Sandboxing and bringing wonder and the unknown into DMing

[Mercurius]

I like to be surprised by the unfolding events of the game when I'm behind the screen and I use a tremendous amount of random generation, so I suggest you take a good hard look at the Mythic GM Emulator. I'm pretty impressed by it.

You know I've had the PDF of this for years and never really taken a look through. I just printed it out and will give it a browse. Thanks for the reminder!

I also want to do something similar to what you're describing, but I think it will require at least double the time you're willing to invest.

Yeah, I know. I don't want to sacrifice the sandbox theme, so in some ways I could re-phrase my question and ask "What are ways to minimize preparation in a largely sandbox setting?"

I just spent a couple hours working on a summary document of the setting and it got me re-inspired. It may be that if I keep on feeling inspired I can carve out the time and dedicate 2-3 hours a week...that's my goal, at least. I guess I'll have to cut down on stuff like online forums!

At the outset, get a pre-published setting but don't read every detail regarding the geography. Then pick a spot at random and place the PC's in the nearest town. Then read everything you can regarding the area within a 30 to 50 mile radius....

SNIP

All excellent advice, and a lot of what I've already been doing (especially the "draw a card" approach in terms of adventure hooks).

I don't want to use a pre-published setting, however, but I collect settings and can use ideas from them to fill out my own world.

The Ultimate Toolbox should be quite useful at providing tables for details on the fly. You could also look at the Game Mastery Guide from Paizo which also has tables and such that can help with details on the fly. The PDF version is quite affordable if you wanted to go that route and you don't necessarily have to be playing Pathfinder for it to be useful.

How would you compare the two books? And what does Gamemastery Guide have that the Ultimate Toolbox or, say, various editions of the DMG not have?

I would also still keep a supply of short modules on hand and a passing familiarity with what is in them. Then you can drop them in as events unfold and if you find yourself needing a small dungeon, temple, etc. You might have to rip out a lot of the backstory from the module and adapt what is currently happening in your campaign to the module. But once you get good at that they can be quite the time saver, you just have to get comfortable with adapting on the fly which takes practice.

Good idea and this is also where books like Dungeon Delve and Open Grave come in handy.

This can be tricky as DMs tend to be one step ahead of the players. But my suggestion would be to start by throwing some hooks and interesting NPCs out there for the characters to interact with. Then let their decisions help mold the direction of the game and lead you to the areas that will get further detailed.

True. But as you say, the sense of the unknown can come from filling out the setting based upon what decisions the PCs make.

Something I've done that players have really enjoyed is giving them a little bit of "DM Power." In other words, let the players create the world with you. In my case, I often invite them to take the narrative reins for a bit (within a few guidelines), especially when it's related to their characters. This requires being comfortable with improvisation and conveying important information through characters and dialogue.

This trick has many permutations, but I think that my personal favorite is called "The Mountain Witch trick."

This is a good idea although maybe not best for this campaign. I could see doing this with a group of experience, serious players. My group is mainly comprised of 30-40-somethings that "used to play in high school," only one or two of whom have played in the last decade or so, and mainly pre-3E.

It's kind of a long term solution, but you should teach your students the game and give them an assignment to write short adventures for you.

Just to clarify, my game group is not comprised of students. I've thought of running a game for/with students but just don't have the time.

 

[Jeph]

I can't believe Nameless1 hasn't mentioned this, because I just saw him link to it in another thread.

The Western Marches

It's a really cool style of GMing that I think fits perfectly—to a 'T'—with what you're looking for. It's a sandbox-style method designed for large and inconsistent groups of players that naturally ends up with a very light GM workload, after some initial investment. Play is exploration based, but characters are expected to return to a base town every session or two. This means that many of their ventures will pass through the same areas again and again, allowing you to re-use random encounter tables, re-populate the same small dungeons, and in general recycle everything many times over. This also leads to the players getting a real feel for the character of the regions they're exploring. People say it evokes the sense of wonder and discovery pretty powerfully.

