D&D 5E 5e Sandbox Adventures

[Orlando29]

I am planning on running my second 5e campaign for my group. I ran Dragon Heist previously, but I think this group would prefer something a little more sandbox. I remember princes of the apocalypse being fairly non linear when I played it in another dms game. Are there any more adventures or adventure series put out by wizards that fits the same mold as PotA?

 

[Quickleaf]

Out of the Abyss is mostly an Underdark sandbox, though the urgency of the first part escaping the drow sort of nixes the exploration factor initially.

Tomb of Annihilation is sandbox in Chult, though you need to tweak the urgency of the death curse to allow for exploration & as far as hex crawls go it is really sparsely populated.

I haven't run Storm King's Thunder, but there's a lot of setting info there that strikes me as very sandbox-y.

 

[Shiroiken]

Ghosts of Saltmarsh is a sandbox setting. It provides a home base with plenty of plot hooks for you to use, and a series of adventures you can use as desired. Combined with some adventures from Tales of the Yawning Portal, it creates an ideal sandbox campaign.

 

[iserith]

Tomb of Annihilation is probably the most sandboxy of the lot in my experience.

You might also check out OSR hexcrawls. Often they are set up a lot better than WotC modules and require only a little monster conversion/substitution.

 

[Rabbitbait]

Tomb of Annihilation is also one of the best pre-written campaigns I have DMed in my 42 years of DMing. It ranks up there with Red Hand of Doom.

Really good to play up how hard it is to survive in the jungle and use those outdoor exploration and survival skills.

 

[Mistwell]

I am planning on running my second 5e campaign for my group. I ran Dragon Heist previously, but I think this group would prefer something a little more sandbox. I remember princes of the apocalypse being fairly non linear when I played it in another dms game. Are there any more adventures or adventure series put out by wizards that fits the same mold as PotA?

I strongly recommend Tomb of Annihilation

 

[Burnside]

Tomb of Annihilation, Icewind Dale: Rime of the Frostmaiden, or Curse of Strahd.

 

[aco175]

I enjoyed PotA when I ran it. If you already played it, you might be able to make it a better play for your group. You may also be bored and it becomes not fun for you though. I have seen some supplemental material for it since it is an older book on DMsGuild and other sites which may help run it.

 

[Ibrandul]

Princes of the Apocalypse is a great sandbox adventure. It’s my favorite of the 5e adventure paths I’ve played or run. It does require a lot of work from the DM to run, however, partly because the adventure deliberately leaves a lot of gaps for you to fill in, and partly because the book itself has some real flaws with the way it presents information (a byproduct of WotC’s decision to combine what was intended to be two separate books into a single release late in the development process).

But if you’re willing to cope with that, then what you have in PotA is a campaign with two features that I think are definitive of sandbox play: unlike pretty much any other official WotC 5e content, a large portion of the book is optional side quests; and the various stages of the main adventure do not have to be explored in a predetermined order, meaning that unless the DM decides to adjust encounter difficulty on the basis of party level, parties can venture into very deadly places.

 

[AnotherGuy]

Sounds like I need to get my hands on Tomb of Annihilation.