Friday, June 13, 2014

Here Be Adventure: Bounding a Limited Sandbox

In Wilderness Adventures, it says:

[. . . ] most campaigns benefit from confinement, if only for the GM's sanity. Confining adventurers is tricky. The old standbys of writing "Here Be Monsters" on the map and telling horror stories about what waits beyond the Mountains of Insanity won't work on fearless monster killers."

He's right. "Here be monsters" is a signpost adventurers go toward, not away from. The book has a lot of suggestions to keep adventurers in the sandbox area. But I have a simple one I usually rely on:

Stamp the sandbox map with "Here Be Adventure."

In other words, there is a whole world out there - but the exciting stuff is happening right here. The sandbox area has the greatest concentration of adventure - the artifacts of great power, the people of consequence (including the PCs), the great treasures, and the events that will affect the world. It's the hotspot of the world. Within its bounds are the main exciting things in the game.

Yes, you could leave the sandbox area and see what's beyond the mountains or past the northern-, southern-, western-, or easternmost edges of the sandbox. But it's not going to be quite as exciting. What's more, it will be hooked back into the sandbox. The magic items you find will need identifying by someone in the sandbox. The map you find leads back to a hidden spot in the sandbox. The bad guy that gets away? She flees to her allies - yes, back in the sandbox.

I've found this method works pretty well. I just tell the group this before play begins, and generally they stick around in the area I mapped out. People want adventure, and they're generally happy to have you say, "this is where it is."

It's better to give a pointer to the fun than try to hang up warning signs about where the fun isn't. It's easily coupled with any in-game explanation (the Mountains of Insanity drive you insane, the Infinite Ocean requires a special ship to cross, it's illegal to kill and murder for loot outside of Krail's Folley, etc. But on a meta-game level, "go here for fun" works.

What about exploration?

This can put a damper on a game of exploration, unless the sandbox either a) is a place to explore or b) has places that need to be explored. If the game is about exploration (instead of conquest, trade, dungeon-delving, or whatever), just make the sandbox the area you explore. Maybe town is off the map, and you just go there and come back. The Isle of Dread works on this principle. There is a map of the "Known World" but the adventure itself isn't there, it's on the island. The Known Worlds are a place to sell your stuff and recruit new adventurers in an X1-centered game.

Some players just won't be satisfied with a bounded area. In that case, you can either satisfy them with occasional forays into the lands beyond the map edge, or just ditch the whole idea of a limited sandbox. Usually the occasional forays will be enough - that big trip to the Imperial Capital, the 5 or 6 session trip to the Island of the Evil Stone Head, a brief trip to another world. If it all hooks back, it both helps the GM by limiting the game prep to the main sandbox area plus a side trip area, and rewards the players for both going on the excursion and for coming back to the sandbox to exploit their rewards for the trip.


10 comments:

  1. The more interesting the area and the more fundamental it is to the campaign premise the less the players will want to see whats outside.

    Arkham city and oblivion kept me pretty busy in their sandboxes

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    1. That's what I figure - if the adventure and the fun and the rewards are really in that one place, going past the Mountains of Insanity is less likely. After all, you're on the side people should be crossing to.

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  2. If the sandbox is a normal mana area, and the rest of the world is low mana, players have a lot less interest in leaving the sandbox.

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    1. Unless their PCs are cabalesque, and the low mana is exactlty where they prefer to operate, but that works to vis a vi no mana vs low mana/normal mana

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  3. I used a little carrot and a little stick. In my campaign, there's the "Old World", which is bound up in rules and bureaucracy and old money, where every square inch has been explored, cataloged, and claimed. Then, there's the "New World", which is largely unexplored, but free of cumbersome laws and rules, and full of cash that isn't claimed by anybody that the law cares about. If they ever were to try to break out of the sandbox, I'll have to try the "hook back" approach...

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    1. Realizing the utility of the "hook back" approach really made my last long campaign pop. I used it with villains and plots, too - ultimately, everything was hooked back to the main plot line (the PCs vs. the evil wizard they set free and then set out to defeat) and/or to someone connected to it. It really made my job as a GM so much easier, and made the players occasional forays out of the main play area just interesting sidetrips that fed back into the main game. Nothing felt wasted or like a distraction.

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  4. My setting is a port city built on a megadungeon. There are plenty of reasons to go there, and hostility and overly ordered areas once you get more than two to three days away.

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  5. Thanks for the great article. It hit just as I am working on setting up some new stuff for my players.

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  6. This post inspired me to use a similar "limited sandbox" approach when drawing out a map for my campaign. http://www.majhost.com/gallery/Ronin-Catholic/GURPS/island_map.png

    Reading your blog in general has helped me feel more daring about running a campaign at all, especially your numerous simplifications helping me decide what options to drop in order to make things run smoother.

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    1. Thank you. I'm glad it's helped you in that way. One thing I like to make clear is that even the folks that write lots of rules really only pick and choose from them. You want just enough rules and options (including in-game choices) to make the game run smoothly without needing to spend a lot of time fussing over how to handle situations or what's available, yet not so many that you end up fussing over how to make all the rules work together or decide between the options. There is a range of a sweet spot somewhere in the middle. And that middle generally has less rules, less in-game options, and less game prep than it can see at first glance. "Build a sandbox for everyone to play in" sounds intimidating, but you can really cut down the options to "just big enough to play in" and everyone will be perfectly happy.

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