The Good Sandbox Thread [+]

[Bedrockgames]

I have to edit a document today, but I thought I would post these before I did. I've shared them on my discord. They maps for my Ogre Gate sandbox when I first started making it. This isn't fully comprehensive and these are early drafts, and these all were done during and after I worked out some historical movement of peoples maps (which I might post later if I can find my originals), but this gives you an idea of how I started with a broad overview of a larger region (this is basically the area of focus for most of my Ogre Gate campaigns):

Many of the names I later changed or altered spelling of, but this will give you an idea of how much information I needed to start.

I then just focused on the Banyan Mt. Region. Knowing that from there I would work my way out during the course of campaigns. One of the big prompts for me going to more detail in a region was the players deciding to go there.

The Banyan was probably as deep as some of the other areas I eventually mapped but this was my starting point. Will try to track down my original banyan map but in the meantime the next region I mapped out was Li Fan, and this was in part because the party heard rumors of something important buried beneath the Ogre Gate Inn. I did end up writing an Adventure for the Ogre Gate Inn that had some kind of structure to it (and the notes in the right hand corner I believe are my notes about that). Again this is not a final map, I later had a more finalized version of this one.

And to give a sense of what I did with towns these are about the level of info I would initially give myself:

This is one from another region. You can see I left blank spaces where there is implied content but I didn't feel the need to render every block (the cut off names on the left margin I believe are names of local officials called Bao Chiefs (kind of like ward councilors). The note about vampires looks like it was related to an adventure I was running for a group but I can't recall anything about that at this time:

The most important details for me though are the sects and NPCs. I wanted the sandbox to be kind of like a Shaw Brothers wuxia. So each of those sects, and their members are all hashed out in my notes. And many pages of NPCs. And to be clear here, I am using the term sandbox for clarity, I always call it a living adventure myself (which to me basically means a sandbox with an emphasis on characters). In a wuxia sandbox I find the characters matter the most because so much of it is about conflict between groups and people.

I also did realms beyond the normal world. This is a very roughly sketched out pocket realm (I later did a more complete map in a book but it was still rough sketch enough in my opinion to go in the appendix):

Oh and this was my continent map. It is meant to be a square shaped earth. I also had a cosmology map showing where this fits in relations to the heavenly realms but can't find the sketch

 

[Thomas Shey]

Its been used for decades. Though, it backfired a few times on me. My players went down a deep rabbit hole of finding a trade route like Traveller was the Merchant of Venus board game RPG port. They looked up all the obnoxiously long system codes to find who needed textiles or electronics etc... Every adventure hook was "too dangerous cant risk the ship we gotta pay it off..." So, yeah... Ive stopped using the mortgage as a motivator for a campaign in Traveller.

That's often the risk with ongoing maintenance goals (whether a ship in Traveler or real property in some fantasy or post-apocalypse game); it can end up making the players overly cautious because the chance to win big does not balance the chance of losing big in their minds.

 

[Clint_L]

I run every campaign as a sandbox, trying to build story hooks out of what the players give me, and then adapting as they make different choices or things unfold in an unexpected direction. I also use random events generators, some of which have led to multi-game adventures as the players took an interest in something unexpected.

This is extra work for me, since I like to prepare detailed sets for likely encounters and I wind up building quite a bit of stuff that goes unused. On the other hand, it makes the campaign more fun for me because I get to see where the story goes the same as the players do!

And I let story hooks sit there, so they can come up again. My school campaign just visited a city that I had prepped for a campaign that ran before Covid, and followed up one of those hooks so that I am finally getting to run the haunted house scenario I had roughed out years ago with a totally different group of players in mind.

Even for one shot games like Dread I have kind of a sandbox approach: I do up the setting, and I know what the antagonists are up to, but then everything that unfolds depends on player choices and, of course, the Tower of Dread (Jenga. The Tower of Dread is Jenga). I have one beloved scenario that I've run at least six times and it has been a radically different story each time.

 

[Endie]

I’m running Drinax right now for a party of mainly 5e-only players. I was worried they’d sit there and await the next instalment of the adventure path at each point (and that I’d burn through the adventures in the main book and Drinaxian Companion trying to kickstart them) but all but one of them have hurled themselves into it, trying to recruit smugglers, seduce agents and use holo disguises to play two separate roles each, one as buccaneering freebooters and the other identities as Drinaxian saviours of safer spaceways.

