Share your concepts for running Sandbox games

[Accersitus]

I'll go first.
We recently had a game based around the characters running
a carriage transport service "The shades of grey". Doing anything
from smuggling to discreetly transporting important dignitaries and ambassadors.
The 3 characters (who introduced themselves as Mr Black, Mr White,
and Mr Grey, an Alchemist/Engineer, a marksman, and the charismatic swordsman/Expert rider), ended up being wanted by the government in two of
the largest countries in the homebrew setting, and wanted by a criminal
organisation in one of the countries.
We had loads of fun with thrilling chases with the heavily modified carriage.

Anyone else who wants to share their sandbox campaign?

[ghost_warlock]

Athas = Mars. That tiny, blue dot in the sky is prehistoric Earth. Hm...

[Quietus]

Something I've been considering doing in the PbP forum if one (or more) of the other games I'm involved with dies is dropping a "taste" of my campaign world, detailing between 3-6 possible starting locations, and asking for backstories for characters, sans stats. I'd let a few base rules be known - no psionics for flavor, no ToB 'cause I don't have it, no other settings - but beyond that, the players could submit characters that would be in the locales I detailed, and I'd accept players from that list.

The locales would include the central plains (barbarian tribes and dinosaurs), Vaeles (major human city, most generic of the area, and birthplace of the homebrew race of "dragon blooded"), Port Cigomenta, (very anti-arcane magic city under the thumb of one of the major religions), Resta (Seen by the few outsiders who know of it to be a small city, but really applies to the sprawling collection of families/communities that goes from one end of a forest to the other), and Fograd (Dwarven community that recently experienced a massive earthquake/cave in that killed 90% of their population). I'd then select the most interesting backstories to be invited to the game, and write a game revolving around plot points in that locale, tailored to their backstories. No idea how well it'd turn out in practice, but in theory it sounds like a fun idea.

[jebob]

This guy did an exploration game with a large group of players, allowing a mmorpg-style atmosphere to develop.

[Urpriest]

It's been awhile...I remember a pretty fun one back in high school. It was an evil campaign, and the DM wasn't really sure what we were supposed to be doing. So the Nazathrune Rakshasa built a supersonic hang-glider and just flew it around all day, the lich hid out in a perfectly defended underwater fortress, and I the death knight forged an undead army to take back my father's kingdom Arthas-style. Much fun was had, and the game ended with us planning to make a spaceship using the Stronghold Builder's Guide and conquer the moon.

[dsmiles]

I guess my sandbox is a little smaller than everybody else's. I just throw out a bunch of plot hooks for different adventures I have sketched out, and see which one they bite on.

[Urpriest]

I guess my sandbox is a little smaller than everybody else's. I just throw out a bunch of plot hooks for different adventures I have sketched out, and see which one they bite on.

That kind of thing often runs better, frankly, and if you don't tell them it's a sandbox sometimes they never figure it out. I had one campaign with a whole lot of entirely different paths the characters could take, but they still felt like they were telling a set story. They were a bit surprised when I mentioned to them afterwards that instead of fighting ancient gods in the jungle they could have gone up north and joined the Ogre Mafia.

[dsmiles]

That kind of thing often runs better, frankly, and if you don't tell them it's a sandbox sometimes they never figure it out. I had one campaign with a whole lot of entirely different paths the characters could take, but they still felt like they were telling a set story. They were a bit surprised when I mentioned to them afterwards that instead of fighting ancient gods in the jungle they could have gone up north and joined the Ogre Mafia.

Perhaps I should rephrase that. By "throwing out" I mean "insinuate into whatever they're doing."

