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I'm creating a sandbox campaign that I have described as 'Gygaxian D&D with lots of Lovecraft and some post-apocalyptic Mad Maxian influence for good measure.' I'm working with an area of temperate climate and varying geography including mountains, swamps, lots of forest, arid wasteland, ocean, etc. I plan on setting the characters loose in the setting and letting them explore with most of the adventuring being site-based over story-based. I usually write out stories and link them together into arcs for my games but that's not how I'm structuring this campaign. I've got a good handle on the setting and even a couple of things they can do at low level, I need more however.
What I am looking for is a number of suggestions of your favorite adventures, big and small I can plug into the setting. I have a few in mind but I'd love to hear what you suggest. The adventure/module/site/plot/whatever can be any edition of any system. I am happy to convert anything to this game so feel free to suggest anything. I have a large collection of old Dungeon Magazines so don't discount that as a source. I also have a handful of PFS scenarios from when I was running weekly games so those can work too.
The only restrictions I can really think of would be setting. It's temperate and low to mid fantasy medieval (think Lord of the Rings or Game of Thrones) so arctic, tropical, Asian, or Egyptian themes are probably out without some work. There are enough thick forests to make tropical work sometimes but that depends on the product.
I plan on plugging in a modified Rappan Athuk on an island off the coast as well as the Lost Mine of Phandelver from the 5e Stater Set. I will also find a home for Feast of Ravenmoor, Dragon's Demand, and Red Hand of Doom since they are great modules though I have players that have already experienced them, some quite recently.
So what are some of your favorites?
If you can get your hands on it, I love the AD&D Carnival for Ravenloft. I used it as the basis for a traveling group in my setting. It wasn't too hard to convert or leave out the Ravenloft specific material.
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Dungeon magazine would have some excellent scenarios as sort of stand-alone sites.
Off the top of my head I'm thinking "The Treasure Vaults of Kasil" (short pit-vaults trapped like crazy) and the "Ruins of Nol-Daer" (both in Dungeon #13). The latter is mid level ruined keep/dungeon exploration - has an interesting Cambion BBEG, some Black Dragons - good fighting/exploration mod. Those two can just be dropped and are very self-contained and excellent site based modules/scenarios.
I'm scouring my Dungeon collection atm for a short 1-shot tourney I'm going to run. Since Gamma World is my preferred game I will keep an eye out for PA/Mad Max-ish scenarios I come across.
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Sweet! Thanks for the suggestions and the open eyes. I have so many Dungeon issues I will never get through them all. There are some serious gems hidden in there.
I would like to plug Slumbering Tsar, Wrath of the Righteous, and Iron Gods in later on so I put a post-apocalyptic area in there where I could have demons flooding from a dimensional rift and on the fringes a place that hordes ancient technology. I am thinking about grabbing a copy of Wardens of the Reborn Forge and sticking it somewhere deep in the wasteland if the urge for steampunk strikes.
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Here's a few more from Dungeon
#17 - The Pit - a good, small sized location encounter that can be dropped anywhere.
#18 - Tallows Deep (and excellent Goblin lair, very difficult
#132 - Caverns of the Ooze Lord - site specific location, also with some great Lovecraft potential (Juiblex can be replaced with Abhoth - or do what I do, make them one and the same). It can be a stand alone cult base or you can keep the village nearby and run the module as is.
#134 - And Madness Followed - Lovecraftian and site based (town), but it's also event based - which may not work for you and the sandbox.
You could run it before, during or after the events of the adventure (which would make it a very bad ghost town).
I always try to look at adventures from every angle - how it got there, what happens if a group fails - that way I can make changes or get more out of the mods.
The Age of Worms AP has some very interesting sites/set piece locations you can pluck out and place throughout your campaign world.
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Another good module to poach would be parts of X4 - Master of the Desert Nomads: in particular the Buried Temple as a small site encounter and the incredibly fun Evil Abby (slightly bigger area). Both could be easily dropped in arid/wasteland/badlands kind of environment.
GA3 - Temple, Tower, Tomb was one of those TSR DM support site modules that came out with little fan fare and was very underrated. If you like hard dungeon crawls this gives you three small/medium sized dungeons that literally can be dropped anywhere - and should have a dangerous rep of "no one comes out alive".
