The Key To A Sandbox Is To Make Sure It's Populated, And Stuff Is Happening

One of the biggest complaints I hear from players is that they want to play in campaigns and settings where they feel like they have freedom and autonomy, and not that they're going to be put on rails and driven toward the Game Master's predetermined destination. The opposite end of that setting is, of course, the sandbox game. This is where players are plopped down into the game world, and they are free to explore, take up quests, meet NPCs, and get tangled up in whatever webs they please.

The thing is, for a sandbox to work, a Game Master has to actually populate it with stuff for the players to interact with, and events to take part in... otherwise you end up with a ghost town.

Also, if this subject interests you, then I highly recommend checking out River Games: Somewhere Between The Sandbox And The Railroad.

Between all these grains of sand, there should actually be stuff.

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Load Up The Sandbox, And They'll Never Run Out Of Things To Do

As someone who has run both linear games where there's a direct through line where the game starts and ends, as well as someone who has put together a handful of sandboxes, I can tell you that the latter take ten times as much time, energy, and effort to set up. This isn't just because you have to populate the world with NPCs, plot hooks, news, rumors, loot, dungeons, and more... you have to do that for a linear progression game as well. The difference is that for a sandbox you have to have more of everything, because you have no way of knowing what your players are going to do, or what direction they're going to go in.

Sandbox GMs are a majority of my readers.

Think about it for a second. If you're going to run a linear plot, you have a series of events that take your players from Point A, to Point B, to Point C, dragging them along a pathway toward the eventual showdown with the campaign's big bad. But if you are running a game where you simply set the world in motion, then turn your players loose, you need to have significantly more stuff for them to do, people to talk to, and happenings to get involved with!

For example, in a linear game, you might have one bar with plot-relevant characters, a couple of town guardsman with actual information worth delivering, and a series of dungeons where encounters will take place... but for a sandbox, you need to have that kind of setup for a wider variety of decisions the players might make. Not only that, but there's going to be a ticking time clock on events, because what the players choose to get involved with, and what they choose not to get involved with, can affect the machinery of the world.

Consider the town of Timbersong. It's a small port town with half a dozen fishermen and some traders and travelers. There's a lumber operation there (or at least there used to be), and most people who come up that way do so for the hot springs, or to look for work in the growing boom town and its surrounding farms. And there are dozens of things that can be done in this location, including:

- Taking on work at the Hardwick Agency as a private guard

- Examine the Palatine Spring, and the rumors of something unusual there

- Go into the old growth forest in search of treasure, ruins, or monsters

- Talk to sailors coming in from the sea to hear about rumors of pirates attacking coastal towns

- Escort a caravan down to the next town

- Take passage on a ship to go further along the coast

Now, if this was a linear game, you might have a specific idea of what you want your players to do. Hopefully they get hired by the detective agency, which then sends them to deal with something that's been seen out in the woods. They uncover an ancient cult, tie that to the springs, and realize the healing waters are drawn from an ancient genius loci. They form a pact with that spirit, and the old rituals are kept up to appease it, ensuring the town can grow around it. At that point the PCs leave Timbersong either by road or by ship to move onto the next town, and the next set of rumors, happenings, and people.

But that's one set of events. And sure, the PCs might take that specific bait and follow those particular events, but what if they step off that path? What if they instead want to try to recruit one of the odd cats that roam the town, either as a pet, or to have a familiar? What if they want to immediately go pirate hunting, trying to figure out if there are bounties and rewards for those who slay buccaneers, and trying to find a captain to take them on this errand? What if they take on tasks from Marlena Racks who needs surveys taken along the coast so she can draw accurate maps? What if, what it, what if...

None of these are random, either. Timbersong is one of the towns in my supplement 10 Fantasy Villages, and it's jammed with stuff like the above suggestions to give Game Masters an edge on laying the ground work for a localized sandbox.

Having a linear game means you have a single chain of events, more or less. There are likely a few side quests here and there, but nothing outside of the important main line is going to get really fleshed out. It's that old situation where there's one clearly important NPC in the bar, and while you can talk to other folk, that individual is the one with the information that's going to move the story along.

But if you have a sandbox game, you need to have either multiple chains of events that all branch off on their own stories, or you need to have a bunch of disconnected events and individuals, and allow the interactions of your players to build the story based off the things they choose to do or not do.

