Prepping a Sandbox Campaign: Part 8

Step 8: Villains

I have to be honest, I don’t normally do villains when I prepare any kind of campaign, especially a sandbox. The best villains are those that players love to hate and I am almost always surprised by what players end up hating. In my experience, it almost never is the person I want them to. Therefore, my job isn’t to provide them with my villain, but rather offer enough opportunities for the players to find out who they really want to have as their villain.

The first time I learned this lesson was a Champions campaign back when I was in high school. The initial sessions took place in a prison for supers where all the PCs were interred. They didn’t remember how they got there or why. Eventually, the prison was attacked by aliens, which offered the PCs an opportunity to escape. The big reveal was that the prison was actually in orbit and was just an initial phase of the alien invasion.

Thus, I had two big villains that I was planning to use: the guys who funded the prison and the leader of the aliens. Who did the players end up hating? Some throw-away fellow inmate who successfully fought off the PCs in order to get to a life boat, which the PCs were trying to hold onto for themselves. I realized that I had to make a major concession to the players by making this throw away NPC into a major villain when I heard my friends making plans on how they were going to track this guy down. Alien invasions and a group imprisoning supers in space had to wait. The campaign turned out to be a blast because they had a villain they chose.

Even if players do end up loving to hate one of the villains I want them to, they usually end up finding a way to legitimately get rid of them long before I want them to.

Having said that, I do have an idea brewing about the Old One that has too much goodness not to include in my Blackmarsh campaign thought experiment.

I was leafing through Matt Finch’s Tome of Adventure Design when I came upon an entry in his section for inspiring Undead monsters. One of the ways he suggests an intelligent undead creature became undead was by placing living body parts into a corpse to keep it “alive.” Couple this with the idea that said undead creature had a contagious form of undeath and my creative juices starting mulling over a way to have the Old One an active villain in the campaign.

The form of undeath the Old One concocted for himself involved a further refinement of the magic found in the Subterranean Lake of Watery Simulacrums. His goal was to create multiples of himself, all while sharing a kind of hive mind. He found a way to infect his own flesh so that if he injects a corpse with his blood (or any other part of his flesh) that corpse will animate as an extention of his awareness and mind.

These magics did not work entirely as planned, however. The more corpses the Old One occupies, the less powerful each possessed corpse is. At the moment, I am thinking that each additional corpse would approximately half his HD and spell casting abilities. Thus, if the Old One were understood to be a 14HD monster, for example, he could have two corpses in his hive mind at 7HD each or up to twenty-eight corpses at 1/2 HD.

This would make him a villain that not only would be really difficult to kill off, but one that could engage the party at several different power levels. To boot, he will probably know a lot more about the PCs than they ever expect him to. The thing that I find really attractive about this particular set-up, though, is that I have the option of making whoever it is that the players end up making their villain one of the corpses the Old One has added to his hive mind.

Prepping a Sandbox Campaign: Part 7

Step 7: Background Noise

One thing to keep in mind about sandbox campaigns is that the world does not remain static. It must react to the actions (or inaction) of the PCs. This is where the Centerpiece Dungeon really becomes useful. As information about its contents spreads far and wide, the various factions of the campaign world will take interest and begin to act. Your job is to figure out who, when and what you’ll have the most fun with.

Note: I like to call this stuff Background Noise, because it may be as simple as letting the players know that there seems to be a larger population of Dwarves at Blackoak Castle, or that the elves seem to be a bit less friendly or that there is a strangely dressed man at the tavern these days. The world is moving, but the players need not act on any of it. Its just background noise until they decide that they need to find out more about the dwarves, the elves or the guy in the tavern. All of this leads to more information and more choices.

Remember, every choice the players make has a consequence. If they ignore the Centerpiece Dungeon long enough, factions are going to be able to mount successful expeditions and bring out artifacts that will then be used to further their agenda.

In Fedor’s Pass, there are three Jade Images that have been broken. Each is missing one or more pieces that may or may not be found within Fedor’s Pass. These pieces must be restored in order to get one of three keys that will open doors to the lowest level of Fedor’s Pass, The Tomb of the Old One which is going to have a Tomb of Horrors kinda feel to it.

