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whisperwind1
2016-08-05, 11:47 PM
Hey all, I was thinking of running a more sandbox-y campaign for my group, where the story is mostly built around player actions, but still has stuff happening in the background (adventure hooks and such). But i'm not quite sure where to run it (the system will probably be either Pathfinder or 5th ed). I was thinking it might be cool to use an original setting, but that requires considerably more worldbuilding on my part. Alternatively I could use an existing setting, but i'm not sure which one would be good for the task. The usual suspects would be Forgotten Realms and Golarion, but i'm somewhat on the fence for both. Forgotten Realms has the advantage of supporting any type of campaign, but it also has a level 20 wizard in every county. Golarion has a lot of variety, but I feel like the Adventure Paths and modules are more or less the best uses of it.

What do you guys suggest? Any other interesting settings for a sandbox-style game?

Mastikator
2016-08-06, 12:08 AM
In large settings like Forgotten Realms anything can happen, which sounds like it's a good thing because it give the DM a lot of freedom of running things in the background but it comes with a pretty big downside. It's unmanageable, it's too much. When the setting's size and scope is just right then the background world almost writes itself, you kind of get a sense of "this is probably what would happen if we just leave it to its own devices".

If you do choose FR then try to keep it small, like only the events of the nearest towns matter, even better; should boil it down to a few proactive NPCs.

What exactly is it you expect the players to do? Build castles? Raid dungeons? Solve murder mysteries? Hang out in a tavern and trade stories?

Honest Tiefling
2016-08-06, 12:16 AM
Have you asked your players for a vote? Some of them might have a strong preference.

You could also use Forgotten Realms in Name Only. Take a region that everyone at the table mostly likes and start changing details about the surrounding areas as they come up, such as getting rid of those pesky level 20 wizards. You might have to avoid Waterdeep (Looooooaaaads of NPCs) and should probably stick to a single region for the first few sessions, but hey, plagiarism is a form of flattery.

I recommend using a wiki or google docs to keep track of the changes, but this way you won't have to write a campaign setting from scratch. You're just modifying what's already there and tweaking it.

Koo Rehtorb
2016-08-06, 02:11 AM
Build the setting with your group. People are more interested and invested if they've all contributed to the setting.

Yora
2016-08-06, 02:23 AM
With a sandbox you have to do a good amount of worldbuilding anyway. You need several settlements and local factions that are all located within walking distance of each other. Published settings are almost always on a much larger scale.
Partly it depends on what kind of background situation you want to have, but a 30 by 30 miles area can easily be big enough for even quite long campaigns.

If you feel like doing Forgotten Realms then pick one spot that has two or three existing locations relatively nearby each other and then fill in the empty space between them with more villages and dungeons.

If you don't want to have high level heroes show up to deal with the local situation, then create a background situation that doesn't concern other neighboring cities and seem so big that local adventurers won't be able to handle it. Whatever it is, the PCs are already taking care of it and there's no need to send someone more powerful to take over for them, as far as the other cities are concerned.

Herobizkit
2016-08-06, 06:51 AM
If you're homebrewing/sandboxing anyway, run 5e in Golarion's setting, specifically the Inner Sea Region. That area's great for all kinds of shenanigans.

Pugwampy
2016-08-06, 07:21 AM
The usual suspects would be Forgotten Realms and Golarion, but i'm somewhat on the fence for both.

Why not both ? My last campaign started in Golarion with a magic mirror that led to Forgotton Realms .
Golarion has always given me the feeling that the races are less xenophobic towards each other .

whisperwind1
2016-08-06, 10:32 AM
So the idea is to pick a region of the world and flesh that out, and it can be even of a modest size as long as there's stuff there right? Well that sounds pretty doable, and any setting could serve. But what about if the PCs decide they want to go elsewhere?

LibraryOgre
2016-08-06, 11:42 AM
What I have done the last few times is take an adventure and find where it is in the setting... make a place for it, or make some adaptations to it and the setting to make it work as is. Your initial hooks come from that adventure, and grow organically from there.

Slipperychicken
2016-08-06, 12:28 PM
The ruleset for Adventurer Conqueror King is quite conducive to sandbox play. It gives lots of tools for the GM to flesh out settings, figure out what could be happening in the background and why, and give ways for players to interact with different parts of the setting.

