D&D General Sandbox Campaigns should have a Default Action.

[Shiroiken]

IME most sandbox campaigns fail because of the players. It's a player driven style, and most players prefer to react, rather than act. If it fails because of the DM, it's usually because they didn't answer the questions "why?"

1. Why are the PCs in this town?
   1. Knowing PCs motivations can help setup hooks they care about.
2. Why are the PCs together?
   1. Random people getting together to do a quest is a trope. Random people getting together to do random things is more of a gang, so there needs to be a logical in-game reason.

Typically most sandboxes start with a preset adventure, since the DM has designed stuff well in advance without knowing the answer to these questions. This adventure is designed to pull the PCs together and answer the 2nd Why. After the 1st adventure, the DM should be aware of character motivations enough to answer the 1st Why, allow them to use it for adventure hooks.

A less common method is to have the players answer the 2nd Why at session 0 during character creation. The DM then gives each character a bunch of rumors that lead to various plot hooks, based on the answer to the 1st Why, which is learned during session 0. The players will start play with enough information to choose which hook to follow up on.

 

[bedir than]

What's the default action in a dungeon?

 

[aco175]

I like the Matt Colville video on sandboxing. He likes to have a few low-level modules as starters and they lead to a few more printed adventures. Offering the players a few choices and see where they go. This makes the other choices not taken still run in the background and they get harder, i.e. for higher level PCs to solve. So the PCs blew off the threat of orcs massing in the mountain pass to deal with the necromancer- well now the ogres arrived to aid the orcs and they are attacking the outer towns. Still do not want to deal with them, well in a few more levels a dragon will join them and they attack the home base.

 

[Bedrockgames]

One thing I have learned is there are different kinds of sandboxes and different ways to approach sandbox (and much of that is going to depend on how your brain works as a gm and what your players do, how they think; as well as the overall chemistry of your group).

I would distinguish between more focused sandboxes (where there is a premise: i.e. we are all going to be bank robbers!) and a more open one (drop the players in a village and see what happens, letting them drive the direction of the campaign). The latter can easily become the former but it is usually just more organic and can change more easily over time. But the former is usually a little easy to flow into because expectations are all pretty similar whereas the latter is a discovery of expectations. For the more open approach, I think a key thing that is very important for it to work is having players who feel they can take initiative (which might just be their style but might be something the GM needs to convey to them if they are more accustomed to receiving quests from NPCs). The other part of that is being comfortable adapting to the players actions as a GM (which I think can be tricky and I would liken it to being able to truly listen in a conversation rather than just waiting for your turn to speak).

What works for folks is going to vary. What has worked for me is the idea of the living adventure (not so much the living world concept but the living adventure concept outlined in Feast of Goblyns, where you treat NPCs as active forces in the adventure itself, pieces that move around of their own volition and respond to the PCs, have clear goals, etc). Essentially treating them like PCs or living characters, then extending this thought to things like the organizations they belong to.

So having a good sense of what conflicts and situations exist in the setting can be very useful here. I don't need an adventure so much as parts of the setting with enough tension and conflict that once the players insert themselves there they find there are a lot of options, and their actions open up further options on my side.

Dungeons and monstrous threats are also something I find useful. Those are things that can come up in play in a variety of ways but I like linking them to the social fabric of the setting. So in my wuxia campaigns many of the dungeons will be things like tombs related to an ancient sect, or a temple that was destroyed and is now haunted. They may house key martial arts manuals or relics, and players might choose to seek them out because they want a particular technique, they want to stop a foe from finding that technique, they need an important relic to raise their own prestige in the martial world or assist a sect they are part of.

Personal preference for starting a campaign is I like to just drop the players in and see what happens, then do my prep around that between sessions. I tend to take the attitude of "I don't care where the campaign goes, and I don't care when the 'adventure' stops or starts".