Thus, part of the background noise is going to be these jade pieces. Where are they and who has them? Another is going to be the actions of Scytheback. He can polymorph into a human with one eye. Given his powers as an ancient dragon this will allow him to pose as an Odin-type figure and influence both the Osrobards and the Vasan Vikings (and through them, possibly the PCs). His interest will be making sure the Old One is dead and gone so that he no longer has to operate in secret.

Prepping a Sandbox Campaign: Part 6

Step 6: Rumors

This is probably the most important aspect of a good sandbox campaign, because a sandbox only really works when players can make informed decisions about what they want their characters to do. Thus, I tend to disagree with the way rumor tables are traditionally done — with both true and false rumors. I don’t mind partially true entries, but false rumors have no real pay-off in terms of player choice and the consequences of those choices. Whereas a partially true rumor can be discovered to be inaccurate, a false rumor usually just gets forgotten.

Blackoak Castle, therefore, serves as an excellent home base for an adventuring party. Not only is it in close proximity to Fedor’s Pass, but it is also a font of information as rangers come in from all over Blackmarsh with stories (mostly accurate) of new threats to peace. In addition, the PCs can become members of the Blackoak Rangers which will avail them of even more accurate information. Thus, players will never be short of choice when it comes to what their characters do next.

To begin the campaign, the characters will know rumors about three locals:

• Fedor’s Pass
• The Wizard’s Tower
• The Ruins of Daur Anthar

Note: I am not adverse to using published adventures for locals outside of the Centerpiece Dungeon. Thus, if your library has good stand-ins for Daur Anthar and a wizard’s tower, I’d happily use them with one caveat: drop clues about the Old One in these published adventures. It can be as simple as a treasure map or a book of ancient history. This will keep feeding the players information about the Centerpiece Dungeon (Fedor’s Pass), helping them make informed decisions about how to react to the things the campaign world is doing in context of the Centerpiece Dungeon.

Prepping a Sandbox Campaign: Part 5

Step 5: Dungeon Background

It is now time to use the level names and landmarks of the dungeon to inspire several different eras of occupation. I normally use three, because that gives me enough detail to keep things interesting while being simple enough to make the design work easier. I tend to label these eras Ancient, Old and Present.

Ancient

The most evocative name level of the dungeon seems to me to be The Tomb of the Old One. This is where the McGuffin of the campaign is going to be and where all of the various factions are going to want access to. It is therefore imperative that I know who the Old One really is.

According to the original material, Scytheback was part of the reason the Bright Empire fell; however, remnants of the Empire still hold on. Thus, the dragon had to have been stopped at some point. This is where the Old One enters into the picture.

The Old One was (is?) a powerful magic-user from the days of the Bright Empire. Today, no one remembers his (her?) name. Tasked with stopping the dragon Scytheback, they entered into battle. The dragon nearly lost its life and did lose an eye. Never before had the beast encountered such a powerful adversary. Never before had it experienced fear. It has laid low ever since, using intermediaries to do its will.

Little did the dragon know that the Old One was also crippled in the fight. Unable to survive another onslaught by the dragon, the Old One turned to dark secrets in order to protect the people of the Bright Empire. As an accomplished necromancer, the Old One became corrupt. In the end, the Old One did more to bring down the Empire than did Scytheback.

Today no one knows if the Old One lives or has died, but artifacts occasionally do show up, reminding the people of Blackmarsh that a powerful mage once roamed these lands.

Old

The fortification on the surface of the dungeon was built later without knowledge of the lower sections beneath. The stone giants of the White Mountains suggest a reason why the fortifications became necessary. Off the west side of the map is giant territory. The pass was a means for those giants to raid Blackmarsh. This period was colloquially called the Giants Wars.

Eventually, things escalated when the various types of giants were united by a frost giant named Gymir. Due to the disorganization of the giants, the fortification of Fedor’s Pass proved to be partially effective. Once united, however, Fedor’s Pass quickly fell and the people of Blackmarsh got desperate. Gathering a large amount of viz, a group of mages cast a ritual spell that closed off the mountain pass. The remaining giants were either hunted down and killed or agreed to some form of peace. The stone giants are all that remain of those stranded in Blackmarsh by the Giant Wars.

The fortress at Fedor’s Pass was briefly maintained after the Giant Wars; however, the post was plagued by bad luck, accidents and a few unnatural deaths. Given that it no longer had any real protective purpose the post was eventually abandoned.