As a matter of fact - you can go sandbox nuts and throw in places like White Plume Mountain
The Ghost Tower of Inverness
Caves of Chaos:B2 - Keep on the Borderlands
Village of Hommlet ruined Moathouse is how you do low-level site based dungeons.... or go with Raging Swan's tribute and take on it - the Shadowed Keep on the Borderlands (excellent mod)
The Lost City (B4 - very bizarre life under a desert pyramid)
Temple of Elemental Evil
Forgotten Temple of Tharizdun
Lost Caverns of Tsojcanth (wotc did a 3.5 conversion if you can find it online)
Just to name a few
Minor derail, but what exactly is a "sandbox adventure"?
Open world. An open world is a type of game design where a player can roam freely through a virtual world and is given considerable freedom in choosing how or when to approach objectives. The term free roam is also used, as is sandbox and free-roaming.
If you're looking at Tsar consider Barakus and Rappan Athuk from FGG. They might not fit vanilla into what you're planning but they've got tons of good material. Also if you're willing to rework the monsters involved I like Master of the Fallen Fortress as a good stand alone with lots of potential for more adventure. Finally Hollow's Last Hope. Its a 3.5 module with an emphasis on exploration to save a town. Again, with a little modification here and there with regards to monsters you could have a very awesome one shot with potential for future adventures
The PCs find themselves in Falcon's Hollow; a ragged lumber town in the wilderness. They are ruled over by a group of organized crime calling themselves the Lumber Consortium. Recently the fey, fed up with the human despoilers and being hunted in the woods poisoned the town's water well. The creeping fungus in the well however isn't some pansy lung thing; it causes madness and turns the woodsmen into axe-wielding psychopaths.
Laurel at the Roots and Remedies has a cure. It involves several ingredients but 3 of them are out in the wilds. Someone will need to find:
1. a haunted witch's hut: once the site of Lovecraftian summons and mad orgies of debased evil now the place is rife with madness. You could add a Haunt of the witch that induces psychosis, change the cauldron in the hut into an aberrant monster and then plant hints that the monster was once Laurel's grandmother.
2. the oldest tree in the woods: to find this you'll need to go to the woodsmen's camp. Good luck; the madness is there and there's a serial killer with an axe stalking his co-workers.
3. the ruins of a dwarven monastery: you can add aberrant horrors, haunts, and undead suggesting that ages ago the fey struck here first. A couple of the dwarves burrowed down underground and survived, but were forever tainted by madness. They are now derro (sub in for the kobold tie in for the dungeons below) and they've finally begun raiding the surface world once more for their own insane depravity.
Surviving all of these you make it back to the town with the ingredients and Laurel gets to work. Depending on whether you're running a light or dark world the cure works perfectly or the cure works to stop the disease but the Wis drain on the victims is permanent, allowing the cruel bosses of the Lumber Consortium even easier access to the folk of the town as mules and slaves. Maybe THAT was their plan all along; maybe they faked the fey angle altogether.
The real story could be that the Lumber Consortium investigated the old ruins, captured and tortured a derro, and figured out what the fey had done ages ago. They resurrected the fungus from the ruins somehow and dosed their own people in an attempt to use the madness and subsequent cure that they just happened to have and let slip into one of Laurel's books as a way to garner more and better control of the populace.
Now their grateful slaves would work for nothing. The bosses get all the profit and when the woodsmen work themselves literally to death they offer up the souls of the fallen to their masters from beyond the stars. Everyone wins!
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I completely forgot to mention that Temple of Elemental Evil has a home already. I got a free .pdf for participating in the D&D Next playtesting and have been running it in 2nd Edition for some good old-school fun and this is part of where I got the idea of doing a bigger sandbox so Hommlet and the Moathouse/Temple plus the nefarious plots are included.
Rappan Athuk also already has a home. I picked it up a little while back and tried to base a campaign around it but it didn't really come together so I figure if I put it as part of a larger world the party can go there if they so desire but it's not the focus if they don't want it to be. The idea for this game came about when I was thinking of putting together a big sandbox with RA andSlumbering Tsar, with perhaps Bard's Gate or Stoneheart Valley also but then I thought that might be too focused in case the party wanted to do other, wildly different things. So I made a bigger setting with more options.
When it comes to a sandbox campaign, I think of the equivalent of Fallout 3 with a wide open world you can run around in and explore but there are stories and plots to pick up and follow. This game, while site-based as a reoccurring theme, I want to include some event-based stuff too so it doesn't feel too static and repetitive. My games are usually story/event-based so this is a departure for me as GM.
