Most of my DMing experience has been with more railroad style adventures: AL Modules and the like. I currently have an ongoing campaign that I'd like to shift to more sandbox. This particular campaign has been what I might call "short-term railroad, long-term sandbox." It started off years ago with some one-shot adventures. At the conclusion of one of those adventures, the players ran things firmly off the rails in a way that made perfect sense for the characters, but which the original one shot author had never considered. I did some research and figured out a path forward that let the players work toward their stated goal/desire, and began looking for more ways to do that in the future: picking up on elements from their back stories and either writing encounters/short adventures or (more commonly) finding one-shot style adventures on DMs guild or the like that I could adapt. So in the broad sweep of things it was no longer a railroad, in that I didn't have an entire campaign arc worked out, but tried to let the players; interests lead me. But in the short term it was still pretty railroady. The campaign was on hiatus for several years, but we picked it back up recently with some new additions, and initially I was using this same type of format.
I'm wanting to give the players more options and choice in the moment. My hesitation has been that feels like a LOT of prep work, and I don't have much time for that. The advantage of a railroad is that it limits DM prep. Those of you who run more sandbox style campaigns, and do so with a "minimal" amount of prep, what do you do?
It it helps, here are some approaches I'm experimenting with at the moment:
-I have two "one-shot" style adventures prepped for our next session; one is a follow up to a story they've been addressing, the other is set in a town that I can drop in anywhere...so if they decide to travel somewhere to pursue some other goal than the follow up, they could come across this town. The second is actually from a two-part resource, one which is "just" a description of the town and the current situation it finds itself in, without being an adventure proper, and the other of which is a one-shot adventure.
-I have some random encounter resources that provide encounters that aren't just combat encounters. (I wish I could find some more such!). I rolled for several encounters ahead of time, so I could create encounters for them in the encounter builder, and will choose from those as needed.
-I have a couple of longer encounters prepped--or at least read through--that I can drop in as need be
-I finally broke down and created a map...in the process, I realized I didn't have to map out the entire continent or even the entire region: It would suffice to fill in the places the party has been so far, and just incrementally add places as they go elsewhere. (Sort of like a hex crawl, where neither the DM nor the players know what is to be found in the unexplored hexes, until the DM decides)
Part of my idea is that I can use these longer encounters/one-shots to give me a little breathing room: if the party says, "we want to go to X and do Y," and I feel like I need some time to sort out what they might find in X and how they might accomplish Y and what challenges they might meet, I can let them head on the way, but use these "drop-in" encounters in the current session. Then plan for their stated goals for the following session.
It sounds like you're doing great as it is. As for me, I'm very much a seat-of-the-pants kind of DM, in fact I used to be known for being able to grab different game systems and run things decently with minimal prep time.
My advice is to watch a lot of movies or tv series, maybe there are some books you like, and feel free to file off the serial numbers and drop in things. If your players notice at all, they might think it was even more fun. Imagine an Artificer who creates the equivalent of the Terminator. Kind of like a mix between a Flesh and Iron golem on a smaller scale. I wouldn't suggest time travel unless you really want to deal with paradox, but having a party trying to stop an assassin who turns out to be a nearly invulnerable killing machine is something I have used in the past and my players enjoyed the heck out of it.
You can always pull things from out of other genre. A city adventure with a touch of pulp noir might be great. Horror has been pretty thoroughly covered. As you are building up your setting, look at travel guides online and add flair to the new cities the characters stumble across. It doesn't take a whole lot of time if all you want is a distinctive look and feel.
You're doing just grand so far. The thing you have to keep in mind is that the entire burden is not on you. The players also have a responsibility to pickup what you're putting down. They don't have to all the time every time but if you give them "goblins kidnapped my daughter!" it's on them to pick it up. True, they don't HAVE to but they know you put an assload of work into being a GM so should respect the hooks you throw out.
