Welcome to the first of a multi-part series on building a fantasy campaign! Herein Bryan, Altered Worlds Press's resident writer, dungeon master, and storyteller, pulls back the curtain on the process he took to create the world of the AWP crew's current old school sandbox, The Yawning Bay Campaign. Onward!
The Yawning Bay Campaign overland map
At its core, the first step of creating a new RPG campaign is about gathering cobwebs: ideas that have been hanging about in abandoned corners of the game master's mind collecting dust. I regularly jot down these ideas when I can -- usually in a simple spiral notebook, and sometimes in the notes app of my phone. When it came time for our group to start a new campaign, I presented several options for choice of game and game style based on some of these ideas, and waited for feedback from my players. Some groups vote on options given them by the game master, but the AWP crew is pretty easygoing, and said they'd go along with whatever option I was excited about.
That being said, I know the members of my group and their gaming tastes. Some in my current group really dislike predetermined paths for characters, and want a more freeform experience in their gaming, one in which they have many choices about what to do and how to affect the game world. Player agency is one of the most exciting things about playing a tabletop RPG rather than, let's say, an electronic one, after all. So I proposed a homebrewed fantasy sandbox as the foundation for our next campaign.
If you're not familiar with the concept of a sandbox, in an RPG a sandbox style game is typically presented as a map or series of locales for characters to explore, with many options of places and plots for the heroes to connect to and get involved with.
But what kind of sandbox would it be? And what system would we use to play? I wanted to choose a game system that would be conducive to playing a sandbox-style game. D&D 5e is fantastic and could certainly do the job, but I have been interested for some time in older versions of the grand old game, versions with huge megadungeons to map and explore, and heroes that gain experience from the gold and magic items they gain during play. AD&D, or one of a number of "retroclones" of the game, seemed like it might be an interesting fit.
But creating a sprawling sandbox campaign can be a time-consuming endeavor for any dungeon master, and I have a busy career. For the sake of my sanity I decided to pitch a homebrewed sandbox game wherein I would create an overland sandbox, but with a published megadungeon as a central feature of the game to save me some time. And so it was decided: Astonishing Swordsmen and Sorcerers of Hyperborea would be the AD&D-adjacent game system we would use, and I would homebrew an overland map with NPCs, plots, adventure locales, and other things to interest the players, but with a published "tentpole megadungeon," in this case Michael Curtis's wonderful Stonehell Dungeon, as a central feature of the campaign.
With any dungeon-based campaign the players need somewhere to return to. A homebase to rest, purchase supplies, and perhaps get into a bit of trouble. So I began constructing the overland map with that in mind. In most old school campaigns an overland map is separated into a series of hexes, and so I used Hexographer by Inkwell Ideas to begin constructing Yawning Bay and the cities, countryside, and other interesting locales of the campaign.
I knew I wanted Stonehell Dungeon about a half day's journey on foot from the nearest settlement, and I wanted that settlement to be a major city. I decided I wanted that city to be coastal, and one of several settlements along a bay. So the city of Farum was born, as was the neighboring city of Pernaus, and the outlying villages of Terem and Ichthys.
I also knew I wanted a variety of adventure locales. So I went back to my "cobwebs," and made a list of possible adventure sites from the ideas I liked best. I wrote a brief one line description of each of these as a master list that I could use to key adventure locations on the map. I also knew that my players would need to be made aware of these locales during the game, either through knowledge they gained by plumbing the depths of Stonehell, or by visiting places and people in the cities and other places on the overland map.
So to recap: every adventure locale needed a main idea, a brief description, a spot on the map (I designated each locale with a letter to be placed on the DM copy of the map), and a hook that the players could find to lead them there. As my players haven't discovered all of these yet in the campaign, I won't publish the whole list here, but here are a few of the adventure sites I wrote down:
C - Monster Lair #2 - The Mountain Aerie, Giant Bee Nest. Hook: Traveler complaints.
E - The Outcast's Hovel By The Sea - An old greybeard lives in his shanty by the sea here by the name of Hoyle. He has information about Stonehell's depths. Hook: See Farum notes. (Later linked this to The Frog's Grog, a waterfront bar, and a drunken patron there.)
G - The Swamp Hag's Lair - The hag-witch Uldra lairs deep in the marsh. She knows things. Hook: PCs can find out about Uldra from a number of NPCs, like Hoyle, Abner Tull, etc.
O - Country Inn - The Shepherd's Rest, a traveler's inn and taproom. (I didn't create a hook for this one as it was on the main road to an old imperial watchpost that PCs were given as a destination on their first quest of the campaign.)
U - Temple of Lunaqqua - Abandoned? Original religion is neutral, not evil. Daemons here now. Hook: Connected to Terem Village quest, location is also detailed in a map in Stonehell Dungeon area (X).
Y - Old Imperial Watchpost Ruins - Hobgoblins. Accosting travelers and caravans on the high road. Hook: Farum quest. Give to PCs first when they approach military personnel.
With a keyed map and these descriptions in hand, the overland sandbox looked like it was almost finished. I still needed to create more details for the cities and villages, such as NPCs, city locations, factions and groups and their agendas, etc. We'll proceed with those steps in the next installment of this series. Until next time, thanks for reading, and happy adventuring!
AWP
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