PDA

View Full Version : Introducing players to sandbox games



Greybird
2013-02-15, 01:10 AM
First off, I'm brand new to sandbox GMing. I GMed for years and ran a number of different campaigns, but that was twenty years ago, when railroading was considered normal and was actively taught as an adventure writing technique. I've got some ideas (and have been doing an absurd amount of research), and I'm going to give it a whirl with my upcoming Savage Worlds fantasy campaign. I doubt it will be 100% freeform sandbox, but I want to lean it in that direction.

I've run a couple of one-offs for this same group of people in the past, and while we had fun, they were completely stymied any time there wasn't an obvious 'next step' presented to them. Does anyone have any general recommendations on getting them started on what amounts to a whole new style of play for all of us?

ArcturusV
2013-02-15, 01:16 AM
Well, as silly as it may sound, the most obvious way to do it is to let them know there is a particular place/idea in each town/village/city that can be the "Go to" for an array of missions/rumors.

I mean this is kind of an old DnD idea. Where "Adventure" modules would be written up and include a metric Crap Ton of adventure hooks, quest ideas, local rumors, etc, etc, etc, that were flying around if you went to the local booze dispenser and asked for rumors and such.

It's an old fashioned idea, but it works. And instead of leading the players around by the nose you can have Options A-F to choose from layed out before them because they went to the Tavern, the Inn, or the Town Hall, or a giant bulletin board posted by the city gates, etc. That gets them in the mindset that there's a lot of stuff out there (Make sure timeframes mean they can't do everything. You do A or you do B, not both), and that they can choose their direction. Once you get them used to that, usually I find players can pick up speed and choose their destinies, forging their own ideas and stories rather than selecting from a preset choice.

xanendorf
2013-02-15, 03:50 AM
Im DMing a Sandbox tabletop game, What I have found is that you give them a bigger goal to work towards (In my case the Wizard has Inherited a keep and A large sum of gold in a dangerous area, and has to get there to claim it.)
So while they journey to this goal, they can come across your other town/adventures. Make sure that the goal isn't of pressing importance, else they will skip what they deem "Small stuff."

hymer
2013-02-15, 04:39 AM
Teach them the use of whatever the equivalence of Gather Information is in your system. Use rumours. Encourage the development of PCs with motivations. Make plenty and plenty of hooks for every adventure they may stumble on, hooks they can come acros many places and in many ways.

My biggest problem with my players in getting into sandboxes was exactly the same. I had them start out in a fort in the wilderness, and a few suggestions for things they could do. By the end of the campaign, they had gotten the hang of it and made up their own missions with little or no meta-input from me. Sometimes (especially when I had guest players) I'd make a special case where they got an old-fashioned 'go there and accomplish this' mission, but maybe 90% was just them reacting to things they came across and thought were interesting. Inaccurate maps are fun in this way.
Exploration, I guess, is the key. Get them used to wander and look, and try to have something happen when they react to something, even if it isn't something big every time.

Surfnerd
2013-02-16, 03:39 PM
I second that it would be way easier if you had players that had somewhat fleshed out backgrounds. You could use these as hooks to get them involved when they are stymied.

There is also the idea of adventuring guilds that post up on bulletin boards or what have you. Taking percentage of treasure or whatever. If you went this route you could also make rival bands that compete for jobs or the adventuring guild assigning NPC or new players to the group to add drama. They could get discounts when buying equipment for being members as well as favored rooms at the end. It would also give people looking for help a place to go to find it.

To give the campaign direction you could have them be in the military, part of an academy, crew on a ship or something similar. Being a sandbox whatever it is, I'd give them plenty of downtime from their "jobs" to pursue their own interest.

Perhaps they are garrisoned troops in a region without mass conflict so they have taken up with the local adventuring guild to help the community with its daily needs and/or to get rich and retire from the military life.

I always liked to have several one page adventures on hand just in case the players decided to follow up on some lead.

Rhynn
2013-02-16, 07:03 PM
Build your campaign around a setpiece.

Basically, "sandbox" really refers to the old, old style of roleplaying game, where the GM created not a campaign or a story, but a world. The key is that you have to start small.

First, start with something to do. In D&D, this was traditionally the dungeon (the dungeons under Castle Greyhawk, the Undermountain, etc.). You can make this anything that fits your game - a war (traditional, civil, underground, whatever), the rivalry between the Capulets and the Montagues, whatever. The PCs need to be aware of it, and it needs to look like a hook. Make enough to run 1-2 sessions before you start expanding (in D&D, this meant the first dungeon level, pretty much).

