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I've been running homebrews and a few adventure paths for the past several years but I've always kept a steady hand on the story and characters. I give my players lots of choice and freedom, but only to an extent. For my next campaign I've been toying with the idea of doing a homebrew Sandbox adventure off the coast of Tian Xia, I feel like I have a lot ideas and am really excited to getting to the game but I also feel a little apprehensive about what running a sandbox could be like.
I've read through Kingmaker, leafed through Serpent's Skull and have been combing the forums for opinions but I have some specific queries that I think would be best answered by those with experience on the matter.
When I prep for a game I'll design the dungeons, the encounters, traps, NPC's and so forth for the particular adventure I'll be running. (I like to premake my encounters by putting each enemy NPC on an index card with their stats, abilities and hp, then roll their initiatives during prep to save time and organize it all) But i see the problem with wanting to do that in a sandbox...that seems like it would become a MASSIVE undertaking, even if the game were just set on a small island, I'd still need to have all the maps, traps, quests etc lined out before a player rolled a dice.
Am I just over thinking this? How do others keep up with a Sandbox game? Do you just create as you go? If that's the case, how do you keep up with the design of interesting encounters and dungeons? Is there a different systems other than the hex explorations a la Kingmaker? Any and all comments and advice would be most helpful.
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I think the most important thing is to start the game with some sort of goal for the PCs. The reason these people have come together and cooperate. Just "rummaging through the local dungeons, looking for treasure" won't get anywhere. The characters need a purpose. That way you can have successes and the players have reasons to do things and something to base their plans for the near future on.
And fortunately, the same thing applies also to the GM. If you already know what the players have planned as their goal, you have significantly narrowed down the number of places they would go to and people they would seek out. If you play a pirate campaign, you can ignore what's going on in the forests, deserts, and plains. They will stick to islands and coastal cities. If you play a thieves guild campaign, you know the PCs will stay in or close to their home city, and if they are visting contacts in other cities, they will probably finish their business there quickly and then return back to their guild instead of sight seeing and checking out the local calls for adventurers.
So as the very first thing, I would get togethe with the players to decide what kind of group they will be playing (specific characters don't matter yet) and what long term goal they will have as a group. With that, comming up with the setting will be much easier.
advice i recieved, and have done... steal like everything just upped in price the day you get your paycheck.
also: get background/personal information from your characters, goals, dreams, history, regrets.
You could just make a hexcrawl and use a dungeon generator on the web. Throw in a random encounter table, several key landmarks, and it should be rather easy to prep.
http://thealexandrian.net/wordpress/17308/roleplaying-games/hexcrawl
http://donjon.bin.sh/pathfinder/dungeon/
I would try to involve my players, as it's a lot of work to flash out a complete world on your own.
E.g.: one player wants to play a knight, ask him to flash out the knight order, history etc.
Try to focus on one area of the world. The rest will come by it's own :D
Definitely ask what they're interested in. Prep that.
Dangle a number of fun clues in front of the Pacs, build on the lures they nibble on.
Explain to themthattheresponsibility is on their heads to runaway if they choose to attack something that's too strong for them.
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My group sandboxes a lot. Like almost exclusively, and I have GMed quite a few. My biggest tip is this: Spend a metric crapton of time making the world. Flesh out the cities, regions, countries, etc. Make laws specific to region (they hang you for stealing in city X, or city Y has a completely corrupt law system). Figure out what attitudes to races are in specific places. The players are a huge resource in this. As has been said, involve them. Their backstories and fleshing out their homes will give you huge swathes of information. Go so far as to design things like the uniforms worn by town guards or favored foods in certain places. This is your world; people can't pick up your book and figure it out. Your job is to make the world as immersive as possible. It is a lot of work, but if you have a good group, they will appreciate everything you have done.
The second biggest tip is a tip to all GMs. Be flexible and improvise. Your players will never go exactly where you want them to in the way you want without railroading. This also functions as a caveat to the above tip. If you find that The Holy Order Of Lawful Jerkwads you made are detracting from the fun, introduce a couple NPCs from that order who are actually nice. Have a list of random names in case you have to name NPCs on the fly because they will talk to someone you haven't made. It may end up that a random NPC is a great boon to the party. The previous tip sounds like a lot of work, but if you just have a list of things to bring up for an area instead of fleshing the whole thing out in detail with maps, it makes it easier. I try to have a list of at least 20 words per area where the characters would stop for a while. They can be things like "bagels made here, people are annoyingly nice, and talk like they're from Wisconsin." It makes a huge difference as you don't get obscenely attached, but you have a lot of material to flesh things out.
The third tip is argot. People talk differenty in different places. Perhaps there are racial slurs for certain unpopular races in country X (in my buddy's game, we call all orcs and half orcs "underbites"). Have naming conventions. Country Y has people with Germanic sounding names, for example, while Country Z is more Gaelic. Make up a curse word. Battlestar Galactica has "Frack" instead of the f-bomb and Farscape has "Frell." Don't go overboard with that, but just a single made up expletive can make the players get into character and into your world so much easier. Another one of my GMs had a world with no gods, and he made us redact any statement including the word "god," so we would say something more setting fitting. It was annoying at first, but after the first two sessions, we got into it and the game was much better for it.
