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Message: <blockquote data-quote="rogueattorney" data-source="post: 5041131" data-attributes="member: 17551">There's no reason why you can't have "big threats" fairly early on in the campaign for the pcs.  The key is to give them enough information to intelligent choices with regard to that threat.  Foremost of the information imparted to the players is that there is no safety net.In one campaign I had a town near the pc's village that was secretly ruled by a vampire.  In the little campaign sheet I handed out to the players at the beginning of the campaign I let it be commonly known that "bad stuff" happened at the nearby town, but not much more than that.While still fairly low in level - maybe 2nd or 3rd - certainly not high enough to take out a vampire in his own lair - the characters' local village was being threatened by a marauding group of goblins.  The players decided that the goblins were a threat to the whole region and decided to warn the neighboring towns and ask for assistance in putting the goblins down.  They recruited some local npcs to go to a nearby "safe" village, and due to the rumors of danger, decided to go to the vampire town themselves.  I hadn't really expected them to do that, but saw the imminent logic in it.  I had a local npc plead with them to leave such that they would arrive at the vampire town in the daytime.  The pcs took that advice.  They were met by a suspicious-acting burgomaster who told them the Baron was "out and might be back later tonight."  The locals wouldn't let them just leave a message for Baron, and also wouldn't allow them to approach the baronial manor.  Although the pcs did get close enough to notice some of the baronial guard acting strangely.  (They were well-disguised zombies.)The pcs were invited to dinner where one of the servants slipped a "Get Out!" note to one of the pcs.  The pcs then told the villagers that they were tired from their journey and wished to retire for the night.  The burgomaster then escorted them to a "guest house" and locked them in.  The pcs immediately broke out a back window and ran out of town as quickly and stealthily as possible.  If they had investigated the "guest house" at all, they would have found a crawl space filled with old bones, but my suspicious minded players didn't need any more hints.When the sun went down, they had to fight some skeleton minions of the vampire on the way out, and were followed the rest of the night by some giant bats until they made it to a friendly chapel, but were otherwise "safe" for the time being.  If they had decided to stick around, eventually Baron Fangs-a-lot would have made an appearance, probably ending those pcs' careers.The important thing is that the players had enough information to begin with that the vampire town was sketchy at best and went into it with their guard up.  I then let them know that they weren't going to be able to fulfill their current goal (get help against the goblins) there.  They thus made the smart choice of cutting bait as soon as possible instead of facing an unknown adversary.  It was a side trek from what they were currently dealing with that netted them nothing in the short term, but gave them a better awareness of the campaign area (and was a whole heck of a lot of fun to play out).  It's also key that the decision to go to vampire town was the players' idea and not mine.  Thus they had no expectations that I had sent them on a mission which I expected them to accomplish and no expectation that whatever was in that town was something they could handle.  Once they were out of town, one of the players said, "See you in about 5 levels."  He had pretty well gauged the threat level.It can't be stressed enough that an absolute key to good "sand-boxing" is giving the players enough information to make smart decisions.  If it becomes obvious to you as DM that the players are operating in an information vacuum and are unable to intelligently balance the risk and rewards of their choice, you need to give them more.  It certainly helps to make sure they understand the lay of the land in your campaign from the start.  In "old school" D&D, that traditionally meant that things got more dangerous the deeper you go into the dungeon and the farther you venture into the wilderness.  That's personally the way I like to do it, with a fairly mundane world nearby, with things getting weirder and more dangerous the farther out or down one goes from "home base."  But there's certainly no reason a campaign has to be set up that way.</blockquote>

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