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For a long time now, I have had an idea to create a sandboxed portion of a gaming world where the characters are free to do exactly what they want. Not even the slightest hint of railroading. This will take a lot of work for me, as I intend to insert Dungeon adventures and Paizo modules (or parts of Paizo Modules) in places where it fits the sandbox.
The general idea is that when beginning a session (unless left on a cliffhanger), it will be the PCs who proactively initiates an adventure. No stranger in a tavern. No running around finding information for a sage. Maybe they'll head out to the mountains in search for some adventure? Maybe they will go down to the dockside tavern to see if someone needs adventurers? Maybe the church of Pelor needs help? The adventure doesn't start with someone approaching the PCs, the adventure starts with the PCs searching for adventure.
Anyway, I don't know if this made any sense, but what I'm looking for is a product (city product, regional product) that describes a location in great detail, which I then can improve upon. Doing it from scratch would take a great deal more work. My ideal location would be a medium-sized city (3,000-10,000), probably a harbor town, with some wilderness around it (forest, mountains) and maybe a couple of smaller villages. This area will constitute the sandbox.
I was thinking of using Diamond Lake from the AoW adventure path, but my current campaign is set in Darkmoon Vale, and the two communities are really similar.
Any suggestions? Doesn't have to be Paizo products, but I'll try to insert the sandbox into Golarion.
I was going to suggest Darkmoon Vale but I'm assuming if you're playing there now then you already have that product?
Beyond that, are you assuming a pseudo-European setting, medieval tech, standard D&D magic levels, etc.?
I was going to suggest Darkmoon Vale but I'm assuming if you're playing there now then you already have that product?
Beyond that, are you assuming a pseudo-European setting, medieval tech, standard D&D magic levels, etc.?
Yes, I have Darkmoon Vale and have been playing there for a year or so now. It was still a "normal" campaign with a plot outline using some of the modules set there.
Standard D&D setting is preferrable, yes. It's easiest to insert Dungeon modules in such a setting.
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Anyway, I don't know if this made any sense, but what I'm looking for is a product (city product, regional product) that describes a location in great detail, which I then can improve upon. Doing it from scratch would take a great deal more work. My ideal location would be a medium-sized city (3,000-10,000), probably a harbor town, with some wilderness around it (forest, mountains) and maybe a couple of smaller villages. This area will constitute the sandbox.
I'd recommend Karameikos in a heartbeat. Karameikos is fondly loved for being the sandbox that was introduced in Basic D&D (the two sets being, in particular, Expert and Complete set). What's more, there's plenty of stunning online support for it, which includes all the info and digital maps you ever need, and advice on how to work published 3E adventures - like Dungeon's own "Kill Bargle" and WotC' Red Hand of Doom - into the region should you wish to do so. And if you cant (or don't want to) print off the digital maps in colour, you can always get the "Karameikos: Kingdom of Adventure" boxed set on Ebay which comes with beautiful maps.
But don't take MY word for it - peruse it for yourself and then make an informed decision:
General Site: http://www.pandius.com/karameik.html
Maps: http://www.pandius.com/karameik.html#maps
One of many adventure suggestions: http://www.pandius.com/klbargle.html
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Not really designed as such, but the Savage Tide adventure path has a lot of this kind of thing built into it.
Take the 1st 2 adventures, and the attendant background info for Sasserine, and you have a wealth of information to flesh into a huge campaign. Throw in some of the "Tides of Dread" adventure, bits of "Serpents of Scuttecove" and you have a rocking piratical/city adventure set in an awesomely detailed area that fills your every requirement.
Harbor town.
Wilderness surrounding.
Fairly close to nearest population center (Cauldron), but far enough for adventuring.
Plenty of city-based, wilderness-based, and water-based adventures written that can slot in fairly easily.
If you're willing to swap campaign settings, Eberron has the excellent book "Sharn: City of Towers", which is about as complete a city-sourcebook as I can imagine. You can have an entire campaign that runs from 1 to epic without ever leaving the city.
