Seeking the Sandbox [3.5]

[Human Paragon 3]

Hey guys, hey. I am starting a new campaign soon. I and a friend are alternating DMing responsibilities every other session. By special request, we are running a total sandbox world, which we are building from the ground up as the campaign progresses. We have agreed that the world should be loosely based on ancient Greece (maybe more like Hercules: The Legendary Journeys). In my wisdom, I have decided that instead of coming up with plot ideas (sandbox, ya know) I will just come up with a big list of people, places, and things. The biggest part will be a big cast of interesting NPCs with fully fleshed out personalities and motivations.

This is a big undertaking, so I'm requesting some help! Suggestions for NPCs, artifacts, NPCs, cool locations and non-player-characters are extremely welcome.

[ericgrau]

I know somebody who ran a sandbox style for a long time. Maybe a couple years, I forget. He had some adventures ready to go for each region, or at least outlines of them, then he just let the party go wherever they wanted.

IMO I'd set up broad generalities ahead of time. What countries are where, what regions (forest, desert, etc.) are where, what type of creatures live in each, political systems, any major wars or other world-changing events, etc. Then for anything the PCs are close to, set up more and more details. A rough outline of anything they might travel to within 2 sessions, and much more detail for anything near by. And if they ignore it entirely, well that's what happens when you play sandbox. Maybe you can recycle some of the ideas for somewhere else.

[Human Paragon 3]

I may end up pre-planning adventures whether I want to or not, though I prefer not to have many different adventures already put together waiting to go. I think this would cause me to encourage the players into playing the adventures I planned out, which is counter to what I and they want. This may just be a necessity I have to deal with, though.

Ultimately I'd like something more modular, with lots of characters and places (I might, for example, work out a few dungeons to have them on record in case PCs want to go to them) to mix and match depending on what my players do. Really, I'd like to be able to just adlib everything, using extensive notes to guide me.

[Yahzi]

Check out DriveThruRPG for stuff. There's a very nice set of City Guides by Justin Alexander that seem good (and cheap), and my stuff is free.

However, you've kind of screwed yourself by setting it in Ancient Greece rather than Faux Middle Ages.

[Human Paragon 3]

Not necessarily! There's a huge wealth of ancient Greek crap I can steal adapt for any number of nefarious purposes. The myths themselves, for example. It's just a little bit of extra challenge.

[Person_Man]

My homebrew world is based on ancient Rome. It's really simple but enjoyable forumula:

1) Start the PCs as slaves on a random tiny Greek island, as slaves in a mine. Let them each decide how they got there.

2) The island has several factions - Roman (human) slave masters, indigenous Greeks (gnomes) who dislike being lorded overs, slaves (mixed races) working in the mines, Persians (kobolds) who were the previous overlords until being beaten by the Romans, and so they so they live as gorillas in the woods.

3) Let them decide if they want to stay on the island and lead a rebellion, become the new slave masters, escape, which factions they want to ally with, etc.

4) Fill other nearby island with encounters based on Greek myths. All you have to do is read Bullfinch's Mythology and your favorite history books and stories.

5) Let the PCs know that they can travel anywhere in the world, as long as they give you a few days of prep time before they go there. All you have to do is read the local myths for that area (they're all on the internet for free), and make a couple of encounters around those myths.

[Superglucose]

I may end up pre-planning adventures whether I want to or not, though I prefer not to have many different adventures already put together waiting to go. I think this would cause me to encourage the players into playing the adventures I planned out, which is counter to what I and they want. This may just be a necessity I have to deal with, though.

There is nothing wrong with pre-planned adventures. Having a pre-planned adventure means "Ok, I think the group will want to do this." If they don't, no big deal, if they do, yay! You're prepared and the adventure is a lot more fun!

[Lapak]

There is nothing wrong with pre-planned adventures. Having a pre-planned adventure means "Ok, I think the group will want to do this." If they don't, no big deal, if they do, yay! You're prepared and the adventure is a lot more fun!

Best way I've seen to handle pre-planning in a sandbox is to prep a little heavily BEFORE the campaign starts: have three crunch-vague, fluff-heavy adventures ready. One should be appropriate for a wilderness, one should be appropriate for a dungeon/ruin/cave, and one should be urban-based. Then, separate from the adventures, stat out several crunch-detailed, fluff-loose encounters. When the players make a choice, you can mix the encounters you've built into the adventure they choose.

So, for example: Adventure A is a caravan raid. The players might have looked for jobs and hired on as guards, they may have gone exploring and seen the battle from a distance, or they may have gone into banditry themselves and ended up attacking it at the same time as another gang. I'll have planned out the personality of the significant NPCs, given them names, and established what it is at stake (a haul of rare oils, a major gemstone, and the Duke's daughter who was traveling along.) I do NOT stat out the enemy bandits or their allies, or the caravan people.

