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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Crazy Jerome" data-source="post: 5607873" data-attributes="member: 54877">For sandbox and clues, the single best advice I have seen is from the old Dungeon Craft series, back when Ray Winneger (sp?) started it. His idea here is that every ... single ... time... you introduce an NPC or named monster, powerful item, interesting locations, faction, etc. that you create at least one "secret" about this thing, and write it down.  Really important things may have 2 or 3 such secrets.  Then you start planting clues about these secrets.  I think he pushed heavier for relatively few clues that would be discovered almost assuredly. Coming from an information heavy style, I modfied this advice to have multiple, smaller clues for each secret.  And then I complicate things by making some but not all of the secrets tie together.   What you end up with is a very intricate, complicated thing to unravel, that however does not take even half the clues to mostly unravel.  And details will start to emerge almost immediately.  The only real risk is that the players may get unnaturally clever and unravel it a lot faster than you planned, but I consider this a feature, not a bug.  If they have to spend the last adventure or two knowing how bad things are, instead of merely suspecting,  I can deal. <img src="http://www.enworld.org/forum/images/smilies/devil.png"  class="smilie" loading="lazy" alt=":devil:" title="Devil    :devil:" data-shortname=":devil:" />  One thing that has really worked well for me in 3E, Arcana Evolved, and 4E, when it comes to faster leveling at times, is to start relatively low, level at more or less the usual rate, but give two levels each time.  For your setup, I might start at 2nd, advance each time a major adventure is completed, and go up to 4th, 6th, etc.  Our current campaign, we did thus up to 8th, and then slowed down to regular pace.  I say this, because the big problem with rapid leveling without other changes is that you don't get to spend much time enjoying the way you are now.  But if all your players are reasonably into the mechanics of the game, this might not matter as much as it does for us.  (We also did this because we have very infrequent but long sessions, and the last thing we want to do is level during game time.)</blockquote>

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