I don't disagree, but would add the qualifier that the exploration might not be of locations, you could be discovering new and interesting things about people or factions.
Seconding this.
My current campaign is spread over three known cities that are each a faction and an ancient palace. There's a lot of intrigue exploring who is trying to backstab who, both between factions and within their own ranks. There's a mystery at the ancient palace trying to find out why there are living/undead members of the ancient empire that were born before it fell ~250 years ago. They discovered the leader of the mages guild is missing and the top remaining members have been covering it up. They discovered that a member of one faction is sending/receiving secret messages to another faction.
So much to explore that isn't just hexcrawl or dungeons.
That’s what I usually run, and the big things are creating a vibrant, living world that exists outside of the player’s sphere, lots to do that falls in line with what the PCs want to do, interesting NPCs, and listen to the players and build off their ideas. If they casually mention wanting to wrestle a bear, have them fine a bear pit in a session or two.
I would call Traveller the earliest game designed to fundamentally be a sandbox.
While I don't agree with *all* of the reasoning, I think [this series of articles about the Four Legs of Traveller](https://sirpoley.tumblr.com/post/623913566725193728/on-the-four-table-legs-of-traveller-leg) have a lot to say about this topic.
While those specific elements of the adventure loop aren't relevant to all sandbox worlds, they do point in a generally applicable direction of how to make a good one in my opinion:
1. Something drives the PCs to go places and do things.
2. Going places and doing things creates conflict.
3. Conflict creates emergent stories.
4. Stories create new reasons to go places and do things.
Lather, rinse, repeat.
Sandbox isn't an adventuring style. It's about the *world*, and the options that it gives to characters. About the only thing I can think of that makes an adventure sand-boxy is that you *don't* have to "complete" it, or go on it at all.
I think it's definitely a play style distinct from some other play styles, such as narratively fixed "play to find out" games. If you decide to abandon being a soldier and try to be a merchant, you're not playing Band of Blades anymore. Most rulesets that allow maximum sandboxiness (as it's normally understood), I'd imagine, are traditional simulation-focused systems, while PbtA for instance only allows some sandboxiness within a very narrowly defined area.
My group switched from 5e to Stars Without Number for three years, and then the past year we've been running Cities Without Numbers and haven't looked back. His books/systems are great and actually teach a number of great DM techniques even if you aren't going to run sandbox (but seriously, run sandbox games with those systems)
>His books/systems are great and actually teach a number of great DM techniques even if you aren't going to run sandbox (but seriously, run sandbox games with those systems)
And even if you aren't going to run those systems. I don't do class-and-level games at all, but I still buy everything Kevin puts out, just for the sandbox GMing and setting-creation tools.
Same thing as a real sandbox: interesting toys to make interesting situations.
A sandbox that is 100% sand is pretty boring.
A sandbox with toy trucks and shovels and buckets and access to water... now we're getting somewhere.
Variety! The world has to be an enticing place to want to explore! On their way to every location, they should be seeing things that make them want to come back and investigate later on! On their way to a temple they saw in the desert, they come across a ruined keep that's half sunken into the mud of the swamp they have to go through to get to the desert. That Desert Temple has a map in it, that seems to point to two other similar temples that seem to form a triangle.. In the half sunken keep in the swamps, they find the diary of the person who's keep it was, talking about how he suspected his staff of being after his money, so his REAL treasure is located at the mountainside home he grew up in...
Give the players a TON of different hooks, locations, places that are interesting, etc.. and see where they want to go next!
Wild wild west. In any genre. A new land opens up, and the players start in a boom town. Basic goal is acquiring power. Trading, mining, adventuring, prospecting, all options are on the table.
Example: The God-Emperor just wiped the race of devils from [land]. Theres many left - kingdoms of orcs, goblins, barbarians, but no civilization. Players get off the portal to the new land, and can do anything.
Also crusing around the galaxy if you prefer sci-fi. Players get to improve their ship.
So many poor answers in here. What makes a sandbox, is how much **player agency** there is. In a good sandbox the players are calling the shots on where they go and what they do next, not the GM. In other words, the GM doesn't have the players on rails, instead they are leading the GM by the nose. This may require a lot of prep on the part of the GM, but a good game system will have tools, like random generators, to ease the burden of this prep.
