So here's a design-challenge: Create a sandbox-type adventuring environment using just Beginner Box content. Small-scale, self-contained - a Pathfinder E5 West Marches, if you will.
Anybody interested? Anybody willing to organize this as a collaborative sort of thing over the web, maybe?
So here's a design-challenge: Create a sandbox-type adventuring environment using just Beginner Box content. Small-scale, self-contained - a Pathfinder E5 West Marches, if you will.
Anybody interested? Anybody willing to organize this as a collaborative sort of thing over the web, maybe?
Lots of great ideas contained in the West Marches link. Doing something like this could be a lot of fun (especially if you had IRL groups doing this in different parts of the country connected through the internet). It feels like taking one of the "living" campaigns and making it feel organic rather than scripted (since we are all playing in the same area but with no set track to follow).
If you were to set this in Golarion, where would you start? If not Golarion, would you use the same sort of setting structure from West Marches?
Does the beginner box have rules for wilderness exploration?
Does the beginner box have rules for wilderness exploration?
IT does have a section on enviornment (and a brief description of wilderness adventures on p 28). Other than needing to generate some sort of encounter table for each type of terrain, that's really about all you need.
EDIT:
there're already tables in the back of the DM book pp85-87 with monster types by terrain (and city, woot!).
Lots of great ideas contained in the West Marches link. Doing something like this could be a lot of fun (especially if you had IRL groups doing this in different parts of the country connected through the internet). It feels like taking one of the "living" campaigns and making it feel organic rather than scripted (since we are all playing in the same area but with no set track to follow).
I've been thinking about setting up a fully stocked sandbox like West Marches for a long time but found the prep-work too daunting. However, if we confine ourselves to Beginner Box content and share the setting among a number of GMs it might be manageable.
For me personally, the logistics of also running the game in parallel are probably more trouble than it's worth (I'm in Japan), but other contributors would of course be free to try it. It'd definitely be interesting to compare how other groups fare, exchange GMing advice etc.
If you were to set this in Golarion, where would you start? If not Golarion, would you use the same sort of setting structure from West Marches?
TBH, I'm not too keen on having much of an explicit wider world around the sandbox, lest we get carried away with big picture /metaplot/ worldbuilding stuff. Also, my knowledge of Golarion is limited to what's in Rise of the Runelords.
I'd prefer approaching this more like one would a mega-dungeon: The focus should be on developing interesting encounters in an open and detailed but "bounded" environment. Beyond that, a vague generic fantasy framework to tie it all together thematically would be enough for me. If there is a place in Golarion that can accommodate such a pocket setting without one interfering with the other, fine.
To give you an idea of what I have in mind: I'd be content to have an area spanning maybe 150 x 100 miles, encompassing one small city and maybe five or six smaller settlements to rest and resupply in. Much like with the West Marches, PCs would be outsiders heading for a wild frontier: Assuming that civilization is south, they would be heading north, into the mountains or marshes. East and west is the ocean. The further north they go, the less settlements there are and the more dangerous the world around them gets.
I'd start by drawing a broad overview map, developing a few factions and themes for related encounters / mini-dungeons and developing random encounter tables. After that I'd go about fleshing out locations and encounters and backfilling the setting's details as we go.
Make sense?
Avoiding the metaplot of Golarion is probably a good idea for something like this.
Mapping wouldn't be to difficult. A free hex paper generator set to .2 inches and you can assign a grid (A-BB up and down, 1-23 from left to right). Post a scan of the overview (major features (mountains, rivers, forests) and a start point and you're ready to go.
Fleshing out the start point (whether it's a keep on the borderlands or a fortified town sending out adventurers to keep monsters away from the settlers/prospectors it supports) sounds like the easiest way to start. If you go with the premis of E5 and using the beginner box style rules you keep the variables down to a minimum so it wouldn't be that difficult to begin populating adventure sites.