Second, come up with somewhere to go when you're not doing the above. You should have this ready for the first or second session, too. Start with broad outlines, and come up with details as necessary (always pump your players for their plans for the next few sessions so you can flesh out the people and locations likely to be involved). In D&D, this was traditionally the town or city closest to (or directly above!) the dungeon, like Waterdeep.

Third, create the surroundings, whether physical, political, social, etc. Whatever suits your game. In D&D, this was the hexmap of the wilderness surrounding the dungeon and the city, and grew from there. Fill it with interesting hooks, and come up with ways for the PCs to get wind of them (traditionally, random rumor tables).


The key is that while the PCs should decide what to do, you need to provide an environment full of adventurous locations, rumors, and tensions. Emergent plot - the wonderful result of sandboxy play - happens when players start bouncing between these elements you've left lying around, interacting with them in unusual ways. It's not necessarily at all unfocused - a big dungeon with interesting secrets, for instance, can keep it very focused - but it grows with the PCs. When a PC starts nearing name level in old D&D, for instance, he's going to start looking around the world for someplace to build his stronghold and rule, and the DM needs to accommodate that in an interesting way.

You can also run a campaign that's totally directed by PC actions and interests. I tried to introduce some larger political plot into a game of Artesia, but the PCs ended up doing the unexpected in a most wonderful way, and going off the rails and into their own direction, with me scrambling and improvising to stay up with their speed - and finally getting in a suggestion that caught their interest in a way that let me focus my development on an area of the world.


So, in short: a good "sandbox" is filled not only with sand to make into what you want, but with interesting toys to find and play with. Whether that's the ancient grudge of two households, both alike in dignity, or the foreboding tower of a necromancer jutting from a great and ancient forest, is up to you - and the world you want to create and the game you all want to play.


Personally, I've just lately written up one campaign setup (2E AD&D played in 1E-AD&D-books-only Faerûn, in the Undermountain, Waterdeep, and the Savage Frontier/the North). I started out by dumping out everything that is in the books and then re-inserting only the parts I liked and wanted or was too lazy to do (Waterdeep's maps, legal system, much of the Undermountain's first 3 levels), and either re-writing everything else to my pleasure or leaving it undefined.

I've got the Undermountain (and enough to run several sessions; no sense writing more yet), Waterdeep (mostly just a list of taverns, services, and people the PCs will definitely need at some point, like trainers, clerics-for-hire, etc.), and hexmaps of the whole North (from the Spine of the World to the Warlock's Crypt and from the Anauroch to the Sea of Swords), with some detail on the part surrounding Waterdeep (up to maybe a week's journey away).

It's all as full of interesting things as I could make it - for instance, I hope very hard the PCs find the completely-not-balanced but incredibly well-secreted treasure on the first level of the dungeon and make off with it, because I foresee endless fun from dealing with that (trying to sell a gem with a six-figure value without getting murdered, robbed, or cheated) - but if they don't, it's no matter, because I only have a single paragraph about it and didn't even write that - and I hope they (as usual) take their own interests in some small facet of the world (a person, a place, a treasure, whatever) and let me spin that out into an interesting story that none of us foresee.


Edit: Also, backgrounds depend on the game/campaign. In old-style D&D, you don't want players front-loading character creation. You should encourage them to come up with facts about their characters during play, but dungeon- or wilderness-crawling play is supposed to be deadly, and that goes smoother if there's no huge initial investment. If it's Vampire: the Masquerade, though - or any other game where the PCs' personalities and motivations are supposed to direct play - you need more work up-front.

There's a lot of easy ways to do this, too, though: for instance, tell each player to come up with 1-3 short-term goals, 1-3 long-term goals, 1-3 beliefs your character holds (some true, some false), 1-3 important things about their past, or whatever else, and use those.


Editedit: Oh, one good idea is to ask your players, at the end of every session, "What are you doing/where are you going next time?"

Amphetryon
2013-02-16, 11:19 PM
Well, as silly as it may sound, the most obvious way to do it is to let them know there is a particular place/idea in each town/village/city that can be the "Go to" for an array of missions/rumors.

I mean this is kind of an old DnD idea. Where "Adventure" modules would be written up and include a metric Crap Ton of adventure hooks, quest ideas, local rumors, etc, etc, etc, that were flying around if you went to the local booze dispenser and asked for rumors and such.

