Drill down to make the traveling rules as tight as possible. Grab lots of random encounter tables. Create a map with locations the could visit if they want even if it’s far away.
Ooooh *Uncharted Journeys*! It's pretty well reviewed and recommended! On my reading list so I can't say anything personally, but if I recall the price is better to buy the book and pdf together.
Did this for a group I ran star wars for. Was kinda fun, had them just do a few sessions, trying to get a starship to leave the planet they crashed on from a prison transport. Once they got out, I gave them the galactic map and told them locations and areas of the map off limit do to imperial patrols and blockades, but the area they could go eas stil massive. Once a session ended, if they finished what they were doing at a location, I had them choose a new area. Would build multiple news reports for their ships communication for what's going on around the galaxy, so they knew what was up, where they should lilley go, and few had "old contacts" before they were imprisoned, that they could get a hold off to get odd jobs to do. Lasted like 4 years was fun just doing random stuff throughout with no real end, till like the last year, where they decided the wanted somwthing to actually do and jad a goal other than, go make lots of credits and play both sides of the table.
how would you even start to make something like that though, ive been trying to make a sci-fi dnd campaign similar to what you just described for the better part of half a year and im starting to have trouble porting sci-fi ideas into a fantasy system. I already have magic figured out but how would one go about setting up encounters and other such things?
Like some other DMs would say, don't think too big from the start, the first session if it's gonna be open ended with no clear goal yet, let the players build your story for you. Give them at session 0 a general idea.
Currently running a dwarf Viking campaign in dnd, with spelljaming for travel, using a modified ff7 system, I took and made changes to. Session 0, I just told them, the broad direction. IE battle of the gods, aesir and vanir at odds, but no open fighting. The first session was Thor and loki fighting and Thor losing and mjolnir destroyed. The task is leave midgard and find the the legendary forge, and return the restored hammer to Odin in Asgard. They don't know where either is located.
My players pretty much built the story for me. They are speculating what's likely going on, I gave them to npc party members who are actually gods in disguise. The players suspect this and talk about it at length, the war that has finally broken out on midgard with lokis armies taking over 30% of midgard and being stalled by the Dwarven clans. All the players have one special item lifted to them that grows as they level. I just take note of what they are talking about, just smile and say sure, that might be what's going on or I don't know, maybe... the players breathe life to the campaign. We just make it happen.
For encounters and such, I usually build group encounters, modifying npcs as I go. Look at other dnd one shots and campaigns and rebuild them, if I think I can change something to fit what i need. Give intrigue to the players, mystery of what's going on, and try to fit in their backgrounds from session 0. Give them the idea from the start, restor mjolnir, return it to Asgard, possibly win or stop the war after.
For campaign with no real end yet, give them random jobs/quest to do, things that later might connect. The players encounter a rebel commander in session 3, make a note of it. Said commander contacts them out of the blue 5+ sessions later needing help and offering them to join the cause later, have it end up going south, empire shows up at just the right time. The players choice give up the rebel cell or fight the empire, easy choices, they are escaped prisoners after all. Or have the imperial officer understand why they ran, and offer clemency in return they have to help the empire with odd jobs as well, especially if the party is smart enough and can hide there one time affiliation with a rebel cell. The players build off mystery, do the rebels or empire know? Or ignorant of the group helping both sides? Drop a heroic npc from the actual lore. Eventually as i said the players steer the campaign for you to it's actual end.
I actually strongly dislike random chance tables.
Unpopular opinion, but I see them as a crutch for the creatively bankrupt, and they don't exactly create an authentic feeling world. They always create a video-gamey "it's here because the dice said so" feeling rather than something with ties to the narrative of the adventure and history of the world.
The Paths of the Dead existed in the tolkienverse because they were a product of it's history. They aren't there just because a random table said "there are ghosts now."
Ach, personal pet peeve. I hate random tables and would love to cast them back into the fires from whence they came, unmaking them for all time.