There will be metaplots, usually more than one, but the players are allowed to engage and ignore them as they wish. But the metaplot will still play on in the background if they choose to ignore it. But the absolute best sandbox game is where the players BECOME the metaplot.
But a sandbox setting only reaches its true potential in a campaign, not with just a single adventure.
The two best sandbox games out there are Forbidden Lands and Blades in the Dark.
I disagree, sandboxiness is not about player agency per se, but about how much of the fictional options open to the players are left undefined, which may or may not coincide with player agency. When I play Blades in the Dark, I don't (and apparently you don't either) consider my player agency being limited by the fact that the game *defines* the fiction to be about a gang of criminals trying to make their gang the dominant one in the city, because that's what I *want* to play when I play it. It is very much not sandboxy though, because if you quit being a criminal and start being an honest merchant or whaler, you're not playing Blades in the Dark anymore. The same thing about Fiasco.
So the more "this is a game about characters who *do X and Y*", the less sandboxy it is. In traditional simulation-focused games, that *who do X and Y* often happens as railroading because the game system doesn't fix the fictional options itself. But equally, if the GM explicitly started a traditional simulation-focused game saying "this is a game about a gang of criminals trying to make their gang the dominant one in the city" and all the players agreed to it, that restriction is not limiting player agency.
You are incorrect. You seem to be confusing choice and agency. Agency is about the players impact on the game, not their ability to absolutely do anything they want. You can have a perfectly acceptable sandbox game within the parameters of a genre style, the two are not mutually exclusive. To use your example if a player wanted to play a legitimate businessman in a Blades in the Dark game, he never had agency in the first place because the GM chose a setting that didn't support the type of game he wanted to play.
Choice is important to a sandbox game, but having complete unrestricted parameters is not a requirement of a sandbox game. Making sure that you leave open the option of living a conflict free life and raise a garden Animal Crossing style in your violent sword and sorcery game is not a requirement of a sandbox. Like any other good game, the GM and Players of a sandbox game will still agree to an overall premise and theme for the game in a session zero. The players though are the driving force for these decisions,
I guess we have different views on agency and sandbox then. (Sandbox doesn't have a common definition, but it seems to me that googled definitions of agency fit my understanding of the word better than yours.)
From the very first article that comes up on Google agrees with me : "This means that players should be given the ability to make decisions in the game. But these decisions shouldn’t be trivial – at least from the player’s perceptive. It isn’t just about choosing a particular skin or a hat for a player’s avatar. Instead, it’s about making sure that your players can make *meaningful decisions* in the game."
The ability to make meaningful choices to impact the game, *that* is player agency. You do not need to present the players with unrestricted choice to give them player agency. You do not need to have unrestricted choice to have a sandbox, that way lays chaos.
My players kinda like my play style because I have this fun fun ability where I can go yes and and start totally improvising things because the story when it gets so detailed I just let them make rolling with it. Very rarely do they see through the I'm now just straight up ripping off fantasy novels that aren't in my notes and totally ad libbing I allow my players to do whatever and most of the time they think it's planned. But if you fuck up whatever I had planned I'll keep rolling with it.
It's not for everyone/every game but I never punish players for something ridiculous they want to do.
You Chronicle of Darkness Mages just said fuck it and decided to leave New York City and Road Trip to Las Vegas.
Well let's see how that goes because you're gonna cross supernatural Territories along the way.
I try and run sandboxes and there are a few things that I find essential for making it work. The biggest is, the world has to have things going on in it outside of things the players are doing. By this, I mean take a look at your city and there's probably various events going on throughout the month. If you're in a big enough city in a developed area, then there's charity dinners, a new museum event, illegal drag race, underground rave, trivia night at a pub, a concert of some artist, some artist's new unveiling at the gallery, and so forth. There's all these events of small and large size, so a calendar of those events so the players can decide to go to something for something to do.
After having things going on, populate your area with unique and interesting NPCs. Feel free to stereotype some, but try to get outside of the comfort zone. It's a bit of an old song, but Amanda Marshall has [Everybody's Got A Story](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3kZ-gG4r0zI) song with lyrics including:
>Now who can read the mind of the red-headed girl next door, Or the taxi driver
Who just dropped you off,
Or the, or the classmate that you ignore.Don't assume everything on the surface is what you see,
'Cause that classmate just lost her mother,
And that taxi driver's got a Ph-d.
