D&D 5E Sandbox Noob Needs DM Advice

[Sunseeker]

The party finds nothing.

A lot of the world, even the fantastical fantasy world of D&D is filled with nothing. You could wander for hours in a forest and find nothing. You could wander for hours in the desert and find nothing. You could wander for hours around a major metropolis and find nothing. Though I have many campaigns within my campaign world, there are still vast portions filled with absolutely nothing of note. Sure, there are towns. Sure, there are traders. Sure, there are wandering nomads. You might meet these people, buy goods from them, trade stories, but they're not going to lead you down the rabbit hole of adventure and excitement, at best they're going to point you in the direction of the Rabbit Hole.

My advice? Breadcrumbs. Let them find something that leads them to where you want them to go. Want them to find the Magic Fountain? A trail of statue parts leading away from a small farmhouse could put them on track. Want them to explore the Dangerous Dungeon, have them find the body of a kobold carrying a carefully penned note saying "Adventurers Wanted!" with directions to the Dangerous Dungeon.

 

[Gwaihir]

The Usual way I run a campaign is what I think of as Pseudo sandbox. My Players know that they can go anywhere or do anything. I create a small part of the world, provide overall some hooks and let them play. I have an overall idea of the plot but it can careen all over or get modified by player actions. As an example, a while back I ran an all campaign in which undead elves were trying to get back to this plane of existence and take revenge on the descendents of the dwarves that banished them. Each PC also had a "personal" plot --one dwarf was looking for his brother was the initial plot thread.

Well on the search for the brother early in the campaign, the group came across this small keep, looking for directions and one PC got all agitated with the guy who Answered the door, the group turned out to be called the Soldiers of the Light (SOL) dedicated to elimination of undead across the planet. They were literally there for a bit of exposition at max. But because the one PC took everything the NPC said personally - they became major players in the campaign.

I try to follow two rules 1)rethink before every session- what would be the most fun here. Im perfectly willing to morph the plot as we go. Sometimes the meta plot keeps running as is no matter where the PCs go with it, sometimes I change the meta plot. #2) The PCs are the stars of the show.

G

 

[Oofta]

I do want to echo something said up-thread. Sometimes railroading can be a lot of fun. As long as the PCs are having an impact on the world, some things are just going to happen.

So for example what happens if the PCs managed to kill Bob? But Bob was suppose to be their nemesis? At that point I can have Bob raised (hey, it works for the PCs), or he can come back as a really pissed off fiendish undead thing. Or there are simply repercussions now that Bob is dead, either for good or ill.

So semi-railroad? I guess what I'm saying is that true sandboxes are rare and don't always feel all that epic. They can be fun in their own way, but for telling bigger stories? Sometimes you have to railroad a bit.

So good railroading: the PCs kill Bob when you didn't expect them to but he returns a disfigured shell of him old self proclaiming "I will now make you suffer as much as I have suffered because of you!" Bad railroading? You can't kill Bob even though it should have been possible; Bob is kept alive only because of plot armor.

 

[iserith]

The term "railroad" is so overused that it has lost all meaning in my view. When you give the players an informed choice between, say, A and B, and you somehow give them B when they chose A? That's railroading. You've subverted their informed choice.

Now say it's an uninformed choice between A and B. They choose B. You give them the content for A. Not railroading. They didn't really make an informed choice in the first place. (Which argues for offering the players informed choices.)

A linear plot or dungeon? Not railroading as long as the players agreed to do it.

Bringing a dead NPC back to haunt the PCs later? Not railroading.

Sandbox with discrete locations for adventure and not much else otherwise? Not railroading.

Railroading is bad as I see it. But it happens so very rarely. It's just the word that is overused and applied to things it's not.

 

[Imaculata]

Agreed Iserith.

In my sandbox campaign I move things around all the time. If I had planned an encounter somewhere, but the players go in a completely different direction, I may just move the encounter so they run into it anyway. But that's not railroading. Their choice is not being invalidated, because they had no knowledge of my planned encounter anyway. As a DM I consider it my job to provide fun and excitement for my players, and not a big box of nothing that they aimlessly wander around in. I take the adventure to them, regardless of what direction they decided to go in. But their choices change the shape that the adventure assumes, and often completely changes the course of the plot.

In my campaign I set up a plot hook, where a pirate captain (and ally to the players) had died; his ship sunk by an unknown threat. The local pirates suspected the royal navy was responsible. It was a plot hook to get them to investigate the incident, gather evidence, and convince the local pirate leaders that a much larger threat was responsible.

But my players decided that they could bring this npc back from the realm of the dead; a place that I had set up as a physical but deathly cold dimension. They did everything they could to bring him back, took all the precautions and made all the preparations. This changed the course of the campaign towards a dangerous and completely unintended expedition into the realm of the dead. They succeeded, and brought the npc back.

Plot hooks and moving content in the path of the players is not railroading. Its how you handle the choices of your players, and how strictly you keep them on a linear path, that determines if you are railroading or not.

 

[Monayuris]

I’ve been running a campaign featuring a tent-pole dungeon and surrounding wilderness game for about 3 years now (in Adventurer Conqueror King). In this campaign, the group can choose between exploring the dungeon, going off into the wilds to explore a number of adventure sites or go south to civilization and have some big city adventure.

We usually play Friday nights, after work, so there is an element of real life involved. Sometimes they explore the dungeon, sometimes they want to follow a lead or hook to an adventure site, and sometimes they want to progress their agendas in the city. But sometimes they also just want to strike out in a random direction and see what they run into.

A lot of this depends on what kind of week they had... they just don’t want to invest in a specific plot, they just want to go off on some low investment adventure.

I usually don’t worry about it. If they aren’t going for my leads, then they either aren’t interested in them or don’t feel like dealing with them at the moment.. So, I don’t force the issue too much. I let them explore and roll with whatever random encounter or location they come up with.

I actually enjoy when this happens since I have a number of tables that generate random features (plus I mentioned encounters in Lairs, already) so it’s never just nothing happens, and I get to be just as surprised as the players. It’s a ton of fun to improvise a random thing that suddenly becomes a part of your world.