When one tugs at a single thing in nature, he finds it attached to the rest of the world.
John Muir
In order for a sandbox RPG region to have a sense of verisimilitude it’s important for many of the locations in the area to be actually connected to each other instead of existing as a series of unrelated vignettes. The dynamism of considering how two areas affect each other creates more immersive and creative settings that increase conceptual density and packing more interesting ideas into the available space of your sandbox region.
One way to achieve this interconnection creates a web of hooks that pulls players from location to location and unites the patchwork quilt of locations into a unified whole. In game design terms all rumors, jobs, quests, and lore are hooks that exist to help create a call to adventure by telling the player something about a location or something at a location and provide context for the setting. They should be linked to specific locations instead of something abstract or unactionable. This location could be anywhere from a settlement, a dungeon, an area within a dungeon or settlement, or a desolate bluff in the desert wilderness.
At their core adventure hooks break down into some fairly simple formats.
For example:
I’ve heard there’s something valuable over there.
Here’s how you can avoid the dangerous thing over there.
Go there and get this thing and you’ll get something in return.
Bring this thing there and you’ll get something.
Go here and kill this person or monster.
Go here and rescue this person or monster.
This is a simple process. We can make these hooks more engaging by applying the therefore or but principle to the hooks and adding complications. The more of these hooks between locations we create, the more interconnected and dynamic our sandbox is.
One type of hook that’s worth discussing in more detail is the rumor. I prefer adding a good number of diegetic rumors spoken and known directly by specific NPC’s or found on specific documents rather than always rolling on a random rumor table and hearing the rumor mysteriously bestowed from a general entity “They say…”.
Multiple people might know the same rumor or have similar quest hooks, though their versions could be widely different. And if rumors are false or misleading, the PC’s know who to blame! Specific information can be a reward for seeking out and talking with specific people in the world.
I still think there’s still a big place for rolling on a Random Rumor Table. It would take way too much work and page space to specify what general information every single NPC knows about the region. Instead it’s better to roll to procedurally generate rumors on the fly that NPC may be likely to know, just once for establishing the background information a PC starts with, or if the PC’s hit the tavern and do some socializing.
I really like how The Halls of Arden Vul divides adventuring rumors (adventurers, people with practical experience with the locations, or people who talk to them) and historical rumors (sages, researchers, and ancient beings). The tables are broken down into Common, Uncommon, Rare, Very Rare, and Legendary rumors that have varying odds of the person knowing them. I’ll probably adopt something similar.
Getting back to the process of laying out the hook connections while planning a region my attempts to use a Google Sheets document to note all the location interconnections using a format similar to the Colossal Wastes of Zhaar crowdsourced hex crawl was difficult for me to wrap my head around. I’ve discovered I’m a bit more of a visual person and decided to use Scapple to take each of my hex locations from my map and create a diagram showing arrows designating hook linkages.
Each arrow represents a specific hook leading from one location to another.
Yellow locations are dungeon sites, Blue locations are settlements, and the brown one is the Cinderstrom volcano megadungeon.
I have lots to add and tweak but you can see some patterns emerging.
There are hubs that are both popular end points and starting points. Some hooks just lead directly to one location while other hooks lead to the next in a series of them. A couple desolate locations don’t have any hooks leading to them and can only be investigated by stumbling upon them. I haven’t finalized all of the quests or come with an equation for connection over just eyeballing it.
Every settlement has at least 3 hooks leading to other places with up to 7. Cinderstrom has 8 different hooks leading to it and in turn leads to 3 different locations outside of it. These numbers should increase for all locations as I build up higher interconnectivity by adding more hooks. Here’s a quick example of a segment of these hooks from the Bandit Ruined Villa.
Hooks in the Bandit Ruined Villa:
Jorgan the Hammer: “There’s a floating rock with a silver pool under it just to the north! I heard if you submerge your body you can whisper a wish to be granted. (F- Jorgan has a fell bargain with the hungry Tarn Demon.)
To Tiny Tarn (pg.xx)
Lobster Jacques: Secret “Headwoman Lana of Ulark hasn’t been paying the whole protection tax, find some leverage to get her to pay up and I’ll make it worth your while.” (T-2000 gold each and command of squad of bandits)
To Ulark (pg.xx)
Doctor Cathero , drunk: “Tunnels in that mesha to the west are crawling with shpitwurms! If I could get my hands on their glands, what a rich harvesht! (T-can be made into expensive and unstable explosives)
To Spitwurm Caverns (pg.xx)
Graculous Clay the Prisoner: “Ol’ Jailor Jean needs an escort to the Mud Pots to rest his bones in their healing muck. Poor man can’t make the journey anymore.” (T- he’ll die in one week without their healing properties)
To Mudpots (pg. xx)
Following this process of hook connection building can take a sandbox from a weightless series of random encounters and strange locales to a more cohesive overarching adventure.
With a video game like Fallout New Vegas or the Witcher III, side quest hooks are included to add variety and interest to the expansive world instead of demanding the player follows only one main plot bearing quest. While in a tabletop RPG sandbox region everything is a side quest!
However in a region with a tentpole megadungeon there’s a center of gravity to the sandbox and a nexus around which a hurricane of potential energy and plots swirl. Just as the megadungeon volcano Cinderstrom looms over the basin, its shadow and influence should touch a good number of the other hooks in the region. I’m looking to accomplish this by having all the major factions care about the megadungeon, having a lot of hooks that lead there seeded throughout the region map (8 so far), and putting the most valuable, weird, and powerful stuff inside of the megadungeon.
Nothing stops me from flipping the script and placing hooks and important items or people within the megadungeon itself that connect outwards istead. This replicates the organic feeling of interconnectedness found between rooms within a good dungeon and supports adventures outside of the megadungeon that remain linked.
One unformatted example of this in action:
Within a side passage of the black marble Grand Halls on Level 1 of Cinderstrom there is a great brass door with three evenly spaced slots the size of a dagger’s blade. The magically sealed door seems impervious to physical damage or mechanical lock picking. A bas relief on the door above the slots shows the outline of a jeweled dagger with odd serrations above each slot.
The moldering tomes found elsewhere in the Forbidden Archives of Cinderstrom note that the Thrice Locked Door of Thrones requires certain jeweled dagger keys to enter-last seen in the tower villa of Sorcerer Lord Polgath. One of the dagger keys has been looted by Lobster Jacques, the bandit leader squatting in the ruins of the tower villa.
Of course if a different hook brough them to the tower villa they could still find two oddly serrated jeweled dagger in the treasure hoard of the bandit company that now occupies the villa and recognize a matching one on Lobster Jaques Belt.
I probably should add at least one more connection hook here from elsewhere to increase player’s odds of figuring out how to access the Thricelocked Door of Thrones in keeping with The Alexandrian’s Three Clue Rule This type of content gating behind specific access requirements shouldn’t be required to access the majority of locations. Instead these hooks are for an optional hidden bonus and danger for those who venture to investigate off the beaten path.
The thicker woven these web of hooks are the more likely your PC’s are to get stuck fast and cause impacts that ripple throughout the region while the organic story that’s generated through their episodic roving and delving develops overarching themes, reoccurring nemeses, and familiar territory that help tie past actions to future consequences.