There’s been heaps of great writing has been about the value of specific procedures in old school D&D that atrophied away and were forgotten as editions marched on. The reaction table, morale rolls, and a system of location exploration turns linked to diminishing light and increasing odds of random encounter are all valuable to support a specific style of gameplay that has time and resource pressures and doesn’t default to all things invariably trying to kill you.
Another element of specific procedure for sandbox games that I think could use a renaissance are Campaign Events.
The original AD&D Oriental Adventures comes with mountains of well deserved baggage but it did have one area that provided a really useful table for inspiration-the Campaign Events section. A DM could use the tables to roll up the overarching events of an entire year in advance.
There was also a daily events table but I feel that territory has been pretty covered by using location Wandering Encounters table stocked with events as well as potentially hostile foes for whatever city, blasted wasteland, or hole in the ground the PC’s find themselves in.
A neat element of the system is that the table rolled for monthly events are affected by whichever yearly event was rolled while the seasonal event is happening. If there’s a 4 month War for the seasonal event on then Major Battles and Bandit Activity are likely while there’s little or no chance of marriage events for the months that the War lasts. Curiously, seasonal events of natural disasters also make every other natural disaster likely while they last, if there was a Famine then a Minor Earthquake is suddenly more likely during this time. I think this non-scientific take can work well for a lot of fantasy settings as the natural world is often portrayed as magically interconnected and if there’s a period of natural disaster and instability it makes sense that it affects the rest of the natural order.
These tables are interesting because they introduce a broader plot that doesn’t involve the players while using the oracular power of dice to surprise the Gamemaster and inspire them through producing seeds, pushing the game in a direction they wouldn’t have taken it if they had just created the timeline of future events from their own plotting and creating an impression of the wider world going on and changing without them giving a great sense of verisimilitude to the setting. These events don’t have to be written in stone but offer inspiration and provide a living world that changes without the PC’s touching it.
When I’m running a campaign I’ve found that it’s easy to have everything just remain in a state of delicate stasis instead until the PC’s come and screw it all up. In my opinion, Hot Springs Island is the best sandbox RPG adventure published at this point. They refer to the setting of the island as a “keg of black powder” with volatile elements and complex factions in a precarious equilibrium waiting for the PC’s to come in and light the match that blows it all to hell with their shenanigans. One downside of this approach is that that large changes to the setting are only precipitated in a rippling butterfly effect as a result of direct or indirect interaction with the PC’s and centers most events of broad reaching disruptive change around them.
This is my default way to run sandboxes. If the PC’s haven’t interacted with it, it exists frozen in the same state until they do, or their actions impact it. This works for my brain the same reasons most video games don’t render every single level and simulate every entity in the world while the players aren’t there- I’m saving precious processing power. Still, there’s a lot of gameplay value in simulating a world that feels alive and changes in big ways in the background without any PC input.
Before getting to the tweaked campaign events table there’s a couple other ways I’ve seen modules and systems introduce change that exists independent of PC’s. The sandbox Mothership module Pound of Flesh uses an event meter that ticks up in one direction every session along a series of crises from a dockworkers strike to a cybernetic plague until they get to their inevitable cataclysmic conclusion unless PC’s act to prevent this. I used a more limited potential timeline of future events if the PC’s do nothing in my space western module, Desert Moon of Karth. (I took the future timeline idea from Deep Carbon Observatory.) These are great and focused but only provide one or three potential timelines of changes instead of a huge procedural range for a long term campaign in the same area.
Faction procedures offer another way of introducing more setting dynamism without needing the PC’s finger in all the pies. I ran a real enjoyable star hopping campaign with friends using Stars Without Number for 14 sessions. The detailed faction procedure was a lot of fun to run six factions through for an hour each week with an automated spread sheet of their assets but the solo RTS I was playing didn’t seem to deliver the same value for the players. I think something like Mausritter’s faction procedures would have been more useable for my purposes. In that procedure, factions each have several goals that require a certain number of progress marks depending on how difficult the goal is. Between sessions a die is rolled to see how many progress marks are added to their goal adjusted by how many unique resources they have at their disposal. If the goal is targeted at harming a rival, they lose one targeted resource when the goal is completed. If PC’s help or harm the goals of a faction they can add or remove a number of progress marks towards the goal depending on the scale of their interference. I think a faction system like this could pair nicely with an overarching campaign events table representing more unexpected outlier events and acts of nature than the steady progress of factions towards their goals.
