Merlin's Garden

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Merlin's Garden

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01 Sources

002 Placeholder Source

Getting Stuck and Unstuck Again

Pacing and Random Encounters in the Sandbox

Skeet by emielboven about writing d20 tables

Skeet by ktrey about writing d20 tables

Skeet by riseupcomus about Animals

The Four Pillars to a Great DnD Sandbox Campaign

Vivid Worlds Will Kill You

Writing rooms in pairs

02 Literature Notes

Getting Stuck and Unstuck Again

Pacing and Random Encounters in the Sandbox

Skeet by emielboven about writing d20 tables

Skeet by ktrey about writing d20 tables

Skeet by riseupcomus about Animals

Structuring Encounter Tables, Amended & Restated

The Four Pillars to a Great DnD Sandbox Campaign

Vivid Worlds Will Kill You

Write Encounters in Networks

Writing rooms in pairs

@Emiel Boven (Cult of the Lizard King)

@Josh McCrowell (Rise Up Comus)

@ktery (d4 Caltrops)

@Nick LS Whelan (Papers & Pencils)

@Noel (Viridian Void Productions)

@Sean McCoy (Failure Tolerated)

@[[@Shannon R (The Novel Game Master)]]

@Zak H (Bommyknocker Press)

🌰 Everything can be a dungeon

🌰 Plot and narrative need conflict and development

🌰 Write encounters in networks

🌱 (Unearned) structure keeps you from following your energy

🌱 A 2DX encounter table gives you options to differentiate encounters by likelihood

🌱 A sandbox should not wait for the players

🌱 A world that waits for the players is not a sandbox but a theme park

🌱 AI writing is a source of anxiety

🌱 All elfgames could use more dragons and wizards in them

🌱 Allow players to opt-in or out of random encounters

🌱 Animals make worlds feel real

🌱 Approaching writing tasks as note taking lowers the threshold for success

🌱 Books are hard to write

🌱 Catalyst-Events are pre-planned happenings that happen regardless of player action

🌱 Catalyst-Events change the status quo

🌱 Catalyst-Events force players to react to a new reality

🌱 Dragons and wizards should offer great risk-reward ratios

🌱 Dungeon narratives should be archaeological delves, or crime scene investigations

🌱 Ecological interactions can convey the meaning of their environment

🌱 Encounters can emphasize the boundaries between locations

🌱 Encounters should be agentic

🌱 Encounters should be doing something specific when you encounter them

🌱 Encounters should have desires and the ability to pursue them

🌱 Ensure that random encounters are interesting and relevant

🌱 Events answer "what" happens

🌱 Excreting NPCs are only interesting if the can experience shame

🌱 Factions act as agents of change

🌱 Factions answer "who" does something

🌱 Factions are the actors in a campaign or sandbox

🌱 Factions should have friction and conflict between each other

🌱 Fun can come from embracing randomness in sandboxes

🌱 Horror encounters should be preceded by two or three omen or aftermath rooms

🌱 If the PCs don't interact with a faction's plan, the plan should still happen

🌱 Ignoring an encounter should be a choice with consequences

🌱 Ignoring an encounter should be possible, but not simple

🌱 In battle, animals die too

🌱 In dungeons, players should be asking "What happened here?"

🌱 Interesting random encounters encourage players to engage with them

🌱 It's easier to turn a weak encounter into a strong one than to come up with strong encounter first

🌱 Linked notes allow for a natural progression of ideas to emerge

🌱 Maintain a list of NPCs the players liked to bring them back as random encounters

🌱 Make environments intrude on the player's desired activities to make them feel dangerously alive

🌱 Make zany encounters the least likely to not make the game feel disjointed

🌱 Making encounter tables specific means frequent restocking is necessary

🌱 Not everything in alien environments should be dangerous or beneficial

🌱 Observation and experimentation require uncertainty

🌱 One of the joys of a sandbox campaign is seeing the impact PCs have on the world

