnt agree on a new video game. So my 3 buddies of course had friends interested and I called it at 7 players.
My dad raised me on tabletop games so I spoke up about DMing and got invested.
Here I am. Thanks is what I’m trying to say.
You are very welcome. I'm happy to be able to help!
I like how "wondering around" is the main idea of OSR games, as the characters are motivated by gold out of the box, due to the xp=gold leveling abstraction. It also has exploration procedures required for that, unlike 5e. But it requires all the prep time to be spend on developing interesting environments (dungeon/wilderness).
Solves a lot of issues for me.
And for a heroic fantasy I play Chasing Adventure (Dungeon World hack), where the narrative right are passed from the dm to player quite often, so it requires almost no prep either.
I guess, "sandbox" in a 5e campaign is a huge challenge, that's why almost everyone I know runs it "by the book"
Inspired me to incentivize players to "use the world," i.e. engage in flavorful downtime activities to win inspiration points (also stolen from you). E.g. wizards study at a library, clerics attend to temple duties or go on a pilgrimage, rangers hunt bigger game, bards perform for greater audiences, etc. These predetermined activities will earn them 1d6 inspiration points. The idea is to create bonds to the world.
"Don't give them options for something you don't want them to do."
My players entered a crypt that was intended to be one room and when describing it, I accidentally said "door" and instead of backtracking, I just said it was locked. They went at it for so long I knew I needed to put something behind it. Never make a door from thin air, worst mistake of my life.
"Who wouldn't want that."
[Raises Hand].
Your job as DM is to have something for us to ... do.
If we take a detour, you might have an NPC you can drop in to give us a "fun" ten or fifteen minutes, but I, for one, don't want to wander around all evening and just stumble on a random encounter over and over.
One note on this. Make sure you hold the players to their decision on what to do next. I can't tell you how many times I asked the players what they were going to do next time, only to have them totally change their mind when the session started.
Sandboxes work best when the players have a deep understanding of the world around them. (Even if part of that means “the world is mysterious”). Any group planning a new sandbox campaign should strongly consider playing a game of “the quiet year” to set up the starting village/home base and countless adventure hooks, NPC’s, points of interest and best of all the players will feel like they have a big stake in the world since they creatd it
I would recommend more prepwork than what is being suggested here, but less intense.
Yes, you DO want to make all the available adventures.
But not to the depth a "On Rails" campaign would.
Make locations, enemies, NPCs with motivations, and that's about it. You don't need complex encounter planning, all you need is to know who, where, and why, getting that for a few dozen things in each major city is easily do-able in a week or two.
Also, plan for failure.
As in the PCs either failing in an adventure, or failing to hook, plan out what will happen if the PCs don't complete the task.
Maybe this means a bad end for the npcs involved, maybe another group of people come along and succeed, taking the public glory for doing so.
Also, make use of existing resources.
There is a 2nd edition boxed set called "The city of Greyhawk" that I can't recommend enough.
Contained in it are a series of "Adventure cards" that are short, single session adventures that you could expect to find in a large city.
Even if you don't run 2nd ed (but you should) they're still useful as the only thing you'll need to change are stat blocks.
As for campaign structure:
I ask the party to give me one session "on rails" to start them out. I use this to:
1. bring the party together
2. introduce them to the setting and important NPCs thru a low level adventure (normally a fetch quest for a powerful individual who doesn't have the time)
3. establish other hooks.
After that, they can do whatever they want, leave the city and go to a completely different place if they want, or stay in the starter city forever, it's fine.
But this is why I flesh out all the major cities on the continent in advance, if they go further, you can have some high seas adventures while you work on the rest.
For me, the first games starts wide open. I have hundreds of prepared scenarios and linear quest lines of various degrees. And every area has something going on. I also have hundreds of npc completely fleshed out. From here, player decisions make minor and major quests.
Even if on what seems the main quest at the moment, has a rabbithole of a sidequest possibility. Like a partial map on some bandits attack while on the road somewhere. My players learn quickly the importance of these decisions. Sometimes, they save the town and go on to be heroes. Sometimes, they return after getting lost for years but return as heroes and return the towns urn that went missing before the players arrived.
Of course, a good DM should know what their players want. No use doing a plane hoping campaign with a player hafling that wants a harbor city of intrigue and subterfuge.
A big part of random encounters are natural disasters and weather events. Pitfalls, caveins, and avalanches... things that negate character skills and makes everyone feel vulnerable. Even make them run for their lives.
I love having 2-5 plot hooks per area for my sandbox games. I'd say it's more prep but it might be the way that I organize
You got to have the wool blanket! You rock, dude!
In my view a good sandbox game is often a set of shorter linear games with opportunities for player choice. That gives the benefits of a sandbox with more engaging stories that you get with a linear game. It also dramatically helps the GM prep too, because when the PCs are in one of the linear parts, it’s not necessary to prep a ton of possibilities that don’t get used.
BioWare games are often like this-they have an intro on rails to set the stage and then start opening up more choices, finally converging on the end goal.
I always champion Blades in the Dark as a system to read (and tbh steal from) if a DM wants to run a true sandbox campaign. It's something that is going to take an extremely long time to write, but once it is done and you've started the campaign proper there should be very little needed prep time between sessions
This is definitely a reference heavy episode! Nice done!
I write a framework of story beats that I want my players to hit. But I don't go too indepth beyond a few NPCs and what they want with at least 1 or 2 encounters pending the players choices.
Pro tip: your "sandbox" game can easily be constructed as a "modular" game. It can then be run over and over even by the same players.
You just make your world, and how it will progress if the players don't exist.
You populate it with adventure modules.
The players can pick up or drop these adventures flawlessly, and their proximity determines what you may need to prep.
...this works so well.
You can simply turn off adventures you don't want, and amplify the hooks to those they're looking for.
You can now set up a endless sandbox adventure, and it can literally be the ONLY game you ever make, that can service endless adventuring parties for endless levels.
Me, writing a bad sandbox and putting a fork in a toaster: Don't tell me what to do!