Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Hussar" data-source="post: 4034539" data-attributes="member: 22779">/tangent - Honest I'll get back to the main point.Pardon?  Umm, every module in 1e was an adventure path pretty much.  GDQ?  Dragonlance?  "A" series?  Temple of Elemental Evil?  The AP has a very long tradition. I'll bet that just as many people have played the GDQ series as any Paizo AP./end tangent.There is another way you can go about sandbox style without having to do scads of extra work.  I'm a lazy bastard, so, I'm always looking for the shortcut.Instead of using one very large sandbox, you can cut it up into a series of smaller sandboxes with some sort of passage from one box to the next.  That way you can start with a more manageable scale and work from there.An example of this is the World's Largest Dungeon.  Essentially you have a 4x4 grid of 15 (one box is double sized) sandboxes.  Each region of the WLD is more or less self contained, although there is some bleed over, and travel between regions is restricted to certain passages.  So, from the first region in the bottom left corner, you can travel north or east, to regions E or B respectively.  That way you can design each region with an eye towards the expected level of the party by the time they reach that region.Now, obviously that's easy to do with a dungeon setting.  An outdoor campaign setting is a bit more difficult.  But, not as much as you might think.Start with a 4x4 grid.  I like 16 because that covers the 1-20 level spread quite nicely.  You initial region, for your first level PC's is in one of the corners.  That right there means that you can expect them to travel one of two ways and can design the next regions for the expected level.  To move things along, you simply need an overarching plotline to move them from one region to the next.  For example, say the campaign seed is that a couple of centuries ago, dragons went into a breeding frenzy and seeded eggs all over the kingdom.  These eggs are hatching and areas are becoming inundated with dragons.So, our first region, say a nice isolated village in a hilly region during the winter is facing a couple of hatchling white dragons that are causing all sorts of destruction.  You can add in three or four subplots and maybe half a dozen lairs of various critters and you have a region.After defeating the dragons, the PC's gain information that there is a doomsday cult associated with the hatching dragons.  The cult has a base in the next region.  Additionally, in another region (the other adjacent region) a larger town and/or city has a problem with a series of black dragons and their kobold worshippers in the sewers.  So on and so forth.  You can seed the further regions with whatever and through various techniques, such as controlling information, open new regions as the PC's get strong enough to either poke their noses in and run away or actually deal with the region, depending on your own mood.The point is, within each region, you have a sandbox.  In the first region, the PC's have a number of things they can interact with - lairs, various groups, a town, and, of course, the dragons.  In the city with the black dragons, the sewers become a sandbox, possibly with thieves guilds, cults and black dragons.  Outside the sewers, the PC's can interact with the city and its inhabitants.This is a more modest sandbox, of course.  But, for me, its a more feasible possibility.  I simply don't have the time or talent to construct a single massive sandbox.</blockquote>

Verification