Travis Miller's Blog About Sword & Sorcery Fiction and Classic Fantasy Adventure Gaming
The freedom players have in a sandbox campaign creates some challenges for a game master. Players ignore adventure locations you’ve spent hours building. Players can make choices that you don’t expect and don’t have anything prepared to handle. Players who aren't used to sandbox play can be passive. I learned that one way to address …
Continue reading Why and How I Connect Adventure Locations To Everything Else In a Sandbox Campaign
I am working on a series of videos about my method of creating a sandbox campaign. I am four videos into the series. I have seven more shot and I'm releasing them as I get them edited. https://youtu.be/P9SygS7OwRw I originally published this information in a fairly long document in my newsletter archive. If you'd like …
Adventures written by other people can be hard to fit into a sandbox campaign I build myself. There are ways of doing it but it also requires picking adventures that fit the setting I've created. If I create a setting that is very different from the implied or intended setting of the game I'm running then I'll have an even harder time finding an adventure that fits.
The emotional content of many linear story or quest based campaigns typically don't have the intensity and variety I want. That's the main reason I don't run them. I want more complex emotional content in my campaigns. That's why I run sandbox campaigns.
Starting game masters often build too much of their world before their campaign starts. Too much world building can produce a lot of stuff that players never engage with in play. It can make it hard to use material I find after the campaign starts because I'll have to revise elements of my world or …
Continue reading How I Do Worldbuilding For My Sandbox Campaigns
Non-player characters are where I put my main effort when I create a sandbox campaign. There's an old how to post on how I create NPCs but in this one I'm going to tell you a bit about why I put so much effort into non-player characters. Non-player characters are the most important thing in …
Continue reading Why are Non-Player Characters My Main Focus in a Sandbox Campaign?
One of the debates I see pop up on social media from time to time is "Low Prep Vs. High Prep." Some say you should do as little as possible and improvise because players are going to do things you don't expect anyway. Others say you should do as much as possible so that you …
Continue reading Where Do I Fall in the Low Prep Vs High Prep Debate?
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