Example:
Character A is shopping for weapons or armor. The weaponsmith or armorer happens to mention that a caravan with a good supply of <insert exotic metal here> has gone missing, and is willing to pay for help.
Character B is at the Mage's Guild or Library doing research. He/she happens across an ancient scroll/map/whatever that details the fall of (or is a map of) an ancient civilization.
Character C is at the local thieves' guild, and is informed that his/her services are required to retrieve an ancient artifact/velvet Elvis/whatever from a tightly secured location.
Character D is at the Temple of <insert deity here> and is implored by the priests to bring their aging high priest through <insert unexplored/dangerous territory here> so that he might commune with said deity at <insert sacred place here> to find out who his successor is to be.

When all the characters meet back up at the end of the "R&R" day, they each have a plot hook to share with the other party members. They eventually pick one, and off they go on another adventure. Some of the adventures will even intersect with the other ones.

Example:
The missing caravan was kidnapped by goblins/kobolds/orcs/whatever and is located at the ruins of the aforementioned ancient civilization. The ground level of which is being used by said humanoids as a base of operations. Below ground, however...

That's what I meant by throwing out plot hooks. I never expressly tell the players to "go play in the sandbox," as it were, I just give lots of options. Options for which I have written adventure outlines.

[Quietus]

That's what I meant by throwing out plot hooks. I never expressly tell the players to "go play in the sandbox," as it were, I just give lots of options. Options for which I have written adventure outlines.

That never works. It's the brain-block that happens in people any time you toss out a "do anything" statement. Most people, when given almost infinite options, will freeze up instead or go blank instead of picking something. The trick with a sandbox game isn't to present a static setting and then ask your players what they want to do.. this might work, in a group used to sandbox adventures, but more often than not you end up looking at the "buh.." face all around the table. Instead, you need to have *something* happening that first game, even if it's a one-off minor thing that has little to do with anything. From there, players will either give you a direction they want to go, or you can read from their in-game actions what interests them, and what to drop in front of them.

The key, I find, is to simply have the world *living around them*. The PC's enter the marketplace - there's hustle and bustle, and shouting voices, sure. But throw in a few interesting things - the man over there with the golden outfit and massive purple hair, who's got some overly large woman leaned back in a makeshift chair, apparently drawing things all over her face. Some street rat being chased by the guards over a loaf of bread. The gnome telling an animated story to a group of lookers-on, a hatful of coin sitting waiting for a few grateful coins, and being watched over by a surly half-orc trying to be less imposing so as not to interrupt the gnome's story. Players will either hook onto something and interact with it, or they'll pass by all of this, and head for something else that they, as a player, are more interested in. Hopefully. Sometimes you get people who'll just wander from one place to another and never hook on anything until you make the young woman with the strange necklace, who happens to be a princess but no one knows this yet, run facefirst into them.

[dsmiles]

Fortunately for me, my group has been together since 2004. We know what makes each other sit up and take notice, as far as plot hooks go.

I can appreciate that this wouldn't work with a bunch of strangers, or even a group of people who never see each other outside the gaming environment. My group is like family, we get together on holidays, I was at their son's baptism, they'll be at my wedding (if my wife and I can ever afford to have one, that is). It makes it easier to know which hooks to throw out.

I'm not refuting your point, I'm just pointing out that the two different types of groups (new/stranger and friend/family) will react differently to this tactic.

[AshDesert]

I once ran an evil campaign where I gave the characters an airship , a detailed map and political summary of the campaign world, started them at 5th level and told them that their character's backstories should include how they came together to try and take over the world. The first session was the only one where I specifically made any adventure, which was stealing the airship. After that I let them do what they wanted, and just made the world react around them. In the end they ended up taking over the world, getting bored, and branching out into the Outer Planes and becoming Evil Gods themselves.

[true_shinken]

Seeing as so many sandbox games amount to 'we are evil guys, so we'll take over the world while kicking pupies' (really, there were like 5 examples in this thread alone), there is no wonder I dislike them.
Maybe this is why so many people around here just assume adventurers are violent racist murderers - it looks like this kind of game is actually the prevalent one.
Am I the only here who actually likes to play a true hero? To help people, to defeat villains, to save the day and live to tell the tale?

