Any good advice or tips for running SANDBOX games?

ninjazombie42

Without too much work... Just want to sit down and have fun, and I don`t have much time to prepare these days.

arsheesh

There are some very good articles on this topic that I would recommend:

1. "Opening Your Gaming Table":http://thealexandrian.net/wordpress/1223/roleplaying-games/opening-your-game-table by Justin Alexander discusses a style of play that, provided you already have a published (or previously created) dungeon, and or hex map, requires virtually no prep at all.

2. "Don't Prep Plots":http://www.thealexandrian.net/creations/misc/prep-scenario.html by Justin Alexander is a good short introduction into how to set up a non-linear (aka sandbox) game structure, that, while needing some prep, is much more flexible, and much less prep intensive than working with a linear plot system.

3. "Node-Based Scenario Design":http://thealexandrian.net/wordpress/7949/roleplaying-games/node-based-scenario-design-part-1-the-plotted-approach by Justin Alexander is a much longer and extended continuation of the former topic that shows how to put this sort of scenario design into practice (literally, this changed my whole outlook on campaign design!).

4. "Hex-Based Campaign Design":http://www.welshpiper.com/hex-based-campaign-design-part-1/ by The Welsh Piper offers a quick and easy technique for building a sandbox type setting by using a hex-map. While this will requires some advance prep work (the actual building of the nearby setting), this method requires much less prep than one might think, and is very versatile and easy to work with. I've recently become more and more interested in hex-based campaign design since I think it is a fantastic way to run a sandbox, and there are several other useful blog posts on this topic over at The Welsh Piper.

5. "Hexcrawl":http://thealexandrian.net/wordpress/17308/roleplaying-games/hexcrawl by Justin Alexander is also a really good read on this topic.

Well that should be enough reading to keep you occupied for a while. Hope it helps.

Cheers,
-Arsheesh

GamingMegaverse

Funny thing is, I think that there are 2 main rules- 1: Get your players involved from the beginning. That way you can accurately do #2. 2: Do an outline, and make sure the main points that need to be hit are on the outline. Prep the big points in the outline early- no one wants a sandbox campaign where they meet the big bad villain they have been chasing for months and have the gm unprepared for the big bad villain.
Good Luck!
killervp
"A God...Rebuilt":http://www.obsidianportal.com/campaigns/a-god-rebuilt
"Duskreign's First Ever COTM":http://www.obsidianportal.com/campaigns/wyrmshadow/wiki_pages/112011
"OP's COTM April 2012":http://blog.obsidianportal.com/a-god-rebuilt-aprils-cotm/

Baalshamon

My campaigns are always an open sandbox. The trick to making that work is the players. If you have players with goals or at least a little direction, your sandbox experience will be much better. You as the GM must also be able to adapt on the fly and even when you have nothing planned for what the players decide to do, still be able to create something to make the game fun. I have seen many sandbox style games get derailed because the GM couldnt adapt to the players craziness. Good luck and have fun.