Yora
2016-12-30, 05:23 PM
After reading the Angry GM post on wilderness travel (http:// http://theangrygm.com/getting-there-is-half-the-fun/) this week and the start for my next campaign still being delayed for a few more months, I got really interested again into trying to run a wilderness sandbox campaign in a huge forest.
My questions are primarily to people with experience with sandbox campaigns or are familiar with The North in it's earliest incarnations, but of cause all replies and suggestions are welcome.
The High Forest from the Forgotten Realms setting has always been the primary influence on my own worldbuilding and some of my earliest and greatest campaigns were set in the surrounding areas, but I never actually got to run a game set inside its borders. A big part of it being that I never really knew how to run decent wilderness adventures. But I feel that I am now much better equipped to make such a campaign work.
To create the sandbox I want to use the High Forest material from the Savage Frontier sourcebook as the base. I find it to be the most evocative version and it's one of the very early setting books that is more written to inspire GMs to expand on it and make it their own than to provide deep backstory explanation and a comprehensive catalog of people and places.
My homebrew setting first started as such an expansion of the High Forest many years back and went on to become its own thing, but being the stylistic template I can now take the High Forest map with its sites and inhabitants and easily drop it into my setting. Only the gods and the appearance of some races will change in my campaign, but other than that I'll be sticking with all the information that is in Savage Frontier. But all the surrounding areas of the Dessarin, Delimbyr, and Silver Marches won't be in this campaign. Beyond the edges of the High Forest there will just be even more undescribed forest in all directions.
http://www.profantasy.com/library/files/highforest.jpg
Now the High Forest is really big. Not as big as space, but still really big. Going with the note from SF that it's 500 miles from North to South, it would be about the size of Germany or Finland. Being that Finland is mostly sparsely populated forest, Finland is probably the best comparison here for how vast an area this is. (Finland looks bigger on maps because most maps look weird towards the poles. Same thing with Alaska.)
I think going with a hexmap wouldn't be very useful at this scale. 30-mile hexes are too big to really help determine what you see and meet, and with 6-mile hexes there would be just way too many of them to fill a decent number of them with content. Which is why I like the Angry GM version of wilderness travel much more and I only now consider actually doing a high forest sandbox.
You start by planning a journey from a known point A to a known point B and the GM roughly eyeballs the number of days the journey would take on average.
Depending on how much the party wants to hurry, they make 2/3, 3/3, or 4/3 of a travel day progress during a day. Going faster increases the risk of getting lost and being surprised in a random encounter. (My own improvement on this is to take the number of days times three as "progress segments" and have the party make 2, 3, or 4 segments of progress per day to avoid dealing with fractions.)
When the party gets lost they don't make any progress towards their destination until they figure out where they are in relation to their destination and plan a new route to get there.
In addition to encountering people and creatures, there's a chance to spot an interesting site in the distance and the party can decide to make a detour and explore, but make less progress towards their destination while still consuming supplies.
I like this approach to wilderness travel since you don't need to track where exactly the party is in the wilderness and where they end up going when they are lost, and you also don't have to make a hexmap, which can be a really considerable amount of work when you want to spend a lot of time while wandering between places.
Another really nice feature is that you basically have random encounters with ruins, caves, and dungeons. On a static hex map there's a really good chance that the party will just miss a site by a hex or two and never see any signs of its existance, so you kind of hav to have a pretty high density of sites scattered around the map. If you want the party to travel long distances, the map gets really big and that quickly leads to preparing a lot of sites to keep the density high. With randomly discovered sites you can give players a very similar experience while preparing a much smaller number of sites. I think this is what makes using such huge area as sandbox possible.