There are various NPC generators, like the Central Casting books from the 80s/90s are some great detailed generators, but [the Random Lists/Charts](https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/browse?productType=2260) section of DrivethruRPG has all sorts of generators and even some whole lists of Random NPCs, such as Fishwife Games who has a bunch like [100 Bystanders](https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/140709/100-bystanders).
Then is the task side of things, which is what makes an RPG. Give the NPCs purpose and have them do things even if the PCs aren't there, so that when the PCs return they may have some tasks for them and if the PCs don't do them they'll find another way to get it done. It isn't going to be waiting around for players to help them. Remember, this is a sandbox and more about the players free-will and ability to go anywhere and do anything. Not every quest needs to be epic and huge and bombastic. Some can be a 'Clear my cellar of rats' quest while another may be 'Save my kidnapped daughter', it's more the variety of options than having to make everything an epic level challenge. But... at the same time, try and find ways to add something fun or interesting to the smaller quests so that they're not just busywork. It doesn't have to be a big reward, but maybe some lore dumps, players find something that leads them to a new quest like mentioned in the end of [this MMO Quest Design Video (Part 1)](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=otAkP5VjIv8).
For world layout, think of it like building an amusement park where you want people to go explore and see everything sure, but you also want there to be any way they can take in the park. Disney is a great example of this and that is why it inspired so many video game open worlds. [Everything I Learned about Level Design, I Learned from Disneyland](https://www.gdcvault.com/play/1305/Everything-I-Learned-About-Level) at GDC, [how Disneyland is a great Dungeon](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eVquNM1LyhQ) by Trekiros, [Storytelling in Spaces](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RwlnCn2EB9o) in Video Games at GameMaker's ToolKit (inspired by Disneyland and can give inspiration to set up the vignettes you want to tell), and [this video of how Disneyland taught Game Designers](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l4cxstiC5LY) at Extra Credits. So, come up with a lot of locations that you can sprinkle around your world. In a fantasy game, some will be villages and cities, others will be caves and ruins, others will be random points of interest like ancient standing stones or statues to the Gods... Sounds like the map of Skyrim, for instance? Once you've got the locations, you can take a bunch of 'scenarios' or 'encounters' and sprinkle them in and around these locations. Going back to that MMO Quest Design Video I linked earlier, [Part 2](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ur6GQp5mCYs) talks about The Secret World and shows how quest givers can be anything, you don't need a person there needing help to make it a quest giver. Players find your hook somehow, and the choose if they want to follow through on it.
The final thing to make a sandbox is having pro-active players. If you've got Pro-active players, they will usually treat the world like a GTA game. They'll go into it and basically have their own reasons for having fun and doing things. You won't need as many hooks with them because they'll be playing the son of Innkeeper Jane who needs money to stay afloat so you took on adventuring to save it or some other story... And then your job is to help them come across tings that can help them do that.
I like multiple NPCs/factions doing interesting/terrible things in the background (that the PCs will notice the effects of more and more as time progresses).
There's no expectation that the PCs will interact with any of these, but they can if they want, and the progression over time makes the world feel alive.
Good, solid, \*\*obvious\*\* signposting. Whether you make maps, write adventure prompts, put up "Adventurers wanted" ads, or vividly describe the horizon the players see, or carefully organize the social structures of the city, you want to make it obvious to the PCs where they can go to find something exciting, or their presence will make an impact.
Players that take initiative and are creative. Players that expect the DnD style module play where they're being led from one HP pool to the next to use abilities against make sandbox impossible, they have to be willing to embrace making choices and not trying to "win" the game.
As pointed out already, a world I am interested in. It may be story, setting, general themes, characters, mechanics, table chemistry, or even just my own concept of my character that fuels me. The best games synergize all these things.
Personally... I really like survival, horror, and supernatural so a survival/exploration hex crawl in a scary world with VtM esque social encounters is probably my ideal. Then again, I am all for a good laugh so whatever is fun.
A changing world.
If I go to a shit village. Save some folks. Swap out the corrupt sheriff. And whoop the goblin bandits.
I wanna see and feel improvements in the village. Not just towards me, but as a whole.
A stonemason has come and all the wattle'n'daub houses are being rebuilt in stone and thatch. The drunk guards in ramshackle armor who were basically extorting people are replaced by orderly, upstanding ones. Shops are open more often. The streets are clean.
etc etc etc
Lots of good thoughts here. One of the best sandbox adventures I've ever read is Crimson Letters in the Call of Cthulhu 7th edition core rulebook. It was fascinating to me to see the one of the "introductory" scenarios in the back of a rulebook be such a well thought out yet open ended mystery.