With things like henchmen and domain-building, the players are encouraged to help shape the world through their adventures, the way they spend treasure outside the dungeon (and integrate that into the setting's economy), their magical and other talents, and their ability to lead followers and allies. It lets the players' actions exert influence on the setting.

There's also a lot of ways to randomly generate elements, including NPCs' opinions of PCs and each other. That sort of thing can help you develop the game world in unexpected ways. You might have a questgiver who is secretly contemptuous of the PCs, or even random encounter NPCs that cautiously attempt to befriend or trade with the PCs.

Even if I were running 5e or PF, I'd probably steal morale and reaction rolls and use them to help determine what NPCs do.

Hopeless
2016-08-06, 12:44 PM
Pick a couple of your favourite tv series or movies and turn that into your campaign setting and then have your players reactions guide you on fine tuning the resulting game?

For example Leverage meets NCIS, your team are recruited by a patron who sends you to investigate parts of his dominion that have come under attack by raiders.

They inevitably learn their patron has been hiring various bands of adventurers to raid these sites to draw off the city guard allowing him to send in his own people to eliminate the ruler and replace them with a puppet under his control.

So your players set off have a couple of adventures that involve tracking down a raiding party (intended to silence witnesses to what he's been doing) before sending them into an ambush involving the city guard that then reveals what's really going on as both guard and your PCs have to fend off an attack by a dragon sent to immolate the lot as at that very moment the bad guy is assassinating their ruler.

Any PCs that die during this can be replaced by surviving city guard as both are now been declared enemies of the state and they have to find a way to restore the throne to its rightful heir and prove their innocence unless of course they decide to have nothing to do with this and head out of the dominion altogether but they'll be a recurring enemy for them until they decide to resolve the problem which becomes more of a problem the longer they don't do anything about it!

Does that help?

SirBellias
2016-08-06, 01:00 PM
But what about if the PCs decide they want to go elsewhere?

Multiple schools of thought on this. I'd say you should let them, and make up the small details as they strike your fancy. If they happen to find some strange green metal, you don't have to know what it is until they can come close to identifying it.

If they aren't interested in the groups and factions you've built in your small area, make the next town over have something else going on. You may not think it is as interesting as what you had planned the first time, but your players may think it's great. You can also feel free to reuse the ideas that they avoided at a later date.

I'd tell them you didn't prepare anything for the World Beyond, by the way, and that everything from there on out would be improvised.

If they leave the area, it may be a sign that nothing in that area interests them.

EDIT: Actually, Hopeless, that sounds like a great idea.

Thrudd
2016-08-06, 02:09 PM
Multiple schools of thought on this. I'd say you should let them, and make up the small details as they strike your fancy. If they happen to find some strange green metal, you don't have to know what it is until they can come close to identifying it.

If they aren't interested in the groups and factions you've built in your small area, make the next town over have something else going on. You may not think it is as interesting as what you had planned the first time, but your players may think it's great. You can also feel free to reuse the ideas that they avoided at a later date.

I'd tell them you didn't prepare anything for the World Beyond, by the way, and that everything from there on out would be improvised.

If they leave the area, it may be a sign that nothing in that area interests them.

EDIT: Actually, Hopeless, that sounds like a great idea.

I disagree about telling them. Don't tell the players you are improvising. Don't let them see anything "behind the screen", either literally or metaphorically. It's much better for immersion if you don't refer to what you have or have not prepared. Just have confidence in yourself, in your ability to improvise, stay organized with your DM tools like random tables, monster stats and general setting info. Something you invent on the spur of the moment and something you wrote down last week don't look any different to the players. Keep the game going, keep giving them things to do, and they will be happy.

Always prepare for improvisation, it shouldn't come as a surprise when you need to do it.

Darth Ultron
2016-08-06, 02:25 PM
The usual suspects would be Forgotten Realms and Golarion, but i'm somewhat on the fence for both. Forgotten Realms has the advantage of supporting any type of campaign, but it also has a level 20 wizard in every county.

Well, the Forgotten Realms does not have a 20th level wizard in every country....but even if it did, I'd wonder why it would matter?

Anyway, the Realms is a great place for a sandbox campaign. There is tons and tons and tons and tons of lore for the DM to use...or not use. It is easy to have ''back ground'' stuff going on.

Now the big thing about the Realms, over most other settings, is the Realms are big. Most of the ''big realms events'' only ever effect like a third of the planet....for the rest, life just goes on.

