D&D 5E Sandbox Play

[Bupp]

I've run quite a few sandbox campaigns, but I've never run a hexcrawl.

Back in my high school/army days was my high point of DMing in a sandbox. Lots of free time and expendable income for gaming.

I've never been great at coming up with original ideas, but I can always take other peoples ideas and blend them together to and make them my own.

Back then I bought just about every published adventure and had a subscription to Dungeon. I kept index cards of each adventure with a synopsis and organized by level range. A lot of my pleasure reading then was adventures. I'd read through them over and over, even playtesting them myself with different adventuring groups I'd make up. A lot of these characters would become NPC's in my world.

After the character creation session, once I had an idea of what the group was, I'd write up "Rumor Notes" for each character. 3-5 things that each character has heard about that were adventure hooks. Some would overlap, being different rumors about the same things. Then at the end of each adventure, I'd hand out a few more to each player. They would discuss among themselves what they were interested in checking out. If was always fun to see what interested each player, and the group as a whole.

I'd take friends and foes from early adventures and make them recurring. I'd also take things from adventures they passed over and mix them into later adventures.

Sometimes I'd throw some stuff at them that I wanted to run, though. "On your way to do this, THIS happens!"

Still, for the most part the players had complete control over what they did, within the parameters of the rumors I'd give out, but that would leave plenty of choices.

 

[Rune]

After the character creation session, once I had an idea of what the group was, I'd write up "Rumor Notes" for each character. 3-5 things that each character has heard about that were adventure hooks. Some would overlap, being different rumors about the same things.

I once ran a game wherein all of the PCs were from the same small village where everybody knew everybody. Each player then wrote down a rumor that their character (and, by extension, everybody) had heard about another randomly determined PC. These generated a surprising number of hooks.

 

[Jaracove]

Some brilliant tips/advice here

Thanks all for the info!

 

[Jeph]

I'm kinda astounded nobody's dropped a link to the West Marches yet; it's a series of blog posts with some fantastic advice on running sandbox games. (Plus some rotating-playerbase stuff, which isn't as relevant.)

http://arsludi.lamemage.com/index.php/78/grand-experiments-west-marches/

Sandbox is my preferred style. My process is:

• Draw an evocative map with lots of cool stuff on it.
• Give the players a reason to be together and go out and do things, before chargen. Eg, "Make characters who are settlers on a new continent. You're the few people in the community willing to go and explore a dangerous wilderness."
• Present them with at least 3 choices, and always ask what they want to do next at the END of each session.
• Prep the thing they say they want to do.

Plus two golden rules:

FRACTAL COMPLEXITY: The more players interact with pretty much anything, the more detail, nuance, and complexity you give it. Be it the culture of the beast-men who inhabit the hills or the motivations and personality of the air elemental bound to Forbidden Library or the language of the ruined city of Pinosh Orum.

INTERCONNECTED HISTORY: Start with a rough sense of the history of the area of play, and how it maybe gave rise to the current major powers there. Drop details as you play about how the NPCs, monsters, and places the PCs interact with relate to that history and each other.

In both cases, make up the surface details on the fly. Between games, take the stuff you made up during last week's play and flesh it out with internal logic and richer detail.

A map I used a few years ago for a super successful E6 3.5 sandbox game. The players started in New Town, in the lower left:

 

[Rune]

Really like that detail-work on the map, [MENTION=6738]Jeph[/MENTION]. Especially the forests.

 

[Viking Bastard]

If you haven't run a sandbox game before you might try a "semi-sandbox" - give the players a couple of story hooks (rumors, PC background hooks, etc.) and at the end of each session ask the players what they plan on pursuing next time. This gives you time to fully plan out an adventure in advance, while still letting the players drive the story. With each session drop an additional hook or two so the players always have options.

This is pretty much my default style, which I've also seen described as a "story-sandbox". Just keep rapid-firing plot-hooks at the players and then follow their lead.

I ran a full sandbox, for the first time in over a decade, in-between my 4e and 5e games. It was a consciously short and experimental game, as to let both me and my players stretch our wings a little between campaigns. While we had fun and it resulted in some memorable sessions, I'm going to rate it as 'so-so'. I did find it hard to keep up momentum, as the players did end up (especially in the first few sessions) mostly twiddling their thumbs and just kind of indecisively wandering around, much like [MENTION=1]Morrus[/MENTION] described, until I shoved action in their faces, while I got too caught up in (and then was quickly overwhelmed by) the minutiae of tracking hexes, time and local activity.

It brought two things into focus for me: Tracking things has always been my prime weakness as a DM, so if I want to try it again I should find more abstract ways of handling that stuff, and that even though you shove hooks under player noses, it doesn't mean they don't need a sense of direction to be motivated to choose one.

One piece of advice, and one that I kind of failed at in the above game (I meant to, it just kind of fell flat), is to start it off with a bang--just drop them into an adventure for the first session and wait with triggering the full options of the sandbox until they've already on a course, even if that course will change. It's hard to gain momentum from a hard stop.

 

[Schmoe]

Lots of great ideas in this thread - its my favourite type of play. Just one thing to add that has worked really well in some of our campaigns. Just because there is no major plotline to follow there can certainly be a strong campaign theme. Two of our best campaigns have been based on the themes of exploration and another on survival. You can then help the players build a suitable character/backstory for such a sandbox.