Some of their exploration will be them finding things I have put in the setting, but some of it will be things I haven't thought of that they suggest. If I drop them in a village and I've only planned out things like the headman, local wine shops, a couple of relevant sects to the area, a local tomb, encounter tables, and some monstrous threats that hunt people in the nearby wilderness; but the players ask if there are any cults in the area because they want to join one (perhaps with the aim of taking it over), I will have to consider that and say yes if it sounds reasonable: then quickly sketch details for them on the fly. Same if they ask if there is a merchant shipping operation between the village and the nearest city along the river. Ideally you have a lot of this stuff thought out before hand but there are so many in between places on the map that stuff will need to grow organically through Q&A too

Now I don't always run sandbox campaigns. Sometimes I want a more monster of the week game or just want there to be a campaign with more regular adventures. But this is a style I find quite rewarding because as a GM you are surprised just as much as the players

 

[Oofta]

I get a general idea from a session 0 and rhe very first session or so is typically predetermined, at least in a broad way.

For example fo my current campaign, everyone lives in a dangerous area. Every family can pay taxes to pay for mercenaries or be part of the defensive forces for a period of time. So the PCs got assigned to the same unit and were given slightly more risky tasks because they showed potential.

I've done similar things before, the intro sessions have them all trapped somewhere, defending against invaders or guards for a caravan. In all cases, there are a handful of encounters, some info dumps as they interact with NPCs and so on. The goal is to throw them head first into action as a way to get to know the other PCs without doing the tired "You meet in a tavern." Unless of course, the tavern was just a refuge from the zombie horde that's invading the town..

Then I give the group multiple threads and options. They may be introduced by someone they interacted with during the game or things they heard about. They can also suggest things I didn't think of.

The important thing is that at the end of the session or between sessions they decide where they're going next so I have time to prep. These mini-arcs may last for a single session or a dozen.

Meanwhile I'll also set up potential meta plots, bigger events that are happening in the background and rough outlines of potential future opportunities.

 

[FallenRX]

What's the default action in a dungeon?

Crawl it, find treasure, mysteries secrets, even plotlines, or even a whole mystical underground world.

I like the Matt Colville video on sandboxing. He likes to have a few low-level modules as starters and they lead to a few more printed adventures. Offering the players a few choices and see where they go. This makes the other choices not taken still run in the background and they get harder, i.e. for higher level PCs to solve. So the PCs blew off the threat of orcs massing in the mountain pass to deal with the necromancer- well now the ogres arrived to aid the orcs and they are attacking the outer towns. Still do not want to deal with them, well in a few more levels a dragon will join them and they attack the home base.

The best sandboxes take from their favorite modules, and key it around the sandbox, that is a great way of doing it.

 

[Yora]

I like the idea of "Fronts" from PbtA; keep things progressing when the PCs don't pay attention to them.

A videogame and not really an RPG in the conventional sense, but Kenshi manages to create an amazing party-based sandbox full of great adventures with the simple hunger mechanic. The game world is a desert with no naturally growing edible plants, and pretty much all animals are evolved to defend themselves against the many huge predators, which makes them really dangerous to hunt. Because the hunger bar of the characters in the party is constantly going down, you are permanently forced to ensure a steady supply of food. You just can not sit on your butt and let time pass, you have to be active to keep food coming in. You need to mine resources to trade for food, train and equip your characters to be able to hunt for food, or build a base to grow your food. The first option is very slow and gets boring quickly, and the last option means you're setting up a giant beacon for all the raiders in the surrounding desert because they also need your food. And you can have absolutely amazing adventures exploring the desert to search for new resources that allow you to improve your food production or strengthen your defenses in your base or better equip your characters to fight off raiders and predators. Entirely with basically just random encounters and no meaningful dialogs, and no kinds of quests of any kind. Trying to find a way through a pass occupied by bandits to avoid a giant detour through monster territory. Trying to get your severely injured and bleeding characters carried to a village where they can recover before the beasts of the desert catch the last ones that can still walk. Trying to retake your base after you've been thrown out by bandits. Sending a rescue team to get captured allies out of prison cages in a hostile town, or race from your base through the desert with a backpack full of bandages to save your bleeding and unconscious friends who were away to deliver your goods to the market.