It's an old fashioned idea, but it works. And instead of leading the players around by the nose you can have Options A-F to choose from layed out before them because they went to the Tavern, the Inn, or the Town Hall, or a giant bulletin board posted by the city gates, etc. That gets them in the mindset that there's a lot of stuff out there (Make sure timeframes mean they can't do everything. You do A or you do B, not both), and that they can choose their direction. Once you get them used to that, usually I find players can pick up speed and choose their destinies, forging their own ideas and stories rather than selecting from a preset choice.

Counterpoint: I've known more than one Player who would call the above "choose which of these adventure hooks to pursue" options presented by the GM a form of Railroading, with the argument being that it's still a railroad, they're just starting off at the station and haven't picked which rail to board yet.

ArcturusV
2013-02-16, 11:30 PM
True. I've seen that sort. But it's usually a person I can't ever do ANYTHING to please short of throwing the reigns completely in his hands. Most accept the premise that if I allow people to choose A-F, and there is no way you can do all of A-F at the same time... this means I'm creating a living setting. Where the actions (Or inactions) of the players matter. And you can abandon your goals. Alter it, hop tracks, whatever. Things happen though.

Course you should probably explain that to your player too if they don't get it. Most get it. I've had a few people I've had to explain that to however. Including one who didn't understand the concept that the players failing to do something (Or doing something foolishly) may impact the setting as a whole. In this case staging a massive prison break/slave riot in the particular example I'm thinking of, and the player was having a hard time accepting that actions have consequences.

Rhynn
2013-02-17, 03:43 AM
Counterpoint: I've known more than one Player who would call the above "choose which of these adventure hooks to pursue" options presented by the GM a form of Railroading, with the argument being that it's still a railroad, they're just starting off at the station and haven't picked which rail to board yet.

That's sort of nonsense, though. A sandbox campaign is always going to have a limited number of things to do - because it's a limited world or section of a world. The subset of "things the GM can actually run right now" is even smaller, especially if the GM is not great at improvising. (Or well-prepared to improvise, which is not an oxymoron at all. Basically it means a lot of random tables.)

It is true that going "Okay, I've got these modules ready, pick one" isn't exactly the point of a sandbox campaign, but it's perfectly fine as a starting point, or to help players ease into the style.

Who cares if you're running the purest sandbox campaign since the Lake Geneva campaign (or The West Marches (http://arsludi.lamemage.com/index.php/78/grand-experiments-west-marches/), which was just a reinvention of the old 70s and 80s D&D campaign style) at every given moment? What matters is that the campaign works, ends up being driven by player choices, and is fun for everyone.

Amphetryon
2013-02-17, 10:12 AM
That's sort of nonsense, though. A sandbox campaign is always going to have a limited number of things to do - because it's a limited world or section of a world. The subset of "things the GM can actually run right now" is even smaller, especially if the GM is not great at improvising. (Or well-prepared to improvise, which is not an oxymoron at all. Basically it means a lot of random tables.)

It is true that going "Okay, I've got these modules ready, pick one" isn't exactly the point of a sandbox campaign, but it's perfectly fine as a starting point, or to help players ease into the style.

Who cares if you're running the purest sandbox campaign since the Lake Geneva campaign (or The West Marches (http://arsludi.lamemage.com/index.php/78/grand-experiments-west-marches/), which was just a reinvention of the old 70s and 80s D&D campaign style) at every given moment? What matters is that the campaign works, ends up being driven by player choices, and is fun for everyone.
And if you have the sort of Players who can handle being told that their complaint is balderdash, congratulations - though I suspect that finding Players who would take well to that among those who would also characterize "choose which adventure hook to pursue" as a form of Railroading is highly unusual.

Given that, the prospective DM is left to decide whether the Player is going have his demands for a more open format met. If not, the DM has to decide if said Player is going to stay, which has other issues factored in, including the social structure of the group and whether the Player's departure would hinder the group's continuing to game together. "Bad gaming is worse than no gaming" is not a universally held opinion, and not everyone is satisfied with a PbP experience.

Rhynn
2013-02-17, 10:48 AM
And if you have the sort of Players who can handle being told that their complaint is balderdash, congratulations - though I suspect that finding Players who would take well to that among those who would also characterize "choose which adventure hook to pursue" as a form of Railroading is highly unusual.

