Total Improv: Sandbox

After reading Raven's Purge of Forbidden Lands I've gotten more insight in how to structure a sandbox campaign. This is an attempt to codify the things I've learnt into a guide for others and myself, in running one with slightly more improv than most people would use.

UPDATED 10/10/20. Now with more Perilous Wilds!

Before the game and the initial session

1. Sit down with your players and talk about two things: the Tone (is it serious or lighthearted, the Theme (gothic horror, swashbuckling, heroic fantasy, etc) and the Premise of the sandbox. Have a plan for how the sandbox might end. If you don't do this you run the risks of encountering mismatched expectations and a campaign that just goes on forever, with unmotivated players asking "what are we supposed to do?".

2. Prepare two lists: the Buzz list, and the Quest list. Stock the Quest list with your adventures and adventure sites, about 3-6 of them.
If a situation arises in the game when you need content, roll a d20. 1-14 means they get a new rumour to a quest already in the Buzz List (naturally, if already empty you just pick a random one), 15-20 means you get a new quest from the Quest List instead. Remove it from the Quest List and put it into the Buzz List.

3. What is each PC's relationship to each other? Decide here if you want PC versus PC conflict in your game. Roll randomly here or let them decide.

4. Create a world map. Here I like to use the default Perilous Wilds rules, but with these steps instead:

• Youngest player starts drawing a Region. Repeat until you've got at least 5 of them.
• Decide where the PCs start out, put an X on the map.
• The player with the most well-travelled PC starts to put down a Site in a region. Inspirational table here, credits to Beyond the Wall:
  1. Major city.
  2. Ancient Ruin.
  3. Human Settlement.
  4. Recent Ruin.
  5. Inhuman settlement (in a game with nonhumans, otherwise reroll).
  6. Lair.
  7. Source of Power.
  8. Otherworld.
  Repeat until you've got at least 7-10 of them.
  
• The player with the most well-travelled PC starts to draw a line between two sites, called a Connector. Repeat until you've got 7-10 of them.
• Decide what the campaign is going to be about. For this I like to use the Rumour System:
  1. Every player except the GM writes a rumour secretly, using this template:
  [Bad Thing] is happening at [Place] and we care about it because [Motivation]. The GM shuffles the rumours and reads them aloud, everyone can vote for two rumours each. The rumour with the most votes win. In the case of a tie, the GM judges randomly. Finally, each player gets to make up some Gossip regarding this rumour. The GM secretly determines the accuracy of this gossip by asking for an ability check from the player. Ask the player to decide if this is something their PC has:
  1. Read about (INT).
  2. Has seen themselves (WIS).
  3. Have heard someone else speak of (CHA).
  

Then roll for that ability score, using either a simple d20 roll-under check or your preferred mechanic:

• Success: the character is right about the nature of the gossip, but there can still be mysteries there.
• Failure: much of the information is correct, but the character is missing important details, or is wrong about a specific but basic detail.
• Roll exactly your ability score: all of the information provided by the character is correct, and the character actually knows even more than that.
• Failure by 5 or more: the character is badly mistaken about the gossip, and probably in a very dangerous way.
  

For example, the rumour chosen for a particular play group is "The queen's sceptre has been stolen from the Capital, and we care about it because we have helped her out in the past", and the party's Fighter comes up with the Gossip "They say the sceptre was stolen by a vampire cult that worships rats".
He chooses "Has seen themselves", their score in WIS is 14, he rolls a d20 and gets 20. In this case, the cult of vampires are probably not worshipping rats, but are instead controlled by a rat demigod that wants to enter the material plane through the power of the sceptre.

5. Begin the game at the chosen rumour's adventure location, let the PCs loose, take note of their actions.

6. Plant a clue to the sandbox's end-game in each adventure.

7. Use the post-session questionnaire at the end of this page to create further content based on what the PCs did.

Exploration Procedures

Travelling Across the Map

Prior to the game, scan the drawn map, apply a hexgrid and print it out.
This will be your personal map, and not something shown to the players. 
The hex grid is purely for determining travel time, and not something the players are supposed to interact with.

Each connector has 1d6 Discoveries placed randomly along it. If the party is travelling along a connector, ignore further results of Discovery.
This ensures that new structures don't appear spontaneously while the players aren't looking, and forces the party to leave connectors to find new Discoveries.

Random Encounters
Roll once per day.
Credits to Spwack at Slight Adjustments.
1. Encounter.
2. Traces.
3. Discovery. (only when travelling off-road)
4. Incident.
5. Weather.
6. Resource Drain.


If you're like me and don't want to spend time detailing exactly what creature the PCs might encounter, but you do have a vague idea of what it could be, you can use this template, with credits to Jorge Jaramillo:

In an uncharted area you would roll all stats with advantage to represent the increased danger.


Each Discovery has a lead to it that determines how the PCs notice it:

1. Game trail 
2. River 
3. Landmark chain 
4. Road 
5. Naturally occurring clearance(s) 
6. Supernatural guidance 
7. Actually on the path 
8. Visible from the path 
9. Audible from the path 
10. Smellable from the path

Choice 8 to 10 implies that the party have to leave the connector in order to access the Discovery. See Trekking Through Uncharted Wilderness below.

Each Discovery in turn has a 1 in 6 chance of having another connector that either:

1-2. Leads to an extant connector, creating a detour.
3-4. Leads to an extant connector, creating a shortcut.
5-6. Leads to a new Discovery.

Trekking Through Uncharted Wilderness
Pro: Lets the PCs discover shortcuts and new locations, along with greater rewards.
Con: Increased danger of all random encounters, risk of getting lost.

So the party leaves the path because they have heard of a sacred spring in the mountains northeast of here, but there is no connector to it, only the direction to "head into the woods behind the inn the Piebald Rat, look for the grave marker under a rotten tree and keep going east"?

What you do is to treat the journey there as a mini-dungeon, using your system of choice, putting the searched for location in a random room.

Any Discoveries found on the journey are not added to the map unless the PCs take some action to leave a path back to it. Otherwise, there is a 1 in 6 chance per exploration turn of finding their way back to it.

Getting Lost 
If a party is indicated as being lost, they simply stop their travel at the current location as they backtrack back to a more familiar location. No further travel can be done that day.



City Procedures
When they enter a city, I'm using this procedure, along with the blog post about settlements I made.


Post-Session Questionnaire
After the session, ask these questions to yourself:

1. Did the PCs do anything that made an NPC upset?
2. Did the PCs do anything in secret that might be discovered?
3. Who gained and who lost on the actions of the PCs?
4. If someone in the employ of the PCs died, how does their community react to this? What's the consequence of their death?
5. Did the PCs spread any information around that others might act upon?
6. Did the PCs do anything illegal that might come back to bite them in the ass later?
7. Did the players express interest in something that you could use as a future hook?