Adventures

[hanszurcher]

Personally, I'd use a mixture of elements. For example:

• One or two locations that that resemble traditional dungeon crawls to cater to those groups who enjoy combat-heavy adventures.
• A location filled with fiendish traps and puzzles that are designed to challenge the players as well as the characters.

These two go together like chocolate and peanut-butter.

...

• A location dominated by magical effects of some kind, such as a haunted house filled with restless spirits. The characters must use their brains to find a way to put the ghosts to rest as these creatures are collectively too powerful to confront head-on. Think of this as an investigation scenario where the characters are looking into the "crime" that gave rise to the haunting.

I was defiantly thinking about adding a house or orphanage haunted by the ghosts of children murdered and devoured by the head nun, a Penanggalan. Or a haunted manor housing a gang of Nukekubi that prey on travelers.

...When I design Dungeon Crawls I incorporate the first 2 elements in the same location; think Tomb of Horrors as a classic example (not that I'm alluding to creating dungeons as good as that!)....

Tomb of Horrors...DamonJynx, I see you are a man of refined taste.

 

[DamonJynx]

Tomb of Horrors...DamonJynx, I see you are a man of refined taste.

Not really, just a twisted and often frustrated GM that likes to screw with players and have fun at their expense.

But the adventures produced by Gygax and co in the early days are certainly classics, I haven't played or run a lot of them, but the ones I've seen are all excellent.

 

[Olaus Petrus]

Nice idea on the open ended sandbox adventures, but very hard to write i would think. I think adventures that have a number of choices on how they could pan out would work better, so players not following the main plot line have other choices.

It is true that writing sandbox scenarios requires bit more thought, because you have to describe in detail the entire area and not just few adventure locations and key NPCs. When I was thinking sandbox adventures I was thinking stuff like Chaosium's classic Griffin Mountain/Griffin Island (I have the Griffin Island version of that book) and Mongoose's Cities of the Young Kingdoms: The South. First gives details of entire region and some scenarios and latter gives details of several cities with adventuring ideas and minicampaign which gives a lot of freedom for the PCs to do whatever they like.

And while in general I'm not huge fan of dungeon crawls, there's one exception and that's Snake Pipe Hollow. I would love to see something similar.

 

[danskmacabre]

Would people be interested in a sandbox setting that contains a fully-developed settlement designed for use as a "home base" and two or three places of mystery (dungeon, ruins, strongholds) to explore?

I would also be totally up for this.

 

[Old timer]

That is a good idea, some thing that i do with all my campaigns, set up an area as a 'base' and then other areas to explore, expanding the area when needed.
@Prime-evil
As our ideas seem to be very similar, if you wanted to do something like that, would you be interested in a collaborative effort?

 

[jux]

Would people be interested in a sandbox setting that contains a fully-developed settlement designed for use as a "home base" and two or three places of mystery (dungeon, ruins, strongholds) to explore?

I would also be totally up for this.

Let's make it then

There is a series of products out called "Toys for the Sandbox" as a good example (this one is free):
http://rpg.drivethrustuff.com/product/100196/Toys-for-the-Sandbox-00%3A-Wizard%27s-Tower

 

[Prime_Evil]

Would people be interested in a sandbox setting that contains a fully-developed settlement designed for use as a "home base" and two or three places of mystery (dungeon, ruins, strongholds) to explore?

I would also be totally up for this.

Let's make it then

There is a series of products out called "Toys for the Sandbox" as a good example (this one is free):
http://rpg.drivethrustuff.com/product/100196/Toys-for-the-Sandbox-00%3A-Wizard%27s-Tower

OK...how about we start a new thread for a sandbox setting project so that we don't derail this thread too much. We can start off with pitches for the overall concept that will be used by the sandbox.

 

[alex_greene]

There is a series of products out called "Toys for the Sandbox" as a good example (this one is free):

Got that one, thanks.