Advice on Running Sandbox Game

[chaoticgoodbeard]

Hello All,

New here! If there are some threads that have already addressed this issue please feel free to forward them!

I am starting my first 5E session on the platform of an ongoing campaign. I run a pretty sandbox-y game and my players often end up in random rooms, going to random places. Most of what I do is on the fly, with a lose idea of what monsters or NPCs they might encounter.

Let's say for this example my player's decide to explore a random bedroom that I don't have anything planned for. They enter the room and there's a potential monster/npc, but I want to make sure I know the stats of this person/thing so if they decide to pop off I am prepared. What's the best way to do this?

My thought was to just grab a monster or NPC from the stat block and toss them on the map. However, it seems like if you do that you either get the red pin link (if you do it from NPC window) or the unlinked token, which is fine unless they decide to fight the token, then I'm not sure how to keep the pacing going. Also if I do drop the red pin link and reveal it to my players do they get to look at the stat block as well? Any advice? Is there a way to link the token on the fly or have it linked when you drop it? Or can you only do this through creating encounters/ random encounters?

For reference I have DMG/PHB/Volo/Xan/SCAG and am running a homebrew.

Thanks!

[Speculi]

Drag the NPC first to the combat tracker, then from there to the map.

[LordEntrails]

Always add creatures to a map from the combat tracker. So add them to the CT (either from an encounter or from the NPC list) and then from the CT to the map.

Other things you can do for a sandbox game is to use story templates and tables for random generation of anything. There's a link in my sig for a Dungeon Room Description generator that uses templates and tables to make over 44 trillion unique dungeon room descriptions. You can also do random encounters with NPCs ready to add to the CT. Also See Jim Sock's 2020 Content Generator here on the forums. It does things like NPC descriptions, tavern generation, stores etc. https://www.fantasygrounds.com/forums/showthread.php?54306-Content-generator-2020!&p=480747#post480747

[chaoticgoodbeard]

Thanks!

[chaoticgoodbeard]

Thank you!

[Neovirtus]

I think along with getting comfortable dropping an NPC into the combat tracker, and changing the token/name to suit the situation, the biggest other help for sandbox games is to make sure you have quick access to a variety of maps you might need. This is easier now in FGU than in FGC, as you're able to assemble some on the fly once you get used to the tools. But I like to have a generic map for each environment the party could potentially have an encounter in for a given session. Generic plains, forest, beach, mountains, tavern, etc. Once you have that, you can worry more about set pieces, and less about random encounters.