The World Needs To Move Without Them

I mentioned this concept back in Game Masters, Make Sure The Villains Aren't Just Sitting Around Waiting, but it's worth being repeated here. Because if you have an entire sandbox world, the player characters won't be able to respond to everything... so when they aren't involved, that also has consequences that can spiral out of control.

Consider Timbersong again. There's a cult in the forest trying to awaken the wrath of a genius loci to wipe out the town. There are pirates pillaging the coast. There are farmers being attacked by terrible beasts who lost their habitats. While it's possible for the party to solve all of these problems all at once, if they neglect something, or don't consider it worth their time, then it will come to a head without them.

For instance, if the party goes out to hunt pirates on the waters, they might find a bounty, and bring them down quickly, giving them the time to get back to Timbersong to deal with the cult. But if they're gone for too long due to storms, bad rolls, etc., then they might come back to a town that's been ruined by an angered spirit within the spring. Or, if they focus on the cult first, and then handle the pirates, by the time they come back to town they might find people deep in debt because the farms were overrun and all their food now has to be imported.

Or if the PCs chose to do an escort mission for a ship or a caravan, then they might hear about the uprising in Timbersong, or about how a disaster wiped it off the map, only for the survivors to be captured by pirates and sold into slavery.

It's a rough life on the bloody seas.

Now, the point is not that you need to give your players impossible decisions... the point is that for your sandbox to have meaning that there has to be a lot of stuff in it, and for the decisions your players make to have weight and gravitas. And while you might be able to tie various things together due to the players' actions (say they do capture a special cat from the forest, and it turns out to be able to talk. So now it can clue them in on secret knowledge of the cult, and the spring spirit, which they didn't have before because they did a seemingly pointless side quest), it needs to feel organic.

 

In other words, if you only have one bar, and it doesn't matter which one your players walk in they're getting the same NPCs and the same floor plan, that gamble only works if they don't realize you played switcheroo with them. Because if they feel you're just creating a Potemkin village that makes them feel like their actions have consequences, but really there's only ever been one path to walk, that's going to deeply disappoint people who showed up to play in a sandbox.

So yes, sandbox games require a lot more in terms of worldbuilding, NPCs, plot hooks, events, etc. But once you have all those things in place you can basically set the world in motion, and then just watch what your players choose to do, and ask how that affects the physics of the world that was already turning.

 

Harder to start, but fairly easy to keep running once you flick the switch and all the gears start running!

With that said, I would recommend checking out all of my 200+ TTRPG supplements that are largely meant to help you populate your game, and to be sure you save your brain power for the heavy lifting. You can take a look at this pinboard of all my supplements and games, but if you're looking to build a sandbox I would definitely suggest grabbing copies of:

- 100 Tips and Tricks For Being a Better Game Master

- Towns of Sundara

- 100 Character Goals and Motivations

- 100 Ways To Start a Campaign (That Aren't In a Tavern)

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What Keeps Your Character Traveling?

There's a reason so many tales begin in the tavern... it's usually the one place that travelers gather to wile away the evening hours before they have to get back out on the road. And while there are some games where the party members are local to the area, those tend to be fairly few and far between. Heroes (and villains, for evil games) tend to come from afar, walking into whatever danger and adventure awaits them in the place where their adventure begins.

Before you put together another traveling adventurer with worn down bootheels and a cloak that's just getting ragged around the edges, take a moment to consider just how many reasons there are to be on the road. Because a lot of us only seem to think of the same handful to be from home when the plot thickens.

Also, road is sort of a loose term in this instance.

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Professional Reasons

The most common reasons you find PCs located far away from home when we first meet them is because they're looking for work... but that work is almost universally A) as a wandering sellsword, or B) as a traveling bard.

And there are some characters who tend to be a bit of both.

While there's nothing wrong with either of these reasons (and you can improve them by lifting some content from 100 Random Mercenary Companies as well as 100 Fantasy Bands by yours truly if you'd like), there are so many other options out there!