Finally, in the DMG2 there is a fleshed out small settlement (forget the name right now), that gets the full write-up treatment. NPC's, names, adventure seeds, they're all right there in the book.
-t
Saltmarsh.
Karameikos: I did start out my career as a GM with the Basic/Expert rules, so I have adventured extensively in Karameikos. And it rocked. Only one of the players still with me was there then, but I guess she would love the nostalgia feeling of it. Will take a look.
Eberron: Don't really have strong feelings for the setting.
Sasserine: Interesting idea.. I think I actually missed out on the first issue of STAP.. maybe I have it in PDF. And I have been wanting to run something in Scuttlecove for years.
Saltmarsh: Again, good idea, but for some reason I always feel like Paizo can deliver more flavor than WOtC.
Great CIty: Never heard of, but it looks intriguing.
Btw, have anyone of you tried something like this? I mean, have a sandboxed area ready up front, so if the characters decides to change the objective mid-session (nah.. that merchants boring mission doesn't sound fun.. we'll head up into the mountains instead), all you had to do was pick out something else from your bag?
I think the players will love it, but I think it will take a lot of work.
Btw, have anyone of you tried something like this? I mean, have a sandboxed area ready up front, so if the characters decides to change the objective mid-session (nah.. that merchants boring mission doesn't sound fun.. we'll head up into the mountains instead), all you had to do was pick out something else from your bag?I think the players will love it, but I think it will take a lot of work.
It takes a lot of work and also many players are afraid of it. Most players I've encountered want a handful of choices to choose between and actually freeze up when there is little to no direction from the GM (especially when it goes "You wake up in the morning. What do you do?").
My advice: try to leave hooks lying about that the players are free to ignore but gives them ideas on what they can do.
Great City: Never heard of, but it looks intriguing.
I know you're doing a sandbox game setup, but the Great City does have supporting adventures to go with it.
Sandbox games inherently require a bit more work, both on the GM's and the players' part. While it does take a lot more effort, it is very rewarding.
It takes a lot of work and also many players are afraid of it. Most players I've encountered want a handful of choices to choose between and actually freeze up when there is little to no direction from the GM (especially when it goes "You wake up in the morning. What do you do?").
My advice: try to leave hooks lying about that the players are free to ignore but gives them ideas on what they can do.
The plan has always been to have the PCs encounter hooks along the way. Maybe they bump into a young woman whose husband never came home from a trip to his parents farm a few miles outside of the city. Maybe a map falls out of a book they're browsing at a library.
And if they don't want to run with it, I can always dish out something new. The flipside is that I'm bound to do a lot of work that never gets played...
The flipside is that I'm bound to do a lot of work that never gets played...That time. No reason you can't reskin that adventure and insert it someplace else later.
Kalamar has a lot of information available. It is 3.5e, so most of it can be picked up on the cheap.
CJ
Karameikos: I did start out my career as a GM with the Basic/Expert rules, so I have adventured extensively in Karameikos. And it rocked. Only one of the players still with me was there then, but I guess she would love the nostalgia feeling of it. Will take a look.
I'd second Karameikos, as it's been my go-to setting for decades. Only with the rise of Golarion am I actually moving away from Mystara as my home game setting. Even my current Savage Tide game is set in Mystara (as any Isle of Dread related product should be...Greyhawk? Hah! Not on my watch...). I actually had a Player's Guide to Karameikos I had pulled together somewhere in a doc file. I prefer the D&D version in the Gazetteer over the AD&D updates, but I did bring in a few pieces from the newer stuff. If you're going that route, the Vaults are definitely a grand resource. Karameikos is obviously rooted in standard D&D feel, and you've got Darokin, Thyatis, Alfheim, Rockhome, Ylarum, and the Five Shires all near at hand for some ready-made "foreign" influence.