There are tons of places you can set a whole campaign that only have some light details and plenty of places with lots of detail too.

Pro Tip: set your Forgotten Reams game in the past. All, and I do mean all, of the ''crazy stuff' has happened in the last couple of decades. This gives roughly 5000 years of history before that when very little happened. For example, take Waterdeep in 1306 DR...what happened in Waterdeep that year? Check the Timeline...and you find nothing. Of course it is not that ''nothing happened'', it is just that no one made anything up and put it in the time line(and even when they do you just get a silly line like ''goblins attacked wagons near Waterdeep'', wow look at that detail.).

Honest Tiefling
2016-08-06, 06:25 PM
So the idea is to pick a region of the world and flesh that out, and it can be even of a modest size as long as there's stuff there right? Well that sounds pretty doable, and any setting could serve. But what about if the PCs decide they want to go elsewhere?

1) Tell them before the first session a little bit about the region. This will give them time to adjust their characters to work in the selected region.

2) Give carrots. They want a thief? Okay, you have some contacts here. You want a subplot about finding your brother? Okay, he's here.

3) Pick a region they don't hate. Vote on it if you have to.

4) Tell them that you need them to stay in that region for a bit. This works best if you communicate this sooner rather then later, and out of character. Hopefully, they will be understanding and find a way to stay.

5) Make leaving an adventure. Well, you need money for a ship, and then you got to choose where you are all going. And then pirates attack! Land travel is also quite slow, so you have time to pepper in some events (bandits, local plagues, etc.)

6) And the best of all: An NPC steals something from them. Most people will sooner try to attack the Abyss and every demon in it then ignore someone who has STOLEN from them. Take some coin or something like that, don't rob them blind. They'll sooner try to kick Ao in the goody sack then give up.

whisperwind1
2016-08-06, 07:19 PM
Hopeless' idea of marrying several favourite universes to create a setting is not bad at all. It would mean an extra bit of worldbuilding, if only in the projected main play area. I also like the idea of ripping stuff from Adventure Paths to serve as potential plothooks.

As for the suggestion of setting games in existing setting in the unmarked past, that could work as well. I know there are several regions in Golarion as well that are more or less designed for "insert your adventure here". Places like Varisia, the River Kingdoms come to mind, i'm less familiar with the Realms to find similar places however. I remember reading Ed Greenwood's Forgotten Realms, is that still the best setting book for it? Or has 5th ed put out something new?

AnBe
2016-08-07, 02:44 AM
I once bought the D&D 3.5 Forgotten Realms book, and whoa was I overwhelmed with all of the information. I only cared enough about it because of my experience playing Neverwinter Nights, and I was too lazy at the time to make my own setting, so I decided to go with that. But, there was so much stuff going on that I decided to say "screw it" and went on to create my own setting.

I once heard some advice that when creating your own sandbox world, start the player characters in a simple village, and let it grow and expand from there. This advice has helped me run some very fun games in the past.

Joe the Rat
2016-08-07, 08:23 PM
Start with a brainstorm session - ask your players for ideas and elements to include.

Raid anything and everything for content. Creepy forest realm tucked away in the mountains? Screw it, that's Barovia. Need some antagonist groups? How about the Church of Tiamat, Acquisitions Inc., Gnomish MI6, and Skrulls.

Demidos
2016-08-08, 01:49 AM
Themes are great too -- if your antagonists often use chains, blasts, or walls of ice, while others use darkness, then it gives a coherency to each given group that helps keep each unique.
Reskinning is also a great friend. I ran a normal ghost against my party last session, with the caveat that I described incorporeability as continually evolving and reacting defenses instead of intangibility. My party is quite experienced and wold have easily defeated the enemy without really fearing it or caring, but the look on their faces when I told them that its skin shifted between iron to block a spear, gushing water to block a burst of flame, and wind to dodge a flurry of projectiles was priceless.
Using themes and reskinning in conjunction allows you to create new and interesting takes on normal SRD monsters with minimal effort, and allows you to easily keep up with sudden changes in player plans. The blink dog can be reskinned to a terrifying insubstantial teleporting ninja who trips, an elvish archer sniping the party from seemingly everywhere in the forest, or even as other extant monsters such as Will o wisps. Whatever you need in a particular encounter, reskinning makes it easy, and keeps the more experienced players guessing instead of having them fight yet another random encounter.