For example, consider the fantasy teamster. With her wagon and her mule she runs goods all over the region, and any trouble she meets out on the road gets a quarrel between the eyes from the crossbow she keeps locked up by her seat. Traveling peddlers, river boatmen, and sailors can also fall into this category. Or consider the barber surgeon, who can cut hair, stitch wounds, set bones, and pull teeth, but who tends to make rounds to a wider area in order to help as many people as possible while collecting modest fees. There's the treasure hunter who's always looking for that next big score, the forest ranger acting as a freelance guide, the cartographer who is making new, updated maps of the region, and the historian who's attempting to piece together parts of the past to provide a window onto what came before.

The key for characters who are traveling for professional reasons is that you need to give them a pressing enough reason to be on the move, but not something so pressing that they end up ignoring the adventure hook in favor of their personal travel plans. If the drunken master monk is a roadie/bodyguard for touring musicians, for example, you don't want them to be so committed to that role that they refuse to go check out the troll caves, or to stick around and help protect the town against bandit raids.

It's all about balance, and flexibility.

Personal Reasons

Much like the above section we see plenty of personal reasons for travel among PCs... but a lot of them tend to fall into the same, very broad categories. The most common examples I've seen of this are, A) Looking for revenge, B) Running from debts/commitments C) Some kind of rite of passage.

You met a man with three fingers on his left hand? Which way did he go?

Again, because I cannot stress this enough, there is nothing wrong with those reasons. They're old fall back positions, the same as the paladin that's a knight in shining armor, or the wizard that's an old gray-bearded sage. But they aren't the only options you have, and you can get a lot out of stretching your creativity in this case.

For instance, is your character having a mid-life crisis, so they decide to leave behind a steady trade or a growing business to go out and make their name as a hero? Are they hounded by visions and prophecies, driven toward certain places by the will of inscrutable gods (whether or not they're divine caster classes)? Did they want to get out of their small town to see the world before settling down to have kids? Are they looking for a long-lost friend, family member, or rightful owner of a strange ring they found that draws them on like an iron filing to a lodestone? Are they a really dedicated foodie determined to try all the strange dishes and unusual customs found in 100 Fantasy Foods?

There are hundreds of different reasons someone might find themselves on the road, far away from home. The advantage of personal reasons to travel, though, is that a good GM can take them, and weave them into the ongoing plot in order to hook a PC into said plot to satisfy the player's personal arc. Whether it's deciding to Don Quixote their way through a goblin siege on their old plow horse, or traveling to the capitol to taste the finest viands while also solving the murder of the duchess, players with personal reasons to be out and about can often be easily directed toward the plot with a dangling carrot.

Additional Resources and Inspiration

If you're going to be running a game that takes place out in the open world, and your PCs are going to be doing a great deal of traveling, then I would suggest checking out some of the following supplements for extra inspiration!

- 100 Random Taverns: One of my bestselling supplements, it's gone Electrum at time of writing. Whether you need a sports bar hung with regalia of tourney knights, a clockwork brewery, or a hole-in-the-wall run by kobolds, this supplement has you covered!

- 10 Fantasy Villages: Whether you need a place for your PC to be from, or you need unique locations for the party to stop in, this supplement has everything you need. Maps, histories, rumors, notable places, NPCs, and more can be found between these pages.

- 100 Encounters in a Fey Forest: Traveling through a fey forest is a unique kind of danger... people who are actually from such places might be seen as touched in the head by the rest of the world. For those looking for specific lists there's both a Pathfinder Classic version as well as a DND 5E version.

- 100 Encounters For on The Road or in The Wilderness: From road construction, to guard patrols, to mating wolves, and strange discoveries, there's no reason your PCs should ever have a dull moment when getting from point A to point B. And like the previous supplement this one comes in both a Pathfinder Classic version as well as a DND 5E version.

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That's all for this week's Fluff post!

For more of my work, check out my Vocal archive, and stop by the YouTube channel Dungeon Keeper Radio. Or if you'd prefer to read some of my books, like my alley cat thriller Marked Territory, my sword and sorcery novel Crier's Knife or my recent short story collection The Rejects, then head over to My Amazon Author Page!

To stay on top of all my latest releases, follow me on Facebook, Tumblr, Twitter, and now Pinterest as well! To support my work, consider Buying Me a Ko-Fi, or heading to The Literary Mercenary's Patreon page to become a regular, monthly patron. That one helps ensure you get more Improved Initiative, and it means you'll get my regular, monthly giveaways as a bonus!