[Aidan305]

I've currently got my players running round a sandbox consisting of a magocracy and the contents therein as a team of all casters. Personally I find it the best method for running a game since it means that the PCs have more say in what's going on and what adventures will happen and you don't get the sense of simply going straight from one scenario to the next.

[Urpriest]

Seeing as so many sandbox games amount to 'we are evil guys, so we'll take over the world while kicking pupies' (really, there were like 5 examples in this thread alone), there is no wonder I dislike them.
Maybe this is why so many people around here just assume adventurers are violent racist murderers - it looks like this kind of game is actually the prevalent one.
Am I the only here who actually likes to play a true hero? To help people, to defeat villains, to save the day and live to tell the tale?

Playing the hero is fun, but it's hard to find villains in a sandbox. Sometimes you have to make your own.

I think it would actually be really fun to have a mixed alignment sandbox game with powerful heroes and villains battling over the fate of the world. Have something in place to stop them from killing eachother off too quickly (perhaps Xorvintaal?) and it could be quite interesting. It's just hard to have players working against eachother as part of the standard dynamic.

I also think it's harder to run a heroic sandbox campaign because a hero is necessarily beholden to things. A hero must save those in danger, right wrongs, etc., and that means that it is the wrongs, people in danger, etc. that determine the hero's activities. So it doesn't feel as much like a sandbox. Like the campaign I mentioned earlier: it started out with many choices, but the players still gravitated towards saving the world. Even, oddly enough, the evil ones. Possibly because the good ones included a half-ogre paladin.

[true_shinken]

Playing the hero is fun, but it's hard to find villains in a sandbox. Sometimes you have to make your own.

Yeah, that was my point. I'm not a big fan of sandbox games for that same reason.
Actually, I once played in a 4e supposedly sandbox game that ended up in the party members fighting to the death. We had a warlock with a heart of gold (my character) and a paladin (a traditional one)... and a bunch of violent homicidal grav robbers. They eventually killed innocents for the heck of it and while for a long while both my character and the paladin just tried to ignore their deeds, the innocent-killing was too much to ignore. So we basically fought them... and 4e is a really bad system for PvP. Bad luck with initiative (and a lack of Dex focus in our classes) meant we were killed before we got a turn. It sucked hard.

In my game, I give the players plenty of choices. Once they just sat on a floating city having fun while the group artificer crafted items, the other time they abandoned a quest (and basically skipped in what could be a whole story arc) because it seemed too deadly and so on so forth.
Frankly, I find it hard to interpret 'this is a sandbox' differently than 'I can't think up a good plot, so do random crazy things'.

For my upcoming campaign, I'll stat out a single city and it's surroundings in a great deal of detail, set a few events happening around it (an incoming monster army, basically) and see what they do with the world around them. I wouldn't call this a sandbox.

[AshDesert]

Seeing as so many sandbox games amount to 'we are evil guys, so we'll take over the world while kicking pupies' (really, there were like 5 examples in this thread alone), there is no wonder I dislike them.
Maybe this is why so many people around here just assume adventurers are violent racist murderers - it looks like this kind of game is actually the prevalent one.
Am I the only here who actually likes to play a true hero? To help people, to defeat villains, to save the day and live to tell the tale?

Playing the hero is definitely fun, and the majority of games I play in and DM are story-driven games where they PCs are the heros. But sometimes you just wanna change things up, be the evil villains who are trying to take over the world rather than stopping them. Sandboxes are slightly more accommodating to that style of play, so there are probably more villainous sandboxes than heroic ones.

[Quietus]

For my upcoming campaign, I'll stat out a single city and it's surroundings in a great deal of detail, set a few events happening around it (an incoming monster army, basically) and see what they do with the world around them. I wouldn't call this a sandbox.

