So you have a traditional old-tyme sandbox hexcrawl game. You have the city of Whiteplainrockeagle and the associated megadungeon of Castle Whiteplainrockeagle a short walk from the city.

Surrounding these environs are the howling wilderness, which is the traditional Wilderlands - Post Apocalyptic OD&D environs.


Even though the players begin in an established civilized community they don't have a map of the surrounding region. Maps aren't available.

People do travel through the wilds, and there are other communities, but the layout of the land is not common knowledge. Most people never travel more than five miles from where they were born, the wilds are full of savage dangers, and the merchants that travel from city to town to city in armed caravans jealously protect their proprietary knowledge of travel routes.

As far as the PCs go, once you travel out of line-of-site of the Free City of Whiteplainrockeagle for all intents and purposes you are in Terra Incognito.

They players map the wilds as they travel through it, and as....

a) There aren't maps of the wilderness

&

b) There's no commonly known body of lore about the features of the wilderness

Than it follows that the features of this wilderness are unnamed.

Which means...

The PCs would be the ones that would name the various forests, rivers, mountains, etc. that they come across.

Which would be pretty damn cool!

Maps should be treasure, and a good one could fetch a very high price. Gaining the data necessary to make map could well provide motivation enough to leave the city

I've sort of played in that, a long time ago. It's one of the most appealing features of that sort of play - the sense of discovery and exploration. Which is what I, personally, think D&D is "about", rather than "kill monsters and take stuff".

Naming terrain features, or getting the feeling that you are the first people to see something, that sense of discovery, is one of the coolest parts of RPGs. Not something you get to do in the real world, anymore.

Quote from: Aos;492693Maps should be treasure, and a good one could fetch a very high price. Gaining the data necessary to make map could well provide motivation enough to leave the city

OD&D/AD&D had treasure maps being a common treasure; in this paradigm the treasure would be twofold.

Quote from: Planet Algol;492691Which would be pretty damn cool!

Make sure you have the right group of players. Doing this means the players lack a lot  of context so they have to be self-motivated to explore. Enworld and RPG.net is littered with the failed sandbox campaigns because of this issue.

I love the idea of having an entire world at the party's fingertips, all waiting to be discovered, named and explored. Having said that, I think I can see some rough edges with the setup which the players will likely snag on:

- All right, only a few people travel. What would keep the party from asking one of these guys for a map of whatever routes he knows? Or buying a copy of it? Or just shanking the guy and taking his map?

- On a similar note, whatever landmarks are along the routes of the few travellers are probably already named.

For these reasons, if I were to run such a game, I'd make it a proper "Conquest of the New World" scenario. No occasional travellers who already know some of the land - just a continent in front and an ocean behind you. Obviously, logistics and followers would also play a significant role in such a game.

PS: And echoing what Estar said. With a landfall scenario, they might receive some overarching goal to keep them active, something like "Find the Fountain of Youth / Seven Cities of Gold / half a ton of gold for the Queen / whatever.

The Dawnlands has this element. While I have drawn maps of it, none exist in game.

Also, while there are civilisations, they are extremely thin on the ground and none are truly friendly. The PCs, assumed to be Kadiz nomads in most cases, will have the opportunity to explore large chunks of the Dawnlands and may be the first Kadiz to see many things.

Quote from: estar;492705Make sure you have the right group of players. Doing this means the players lack a lot  of context so they have to be self-motivated to explore. Enworld and RPG.net is littered with the failed sandbox campaigns because of this issue.

I've found that an explicit hexcrawl structure (like an explicit megadungeon structure) basically eliminates this problem.

The question, "What are we doing today?" always has a simple, default answer: Pick a direction and go.