Maybe I've been living under a rock for awhile but can someone please explain what a sandbox setting is, particularly a fantasy sandbox setting?
I had to answer this same question on another forum. I'm going to copy & paste some paragraphs from a few different posts. Here we go:
I run a sandbox game. I didn't realize how rare it was until one of the new players said, "I've never played a game before with real options."
My sandbox game is not completely directionless. This is one of the big difficulties with such a game. If you give 'em a world and say, "Do whatever you want," with no plot lines at all, you'll find they sorta aimlessly wander, kill a few random encounters, and get bored. They won't
make plots or imagine them for you.
So how I do my open-ended game is that I buy a lot of mini-modules, such as the Dungeon Crawl Classics hardcovers, "The Adventure Begins" and "The Adventure Continues" (each contains about 20 mini adventures that can be completed in one or two game sessions). Then, I scatter those modules onto a map of the region. Finally, I place a rival adventuring party somewhere in the region.
When the campaign begins, I start a game-world calendar and allow both the real PCs and the rival adventuring group to wander the world, making an impact. It's possible for the PCs to spend a night in town, shopping, getting rumors, and doing little else. It's also possible for them to stumble onto a designated module. Or, stumble onto a module too late and the opportunity no longer exists.
I repopulate the region with new modules every few levels, to keep things roughly level-appropriate.
When they begin interacting with a module, I run it as anyone normally would. So if the module has read-aloud text or is a dungeon with only one way forward, then that's what the players get. In those cases, they might feel the module is railroading them and the gameplay is not "sandbox."
However, it is always their option to pursue an adventure path, and they have in fact completely undermined/bypassed entire module plot lines because... I let them. It's also possible for them to develop long-term enemies -- they showed up to rescue a princess, but got into an argument with the town mayor. They were promptly escorted outside of the town gates. At that point, they were completely off the module path, which had assumed they would simply chat up the mayor and get the quest. I quickly dreamed up a plot line involving that mayor getting on the bad side of one of the party's allies, and they'll get to take him out later if the timing is right. But if the timing doesn't work, then it doesn't work. No forcing.
So this is the idea. If you are not dropping your players straight into a pre-built module, then you have to make a living world with
something interesting in it. If you're super creative, you can simply ad-lib any awesome story as you play. But if you're like me, you'll need at least a foundation. I put points of action all over the map, give each town a handful of rumors to dole out, and then set the PCs loose. They might bite a plot line, they might not. They might get a line on five or six interesting rumors before finally acting on one. It's fine, so long as your world is worth exploring.
One of the most helpful tricks I've learned about a sandbox game is that you need only 1 of anything, usually. For example, say your players finish a quest and end the game by saying, "We have 3 cities within a day's ride, when get back together, let's pick one and ride to it."
For a newbie sandbox DM, that's a bit daunting. You find yourself thinking, "Oh crap, I have no idea which city they will pick. I do not want to force them to one. I have to stat them all!"
But nope, not really. The players can only get to 1 city during a game session, so get one city done and call it complete. Then
whichever city they pick, it's the one you built.
Same with NPCs & villains. Did they kill your main villain in the first of many planned encounters? Are you miserable because now you have to kill that story arc and invent a new bad guy? Why? Unless you specifically said to the players, "This is the main enemy who will be a long-term recurring act," there is no reason to throw the baby out with the bathwater. Instead, just write off the first encounter as if it were the BBEG's right-hand man. Re-stat your BBEG to be tougher, and continue on.
Once I learned how to "prepare smart" instead of "prepare everything," it made running a sandbox game 100% easier.
