This week’s Advanced Gamemastery takes a first look (and then a much closer look!) at what it’s like to run a sandbox campaign. I use a D&D-esque campaign as the example, but the lessons can be applied to almost any RPG.
This is the third installment in the series. I’ve been very humbled by everyone’s excitement to see more of these videos! While I know it’s a cliche, it remains true that subscriptions, likes, and comments make a big difference in helping the channel grow! You can help bring these videos to a wider audience by training the algorithm!
If you’d like to keep helping the channel, though, can you do one more thing for me? Share the video! Whether that’s just texting it to someone you think would love it or posting it to social media, that would be huge!
I’d also love to chat about sandbox campaigns.
What have been your best/worst sandbox experiences?
What sandbox campaign have you always wanted to run/play?
Good gaming! And I’ll see you at the table!
Another good video with solid advice. Thanks! And to answer one of your questions, I’ve always wanted run a wasteland post-apocalyptic sandbox. Alas, it has not yet happened.
I have 2 sandbox ideas at the moment …
The simpler one is to merge D&D (probably 3.5 since I’m not in love with 5e or maybe some non-D&D fantasy system) with the idea of exploring the Universal Brotherhood (Shadowrun) concept.
The more complicated one … is a space opera that is influenced by a long list of stuff: Star Wars, Star Trek, Battletech, Heavy Gear, Eclipse Phase are the notable ones. The setting revolves around 3 dominate “empires”. One modeled after the Clans from Battletech, one modeled after Eclipse Phase Titans, and one modeled after the Republic from Star Wars. Given I would like to have biotech, cyberware, and other things, I’m not even remotely sure what rule system would make sense for it.
Well, right now is about the 1st anniversary of me starting my online megadungeon sandbox on roll20, trying to set up an open table.
Ofc i wanted to expand on it by including a hexcrawl, and maybe some urbancrawl.
However, i only had a handful of players who actually stuck around, and also made a number of mistakes and miscalculations, due to being fairly fresh at GMing, and completely new at Pathfinder. My players still had a blast, but i wasn’t really vibing with the campaign anymore.
Since i’ve been working on a node based campaign anyway, i decided to put the sandbox on a break, and focus on that instead.
But I definitely have a few good stories, especially from the early days. The core group of the sandbox had a penchant for befriending people/creatures in the dungeon, but also for ending these alliances in a rather spontaneous and violent manner.
The best example for this is probably their dealings with the goblin tribe of the Wise Ones. These goblins were lead by a “grand shaman” and they worshiped a necromantic monolith, which they could use to create and control undead.
The PCs managed to befriend the tribe early on, and together they mounted a raid at the camp of a rival tribe.
After that, the PCs occasionally sold corpses to the goblins for treasure. Until one session, they randomly found a good opportunity, and decided to take it, so the fighter knocked out the grand shaman, put him in a bag, and the party fled.
Some time later, they attacked the Wise Ones, forced a surrender, took the goblins’ treasure, and let the shaman go.
While the PCs were busy otherwise, a fugitive fire sorceress set up her hideout near the goblins, and started gathering followers from within the tribe (mostly through intimidation), and also collecting a few wandering fire elementals.
Eventually, the sorceress mounted an attack against the great shaman and his loyalists, cutting them away from their monolith, but the loyalists managed to barricade themselves.
The PCs offered her to help taking care of the remaining loyalists (since the bard was lightly flirting with her). However, during the battle, the fighter knocked the sorceress out with a single critical hit. No one really complained, since she did have a bounty on her head after all, and probably had better treasure than the goblins.
So, after that, the PCs simply killed off the fire elementals, and shouted every goblin into total submission, putting the grand shaman in charge in exchange for future free passage through the tribe’s territory.
The Sandbox/open world game that I would love to run would be set in the West Indies in the mid 1600’s. I am currently re working the classes for 5e to make something more historical and less magic.
The classes I have so far are: Buccaneer (a sort of ranger who is good with firearms and survival skills), the Soldier (who is basically a fighter), the Pirate (a rogue like character who specializes in sailing), and the Scholar (an INT based skill-monkey). I will likely include a Native Warrior, Shaman, Preist, and Vodoun.