Btw, have anyone of you tried something like this? I mean, have a sandboxed area ready up front, so if the characters decides to change the objective mid-session (nah.. that merchants boring mission doesn't sound fun.. we'll head up into the mountains instead), all you had to do was pick out something else from your bag?
I think the players will love it, but I think it will take a lot of work.
My games are pretty much always like this--I have a setting that is solid, work in published adventures as they seem appropriate and modify/remove anything that won't fit. It does take a lot of work, and the warning over player frustration is a good one. It's a much more organic-feeling game for me, and the players are much more invested in the world/story than when I've just thrown out some random adventure-railroad.
That said, I'm getting old, with too much to do at the job and at home, and so I'm hopping into Legacy of Fire as a shot at going full-on with an Adventure Path. I imagine I'll still have some of the sandbox elements, but I'm going to try and stick to "by-the-book" as much as possible. And of course, if it goes bad then we're in Katapesh anyway and that has huge potential for randomness!
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Bella Sara Charter Superscriber
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But don't take MY word for it
Ack! Reading Rainbow flashback...
Butterfly in the sky, I can go twice as high
Take a look, it's in a book - Reading Rainbow.
I can go anywhere!
Friends to know and ways to grow - Reading Rainbow.
I can be anything!
Take a look, it's in a book - Reading Rainbow.
Reading Rainbow, Reading Rainbow, Reading Rainbow, Reading Rainbow!
Lay off the angel dust, Geordi.
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I might try first asking the players what types of adventure they are interested in playing in. Do they want a dungeon crawl? Do they want a plot-driven mystery? Etc. That way you know what types of adventures to start thinking about and developing, and will develop adventures that they actually are interested in playing. Then you can give them a selection and they can choose which one they want.
Another idea would be to give the entire party an overarching goal. For instance, they want to eliminate slavery in their region. You don't have to tell them where they'd start with this, but it would let you flesh out that whole industry, decide on who the big and medium-sized players are, etc. Or you could give the PCs different goals that they are all trying to achieve. Using Mystara as an example, you could all put the PCs on a boat heading for the isle of dread. They each have different goals that they want to achieve there. The fighter might want to become a big game dinosaur hunter, but doesn't really know how to go about that. The cleric could want to spread the word of the deity to the local population, or study the native religions. The wizard might be ultimately looking for a powerful artifact. This way each of the players has a goal that they are trying to accomplish and that gives them direction, but they get to pick how to bring about this goal.
Another great help in sandbox adventures, in my opinion, are flow charts. Map out the many different directions the party could go in, and put it in a flow chart. It's a great way of brainstorming what direction the campaign could lead in, but doesn't take away the PCs agency. They still get to decide which arrow on the flow chart to follow.
If you want to use Dungeon magazine as a resource (and what a great resource it is), I would recommend the "Complete Dungeon Index", in the final print issue of the magazine. It lists every adventure Dungeon published by setting, system and level, and can be very useful for coming up with pre-made adventures to plunk into your setting with hopefully minimal modification. It also lists the Campaign Workbooks (another great tool) and the "Maps of Mystery", all of which can be great food for thought. Of course that presupposes that you have access to back issues of Dungeon.
Hope something above is useful to you.
BrOp
... and now I want to use the Isle of Dread as my sandbox.. :)
I am not too fond of dungeon crawls myself. In my current campaign, maybe 1/3 of the 19 sessions have been without combat or maybe 1 small combat. It has been plot-driven and heavily focused on NPC interaction. Not all of the players like this, though.
I did play the Isle of Dread back in the days (Expert D&D Rules), and I think one of the players (who actually co-GM-ed the original Isle of Dread, would get a kick out of it). And fortunately for me, the sandbox is mostly done :D
Suggestions for other Dungeon adventures that could fit on the Island is also greatly appreciated... I seem to recall one that dealt with hunting dinosaurs on a remote colony... can't remember its name.
Hiya.