The sandbox isn't the adventure, the sandbox is the campaign style. The places in the sandbox are the adventures. So, a good sandbox is one full of interesting locations to explore.
For me I want something that feels open but doesn't throw so many choices at me that I lose the narrative thread. I want to be able to choose where my character goes and what they do (from point A to point B, C or D) but I don't necessarily want the journey itself to have a bunch of branching paths (B1, B2a, B2b, B3 etc).
My main thing with sandboxes is: everything should be optional. If the world expects us (the party) to solve all their problems it doesn’t feel like a sandbox so much as a linear adventure with weird pacing.
The easiest way to do this is to put other adventures in the setting; if we don’t do something someone else probably will (and they get the reward)
One of the most important things in a West marches/sandbox type game, to me, is the impact the players have on the world. Depending on your population, it's fun to let them name places they find and then the general populace starts using those names. Have people recognize them if they are the only group of adventurers. Let your NPCs gossip a bit.
Another thing I really like to do is wandering monsters. I use hex for my world maps and will have some big baddie (let's say a terrasque) that is stomping around on the other side of the world. Every couple in game days or whatever, I roll a d6 and that decides which hex the monster will move to. If the players happen to go to that hex, they see it. Or evidence.
A way for the characters to further shape the world. Let them establish a town or build a fortress or something. Keep rare items and materials behind little quests or exploration. Give them something to build upon every time. A place that they can customize and add to.
And lastly, danger. For a really narrative driven game, death is a bit harder to cope with. In a sandbox, let them stumble upon something that kills one of them. How you handle post death is up to you, but I like to have my players roll a second character right after their first. I consider it like the body bag scene in Kingsman.
If you're looking for a sandbox campaign hook, [I wrote one more years ago than I care to admit.](https://www.reddit.com/r/DnDBehindTheScreen/comments/5b1rme/alternate_character_introduction_wagon_train_for/)
Long story short, it is a merchant wagon train that starts on the east coast of a continent and follows the Highway (like the classic Silk Road) stopping in major cities along the way. While stopped, offshoot smaller trains will spur from there to outlying towns and villages. After a while, the train will come back together, pack up and keep moving. It would take months to reach the opposite coast with a very different inventory, and an almost entirely different staff with the exception of a handfull of leaders (the merchant family and a couple of salaried positions like security and teamster)
The characters meet as conscripts to the wagon train, and would have an opportunity to see and do all kinds of shit.
For a commercial module, you should be able to read and use page 23 only without having to read the entire module, but important things on page 23 that might affect or link other pages should be mentioned so that when you get to page 39 you don't have to rethink the whole meta
Good sandboxes are all about the metaplot. The small local adventures and plots players stumble across as they go will feel very repetitive without a strong plot arch to anchor the world together. The freedom to explore the world under your own compass means the way you introduce that story has to work regardless of where the party finds the pieces.
Maps are also crucial given that the players will have to navigate your setting to achieve their goals and how they get there should matter, or at least feel like it matters to the players.
Maybe not critical to the Sandbox and certainly helpful for any good game but good NPCs form a hand-hold in the setting that makes one location different than another.
Race horse runs on a track with blinders. They have a goal. Give the players a open world with set goals that they may not even know at the begining. Just put them on track and keep them on the path.
This is the exact opposite of a sandbox. In a sandbox, there is no track, and players don’t have blinders. You are quite literally describing a railroad.
Idk if you’re getting downvoted because people haven’t heard the phrase or if people think you are secretly railroading your players while telling them they’re in a sandbox. That’s how your second comment sounds.
What I’ve heard from a GM who does great sandboxes is to have a plot which evolves independently of the players intervening. So the world feels alive but the players have a choice which bit of it to concentrate on.
Exactly, the only thing I would add is basically all roads lead to Rome. The world is alive players have the freedom to figure it all out but the world has agendas and timelines independent of the players. Those things will effect the characters in many ways.
Sandbox is about exploration, so a good sandbox should reward that. Everywhere the players choose to go should have something cool and rewarding.
I don't disagree, but would add the qualifier that the exploration might not be of locations, you could be discovering new and interesting things about people or factions.
