What's the best/your favorite starting site-based adventure, or sandbox?

[Olgar Shiverstone]

Well, I'm biased toward Raiders of Oakhurst and The Desolation of Oakhurst because I wrote them to be sandboxy. Both would be easy conversions to 5E.

But for classic products, in addition to Hommlet my favorites are:

B2, Keep on the Borderlands and sequels/revisits (2E Return is a bit more fleshed out)

The Lost City of Barakus

Common features among them that I think are key to a good starting location:

- A keyed town/settlement with interesting NPCs who have their own stories and interactions that can be expanded into broader plots and adventures
- A wilderness area
- Some site-based set-piece encounters that can be found via exploration
- Some mysteries that can be followed up if the DM wants to expand the adventure
- A plot thread that leads to a reasonable-to-large-sized adventure site
- Design that doesn't assume every encounter is a combat encounter and allows PCs to take a variety of approaches to the adventure

Another approach is to simply pick a slightly isolated town/village on the outskirts of civilization in a campaign setting that you like, and drop in adventure sites stolen from your favorite adventures. You need to come of with a framing/linking story, but otherwise your prep is pretty minimal. I once ran a campaign that combined the Keep and Caves from B2 with the Moathouse version from RttToEE as part of the local sandbox.

 

[Mercurius]

Common features among them that I think are key to a good starting location:

- A keyed town/settlement with interesting NPCs who have their own stories and interactions that can be expanded into broader plots and adventures
- A wilderness area
- Some site-based set-piece encounters that can be found via exploration
- Some mysteries that can be followed up if the DM wants to expand the adventure
- A plot thread that leads to a reasonable-to-large-sized adventure site
- Design that doesn't assume every encounter is a combat encounter and allows PCs to take a variety of approaches to the adventure

Another approach is to simply pick a slightly isolated town/village on the outskirts of civilization in a campaign setting that you like, and drop in adventure sites stolen from your favorite adventures. You need to come of with a framing/linking story, but otherwise your prep is pretty minimal. I once ran a campaign that combined the Keep and Caves from B2 with the Moathouse version from RttToEE as part of the local sandbox.

That's pretty much what I'm doing, but am using my own setting. But I'm starting with a village, with a town a couple days away, and a small city a few more way, and all the classic terrain types - mountains, hills, marsh, moor, lake, plains, etc.

So in a way what I'm looking for are two things:

1) Examples of good starting locations/sandbox adventures that I can get ideas and inspiration from

2) Interesting sites and encounters that I can drop in as desired

I've been emphasizing the first, but anyone have ideas for the second? What are some good resources? I own the Wilderlands box and am going to read through for ideas, but i'm looking for stuff that is a bit more fleshed out.

 

[Gilladian]

If you're "stealing" from Rise of the Runelords, I would also recommend taking a look at the first book(s) of Kingmaker. The first book is loaded with things that can be plucked out and used in other settings. A trading outpost, bandit camp, a bandit fort, a mite lair, kobold lair, an abandoned minor temple now inhabited by rogues, and bunches of other minor set pieces that can be run across whenever the PCs go wandering about.

 

[howandwhy99]

It's easy to repeat a lot of the early adventures as they were designed as sandbox adventures. B2, L1, T1. What matters are there are both potential allies and enemies present. Both towns and dungeons and a history of their growth, relationships, and the current status of each.

Instead I'll suggest my favorite from Forgotten Realms in 3.x "Silver Marches". The overland scale is out of whack, but as a sandbox adventure there is a ton of good material here. Plus, the North in FR has a lot of history as well to tie into. So you can reveal it with connections to any new adventures you place.

 

[Scrivener of Doom]

Like many others here, I reckon Keep on the Borderlands is a near-perfect start to a sandbox (or any!) campaign, provided you put in a bit of work to make the temple more specific and, as a corollary to that, have it explain why such diverse and antagonistic humanoids are living in such close proximity to each other.

I think it also benefits from giving each of the tribes a name and a unique identifier like a plucked out eye for one of the orc tribes, a necklace of ears for each of the bugbears etc.... But it's a great place to start.

It's easy to repeat a lot of the early adventures as they were designed as sandbox adventures. B2, L1, T1. What matters are there are both potential allies and enemies present. Both towns and dungeons and a history of their growth, relationships, and the current status of each.

Instead I'll suggest my favorite from Forgotten Realms in 3.x "Silver Marches". The overland scale is out of whack, but as a sandbox adventure there is a ton of good material here. Plus, the North in FR has a lot of history as well to tie into. So you can reveal it with connections to any new adventures you place.