Any world/setting can fit this style. Like a few others in this thread, almost all of my games/campaigns are open-ended like this. I will sit down with the players as they make characters and ask questions as they create PC's. Find out what the group seems to be leaning towards and what kind of characters they end up with...this usually gives a perfect starting location.
Picking a town/city is a perfect (and almost always how I start) choice. I then take a week or so of time to write down some NPC names (the 'movers and shakers' of the area), maybe do a more detailed area map, and then write down a few things that are "going on". The first game is a 'get your feet wet' game; PC's are introduced to eachother, and the news of the day is sprinkled about the session. From there, the players pretty much pick something that peaks their interest and off they go! I'll usually detail a week to a month at a time of what is going on, and continue the 'news' stories that the PC's decided not to look into. This provides a sense of "the world will go on without you, you know..." sort of feeling. If/when the PC's start to really shake things up (ex: bringing down a large slaver ring that's been a thorn in the side of the local lords), *then* people start to notice them...until then, they are looked at primarily as money-seeking nut cases for the most part. ;)
I've found that once players start to get a feeling for their characters, the DM's work is pretty easy. The players do all the 'writing' of the story, the DM just fills in the blanks and adjusts the reactions of the rest of the world to the PC's interfearance (or lack thereof). :)
VERY rewarding once it gets going. :)
^_^
Paul L. Ming
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For a long time now, I have had an idea to create a sandboxed portion of a gaming world where the characters are free to do exactly what they want. Maybe they'll head out to the mountains in search for some adventure? Maybe they will go down to the dockside tavern to see if someone needs adventurers? Maybe the church of Pelor needs help?
Anyway, I don't know if this made any sense, but what I'm looking for is a product (city product, regional product) that describes a location in great detail, which I then can improve upon.
I think you just described Necromancer's Lost City of Barakus hardcover.
-DM Jeff
Anyway, I don't know if this made any sense, but what I'm looking for is a product (city product, regional product) that describes a location in great detail, which I then can improve upon. Doing it from scratch would take a great deal more work. My ideal location would be a medium-sized city (3,000-10,000), probably a harbor town, with some wilderness around it (forest, mountains) and maybe a couple of smaller villages. This area will constitute the sandbox.
I might recommend Korvosa. It's a harbor town, has swamps, forests and mountainous regions not to far off, and has several satellite villages described. It's a little larger than you were asking for, being 18k citizens and room to grow.
And you can get all this lovely information in one book, Guide to Korvosa :)
... and now I want to use the Isle of Dread as my sandbox.. :)
I am not too fond of dungeon crawls myself. In my current campaign, maybe 1/3 of the 19 sessions have been without combat or maybe 1 small combat. It has been plot-driven and heavily focused on NPC interaction. Not all of the players like this, though.
I did play the Isle of Dread back in the days (Expert D&D Rules), and I think one of the players (who actually co-GM-ed the original Isle of Dread, would get a kick out of it). And fortunately for me, the sandbox is mostly done :D
Suggestions for other Dungeon adventures that could fit on the Island is also greatly appreciated... I seem to recall one that dealt with hunting dinosaurs on a remote colony... can't remember its name.
Then do what I did...take the Savage Tides adventure path, cut it off at the "we head off the island" section, and just leave the players on the Isle! The AP material is all great for building up the island, and the companion Dragon magazines having nice fluff to build out the sandbox. Dungeon #114 also had an adventure and set-piece on the Isle. And if you shooting for Mystara flavor, some of my notes for converting the AP to that setting (it defaults to Greyhawk) are up at the Vaults of Pandius.
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Then do what I did...take the Savage Tides adventure path, cut it off at the "we head off the island" section, and just leave the players on the Isle! The AP material is all great for building up the island, and the companion Dragon magazines having nice fluff to build out the sandbox. Dungeon #114 also had an adventure and set-piece on the Isle. And if you shooting for Mystara flavor, some of my notes for converting the AP to that setting (it defaults to Greyhawk) are up at the Vaults of Pandius.... and now I want to use the Isle of Dread as my sandbox.. :)
I am not too fond of dungeon crawls myself. In my current campaign, maybe 1/3 of the 19 sessions have been without combat or maybe 1 small combat. It has been plot-driven and heavily focused on NPC interaction. Not all of the players like this, though.