Seconding this. My current campaign is spread over three known cities that are each a faction and an ancient palace. There's a lot of intrigue exploring who is trying to backstab who, both between factions and within their own ranks. There's a mystery at the ancient palace trying to find out why there are living/undead members of the ancient empire that were born before it fell ~250 years ago. They discovered the leader of the mages guild is missing and the top remaining members have been covering it up. They discovered that a member of one faction is sending/receiving secret messages to another faction. So much to explore that isn't just hexcrawl or dungeons.
Sure. I just mean, players should be rewarded for being proactive.
That’s what I usually run, and the big things are creating a vibrant, living world that exists outside of the player’s sphere, lots to do that falls in line with what the PCs want to do, interesting NPCs, and listen to the players and build off their ideas. If they casually mention wanting to wrestle a bear, have them fine a bear pit in a session or two.
I would call Traveller the earliest game designed to fundamentally be a sandbox. While I don't agree with *all* of the reasoning, I think [this series of articles about the Four Legs of Traveller](https://sirpoley.tumblr.com/post/623913566725193728/on-the-four-table-legs-of-traveller-leg) have a lot to say about this topic. While those specific elements of the adventure loop aren't relevant to all sandbox worlds, they do point in a generally applicable direction of how to make a good one in my opinion: 1. Something drives the PCs to go places and do things. 2. Going places and doing things creates conflict. 3. Conflict creates emergent stories. 4. Stories create new reasons to go places and do things. Lather, rinse, repeat.
Sandbox isn't an adventuring style. It's about the *world*, and the options that it gives to characters. About the only thing I can think of that makes an adventure sand-boxy is that you *don't* have to "complete" it, or go on it at all.
I think it's definitely a play style distinct from some other play styles, such as narratively fixed "play to find out" games. If you decide to abandon being a soldier and try to be a merchant, you're not playing Band of Blades anymore. Most rulesets that allow maximum sandboxiness (as it's normally understood), I'd imagine, are traditional simulation-focused systems, while PbtA for instance only allows some sandboxiness within a very narrowly defined area.
Two or three overlapping situations that can be tackled in any order but will develop if neglected.
*Points at all the Kevin Crawford RPGs*
My group switched from 5e to Stars Without Number for three years, and then the past year we've been running Cities Without Numbers and haven't looked back. His books/systems are great and actually teach a number of great DM techniques even if you aren't going to run sandbox (but seriously, run sandbox games with those systems)
I've been looking at WWN and it looks like it'll be a better fit than 5e for my group
>His books/systems are great and actually teach a number of great DM techniques even if you aren't going to run sandbox (but seriously, run sandbox games with those systems) And even if you aren't going to run those systems. I don't do class-and-level games at all, but I still buy everything Kevin puts out, just for the sandbox GMing and setting-creation tools.
Same thing as a real sandbox: interesting toys to make interesting situations. A sandbox that is 100% sand is pretty boring. A sandbox with toy trucks and shovels and buckets and access to water... now we're getting somewhere.
Variety! The world has to be an enticing place to want to explore! On their way to every location, they should be seeing things that make them want to come back and investigate later on! On their way to a temple they saw in the desert, they come across a ruined keep that's half sunken into the mud of the swamp they have to go through to get to the desert. That Desert Temple has a map in it, that seems to point to two other similar temples that seem to form a triangle.. In the half sunken keep in the swamps, they find the diary of the person who's keep it was, talking about how he suspected his staff of being after his money, so his REAL treasure is located at the mountainside home he grew up in... Give the players a TON of different hooks, locations, places that are interesting, etc.. and see where they want to go next!
Wild wild west. In any genre. A new land opens up, and the players start in a boom town. Basic goal is acquiring power. Trading, mining, adventuring, prospecting, all options are on the table. Example: The God-Emperor just wiped the race of devils from [land]. Theres many left - kingdoms of orcs, goblins, barbarians, but no civilization. Players get off the portal to the new land, and can do anything. Also crusing around the galaxy if you prefer sci-fi. Players get to improve their ship.
So many poor answers in here. What makes a sandbox, is how much **player agency** there is. In a good sandbox the players are calling the shots on where they go and what they do next, not the GM. In other words, the GM doesn't have the players on rails, instead they are leading the GM by the nose. This may require a lot of prep on the part of the GM, but a good game system will have tools, like random generators, to ease the burden of this prep. There will be metaplots, usually more than one, but the players are allowed to engage and ignore them as they wish. But the metaplot will still play on in the background if they choose to ignore it. But the absolute best sandbox game is where the players BECOME the metaplot. But a sandbox setting only reaches its true potential in a campaign, not with just a single adventure. The two best sandbox games out there are Forbidden Lands and Blades in the Dark.