Thanks for all the suggestions, I will see what I can track down/already have kicking around. I would love to weave Age of Worms into the mix since it is a phenomenal campaign. I ran part of it in a conversion to World of Darkness but I'm not above running it as originally intended. Having some bigger plots running through the campaign would be nice. I'm using a pretty slow level progression (about the speed of AD&D) for this so an AP would not allow the party to hyper focus on it without them being outclasses pretty quickly because they can't keep up with the levels. Alternatively, it is a sandbox and I will make them aware that not everything they face will be level appropriate.
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Some handy tips from my own recent experience trying to sandbox:
- tie the PCs together as a group or else let them develop motivations as the game goes on. A couple of my PCs had motives based on individual backstories and as a result they argued over going after the paladin's mcguffin or the cleric's revenge kick.
- actively/publicly incentivize exploration. It might be as simple as "thar's gold in them thar hills!" to telling the players outright that if you discover a secret area in the dungeon and survive it'll unlock some hidden ability in them and you'll hand them all a free trait bonus or something.
- watch for the player with analysis paralysis. So far I've cycled through 2 groups of players in this sandbox. Both have included at least one guy who, faced with an open world and near-infinite plot hooks simply shuts down and stares blankly as his mind seeps out of his ears. Some players NEED to be led; if this happens talk with all your players and see if they'll work out a "leader" to decide missions to take, directions to go etc.
I'm sure you already know all this Mighty J. As long as I've GMd though and even having run sandboxy in the past I still got caught up by these so I figured I'd share. Enjoy the game it sounds totally RAD!
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When it comes to a sandbox campaign, I think of the equivalent of Fallout 3 with a wide open world you can run around in and explore but there are stories and plots to pick up and follow. This game, while site-based as a reoccurring theme, I want to include some event-based stuff too so it doesn't feel too static and repetitive. My games are usually story/event-based so this is a departure for me as GM.
This is my Gamma World game by default and has been since I was a teenager (mid 80's) and before Fallout, hell even before Wasteland. My game was sandbox before it was an established module style/adventure style - I think most GW games were. Two big sandbox GW modules were Legion of Gold (the granddaddy of all sandbox modules - 4 mini adventures and several smaller sandbox encounters) and Famine in Far-go.
Thinking back on my first major environs map on hex paper: I had purchased around 25 packs of slightly damaged Hex paper pads from the nearby .99 cent store - don't ask me why the .99 cent store had stacks and stacks of hex paper - I was just a VERY happy kid! And I eventually bought them all.
I had some Fallout style encounters:
- Abandoned Post-Apocalypse town (people were drug off by evil cyborg to be utilized for their organs or turned into cyborgs themselves). Players encountered some weird robots going through the ghost town (looking for more people).
- Small remote Research Medical facility (one of staff in stasis was killed, automated system made him a cyborg in an attempt to save his life) - this was the main module/base/dungeon.
- A Power Relay station (broadcast power relay station and offices), few encounters (small creatures) plus some good tech loot.
- Junkyard and buildings - with some gigantic mutated scorpions roaming around the columns of wrecks (again, this is why I love Fallout.
- A marking on the players map of a shooting star - A Downed Space Ship that had a few internal sections sealed. When the players started looting the wreck, they bashed down the door and out came some of the old crew - brownish red melting plague zombies. Epic, the guys ran like hell into the desert until they realized what they unleashed, the re-grouped and came back to kick some ass.
And Hoover, yes - I was looking at (still am) Hollows Last Hope - the Dwarven Monastery is a very good and small drop dungeon. You don't even need the plot, just the ruins + add a few more encounters and it would fit almost anywhere.
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Ah...Gamma World.
Hmm...turns out I've been running sandbox games my whole GMing career..
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- watch for the player with analysis paralysis. So far I've cycled through 2 groups of players in this sandbox. Both have included at least one guy who, faced with an open world and near-infinite plot hooks simply shuts down and stares blankly as his mind seeps out of his ears. Some players NEED to be led; if this happens talk with all your players and see if they'll work out a "leader" to decide missions to take, directions to go etc.
My above mentioned World of Darkness game started out as an open sandbox and the whole group had this problem. This game is a different group with a couple people who are playing in my Serpent's Skull game so hopefully it shouldn't be a problem... I hope. Also it helps that it's low-fantasy medieval instead of modern where random exploration is more of thing for the common adventurer.
I ran Hollow's last Hope as a lead in to a campaign that arced from that to The Witchfire Trilogy and finally Red Hand of Doom and it's certainly a neat little module and a fun steampunky campaign. I also ran the first part of the Razmir trilogy, Crypt of the Everflame as a one shot a while back and it was fun, but it was a borrowed copy so I'd have to get my own if I include it.