I did play the Isle of Dread back in the days (Expert D&D Rules), and I think one of the players (who actually co-GM-ed the original Isle of Dread, would get a kick out of it). And fortunately for me, the sandbox is mostly done :D
Suggestions for other Dungeon adventures that could fit on the Island is also greatly appreciated... I seem to recall one that dealt with hunting dinosaurs on a remote colony... can't remember its name.
concur on this, totally. Start with Sasserine (possibly closer to the IoD but the Isle is unknown) and get the expedition together. That'll give them time in a civilized city, with the amenities etc. If you want to handwave the crossing to the IoD, do it, then have them start low level on the IoD itself. Again, get the Savage Tide adventures, at least the 1st 4 or 5 of them, and the one with Serpents of Scuttlecove in it. Mine those adventures for Farshore, Sasserine, the shorelines and other islands in the area, and plenty of pre-made NPC's and interesting monsters. Just in Tides of Dread, you could stretch the defense of Farshore from Pirates and Demons and Dinosaurs into a whole 1-20 campaign.
And what better way to Sandbox the game than to have the players invested in the construction of the infrastructure.
-t
If you do set up in a city environment, you can't go wrong with the old Flying Buffalo "Citybooks 1-6." They do a great job of setting some cool locales and even weave a few C-level plot threads in there.
-Ben.
What about the Vault of Larrin Karr by Necromancer Games? It doesn't have the city but it looks like Lilith has found a perfect source for that.
Where am I going to find the money for that Great City now my birthday has gone?
Cheers and it sounds like your players are lucky.
I will second the suggestion of The Vault of Larrin Karr.
There are a few towns in it. One is sizable and could be increased in size to a big city without too much plot interferance.
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Ptolus
I second this. Ptolus is expensive and out of print, but if you can find it it will last you for decades of adventure. You can also get a .pdf version of it.
Ptolus is v3.5, but it was the original 3e campaign. Monte Cook used Ptolus as a base for his home game, where he playtested 3rd Edition rules (as well as pretty much everything 3.x that he made after 3e came out). Because it was a test ground for the new edition, Ptolus is set up to make use of almost all the 3e rules; city, dungeon, wilderness, planes-traveling, small-time crooks, worlds-wrecking apocalypses, it has room for everything. Ptolus is 3rd Edition.
Plus, Ptolus has a huge fan base and community that are constantly coming up with new ideas and material. If you visit Monte Cook's message board, you can even get responses directly from the creator himself.
So, long story short: Ptolus requires some investment (I got the hardcover when it first came out for $120), but, in my experience, if you really utilize it, it can totally be worth it. Best source book ever.
What about the Vault of Larrin Karr by Necromancer Games? It doesn't have the city but it looks like Lilith has found a perfect source for that.
Where am I going to find the money for that Great City now my birthday has gone?
Cheers and it sounds like your players are lucky.
In the Great City, there is allusions to the Dungeon Under the Mountain, if you're needing some dungeon crawling fun.
Begone green-eyed temptress!
...Did I mention the supporting Blueprints series? ;)
Well, I have decided to go for Isle of Dread, actually. That is, if my players want to go for it, which I'll suspect they will.
As this campaign is slated for 2011, I haven't figured out the details yet, but it will probably be set in Golarion, have the PC's start out in "Sasserine" and then pretty soon leave for the Isle. I will steal material from the various adventures and supplements, but probably not entire modules as I'm trying to cut down on the time spent on battles. However, exploring, politics, communicating with natives etc. is just some of many plot hooks to use on the Isle of Dread.
And hunt T-Rexes, of course. One must never forget to hunt T-Rexes, preferrably with the Jurassic Park soundtrack as background music.