How large do you like your sandboxes to be?  Tiny, like a few miles around? A region? A kingdom? A whole world?  What are your reasons for preferring the size you like?

I like having a large-scale map and a basic outline of the world beforehand. Then I develop the map as the campaign scope grows.

For my current Godbound game, I used the world provided in the core rulebook. For my first session I chose the Raktine Confederacy and started with a simple premise: a dirt-poor village, a school of warlocks perched atop a mountain that exacted a tax in blood, and an asshole lordling in a nearby castle that has an ancient pact with the warlocks (they defend the land in exchange for the tribute in sacrifices).

As the PCs moved on the warlocks for two sessions, I statted up the local lord's court, with which they are now interacting. Now I'm working on the neighbouring fiefs, which are sure to eventually move on the "liberated" fief, as the Black Academy (the warlocks' citadel) got sucked into Uncreated Night (the void between worlds) as a result of the PCs' actions.

Soon enough they'll stumble upon a bigger obstacle than territorial petty lords and their allies in black magic-working hermitages — given enough time Dulimbai, Patria, Nezdohva and other powers will sit up and take notice, particularly if they continue to "cleanse" the land of the sorcerers and monsters that dot it and have kept invaders at bay for centuries — but so far I want them to build up a domain, which is integral for Godbound play (as in, you cannot level past level 2 without enacting permanent change upon the world).

This is the first time I embrace the session-to-session, "fractal" approach, which appeals both to my restricted prep time and my knack for improv, mostly on the Godbound rulebook's advice. I intend to use it frequently in the future.

Quote from: RPGPundit;927851How large do you like your sandboxes to be?  Tiny, like a few miles around? A region? A kingdom? A whole world?  What are your reasons for preferring the size you like?

I _prefer_ my sandboxes to be a continent or at least a very large island or archipelago, so that I can track all the common cause & effect without introducing paradoxes when I expand the map, and so players cannot just "keep following the coast" or "keep going east" or "get a magic carpet and fly east as long as they can" and end up at the edge of what I know about the world.

Of course, depending on how I approach it, that can involve way too much work. My first campaign started on an approximately 800km x 430km hex map, and then added maps of the same size in advance of the player's explorations and the GM's interest/prep for about 8 years of real time, reaching about 6000km x 4800km at the end - parts of three continents bounded by ocean and giant wildernesses, a few major empires, many many smaller nations.

Later-designed sandbox campaigns for serious long-term play have always started with at least a whole continent map first, often a multi-continent map or whole/most-world map, though not done down to hex-scale, and an origin/history going back before players would/should ever be able to find out about, so I have a full (if not detailed) view of both geography and history.

Often places that no player has never been nor heard much about (and also many of the ones that they have, but just passing through) have little or no detail besides terrain/roads/rivers, settlement name/type/size and very brief info. Things get more and more detailed closer to the PCs, their interests, and other stuff I get interested in.

My current sandbox is about the size of Scotland. Most of it is actually blank, to be filled in as the game progresses.  I no longer have the time and energy to try to detail everything in the world before play, especially when the PCs will not know about it.

I start local and build outward. I have a few distant points of interest, some of which are mere rumor, and as teh map gets closer to the PCs' home village the map gets more detailed. The player's map also gets more accurate the closer to home it gets.

I live in a rural county, about teh size of the state of Rhode Island, and many people in the county have never been beyond it. So I don't need a huge sandbox for a game where most people walk and only the rich ride horses.

Mine, for my Wulfwald setting, is about the size of England and is split into five or six petty kingdoms.

At least kingdom-sized, preferably larger.  I flesh out the initial play area fairly well, come up with some more remote place names, and give them an initial dusting of background to be filled in as necessary.

My reasoning is that I'm a huge map nerd and absolutely love filling them in.