Think of who your main nemesis is. keep that thread in mind as you weave together the one-shots, the modules, the backstory encounters. Drop a few details or pull from events that already happened to the party back when you stopped playing. Mosh it all together and stretch it out like pizza cheese. Always have that background enemy is mind. What does she want? How is she going to go about getting it? If you do a backstory one-shot, make part of that important to the BBEG.
Maps are great! The best part is just like you said, you only NEED to plot where the party has been. Those are the sections they know. Everything else can be ambiguous or rumor and not placed until they get there =
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
"Sooner or later, your Players are going to smash your railroad into a sandbox."
-Vedexent
"real life is a super high CR."
-OboeLauren
"............anybody got any potatoes? We could drop a potato in each hole an' see which ones get viciously mauled by horrible monsters?"
Most of my DMing experience has been with more railroad style adventures: AL Modules and the like. I currently have an ongoing campaign that I'd like to shift to more sandbox. This particular campaign has been what I might call "short-term railroad, long-term sandbox." It started off years ago with some one-shot adventures. At the conclusion of one of those adventures, the players ran things firmly off the rails in a way that made perfect sense for the characters, but which the original one shot author had never considered. I did some research and figured out a path forward that let the players work toward their stated goal/desire, and began looking for more ways to do that in the future: picking up on elements from their back stories and either writing encounters/short adventures or (more commonly) finding one-shot style adventures on DMs guild or the like that I could adapt. So in the broad sweep of things it was no longer a railroad, in that I didn't have an entire campaign arc worked out, but tried to let the players; interests lead me. But in the short term it was still pretty railroady. The campaign was on hiatus for several years, but we picked it back up recently with some new additions, and initially I was using this same type of format.
So, just to try to clear the air a bit here, linear is not synonymous with railroad. You can, and what looks like do, have a linear adventure and plot that spans the entirety of a campaign without taking away player agency or choice. Allowing the PCs to go off book, or to "derail" the adventure, means that this is by definition not a railroad. Now, with that out of the way, looks like you're well into getting this thing figured out.
I'm wanting to give the players more options and choice in the moment. My hesitation has been that feels like a LOT of prep work, and I don't have much time for that. The advantage of a railroad is that it limits DM prep. Those of you who run more sandbox style campaigns, and do so with a "minimal" amount of prep, what do you do?
Gonna just flat say it - Sly Flourish Lazy DM. Give this guy a serious look over. He's easily found on the Tube and has a decent blog and webpage.
It it helps, here are some approaches I'm experimenting with at the moment:
-I have two "one-shot" style adventures prepped for our next session; one is a follow up to a story they've been addressing, the other is set in a town that I can drop in anywhere...so if they decide to travel somewhere to pursue some other goal than the follow up, they could come across this town. The second is actually from a two-part resource, one which is "just" a description of the town and the current situation it finds itself in, without being an adventure proper, and the other of which is a one-shot adventure.
-I have some random encounter resources that provide encounters that aren't just combat encounters. (I wish I could find some more such!). I rolled for several encounters ahead of time, so I could create encounters for them in the encounter builder, and will choose from those as needed.
-I have a couple of longer encounters prepped--or at least read through--that I can drop in as need be
Awesome start. We can probably call these Schrodinger's Adventure. Nobody knows where this thing is gonna kick off or when it will until the PCs practically ask for it. Having plot hooks and adventures picked that are setting and campaign agnostic to drop in without too much prep is pure gold when the party decides to play reindeer games with the plot. Also, let the party downtime complications create opportunities for you.
-I finally broke down and created a map...in the process, I realized I didn't have to map out the entire continent or even the entire region: It would suffice to fill in the places the party has been so far, and just incrementally add places as they go elsewhere. (Sort of like a hex crawl, where neither the DM nor the players know what is to be found in the unexplored hexes, until the DM decides)
Another good pick. There are some great resources out there that create complete campaign maps and town maps that save me a ton of time. Azgaar's Fantasy Map Generator is priceless to me. Another good go to resource is a method of creating the town government and infrastructure. Clergy, Guard Captain, Inn Keeper, Blacksmith that type of stuff. Used to use RPG Market Generator, but it's currently offline until someone hits it with True Resurrection. Also, a giant list of NPC names. There's a pretty big one in Xanathar's.
