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Message: <blockquote data-quote="kenada" data-source="post: 8101864" data-attributes="member: 70468">I’m running a sandbox *crawl. It started out as a hexcrawl, but it’s currently a dungeoncrawl (due to exploring a megadungeon). It could turn into politics and intrigue if the party ever decides what it wants to do about its relationship with Orctown (or the factions in Orctown force the issue).I’m using a modified exploration mode where turns have explicit times. You can see a copy of my exploration procedure <a href="https://www.dropbox.com/s/swhi5hbflv96u7h/Exploration%20Procedure.pdf" target="_blank">here</a>. There’s urbancrawl stuff, but it’s untested (and probably needs heavy revision).Wilderness exploration is based heavily on The Alexandrian’s <a href="https://thealexandrian.net/wordpress/17308/roleplaying-games/hexcrawl" target="_blank">hexcrawl stuff</a>. The idea for group activities comes from Hexploration, but I don’t feel that Hexploration is actually very good for sandbox play. It’s too steeped in the GMG’s conception that a sandbox is a way of letting players decide how they go about approaching the story and not as an open-ended activity in its own right.Dungeon exploration is broken down into turns with regular wandering monsters checks. Note that these are wandering monsters done right. If the check succeeds, I don’t just spring a fight on the PCs. What it means is something showed up in the dungeon, and it’s having an effect on the environment. There might be gray oozes on the ledge above, or a necromancer moved into the dungeon while you were away (or flying snakes are inside a bloated corpse, feasting).I find that this is the single biggest thing that creates time pressure. If the PCs spend too much time resting, then they risk losing ground in the dungeon or having the environment become less favorable. The same goes for spending too long away. I roll to restock when they’re gone (though that’s mostly just ad hoc). Anyway, my PCs worry quite a bit spending too long resting, so they’ll often only spend a bit of time healing and either live with having lower hit points or use magic or consumables to top off.I do both. My players have a bad habit of not being very explicit about their intentions, so I’ll get the exact action. I also do it in the hope they’ll be less boring than having 75% of the party just standing around looking out for monsters while one of them investigates something.I can’t speak to AD&D, but I know OD&D and B/X have dungeon exploration procedures. B/X, or rather Old-School Essentials, was a big influence on my dungeon exploration procedure. D&D just eventually <a href="https://thealexandrian.net/wordpress/43568/roleplaying-games/game-structures-addendum-system-matters" target="_blank">stopped including exploration procedures</a>. It makes some sense when you consider that it was also transitioning away from open-ended play to story-driven play.Not a hack per se, but it works great for doing an old-school dungeon crawl. I can have my dungeon turns and old-school stuff, and it works using a structure that’s part of and supported by the system we’re using. That’s really fantastic.I’d really like to get my urbancrawl stuff fleshed out. The Alexandrian did a <a href="https://thealexandrian.net/wordpress/36473/roleplaying-games/thinking-about-urbancrawls" target="_blank">little bit</a> on urbancrawls, but aside from the idea of layers (which I’ve already incorporated), it doesn’t have a lot to say definitively on moving about them. I’d love to use exploration mode so my players can navigate and interact with Orctown the way their characters do. There’s something about showing them things through their own eyes instead of just telling them about it like some trivial that makes it more impactful (e.g., because of the balance of power has shifted, and now a new faction controls an area, and you can see its influence changing the area’s character).</blockquote>

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