For adventure B, I prepare a ruined monastery. I write up some flavor text for various locations, build a map, seed a couple of plots that might follow (they find a treasure map, there's a secret cult operating there that may have larger goals, and so on) and I decide what the primary threats will be - it's inhabited by hostile humanoids, it's inhabited by undead, etc. Again, I don't stat out the cultists, or the monsters, or the traps.

Then I put together crunch without fluff: I stat out an encounter of mixed humanoids: there's a few slingers, a few sword-fighters, a divine caster leader, and a lower-level arcane support caster. I stat out a deadfall trap intended to attack the whole party and give it stats and DCs. I put together a group of undead.

If the players decide to into the wilderness, I run adventure A. The group of humanoids is the bandit gang, and I'll describe them as such. The trap is a pile of logs they've set up in a nearby ravine to cover their retreat. The undead are a bunch of forest-dwelling ghouls that happen to lair near the (fortified) entrance to the bandit camp, and the bandits chose that location specifically because the ghouls make for an excellent (if unwitting) outer defense that can be avoided through their leader's turning ability. If the players want to explore a dungeon, then the humanoids I've statted up are the cult, the trap is an ancient one in a passage that the inhabitants know to avoid, and the ghouls are the undead remnants of the monastery's former owners who wander the surface looking for prey.

After each session, you have to rebuild one set of fluff and one set of crunch, but the other two sets of fluff are on hand and ready to go if the players change course. You can go back and make subtle adjustments to the two backup plans if, say, the players uncovered new information and you want to make them tie into the plot you've started to roll out.

[jiriku]

This is more Roman than Greek, but here are three interesting NPCs from a campaign I'm developing. Feel free to steal whatever is useful.

Marcus Septimius (archivist)

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Marcus Septimius, a senator, recently married to a cousin, Camilla Septimia. Marcus is of a classic build, with strong nose hooked slightly more than is handsome, an athletic build, and a refined and courtly bearing. He is a scholar, and a student of languages, not a warrior, and while reared on the traditional education of nobility, spends much time with friends and cousins who are more artistic, more decadent, and have exposed him to strange tastes, strange religions, and odd cults. He knows a smattering of the rites of Zehir, practiced by the unwholesome yuan-ti in the ancient ruined pyramids of Ahkoptos, and has spoken with the heathen witch-doctors of the halfling tribes deep within the Manangbanag jungle, who engrave archaic pictographs upon the bones of their vanquished foes and entreat fey loa spirits to possess them during gutteral rituals. Since his marriage, however, he has given up adventuring and dabbling in such dark things, and seeks to fulfill the role expected of his station, a senator and a scion of the imperial house advancing his family's interests.

Role: Marcus is a quest-giver NPC who may serve as patron to the players, sending them searching for lost cities, ancient artifacts, and anything that Indiana Jones or Lara Croft might have found interesting.

Camilla Septimia (shroud of Zehir)

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Camilla Septimia is a slender, dark-skinned woman of exotic beauty and long, luxuriant raven hair. Of a distant and ill-omened branch of the imperial line, she married well when she chose her husband, Marcus Septimius. Where he has dabbled in occasional studies of the occult, she is steeped in dark mysteries, and those among her husband's friends sometimes mutter darkly that she was once a queen or high priestess of a dark and mysterious cult replicating the rites of worship for such beings as Torog and Zehir, and perhaps awful Yog-Sothoth or half-forgotten Tsathoggua. Certainly there is an unsettling air about her that discomforts sensitive individuals. Eldritch magic cloaks her true nature, but those who find Camilla unsettling are perceiving the truth. She is not human at all, but a medusa Shroud of Zehir (4th Ed MM187), steeped in the dark lore of things best left undiscovered by human minds.

Role: Camilla is a recurrent villain. They can't attack her directly because their patron Marcus is convinced she can do no wrong, but she will flaunt her involvement in matters unsavory right in front of the players, while never letting them gain enough evidence that they can prove her wrongdoing to her husband.

Cassius Aurelius (warblade)

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Cassius Aurelius, the son from a first marriage of the senator, Marcus Septimius, and involved in an incestuous relationship with his mother-in-law, Camilla Septimia. Cassius plots against his father, for Camilla wishes her husband murdered so that she may scheme more freely.

Role: lackey villain. Camilla uses Cassius as an expendable pawn to further her plots.

[Human Paragon 3]

Best way I've seen to handle pre-planning in a sandbox is to prep a little heavily BEFORE the campaign starts: have three crunch-vague, fluff-heavy adventures ready. One should be appropriate for a wilderness, one should be appropriate for a dungeon/ruin/cave, and one should be urban-based. Then, separate from the adventures, stat out several crunch-detailed, fluff-loose encounters. When the players make a choice, you can mix the encounters you've built into the adventure they choose....

That's actually really clever! Thanks!

[bosssmiley]

Sandbox in Detail article series by Rob Conley. Rob is co-author of Points of Light I & II sandbox setting collections. Harken unto his words, for he speaks great sandboxing truths.

Random tables are your friend.