Mr. Rients always comes up with the best links. He’s dependable like that. Through his blog I’ve found a very cool post on Bat in the Attic entitled ‘How to make a Fantasy Sandbox‘, which gives would-be world makers a simple checklist to follow in order to create a playpen for their pals to trek around in.

I’ve been thinking about creating a new homebrew setting for some time now, and the sandbox idea is the most appealing to me. I can envision a world somewhat like an Elder Scrolls PC game – a large land mass with lots of small caves, ruins, mine shafts, etc for players to discover and explore, with the occasional large dungeon scattered about the map. I probably wouldn’t use any modules, except perhaps if I needed a few bits and pieces of inspiration (or if I got tired of the world and wanted it to come to an apocalyptic end: Death Frost Doom). No predesigned story arcs, the game progresses the way the players decide it should (for better or worse).

The best part about the big sandbox worlds is that they’re infinitely recyclable. Your players never went to the haunted prison in the low country? Throw it into the next campaign. The group all died or fled before making it down to level two of the last dungeon? MacGyver the layout into your next dungeon design (of course, you’ll need a new second tier should some other group of players come along and want to explore it, but that’s part of the fun, eh?). If you end up liking your world enough, take it from game to game, have statues erected in the villages for the players who made it to heroic levels and lonely grave markers out in the wilderness for those who didn’t make it quite so far. When you get bored, advance the timeline forward a few hundred years and use AD&D’s A Mighty Fortress handbook to make it into an Elizabethan setting. If that’s not extreme enough, move the timeline up a million years into the future and use your same map for a Mutant Future game. Whatever you want!

I suppose deep down I’m always jealous of those guys who talk about using the same setting of their own design since the 1980’s (or late 70’s in some cases). To have that kind of longevity with a world (even if it spans multiple campaigns and gaming groups, maybe even different systems) would be pretty swell, to say the least.