Campaign Creation

Tonight will be the 4th session of my Swords & Wizardry sandbox campaign. I have a feeling that the players may be breaking out of the tiny area of play that they've been exploring in the previous sessions and I'm okay with that. After all, that is what the concept of sandbox gaming is all about. In fact, I want the players to define the direction of the game. Believe it or not, it seems to be a lot less work for the DM.

Campaign creation can be a daunting task, especially if you feel that in a sandbox campaign you have to have something created for every possible direction that the characters can take. I've learned that that doesn't have to be the case. As long as you are willing be flexible with your setting and situations and are comfortable with a bit of improvisation, you can let your players run wild. It's good to have a flexible rule system to be playing with to assist in making that happen, such as classic D&D or many of the Retro-Clones such as Swords & Wizardry, Basic Fantasy RPG, Labyrinth Lord or many others.

I'm sure that every Game Master has different methods and philosophies about designing their RPG settings and that's exactly what the core of the game is all about. With today's RPG communities online, you have more resources to help in your setting creation than ever before, many of it as free downloads and some an pay products.

I'll be covering some of my methods and sources for the creation of my sandbox campaign setting. It may not be the most jaw-dropping and mind-blowing of ideas but it's what I've found works for me and if anyone one on the interwebs finds any of this useful, than by all means take what you want and discard the rest. That's what it's here for.

Until then....Keep Those Dice Rollin'!