 

[Ariosto]

Kellri's CDD#4 - Encounters Reference (from Kellri ) is a free PDF. Some material -- such as "pregenerated" character stats by class in Chapter I: Men -- is pretty specific to AD&D. However, other material in that very chapter -- such as "boons and disabilities" and "NPC motivations" -- is more widely applicable. Chapter II: Humanoids & Demi-Humans also includes bits beyond the standard Monster Manual data.

The rest of the chapters get really interesting:
III: The Underworld
IV: The Wilderness
V: Settlements & Civilization
VI: Treasures
VII: The Campaign
and even
VIII: Forms & Appendices

It's sort of like a combination of the old Ready Ref Sheets, Monster & Treasure Assortments, Dungeon Masters Guide and Rogues Gallery. It can also compliment those nicely, as a "sandbox" DM is unlikely ever to have too many tools in the toolbox!
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I would also look into Judges Guild PDFs at RPGNow or DriveThruRPG. For just one example, Frontier Forts of Kelnor includes a standard-issue fort -- and algorithms quickly to transform it randomly into a state that can make for a perilous encounter.

 

[Nameless1]

I didn't mention The Westmarches because it requires a pretty huge up front investment, and I am not sure that it gives the kind of mystery for the GM that was a goal of the OP. The Westmarches is a great way to sandbox, but I kinda feel like a true sandbox is counter to the stated goals of the OP.

Sandboxes are basically a pre-planned campaign without any overarching "plot" built in. They require that the world "exist" outside of what the PCs are doing. They require a lot of up front planning in a effort to make the world wide open for the players to explore. They are not improvisational in their design, they are improvisational in that you already have the heavy lifting done, and all it takes is PC action and you can wing it based on the volume of material that you already know about the world. The more you pre-plan about the world, the easier it is to improvise, at least supposedly. Sandboxes conserve some mystery because the what, when, why, and how things happen is not planned, just the who and where are planned.

This is in contrast to more linear "plot" based play. The event are pre-planned, but just the places and characters that relate to the events of the "plot". Lots of pre-planning, but the world is left sketchy. Sounds like this is not what the OP wants. The mystery is not conserved at all because the who, what, where, when, and why are all predetermined, and it is just the how that remains to be determined.

Then there is situation generation. Still some pre-planning, but the mystery is conserved because what, when, how, who, why, or where it happens is not pre-planned. A dynamic tension is created, with lots of motivation to resolve the tension, but the events remain to be determined.

What I thought the OP wanted was to be a perticipant in the exploration, not the architect of the world or the plot. To do this, he will have to release a major amount of authority over the world and the events within it to gain that participation. One way that he obviously knows about are random charts. Good stuff, but occasionally can feel very random and incoherent. Another is to give more authorship to the other players so that they can surprise him. There are a ton of tricks to get this experience, ranging from the Mountain Witch Trick on the most conservative side, to a fully GMless game like The Committee for the Exploration if Mysteries.

With the stated goals of sandbox and exploration/wonder/mystery for all the participants at the table, the 3 games that I suggested at the top can achieve this very well. In each, a world is loosely sketched by everyone at the table, and then the game starts and everyone explores this world. Surprising things are emergent from play. No one is stuck with prep work or denied the fun of the surprise. This would be my prefered way to accomplish these goals. My second suggestion was more conservative, and was a hint at techniques of relinquishing the sole authorship rights of the GM in an effort to limit both prep and allow for the possibility of mystery for the GM.

The Westmarches does not seem to get at this too well without the use of these other tricks.

 

[Ariosto]

It's a really cool style of GMing that I think fits perfectly—to a 'T'—with what you're looking for.

It's not just a "style of GMing". It's basically the game of Dungeons & Dragons as originally presented in 1974.

That it should be some kind of revelation in D&D circles 36 years later is a commentary on how much the game by that name has been changed.

 

[malcolypse]

Just to clarify, my game group is not comprised of students. I've thought of running a game for/with students but just don't have the time.

No, no, I'm not suggesting you run the game for this batch of students.

I'm suggesting that you teach them the rules and have them write adventures for you to run in your game. That way, you won't be aware of the content before you open the envelope at the gaming table.