In making my own version of a Campaign Event Table, I made a number of changes from the Oriental Adventures events table to make it more user friendly, and customized to my swords and sorcery campaign purposes and preferences.
First, I changed the types of disruptive overarching events to the categories Faction Chaos and Natural Chaos which sums up the origin of most types of large changes that affect the area. I also reduced the timeline scale from Yearly Events and Monthly Events to Seasonal Events (12 weeks) and Weekly Events. I did this because I tend to operate campaigns on a shorter in game time scale than I think they were assuming in 1985. If you run a game with regular downtime in between or that operates on the same time frame as reality in between sessions and dungeon expeditions it’s easy to have an event come up every session, which is my ideal pace. You could easily adjust what increment of time the tables represent to your liking.
I think these are best rolled in advance to create a timeline of outside happenings if the PC’s don’t interfere and synthesized into a more detailed and partially interconnected series of events. Also credit to John Arendt for the Campaign Events table in their Black City setting inspiring several of the entries.
How It Works
- Roll on the Seasonal Event table. Roll for how many weeks of Faction or Nature Chaos caused if needed.
- Roll 1d12 to see what week of the 12 week season the Season Event starts on.
- Roll a Weekly Event for each week, rolling on the Faction Chaos or Nature Chaos table if the week occurs during a period of either from the Season event.
- Repeat the process for more Seasons if more time in your game’s calendar is needed. Though probably best to just wait until you get right before the next season to roll again.
- Look at the series of events and weave them into an interconnected timeline of what will happen in the region that season without direct interference by the PC’s.
| 1d100 | Seasonal Events |
| 1 | The Dragon Wakes: Faction Chaos for 2d6 weeks as it ravages before it returns to it’s slumber. |
| 2-7 | Major Birth: Local celebration lasts for 1 week. |
| 8-14 | Faction VIP Visit: Remains for 2d6 weeks |
| 15-21 | Assassination of Faction Representative: Faction Chaos for 1d6 weeks |
| 22-28 | Death of Faction Representative: Faction Chaos for 1d6 weeks |
| 29-35 | Diplomatic Marriage: Celebration at both factions lasts for 1 week. |
| 36-42 | Coup Plot Discovered: Faction Chaos for 1d4 weeks |
| 31-35 | New Cult: Faction Chaos for 1d8 weeks |
| 36-42 | Invasion: Faction Chaos for 1d10 weeks |
| 43-49 | War: Faction Chaos for 1d8 weeks |
| 50-56 | Famine: Nature Chaos for 1d6 weeks |
| 57-63 | Plague: Nature Chaos for 1d6 weeks |
| 64-70 | Great Earthquake: Nature Chaos for 1d8 weeks |
| 71-77 | Steppe Fire: Nature Chaos for 1d4 weeks |
| 78-84 | Gray River Floods: Nature Chaos for 1d4 weeks. |
| 85-91 | Starstone Impact: Nature Chaos for 1d6 weeks. |
| 92-98 | Red Comet* Only occurs once. Nature Chaos for 1d6 weeks. |
| 99-100 | Cinderstrom Erupts: Nature Chaos for 1d10 weeks |
Weekly Events
| 1d100 | During Faction Chaos | During Nature Chaos | During Normal Times |
| 1-4 | Accident | Accident | Accident |
| 5-8 | Bandit Activity | Skystone Impact | Locusts |
| 9-12 | Birth | Locusts | Bandit Activity |
| 13-16 | Death | Bandit Activity | Birth |
| 17-20 | Outsider Visit | Bandit Activity | Death |
| 21-24 | Fire | Birth | Minor VIP Visit |
| 25-28 | Haunting | Death | Minor Fire |
| 29-32 | Deadly Predator | Death | Haunting |
| 33-36 | Incursion | Minor Earthquake | Travesty |
| 37-40 | Travesty | Minor Earthquake | Mistaken Identity |
| 41-44 | Raid | Flooding | Hidden Hunter |
| 45-48 | Skirmish | Flooding | Marriage |
| 49-52 | Battle | Minor Fire | Infamous Criminal |
| 53-56 | Major Battle | Minor Fire | Vengeance Seeker |
| 57-60 | Infamous Criminal | Haunting | Bad Weather |
| 61-64 | Recruitment | Disease | Seasonal Festival |
| 65-68 | Mutiny | Deadly Predator | Blood Feud |
| 69-72 | Kidnapping | Deadly Predator | Disappearance |
| 73-76 | Troops Moving | Travesty | New Dungeon Discovery |
| 77-80 | Vengeance Seeker | Landslide | Supply Issues |
