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<blockquote data-quote="Reynard" data-source="post: 6550725" data-attributes="member: 467">If you populate the sandbox with interesting people, places and things then the players will have lots of opportunities to find something to do. If you start with a simple premise -- &quot;You have arrived in the frontier town of Threshold, penniless but hungry for adventure!&quot; -- and provide a couple dangling hooks -- &quot;The logging camp has been being harassed by goblins.&quot; &quot;No one has seen Old Jonas the prospector in over a week!&quot; -- they should be able to grab one and go. Now, following up on Old Jonas might not involve an adventure with the prospector at all. maybe along the way they stumble across a bandit camp and decide to arrest them for the price on their heads, or even join them! Or maybe they find the body of a local adventurer with a treasure map in his pocket. Or maybe they get eaten by an owlbear. The key is to get them out the door on looking for adventure.EDIT On the question of &quot;when is it over&quot; the thing is there are lots of stories embedded in the sandbox, so the players will enjoy regular climaxes and resolutions, some of which will lead to new adventures and some of which will close the book on elements in the sandbox. You might have an element in your sandbox that is powerful or influential enough that it becomes a sort of default &quot;main story&quot; -- dragons, bottomless dungeons and battles for succession are good ones -- that if resolved sort of &quot;cap&quot; the sandbox and it may be time to move on, but that is, in my experience, rare. Players invested in the sanbox will, by that point, have lots left to do.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Reynard, post: 6550725, member: 467"] If you populate the sandbox with interesting people, places and things then the players will have lots of opportunities to find something to do. If you start with a simple premise -- "You have arrived in the frontier town of Threshold, penniless but hungry for adventure!" -- and provide a couple dangling hooks -- "The logging camp has been being harassed by goblins." "No one has seen Old Jonas the prospector in over a week!" -- they should be able to grab one and go. Now, following up on Old Jonas might not involve an adventure with the prospector at all. maybe along the way they stumble across a bandit camp and decide to arrest them for the price on their heads, or even join them! Or maybe they find the body of a local adventurer with a treasure map in his pocket. Or maybe they get eaten by an owlbear. The key is to get them out the door on looking for adventure. EDIT On the question of "when is it over" the thing is there are lots of stories embedded in the sandbox, so the players will enjoy regular climaxes and resolutions, some of which will lead to new adventures and some of which will close the book on elements in the sandbox. You might have an element in your sandbox that is powerful or influential enough that it becomes a sort of default "main story" -- dragons, bottomless dungeons and battles for succession are good ones -- that if resolved sort of "cap" the sandbox and it may be time to move on, but that is, in my experience, rare. Players invested in the sanbox will, by that point, have lots left to do. [/QUOTE]

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