The really important lesson I've taken from this game is that default actions and incentives come in both the form of pull and push factors. Typically in a dungeon crawling sandbox campaign, we are dealing with the search for treasure and XP as pull factors. There are things out in the wilderness that are desirable to reach if the players can get past the obstacles, but the players don't have to pursue a specific source and can instead choose to go after another source where the risks don't seem as high compared to the rewards.
But push factors can be just as powerful, and even feel much more appropriate and interesting for some campaign premises. The hunger mechanic of Kenshi mentioned above is one such push. Water requirements in Dark Sun are another one. When you're only dealing with pull factors such as rewards waiting for those who overcome the obstacles standing in the way, there's always an option for players to decline and instead keep looking for other opportunities that seem more promising with better rewards for the involved risks, or which just seem more thematically and narratively appropriate for the personalities of their characters. This can lead to the situation where the players don't really want to pursue any of the options known to them and the game drags on as they wait for new opportunities to present themselves. That's the very important difference with push factors. When you motivate players with push factors, then they are on a clock. Water is running out. Food is running. If the PCs don't get off their asses and do something, they will die! Don't like any of the options presented to you? Tough luck. You're now forced to pursue something that doesn't seem that great to you simply to buy yourself more time to find an interesting pull to grab on to. And just because the characters don't like the activity they are doing doesn't mean the activity isn't fun to play for the players. That's where drama and desperation comes from. Being forced to do things that are unpleasant because you're being forced to by circumstances outside your control.
This is one of the reason why many space exploration games have the ships of the PCs come with regular maintenance cost, and frequently have the party start out with a large debt to some dangerous people. Any time the players find a job opportunity for their party and decline, have the clock tick forward increase the push by one increment.

 

[payn]

Great OP, not much to add. I can give a story about a recent experience I had.

Last year a friend wanted to run a cyberpunk game. Do to covid it was just three of us, which was fine. The GM decided to use Carbon 2185 which is a 5E reskin to cyberpunk. I dont like 5E reskins, but it was easy to jump into and get going. System has never been the issue for this GM though. He told us it was going to be a sandbox and we could do whatever we wanted.

So, we had a session zero and I made a former megacorp security officer. He was a former fixer, in that he got corp execs out of trouble and dealt with the slums and gangs on the down low to keep the corp clean. He tired of doing all the dirty work and getting non of the credit, so he quit. Now he is looking to put to use his skills on the street with those from the office. The other PC was a 19 year old gutter punk. She had some skills and wanted help folks on the street, but wanted to avoid joining a gang. They work together as he is the face and she is the tech.

After starting, the two PCs wanted to open their own detective agency. Work cases for whoever had the cash. GM thwarted us at every attempt. We kept asking him what he wanted us to do, since he wasn't really willing to entertain our ideas. "cyberpunks dont work with corpos, cyberpunks join gangs, the plan was to have a gang war, etc..." Turns out the GM didn't really want to run a sandbox. They wanted a specific experience and had the odd notion that the players would just fall into it.

I think its important to be straight with your campaigns. If you expect your players to be a genre template to a T, then you really need to communicate that. Pretending to entertain their notions and dead ending all their efforts is awful. Once the illusion that the sandbox isnt really open at all, it will burn good will the players have for the campaign and the GM.

 

[Reynard]

Absolutely agree, the default action imo, is basically how that understanding is came too, by having an means to get a variety of content to them, and a default action to get more hooks to a variety of content.

My point was I don't think you need a formal procedure if everyone at the table is on the same page.

 

[FallenRX]

My point was I don't think you need a formal procedure if everyone at the table is on the same page.

Its not a formal procedure, its quite literally just a way for them to do what they wanna do, and get content about what they wanna do.
For example, we agree on running a heist sandbox campaign, the default action for them to get options of heists is what? Investigate towns for Heists targets, or try to hit up a contact who has heist jobs for them, this is just kinda basic design lol.