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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pawsplay" data-source="post: 5405824" data-attributes="member: 15538">I think you can run the epic quest + reluctant hero as a sandbox game, but it's going to take a lot of lumber. The GM has to put into play some serious forces. There is also a hidden danger. The player may not realize that in a sandboxy scenario, a large amount of danger in unexpected places. If they play like Frodo Baggins, they'll probably be okay. OTOH, if they treat the game as a serious of action set pieces, they're heading for problems, because if you are dealing with such a powerful foe, your biggest problems aren't fighting off a few wraiths/stormtroopers/etc., it's finding places to stay, finding allies without betraying them to spies, looking for ways to win big against an opponent who has every advantage in conventional terms. Aragorn's appearance in LOTR, when he gripes at the hobbits for attracting attention, is very well-placed advice. To run a sandbox epic quest, the GM has to lay down some preparation. Instead of the usual rivers and valleys and bandit camps, and so forth, the GM has to create events of personal relevance to the PCs. Relatives must be killed, villages burned, honor stained, places to run cut off, etc. If the GM can pull it off, though, it's actually quite satisfying. There are few things as satisfying to me as a GM as when the players hate, really hate the villains, and respond with real emotion to their crimes and the eventualy victory they (may) achieve over them. I built a 1st to 20th level 3.5/Pathfinder game that way, starting off with the characters as a group protecting a dwarf noble's caravan. I attacked the dwarves, infiltrated the local ruler's castle with not one but TWO master villains, turned the PCs into outlaws after their first big win over the bad guys, sunk a navy, and had their quasi-omniscient NPC wizard ally direct them to seek advice from an evil sorceress he was afraid to deal with personally. I let them acquire a powerful artifact that creates and controls undead, just to see what they would do with it. By the time things were rolling, they were 8th level, some of the most famous people in the world, and constantly on the run. They were attacked by assassins, had villages attacked simply for being hospitable to them, and slew some of the most fearsome creatures in existence just to secure potential allies. At the front of my folder for that campaign is a piece of notebook paper. It describes the attack on the caravan, the wizard approaching them to hire them as a rescue team for the Baron's daughter, the name of the two master villains, and a rough sketch of the valley where they begin. When I embarked on the campaign, I had no real idea how, or when, they would fight the final battle. I simply settled on CR 23 for their final foe and started filling up the world with things to do. Merfolk to rescue over here. Lich castle over there. Most of the locales, in fact, were ripped off from the Final Fantasy Nintendo game.</blockquote>

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