The Anything Can Happen Sandbox

So, all I can say is what a session we had on Monday.

My players and I have been talking about taking a hiatus from our Swords & Wizardry campaign to get our feet wet with some other rpgs (Savage Worlds, DC Superheroes, Paranoia and perhaps Traveller). Mostly one-shots / small campaigns. I've been getting a bit burnt-out behind the screen and it would be fun to be a player for a while.

So we all agreed.

The campaign plot threads were building up to a type of episode 1 climax and I thought it would be a great time to leave everyone hanging with some shocking developments until we get back to the campaign in a couple of months.

Well, the best laid plans…..

In a sandbox campaign, especially this one, I pretty much let the players head in whatever direction they want to. Whenever I made plans for what should happen it pretty much never went that way. So I've given up on planning the sessions at all. I did plan out Monday's session to begin bringing various plot threads, hooks, npcs, etc. to a head.

The players, true to their nature, chose a totally different path, unexpected and unplanned for and are now in quite a predicament well outside the events going on in the outside world. It really emphasizes the aspect of really not needing any large plot happenings or world changing events as the players tend to get themselves into enough trouble to last sessions!

So what may be our last S&W session for a while while we branch off into some other adventures turned out to be quite the cliffhanging conclusion. That session left our player's characters in two groups with one dead original member of the party having been swallowed in a flow of blue ice lava (only 3 original PCs remain), the dungeon map destroyed(?) with the dead character, the party trapped and lost beneath the tower having traveled through a one way portal, two characters, having lost to their evil-selves, are partying in Caladan and a Cleric getting high off of Moon-milk in the Moon Tower. All this while the vampyre Zenopus is still on the loose and other world events coming to a head.

This seems as good a place as any to be continued….!

Full session recap coming shortly!