The exploration theme worked well because we and our whole village migrated to a new, exciting and dangerous land. Our characters all had different story reasons to embrace such a theme. One wanted to make a name for himself, another find ancient relics from the previous fallen civilization, another dark magics. The group was given the first few missions to get them used to the new land but after that's it was up to the players to advance their stories. What is important here that the characters bond together over the first few levels so they are willing to help each other with their own quests down the line. We took this one to 14th level (3e)

The survival them created an instant bonding of the characters although most of them were evil alignment. They were stuck in a chaotic recently fallen city (Ched Nasad if you want to look it up) and we simply had to survive until we could find a way out and it was totally up to us how to do that. The DM threw all sorts of stuff at us but in general unless we needed to fight we mostly looked to hide or flee. As typical though of an evil group, once the party escaped, the bond weakened and the characters went their own way. It actually made a lot of sense as when a sandbox campaign is over the players tend to decide rather than a predetermined story. We made it to 8th level (3.5e)

I really like this idea. Creating a basic premise for the campaign, such as "you are part of a displaced group looking for a new home in a strange land" or "your government just collapsed," gives an entirely new set of goals and choices the players can make, and it doesn't have to be part of an overarching plot. It seems like it creates more opportunity for players to create their own overarching plots. I don't know why, but I never really connected this idea with sandbox campaigns. In some ways I can see the theme or premise of the sandbox campaign being the most defining aspect of it, without actually forcing any particular player choices.

 

[Nebulous]

Good sandbox play is simulated very well by Skyrim. There's a main quest, seemingly endless side-quests, and, importantly, NPCs that drop quests in the PC's lap.

Two types of GMs sandbox well:
- Improv actors who consistently make up interesting things (rare)
- those who prepare lots of material, gently guide the PCs, and have reasonable improv ability (more common).

Agreed. It also helps if the players are particularly good at reinforcing their own backgrounds and goals and personalities, this sparks ideas that a (good) GM can take and run with.

I remember long, long ago I was running a sandbox in, I guess it was 2e but it might have bled over to 3e. Anyway, I prided myself (erroneously) at one point by having 14 separate plot threads that the PCs could pick up and follow. I learned later that it was just far too many and it diluted the infrastructure as a whole.

Sandbox adventures are probably the most satisfying to run for DMs who run story-based campaigns, but they're also so much work. I've done it, but probably won't do it again as it's just so much time and energy to invest for such a small group of people who aren't as interested as me. UNLESS you are one of those rare people who can improv the s*** out of a game with little or no prep time.

 

[Nebulous]

Really like that detail-work on the map, [MENTION=6738]Jeph[/MENTION]. Especially the forests.

yeah, nice map. That's what I always liked about the poster sized FR maps back in the day, just thousands of square miles to explore, and magic gateways allowed jumping to other kingdoms above or below ground a snap.

 

[ExploderWizard]

At the core, a sandbox style campaign needs two main ingredients to be successful. The first is players who are motivated to discover the setting and are looking for adventure opportunities. The second is a living world in motion, populated by people and monsters that have goals and desires.

Original D&D worked great in a sandbox style because the default premise of play was adventurers seeking fame and fortune. An adventurer didn't get rich sitting around waiting to get pulled into some intrigue or foul plot that may or may not bring a payday. An adventurer frequented places where rumors of dangerous adventures rewarded by fabulous wealth were plentiful. After hearing enough tall tales and rumors, the adventurer decided which opportunity had the best risk/reward ratio for them and followed up on it. Self motivation was the key.

If not treasure and fame, then something needs to motivate an adventurer to find out more about adventure opportunities and not just sit around a tavern until they are approached by an old man with a mission of dire importance.


The world in motion takes a bit of prep work, but it is well worth it. The workload can be kept very manageable by restricting the scope to the immediate campaign starting area. You don't have to decide the motivations of a world full of people at once. Just decide on what you want in the campaign starting area and detail that. Who lives where? What do they want to accomplish? This is the time to establish motivations and plots that certain individuals & groups are involved in. The friendly monks at the brewery are secretly a demon worshipping cult and are kidnapping children and sacrificing them in unholy rituals. This is part of established ongoing events in the area and an opportunity for adventurers to get involved and disrupt their plans. As a DM the things to work out are who is involved, how do they carry out these activities without getting caught, and what will happen if nothing is done to stop them and when. Lets say the campaign begins on date X. Assuming everything goes to plan, enough children will be killed to summon a demon on date Y which will ravage the town. Now you have a rough timeline of what will happen without assuming any actions by the players.

Once this little timeline map is done for a dozen or so different goings on in the area, you will see possible connections between them begin to develop. This is good. In a living world, plots and events do not live in a vacuum. Things people do affect others sometimes indirectly and without specific intent. My campaign calendar is full of things that may or may not happen depending on the actions of the players. In order for the actions of the player characters to have real meaning, then things have to have a chance to turn out very differently should they decide to involve themselves in something. Without a good idea of what will happen if they DON'T, their actions are more or less meaningless.

There is plenty of room for story and drama in a sandbox setting without it needing to be orchestrated and tightly controlled by the DM.