Now to actual business: What can I do to make the chaptet from SF into a solid sandbox? There's already a good number of interesting hooks, particularly in the northeast:
Hellgate Keep: At this point it's still standing and home to several powerful demons who can't leave it to go out into the forests but their undead minions are not bound by that ward. It's practically a town with some evil living people among the inhabitants, so sneaking in and snooping around is possible even if an assault would be hopeless.*
Stone Stand: This is the holy site of the Blue Bear tribe who are lead by an evil shaman who is secretly a hag (who has some dealings with the demons I believe). She would make a great villain.*
Grandfather Tree: A giant tree sacred to the Blue Bear tribe, who got banished by its spirits (for having turned evil, I presume). Some of them got fed up with the shaman and founded the Tree Ghost tribe and the are trying to find the tree again that must be somewhere in the forest. As noble a quest as there can be.*
The Nameless Dungeon: An old elven ruin that is still guarded by elves who don't let anyone inside to explore. It actually was a prison for elven tieflings who broke the enchantments that bound them and recently escaped after thousands of years. It's very embarrassing to the elves and they are not sure what else is still down there. (Not sure if that was a much later added detail that was added to the mysterious place much later, but I like it.)
Stronghold of the Nine: A ruined castle that was taken over by adventurers,including a very powerful sorceress. Somehow they got their hands on an evil artifact and now started to fight each other in their madness. Whoever comes out on top could become a major threat with the artifact's power.*
Dire Woods: A small section of forest that is vastly larger on the inside than the outside. (You can easily go around it in a short time, but it takes a long time to go straight through it.) Somewhere near its center lies an ancient ruined city in which lies the undead giant heart of a dead demigod sorcerer.
Endless Caverns: A huge labyrinth of caves that leads to the Underdark, and if I recall correctly was the lair of a dragon who recently died. I also think there were ilithids in the area.
Citadel of the Mist: A magic castle that is home to a powerful sorcerer who's an enemy of Hellgate Keep and the Blue Bears.
Turlang's Wood: A part of the forest that is home to many treants led by the druid Turlang who hates the demons of Hellgate keep and is an ally of the Mistmaster of the Citadel of Mists.
Ruins of Decanter: An old huge mine full of magically created monsters. Many of which are led by an illithid called the Beast Lord.*
Great Worm Cavern: Not originally in the High Forest but I like it. A big cave town of barbarians whose shaman is an ancient giant lizard thing. Also with tunnels to the Underdark with connections to Gauntlgrym.*
Gauntlgrym: A lost ancient dwarf city that was famously rich but nobody knows where it is. I think also something with ilithids going on here. (I want to do something inspired by the Deep Trenches from Dragon Age and Dead Space.)
Lonely Tower: Also not originally in the High Forest. A single tower standing in the center of a huge perfectly circular clearing in which noting grows. Home to a sorcerer who's secretly a disguised alien.*
There's also many interesting major NPCs:
Turlang the Treant
The Mistmaster
Tanta Hagara, hag shaman of the Blue Bear tribe*
Elrem the Great Worm*
Laeral, currently insane archmage of the Nine
Sarya Dlardrageth, escaped ancient elven tiefling sorceress
Demon Masters of Hellgate Keep
Kaanyr Vhok and Aliiza, two cunning half-demons with big ambitions
Ssessibil, sorcerer of the Lonely Tower*
And illithids! Illithids everywhere!
*All these were no longer around in 2nd edition. Which is why the 1st edition version is so much cooler.
I think this looks like it'd be easily enough to provide enough fixed major dungeons for a sandbox. But to my knowledge all of these have to be made by the GMs themselves with only a few short paragraphs given for inspiration. Has anyone seen dungeon maps and encounter keys made for any of these?
Also, does anyone know what's up with the Star Mounts and Lonely Peaks? The discriptions on these two mountain ranges seem to have always been very vague. Was there ever any deeper details about the magic ponds and giant crystals?
One thing that is noticably lacking is towns. I believe the original intend was to have the PCs use the towns on the Dessarin and Delimbiyr rivers as home bases for expeditions into the forest, but I would like to have the campaign be fully inside the forest with no real outside world. I don't want any major cities or pastoral farming villages. I still want settlements to be part of the forest, even when they are somewhat point of light-ish. The Great Worm Cave and Stone Stand could be expanded into small barbarian towns that are still wilderness locations. Any ideas for elf and orc settlements?