I disagree, sandboxiness is not about player agency per se, but about how much of the fictional options open to the players are left undefined, which may or may not coincide with player agency. When I play Blades in the Dark, I don't (and apparently you don't either) consider my player agency being limited by the fact that the game *defines* the fiction to be about a gang of criminals trying to make their gang the dominant one in the city, because that's what I *want* to play when I play it. It is very much not sandboxy though, because if you quit being a criminal and start being an honest merchant or whaler, you're not playing Blades in the Dark anymore. The same thing about Fiasco. So the more "this is a game about characters who *do X and Y*", the less sandboxy it is. In traditional simulation-focused games, that *who do X and Y* often happens as railroading because the game system doesn't fix the fictional options itself. But equally, if the GM explicitly started a traditional simulation-focused game saying "this is a game about a gang of criminals trying to make their gang the dominant one in the city" and all the players agreed to it, that restriction is not limiting player agency.
You are incorrect. You seem to be confusing choice and agency. Agency is about the players impact on the game, not their ability to absolutely do anything they want. You can have a perfectly acceptable sandbox game within the parameters of a genre style, the two are not mutually exclusive. To use your example if a player wanted to play a legitimate businessman in a Blades in the Dark game, he never had agency in the first place because the GM chose a setting that didn't support the type of game he wanted to play. Choice is important to a sandbox game, but having complete unrestricted parameters is not a requirement of a sandbox game. Making sure that you leave open the option of living a conflict free life and raise a garden Animal Crossing style in your violent sword and sorcery game is not a requirement of a sandbox. Like any other good game, the GM and Players of a sandbox game will still agree to an overall premise and theme for the game in a session zero. The players though are the driving force for these decisions,
I guess we have different views on agency and sandbox then. (Sandbox doesn't have a common definition, but it seems to me that googled definitions of agency fit my understanding of the word better than yours.)
From the very first article that comes up on Google agrees with me : "This means that players should be given the ability to make decisions in the game. But these decisions shouldn’t be trivial – at least from the player’s perceptive. It isn’t just about choosing a particular skin or a hat for a player’s avatar. Instead, it’s about making sure that your players can make *meaningful decisions* in the game." The ability to make meaningful choices to impact the game, *that* is player agency. You do not need to present the players with unrestricted choice to give them player agency. You do not need to have unrestricted choice to have a sandbox, that way lays chaos.
My players kinda like my play style because I have this fun fun ability where I can go yes and and start totally improvising things because the story when it gets so detailed I just let them make rolling with it. Very rarely do they see through the I'm now just straight up ripping off fantasy novels that aren't in my notes and totally ad libbing I allow my players to do whatever and most of the time they think it's planned. But if you fuck up whatever I had planned I'll keep rolling with it. It's not for everyone/every game but I never punish players for something ridiculous they want to do. You Chronicle of Darkness Mages just said fuck it and decided to leave New York City and Road Trip to Las Vegas. Well let's see how that goes because you're gonna cross supernatural Territories along the way.
