How to set up a Sandbox style space campaign.

[Scott Ruggels]

https://batintheattic.blogspot.com/2009/04/how-to-make-traveller-sandbox.html?m=1
 

The example is Traveller, but works well as basic advice for a sandbox style campaign. Additionally, you can tag player’s life path results to the map notes as well to give folks a deeper background, and ties to the location. 

[Duke Bushido]

7 hours ago, Scott Ruggels said:

https://batintheattic.blogspot.com/2009/04/how-to-make-traveller-sandbox.html?m=1
 

The example is Traveller, but works well as basic advice for a sandbox style campaign. Additionally, you can tag player’s life path results to the map notes as well to give folks a deeper background, and ties to the location. 

Wait-

 

Are you telling me that this isn't normal?!

 

 

 

 

[Opal]

You mean you don't just randomly generate the planets as the players get to them?

[Duke Bushido]

3 hours ago, Opal said:

You mean you don't just randomly generate the planets as the players get to them?

 

To some extent, yes, but mostly no in an extended campaign.  If I am going to end up having to write it all down anyway, I prefer to get it done and out of the way and have that much prepped material I can toss out to the players on demand.

 

Now That doesn't mean every world has a whole lot of detail- basic geography, climate, population-- possibly culture if there is a particulalrly dominant Or interwsting one.  Possibly.  Sometimes those are filled by the needs of the story at the moment, and sometimes they arw filled by the players (my charavter comes from a planet in this sector over here.  It's a warm, wet world, and the humidity is so extreme in equatorial regions that only the cobalt miners live there.  Mist of us are closer to the poles, which at least freeze a bit in their winter months.  Tech level 8 exceot for farming, which bumps 10 in places, with a mostly semi-nomadic population away from the corporate farms.  The government insist on strict laws, but since there is no real way to enforce them on most folks and the corps dont care, it'a pretty lax.  My character was from a family of nomads blah blah blah)

 

Okay, cool.  Let me write that down / make a couole of tweaks and we can get started.  If we end up there, I can add more detail as needed.

 

 

Short campaign or one-shots?   Or if you happen to wander out of the sandbox?  Yeah: probably going to whip something up on the spot.

 

I have an aversion to not having _something_ mapped out ahead od time.  Not bwcause I can't wing it, but from a player comment back in the 90s.  We had a new (to our group) player and very much near the start of the campaign, the characters are left with a decisiin on where to go next.  Whilw my regulars took a moment to debate (in character), the new guy says "just pick one.  Wherever we go, it is going to be the right planet, right?"

 

The laughter was deafening until one od my regulars said "wow.  Buddy, I dont know who you played with before, but you are in for a treat if that's what you're used to."

 

I was embarrased over how proud that made me, and even though TJ hasn't gamed with us since 98 or so (he moved for a job), I go out of my way when planning a campaign to not let him down.

 

 

Edited March 28, 2023 by Duke Bushido

[Steve]

I personally find travellermap.com to be an excellent resource as a GM, especially since it will give me the book reference for more details.

 

Since I’ve seen books reference that it exists “in universe” as a database players can look at, it also helps them determine where they’d like to go and what kind of planet to expect when they arrive. This is helpful if they prefer to skim a gas giant and process their own fuel, for example.

Edited March 30, 2023 by Steve

[Scott Ruggels]

On 3/28/2023 at 1:15 PM, Duke Bushido said:

Wait-

 

Are you telling me that this isn't normal?!

 

 

Apparently not any more.  I have been cruising  r/rpgs on Reddit, and most of the chatter is about narrative focused games like Fate,  Blades in the Dark, and the endless "Powered By The Apocalypse, games. Tyrrany by Theater Kids, over there. The exodus from 5e apparently went in different directions on Reddit.

 

But I thought that this would be a nice reminder for folks to post here.

On 3/28/2023 at 1:34 PM, Opal said:

You mean you don't just randomly generate the planets as the players get to them?

 

I don't like to roll during the game, as it slows things down, and I lklike to keep my prep to a half hour to 45 minutes before the game, and maybe 20 minutes after to consolidate my notes.  But before game 0, I'll spend months building out things.

[GDShore]

Yeah, for me the most fun, was the build, the creation of the universe. The backstory, the histories, the peoples living there the skeleton of the game. I enjoy running the game, but my pre game prep time was very short, you have to be able to improvise when your group does something they weren't supposed to do (in your carefully mapped version) a campaign that was supposed to run 18 sessions wound up going for 56. Real time just over 2 years, game time 9 months. The group followed a red herring and would not return to the main trail, (each session 2 weeks apart) in the two weeks that followed the deviation from my original plan I rebuilt the campaign. New planets, new clues, some encounters repurposed, some needed major surgery [truth be told I loved it, I wallowed in it] and best of all they never figured out what was going on till the very last session, at that only one of them caught the final clue. They had thought that they were performing one task and they were but it was much bigger than they had thought.  About an hour after we had finished that campaign, and were talking about where to go in the next, he says "did you say X, did he say X, was that a slip or deliberate.... watching their faces as they realized that the story they all thought was A (and enjoyed immensely) was actually X was my second best moment as a GM. For me at least that was the real reason to play!