A newbie DM and his sandbox
- Thread starter dalelees
- Start date
I've attempted this without much success. The faults could easily lie with my skills as a DM but I feel the players have a large role as well and they dictate how much fun can be had with such a format.
I initially had each player create a solid backstory with several elements that could be tied to the game world. In addition I requested a general goal or two the character would like to achieve. When getting such things from all the players, this essentially opens up a ton of side-quests that can be explored.
Unless you're great with working on the fly. Sandbox games can easily suffer from lack of excitement. Sessions may involve you simply stalling for time (needless encounters) until which point you think of something interesting to do with what the PC's are trying to accomplish.
Expect the unexpected. You can easily establish several story hooks for a party to explore...but they'll often latch on to a certain detail and go from there. In my case, anything that sounds like possible treasure was always more important than an act of kindness with no specific time limits in place.
Personally, I enjoyed running this style of game, but in the future I'd recommend running it in a world the party knows. Mine was all custom. People in my group have all played Dragon Age for example. Establishing any kind of story in a world like that seems like it would make for a great sandbox as the players have a good idea of the world and its politics/expectations.
The main benefit of a sandbox game is that it only gets better with time. Once you get over the initial hang-ups, the PC's will hopefully come up with more and more ideas themselves to drive the story. All their actions have longstanding consequences, and this aspect continually makes the game potentially great, especially when you create quests with strong moral choices.
I initially had each player create a solid backstory with several elements that could be tied to the game world. In addition I requested a general goal or two the character would like to achieve. When getting such things from all the players, this essentially opens up a ton of side-quests that can be explored.
Unless you're great with working on the fly. Sandbox games can easily suffer from lack of excitement. Sessions may involve you simply stalling for time (needless encounters) until which point you think of something interesting to do with what the PC's are trying to accomplish.
Expect the unexpected. You can easily establish several story hooks for a party to explore...but they'll often latch on to a certain detail and go from there. In my case, anything that sounds like possible treasure was always more important than an act of kindness with no specific time limits in place.
Personally, I enjoyed running this style of game, but in the future I'd recommend running it in a world the party knows. Mine was all custom. People in my group have all played Dragon Age for example. Establishing any kind of story in a world like that seems like it would make for a great sandbox as the players have a good idea of the world and its politics/expectations.
The main benefit of a sandbox game is that it only gets better with time. Once you get over the initial hang-ups, the PC's will hopefully come up with more and more ideas themselves to drive the story. All their actions have longstanding consequences, and this aspect continually makes the game potentially great, especially when you create quests with strong moral choices.
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Raven Crowking
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Infiniti2000
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Ruleset? You mean, different than 4E?
IME, unless ALL of the players are and remain very engaged in the game, a full sandbox is not really worth the effort on the part of the DM. I'd instead recommend a partial sandbox where you are able to develop a story so that all your time as DM isn't wasted, but let the players/party delve elsewhere for short periods with a clear indication prior to that next session. IMO, an unprepared session or even encounter simply isn't great; at the very least it won't be as good as it could be. So, a full sandbox where such is the norm simply won't be the best game it could be. Sure, a great DM will still allow the game to be a blast, but think how much better it would be if the DM were able to spend his time and resources on things the party will do as opposed to 5 times as many things more half-ass for things the party might do.
1 Bit of advice is to start small then work your way out from that point. You can have a over-all idea of geography and politics but do not fill in too much until you have an idea of which way the party is going.
Back-stories for the characters are important and can help you fill in parts of the sandbox.
Rumour-mills are a great addition for the campaign and allow you to introduce new adventure hooks as well as create a more immersive world. (and if i could figure out how to do so I would include an example from the campaign that I play in but i do not want to have the wall of text without a spoiler tag to be able to hide it)
Back-stories for the characters are important and can help you fill in parts of the sandbox.
Rumour-mills are a great addition for the campaign and allow you to introduce new adventure hooks as well as create a more immersive world. (and if i could figure out how to do so I would include an example from the campaign that I play in but i do not want to have the wall of text without a spoiler tag to be able to hide it)
Raven Crowking
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Even when doing a sandbox I would recommend starting with an introductory adventure to let the PCs bed in and give you all a chance to become at least slightly familiar with the world and introduce a number of potentially useful NPCs.
The introductory adventure should probably take the group to level 2 and along the way highlight a few of the more important aspects of the area or world. The end of the adventure should probably present about 3 hooks to other possible avenues of adventure, but by then you will probably know what your players are interested in.
Start small, only detail areas that you know the players are going to interact with soon, and be prepared to wing it when necessary.
The introductory adventure should probably take the group to level 2 and along the way highlight a few of the more important aspects of the area or world. The end of the adventure should probably present about 3 hooks to other possible avenues of adventure, but by then you will probably know what your players are interested in.
Start small, only detail areas that you know the players are going to interact with soon, and be prepared to wing it when necessary.
Scribble
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For my next campaign I'm working on I want to "zone" out the various areas of the world (west marches style) with different encounter levels.
Then as I either create or gather together adventures and areas of interest, I can put them in places that fit the encounter level (with a few oddities here and there.)
Once that's done I can start building different rumors and such people might know about the places.
I want the "random monsters" in the world to be encountered more based on the results of s skill challenge then just a random roll. That way, getting from point a to point b without encountering something gains the players experience as well.
(Haven't fully worked out how I want it to work though.)
I'm also thinking it will end up being a lot of work.
Then as I either create or gather together adventures and areas of interest, I can put them in places that fit the encounter level (with a few oddities here and there.)
Once that's done I can start building different rumors and such people might know about the places.
I want the "random monsters" in the world to be encountered more based on the results of s skill challenge then just a random roll. That way, getting from point a to point b without encountering something gains the players experience as well.
(Haven't fully worked out how I want it to work though.)
I'm also thinking it will end up being a lot of work.
I'm running a mostly sandbox game right now, and I think the most the most important thing to ask the players what they want to do next session at the close of the current session. That way I can prepare specifically for what the characters want to do.
Other than that, I echo a lot of what has been said already. Start small. Dangle a lot of hooks and see which one the players latch onto.
Other than that, I echo a lot of what has been said already. Start small. Dangle a lot of hooks and see which one the players latch onto.
Raven Crowking
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