Sandboxing

[Blackhawk748]

I was talking with a buddy awhile back about how dnd has the potential to be the greatest sandbox in the history of ever, (we were discussing railroading at the time) and i had an idea. I am gonna run a game i refer to as......... ULTIMATE SANDBOX!!!!!!! Effectively i dont make a plot and just let them run around in a world i make up. Im curious if anyone has done this before and how it turned out

[Pesimismrocks]

I run a sandbox, although perhaps not the most effective one. I believe that to work, a sandbo has to have a number of things

1. A well defined world with lots of details to explore, some the players will never meet. An inn a certain city where players may never venture to, named the silver bullet, a breeding ground for sentient undead. A cabbage farmer who is secretly the leader of a secret society.

2. A reason for a party. The players should create backgrounds together, or at leat have a powerful reason to stay together.

3. A world where things happen. The world is not static, and not every event is related to the PCs. After a year of travels for example, a political leader may have been assassinated, halflings may have burnt down the city, a famous priest may hae bee or gone.

4.Poor hiding places. Although 1. & 3. Are important, the PCs should have a good chance to interact with everthing the DM has planned. They may be able to catch up with the pries or he may pass them along the road. The halflings may be reoccurring enemies who the players hunt down. The new leader may inspire the players to take a gander at politics.

5. Player goals. The most important is tha the players should have their own goals as to why they set foot outside of town. Whether they want to be famous, seek vengeance or open a successful chain of cabbage farms, a player needs something which stop the game being static.

At leat that's my advice, from the Sandboxes I've played. I'd suggest higher level characters, as the players feel like they can influence more

[Blackhawk748]

Im still working on number 1, and i will probably never stop to be honest, but i do have some stuff related to 3, mainly the start of a war, but i can easily add more stuff. 2 and 5 i cant really make so i need to leave that in their hands. I was gonna be a little nuts and start them at lvl 1, but i was thinking of seeing if they were up for trying an E8 or an E10 game

[Bakkan]

My most successful campaign was one that kind of transitioned into a sandbox campaign. I threw the party into an interesting situation at the beginning (the king's brother had been poisoned and the party, being newcomers in town, were some of the very few people the king knew didn't do the deed). After they discovered the culprit and brought him to justice, they were rewarded with land. Incidentally, rewarding players with land is a fantastic thing to do in a sandbox setting; it gives them someplace to call home, to defend, and they will be excited about exploring the area in and around it. They did explore their new land and had plenty of adventures:

They defeated a necromancer in a tower and took the tower as their own base of operations
They cleared the runehound infestation from the swamp that surrounded their base
They went back to town and recruited a dozen men as guards, called them the "Silver Swords" becuase of the special weapons they had to defend themselves against the runehounds
They discovered a massive spider nest and almost died to the poison
In the far end of their valley the discovered that a kobold tribe and a goblin tribe were at war with one another. The goblins, who lived in the ruins of a human city, claimed that the kobolds had stolen a great treasure of theirs which had provided the goblins with food for generations and they were now starving. The kobolds, who were led by an only moderately sane Dragonwrought kobold, claimed that the statue was theirs in antiquity and was a holy relic of hte cult of the green dragon. The party stole the statue from the kobolds, helped the goblins repel the massive kobold attack that followed, killed the Dragonwrought, and then negotiated a peace treaty (including tribute to themselves).

[Pesimismrocks]

Im still working on number 1, and i will probably never stop to be honest, but i do have some stuff related to 3, mainly the start of a war, but i can easily add more stuff. 2 and 5 i cant really make so i need to leave that in their hands. I was gonna be a little nuts and start them at lvl 1, but i was thinking of seeing if they were up for trying an E8 or an E10 game

I definately understand that a sandbox world never stops building, and things can branch out when the players get near them.

Level 1-8 or 10 can work just as well, it just depends on how much influence you want them to have.

I also have to agree with the idea of land. Land is a good way to bring players together, and it can also mean you only have to go into great detail regarding one town or area.

[Bonzai]

I would just like to add this bit of a warning.... I would not try this with a group that isn't comfortable with this type of game. It can lead to sessions where the party more or less is standing around waiting for direction or something to do. Many players simply want to follow the bread crumbs, and do not really want to come up with their own motivations and goals. My group just finished a Sandbox game. It took place in a large city, had a general plot with several small sub plots and arcs, and the DM had a definite end in mind for the game, but it was up to the players to piece things together and bring it to it's conclusion. It led to a lot of hesitation and uncertainty on the players part. We all had the same goals and motivations, as well as a solid reason to be working together, so we didn't have to worry about that. Our problem is that two players (including myself) had different ideas on how to go about things, and the other two had no clue what to do, or initiative to do anything. Eventually we more or less got there, but there were several uncomfortable sessions where we kind of foundered a bit. Once we got focused on a specific goal we gained momentum and did fine, but when he didn't have a clear idea of what we were trying to do, the game just ground to a halt.

So if you do run this, make this absolutely clear that each player should bring their own goals and motivations to the table, as the DM will be providing no help in that department. That you will be providing a setting only, and the rest is up to them. Some players have a surprisingly hard time with this, so try and work with them before hand and prep them for it.

[Blackhawk748]

I think my group can handle it. We've done a character driven game set in Ravenloft and it was going pretty well, RL got in the way though so its pretty much dead, but i know that they are fully capable of creating characters with interesting back stories and goals.

Though i will probably never stop being paranoid about them not having something to do lol