Given that, the prospective DM is left to decide whether the Player is going have his demands for a more open format met. If not, the DM has to decide if said Player is going to stay, which has other issues factored in, including the social structure of the group and whether the Player's departure would hinder the group's continuing to game together. "Bad gaming is worse than no gaming" is not a universally held opinion, and not everyone is satisfied with a PbP experience.

Or, instead of aggressively telling off players for their complaints, you can explain that the idea is to let everyone else ease into the sandbox campaign... you know, actually treat your players like adults. If your players pitch a fit every time they don't get exactly what they want right now, you need new players. (Babies are bad at basic math anyway.)

Surfnerd
2013-02-17, 11:08 AM
I have players who love just improvising it as we go and I enjoy it too. The odd thing is some of my players are great and love a sandbox style campaign when its solo. GM and player.

Get them in the group and they prefer an on rail shooter. They sit back and kill anything that comes there way. I can only assume they feel like they get lost in the shuffle. In a group its hard to imagine why your character would care to help player X travel to his ancestral manor and put his life on the line. Which I guess in a sense is player created railroading for the rest of the party.

I have had the best success with improv character driven sandbox style campaign with one or two players. But that could just as well be a testament to my GM ability rather than an accurate study on the perfect balance for a sandbox style.

Rhynn
2013-02-17, 03:21 PM
Player/character-driven group-based sandboxes are harder than group-driven sandboxes (e.g. "You're an adventuring company with a contract, out to make fortunes for yourselves" - basically land-borne pirates targeting dungeons).

That's why sandboxes where the players/characters and their personal stories (where they come up with the hooks, rather than the hooks being treasures in dungeons or locations on a hexmap, and rumors pointing to them) are harder and require much more preparation and front-loaded character development, and party development. In any game where the premise is more than "Okay, you're a bunch of guys and you're working together"*, you need separate party development, and it should start before and happen concurrently with individual character development. "Here's the premise of the campaign/game/world - now who are your characters (collectively), and why are they together?"

Of course, some sandboxy games - particularly ones that include elements of PvP (physical or social), like Vampire - can be played just fine with a party that has no reason to stick together. But that has to be acknowledged. Keeping with Vampire, one of the classic problems is a Storyteller starting a campaign that requires a party working together, letting the players all do their own thing creating their PCs, and then finding that it's like herding cats trying to get them to cooperate!

I do agree that roleplay-heavy, character-personality-driven sandboxy games are probably easier with fewer characters: more spotlight time for every PC (such a game is all about showing off your character's personality, really), and fewer PCs to tie together and to come up with NPCs, etc., for.

* I think this should never happen, because it doesn't need to. Even in the most simplistic dungeon-crawling campaign (like the ones I'm gearing to run), I think the minimum should be "you're an established adventuring company." 17th century Caribbean pirate crews (the majority, if not quite all) had actual written charters that went on for dozens of articles, detailing in full the responsibilities, division of loot, and codes of conduct (and punishments!) that applied to the crew, and which you signed to to join; I can't imagine any professional adventuring group (as opposed to the rag-tag band of misfits thrown together**) would have any less of a charter, and I just love the style and feel and structure it gives to a dungeon-crawling campaign. It also explains why henchmen get a full share, etc. ...

** This is common in novels, but it just doesn't work as well in RPGs. It can, but it's the worst at tying the PCs together, by default - you need to start the adventure out with some establishing event that immediately hooks every player to the same main plot. It's unreliable (especially if any player isn't eagerly cooperating) and very hackneyed.

Edit: Timely comparison: LOTR has a rag-tag band of misfits thrown together, which works because it's an epic quest - but epic quests are better for novels than RPGs, IMO (how many times can you save one world, exactly?). The Hobbit has an adventuring company with a contract, because it's a smaller quest, more akin to a dungeon crawl ("There's a dragon in a dwarven ruin with a lot of treasury, and we want it!"). Both work, but the latter is much easier to do in an RPG context.

Amphetryon
2013-02-17, 05:04 PM
Edit: Timely comparison: LOTR has a rag-tag band of misfits thrown together, which works because it's an epic quest - but epic quests are better for novels than RPGs, IMO (how many times can you save one world, exactly?). The Hobbit has an adventuring company with a contract, because it's a smaller quest, more akin to a dungeon crawl ("There's a dragon in a dwarven ruin with a lot of treasury, and we want it!"). Both work, but the latter is much easier to do in an RPG context.

