List of Encounters / Events for a Sandbox-Style Campaign


Advice


Hi all,

I'm looking to put together a list as big as possible of encounters/events that can occur in my current sandbox campaign. The current campaign takes place on an accursed island. There aren't a lot of cities around, and the few that exist are hidden/reclusive.

As such, I need help generating encounters/events that make sense for a mysterious island. As an example, here's a few I have:


  • An abandoned witch's hut is found on the edge of a swamp. Writings on animal hides found inside the hut indicate that the witch was trying to summon forth some kind of evil creature from the swamp. Tracking the witch leads to a corpse mutilated by local predators. Did she succeed in summoning the creature? PCs can try to find out.
  • While exploring the wilderness, PCs discover they're being tracked by a leopard. If PCs try to engage the leopard, it flees/hides to the best of its ability. If the PCs leave food for the leopard, they can attract its attention. The leopard is unusually intelligent and leads the PCs to a healing grove (1d4 plants can be removed from the grove per month without damaging the grove. Each plant can be eaten to heal a small amount, or used to make a potent healing salve by a knowledgeable person.)
  • While exploring, PCs are greeted by an elf/dryad/etc that has vines attached to it. The being tries to coax the PCs to approach her tree to inspect some corruption. If the PCs approach, the tree attacks them (its a carnivorous intelligent plant.)

Any and all additional suggestions/ideas are appreciated.


By 'island' do you mean Australia-size or atoll-size? What sort of climate or other details are set?


In a very secluded place, but at a strategic location for the PCs so they would consider making it a hub for future explorations in the region, the PCs find a thriving and happy village with an odd local religion that venerates outsiders, including local women who are so very happy to meet them. Everything seems a bit too happy and peaceful and should the PCs investigate further they find some vaguely sinister signs as well as phrases getting thrown around in relation to the religion, but that aside the village is exactly what it seems to be.

The next time the PCs return to the village it is an utter ruin, brimming with inanimate skeletal remains. The ground is blighted, the water poisoned, and nothing grows here. The village was seemingly destroyed centuries ago and as the PCs look around confused they feel as if something is watching them. There is nothing there of course.


What level are the PCs?

I'm currently a 5th level PC in a Razor Coast adventure that is definitely a cursed island. Here are some of the things we've found do far in our cursed tropical island.

The Many Joys of Dolentla Isle:

  • One maddened possessed whale that sinks all ships that come by;
  • Many monstrous humanoids called 'hiwanis' that have multiple attacks, including a will-sapping temporary wisdom damage bite and can cause you to fall asleep if you fail your will save. The first time we saw these guys was in the water when we were swimming to shore. We were hampered by the water. They were not;
  • Overgrown jungle paths that are narrow and are difficult terrain on either side, making them perfect ambush sites for the afore-mentioned hiwanis;
  • Shambling mounds and strangler vines;
  • Cliffs with caves we haven't explored yet;
  • An ancient Elven lab that may be connected to all of these aberrations;
  • Other stranded, ship-wrecked people who've become will-sapped prisoners of the hiwanis (you can get transformed into a hiwani after a while);
  • One telepathic Shoggoth Qlippoth demon who eats babies, is likely in the Elven lab, and has a telepathic range of a mile. He's controlling the hiwanis and the maddened whale and yammering in our heads so much that we can't recover spells without flying out of range. (The whole island is less than a mile wide and thus in his range, but we fortunately have someone with a very strong flying pet and ant haul.) He also likes trying to interrupt rest and recovery;
  • Multiple shipwrecks of other ships;
  • A bunch of stuff we haven't explored yet.

I really expect that we'll see ghosts or undead at some point too.

My Razor Coast game is play by post, so you can click my avatar and read this particular campaign so far. Fortunately, food has been plentiful, and we have lots of people who can hunt and gather. It's been high-challenge, but the challenges have been almost too overwhelming.

I think that one thing that is missing from all of this is has been light or gentle encounters. It would be nice to meet something living that is not out to kill us, or maybe even an ally or two. Having high challenge is great, but there needs to be some light in with the dark to give the players a mental break.

TL/DR: Don't have everything on your accursed island be out to kill your players.


avr wrote:
By 'island' do you mean Australia-size or atoll-size? What sort of climate or other details are set?