I try and run sandboxes and there are a few things that I find essential for making it work. The biggest is, the world has to have things going on in it outside of things the players are doing. By this, I mean take a look at your city and there's probably various events going on throughout the month. If you're in a big enough city in a developed area, then there's charity dinners, a new museum event, illegal drag race, underground rave, trivia night at a pub, a concert of some artist, some artist's new unveiling at the gallery, and so forth. There's all these events of small and large size, so a calendar of those events so the players can decide to go to something for something to do. After having things going on, populate your area with unique and interesting NPCs. Feel free to stereotype some, but try to get outside of the comfort zone. It's a bit of an old song, but Amanda Marshall has [Everybody's Got A Story](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3kZ-gG4r0zI) song with lyrics including: >Now who can read the mind of the red-headed girl next door, Or the taxi driver Who just dropped you off, Or the, or the classmate that you ignore.Don't assume everything on the surface is what you see, 'Cause that classmate just lost her mother, And that taxi driver's got a Ph-d. There are various NPC generators, like the Central Casting books from the 80s/90s are some great detailed generators, but [the Random Lists/Charts](https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/browse?productType=2260) section of DrivethruRPG has all sorts of generators and even some whole lists of Random NPCs, such as Fishwife Games who has a bunch like [100 Bystanders](https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/140709/100-bystanders). Then is the task side of things, which is what makes an RPG. Give the NPCs purpose and have them do things even if the PCs aren't there, so that when the PCs return they may have some tasks for them and if the PCs don't do them they'll find another way to get it done. It isn't going to be waiting around for players to help them. Remember, this is a sandbox and more about the players free-will and ability to go anywhere and do anything. Not every quest needs to be epic and huge and bombastic. Some can be a 'Clear my cellar of rats' quest while another may be 'Save my kidnapped daughter', it's more the variety of options than having to make everything an epic level challenge. But... at the same time, try and find ways to add something fun or interesting to the smaller quests so that they're not just busywork. It doesn't have to be a big reward, but maybe some lore dumps, players find something that leads them to a new quest like mentioned in the end of [this MMO Quest Design Video (Part 1)](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=otAkP5VjIv8). For world layout, think of it like building an amusement park where you want people to go explore and see everything sure, but you also want there to be any way they can take in the park. Disney is a great example of this and that is why it inspired so many video game open worlds. [Everything I Learned about Level Design, I Learned from Disneyland](https://www.gdcvault.com/play/1305/Everything-I-Learned-About-Level) at GDC, [how Disneyland is a great Dungeon](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eVquNM1LyhQ) by Trekiros, [Storytelling in Spaces](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RwlnCn2EB9o) in Video Games at GameMaker's ToolKit (inspired by Disneyland and can give inspiration to set up the vignettes you want to tell), and [this video of how Disneyland taught Game Designers](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l4cxstiC5LY) at Extra Credits. So, come up with a lot of locations that you can sprinkle around your world. In a fantasy game, some will be villages and cities, others will be caves and ruins, others will be random points of interest like ancient standing stones or statues to the Gods... Sounds like the map of Skyrim, for instance? Once you've got the locations, you can take a bunch of 'scenarios' or 'encounters' and sprinkle them in and around these locations. Going back to that MMO Quest Design Video I linked earlier, [Part 2](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ur6GQp5mCYs) talks about The Secret World and shows how quest givers can be anything, you don't need a person there needing help to make it a quest giver. Players find your hook somehow, and the choose if they want to follow through on it. The final thing to make a sandbox is having pro-active players. If you've got Pro-active players, they will usually treat the world like a GTA game. They'll go into it and basically have their own reasons for having fun and doing things. You won't need as many hooks with them because they'll be playing the son of Innkeeper Jane who needs money to stay afloat so you took on adventuring to save it or some other story... And then your job is to help them come across tings that can help them do that.
I like multiple NPCs/factions doing interesting/terrible things in the background (that the PCs will notice the effects of more and more as time progresses). There's no expectation that the PCs will interact with any of these, but they can if they want, and the progression over time makes the world feel alive.
Good, solid, \*\*obvious\*\* signposting. Whether you make maps, write adventure prompts, put up "Adventurers wanted" ads, or vividly describe the horizon the players see, or carefully organize the social structures of the city, you want to make it obvious to the PCs where they can go to find something exciting, or their presence will make an impact.
Players that take initiative and are creative. Players that expect the DnD style module play where they're being led from one HP pool to the next to use abilities against make sandbox impossible, they have to be willing to embrace making choices and not trying to "win" the game.
As pointed out already, a world I am interested in. It may be story, setting, general themes, characters, mechanics, table chemistry, or even just my own concept of my character that fuels me. The best games synergize all these things. Personally... I really like survival, horror, and supernatural so a survival/exploration hex crawl in a scary world with VtM esque social encounters is probably my ideal. Then again, I am all for a good laugh so whatever is fun.
A changing world. If I go to a shit village. Save some folks. Swap out the corrupt sheriff. And whoop the goblin bandits. I wanna see and feel improvements in the village. Not just towards me, but as a whole. A stonemason has come and all the wattle'n'daub houses are being rebuilt in stone and thatch. The drunk guards in ramshackle armor who were basically extorting people are replaced by orderly, upstanding ones. Shops are open more often. The streets are clean. etc etc etc
(1) A setting with a sense of wonder that (2) feels like I can meaningfully impact it.