| 81-84 | Bad Weather | Landslide | Outsider Visit |
| 85-88 | Fire | Bad Weather | Team Up Offer |
| 89-92 | Landslide | Bad Weather | Rival Party Slain |
| 93-96 | Minor Earthquake | Demons | Skystone Impact |
| 97-100 | Flooding | Mastodon Migration | Merchant Caravan |
Blank Season Calendar of Events
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An Example Season:
I rolled for the Seasonal Event of the year and got a 93, Red Comet. They then rolled a 1d12 to see what week the Seasonal Event started and got Week 7. Reading in the description of the Green Comet that it lasts for 1d6 weeks of Nature Chaos they roll to see how long it will last and get 2 weeks. The first 6 weekly events are rolled using the During Normal Times table, and weeks 7 and 8 are rolled on the During Nature Chaos table, and the last 4 week’s events are rolled on the During Normal Times table again for the following 12 week Season results.
- New Dungeon Discovery
- Accident
- Birth
- New Dungeon Discovery
- Mistaken Identity
- Merchant Caravan
- Red Comet; Death
- Red Comet; Death
- Supply Issues
- Skystone Impact
- Haunting
- Outsider Visit
Looking at this timeline of events I decide that the Season starts with a rival adventuring party discovering the Steaming Grotto’s hidden entrance to the volcano megadungeon of Cinderstrom and bragging about it a bit too loudly in a settlement’s drinking hall. Next week one of the members falls into a mud pot and is nearly fatally scalded on a subsequent expedition requiring bandages over their entire body. The third week, Anasa the herb merchant gives birth and there’s much celebrating and festivities in the village of Nabtaar. In the fourth week, the same rival adventuring party decides to venture away from Cinderstrom and stumble upon the Mound of the Horselord and prepare to loot it and brag copiously again. This angers the plainsfolk who hear about it and a rowdy mob is assembled the next week to punish the party defiling the tomb of their ancestor. Unfortunately their info is bad and they believe the PC’s are the ones that entered the mound while the rival party skipped town.
On the sixth week a merchant caravan passes along the trade road and brings merchants bearing strange goods that are available for the short week the caravan stops in the Cinderstrom Basin, the rival party flees the region with them. On the seventh week the Red Comet is visible and magic is empowered and strange things stir as it’s visible for two weeks, in the same week dealer of the black pomegranates in the Janeer Bastion is wracked by convulsions while gazing up at the Red Comet and dies. The eighth week see’s the strange death of the recent mother Anasa the herb merchant in the village of Nabtaar under similar circumstances. After that the comet passes and the natural world reverts to a less weird state. However, the Red Comet’s emanations polluted all of the magical potions brewed in the region and none are available for that ninth week until more are brewed. On the tenth week a blaze is seen in the sky as a late chunk of the Red Comet flies from the sky and lands on the Tallgrass Plain with an ear shattering boom, killing a herd of mastodons and emanating magical radiation. The eleventh week the tortured and angry souls of the mastodons rise as specters and create a new hazard for any travelers across the Tallgrass Plain. Finally in the last week of the season a robed stranger with a huge ax comes to seek out the Mound of the Horselord that they heard about from the rival adventuring party fleeing north with the merchant caravan 6 weeks ago. They claim they are the heirs to the Horselord and wish to claim their birthright within the Mound.
This took me about 10 minutes to come up with and write down. The events rolled aren’t set in stone but fertile seeds for inspiration for a timeline of what will happen without player activity that actively prevents the events from occurring. In order to get information of these out to the players it’s great to add to drop evidence of the event into local rumors or NPC conversation if the player’s don’t directly witness the event.
Let me know what you think! Have you ever used a campaign events table? How did it work?