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Message: <blockquote data-quote="ExploderWizard" data-source="post: 5150859" data-attributes="member: 66434">I'm running a 4E sandbox campaign now. The "middle stuff" is that gooey caramel center that binds the chocolate coating (encounter detail) to the crispy base wafer (world backdrop).  My caramel mixture has three (or four) basic ingredients which begin as lists, which are then combined with an activator (a combination of PC's and a timeline) to produce the yummy campaign caramel. The Lists: Start thinking about populating the following lists- 1)People/Groups of interest & influence:    Power players of all types. These can be religious leaders, nobles, factions, crime bosses, humanoid leaders, etc. Generally these types have some power and pull some strings somewhere. 2) Places of Interest:    Locales that are important in some way. A dungeon, some ruins, thieves guild hideout, a temple, etc. 3) Events of Interest:    General happenings that take place in an area. Market day, holiday celebrations, religious festivals, shipment arrivals, etc. These are things that generally go on regularly that the PC's would be familliar with.  4) Items of Interest:    Famous treasures, lost magic, treasure maps, damning evidence (against someone!) or a general mcguffin.  Brainstorm a few ideas for each of these independently. Since you already have a world sketched out, pick a general area where you would like to start. Once you have several items for each list its time to start drawing links between them. Think about how an important person fits into the world. What are thier goals? Based on this are they likely going to be up to no good? Think of things that link this person to an event, place, item or any/all of these. Once we have links then we can start to flesh out more details. Our villain with a hideout in the ruins has plans to swipe a relic during a religious festival because he has an interested buyer that will be arriving next week on the scheduled caravan stop coming to town.  How powerful is this villain and what manpower/resources does he have access to? Once decided we can put this plot module into the activator. Sketch out a rough timeline for the activities needed to pull off this scheme and what will happen barring interference and let the PC's get wind of it somehow.  You might have several crunchy detailed encounters that would work for this setup. Of course other parties will have plans of thier own which might be at odds with this one.  The lists will grow and the timeline will progess and you will have good picture of what is happening and when prior to the PC's doing things.</blockquote>

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