REVIEW: How to Make a Fantasy Sandbox

There were two great obsessions at the dawn of the Old School Renaissance: megadungeons and sandboxes. Each was a distinctive element of many of the foundational roleplaying game campaigns of the 1970s, like Blackmoor, Greyhawk, and Tékumel. Their rediscovery and promotion are among the lasting impacts of the OSR – so much so that both massive dungeons and open-ended hexcrawls are now permanent fixtures of the even wider RPG scene. 

Of the two, I'd say that megadungeons are probably the better understood and more commonly used, thanks in no small part to the many examples of them now available in print. Furthermore, a megadungeon is, in many ways, just a scaled-up version of a dungeon and almost everyone who's ever played a fantasy RPG, whether tabletop or electronic, knows what a dungeon is like and how it's constructed. However, sandboxes are, in my experience, both less common and less well understood. There are no doubt many reasons for this, but a big one, I think, is they require more preparation beforehand by the referee and preparation of a less formulaic sort than what's employed when designing a dungeon, regardless of its size.

Fortunately for those of us who enjoy fantasy sandboxes – my ongoing House of Worms campaign, for example, is something of a sandbox – there are resources out there to aid in their creation. The very best of them has long been Rob Conley's twenty-four part series on "How to Make a Fantasy Sandbox," whose first post appeared in the far-off time of September 2009. It's a terrific collection of blog posts, filled with good ideas and wisdom drawn from years of refereeing sandbox campaigns. I long ago bookmarked many of the posts and refer to them often in my own work, such as designing the Eshkom District for Secrets of sha-Arthan. If you've never read these posts before, I highly recommend you do so.

An equally good – maybe better – option would be to purchase How to Make a Fantasy Sandbox, 180-page compilation of Conley's blog posts, rewritten and expanded with examples, maps, and artwork, available in PDF, softcover, or hardcover formats. In the book's introduction, Conley provides both a nice overview of what a sandbox campaign is and his own reasons for enjoying them:

One of my favorite things to do with Tabletop RPGs is to create interesting places with interesting situations and then let the players trash the setting in pursuit of adventure.

That certainly encapsulates much of the fun my players and I have had with my House of Worms campaign. He goes on:

My focus is not to create any type of narrative. Rather, I focus on helping my players experience living their characters' lives while adventuring. It's called a sandbox campaign because like in life, the players are free to do anything their characters can do within the campaign setting.

This wide-open world with unlimited choices can be very challenging as a Game Master/Referee. The key to dealing with this challenge is organization. A systematic approach is needed to break down the enormous task of dealing with an entire world. Organized into bite-size chunks that one can do in the time they have for a hobby.

Once again, I think Conley has done a fine job here of distilling the essence and unique pleasures of a sandbox campaign, while also recognizing that creating and maintaining such a campaign is not always easy, hence the need for a guide such as this one. 

With that out of the way, he first describes and then elaborates upon thirty-three distinct steps in the process of designing a fantasy sandbox, from creating the map to placing settlements and lairs to choosing a "home base" for a new campaign. It's all presented clearly and methodically, so that it's easy for even a neophyte to follow. Best of all, Conley includes lots of examples throughout, drawn from his own experience of making fantasy sandboxes. Indeed, I'd go so far as to say that these examples are among my favorite parts of How to Make a Fantasy Sandbox. They not only serve as illustrations of design principles, but they also give some insight into Conley's own gaming past, which I found delightful and inspiring.

Throughout the text, the Isle of Pyade serves as the main example of how to implement the thirty-three steps to creating a fantasy sandbox setting. I found this very useful, because it's eminently practical and concrete rather than merely theoretical. If you follow the steps through, one by one, you'll see Pyade grow out of a blank hex map into a fully-fleshed out and complete location. Whether you're a novice or an old hand at this sort of thing, you'll learn a lot from the example of Pyade.

By the conclusion of How to Make a Fantasy Sandbox, the Isle of Pyade is now ready to use. However, many of its details – maps, NPCs, encounter tables, etc. – are scattered across its 180 pages, making it less suitable for use as a reference. Should you wish to make use of Pyade yourself, a better option might be the separate The Isle of Pyade book (available in electronic, softcover, and hardcover format), which takes all the relevant details and consolidates them in one place for greater coherence and ease of use. There's also some additional content in the form of artwork and color reproductions of the original maps Conley made in the late 1980s. If you're fan of RPG "archeology" as I am, this only adds to the value of The Isle of Pyade.

How to Make a Fantasy Sandbox is a very good book, one I am very happy to own and one I am certain I'll refer to and make use of in the years to come. In addition to all the thoughtful insights and clear instructions Conley provides, he "shows his work," which is to say, he lays bare how he works and why, right down to including very useful appendices of resources, hexmapping guidelines, travel and encounter rules, and information about the process behind creating Blackmarsh, his earlier published sandbox setting. Aside from some minor quibbles about editing, I have only praise to offer about this book. If you have even the slightest interest in creating and refereeing a sandbox campaign, consider picking up a copy. You won't regret it.