Would you call either of those a Sandbox? I wouldn't, for clarity.

TheThan
2013-02-17, 05:48 PM
Oh boy, where to begin.
First things first, give them a detailed world to explore. Unless you intentionally want them to fill in the blank spaces on the map; they’re going to need to know where they can go and explore.
Secondly, they need to have an idea of what they as a group want to do. For example in my Iron Kingdoms campaign, the player’s ultimate goal is to build the first full on airship (they have hot air balloons but no airships). This is a goal they came up with on their own with no help from me.

What I suggest you do when you start your game, is create a shortish adventure for them to go on. then when they complete that adventure, let them have at it and find something to do.

Since my players basically created their characters in a vacuum, they spend the majority of the first and second sessions basically filling in their back stories in relation to each other.

Rhynn
2013-02-17, 06:32 PM
Would you call either of those a Sandbox? I wouldn't, for clarity.

Not LOTR, certainly - that's a single-story campaign if there ever was one. I'm not sure why this has become the standard - probably ebcause roleplayers love to read novels, then assume (mistakenly) that RPGs facilitate novel-like stories well. (IMO RPGs don't lend themselves to novel-like stories well, although you can still do them well and have great fun.)

The Hobbit is definitely something that could happen in a good sandbox campaign - you start with a small hook, and it spins out into claiming domains and dealing with politics. It just wouldn't end, necessarily.

The point of my aside was that the (IMO) superior* model of "contract-based adventuring company" (it's unclear if any of the dwarves were on contract; maybe, but kinship was probably as important a motivator to them as greed) has precedent in the works of Tolkien, who many roleplayers (mistakenly) consider the granddaddy of fantasy RPGs.

* Superior to "ragtag band of misfits" in an RPG, that is. Not necessarily the best overall, and not necessarily for any other context...

Scow2
2013-02-17, 06:35 PM
* I think this should never happen, because it doesn't need to. Even in the most simplistic dungeon-crawling campaign (like the ones I'm gearing to run), I think the minimum should be "you're an established adventuring company." 17th century Caribbean pirate crews (the majority, if not quite all) had actual written charters that went on for dozens of articles, detailing in full the responsibilities, division of loot, and codes of conduct (and punishments!) that applied to the crew, and which you signed to to join; I can't imagine any professional adventuring group (as opposed to the rag-tag band of misfits thrown together**) would have any less of a charter, and I just love the style and feel and structure it gives to a dungeon-crawling campaign. It also explains why henchmen get a full share, etc. ...

** This is common in novels, but it just doesn't work as well in RPGs. It can, but it's the worst at tying the PCs together, by default - you need to start the adventure out with some establishing event that immediately hooks every player to the same main plot. It's unreliable (especially if any player isn't eagerly cooperating) and very hackneyed.

I'd disagree with these - Adventuring parties aren't largish gangs of pirates - They're more like the Rock Bands of the medieval world - albeit bashing monsters instead of putting on concerts.

Rhynn
2013-02-17, 06:57 PM
I'd disagree with these - Adventuring parties aren't largish gangs of pirates - They're more like the Rock Bands of the medieval world - albeit bashing monsters instead of putting on concerts.

That's the modern paradigm, for some reason (even Dragonlance was catering to what many players wanted), and I don't think it works too great.

For something like 10-15 years (OD&D, BD&D, AD&D 1E), the default pretty much was that you had a large party (4-8, even 12; check out the 8-12 party sizes recommended by some AD&D and BD&D modules...), with several henchmen (probably averaging one each), and retainers and hirelings (torch-bearers and carriers). Even in The Hobbit, the logistics of transporting a dragon's hoard are a (slight) part of the challenge.

The contract-based company explains all these people coming and going, why they join up and get a share of treasure. "We want to explore the Dungeon of Gyr Gogramyr on the slopes of Mount Magg, but we're lacking a wizard and some fighters! Join up for a share of the loot and glory!"

The company won't necessarily last for ever, but it's a good way to start.

This particularly works best for "sandbox" games or old-style "world campaigns" with rotating players or characters. Large parties facilitate high-lethality play, which is also IMO important in a location-based sandbox game (it's poison to character-personality-based ones though), like old D&D - you don't become a hero by surviving a dungeon nobody died in. You become a hero by conquering a dungeon that killed one PC per session. That's why front-loading PC development isn't a great idea in that kind of game - you don't want to do a lot of work for a character who dies early.