Present

It is now time to take elements of the Ancient and Old eras of the dungeon and weave them into who presently occupies the dungeon. Currently, the main fort of Fedor’s Pass is occupied by a force of goblins led by the bugbear Drefec.  They are a part of a coalition of goblin tribes led by the stone giant Lythor. Unlike many of the stone giants currently in the region, he is Chaotic and yearns for the days of old when the giants were terrorizing the land during the Giant Wars. Fueling this desire was a chance discovery of a volume that once belonged to the Old One. Lythor read the book and his already cruel intelligence became dangerously high. Subsequently, he has organized the local goblin tribes into a personal army.

At the beginning of the campaign, Lythor has been sending out scouting parties in search of clues for the resting place of the Old One because there are references in the tome he read of other books, weapons and treasures that could turn his private army into a conquering hoard. The bugbear Drefec has unknowingly found the location of the Tomb of the Old One; however, he has discovered an artifact of the Old One himself and is now only paying lip service to Lythor.

Beneath the Opal Lake is an artifact manufactured by the Old One call the Subterranean Lake of Watery Simulacrums. Drefec now lies within that artifact and is able to send individual duplicates of himself to rule and fight without fear of death, because when one simulacrum is destroyed (turning into water), another one can rise with all the knowledge of the previous Simulacrum.

There is, however, a faction within Drefec’s forces that haven’t forgotten their mission and are secretly trying to find more artifacts to return to Lythos. Ironically, if a party managed to actually kill Drefec, it might actually make the situation worse...

Prepping a Sandbox Campaign: Part 4

Step 4: Fill in Dungeon Details

It is now time to name each level of the centerpiece dungeon and place landmarks throughout. The goal here is to have each area of the dungeon have a specific function and feel that differentiates it from everything else.

The reason to do this is to not only make the dungeon itself better, but to start to knit together a background story that will serve the campaign.

By the way, do yourself a favor and check out Matt Finch’s Tome of Adventure Design. It is filled with random table goodness for coming up with dungeon level landmarks and names. It is one of the single best RPG purchases I have ever made.

Here is my version of Fedor’s Pass with level names and landmarks:

Prepping a Sandbox Campaign: Part 3

Step 3: Place Your Centerpiece Dungeon

This is an important step, even if you never see your players show any desire for entering your megadungeon/dungeon of choice. The reason being, the backstory of the dungeon affects the backstory of the region and the campaign. Often times, there will be something inside the dungeon, whether an object, a person or a piece of information (or all three) that the various factions within the campaign are vying for. Thus, the dungeon will be a source of adventure even if the players themselves never go there.

Personally, I rarely use published dungeons for this purpose, because the backgrounds often don’t jive with what I want to do with the world (unless I start with the dungeon and move out, but that usually involves a lot more work). Since we are doing an exercise for folks who don’t have the time or inclination to draw maps, etc. I would suggest doing a couple of things:

Go to Dave’s Mapper and play. You can make a side-view of a dungeon and then a map for each section of the dungeon in that side view. You can also go look at the plethora of maps Dyson Logos has done over the years. To keep your own efforts to a minimum, you really need only do a sideview to begin. The rest can be done later as needed.

For my own purposes, I decided to go with a map Dyson drew several years ago called Fedor’s Pass. The name is evocative, there are a number of levels already mapped and some that are not. This leaves room for me to use either maps of my own creation, those found by playing with Dave’s Mapper or using other maps by Dyson.

The name “Fedor’s Pass” suggests that the surface structure was used to protect a road that wound its way from one side of a mountain range to another. Blackmarsh has several mountain ranges: The White Mountains, The Pendar Mountains, and the Dragonbone Peaks. The latter is the most tempting, due to its massive cave network; however, the only place that might have a pass leads to a forest…with pixies.

The Pendar and White Mountains occupy the western edge of the map. If the whole 010X column of hexes were filled in with mountains and hills, then there would be a need for a pass to go west off the map.

Hex 0107 has a group of bandits out for revenge against Castle Blackoak, something I am not particularly interested in. It would, however, put Fendar’s Pass in close proximity to the castle and make sense as front-line defense position for anything trying to use the path to raid or invade Blackmarsh.

Prepping a Sandbox Campaign: Part 2

Step 2: Ignore or Change Everything Else

Seriously. Your job is not to follow the whims or will of the author. Your job is to create a world that you have fun with. This is one of the reasons I prefer products like Blachmarsh and the Wilderlands. The terseness used by the authors gives me permission to use, ignore or change anything I want. There is no canon I have to break. There is no intricate back story I have to re-craft. The implied effort of the author is only invested in a few sentences at most. Thus, I am not going to hurt any one’s feelings (or be challenged by a canon-nazi).

