Good Sandbox Products?

[Kobold Stew]

Vornheim.

There are so many ideas living together in this small book, packed on top of each other, mating, and having illegitimate offspring that go off and become ideas on their own. It's an insane city but makes you never want to go find a dungeon. I know it's available as a pdf, but it's really worth getting a hardcopy -- the covers, the dust jacket, every inch of paper in the book is used to bring some tool for making the campaign city richer.

It's a brilliant, challenging book.

 

[Obryn]

4e actually had several good sandbox locations.

Vor Rukoth is concise, but a great toolkit for a ruin.
Neverwinter is designed to support a low level sandbox
Gloomwrought (the Shadowfell) box set goes so far as to give you quick encounters to improvise with when appropriate.

 

[gamerprinter]

Frozen Wind, a free one-shot module for the Kaidan setting of Japanese horror (PFRPG) is said to be a sand-box temple adventure, with time based acts (act I, II, and III) as the means of moving the story along.

 

[zoroaster100]

4e's Hammerfast

 

[Shiroiken]

Off topic clarification for Morlock:

Sounds good, too. By the way, what exactly is the Encounters format?

You meet for a short session (officially started with 1 hour sessions in 4E, but was expanded to 2-3 hours, my game ran closer to 4 hours per session) each week for public play. This means that people can show up or drop out on a weekly basis, which can cause some discontinuity. Most of the Encounters adventures (MiBG and LotCS were exceptions to this) had pre-set encounters that happened, pretty much regardless of what the PCs do. This forced the adventure forward, but gave very little control to the players.

When I ran MiBG, I ran 4 hour sessions, and had the same group of players showing up every week because they loved the way I ran it (which was totally sandbox). My issue was that the season lasted only about 14 weeks, and after week 3, I had only finished the introduction (which was supposed to be the first half of the first session). Due to this, I was forced to speed up the sessions, which tended to limit player options. This got worse and worse until we reached the deadline, and while everyone still had a good time, I still feel that the potential of the adventure & setting was wasted due to the time limitation. If I could go back, I would have told my players early on that we were no longer officially part of the Encounters season, and run the game my way at my house.

One of the best touches I used, that really held the player's attention was the use of Baldur's Mouth, which provided broadsheets (mini-newspapers). I printed out broadsheets each session for the events that had happened in the last session, foreshadowing of events for the current session, rumors of events that had nothing to do with the adventure, and advertisements for local establishments listed in the setting guide. I was able to bring Baldur's Gate to life for them with this simple tool. Best of all, it helped prod them with ideas of what to do, so they were very proactive, which is a requirement for a sandbox game.

 

[Gilladian]

You mentioned Ptolus, and said you're not into egyptian settings. There's no connection. Ptolus just steals the Pt thing, and nothing else. It is very distinctly its own world. I ran a Ptolus/Banewarrens campaign for about a year, and 3 of my 4 players liked it very well. It has a fairly high magic potential, and "magic gunpowder" and lots of demonic presence. In the end, we tired of it and went back to my own campaign world quite happily, but it was worth the experience.

 

[Morlock]

You mentioned Ptolus, and said you're not into egyptian settings. There's no connection. Ptolus just steals the Pt thing, and nothing else. It is very distinctly its own world. I ran a Ptolus/Banewarrens campaign for about a year, and 3 of my 4 players liked it very well. It has a fairly high magic potential, and "magic gunpowder" and lots of demonic presence. In the end, we tired of it and went back to my own campaign world quite happily, but it was worth the experience.

Good point, I did mention Ptolus in my OP. Kinda had two conversations going on there, only one of them was in my head, lol. I based my assumption that Ptolus was Egyptian on my recollection of thumbing through it and seeing a lot of Egyptian-styled art. Maybe I'm remembering a different product, though. *Checks* Yeah, I was thinking of a different product, maybe that Gygax city of the dead thing.

 

[Morlock]

Vornheim.

There are so many ideas living together in this small book, packed on top of each other, mating, and having illegitimate offspring that go off and become ideas on their own. It's an insane city but makes yo need want to go find a dungeon. I know it's available as a pdf, but it's really worth getting a hardcopy -- the covers, the dust jacket, every inch of paper in the book is used to bring some tool for making the campaign city richer.

It's a brilliant, challenging book.

Well, you just won the Oscar for evocative imagery, so I kinda have to check it out.

4e actually had several good sandbox locations.

Vor Rukoth is concise, but a great toolkit for a ruin.
Neverwinter is designed to support a low level sandbox
Gloomwrought (the Shadowfell) box set goes so far as to give you quick encounters to improvise with when appropriate.

It does look good. Evil, ruined cities are always fun. I really like the idea of ruined cities as above-ground dungeons, too.

Frozen Wind, a free one-shot module for the Kaidan setting of Japanese horror (PFRPG) is said to be a sand-box temple adventure, with time based acts (act I, II, and III) as the means of moving the story along.

Sounds good too.

4e's Hammerfast

One can never have too many Dwarven cities, though a quick peak at the intro certainly outlines an atypical one.

 

[Jan van Leyden]

Good point, I did mention Ptolus in my OP. Kinda had two conversations going on there, only one of them was in my head, lol. I based my assumption that Ptolus was Egyptian on my recollection of thumbing through it and seeing a lot of Egyptian-styled art. Maybe I'm remembering a different product, though. *Checks* Yeah, I was thinking of a different product, maybe that Gygax city of the dead thing.

NecroPtolus?

Ptolus is a marvelous sandbox, all city and dungeons. I run one campaign using 4e rules in the city which started out with a storyline defined in the book. As my players veered away from that and followed their own theories, the plot has changed very much in best sandbox style. They are currently experiencing Madness at Gardmore Abbey, which I changed to be a former dwarven stronghold in one of Ptolus' subterrenean ares.

Another campaign is the online game I run in conjunction with two other GMs. Even when some of our plots come pretty close together, one can always add another kink to the well devloped movers and shakers in the city and have the players scratching their heads.

Highly recommended!

 

[TarionzCousin]

One of the best touches I used, that really held the player's attention was the use of Baldur's Mouth, which provided broadsheets (mini-newspapers). I printed out broadsheets each session for the events that had happened in the last session, foreshadowing of events for the current session, rumors of events that had nothing to do with the adventure, and advertisements for local establishments listed in the setting guide. I was able to bring Baldur's Gate to life for them with this simple tool. Best of all, it helped prod them with ideas of what to do, so they were very proactive, which is a requirement for a sandbox game.

Do you have these available anywhere online? This is the sort of thing I love, but don't have the time to create.