My questions are primarily to people with experience with sandbox campaigns or are familiar with The North in it's earliest incarnations, but of cause all replies and suggestions are welcome.
The High Forest from the Forgotten Realms setting has always been the primary influence on my own worldbuilding and some of my earliest and greatest campaigns were set in the surrounding areas, but I never actually got to run a game set inside its borders. A big part of it being that I never really knew how to run decent wilderness adventures. But I feel that I am now much better equipped to make such a campaign work.
To create the sandbox I want to use the High Forest material from the Savage Frontier sourcebook as the base. I find it to be the most evocative version and it's one of the very early setting books that is more written to inspire GMs to expand on it and make it their own than to provide deep backstory explanation and a comprehensive catalog of people and places.
My homebrew setting first started as such an expansion of the High Forest many years back and went on to become its own thing, but being the stylistic template I can now take the High Forest map with its sites and inhabitants and easily drop it into my setting. Only the gods and the appearance of some races will change in my campaign, but other than that I'll be sticking with all the information that is in Savage Frontier. But all the surrounding areas of the Dessarin, Delimbyr, and Silver Marches won't be in this campaign. Beyond the edges of the High Forest there will just be even more undescribed forest in all directions.
http://www.profantasy.com/library/files/highforest.jpg
Now the High Forest is really big. Not as big as space, but still really big. Going with the note from SF that it's 500 miles from North to South, it would be about the size of Germany or Finland. Being that Finland is mostly sparsely populated forest, Finland is probably the best comparison here for how vast an area this is. (Finland looks bigger on maps because most maps look weird towards the poles. Same thing with Alaska.)
I think going with a hexmap wouldn't be very useful at this scale. 30-mile hexes are too big to really help determine what you see and meet, and with 6-mile hexes there would be just way too many of them to fill a decent number of them with content. Which is why I like the Angry GM version of wilderness travel much more and I only now consider actually doing a high forest sandbox.
You start by planning a journey from a known point A to a known point B and the GM roughly eyeballs the number of days the journey would take on average.
Depending on how much the party wants to hurry, they make 2/3, 3/3, or 4/3 of a travel day progress during a day. Going faster increases the risk of getting lost and being surprised in a random encounter. (My own improvement on this is to take the number of days times three as "progress segments" and have the party make 2, 3, or 4 segments of progress per day to avoid dealing with fractions.)
When the party gets lost they don't make any progress towards their destination until they figure out where they are in relation to their destination and plan a new route to get there.
In addition to encountering people and creatures, there's a chance to spot an interesting site in the distance and the party can decide to make a detour and explore, but make less progress towards their destination while still consuming supplies.
I like this approach to wilderness travel since you don't need to track where exactly the party is in the wilderness and where they end up going when they are lost, and you also don't have to make a hexmap, which can be a really considerable amount of work when you want to spend a lot of time while wandering between places.
Another really nice feature is that you basically have random encounters with ruins, caves, and dungeons. On a static hex map there's a really good chance that the party will just miss a site by a hex or two and never see any signs of its existance, so you kind of hav to have a pretty high density of sites scattered around the map. If you want the party to travel long distances, the map gets really big and that quickly leads to preparing a lot of sites to keep the density high. With randomly discovered sites you can give players a very similar experience while preparing a much smaller number of sites. I think this is what makes using such huge area as sandbox possible.