The NPC hangers-on also facilitate high lethality: with henchmen who get a ½ share of XP, you've got (in AD&D) spare characters about one level behind your main character when you drop dead. Just graduate a henchman to PC status.

I'm planning for something like 12-15 PCs and henchmen (total, not counting retainers, hirelings, etc.) in the 1+3-person Undermountain campaign, with mechanics specifically meant to encourage rotating them out (training times to level up, long spell research, etc.) as well as use up their treasure.

NB: I'm not arguing for one true type of play, I'm just talking about (mostly location-based, old-school D&D, RuneQuest, etc. -style) sandbox campaigns and what IMO works for them. Plot-based or personality-driven games can be great; one of my absolutely best campaigns ever was a personality-based sandbox in the awesome Artesia RPG. (Although, funnily enough, Artesia's world specifically has locatiosn for old-school D&D style adventure, in the form of the Dungeons of Myrad until Therapoli, and Lost Uthedmael.)

Surfnerd
2013-02-17, 10:02 PM
I personally wouldn't mind creating an elaborate background for a character I thought may die in a lethal sandbox style game, its the crunch of a 3.0 or better campaign that would make me insane. Not a huge fan of char creation in those games. I mean I enjoy it for a campaign but if I had to make several over a campaign I'd pull my beard off.

Rhynn
2013-02-18, 01:18 AM
I personally wouldn't mind creating an elaborate background for a character I thought may die in a lethal sandbox style game, its the crunch of a 3.0 or better campaign that would make me insane. Not a huge fan of char creation in those games. I mean I enjoy it for a campaign but if I had to make several over a campaign I'd pull my beard off.

This is absolutely true! Older editions of D&D made it much simpler. In OD&D, Basic, and even simple core AD&D, it's just "6 times 3d6, pick a class and race, buy equipment" (probably a pre-made equipment package, the backs of modules are full of those), and you're ready to roll.

System definitely affects play, and complicated systems like 3E, PF, and 4E discourage lethal play where most character development happens as the character keeps on surviving.

Calmar
2013-02-18, 06:23 AM
Oh boy, where to begin.
First things first, give them a detailed world to explore. Unless you intentionally want them to fill in the blank spaces on the map; they’re going to need to know where they can go and explore.
Secondly, they need to have an idea of what they as a group want to do. For example in my Iron Kingdoms campaign, the player’s ultimate goal is to build the first full on airship (they have hot air balloons but no airships). This is a goal they came up with on their own with no help from me.

What I suggest you do when you start your game, is create a shortish adventure for them to go on. then when they complete that adventure, let them have at it and find something to do.

Since my players basically created their characters in a vacuum, they spend the majority of the first and second sessions basically filling in their back stories in relation to each other.

I plan to do a sandbox game in the future and had some similar thoughts. My plan is to create a quite detailed region with settlements, places, factions and people first, then present the setting to the group so that they can create characters that fit the world and to each other (because I do not want the game to develop in any PvP scenarios).
That way, I hope, I will be able to save much time later, because the groundwork is done, and it will hopefully enable PCs to pursue some goals on their own. I don't like it very much that in D&D the characters usually are a unit that only works when all parts are together. Would be sweet if I could give the characters the option to actually pursue all those goals that are usually lost beneath the group-dynamic of a regular campaign (e.g. build a keep, buy an inn, become priest of a village, etc.).

Rhynn
2013-02-18, 06:34 AM
I plan to do a sandbox game in the future and had some similar thoughts. My plan is to create a quite detailed region with settlements, places, factions and people first, then present the setting to the group so that they can create characters that fit the world and to each other (because I do not want the game to develop in any PvP scenarios).

That is the best way, IMO. I recommend Hexographer (http://www.hexographer.com/) for mapping, personally - and get some hex paper for your players to make their own maps as they adventure in the wilderness. (You can fill out some stuff for them, like oceans, roads, major settlements, mountain ranges, and maybe even the edges of great forests.)

For a great example of how to do a hexmap and its contents (in a very bare-bones but more than sufficient way), check out the map of the Iridum Plateau (http://planetalgol.blogspot.fi/2009/08/map-of-iridium-plateau.html) and its hex contents (http://refereesresources.blogspot.fi/2009/10/hexes-of-iridium-plateau-completed.html) (many of which are begging to be fleshed out as dungeons with full maps), from the incomparable Planet Algol (http://planetalgol.blogspot.fi/).