I'm currently working on a sandbox campaign in the Silver Marches that I will be starting in the second week of February. It's perfect for a sandbox campaign. Orcs, giants, dragons, dungeons: everything has a logical reason for being where it is. It's also perfect for adapting almost any 1E or 2E adventure from Keep on the Borderlands to The Shattered Circle.

And you have the choice of three excellent maps: the 2E version from The North boxed set, the 3E version from Silver Marches, or the 4e version by Mike Schley (no, not the crappy one from the campaign guide).

Keep on the Borderlands is perfect for the Silver Marches....

 

[Baron Greystone]

Modron from JG? Or Thunderhold? Heck, I usually just use the City-state. Dearthwood full of orcs, ruins, swamps, caravan route, Howling Hills, river pirates, merpeople in the estuary, marauding vikings...

 

[DEFCON 1]

Once I finish my current Gates of Firestorm Peak campaign (which I sandboxed and talked about previously in another thread)... my next thoughts are either to use and more fully expand either Expedition To Castle Ravenloft or Isle of Dread.

EtCR already has expanded and sandboxed things a bit more out from the village of Barovia... with all the fanes that the party should deal with before heading to the castle itself. But if I do go with that adventure, I'll probably go rummaging through my modules and pull out a few more that are necromancy, gypsy, or gothic related. I know there's a couple "haunted house" modules out there that could be dropped into Barovia easily enough... there's a 4E Nentir Vale Backdrop article (Backdrop: Mistwatch) that is marked similar to the situation in Barovia that I can plunder some ideas from. Plus I'm sure there are plenty of others. Having a landscape that is surrounded by the impenetrable mist contains everyone and everything and makes for a cool land to explore.

And as far as Isle of Dread is concerned... it's another one where the area is contained. The fact that it's already been updated as a D&D Next playtest adventure just makes it even better. There's already a bunch of areas on the map that are encounter spots, but there's still plenty of space to drop in other modules (like The Lost Isle of Castanamir) or encounters as need be. I've even thought removing the temple found on Taboo Island and replacing it with the City of Skulls (incorporating Return to the Tomb of Horrors into the Isle).

In both cases, they each have a starting village to use-- Barovia and Tanaroa... and plenty of space beyond to begin exploring. And also in both cases, there is a central plot adventure area (the Castle and Taboo Island) that the party will eventually make their way towards. I've found that doing it that way for my current GoFP campaign has worked really, really well... and I'm looking forward to trying it again with a different central adventure (either Castle Ravenloft or the Tomb of Horrors.)

 

[howandwhy99]

I'm currently working on a sandbox campaign in the Silver Marches that I will be starting in the second week of February. It's perfect for a sandbox campaign. Orcs, giants, dragons, dungeons: everything has a logical reason for being where it is. It's also perfect for adapting almost any 1E or 2E adventure from Keep on the Borderlands to The Shattered Circle.

And you have the choice of three excellent maps: the 2E version from The North boxed set, the 3E version from Silver Marches, or the 4e version by Mike Schley (no, not the crappy one from the campaign guide).

Keep on the Borderlands is perfect for the Silver Marches....

Thanks for that Mike Schley map. That's easily the best I've seen of for the Realms. And it helps me understand how FR map scales can work. It's simply that Forgotten Realms is so really very big it can be hard remember to focus on a local area as a campaign location. Below is the original published map of The North, of which all of the Silver Marches is the top right quarter. That boxed set was a huge success for TSR and FR and still very useful today.
[sblock] [/sblock]

 

[Scrivener of Doom]

[MENTION=3192]howandwhy99[/MENTION]: Glad I could help. The map you posted is not from The North boxed set but from one of the atlas products (I can't remember the name, primarily because I never use it because the maps are nigh on useless). The North's maps are quite practical, but nowhere near as good as Mike Schley's version, IMO. The map from 3E's Silver Marches is also excellent: actually that whole book is perfect for running a sandbox campaign. It even has random weather by seasons and thinks like flash floods and avalanches in its wandering monster tables.

For my opening adventure of the campaign, I've just taken a small slice of the area around Silverymoon, put in a dungeon, a choice of three routes: et voila, I have a mini-sandbox with which to start the campaign. The area is small so the PCs will not be paralysed by choices - I've even narrowed down their choices to three routes to the dungeon to reduce any chance of analysis paralysis further - but it still provides for meaningful player choices. They can also research each of the three routes, or use their own skills, to find out a bit more about each one.

Anyway, I thought I was a good way to get a new campaign kicked off especially when the players are brand new to tabletop RPGs.