Their eager little imaginations can be turned to your purpose.

Tell the student that if they want to play the game, they'll have to request a class for next year that uses it as a teaching tool.

 

[LostSoul]

I made a whole bunch of random tables to generate my setting. I rolled on the tables, got an inspirational line or two, and then fleshed it out before play began.

One of the things I wanted to do with these tables was to make it so the DM could consult the chart during play and come up with something on the fly. No prep, just a bunch of random rolls and some imagination.

Here is the table for the "Terrain Feature - Moor" entry. As you can see it leaves a lot for the DM to discover and be surprised by in play. I have a lot of these tables (ruins, dungeons, lairs, settlements, special features, terrain features; what's in a hex, like monsters, maps, traps, tricks, treasure, artefacts, and gates) and other procedures so I could potentially run a game with no prep at all; I (as DM) would be exploring the world at the same time as the PCs.

[sblock]roll Terrain
1d20 Moor
1 Smooth stone blocks neatly formed into an arrow.
2 Evenly-spaced hedgerows along an embankment, always trimmed.
3 Rats with human faces and hands building stone cairns.
4 Raised stones in a circle on the top of a mound. A black stone altar
sits in the middle, stained with blood.
5 White flowers that hold the memories of the dead.
6 Thick fogs, always cold and wet, seemingly promising rest and peace.
7 Large black stone cross festooned with spiked chains.
8 Paved stone road leading through moor, overgrown with weeds, each paving
stone engraved with a grinning skull.
9 An eerie wind that sounds like the cries of a child.
10 Great cairns built with massive blocks.
11 Sweet-smelling blood-red heather covering the land.
12 A multitude of campfires in the distance, every night, that recede upon
approach.
13 On a full moon, a trail of fire winds its way across the moor.
14 Sharp rocks and scree, drinking the blood of those who cut themselves.
15 Flensed skin festooned on rotting wooden posts, hanging from silver
chains.
16 Pool of clear water that waxes and wanes with the moon.
17 Skeletal hands grasping weapons reaching up from the rocky soil.
18 Caves ringing a depression, all blocked with heavy stone slabs.
19 Hundreds of stele with epitaphs in long-forgotten languages.
20 Giant-sized throne made of stone, carved with images of death and glory.[/sblock]

 

[Ycore Rixle]

A trick I often use is to have about ten encounter ideas and three adventure hooks and plotlines prepared, but for each of them, I know how they could be presented in five different ways. If the characters are looking for the macguffin, it's in the trunk at the end of encoutner #1; if they are looking for an ally, she's being held kidnapped at the end of encoutner #1; if they were robbed recently in town, the bandits are the ones stationed in encounter #1. Insert details in the encounter to match the story that's going on.

 

[Ariosto]

Frank, I'm sort of taking a shot in the dark here, or maybe just a patch of shade, but I don't think that's what Mercurius means by 'sandboxing' or 'wonder' or "the unknown".

 

[Mercurius]

I can't believe Nameless1 hasn't mentioned this, because I just saw him link to it in another thread.

The Western Marches

It's a really cool style of GMing that I think fits perfectly—to a 'T'—with what you're looking for. It's a sandbox-style method designed for large and inconsistent groups of players that naturally ends up with a very light GM workload, after some initial investment. Play is exploration based, but characters are expected to return to a base town every session or two. This means that many of their ventures will pass through the same areas again and again, allowing you to re-use random encounter tables, re-populate the same small dungeons, and in general recycle everything many times over. This also leads to the players getting a real feel for the character of the regions they're exploring. People say it evokes the sense of wonder and discovery pretty powerfully.

You know, I'm vaguely familiar with the Western Marches but will give it a more detailed look. Another good reminder.

Anyhow, this sounds good--especially the last two sentences. I think the key of the sandbox is combining a sense of familiarity ("we've travelled along this road before, oh yeah, there's the bluff over there with the waterfall") and spontaneity and mystery ("who is that shadowy figure on that bluff?"). The familiarity creates the context in which the spontaneous new idea has impact.

Kellri's CDD#4 - Encounters Reference (from Kellri ) is a free PDF.

