Go, Go Gazette
Last column, in "Tiptop and Bottoms," we discussed setting introduction using the technique of top down – zoom in. Following those guidelines should leave you with about 10 pages of substantial, including a high concept for your place setting, a world map out, a historical timeline of contemporary to forgotten story, and a little-place setting inside your world where child's play is going to happen. The micro-setting ranges in size from a urban center (in Cyberpunk 2020) to a kingdom (in D&adenosine monophosphate;D) to an heavenly body area (in Classic Traveler).
Now, the smart reader will have detected that the micro-setting from "Tops and Bottoms" is exactly the same size equally the sandpile that forms the basis of the story web described in "It's Not Your News report." (If you seaport't read that pillar, check IT out Hera.) No happenstance, of course, because they're the very thing! The end of the top down – zoom along in method is to give you the coherent framework you demand to probably people your sandbox and build your story web. I call the detailed write-up of the sandpile and story web a "Gazetteer," in homage to the standard Dungeons & Dragons Gazetteer supplements such A Principalities of Glantri and Orcs of Thar. It's to that we turn our tending nowadays.
If you're running a fantasy campaign, the sandbox/micro-setting is going to be a frontier or unexplored wilderness. If you are playing Classic Traveler, it's going to be extraordinary or two sub-sectors of star systems. For Call of Cthulhu, it mightiness be a map of British capital circa 1929, for Hacker 2020 a map of your home township in 2020. Since the dominant rules and favorite settings of about gamers are fantasy, I'll use that as illustrative for this column, only the Sami general principles apply to other settings.
Protrude With Static
Start with a hex map, roughly 30 hexes by 40 hexes, each representing a 6-mile wide hex (30 square miles). That gives you a part 43,200 square miles. To put out that into historical price, that's a part about the size of Greece, and thence if history is any guide, seems large enough to justify a distinct civilization with its own gods, heroes, and epic adventures. You tail hook this map yourself, Oregon use whatsoever of the widely available wilderness maps from supplements such as Points of Light or the Wilderlands of High Fantasy.
Within that map, you volition place 45 static points of interest. Tierce of these should follow settlements, towns and castles of the human race and demi-humans, while the other two-thirds (30) are dungeons, lairs, or special areas. Of the 30 dungeons/lairs, aim for 3 mega-dungeons all intentional for about 6-10 sessions of play; 10 dungeons designed for 1-2 Sessions of play; and 17 small lairs premeditated for a uncomplete-session of play, i.e. 1 encounter. Each channelize of involvement in the sandbox initially gets a paragraph of description.
For the dungeons and mega-dungeons, you'll just now describe the keep shortly, to be fleshed out later, but for the belittled lairs, you sack cover everything you'll need to use it live. For instance:
Hex #28 Lair of the Chimera – A copse of giant acacia trees rises from the steppes here, and many wild sheep, gazelle, and else animals browse on the shrubbery and fruit and water at the nearby pond. They are preyed on by a pack of 2 Chimeras (as per Teras Non-automatic) that sleep in a sinkhole ungenerous the haven. In the sinkhole, amidst bones of dead, are a leather satchel with 15 amethysts (100gp each) and 1 small diamond (1,000gp) and 2 injured sacks of golden (1,200gp complete).
Note that you Don't actually have to create all the points of interestingness yourself. In fact, doing thusly is an big prison term dip. What I recommend is to cobble put together a few dozen of your favorite modules, lairs, and encounters from magazines, websites, and transaction products and adapt them to your setting, focusing along simply a few special areas to spend your time. In my own Auran Imperium campaign, I've adapted TSR's classic modules Keep on the Borderlands and In Search of the Unknown region and about a dozen free One Sri Frederick Handley Page Dungeons.
Give out Dynamic
At this point, your sandbox should have a density of about 1 point of interest every 6 hexes (36 miles), putting them roughly 2 years apart at historical travel speeds. With (30 x 40) 1,200 hexes in your sandbox, the vast majority of the sandpile is empty of adynamic encounters. Some available settings, equivalent Geoffrey McKinney's Carcosa, bear actually full up every glamour of their sandbox with encounters, but I don't think that's necessarily the top-quality role of your sentence, because it guarantees most encounters will go inactive.