This is where we differ. A sandbox isn't a word without a plot, in which the PCs decide what monkey crap to fling around today. It's a world where many different things are happening - the monster army is incoming, while the higher-ups in the city are having a hard time cutting all the red tape to get the resources to stop it. They can't pull town guards from patrol because of a recent increase in illegal activity.. and it's into this situation that the PCs are thrust. You find a couple ways to introduce the "There's a problem here" moment - a monster scouting party that decided to try and bring back a few heads, a thieves guild attack in the night on the place they're staying, a few job postings looking to hire new guards with a tasty signing bonus if they stay for X amount of time. The players define, on their own time, what they want to deal with, and how. If they want to leave the city, they can, but you lay out a timeline, and over time, the city gets wrecked because it couldn't stand against the army without assistance. Meanwhile, the PCs were off fishing, and can do something related to that.

tl;dr - a sandbox isn't a world where PCs are expected to be murderous rampaging hobos. It's a world where the PCs can do anything they want, but their actions do have consequences, and those consequences more or less make and drive the story.

[true_shinken]

tl;dr - a sandbox isn't a world where PCs are expected to be murderous rampaging hobos. It's a world where the PCs can do anything they want, but their actions do have consequences, and those consequences more or less make and drive the story.

I actually call that 'decently DMed world'.
I guess sandbox will always have a rather negative feel for me.

[Valameer]

This guy did an exploration game with a large group of players, allowing a mmorpg-style atmosphere to develop.

This is awesome. Thanks for the link. I totally have to try running one of these.

[kyoryu]

This is where we differ. A sandbox isn't a word without a plot, in which the PCs decide what monkey crap to fling around today. It's a world where many different things are happening - the monster army is incoming, while the higher-ups in the city are having a hard time cutting all the red tape to get the resources to stop it. They can't pull town guards from patrol because of a recent increase in illegal activity.. and it's into this situation that the PCs are thrust. You find a couple ways to introduce the "There's a problem here" moment - a monster scouting party that decided to try and bring back a few heads, a thieves guild attack in the night on the place they're staying, a few job postings looking to hire new guards with a tasty signing bonus if they stay for X amount of time. The players define, on their own time, what they want to deal with, and how. If they want to leave the city, they can, but you lay out a timeline, and over time, the city gets wrecked because it couldn't stand against the army without assistance. Meanwhile, the PCs were off fishing, and can do something related to that.

I was actually about to write this exact post. I couldn't agree more.

Sandbox doesn't mean that things don't happen. It means there's no one thing the PCs are supposed to do, but rather a scenario that they're in that will involve, and the world will react to what they do (or don't do).

[banthesun]

My sandbox was set in a single large city (and occasionally the surrounding countryside). The players all worked individually trying to achieve their own goals, which ranged from saving the society from itself to razing the city to the ground just to see what would happen. The initial idea was that they would all join one of the assassin societies vying for control over the city and rise through the ranks as the main plot slowly revealed itself.

What I got was a policewoman, a vigilante, and a serial killer caught in a risky game to take out the others while constantly having to forge fragile alliances against the real dangers as they closed in (this was a great way to stop them murdering the hell out of each other). In the end they'd wasted so much effort fighting amongst themselves that they could only watch the city collapse as the vampire army moved in (though they still had some chances at incredible epicness within the dying city to at least force a draw).

Thankfully, this all fitted in with the theme of the story, where the Big Bad was only trying to convert the entire city into his undead thralls to build an army strong enough to stop a demonic invasion (which had been mentioned several times in the campaign already), and that by resisting, the PCs may well have doomed the entire continent.

Unfortunately, it kinda fell apart during the ending, so they only got to learn about the effects their adventures had caused as a post script, but they still reported it as being plenty of fun (for vastly different reasons though).

[Raum]

Seeing as so many sandbox games amount to 'we are evil guys, so we'll take over the world while kicking pupies' (really, there were like 5 examples in this thread alone), there is no wonder I dislike them.