Wow, this looks great--I just downloaded it.

What I thought the OP wanted was to be a perticipant in the exploration, not the architect of the world or the plot. To do this, he will have to release a major amount of authority over the world and the events within it to gain that participation. One way that he obviously knows about are random charts. Good stuff, but occasionally can feel very random and incoherent. Another is to give more authorship to the other players so that they can surprise him. There are a ton of tricks to get this experience, ranging from the Mountain Witch Trick on the most conservative side, to a fully GMless game like The Committee for the Exploration if Mysteries.

A couple things. First, I think our ideas of a "sandbox" are slightly different, or rather I think you well present the classic sandbox but my view is that it is more of a spectrum and doesn't have to conform so strictly to a definition. I suppose in what you describe what I want is "sandboxy" or "elements of sandbox" rather than a strict sandbox campaign.

Secondly, I don't believe that being a participant and the architect of the world are inherently antithetical or mutually exclusive. As a long-time world-builder and writer, I find that part of the fun of this sort of creating is the sense of discovery, as if I am not building the world but discovering (and "chronicling") a world that already exists. This relates to what Carl Jung termed the "collective unconscious" and my feeling that fantasy art--at its best--is tapping into something much larger than the discursive fancy of the individual mind; it is tapping into a much greater wellsbring of myth and archetype.

So in relation to your comment, I find that I am both the architect and explorer (or participant) in my "created" fantasy worlds. Actually, the building (architecture) is a process of discovery, which is why it is so pleasurable. So what I am trying to do is bring that "wonder of creative discovery" into the gaming process, so that it occurs while both preparing and playing a campaign.

It's not just a "style of GMing". It's basically the game of Dungeons & Dragons as originally presented in 1974.

That it should be some kind of revelation in D&D circles 36 years later is a commentary on how much the game by that name has been changed.

This is an interesting point. Not to "jack" my own thread, I just finished Ursula K Le Guin's The Dispossessed for the first time, which happens to be the same age as D&D (and myself!): 36. One of the things that struck me about this amazing novel is that this sort of novel--a true novel of ideas--is rarely if ever written any more. There is no technological gimmickry, no violence, no cliche or facile characters.

I am of the view that something has been lost in the artistic realm, in the last 30-40 years, especially congruent with technological development. We have Avatar and other technological "masterpieces" (or monstrosities, depending upon your viewpoint), but we don't have many The Dispossessed, or if they do they are marginalized by more glitzy media. Of course it has always been this way to some degree, but I think the trend has become more extreme. But that's really another topic.

No, no, I'm not suggesting you run the game for this batch of students.

I'm suggesting that you teach them the rules and have them write adventures for you to run in your game. That way, you won't be aware of the content before you open the envelope at the gaming table.

Their eager little imaginations can be turned to your purpose.

Tell the student that if they want to play the game, they'll have to request a class for next year that uses it as a teaching tool.

Ah, OK. Interesting idea. By the way, I am teaching a class in Worldbuilding in the winter. Should be fun!

I made a whole bunch of random tables to generate my setting. I rolled on the tables, got an inspirational line or two, and then fleshed it out before play began.

One of the things I wanted to do with these tables was to make it so the DM could consult the chart during play and come up with something on the fly. No prep, just a bunch of random rolls and some imagination.

Here is the table for the "Terrain Feature - Moor" entry. As you can see it leaves a lot for the DM to discover and be surprised by in play. I have a lot of these tables (ruins, dungeons, lairs, settlements, special features, terrain features; what's in a hex, like monsters, maps, traps, tricks, treasure, artefacts, and gates) and other procedures so I could potentially run a game with no prep at all; I (as DM) would be exploring the world at the same time as the PCs.

Wow, great table! Have anymore? An email would be grand: jonnybardo at yahoo dot com.

I like your combination of "random rolls and imagination." That is what I'm going for.

Frank, I'm sort of taking a shot in the dark here, or maybe just a patch of shade, but I don't think that's what Mercurius means by 'sandboxing' or 'wonder' or "the unknown".

Not sure what you mean here? (And who is Frank?).