I want to put Tomb of Horrors in there somewhere, just to mess with folks, because reasons.
If you're looking at Tsar consider Barakus and Rappan Athuk from FGG. They might not fit vanilla into what you're planning but they've got tons of good material. Also if you're willing to rework the monsters involved I like Master of the Fallen Fortress as a good stand alone with lots of potential for more adventure. Finally Hollow's Last Hope. Its a 3.5 module with an emphasis on exploration to save a town. Again, with a little modification here and there with regards to monsters you could have a very awesome one shot with potential for future adventures
** spoiler omitted **...
Mr. Hoover! Excellent just excellent. Falcon's Hollow is my favourite setting
what about some of the Obsidian Apocalypse stuff that gives you lots of neat options for a campaign set against a dark and broken world backdrop particularly the Return of the Elder Gods varient.
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Before a few minutes ago I knew absolutely noting about Obsidian Apocalypse. I just downloaded the free .pdf available on DriveThruRPG and it looks pretty neat. That's a bit more post-apocalyptic than I am aiming for, but I have no doubt I could mine the material for ideas.
The world is very iron age Western Europe around the 11th or 12th Centuries, as opposed to the 17th Century tone of Golarion. Since the geography is loosely based on a sketch of New England, where we live, I threw in all the devastated land to give some variety to the forests and rolling hills. However, I will be drawing on Abanakai culture for one of the human ethnicities so it's not straight post-Roman/early Norman Britain and Scotland type fare.
This game is an experiment for me all around because I'm not used to running this kind of sandbox and I really hope I can make it come alive and give the players enough to do. The death of the game will really be cutting them loose with no idea of where to go to find adventure. So any advice aside from cool adventures I can plug in is very much welcome. I'm thinking about making a handful of hooks for each region then give them to the party when they decide where they want to start. Once they start to express what sorts of things they are interested in it will be easier to know what sorts of things to focus on.
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I've been scouring through my old Dungeon magazines and I've found some gens, with the help of the internet. My internet searching has also lead me to some interesting third party 3E era materials that might be good for mining ideas. What is the general consensus on Monte Cook's Ptolus? It's from a great designer and it seems generally well recieved though, from what I gather, it's kind of steampunky and that's not the tech-level/tone I am aiming for overall.
Also, what are some of the best Pathfinder modules that might fit? I've got Feast of Ravenmoor, Carrion Hill, Fangwood Keep, and The Dragon's Demand in there, but I'd like to find homes for some others if they fit. I can just look at the ratings and reviews but that's only partially helpful in knowing if they can plug into a sandbox game such as this pretty easily.
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Okay, so my world has been stocked with an ass-ton* of adventure potential but I have lots of blank hexes. I have scoured adventures both old-school and new as well as a handful of AP installments and even some Dungeon Magazine gems.
Still there are blank hexes.
So what is out there that is really great fun for adventures? Are the Hex Crawl Chronicles from FGG any good? What about other 3PP material? What about material from other games entirely?
I could also use some temperate forest bits and some rocky badlands bits. Preferably in the level 7+ range. Urban and political intrigue suggestions are always welcome but they don't fill blank hexes.
*An ass-ton is slightly more than a butt-load but moderately less than a crap-lot.
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What I could really use also are interesting sites that can e plugged in randomly. Things like a giant ant hive or an evil tree that has dark fae living in it or something. Basically, something that is small and self contained and doesn't necessarily have a plot or story related to it. The kind of thing that players may dive into and completely forget that they were on some kind of errand. Just cool things for them to discover while they are exploring. I mined some of Kingmaker for ideas but most of those random locations are pretty small or simple.
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Hex Crawl Classics are good, but depending on the amount of work/detail you want done ahead of time it may not be an exact fit.
These are basically hexes that have an encounter, a majority without maps. There is at least one "5 room dungeon" mapped in each installment, but most of the encounters are sans maps. They do provide stats for some customized encounters- some interesting setups an scenarios. I think it's an excellent way to drop smaller (or potentially bigger, expandable) encounters in a sandbox setting. Warning: some of the encounters may be too weird
My concern that it may not be "enough" crunch/write-up for you - if you are looking for highly detailed/mapped, drop and play small sandbox encounters.
If you are looking for some great seed ideas, stated npcs, small strange locations and mini-encounters (mostly without their own maps) it could easily help shore up some gaps for you.