Part of my idea is that I can use these longer encounters/one-shots to give me a little breathing room: if the party says, "we want to go to X and do Y," and I feel like I need some time to sort out what they might find in X and how they might accomplish Y and what challenges they might meet, I can let them head on the way, but use these "drop-in" encounters in the current session. Then plan for their stated goals for the following session.
Tactic that I try to use as often as possible is to create encounters that will fill all but about 15min of our session time. That last 15min block I use to allow the party to figure out and voice where they head off to next. Let them tell you what horizon they are going towards so that you have until next session to have it ready for them. Also, pay very close attention to your game notes and what the players are theorizing about what your BBEG/MacGuffin is doing, or heading towards. It's great fodder for you to start laying out as adventure material. The players love to be right when the reveal comes that one of them had the whole plot pegged from the beginning or at least the last leg of the story. Gives them a moment in the spotlight, so to speak.
All-in-all, you've already ticked all the important boxes, IMHO.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
“Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one's lifetime.” - Mark Twain - Innocents Abroad
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Most of my DMing experience has been with more railroad style adventures: AL Modules and the like. I currently have an ongoing campaign that I'd like to shift to more sandbox. This particular campaign has been what I might call "short-term railroad, long-term sandbox." It started off years ago with some one-shot adventures. At the conclusion of one of those adventures, the players ran things firmly off the rails in a way that made perfect sense for the characters, but which the original one shot author had never considered. I did some research and figured out a path forward that let the players work toward their stated goal/desire, and began looking for more ways to do that in the future: picking up on elements from their back stories and either writing encounters/short adventures or (more commonly) finding one-shot style adventures on DMs guild or the like that I could adapt. So in the broad sweep of things it was no longer a railroad, in that I didn't have an entire campaign arc worked out, but tried to let the players; interests lead me. But in the short term it was still pretty railroady. The campaign was on hiatus for several years, but we picked it back up recently with some new additions, and initially I was using this same type of format.
I'm wanting to give the players more options and choice in the moment. My hesitation has been that feels like a LOT of prep work, and I don't have much time for that. The advantage of a railroad is that it limits DM prep. Those of you who run more sandbox style campaigns, and do so with a "minimal" amount of prep, what do you do?
It it helps, here are some approaches I'm experimenting with at the moment:
-I have two "one-shot" style adventures prepped for our next session; one is a follow up to a story they've been addressing, the other is set in a town that I can drop in anywhere...so if they decide to travel somewhere to pursue some other goal than the follow up, they could come across this town. The second is actually from a two-part resource, one which is "just" a description of the town and the current situation it finds itself in, without being an adventure proper, and the other of which is a one-shot adventure.
-I have some random encounter resources that provide encounters that aren't just combat encounters. (I wish I could find some more such!). I rolled for several encounters ahead of time, so I could create encounters for them in the encounter builder, and will choose from those as needed.
-I have a couple of longer encounters prepped--or at least read through--that I can drop in as need be
-I finally broke down and created a map...in the process, I realized I didn't have to map out the entire continent or even the entire region: It would suffice to fill in the places the party has been so far, and just incrementally add places as they go elsewhere. (Sort of like a hex crawl, where neither the DM nor the players know what is to be found in the unexplored hexes, until the DM decides)
Part of my idea is that I can use these longer encounters/one-shots to give me a little breathing room: if the party says, "we want to go to X and do Y," and I feel like I need some time to sort out what they might find in X and how they might accomplish Y and what challenges they might meet, I can let them head on the way, but use these "drop-in" encounters in the current session. Then plan for their stated goals for the following session.
Trying to Decide if DDB is for you? A few helpful threads: A Buyer's Guide to DDB; What I/We Bought and Why; How some DMs use DDB; A Newer Thread on Using DDB to Play
Helpful threads on other topics: Homebrew FAQ by IamSposta; Accessing Content by ConalTheGreat;
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It sounds like you're doing great as it is. As for me, I'm very much a seat-of-the-pants kind of DM, in fact I used to be known for being able to grab different game systems and run things decently with minimal prep time.