It is a very large island, something like 600 miles from northwest corner to southeast corner. The island is ringed almost entirely by mountains, creating an exterior of the island, and an interior of the island. The exterior is fairly nondescript, various beaches that are mostly inaccessible (though a path through the mountains to a beach event/encounter could work.)

The climate is fairly tropical, but due the presence of a powerful magical effect, there are a couple of places on the island that differ (a winter region in the south-east, for example.)

I've left much of the island intentionally vague so that I can fit in various encounters into places that make sense. The general theme of the island is simply mystery, the inability of the residents of the island to easily escape, and a powerful trickster enemy that loves to use shape changing abilities and illusions to cause confusion.

chaoseffect wrote:
The village was seemingly destroyed centuries ago and as the PCs look around confused they feel as if something is watching them. There is nothing there of course.

That sounds very cool. Definitely putting that in. Thanks.

Nefertiti Abdul wrote:
TL/DR: Don't have everything on your accursed island be out to kill your players.

Thanks for those suggestions. PCs are currently 5th level actually. Good ambush spots sounds like a great idea. The ranged character in the group has been free from most enemy attacks due to good party tactics. Mixing it up here and there will help create some tension.

And yeah - its definitely not all evil. The PCs have made some allies on the island and are creating a home city, so to speak, of the various survivors they've found so far.


By the ruins of a farmstead, a group of skeletons endlessly digs holes and refills them. The locals claim to know nothing about what happened there, but they have rumors of a dark witch by the headwaters of their stream. (The witch was an angry teenager; she killed her family when pushed too far and cursed them to endless pointless labor. She might be glad of allies, but the party might prefer someone with more morals or at least a reliable work ethic.)

In a wind-shadowed part of the interior there are odd lines of stones meandering down hillsides. Someone observing them from high enough above might recognise them as a spell inscribed in a spellbook, and even be able to prepare it if they're high enough level wizards or arcanists. (An odd side effect of someone's botched teleport attempting to escape the island.)

A group of fey meet to play a wagering game each full moon on a hilltop ringed by flowering trees. The party may hear about it or see strange lights there in the night. Strangers are welcome to join in, but their game is not easily learned, they have no mercy for beginners, and some of them cheat (turning invisible and scurrying off if caught at it). On the other hand they gossip like crazy and will happily point the party towards local people and points of interest.

Following a rainstorm and a landslide the village where the players are staying starts rapidly flooding in the night. Worse, local werecrocodiles have stirred their natural brethren to attack as people evacuate, and will focus their own efforts on any meddling PCs.


Is it supposed to be a brute mystery, or is there some reason/plot going on behind it all? You might be able to link some of these events together.

I.e. the witch might be the one who turned someone into a leopard, the one who showed the pcs the magical healing grove. The leopard was originally an explorer who fell in love with the witch, but the whole thing ended up with a big fight, and then she transformed him in retaliation for whatever he did.

If they can convince her to turn the leopard back into a man, he'll be grateful and able to help the pcs, seeing as he has already explored some key sites on the island.


I agree that the difficult terrain combats including overgrown paths and flooded areas can make great challenges. It caused us to up our game, and certainly got our hearts racing.


For my sandbox I generally divide the encounters into a couple categories:

- Creatures (NPC or monsters, not necessarily hostile)
- Landmarks or Locations (Notable areas or places, might be a dungeon/lair or something simple as a beautiful waterfall)
- Resource (something gather-able/loot, might be mundane as a tasty berry bush or a cave with a vein of precious metal or gems).

You can of course combine any number of the above into a single encounter as well.

For creatures, there are tons of bestiaries and the npc codex for examples to use. The fluff included often has ways to introduce them to a party with a hook or encounter included.

For landmarks I generally use the GM Miscellany Wilderness/Dungeon Dressing books. They are a fantastic resource for that and are divided up based on geography type.


One thing I like to do is set up two parties that are constantly getting into disputes with each other. The players can join sides if they want, or try to act as intermediaries, but even if they don't they might get swept up in some of the side effects (fireball going off over their head, one of the NPCs they were questing for gets captured/killed etc).

Bonus points if you make both of the sides relateable so that its very hard to choose.

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