In my sandbox campaigns, sites are important. They’re not only places where adventurers can fight monsters and win treasure, but locales tied to the local culture, history, and folklore. Important things found at a site may reveal a different site, lead to an important NPC, or be used as a lure to drive the characters toward something I’m really wanting them to do (usually yet another playtest).
More importantly for the PCs, discovering and “clearing” a site nets the party experience points. I like to incent treasure recovery, exploration, and discovery in lieu of combat. Expertise over blood.
Sites are key to a domain management mini-game. Clearing sites -- either removing threats or making allies -- makes an area safe to settle. PCs can then build in these areas, or the gamemaster may expand the campaign world in an emergent way – the direction of gameplay.
And emergent play is always the right mode.
One of the major sites that recurs across the Zherovain Highlands are battlefields. These sites could yield random encounters, discoveries, treasure troves, or just an interesting atmospheric encounter to get your players thinking (and when players are thinking, your campaign emerges!). Of course, you could disturb a Graverust Knight and their skeletal host!
Witch-Lords of Skull Mountain Issue #1
Our #zinequest crowdfunding campaign over at Kickstarter has funded and crossed its first stretch goal (as of this writing!). We're now pushing for upgraded hexmap art from Craig Brasco.
Witch-Lords of Skull Mountain is an emergent setting in three different game systems: DCC RPG, Shadowdark, and Old School Essentials / BX (making it compatible with any OSR system).
If it interests you, run on over to Kickstarter and show your support. I promise it'll have enough detail to lighten your DM/Judge/GM load, enough open-ended content to allow you to improvise the blanks, and provide many hours of gaming for your gaming-starved players.
Below is a preview of Battlefields of the Steppeland, an encounter, discovery, and events table when characters explore one of the many charnel pits left behind by the Witch-Lords of Skull Mountain!