Edit: I meant to quote @payn in that post but I’m bad at forums, apparently.

 

[payn]

I’m running Drinax right now for a party of mainly 5e-only players. I was worried they’d sit there and await the next instalment of the adventure path at each point (and that I’d burn through the adventures in the main book and Drinaxian Companion trying to kickstart them) but all but one of them have hurled themselves into it, trying to recruit smugglers, seduce agents and use holo disguises to play two separate roles each, one as buccaneering freebooters and the other identities as Drinaxian saviours of safer spaceways.

Edit: I meant to quote @payn in that post but I’m bad at forums, apparently.

 

[Endie]

I'm not sure this thread was strictly necessary, but okay.

I am currently running a sandbox with a strong inciting incident, mostly filled with short adventures from lots of different 5E sources. What I am finding to be a problem is that even short adventures give the PCs lots of XP, and so they are gaining levels quickly without exhausting the vaguely tier-based "zones" I have divided the setting into. As such, I think sandbox adventuring benefits from slower XP progression -- but I do think it needs XP based progression (as opposed to milestones). I want the players to make choices based on their own ideas about perceived risk versus hoped for reward.

The other campaign I currently run is a 5e one. I’d far rather it was 2e, but I compromised with the players by saying that I’d do 5e as they wanted (that lot are Pathfinder players but they wanted to try out the 5e) but with half the progression rate. We’ve been playing fortnightly without a missed session since September, fifteen sessions, and they reached fourth level this week.

As much as anything else, this is because I just love DMing low level play. Far fewer mechanical answers to challenges.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Best campaign I ever ran was essentially a sandbox. It was a supers game using HERO, but the campaign setting (embellished & enhanced) from Space:1889. While I did have certain adventures in mind and plotted out to create the overall plotline, for the most part, the players set the pace and told me which things they wanted to do.

The way it worked:

1) the PCs were all part of an agency with police powers in every country and even interplanetary jurisdiction. So they could go on adventures anywhere in the setting.

2) the agency had a 1 page newsletter I wrote up to provide a synopsis of the party’s past adventures as “front page news” and drop plot seeds involving other things happening in the worlds in the form of other “articles” in the newsletter. (Formatting was done like a single-sheet newspaper, and it was printed & posted on the host’s corkboard- these days, I’d probably just email everyone.)

3) I’d listen to the table talk and field any questions about my campaign between sessions to gauge what plot lines the players were most interested in, then write those up as new adventures. Occasionally, their speculative discussions about the setting replaced my own ideas.

4) most plot seeds that didn’t interest my players got dropped from the newsletter, handled by other teams within the agency. The exception was anything related to the campaign’s core plotline.

5) all told, slightly fewer than 50% of the adventures I ran in that campaign were actually involving the main plotline, and most of those were run in the last months of the campaign as things heated up.

 

[Endie]

It is indeed. There are a good number of products for it. The first obvious one is the Pirates of Drinax box set. A collection of adventures, ship deck plans, and assortment of rules for running the sandbox, including some specific chargen material. There is a second product called the Drinax companion, that adds even more sub-systems, rules, adventures to use.

Finally, there is a series of adventures that Mongoose put out for the Trojan Reach (the section of space in which PoD takes place in the setting). Many of these are short adventures fit for west marches style play for folks looking to do their own thing. However, they also make for excellent additions to the PoD sandbox campaign.

You mentioned in another thread that you’d run Drinax twice before, and were on your third time through it.

I’d be super-keen to hear how each had gone, what worked, what was more problematic about running it, what approaches the players took and so on.

 

[payn]

You mentioned in another thread that you’d run Drinax twice before, and were on your third time through it.

I’d be super-keen to hear how each had gone, what worked, what was more problematic about running it, what approaches the players took and so on.

Absolutely!

First group was some co-workers of mine. We started playing 5E over lunch every Tuesday. We eventually moved to 4-6pm on Tuesdays and towards the end of that campaign covid hit. We wrapped it and I offered to run PoD over zoom and Foundry. It went well for a bout a year and a half, but then folks got different jobs and it fell apart.

The group was mostly human and an old Aslan scholar doctor figure. (The aslan traveller was a lot of fun and a unique approach to it.) We did a number of the main box set adventures along side a number of short Reach adventures. Everyone seemed to enjoy it just one of those real life tore us apart again situations. I'd say I was about half way through (hard to judge accurately) but was on my way towards really having things get shaken up with the Aslan and Imperial Empire and bring things to a head for Drinax and the Travellers. I'd say this group had no issues, really enjoyed it, just logistics ended it prematurely.