Now to actual business: What can I do to make the chaptet from SF into a solid sandbox? There's already a good number of interesting hooks, particularly in the northeast:
Hellgate Keep: At this point it's still standing and home to several powerful demons who can't leave it to go out into the forests but their undead minions are not bound by that ward. It's practically a town with some evil living people among the inhabitants, so sneaking in and snooping around is possible even if an assault would be hopeless.*
Stone Stand: This is the holy site of the Blue Bear tribe who are lead by an evil shaman who is secretly a hag (who has some dealings with the demons I believe). She would make a great villain.*
Grandfather Tree: A giant tree sacred to the Blue Bear tribe, who got banished by its spirits (for having turned evil, I presume). Some of them got fed up with the shaman and founded the Tree Ghost tribe and the are trying to find the tree again that must be somewhere in the forest. As noble a quest as there can be.*
The Nameless Dungeon: An old elven ruin that is still guarded by elves who don't let anyone inside to explore. It actually was a prison for elven tieflings who broke the enchantments that bound them and recently escaped after thousands of years. It's very embarrassing to the elves and they are not sure what else is still down there. (Not sure if that was a much later added detail that was added to the mysterious place much later, but I like it.)
Stronghold of the Nine: A ruined castle that was taken over by adventurers,including a very powerful sorceress. Somehow they got their hands on an evil artifact and now started to fight each other in their madness. Whoever comes out on top could become a major threat with the artifact's power.*
Dire Woods: A small section of forest that is vastly larger on the inside than the outside. (You can easily go around it in a short time, but it takes a long time to go straight through it.) Somewhere near its center lies an ancient ruined city in which lies the undead giant heart of a dead demigod sorcerer.
Endless Caverns: A huge labyrinth of caves that leads to the Underdark, and if I recall correctly was the lair of a dragon who recently died. I also think there were ilithids in the area.
Citadel of the Mist: A magic castle that is home to a powerful sorcerer who's an enemy of Hellgate Keep and the Blue Bears.
Turlang's Wood: A part of the forest that is home to many treants led by the druid Turlang who hates the demons of Hellgate keep and is an ally of the Mistmaster of the Citadel of Mists.
Ruins of Decanter: An old huge mine full of magically created monsters. Many of which are led by an illithid called the Beast Lord.*
Great Worm Cavern: Not originally in the High Forest but I like it. A big cave town of barbarians whose shaman is an ancient giant lizard thing. Also with tunnels to the Underdark with connections to Gauntlgrym.*
Gauntlgrym: A lost ancient dwarf city that was famously rich but nobody knows where it is. I think also something with ilithids going on here. (I want to do something inspired by the Deep Trenches from Dragon Age and Dead Space.)
Lonely Tower: Also not originally in the High Forest. A single tower standing in the center of a huge perfectly circular clearing in which noting grows. Home to a sorcerer who's secretly a disguised alien.*
There's also many interesting major NPCs:
Turlang the Treant
The Mistmaster
Tanta Hagara, hag shaman of the Blue Bear tribe*
Elrem the Great Worm*
Laeral, currently insane archmage of the Nine
Sarya Dlardrageth, escaped ancient elven tiefling sorceress
Demon Masters of Hellgate Keep
Kaanyr Vhok and Aliiza, two cunning half-demons with big ambitions
Ssessibil, sorcerer of the Lonely Tower*
And illithids! Illithids everywhere!
*All these were no longer around in 2nd edition. Which is why the 1st edition version is so much cooler.
I think this looks like it'd be easily enough to provide enough fixed major dungeons for a sandbox. But to my knowledge all of these have to be made by the GMs themselves with only a few short paragraphs given for inspiration. Has anyone seen dungeon maps and encounter keys made for any of these?
Also, does anyone know what's up with the Star Mounts and Lonely Peaks? The discriptions on these two mountain ranges seem to have always been very vague. Was there ever any deeper details about the magic ponds and giant crystals?
One thing that is noticably lacking is towns. I believe the original intend was to have the PCs use the towns on the Dessarin and Delimbiyr rivers as home bases for expeditions into the forest, but I would like to have the campaign be fully inside the forest with no real outside world. I don't want any major cities or pastoral farming villages. I still want settlements to be part of the forest, even when they are somewhat point of light-ish. The Great Worm Cave and Stone Stand could be expanded into small barbarian towns that are still wilderness locations. Any ideas for elf and orc settlements?