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How to Deal with Sandboxes
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I only really gm in the sandbox. Part of my love for the game is sub-creation--world design. The degrees in Anthropology and Archaeology lend themselves to crafting sandbox worlds with cultures and realities all their own. I build continents to play on--so options are wide open.

Now--I do take PF modules and re-skin them all the time because as much as I love the sandbox--adventurers also like story arcs and character development that comes along with chained adventures.

How do you do this for a continent when you players might hop a ship well away from your carefully planned adventure?

I have a couple of suggestions:

1)

Re-skin:
Steal and Re-skin like a madman. I'm running the Hook Mountain Horror right now--but the whole thing was tied back to a far earlier adventure with a world specific item called Warpstone. The ogres are not a race but an inbred tribe tainted years before by the bearer of the warpstone who changed from the demon priest when he found it into a "stone like giant" by the chaos of it...Drop what you don't need--fudge what you do--alter what doesn't fit.

2)

Utility Belt:
Keep a series of simple side adventures with scalable obstacles and foes that can be instantly redesigned for alternate use wherever your folks end up on the continent. The wharf scene can be on a river or lake, the catacombs could be natural caves, the desert can be an icy plateau--the zombies might be ghouls--the natives may live in flets instead of huts--

3)

Interactive Background:
Keep consistent places of interest on your map. Ruins that are referred to in legend, enemies that provide a consistent presence to allow characters to embrace flavour and setting but also allow them to develop tactics. It also allows them to kill their foes and have a thread to why the enemy keeps showing up.

4)

Future History:
Timeline. Worlds are not static. Start with day zero and then put some historical occurrences as they unfold over time. In three months war will break out here. In seven the king will be poisoned here. In one year a massive earthquake will level the city there. It allows for adventuring and building the player characters into the events of the world.

Anyone else?
Gm Question: Is it okay to expect your characters to run?

What I'm saying is--is it reasonable to expect players to understand when they are outmatched and to expect them to run away. I only ask because I've had situations where the characters were obviously completely outmatched from the very beginning of the encounter--had options to run and simply chose not to. I made it clear that engaging would be folly and that the creature wasn't targeting them specifically.

The wizard fireballed it forcing the confrontation and dragging the rest of the party into the confrontation. I was then castigated by the wizard player for putting something with too high a CR in front of them when they had to fight and kill it.

Is it me or is the idea of retreating to lick your wounds get better and come back something that has fallen by the wayside? Cause I sure felt like I was on the spot for it.
Extreme Deviations From the Rule

Hey.

I'm relatively new to the board; but have gamed for almost 33 years. I started with D&D when I was 10. I left it after about two years; moved on to systems that worked better for me at the time. I've played almost everything but generally kept to the BRP/Runequest rule set. It more accurately reflected combat for me. It addressed a number of problems I had with the D&D rule set and I was happy to stay with it for a while.

I, like many others have a personal game world that I have run games in for a while. The modifications of the rules are set to work in that world set and thus I have removed many of the things that are standard in the D&D and Pathfinder canon.

As with any house rule mod--it is a work in progress--but long time players--and specifically D&D players have been exceptionally keen about the mods having played them for almost 2 years now. I have two separate groups--both of whom choose this game over the others that are there to be played. So for want of a better thing to do--I'm going to post the modified rule set just for kicks. By the way--I know that much of this will run against the grain for a number of game purists. I can be a prickly SOB sometimes--but no offense is meant in any of this so ease up a bit. If you can find a real problem with the rules I'd be happy to hear it--always tweaking them you know.