D&D 5E 9 words to help run a sandbox

[clearstream]

People
Places
Motives
Knowledge
Means
Consequences
Foreshadowing
Recurrence
Consistency

Sandboxes come to life when colourful personalities inhabiting intriguing places pursue their motives according to their knowledge and means, engaging the players in their struggles. Foreshadowing helps players understand what may happen (or is happening elsewhere) and recurrence warmly (or icily) rewards players for the RP bonds they establish (with people and places), and reifies the world they live in. Consequences is about what happens next: they make the world feel more alive through adding repercussions. Consistency is key to preserving suspension of disbelief - nothing jolts faster than inconsistency - and consistency rewards players who base their actions on what they know about the world.

[Edited to add Consequences]
[Edited to add Consistency]
[Edited to add Knowledge]

 

[Baldurs_Underdark]

I have never run a real sandbox session, so forgive me if I don't understand it.

If you prepare personalities, places, motives, means, foreshadowing... then it's not really a sandbox anymore, right? You're pretty much writing a scenario, especially when a "coincidental" recurrence of a character or item happens. Or am I overlooking something?

 

[clearstream]

I have never run a real sandbox session, so forgive me if I don't understand it.

If you prepare personalities, places, motives, means, foreshadowing... then it's not really a sandbox anymore, right? You're pretty much writing a scenario, especially when a "coincidental" recurrence of a character or item happens. Or am I overlooking something?

In a non-sandbox approach, PCs are lead from "room" to "room". (I don't mean necessarily literal rooms here, but narrative ones.) Some people call these nodes, which really is just how you branch them. Everything is fairly pre-scripted and we have strong confidence that the PCs will go through it all in roughly the order it is laid out. The value of that approach is that we can include a lot of detail without wasting a lot of work, because almost all details will be seen by players. Look at the discussion of the unused nodes in SKT to understand reactions to loss of efficiency when their not! Think of this approach as a theatre play: it is very efficient at telling a story you want to tell.

A sand box, or living world, can't really work that way because we are open to our players going in whatever direction they find compelling. We'd need a vast number of "rooms" if we wanted to accommodate that! Hence a different approach is used. Instead, we focus on our personalities and what they want (motives) and can do (means). We prepare lightly, but for the same reason Tolkien gave we ensure we have a rough idea of the area and points of interest (places). Foreshadowing has a different connotation here, rather than predicting a pre-scripted event, it shares information about motives and events that players can't presently see but might (or might not) effect them. For example, if we have a monastic order that is trying to steal a unique magical item from the characters, we can foreshadow that threat with a symbolic dream. Will the dream come true? Who knows: that depends on the players. Or if an ancient red dragon is stirring, and about to devastate our kingdom, earthquakes are felt in the region. Will the dragon survive to achieve said devastation? Again, who knows: it depends on our heroes. It's possible even that one of our NPCs takes on the task and defeats it. All off screen. Our theatre is improv.

Recurrence is different and quite simple, it means that Kazook, the deep gnome trader that the player rescued from the gelatinous cubes, a year later when they are back in Blingdenstone is delighted to see them, offers warm hospitality, and now has a toddler. The world feels more real because Kazook didn't cease to exist the moment he went off stage. Recurrence means that the kin of the High Priestess that the players slew, are petitioning for her True Resurrection. And regardless of whether that petition succeeds of fails, the PCs are marked for retribution. Consequences, may be a better word to use. In fact, I believe I will add it!

 

[Imaculata]

To me running a sandbox is kind of like designing a themepark. Its about littering the world with all sorts of wonderful things that the players may want to investigate. Not just by giving the players plot hooks, but also by giving the players this feeling of adventure and discovery. And to me the only way to do that, is by not filling in every detail on a world map. I think there should be plenty of room for new things to be discovered, and a sandbox is defined by how much the players do not know about the world they travel. The world is not a movie set, where merely wandering off the set shows that there is nothing to the side. Instead, there's exciting things to see in every direction they look.

However, just because the players have freedom, does not mean that the campaign doesn't have structure. You can still have a story, still have plothooks, quests and nodes. But the players decide what nodes they visit and when.

But it also means that the world needs to react to what the players do. This is I think where motivations and goals become very important. I'd argue that all types of campaigns can benefit a lot from solid motivations and goals, but this is especially true of a sandbox. What do the villains do when the players don't come to stop them? What is their next move, and what are the consequences? What do the villains do when they suffer a defeat?

With a sandbox campaign you also have to think carefully about how important your npc's are to the plot, and what would happen if the players decided to kill them early. Ideally I think you want to craft your plot in such a way that it can still run its course, even if various characters are killed, or if the players ignore the plot. It also means adapting the plot to where the players want it to go. If for example the players want to build a base, it makes sense to involve the base into the plot.