Indeed, I would imagine that Rob would be thrilled at seeing me take his Blackmarsh setting and run with it in whatever direction I want to take it. He did exactly the same thing with the Wilderlands, after all.

I also know from personal experience that once a campaign begins, I very rarely have to re-read or even look at the published campaign material. Everything that happens is driven by character action (or inaction). I use the stuff I care about and let them react to what PCs are doing. The results are almost always fun for me because the campaign is no longer the published material, it’s mine.

From Blackmarsh, as published, there are two things that I immediately want to change:

• As written, Scytheback is a very old red dragon. I want an ancient black dragon who knows how to polymorph self. (Red dragons bore me, acid breath is terrifying and polymorphing dragons are awesome NPCs).
• I want to change the name of the Blackmarsh Rangers to the Blackoak Rangers. It makes it much clearer that their HQ is Blackoak Castle and it emphasizes that they are an independent organization that is willing to help any Lawful cause that helps bring stability and peace to the region.

Prepping a Sandbox Campaign: Part 1

The other day, I started going through Rob Conley’s Blackmarsh setting (which you can get for free here) to engage in a little creative calisthenics by thinking on how I would run a sandbox campaign using the goodness found therein. While doing this it occurred to me that while Rob has an excellent series on how to create to a sandbox similar to Blackmarsh (a map, encounter areas, major NPC’s etc.), not everyone (especially me at the moment) has the time or inclination to do all that work.

Therefore, I thought it might be interesting to write down my method for prepping a sandbox campaign using a preexistent setting like Blackmarsh, especially since it follows in the footsteps of settings like Judges Guild’s Wilderlands of High Fantasy with what might be called a terse style. I must admit, I am also doing this for the purpose of having a repository for the ideas I have come up with because this is becoming a campaign I wouldn’t mind running someday.

Step 1: The Read Through

One of the reasons I really appreciate the terse style used in Blackmarsh, and settings like it, is that it allows me to quickly get through an entire setting with a simple read through. What I look for during this read through are ideas or encounters that catch my attention, because these are the things I am going use as the basis for a campaign. Here is my list after that quick read through:

• I love the concepts of The Mountain that Fell and Viz. They give magic a source — there is this alien substance brought to the world via an asteroid that crashed into the very region the campaign is to take place. In addition, viz is something that can be found, touched, forged, bought and sold. It gives the entire region a gold-rush kind of feel where greed is going to be a major problem.
• There are a bunch of potential factions competing with each other over resources (like viz) and territory: The Osrobards, Castle Blackmarsh, the Vasan Vikings, the Grand Kingdom, the Blackmarsh Rangers, the House of the Raven, the Greywood Elves and the Bolzak Dwarves of Olden Hold.
• The Osrobards are trying to become civilized, an endeavor the younger generation seems to take more seriously than their parents.
• The men of Castle Blackmarsh are remnants of the long-gone Bright Empire.
• The Vasan Vikings are refugees seeking revenge upon the Grand Kingdom which drove them from their home, but find themselves just trying to survive.
• The Grand Kingdom, though the current champion of Civilization who is trying to take up the mantle once lost by the Bright Empire, is still just an usurper in Blackmarsh.
• The House of the Raven are regular elves, not drow. Their motivation is chauvinism, not evil for the sake of evil. In other words, they are the heroes of their own story — the best kind of villain. As normal elves working for the betterment of elven kind, they can also operate secretly (openly?) within Greywood without raising an eyebrow.
• The Blackmarsh Rangers are recruiting.
• There is a bunch of undiscovered goodness at the bottom of the Smoking Bay.
• The Dragonbone Peaks have an extensive cave system formed as a result of the Mountain that Fell.
• There is an abandoned Dwarven Hold called Daur Anthar guarded by an earth elemental.
• There is an old wizard’s tower where an experiment went awry.
• There are a number of dragons, one who has a great name: Scytheback. This dragon is responsible for the destruction of a settlement which served as a hub for silver mines.
• There is a hydra that the House of the Raven are trying to use to create havoc.
• There are a number of Stone Giants that mostly leave people alone.