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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Beginning of the End" data-source="post: 5401551" data-attributes="member: 55271">The best definition of a sandbox I've heard is:A campaign in which the players choose the scenario.There are, in fact, lots of ways in which that scenario selection can be packaged.For a completely non-traditional example, consider a police procedural RPG in which the players get a list of cases they can choose to investigate each week. Properly designed this could be very sandbox-y.The most traditional example of a sandbox is probably the hexcrawl, in which exploration of the campaign world's geography leads to the discovery of different scenarios which can then be selected. This is often combined with a rumor table (which is not particularly dissimilar from the police procedural's list of available cases).So here's the essential Tip List for running a sandbox campaign:(1) Know the methods by which the PCs will become aware of the scenarios which are available to them. Janx referred to these as "opportunities and threats" in another thread, and that's a great way to think of them. (This is the reactive content of the sandbox campaign.)(2) The setting should be complex and rich enough that the players will be able to set their own goals and agendas. In the hexcrawl this can be "become a duke"; in the police procedural it might be "set up a wire targeting Avon Barksdale". (This is the proactive content of the sandbox campaign.)(3) Sandbox campaigns don't have to start as tabula rasa. In fact, they almost certainly shouldn't. Characters should be created with specific starting goals. These can be generic or specific.For example, in a Western Marches campaign all the characters start with a generic goal: Explore the frontier. This generic goal immediately pushes them into the hexcrawl delivery of scenarios.OTOH, if a player creates a character whose parents were murdered by cultists bearing the tattoo of a red claw on their foreheads all you need to do is give them a rumor that cultists with red claw tattoos have been seen in the Cave of the Grizzled Bear.(4) Learn how to minimize wasted prep.If you're used to running heavily plotted adventures, the first thing you'll need to jettison is the belief that you need to have everything the PCs could potentially interact with fully prepped. Once you've done that, you'll be in a position to start figuring out the best ways to correctly anticipate what needs prepping and when you need to prep it.The most basic tool in this arsenal is a simple question: "What are you guys planning to do next session?"After that it becomes a matter of using smart prep instead of exhaustive prep. Knowing how to properly prep a wandering monster table and then using it in creative and interesting ways, for example, is, IMO, an essential skill for high quality hexcrawl play.</blockquote>

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