How to plan a D&D Sandbox Campaign

[Music] hello and welcome to this episode of for your consideration my name is guy and today we're looking at sandbox style GME now there's a few different types of jamming that are out there you've got the railroad GM you've got the sandbox GM you got the module GM you've got the campaign GM I'm a campaign GM I like to plan out big epic campaigns that send to the characters right in the middle of it sandbox style jamming however is a different approach and there's nothing better or worse than any of the other methods it's just a different way of doing it so how is it different and how can you use it to plan your next session all sessions moving forward well when we look at it we look at obviously planning we look at adventures and we look at flexibility because that's what sandbox is all about it's about flexibility and it's flexibility of the players characters choices the players choices and your choices so it's a very exciting very different space to be in so let's move forward hopefully right so when it comes down to planning there's no main campaign there's no central plot that you've worked out meticulously with all its different beats and all that kind of stuff there's no giant evil force who's trying to take over the planet or the galaxies or the universe there's just stuff happening simulation is love this type of game because there's all sorts of things happening all over the place and the players can get involved in whichever stories they want to or not entirely up to them so in ed says no main campaign adventures are independent adventures are independent right I'm still getting used to this idea adventures are completely independent this means one adventure to the next there's no link this adventure doesn't lead me to that adventure I risk your princess and this adventure next week we save a kingdom from an army the kingdom has nothing to do with the princess at all there's no link there's no causal link we do this so that it causes that happen maybe occasionally one adventure might cause another adventure we burn down the orc village so the next adventure is the orcs coming to attack us yes that certainly can happen but it lasts for one or two or three adventures and then it dies down and we never again hear from those orcs there's no larger implication to the the the narrative it just it is what it is so the challenge we have is how to start our campaign where the world is quite literally available the players can do literally anything they like how do you start your campaign well there is that video that I did on on six ways of starting your campaign or anyway it was video on the helmet the idea is that because they can do anything they can go anywhere your first adventure is an introductory adventure to the idea that they can go anywhere that they can do anything that they like so I would place them in a battle that finishes in that first adventure it's done and dusted and there's nothing that continues beyond that so maybe it's a bird border skirmish or it's a ship that's attacked by pirates I'd make it a neutral space and that gives the players because their characters end up being in a completely neutral situation it gives those players the opportunity to go in any direction they like you need to let them know that they can do that you need to say this is a sandbox game you determine where are we going now there's no causal link so you don't have to worry about keeping track of things seeding which is something that we're going to talk about a little bit is also something that's different because there's no causal link there's no long-term campaign seeding is really now just opportunities for you to throw out adventures as you need so when it comes to adventures we then look at the villains and the henchmen that you use they are episodic and by that I mean they're here for this adventure they die in this adventure they are defeated in this adventure maybe they come back in three or four sessions time and you defeat them again and then they're gone there's no long-term nemesis there's no one power actively working against the group we'll ever overcome or be overcome by the group they will face villains and henchmen and the bad guys will be as varied as they possibly could be now if this sounds familiar what we're talking about here is television from the 1980s television was very very reluctant to create long term campaigns they were very reluctant for one episode of television to relate to the next so if you watched say magnum p.i if we're going really far back or you watch the early years of Star Trek The Next Generation or anything along those lines each episode was self-contained and what happened in one episode very seldom had any impact on anything that happened later on it was only in the later of the mid-90s that we started to have longer-term game plans longer term stories within our TV shows which if you didn't watch episode one you wouldn't really pick up on but again they were still nervous and the reason why they were nervous was because they were worried that viewers who tuned in to a show halfway through the season if it was a long-running campaign like game of thrones' today the viewer would go wow I don't know what's going on so I'm gonna skip it it was before we had things like video-on-demand Netflix DVD boxsets all that kind of stuff way before then where people literally had no way of catching up on what they'd missed it was just played out and it was gone and they wouldn't be able to find out what had happened before so it was very very very insular very isolated kind of narratives and what's nice about that is an eye and this is not only just nostalgia is it occasionally you watch a show from that period because you know you're not having to invest 12 hours to watch the entire season you can just watch an episode and go yeah it was an entertaining episode there was no real link from one to the other now we've moved to the exact extreme end of the spectrum where we no longer even have episodes coming out per week we now get the entire season upfront so you can just binge watch the entire thing because that's where we've now moved we'd rather watch for 12 hours then break it out over 12 weeks or whatever the cycle might be so in those shows you're villains no reason to stay around there's no reason to take any long-term long-term plans because they're not gonna be there for very long downtime is entirely player-driven what do you want to do while you're not fighting this week's villain next week's villain you don't know about because they haven't yet appeared because it's sandbox and we don't know where you're going so in your downtime what are you doing the player now decides on downtime you can obviously as the GM watch the tempo of the game you go up they've been sitting around the table for 12 minutes now not doing anything they're kind of shopping and there's nothing going on okay I can throw in a random act which will start the next adventure but generally speaking downtime is definitely player driven you let them explore it for as long as they like until they go and find the next adventure they need to actively go and look for the sandbox after all it's not a campaign where there's going to be event triggers like the big bed doing something generally it's the players who find the adventures they go and make the adventures themselves modules