Building Blocks of A Sandbox Campaign

A sandbox campaign is a style of campaign where player characters can go where they want and do what they want, how they want within the constraints of the game world and the game system. Players are free to determine their own objectives and means of achieving them.

My style of sandbox game is to create a setting with a number of competing factions and NPCs, along with locations and objects with a history that impacts the game world in the present moment. I wind up the clock work, drop the player characters into an interesting and troubled part of the world and see what happens.

Sandbox campaigns are my favorite.

I’ve played tabletop role-playing games of many different genres, systems, and styles since the late 80’s. The most memorable campaigns have been sandbox campaigns.

The main reason I prefer sandbox campaigns as a referee are the surprises. The way I run a sandbox, the players decide objectives they want to pursue, and how to get it. I am able to anticipate much of what players will do through long experience, but quite frequently players surprise me with their shenanigans. I enjoy the crazy and spontaneous ways players respond to the situations.

As a player, I am not a fan of plotted adventures. I know these are very popular. Some of them might be well written and well designed. I’ve never played one that provided me with an experience as exciting as the sandbox games I’ve played in. More often, I get annoyed as the players are discouraged from exploring something interesting in favor of the breadcrumb trail. Personal experience, your mileage may vary.

Give me a sandbox. You don’t need to tell me to find something fun to do. I’m going to go looking for it. Many players prefer to be handed a quest and sent on a journey. I’d rather create my own.

When a sandbox campaign is well designed and well played, the results of the adventures will be unexpected and the experience immersive.

The well constructed sandbox campaign.

Any style and method of campaign or adventure can suck if the game master doesn’t do a good job of building and running it. If the designer or the game master messes up, it doesn’t matter what you are running. Every style and structure of RPG scenario design has its strengths and shortcomings.

I have read many of the critics who dislike sandbox campaigns. Most of those criticisms are straw men or written by gamers who simply don’t understand how to structure or run a sandbox. It would be like me criticising all plotted adventures because my game master ran an adventure with a bottle neck encounter that required the players to solve a very difficult riddle and couldn’t be bypassed. That isn’t a failure of the structure, it is a failure of design and game mastering.

Sandbox gaming requires a certain mindset. If the campaign has the basic requirements, much of the adventure and encounter design is very intuitive and time efficient. The campaigns are also long lasting and engaging, but only if they have the basic requirements and are run in a way that capitalizes on the strengths of the structure.

Here are some elements of a robust sandbox campaign.

A limited number of adventure locations with connections.

Too many hooks and choices for adventures in a sandbox campaign can create analysis paralysis and a feeling that if we had made that other choice it would have been better. I keep three to five active adventure possibilities in my sandbox campaign at a time.

Fewer than 3 makes the campaign feel like there isn’t anything to do. More than five starts creating anxiety. Three or four is about right.

The majority will be exploration or location adventures. There is a tendency for inexperienced game masters to make locations static and self contained. I connect the locations into the setting by placing monsters, NPCs, or objects that connect each location to the wider setting and each other. A campaign is a series of connected adventures.

Those connections can be the history of the setting, objects that are found in the location that NPCs want, the location might be a resource controlled by an NPC. It could be a location where monsters or NPCs are working together toward some goal that impacts the goals and interests of the PCs. There are many options.

One of the false criticisms of sandbox campaigns is that they are railroads with a choice of which rail to ride. The players get to pick with train they ride but once they get on, that it. That’s easily prevented by creating connections between adventure locations the rest of the sandbox. I connect adventure locations to the activities of major sentient monsters, NPCs, factions and other adventure locations. Players go to one location, find hooks and clues to other locations and NPCs and they decide how they respond to those things. I do not predetermine what must happen in order to achieve a predetermined outcome to a a predetermined climatic event.

Certainly, there are points of no return but that doesn’t make an adventure a railroad. If players choose to go down the path of pissing off a lich, then the lich responds. As long as this was an option, and not a required action, the players retain agency.

Active ambitious adversaries.

Don’t have villains waiting around for player characters to invade their lairs. Passive villains are boring villains.

You need ambitious NPCs who are actively working to achieve their goals. Those goals should cause people who live that setting a problem or three. Major NPCs should conflict with other major NPCs. Two kings fighting over land. Gangs fighting over turf. A civil war. A succession fight. A necromancer seeking an all but forgotten relic stored in the vault of the most important temple in the city.