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I really like what Banalitybob said above. Seeing as I too run almost exclusively sandbox games, there are a few more things I would like to add.
First - Pick a theme! Pick a theme to the game that you and your players will all like and that you feel inspired to run. You say your running in Tian Xia, but what type of game are you running? Are you running a classic fantasy adventure, steam punk, noir, cops & robbers, pirates, guild members, etc. My themes going back a few years where (sci-fi, classic fantasy/dark, steam punk, now I'm currently running a cyberpunk Pathfinder game). Having a theme allows you to narrow what classes/archetypes people will pick, what races make sense, what languages they choose, what skills they focus in. This is a good thing. Its okay to say "no elves in this game". I usually say "certain races are restricted, and any character you make HAS TO BE TO THEME OR YOU WILL REMAKE". When I ran steam punk, I had Alchemist (salesmen), a runaway gunslinger (fighter), a playboy (bard), and a "cute" theif (rogue). My friend is currently running an underdark game and has said (no humans, elves, halflings, but added drow, orcs, and a few others).
Second - Stick to the theme. I hate it when a GM says he's going to run a Renaissance game and then adds automatic weapons, mechs, and robots. I literally threw a book at him. Pick a theme, enforce the theme (both through rules and through fluff), and then stick to it.
Third - Plan, plan, plan. You cannot go wrong with writing up a ton of side quests or random encounters. More options the better. Also, try to write quests that stick to theme (see above). I also recommend reading my post if you haven't already here. This has 7 quick rules to help you out.
Fourth - Be prepared. Have as many resources as you can help you come up with stuff on the fly. You're going to have to. A good sandbox GM can come up with any needed when needed. Here are some tools that I use ALL THE TIME.
http://paizo.com/pathfinderRPG/prd/
http://donjon.bin.sh/
http://www.seventhsanctum.com/generate.php?Genname=corporationname
http://mcmustard.com/pf_items.html#
http://thealexandrian.net/wordpress/tag/advanced-d20-rules
http://www.dunknet.net/pathfinder.aspx
http://pathfinder-treasure-generator.com/
Keep things in perspective.
Sketch on the large scale stuff. You don't need a fully developed culture for the country 10000 miles away, unless the PCs have a way to get there.
Improvise.
But remember that good improvisation isn't completely random.
Say you're playing a game in which Scary Bad Guys are threatening the Land of Kittens.
You don't need to know where the stronghold of the ancient and horrible enemies of all that is fuzzy and cute is until about a minute and a half before the players do. Until your players find out where it is, or even THAT it is, it's nowhere. That's a good thing. If you put it somewhere, and the players trip over it, then you're screwed unless you're ready to run it. If it's waiting in the wings, you can place it when you - and your party - is ready to go there. If there is absolutely nowhere in the world that it could possibly be, you've probably gone into too much detail.
Repeat.
The first time they see a three headed orc, it's weird and maybe your players think "Wow, that was cool the way he spat acid at us."
The second time, it's a little redundant. "Yup. It's spitting acid again."
The third time, though, it's a pattern, and your next adventure is going to be "In the Castle of Three Headed Orcs that Spit Acid." Hopefully, with a better title.
Additionally, one thing I have found true about most aspects of life is summed up in a Coco Chanel quote: “Before you leave the house, look in the mirror and take one thing off.”
Understand that you have overcomplicated something. You've done it. We all do it. Make sure that you have a few minutes (I typically re-examine my notes about an hour before the game) before you start playing to go in and remove one element that is just overkill. This extends to creation as well. Go crazy, make the world, do your thing, and then edit. The fantasy world for the game I'm planning when one of my group's current GMs burns out or ends their arc is a prime example. I have world maps, political, economic, and climate maps, lists of deities, races, history, the works. I have it down to certain races having certain traits when they come from certain regions. And then I realized I hadn't really worked on anything for gnomes, couldn't think of a logical place they would have originated, and didn't really have a role for them in the world. There are now no gnomes in my world. Editing is as key as creation. Your game can just as easily be defined by what you leave out as what you include.
I've always run my campaigns that can take on whatever form my players choose. I provide some obvious hooks for an overarching quest, but I provide plenty of freedom for them to do as they please. A lot of my players play cRPGs and are used to that style of play: a major questline with various side quests.
The best piece of advice I can provide is simply providing motivation. You can't just drop the players in the world and say, "Now what do you do?" I've seen even experienced players wander aimlessly in this situation. I like to provide a dramatic hook on the onset involving why the party is together in the first place. The cliche tavern-meeting isn't likely to cut it.
If you motivate the group in any direction, both you and the players will have a better sense of where the campaign is headed. If it helps, throw out some obvious adventure hooks to get the game started and let the players take the reigns once they get their feet wet.
I'll echo DragonBringerX's suggestions of tools. Also, read some of the Alexandrian's essays on adventure design.
Good luck and happy gaming!