What I did for my current sandbox campaign, is introduce a big bad that cannot be fought directly, but with lesser big bads that can die at any time, without ruining the plot. I basically have a handful of expendable villains that can enter and exit the spotlight at various points in the campaign. The same is true for potential allies of the players. The plot does not hinge on these allies being alive, and occasionally an ally will die for dramatic purposes. But by the choices the players make, certain allies can grow to become important characters in the plot, which means I won't just kill them off so easily (unless the players make a terrible mistake and cause them to die). Any character in the campaign is expendable.

I don't think I could boil the secret formula to the perfect sandbox campaign down to just a few easy catch phrases. But if I were to try:

-An open world with plenty of room for discovery and adventure.
-The world reacts to what the players do.
-Random encounters.
-Any character is expendable.
-Allies must be gained through dedication by the players to win their loyalty.
-No quest is mandatory, but there are consequences to everything, even to ignoring/refusing a quest.
-The plot goes to where the players are. The players are the main characters and the plot appears around them.
-The players are free to build their own base, start their own enterprise, form their own fleet/army.

 

[Harzel]

I have never run a real sandbox session, so forgive me if I don't understand it.

If you prepare personalities, places, motives, means, foreshadowing... then it's not really a sandbox anymore, right? You're pretty much writing a scenario, especially when a "coincidental" recurrence of a character or item happens. Or am I overlooking something?

If you plopped down in a random real world town, there would be places, and people with motives and means. Recurrences would be either at your discretion or truly, yes, coincidental. If something significant were about to happen, you might well notice indications thereof - probably mainly from the words or actions of the populace, but other signs might occur as well. And none of that would require a meta-being writing a scenario.

There is no grand plan about what the PCs' fate is to be; there are no plot points that they have to hit in order to continue to have adventures available to them. But they do need a world to interact with and I think the OP is talking about how to make it rich and dynamic. So in a sense, I guess, there are lots of scenarios, but they will progress whether the PCs are there or not, whether they care or not, and whether they do anything or not, although the PCs likely can affect the course of events if they choose to.

EDIT: Oh, I've been ninja'd, and with more eloquent explanations.

 

[clearstream]

-Any character is expendable.

I really like this. It speaks to consequences, including for the NPCs! When a key personality is destroyed (often as not, by the PCs) that may create a vacuum. What fills it? Who was hoping to fill their shoes? Who relied on them to achieve their ends? Who applauds and who laments?

 

[John R Davis]

Flexibility on the part of GM and players.
A site, building, dungeon, npc may be revisited several times, many times, or indeed not at all.
Untiered danger awaits, but a warning is sometimes available.
Bucketsful of stuff to do. Lots. At the end of each session, the PCs should have achieved a lot, and have lots of anticipation of what they will do next.
There can be somewhat set future events, which can be unset by pcs actions.
Random encounters.
'Range' encounters where groups of monsters roam, these monsters interact with their neighbours 'range', their numbers recover if not all destroyed, they may ally with pcs to aid each others goals.
Many small (4 to 20 room) dungeons, so the pcs don't dwell in one locale for more than two sessions.
A sense of threat so there is some kind of time pressure, but quite light touch.
A way to reign in too much info dump, or having an overwhelming numbers of threads open.

 

[Imaculata]

A way to reign in too much info dump, or having an overwhelming numbers of threads open.

The way I've handled this so far, is by having an over arching plot, and a local plot. The local plot is what ever the players are currently doing, and is centered on just one location where the players currently are. The local plot usually ties into the main plot in some way too.

Another way I've tried to tackle this, is by making sure all npc's have easy to remember names. Often their names are aliterations, or they have an easy to remember nickname.

Sometimes a plot thread will be left lingering for later on in the campaign, but I make sure the players remember it, by having it be tied to other memorable events.

 

[Coroc]

Cheat a bit, use the prepared Encounters where the Party goes, it saves DM work and
will make for level appropriate encounters.
Do not use that all the time but to move on with your main plot line it is fair game. Maybe the plot comes to the party if the party does not react to the plot. If you planned this course of actions upfront, then it is not even cheating.

E.g. the Party goes their own way instead of fighting the bbeg, the bbeg starts seeing the Party as an uncalculable threat and sends assasins.

 

[clearstream]

Untiered danger awaits, but a warning is sometimes available.

I like this one, too! The option for PCs at 1st level to be clearly advised - that way be dragons - and then upon choosing to go that way, be eaten by dragons.