Sandbox play != evil campaign. In my experience the campaign's morality and it's openness are completely separate issues. What sandbox play does take is player initiative. So just make sure the world is 'less than perfect' so there's something for heroes to do. Only perfectly tranquil worlds force you into a villain's role (because there's nothing for an adventurer to do in a tranquil world).

Playing the hero is fun, but it's hard to find villains in a sandbox. Sometimes you have to make your own.

See comments on perfect worlds above.

I think it would actually be really fun to have a mixed alignment sandbox game with powerful heroes and villains battling over the fate of the world. Have something in place to stop them from killing eachother off too quickly (perhaps Xorvintaal?) and it could be quite interesting. It's just hard to have players working against eachother as part of the standard dynamic.

I'm beginning to wonder if we have the same definition of 'sandbox'. I don't think I've ever run a game where players were consciously working against each other. Cause problems by inattention / misunderstanding / mistakes yes. But I'm not interested in running a PvP arena...and wouldn't call one a sandbox no matter how much of the setting the 'arena' encompassed.

I also think it's harder to run a heroic sandbox campaign because a hero is necessarily beholden to things. A hero must save those in danger, right wrongs, etc., and that means that it is the wrongs, people in danger, etc. that determine the hero's activities. So it doesn't feel as much like a sandbox. Like the campaign I mentioned earlier: it started out with many choices, but the players still gravitated towards saving the world. Even, oddly enough, the evil ones. Possibly because the good ones included a half-ogre paladin.

Sandbox play relies on two things - players taking initiative and characters who are engaged in the world. In my experience, initiative follows engagement. In other words, once they care about something they'll act. If you want a heroic game, give them something to care about other than world domination.

[Urpriest]

I'm beginning to wonder if we have the same definition of 'sandbox'. I don't think I've ever run a game where players were consciously working against each other. Cause problems by inattention / misunderstanding / mistakes yes. But I'm not interested in running a PvP arena...and wouldn't call one a sandbox no matter how much of the setting the 'arena' encompassed.

Sandbox play relies on two things - players taking initiative and characters who are engaged in the world. In my experience, initiative follows engagement. In other words, once they care about something they'll act. If you want a heroic game, give them something to care about other than world domination.

Pure PvP would, I agree, be dumb. I'm thinking more of players working at cross-purposes to alter a large, dynamic world. It's not usually how sandbox games are run, most involve players working together in some capacity...but the possibility is interesting.

And sure, in general characters need to care about something. The problem is, if you threaten what they care about then you've just decided what the adventure is, in their minds. It's tricky to give them things that inspire action without compelling it, basically.

[dsmiles]

Pure PvP would, I agree, be dumb. I'm thinking more of players working at cross-purposes to alter a large, dynamic world. It's not usually how sandbox games are run, most involve players working together in some capacity...but the possibility is interesting.

And sure, in general characters need to care about something. The problem is, if you threaten what they care about then you've just decided what the adventure is, in their minds. It's tricky to give them things that inspire action without compelling it, basically.

I use the cross-purposes plot hook frequently. Each player has two characters, a hero, and a villain. We alternate which character is used every game session, and eventually, the plot kicks in and one party has to track down and destroy/bring to justice the other party. Fun times!

[Greenish]

In my game, I give the players plenty of choices. Once they just sat on a floating city having fun while the group artificer crafted items, the other time they abandoned a quest (and basically skipped in what could be a whole story arc) because it seemed too deadly and so on so forth.
Frankly, I find it hard to interpret 'this is a sandbox' differently than 'I can't think up a good plot, so do random crazy things'.

For my upcoming campaign, I'll stat out a single city and it's surroundings in a great deal of detail, set a few events happening around it (an incoming monster army, basically) and see what they do with the world around them. I wouldn't call this a sandbox.

That's the very definition of sandbox you have in there.