My sandbox is this big

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Although most of my campaigns take place in this region

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Some in a region about this size

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Normally I like something a few kingdoms situated together in a section of a continent. I like having a broad swath of the world in summary form so I know how to handle likely events that may be cooking outside the sandbox. I usually pick up a setting like C&C Aihrde and then choose an area like Kleaves (one of the kingdoms near several others). Normally I would then hex-out an area outside the kingdom and then spring a catalyst to get the characters exploring "the untamed wilds" with the kingdom as "home base".

Currently (however) I have chosen to detail out The Dungeon Under the Mountain by 0one games. An enormous 10 level mega-dungeon with a somewhat strange mixture of things because #magic. I want to give my current group of newbies a classic experience with a "home base" nearby a dungeon to explore. It will include random encounters, some keyed locations, some common area keys (A, B, C), etc.

I've mainly played in the same setting.
And I drew out a continent first, and used Lotus 123 to determine some basics of all the environs.  Then I drew much of the rest of the world.
And while it helps when working with the history, it turns out the older I get, the smaller the area I use.  
I mean, it helps to know where my three PC groups are in relation to each other, and how they each see that history, affected by regionalisms, etc.
It worked for myself, and it makes it easier to deal with the influences of the rest of the world, though.

For the AD&D 1e campaign which has run since the 80s... The entire freaking Multiverse.

Quote from: Weru;927919Mine, for my Wulfwald setting, is about the size of England and is split into five or six petty kingdoms.

Is Wulfwald available anywhere?  Or is it a work in progress?  Either way I'm intrigued...

Quote from: RPGPundit;927851How large do you like your sandboxes to be?  Tiny, like a few miles around? A region? A kingdom? A whole world?  What are your reasons for preferring the size you like?

I'm working on a currently on a sandbox that will take place in region that is newly inhabited by various races that will be "the starting available races" - more might be added later as those areas are uncovered and interacted with. Most of the world has not been explored. These races were all transplanted here during a war among the gods (at least according to legends). So the region I'm starting in is roughly about a thousand square miles. But I've already mapped the sandbox to include the entire continent. I'm creating more detailed regional maps for hex-crawling purposes. As the game progresses we'll be doing a lot of exploring and revealing various secrets of the region/sub-continent/continent and perhaps other continents. If we *really* start getting into crazy-powerful stuff - I'm prepared to go extraplanar/extra-planetary (but not Spelljammer or anything - spellgates to other worlds).

So I'm planning for small regional sandboxes. But I definitely prepare to go full-bore world-wide, extra-planar, inter-dimensional, outer-limits and beyond the Twilight Zone. BOOM!

This is my "big" map (for those interested - I whipped this up in about 2-hrs on Inkarnate. It's AMAZING (and FREEEEEEE). Yes it's supposed to look "D&Dish" on purpose with kitchin-sink-style names.
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My current sandbox is fairly large, in that we're playing Stars Without Number. It's an entire sector of space. BUT! The various planets have been acting more like cities would in a fantasy campaign. The players very much have an "EXPLORE ALL THE THINGS FIRST! GOGOGO!" attitude; we don't spend too much time zoomed into each planet.

For most sandboxes, I prefer a regional, rather than a national or world, focus. I'd rather have players stuck into a local situation and become invested in it than globetrotting.

I have been contemplating a Points of Light sandbox, or something modeled after Bungie's Destiny, where there's maybe one friendly city left and it's all blasted, arcane wilderness outside the safe zones. But we're happy with SWN for now so...

Mine is small.  Two villages, one medium sized city.  Half a dozen dungeons so far.  A lot of vague rumors about that region over there that nobody goes to, but I haven't really sketched it out yet.  We're 16 sessions in.

I like making things up as I go and making the world seem mysterious to the players, cause their characters don't know what else is out there.  Leaves me the freedom to plug in shit I think of later.

Quote from: Dave;928007Is Wulfwald available anywhere?  Or is it a work in progress?  Either way I'm intrigued...

Wulfwald is "A Roleplaying Game of Outlaw Scum in an Anglo-Saxon Fantasy World." There's a version for Heroes & Other Worlds called Redwald (that's on Lulu) and Lost Pages are putting out the DIY D&D/OSR version (prolly in 2017).