Active non-player characters require servants and henchmen. Their goals can’t be achieved without minions. Their holdings require patrols and enforcers. Prestige and status are maintained by having peons to lord over.

Heavy hitting NPCs have allies and clients seeking favor and aid. Important people with wealth, power, and influence are sought after. Kings have petitioners. Guilds have people seeking admittance to the guild as apprentices. Lesser lords seek alliances with more powerful lords. Merchants join together to create leagues and trade information. These are tools for the referee to create conflicts the player characters can get involved in.

The player characters should have encounters with the allies, enemies, minions, servants, and informants long before they have a direct interaction with the most powerful NPCs in the campaign world.

I also like to have some stability in my setting. If there is some sort of existential crises that the player characters must involve themselves in, then I’m pushing them toward an objective. I like players to decide their own objectives. I prefer for two or more forces to be in balance, maybe one gets the upper hand but then it swings back the other way. If the players get involved, then the balance shifts and we can play through the outcome.

Friendly, helpful NPCs that die.

Friendly NPCs in trouble can be a great hook for many different adventures.

I create villagers who will wine and dine the party when they come to town because they saved the village from the necromancer. I create a friendly wizard who identifies magic items, shares information, and gives PCs aid when they desperately need it.

Then, I threaten or kill NPCs when the player characters are out of town on adventure.

If they are interesting enough and helpful enough, players (not just their characters) will start to like the helpful NPCs. I give those helpful NPCs their own goals and their own troubles. If the PCs have developed a reciprocal relationship with the NPCs, they’re more likely to be interested in helping the NPC out.

Often, putting helpful NPCs in dangerous situations spurs players to action and heroism.

Conflict!

Conflict is the beating heart of a sandbox campaign. I create conflict between NPCs, monsters, gods, or factions in my sandbox. Those conflicts don’t have to be apocalyptic battles between the gods or an invasion of the Old Ones from another dimension.

It can be a small war between petty lords over an insult. It can be a turf war between gangs. It can be a rival groups of adventurers trying to find treasure.

Adventures require conflict with high stakes. Death, power, and wealth are those stakes in classic adventure gaming.

Time triggered encounters and events.

These are simple and straightforward. A comet portending doom. Destruction caused by the 100 year emergence of purple worm larvae. A king dies of old age.

This doesn’t have to be negative. These can be feasts and festivals that happen during a specific season or day. Annual rites and rituals at the local temple. A magic tree has fruit that ripens during the full moon in late summer and if you don’t harvest them that day, you miss out. The birth of a child.

These are often not the problem or conflict but a hook. They are reasons why player characters go somewhere at a certain time. While they are there; a hook or adventure drops into their lap.

Location adventures and exploration.

These are obvious, well known, and worth repeating. Dungeons, crypts, ruins, wizard towers, monster lairs are a staple of old school sandbox gaming.

These adventures can be boring, predictable, and detached from anything else going on in the setting. I don’t like using adventures that I can’t connect to another adventure. I create connections to at least one other adventure hook if not two or three.

I use location adventures and random encounters to provide micro-exposition about the setting. The players find a magic sword in a dungeon. It is an elfish family heirloom lost in a battle a hundred years ago. The elves want it back.

A party selling off non-portable loot gets attention from the thieves guild. The item being pawned was supposed to be in the guild’s vaults. The guild master wants to know who stole it and how.

The goblins in that dungeon have a mark that identifies them and they are a long way from home. The party defeats a goblin raiding party with that same mark a few weeks later. They run across more of the same in a dungeon the week after that. The players get curious and investigate.

Session prep is solo role-play.

All those ambitious NPCs and their minions exist in the setting as independent agents. The monsters, particularly the most powerful monsters, are not in suspended animation waiting for adventurers to show up and slay them. They are eating villagers, capturing maidens, and doing whatever they do between meals.*

The NPCs and monsters are the referee’s characters. I put myself in the role of the ancient red dragon. My spies have told me that some adventurers were seen three days away. What do I do?

I am the leader of the thieves guild: Some adventurers burnt down my gambling house in the shady part of town. That cost me a lot of money. They are staying at the Squatting Dog Inn. What do I do?

I consider the interests of my big monsters, NPCs, and even the gods. Determine what they are doing, who they are doing it to, and how. I might not reveal that to my players right away but in time, they’ll develop an interest when those NPCs are creating problems for the party or it’s allies.

This is why organization and tracking time in your campaign is critical.