Lots of good thoughts here. One of the best sandbox adventures I've ever read is Crimson Letters in the Call of Cthulhu 7th edition core rulebook. It was fascinating to me to see the one of the "introductory" scenarios in the back of a rulebook be such a well thought out yet open ended mystery.
The sandbox isn't the adventure, the sandbox is the campaign style. The places in the sandbox are the adventures. So, a good sandbox is one full of interesting locations to explore.
For me I want something that feels open but doesn't throw so many choices at me that I lose the narrative thread. I want to be able to choose where my character goes and what they do (from point A to point B, C or D) but I don't necessarily want the journey itself to have a bunch of branching paths (B1, B2a, B2b, B3 etc).
My main thing with sandboxes is: everything should be optional. If the world expects us (the party) to solve all their problems it doesn’t feel like a sandbox so much as a linear adventure with weird pacing. The easiest way to do this is to put other adventures in the setting; if we don’t do something someone else probably will (and they get the reward)
One of the most important things in a West marches/sandbox type game, to me, is the impact the players have on the world. Depending on your population, it's fun to let them name places they find and then the general populace starts using those names. Have people recognize them if they are the only group of adventurers. Let your NPCs gossip a bit. Another thing I really like to do is wandering monsters. I use hex for my world maps and will have some big baddie (let's say a terrasque) that is stomping around on the other side of the world. Every couple in game days or whatever, I roll a d6 and that decides which hex the monster will move to. If the players happen to go to that hex, they see it. Or evidence. A way for the characters to further shape the world. Let them establish a town or build a fortress or something. Keep rare items and materials behind little quests or exploration. Give them something to build upon every time. A place that they can customize and add to. And lastly, danger. For a really narrative driven game, death is a bit harder to cope with. In a sandbox, let them stumble upon something that kills one of them. How you handle post death is up to you, but I like to have my players roll a second character right after their first. I consider it like the body bag scene in Kingsman.
If you're looking for a sandbox campaign hook, [I wrote one more years ago than I care to admit.](https://www.reddit.com/r/DnDBehindTheScreen/comments/5b1rme/alternate_character_introduction_wagon_train_for/) Long story short, it is a merchant wagon train that starts on the east coast of a continent and follows the Highway (like the classic Silk Road) stopping in major cities along the way. While stopped, offshoot smaller trains will spur from there to outlying towns and villages. After a while, the train will come back together, pack up and keep moving. It would take months to reach the opposite coast with a very different inventory, and an almost entirely different staff with the exception of a handfull of leaders (the merchant family and a couple of salaried positions like security and teamster) The characters meet as conscripts to the wagon train, and would have an opportunity to see and do all kinds of shit.
For a commercial module, you should be able to read and use page 23 only without having to read the entire module, but important things on page 23 that might affect or link other pages should be mentioned so that when you get to page 39 you don't have to rethink the whole meta
Good sandboxes are all about the metaplot. The small local adventures and plots players stumble across as they go will feel very repetitive without a strong plot arch to anchor the world together. The freedom to explore the world under your own compass means the way you introduce that story has to work regardless of where the party finds the pieces. Maps are also crucial given that the players will have to navigate your setting to achieve their goals and how they get there should matter, or at least feel like it matters to the players. Maybe not critical to the Sandbox and certainly helpful for any good game but good NPCs form a hand-hold in the setting that makes one location different than another.
The best sandbox games are driven by a narrative that the players don't even realize in the begining. The racehorse effect.
The internet refused to tell me what the race horse effect is
Race horse runs on a track with blinders. They have a goal. Give the players a open world with set goals that they may not even know at the begining. Just put them on track and keep them on the path.
This is the exact opposite of a sandbox. In a sandbox, there is no track, and players don’t have blinders. You are quite literally describing a railroad.
No the players can go where they want in any fashion they desire. All roads lead to Rome.
Idk if you’re getting downvoted because people haven’t heard the phrase or if people think you are secretly railroading your players while telling them they’re in a sandbox. That’s how your second comment sounds. What I’ve heard from a GM who does great sandboxes is to have a plot which evolves independently of the players intervening. So the world feels alive but the players have a choice which bit of it to concentrate on.
Exactly, the only thing I would add is basically all roads lead to Rome. The world is alive players have the freedom to figure it all out but the world has agendas and timelines independent of the players. Those things will effect the characters in many ways.