fit incredibly well into a sandbox if you pick up something that's set in a desert type of environment well you can make sure the players characters end up near a desert like effect when they walk into the desert you can open up the module play through the module and then move on because the module won't have any a verification zhan anything else happening in the world because it's insulated is episodic so you can then also explore themes this week the theme that we're looking at is the triumph of the we're looking at bravery as a theme and what is bravery me next week we're looking at the idea of Honor all the week after we're looking at the idea of marriage marriage is our theme or comedy is our theme or horror or so you can change themes throughout it's episodic it's sandbox it really doesn't matter there's no idea there's no drive of a central theme all the way through you don't need it because you're just going wherever the winds happen to blow you there's nothing wrong with that it's absolutely fine it actually allows you to explore different ideas to test out different types of adventures so it's a great Avenue for you as a game master to try out different things and go well yeah last week we kind of had but of a horror theme so this week I'm gonna go for that I'm gonna go for this I'm gonna try that I'm gonna try this so you can really cut your teeth on different things and there really isn't any problem with that now flexibility is what it's all about and the benefit of sandbox is that if you don't have a stable player base so you've got players that show up hopefully every week but sometimes they skip a week it's not a problem in sandbox no one character has a long-running thread no one character has this bigger arc there is no bigger art for them to have so whether they're there for this week's adventure or not it doesn't matter next week their character can arrive and pick up and go as they now meet up with the party and continue forward so you can have players dropping in and dropping out it really doesn't make that much difference because there isn't a bigger bigger plan the outcomes are also irrelevant because there's no giant campaign if the characters succeed this adventure or they fail at this adventure it really makes no nevermind it means that well they failed sure they don't get the reward they move on it doesn't mean that they've failed so now the entire Empire collapses because that was part of your grand plot your master plot that your Super nemesis has worked out and that they have now taken over the kingdom that happens in the background it happens in the background because of you is the game master wanting to drive that narrative but in a sandbox space it really doesn't have that much impact on the players they don't care they're gonna move on to another place anywhere and try a different adventure they're going her dungeon crawl or their game for this so they're going for that so the outcomes don't have that much critical nature to them then so you don't have to worry too much about trying to link things together and again there's that freedom of mood so you're flexible about wow I wanted it to be scary but it's turned into funny it doesn't matter because my whole my campaign is just this mishmash so you can really determine is that outcome that's negative really negative or is it at a loss you don't get paid moving on next story here we go and we again etc etc so the mood at your table is really going to be well pretty much optimistic as the characters bounce from one place to another place to another place the other side of this mood this freedom of mood is that your players are not trying to figure out these bigger stories they're not sitting there going this NPC mentioned something about that Kingdom that we came out of and I know that that links to this because of that because of this because of that how does it all think that they're not going to be doing that they don't need to because they know that these are very compartmentalized spaces so your sandbox environment is demanding on you as the game master it's really demanding on you because this planning of these adventures is flexibility there is no link there's no driving matter so you are totally dependent on your own creativity to come up with these different adventures and yes I suggest you go and look at the four different types of adventures and the sub adventures which we've now discovered and look at and see okay well I had a thought a adventure last time let's do a delivery this time let's do this there's etcetera etcetera and then you can throw it out to the players and they can pick it up and take it or they can go in a different direction and do whatever it is that they want you don't have to worry about ceding too much because well the characters are just exploring wherever they happen to go so sandbox definitely allows you as the game master to try out different things try out different adventures try out different monsters different villains different scenarios absolutely you are in a safe space you don't have to worry about long-term planning etc what you do have to worry about is that your short-term adventures need to work out and here's something that's actually quite tricky with sandboxing you need to make sure that your adventures terminate because if you start an adventure and it leads to another adventure which leads to another adventure which leads to another adventure you're no longer in sandbox you're now in a campaign and a campaign has a whole bunch of different demands in order for to feel satisfactory to the conclusion with the sandbox type of game the conclusion is just the last adventure there's no final say there's no final showdown with a big bad monster it's basically when everyone goes you know what I think we've run our course I think we are done just like this video so if you agree with me on sandboxing as being a wonderful vehicle to test out your skills test out your abilities hit that like button hit the subscribe button if you want to see more of this kind of video let me know in the comments below what you thought and whether you agree or not and do you use sandboxing as your adventures very compartmentalized not linked to one another and what are your experiences with that what are the pros and what are the cons do you think so someone who's getting into this hobby of ours can look at that and go well yeah absolutely maybe maybe I'll try a Sandboxie sort of style for the first six months then I'll work into a campaign or into a railroad let me let me think about those so you want me to talk about campaign style versus railroad as well let me know below I can only give you videos if you tell me what videos you want until next time I wish you and yours the very happiest of weekends [Music]

Channel: How to be a Great GM

Views: 49,714

Keywords: dnd 5e, dungeon masters guide, Dungeon master tips, World building, Dnd gm tips, dnd, d&d, dnd gm tips, game master tips, Great game master, Tabletop Roleplaying, GM, How to GM, How to be a great game master, Game Master, Great Game Mastering, How to, How to be a great dungeon master, DM Tips, Dungeon Master, RPG, Game Master Tips, Dungeon Master Tips, GMing Tips, DMing Tips, d&d sandbox, d&d sandbox campaign, d&d sandbox tips, d&d sandbox design, rpg sandbox, sandboxrpg

Id: K8O5K52Fc7k

Length: 14min 38sec (878 seconds)

Published: Fri Aug 17 2018