Sandboxing! | Running the Game

Episode 26: How I sandbox! Maybe not the easiest thing in the world, but you don't have to do it how I do it!

Against the Cult of the Reptile God!

The original! Keep on the Borderlands!

Dungeon Delve for 4E

The 3rd Edition Book of Challenges

The Crucible of Freya

The Village of Hommlet

The Keep on the Shadowfell

Temple of Elemental Evil if you're feeling brave.

Here's the Temple of Elemental Evil notes.

Return to the Temple of Elemental Evil

#RunningTheGame #MattColville #MCDM

[thothrax]

"I think we talked about this in another video" - Matthew Colville, talking for the fourth time about the money thing that the Village of Hommlet does.

[RayCase]

I like that Matthew Colville's videos start out at 1.5X speed!

[RobynMorton]

Have to put in my $.02 on ToEE. My wife ran it for our group. We had no idea how tf we were supposed to take on an entire temple. So instead we joined it--we became a merc group for hire and worked for the temple, worked our way up the ranks, eventually becoming the highest ranking group under main leadership. Then we burned that f*cker to the ground. Campaign took about 1.5 years IRL. One of the best campaigns I've ever played in.

[Ardsgaine]

Using a magic item in a novel way:

One of the other players had to leave early and gave me his character to run. We got into a battle with a behir, and it swallowed his dwarf whole. I was studying his sheet and wracking my brain on how to get him out of the situation. Using his axe in a grapple situation wasn't going to work well. Did he have a dagger? Would that help? I really don't want his character to die! Wait... What's this? A Decanter of Endless Water? What does that do again? "Produces a 20-foot-long, 1-foot-wide stream at 30 gallons per round." Perfect. I gave the behir an emetic.

[bloodsword]

You should talk more about Casserole the Vile.

[Nerdarchy]

Also, if your players have created any level of backstory for their characters, using elements from them is the perfect bait to thread on to your plot hooks! -Nerdarchist Ryan

[liambean]

I think I may have watched this video like fourteen times. Recently I actually tried an open world sandbox, I found that when you tell your players that's what your doing they needed 0 motivation to go to the Moathouse. They straight up just went. Things are not always so different these days!

[shanevsevil]

If anyone is looking for a 5e equivalent of Dungeon Delve (a collection of level-by-level mini-dungeons) the book "Prepared" from Kobold Press is exactly that, and it's great.

[Lobbogurke]

I love the design philosophy of saying: "I think up problems, not solutions" and I will start using this myself. I always felt I had to have some solutions prepaired but that will only make the players feel like they have to figure out my solution not their own.

[TheYearbook]

"The clock is always ticking" is a brilliant idea, oh god. have the world grow stronger alongside the players.

[namelessjedi]

I think it’s more fair to say Gugax assumed you had a campaign of your own and would work the module in to things in a way that made sense for your players. A lot of things were not spelled out because that is simply what a DM was expected to know and do.

[mikegould]

My players are random enough to be guaranteed to go of script, so being able to sandbox an adventure is necessary. My advice for any who want to try this would be:

Create a few encounters of a few different types. Make so they could reasonably occur where you are or in range of where you might end up. Write those encounters on cards or sheets of paper and keep them handy.

Do the same with a few NPCs.

Become familiar with what terrain type they'll be in, and what wildlife might be around.

Become comfortable being uncomfortable. In other words, learn to improv. Don't worry if you're not that good at it. The more you do it, the better you'll get.

Learn to develop a good pokerface and be willing to be vague on yes or no questions. If you make a mistake and it looks like you've dropped the ball on a description...and the players call you on it...raise an eyebrow and say something like "really? Hmmm. I wonder why it looks like that....". They'll immediately go into 'paranoid' mode and you have a whole new aspect to run with.

Once you've done all that, develop the map as you go. Feel free to make stuff up and record it as they encounter it. When you need a terrain feature to be there to justify an encounter you've made, so long as it's reasonable, go for it.

When the players come up with great ideas about "what may be going on", if you like it, steal it and insert it in the game. They'll pat themselves on the back for their genius and you'll have more hooks for them.

As you go, repeat all of the above. Retain all the encounters you wrote that never got used so you can use them later.

If a character dies, it's okay. They have hit points and an AC for a reason. Make the death dramatic and suitably heroic. Players will tend to want a good death over a bad story.

My final piece of advice would be to run the game every second week. That will give you time to create new gems for them to encounter. You may even come up with a full dungeon or town in the meantime. This keeps the flow going and reduces DM burnout.

EDIT: To address Matt's comment that there's not a lot of 5E modular content - I agree. I wanted some for myself that was easy to access and free of charge. Both are not that easy to come by. So I wrote my own. I write an online article for Nerdarchy.com called "Out of the Box Encounters". To date there are 32 (so far) ranging from level 1-10. Some are wilderness and some are dungeon. Some are puzzles, lots are monster-driven, and none are campaign-specific. They're also posted on this website free of charge.

[ANIMEniacReview]

My favorite way my players have used a magic item is the "Immovable Rod." My Dwarven Paladin decided to attach it to his shield and make any creature charging it make a DC 30 strength check to attempt to move it. It was his third ever game.

[AndrewJoyce]

Wait, you did Mercenaries? I love you even more, good sir. So much fun.

[rozwellcake]

You worked on Mercenaries?! Dude those games were so amazing, thanks for great times when I was like 10, then continuing it now I'm like 25. Papa bless.

[duckforceone]

I always run sandbox. I make the skeleton of a story, of a challenge, and then i just react to the players, and let the story evolve depending on what they do and say.

[BuckFu]

I think dming dnd is an art of letting the characters do what they want but “letting” them find your story and make it feel like a sandbox.

[jarrettmoore]

I'm 6 sessions into my first campaign. Your videos have been such a HUGE help! I'm loving DMing! Thank you so much for your hard work on these awesome videos. You're making a difference for our hobby, if nowhere else you're improving the games at my table. Please keep it up. :)

[thecadaver]

Haven't even finished watching the video yet, just commenting because I love the idea of "bad guy npc thinks a pc is also one of their bad guy buddies" as a plot hook. I'm currently populating my world with story threads and that one is most definitely getting dropped in there somewhere.

[talkinghornetsnestvideos]

wow this reminds of this one time, we were all locked in a dungeon that was filling with sand and we had to figure out how to get out within a certain time framed. Like we were literally timed. Our DM had no solution intended and expected us to die lol but we blew his mind on how we managed to get out. Basically we panicked for a while trying to figured out what to do so we started striking at the door, which was metal, trying to get out. We managed to puncture a small hole in the door but by then the sand was about chest deep. I was small enough to fit through the hole but my two friends couldn't. The sand almost completely buried them but then one of them had and awesome idea and they basically did a super powerful fire spell that created a small explosion that created a bubble of glass around them. It also heated up the door which made it easier to tear open and they got out.