Sandbox play relies on two things - players taking initiative and characters who are engaged in the world. In my experience, initiative follows engagement. In other words, once they care about something they'll act. If you want a heroic game, give them something to care about other than world domination.

True enough, but as mentioned in this thread, usually villains act while heroes react.

[Urpriest]

I use the cross-purposes plot hook frequently. Each player has two characters, a hero, and a villain. We alternate which character is used every game session, and eventually, the plot kicks in and one party has to track down and destroy/bring to justice the other party. Fun times!

I tried to do something vaguely similar awhile back, though the campaign didn't last long enough for it to go through. I was running a monster campaign for some 3.5 veterans, and running a mostly cliche 4e game to teach some new people. They were set in the same world, and the intent was that each group would eventually run into an analog of the other one.

[Raum]

And sure, in general characters need to care about something. The problem is, if you threaten what they care about then you've just decided what the adventure is, in their minds. It's tricky to give them things that inspire action without compelling it, basically.

I look at it from the opposite point of view. When a player tells you his character really cares about widgets, he's saying "please put widgets in the game".

I almost always try to incorporate characters' backgrounds into sandbox games. And, conversely, I ask players to account for scripted themes in their backgrounds on the rare times I run a canned campaign.

True enough, but as mentioned in this thread, usually villains act while heroes react.

TV Tropes are more about cliches than truth but, even if you accept is as true, it's fairly trivial to set it up so reacting strategically puts them in the position of being proactive tactically. Or vice-versa. A good mix will keep the players on their toes.

[Amphetryon]

I guess my sandbox is a little smaller than everybody else's. I just throw out a bunch of plot hooks for different adventures I have sketched out, and see which one they bite on.

As I've indicated before, I have had players who wanted a sandbox game actively rebel when they saw that I had plot hooks actually sketched out and written down. As far as that group was concerned, if you're pre-planning stages of the campaign, you're removing choice and, in so doing, removing the game from sandbox territory.

It becomes increasingly difficult, in that environment, to give the players the sandbox experience they claim to want when their consistent reaction is "Look, it's a plot! RUN!"

[Greenish]

TV Tropes are more about cliches than truth but, even if you accept is as true, it's fairly trivial to set it up so reacting strategically puts them in the position of being proactive tactically. Or vice-versa. A good mix will keep the players on their toes.

Yes, but they'll be reacting in the first place. Heroes usually want to prevent or protect something, so you'll have to threaten it to get them to react, and once you do they don't have much options.

An Evil motivation could be to rule over the village/city/kingdom/world (because ambition is evil!). There's many ways to try to achieve that, and no obligation to jump at everything that hints to that direction.

A Good motivation could be protect the innocent. Well, if nothing threatens the innocent, not much for one to do, and if something does threaten them, well, there's one thing to be done.


Of course, fleshed out characters have other motivations, but still.

[Raum]

As I've indicated before, I have had players who wanted a sandbox game actively rebel when they saw that I had plot hooks actually sketched out and written down. As far as that group was concerned, if you're pre-planning stages of the campaign, you're removing choice and, in so doing, removing the game from sandbox territory.

It becomes increasingly difficult, in that environment, to give the players the sandbox experience they claim to want when their consistent reaction is "Look, it's a plot! RUN!"

I try to keep such plans relatively nebulous unless they're likely to affect the next game. In other words, I'll give NPCs goals or desires to accomplish instead of actually planning an event. If Bob wants to summon Yar-Soggoth, Fred wants to be mayor at any cost, and Sally is planning on assassinating the sheriff you have an interesting town. Just add PCs and stir. But if you have Happyville where nothing is going on...yeah I'd probably turn villain also.

Yes, but they'll be reacting in the first place. Heroes usually want to prevent or protect something, so you'll have to threaten it to get them to react, and once you do they don't have much options.

Yes, this goes back to my initial comments on 'perfect worlds'. In a perfect world you don't need heroes so, if that's what you're looking for, make sure the world is less than perfect.