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Hm, yeah that's not as helpful. I can populate a river valley with monsters without spending money on a module. Your description of "highly detailed/mapped, drop and play small sandbox encounters" is exactly what I am looking for.
The hexes on my world map are 20 miles and I would like to have something interesting in most of them. The populated regions were pretty easy with towns and waystations and such being easy to find and plug in. The wilderness, while it should have more open space, has still been harder to populate, especially the deep wilderness. I could create my own locations but that makes WAY more work for me and the party may never encounter those things.
I'm going to start a detailed scouring of my Dungeon collection and see what I can turn up.
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Joshua - don't overlook some of the small set piece encounters in the earlier AP installments - they had them in Second Darkness and Legacy of Fire - but they are exactly the small and detailed sort of set-piece encounters you are looking for.
I believe they actually started this in Curse of the Crimson Throne so that's 18 set piece locations written for 3.5 if you have those APs.
Unfortunately Paizo dropped this format for their AP line, I thought it was an extra value and worked great for people running slow xp advancement but I must have been in the minority on that one.
Necromancer Games also has a few of these that would be great to mine (or run as is).
- Vault of Larin Karr (whole environs with several - dozens of set piece location encounters). I expanded this to a 7 year campaign!
- Raise the Dead (mini adventures for raising dead PCs, site based locations)
- Book of Taverns (locations, with small adventures and pre-built to be dropped in your world).
Goodman Games also has their Dungeon Crawl Classics line for 3.5, which are all in-effect stand alone dungeon/adventure sites. When I get home I can get you a list of what I like.
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Oh man, DCC, I completely forgot I had one of those kicking around; #1, Idylls of the Rat King apparently. I have a friend who has a bunch of them so that would be a great resource. Thanks for all the help you've given me so far on this.
I just leafed through the old AP volumes I picked up and it doesn't look like I got any of the ones that include the set-pieces so it started after Curse of the Crimson Throne and stopped before Kingmaker. I have a friend running Second Darkness and I recall him saying something about those. If I can find a copy of an old AP installment through my distributor I can get them for around $10, which is great if I'm using all of the material in it, but a bit much for just an encounter or two. Unfortunately, my friend who is running SD bought all of that and Legacy of Fire through my store and the golem sale back in December and he is one of my players. Too bad, it sounds like I could have mined his AP issues for material.
I'll see what I can find on eBay for those Necromancer products. eBay is always where I go for out of print material I can't get through my distributors.
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Idylls of the Rat King (I ran, incorporated it to my Larin Karr campaign) also a good one is the Sunless Garden (with the great Erol Otus treant cover).
And yeah, I think they only ran them from Second Darkness to Legacy of Fire. They were single site encounters but they were a great addition. I wish Paizo would just put out books that compile a series of smaller set piece adventures but I think they already have enough on their plate with other stuff.
I'll second the motion for Lost Caverns of Tsjocanth.
Good post above by Mark Hoover.
Running a sandbox is a good idea, but it requires two elements:
1. Players with solid character backgrounds, which does not necessarily mean a "long-winded wall-of-text" background either, just a compelling concept and some self-imposed boundaries
2. A GM who is adept at The Art of The Hook; able to catch players' interest and channel their altruistic/selfish motivations into activity
I've wanted to have the characters headed on an adventure with a very clear objective. While they are camping for the night, another group comes upon them, casts a powerful sleep or knockout spell on the sentry, kidnaps the incapacitated characters and have them wake up either in burlap sacks or barrels in the back of some merchants wagon (the merchant has no idea how they got there) or in a glade with no other recollection of the events, except one of them has a ransom type note pinned to their backpack with instructions. They could try to continue the previous adventure, but they have no idea where they are, or they can set off on the new adventure. They have 'traveled' several hundred miles away from where they fell asleep.
Might not be what you are looking for, but you could insert this right as things are getting good and really mess with their minds.
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I think I found my solution, Book of Lairs. I found a copy of of Ravenloft's Book of Crypts, which is the same thing only made more Ravenlofty, tucked not in with my Ravenloft books so I forgot I had it. It got me thinking that the Lair books for the other game lines might be the perfect solution. They are little locations that can be plugged in anywhere without issue. I considered doing this with the 4E Dungeon Delve but the locations in that book are really not very interesting or modular. I'm really not a 4E fan but oh well, the books were free.
Now I just need to do some digging on eBay and see what I can find.