🌱 Outlines are a pretence of knowledge

🌱 Pacing in sandboxes

🌱 Random encounters are (part of) the cost players pay for exploration

🌱 Random encounters might be at odds with maintaining pace

🌱 Random encounters that are relevant are more interesting

🌱 Record any extra ideas you have for an encounter table to use them during restocking

🌱 Recurring characters give the world a sense of history and interconnectivity

🌱 Recurring characters should invite the party's attention in some way

🌱 Reserve the likeliest encounter in all 2DX for recurring NPCs

🌱 Reserve the major half of a 2DX table for universal threats

🌱 Reserve the minor half of a 2DX table for threats tied to a specific location

🌱 Reserve the tail ends of all 2DX encounter table for the same unlikely encounters

🌱 Running horror RPGs depends on building tension

🌱 Sandboxes should respond to the players presence as well as absence

🌱 Secrets answer "why" something happens

🌱 Secrets are unrevealed truths about the world

🌱 Secrets pull the PCs out of safety

🌱 Sequence encounters to create cause and effect

🌱 Skipping random encounters means exploration was free

🌱 Slow burn timers have a certain amount of vagueness to when they finish

🌱 Specific timers are precise in when they finish

🌱 Structuring writing projects bottom up as atomic notes is a form of task decomposition

🌱 Telegraph the nature of random encounters to let players decide how to engage with them

🌱 The encounter die can be the primary driver of play

🌱 The four pillars of a sandbox form a loop

🌱 The majority of encounters should make an undesirable demand on the player's attention

🌱 The most likely encounters can be mundane to establish the normal of a place

🌱 There are 3 types of events

🌱 There are four tools that enliven a sandbox world

🌱 Think about animals during play

🌱 Timers answer "when" something happens

🌱 Timers can be hidden or open

🌱 Timers introduce urgency into a sandbox

🌱 Universal 2D6 Encounter Table

🌱 Use a specific reaction and action table for wizards

🌱 Use a specific reaction table for dragons

🌱 Using timers requires tracking time

🌱 When restocking, come up with new encounters by twisting previous ones

🌱 When using the universal 2D6 encounter table, a new location requires only 4 new entries

🌱 Wizards need an escape plan

🌱 Wizards need the ability to do something weird and scary

🌱 Writing rooms in pairs halves the ideas you need to come up with

🌱 Writing rooms in pairs means thinking of them as setups and punch lines

🌱 Writing rooms in pairs means writing sequels and prequels to other rooms

🌱 You can feel writer's block because of the structures you have in place

🌱 You can feel writer's block even with great structures in place

🪴 "What is the Encounter Doing?" Table

🪴 Alien environments follow their own logic

🪴 Biotic & abiotic factors for challenging environments

🪴 Break larger tables into d4 chunks

🪴 Challenging environments should answer three questions

🪴 Constraints foster vivacity

🪴 Dungeon procedures are typically the most robust OSR procedures

🪴 Environments may be benevolent, indifferent or hostile

🪴 Fiction about survival ties plot to facts about the environment

🪴 In a survival narrative, the workings of the environment are the drivers of conflict and development

🪴 Overworld exploration is more deeply abstracted than dungeon crawling

🪴 Procedures act like enzymes

🪴 Random encounters don't need to be rolled

🪴 Six questions you can use to create challenging environments

🪴 When writing a d20 table, write 30 entries

🪴 Write rooms in pairs

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🌱 The four pillars of a sandbox form a loop

Links

🌱 There are four tools that enliven a sandbox world

Concepts

Tools, Loops, Sandbox, Timers, Events, Secrets, Factions

Connected Pages

Depth

Pages mentioning this page

The Four Pillars to a Great DnD Sandbox Campaign

🌱 Events answer "what" happens

🌱 Factions answer "who" does something

🌱 Secrets answer "why" something happens

🌱 Timers answer "when" something happens