My advice is to watch a lot of movies or tv series, maybe there are some books you like, and feel free to file off the serial numbers and drop in things. If your players notice at all, they might think it was even more fun. Imagine an Artificer who creates the equivalent of the Terminator. Kind of like a mix between a Flesh and Iron golem on a smaller scale. I wouldn't suggest time travel unless you really want to deal with paradox, but having a party trying to stop an assassin who turns out to be a nearly invulnerable killing machine is something I have used in the past and my players enjoyed the heck out of it.
You can always pull things from out of other genre. A city adventure with a touch of pulp noir might be great. Horror has been pretty thoroughly covered. As you are building up your setting, look at travel guides online and add flair to the new cities the characters stumble across. It doesn't take a whole lot of time if all you want is a distinctive look and feel.
<Insert clever signature here>
You're doing just grand so far. The thing you have to keep in mind is that the entire burden is not on you. The players also have a responsibility to pickup what you're putting down. They don't have to all the time every time but if you give them "goblins kidnapped my daughter!" it's on them to pick it up. True, they don't HAVE to but they know you put an assload of work into being a GM so should respect the hooks you throw out.
Think of who your main nemesis is. keep that thread in mind as you weave together the one-shots, the modules, the backstory encounters. Drop a few details or pull from events that already happened to the party back when you stopped playing. Mosh it all together and stretch it out like pizza cheese. Always have that background enemy is mind. What does she want? How is she going to go about getting it? If you do a backstory one-shot, make part of that important to the BBEG.
Maps are great! The best part is just like you said, you only NEED to plot where the party has been. Those are the sections they know. Everything else can be ambiguous or rumor and not placed until they get there =
"Sooner or later, your Players are going to smash your railroad into a sandbox."
-Vedexent
"real life is a super high CR."
-OboeLauren
"............anybody got any potatoes? We could drop a potato in each hole an' see which ones get viciously mauled by horrible monsters?"
-Ilyara Thundertale
So, just to try to clear the air a bit here, linear is not synonymous with railroad. You can, and what looks like do, have a linear adventure and plot that spans the entirety of a campaign without taking away player agency or choice. Allowing the PCs to go off book, or to "derail" the adventure, means that this is by definition not a railroad. Now, with that out of the way, looks like you're well into getting this thing figured out.
Gonna just flat say it - Sly Flourish Lazy DM. Give this guy a serious look over. He's easily found on the Tube and has a decent blog and webpage.
Awesome start. We can probably call these Schrodinger's Adventure. Nobody knows where this thing is gonna kick off or when it will until the PCs practically ask for it. Having plot hooks and adventures picked that are setting and campaign agnostic to drop in without too much prep is pure gold when the party decides to play reindeer games with the plot. Also, let the party downtime complications create opportunities for you.
Another good pick. There are some great resources out there that create complete campaign maps and town maps that save me a ton of time. Azgaar's Fantasy Map Generator is priceless to me. Another good go to resource is a method of creating the town government and infrastructure. Clergy, Guard Captain, Inn Keeper, Blacksmith that type of stuff. Used to use RPG Market Generator, but it's currently offline until someone hits it with True Resurrection. Also, a giant list of NPC names. There's a pretty big one in Xanathar's.
Tactic that I try to use as often as possible is to create encounters that will fill all but about 15min of our session time. That last 15min block I use to allow the party to figure out and voice where they head off to next. Let them tell you what horizon they are going towards so that you have until next session to have it ready for them. Also, pay very close attention to your game notes and what the players are theorizing about what your BBEG/MacGuffin is doing, or heading towards. It's great fodder for you to start laying out as adventure material. The players love to be right when the reveal comes that one of them had the whole plot pegged from the beginning or at least the last leg of the story. Gives them a moment in the spotlight, so to speak.
All-in-all, you've already ticked all the important boxes, IMHO.
“Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one's lifetime.” - Mark Twain - Innocents Abroad