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Oh yes, the Lord of Darkness (before ravenloft was even a campaign) is a collection of short undead tiered adventures.
I'll have to see if I can find a copy of that one.
It seems that the Book of Lairs, including it's follow ups, II, Forgotten Realms, and Dragonlance, all seem to not include any maps of the lairs. That is next to useless for me. I guess it's Dungeon Delve and a delve into Dungeon Magazine for me.
Dungeon Magazine, Adventure Quarterly (PFRPG Dungeon successor), One Page Dungeon contest (free)
Also check out d20 Toolbox, or even Ultimate Toolbox, Adventure I , Adventure II all by AEG, the d20 converted Judges Guild adventures and perhaps the Wicked Fantasy adventures from the Goodman Games Apocalypse Sale. Maybe a City of Secrets or Ssethregore from Arcanis?
d20 En Route and more from Atlas Games sale on Paizo (check those prices on the print versions!).
Alexandrian blog GAMEMASTERY 101: hex crawl, game structures, node based design.
Also of course Kobold Press' Tales of the Old Margreve, plus the Margreve web compilation
Anything by Necromancer Games or Frog God Games.
What is the general consensus on Monte Cook's Ptolus?
I think the consensus is it's great. It is probably the most detailed and gorgeous citybook out there, with great adventures seeded thoughout and a few great supplemental products among the acclaimed adventures the Banewarrens and The Night of Dissolution. One quirk of it is that it is designed to highlight/incorporate the D&D system in the campaign world, i.e. no wizards allowed signs behind the half orc barkeep, inclusion of character abilities and magic in the worldbuilding.
There's Chaositech in it but it is a kind of magical chaos powered steampunk tech, and the Lion-headed people didn't do it for me, but the rest is gorgeous.
I loved the The Alexandrian's Ptolus annotated campaign log
Good City books, though the thread predates 0One Games Great City iirc.
One thing to consider in a sandbox campaign is the motivations and simultaneous actions of 3-5 NPCS antagonists. It's sandbox for your Villains too, be they good, evil, neutral, lawful or chaotic. I am running a sandbox campaign now in my verse, where the party is questing to collect the orbs of Dragonkind after they fell to the planet. They were competing with a hidden Dragon Villain that was almost a BBEG for the previous campaign in the same setting. It also is hunting for the orbs along with rival adventure grips, reps from major governments, a rival lich, and Gith (see Githyanki) who was revived during a planar invasion by Githyanki (see whichever relevant Dragon mag had the invasion).
Just as Villains spy on players, your players, if creative enough, can infiltrate and steal the plans of a villain to beat them to it. Glibness is excellent for pc's to lie our of most situations.
Also prepare yourself for a Bank/temple heist. It's a quick means to an end (money, gems, documents, deeds, magic items), and those adventures are super fun as a pc. You'll be happy you thought about what wards and locks are there, and a guardian our two, as well as ways to get pc 's to leave stuff behind to make scrying easy for the robbed people to find the party.
There is a great 2e module for upper level PCs called The Vortex of Madness and Other Planar Perils. It's very open ended with 5 adventures included, such as a adventure that involves helping a pair of titans not imprisoned by the gods getting help from pc's/tricking them into freeing the titans from Tarterus. Also I recommend Homebound: the blood war, 2e multiadventure module that includes a trip to the Fortress of Indifference and the possibility to take away the ability of fiends to use their plane shifting/teleport abilities (ALL fiends).
Finally, pick some date semi far in the campaign (more than a month or two away) for the Tarrasque/Jabberwock/Cthulhu or equivalent overpowering creature to arrive and mark a general path of destruction. It's inspires excitement and fear as it's hard to fight something as tough as Force of Nature.
Sandbox games are fun and sometimes lots of things are destroyed/built/changed. If you read all this, my dragon bbeg I mentioned was taking out with a rod of Wonder and he rolled on 9970 on the d10000 wild surge table and turned a green Dragon wyrm into a gate to the nearest brothel.
Must have spells for a Sandbox party: all divination spells, Create Treasure Map and Blood Biography.
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A good mini arc is Hollow's Last Hope, Crown of the Kobold King, Revenge of the Kobold King, and Carnival of Tears from Paizo. A few others I've loved running are A Dark and Stormy Knight (D&D 3.5), The Burning Plauge (D&D 3.5), and Something's Cooking (also 3.5). Pretty classic site games right there. Thing with sandbox games are, I've never ran one sucessfully without a hometown that the PCs are actually tied to and try to defend.