I recommend instead creating a chart of wandering encounters for from each one typecast of terrain on your map. Then, on the indirect encounter chart, for each encounter, specify a portion chance (usually round 25%) that the showdown will actually be a "high-energy lair" showdown. Create each of these energising lairs beforehand, similar to the static lairs in a higher place, with 1 operating theatre 2 encounters that will make about a half seance to deal with. The exclusively difference between the ii is that the static lairs are pre-placed while the dynamic lairs are located as the party travels more or less.
Here's an model of one dynamic lair:
Manticore Cistern
Den: Mountain, 20%
Map Location: _______
An antediluvian Zaharan cistern has collapsed here, creating a sinkhole, 300′ wide and 120′ deep. The remnants of the fluted columns that once supported the cisterna are visible, like jagged teeth rising up from the water level, and small metal objects glitter downstairs the water. The derelict cistern is the lair of 4 Manticores (as per Monster Manual). 6,000gp in Zaharan coinage is scattered across the floor of the cisterna, which is used as a entice aside the manticores.
Soh, when in mountains, if the party encounters manticores randomly, there's a 20% chance they actually discovered a manticore lair in an old cistern. When discovered, I compose down the hex number where it is to be found in case the company returns to the area. Sometimes the party Chicago to investigate and sometimes they don't. Each lair is unique and can solitary be discovered in one case, so for rattling standard creatures (goblins, etc.) create 2-3 lairs for each.
From the party's point of view, they cannot tell off the difference between the pre-located static lairs and the random lairs. It just seems like wherever they go, there is a mix of wandering encounters, lairs, and dungeons to cost discovered. If they actually were to look at the sandpile map, though, what they would see is lots of empty hexes with remarkably high clusters of monster lairs that happen to constitute along the routes they've heavily traveled. (For maximum effect, tie the dynamic encounters into your story net, overly.)
Balancing the Take exception
In a fewer games, mostly scientific discipline fiction, role player characters are comparatively stable, but in most RPGs, characters advance from unstressed-kneed apprentices to mighty heroes and experts over the course of play. If that's the case, you call for to take the reality of the leveling curve into account when creating your gazetteer.
The easiest way to handle it is to set your sandpile rising A a borderlands environment because information technology gives you a assembled-in social structure that explains the gradient of challenges the political party faces. To build a borderlands, first put down a drawstring of border forts (or towns, quad stations, etc.) running along one axis of the map, about 1/3 of the path in. To the rear of the border forts, put the of import town/settlement. Beyond the border forts will be "the wilderness" or "the waste" or knickknack, where the majority of the dungeons and lairs will lie. Place these such that the deeper the players travel into the wilderness, the more dangerous it becomes. Put a some areas of higher-than-normal danger approximately the border but in geographically isolated places; for instance, an evil fort highschool au fait a mountain, or a very walk-in underground river. Put your mega-dungeons such that same is close and pretty gentle, one is a hold length departed and relatively hard, and unmatchable is far, out-of-the-way away and amok hard. Build your dynamic lairs and planetary encounters such that they are at a mid grade of difficulty (in classic D&D, this is the 5th-9th level range).
The resultant role of this structure is that early on in the campaign, the party hangs near the border forts. They can't hazard the dangerous wandering encounters of the wilderness (which will be several levels higher than them) then they incline to move from border fort to skirt fortify, assisting each fort in clearing out whatever threats are near. Then when they pass a certain level of confidence, they begin to get into the wilderness, enlightened they can handle some vagabondage encounters they bump into. Again, they turn from border fort to border fort, but this time in widening circles of exploration into the wild. As their great power peaks, they will begin conducting forays deeper in the wilderness, far on the far side the border forts, perhaps capturing Oregon building strongholds to use as a staging point for deeper forays into harder challenges. The occasional high-level areas impending to the perimeter (like the castle on the mountain) serve A a reminder of the evil that lurks on the far side, and also as a Nice taste of what they can expect when they are ready to go deep.
If you follow these guidelines, you'll have your hands quite an brimfull – certainly giving me enough time to pen my next column, on techniques to transubstantiate your sandbox into a "world in motion" that lives and breathes. Happy gaming until then!
Further Reading
The undermentioned books, blogs, and settings are recommended to any student of sandbox gamesmastering.
Alexanders Macris has been playing tabletop games since 1981. In addition to co-authoring the tabletop games Recent Spearhead and Blaze Across the Litoral, his work has appeared in Interface, the Cyberpunk 2022 fanzine, and in RPGA AD&D 2nd Version tournament modules. Additionally to running deuce weekly campaigns, he is publisher of The Dreamer and chair and CEO of Themis Media. He sleeps along Sundays.
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