Second attempt was with a group I met online during Covid. I really enjoyed playing with these folks. We started with PF2 as sort of kick the tires learn the system. That ended about 6-8 sessions in when collectively we were not feeling it. Then, it became almost an RPG of the month club. We tried a good number of things before I offered a Traveller one shot. Everyone liked it, and so I offered to go with a campaign. They signed up, made characters and it was all good.

As things were really just getting started, about a few months into it, one of the players mentioned not being happy with it. Turns out the player who was formerly our GM, doesnt like playing. They played it off as if they were foisted into the GM chair as a forever GM, but it turns out they have a need to be in the GM chair. The other players wanted to keep the group together so wanted to end the campaign and start something else. It was at this point I politely excused myself from the group. Good folks, I really enjoyed playing with them, but are the types that will never complete a long term campaign (while complaining they never do). I just needed more consistency then they were going to offer. Also, the alternatives offered were all some form of D&D adjacent fantasy and I was burned out on that.

Some specifics of why PoD didnt work for group 2, were RPG expectations. The forever GM took the opinion that Traveller doesnt work as a system because it doesnt follow D&D class structure. Meaning, healer, controller, striker in combat roles are not enforced by Traveller careers. They simply couldnt grok how an RPG works outside that dynamic. Add not liking being a player on top of all that and there you go. Some other nuggets were one player is an all combat type. They are there to chew pretzels and kick ass, and Traveller apparently had not enough ass. (Though this player was ultimately easy going with the flow and was kinda comin outta their shell before it went sideways). Otherwise, it was going well until it wasnt.

 

[Endie]

Absolutely!

First group was some co-workers of mine. We started playing 5E over lunch every Tuesday. We eventually moved to 4-6pm on Tuesdays and towards the end of that campaign covid hit. We wrapped it and I offered to run PoD over zoom and Foundry. It went well for a bout a year and a half, but then folks got different jobs and it fell apart.

The group was mostly human and an old Aslan scholar doctor figure. (The aslan traveller was a lot of fun and a unique approach to it.) We did a number of the main box set adventures along side a number of short Reach adventures. Everyone seemed to enjoy it just one of those real life tore us apart again situations. I'd say I was about half way through (hard to judge accurately) but was on my way towards really having things get shaken up with the Aslan and Imperial Empire and bring things to a head for Drinax and the Travellers. I'd say this group had no issues, really enjoyed it, just logistics ended it prematurely.

Second attempt was with a group I met online during Covid. I really enjoyed playing with these folks. We started with PF2 as sort of kick the tires learn the system. That ended about 6-8 sessions in when collectively we were not feeling it. Then, it became almost an RPG of the month club. We tried a good number of things before I offered a Traveller one shot. Everyone liked it, and so I offered to go with a campaign. They signed up, made characters and it was all good.

As things were really just getting started, about a few months into it, one of the players mentioned not being happy with it. Turns out the player who was formerly our GM, doesnt like playing. They played it off as if they were foisted into the GM chair as a forever GM, but it turns out they have a need to be in the GM chair. The other players wanted to keep the group together so wanted to end the campaign and start something else. It was at this point I politely excused myself from the group. Good folks, I really enjoyed playing with them, but are the types that will never complete a long term campaign (while complaining they never do). I just needed more consistency then they were going to offer. Also, the alternatives offered were all some form of D&D adjacent fantasy and I was burned out on that.

Some specifics of why PoD didnt work for group 2, were RPG expectations. The forever GM took the opinion that Traveller doesnt work as a system because it doesnt follow D&D class structure. Meaning, healer, controller, striker in combat roles are not enforced by Traveller careers. They simply couldnt grok how an RPG works outside that dynamic. Add not liking being a player on top of all that and there you go. Some other nuggets were one player is an all combat type. They are there to chew pretzels and kick ass, and Traveller apparently had not enough ass. (Though this player was ultimately easy going with the flow and was kinda comin outta their shell before it went sideways). Otherwise, it was going well until it wasnt.

Thank you for all this detail! I hope your third group is more like the first than the second.

My wife and I were in a kinda rpg of the month type group for a bit and while I understand why some folks enjoy the ludic, system-exploration novelty aspect of the hobby, we both prefer the prolonged story of the long campaign.