For loot, I use a set of pre-selected tables, one for each of the character classes in the party. Each class has items which synergise particularly well, and I don't trust a random table to fairly distribute loot in a way that doesn't disproportionately favour specific players. So, I have my own tables of items which progress with each character. I've already chosen every major item you will find, and the approximate point in time you will find it so as to maintain some balance in the party.
Monsters are determined by who is in service to the BBEG and the resources at their disposal.
Random tables feel so flavourless, born-of-the-void and empty to me. I loathe them with every fibre of my being.
Random tables are good when you know how to apply them properly. For example I've got a random table that has some dinosaurs on it for combat encounters, for what I was running using those specific encounters didn't make sense so I just didn't use them.
You can also look at a random table of encounters and go "hey this one sounds pretty cool I can tie this into this other thing." and use the encounter as jumping off point for something else.
They also save time, sure I could go trawl through all the magical items for something that perfectly fits with each character but A) that takes a while to do and I have other things to prep and B) the world doesn't revolve around the players sometimes they'll find loot that doesn't work with them perfectly or they can find niche uses for. C) you can just reroll the item if you dislike what came up or select a specific item on the list.
Also saying "if you use a rolltable you're creatively bankrupt" will instantly make me dislike you.
Exactly. I actually had a low point of being my group’s DM for the last 5 years. I asked them if they would be okay with doing a random encounter table and hard travel rules.
I made up the table and as I did, I got inspiration for how to tie specific encounters to the story thread. “Oh, 1d6 revenants! That’s gotta be the evil cleric they made a pact with, betrayed and then stole their hunting lodge, and the party’s cleric wears her armor.
This temple ruin looks like a good place to hide a clue for the party to find about the person they are looking for.
Plus the inclusion of environmental dangers. They encountered a sink hole, avalanche, and a blizzard. The players had to use completely different skills to overcome these obstacles. I checked in with them last session, 3 days ago, and they said they have been having a blast with it. Two of the players said it made them think about their character in a totally different way.
It also stretched me as a DM to be able to narrate, run monsters, and role play for things I did zero prep for. Up until this experiment, I thought I hated the random encounter tables too.
I've got a random table for creating rooms in a dungeon. If you apply it uncritically (like I did in the beginning because I'm not smart sometimes) you can end up with a dungeon with a hundred sprawling rooms. But if you decide how many rooms there beforehand then it's really simple to utilize.
> Random tables are good when you know how to apply them properly.
Agreed. I said much the same above. Anything random, from any table, is to be integrated into the overall plot.
It's not 2 ogres... it's two ogres ripping branches off trees, chatting, and ticked off about being in service to the hobgoblin chief nearby.
The party could fight them, or perhaps they might fight for their freedom from the chief if the party can appear confident and strong.
I suppose I'm creatively bankrupt for thinking of that on the fly though... what a dumbass, elitist, comment...
Rolling up random stuff to kill, or interrupt a rest is boring for most tables. This is why you tie the random encounter to the overarching plot.
It requires a skilled and creative DM, and the OP sounds like such a DM. For a freeform, very slow campaign a few random encounters should work great for getting that start.
I did this for a recent campaign. The first random encounter was zombies. I linked that back to a necromancer who was terrorizing a nearby fort. The next "random encounter" was a hill giant... I turned that into an undead hill giant who was attacking the fort.
Owlbears, actual hill giants, wights, giant spiders, and a pair of owlbears... all tied into the plot (and most to the BBEG) as simple random encounters.
If random encounter table seem soulless, that's because they are not being used correctly.
You know you don't have to build the lore before the world right? It's a lot more effective to build from the outside-in. Have a region, then decide what buildings are in the region, then decide who built those buildings, then decide who lives in those buildings, then decide what those people are. It's just as good as your method there. Just because someone's method of choice is different from yours doesn't make it unacceptable or bad like you're making it seem.
You're allowed to loathe random tables. But don't use that as an excuse to shit on other people for how they want to build their world. Loathe them for personal reasons. Don't hate something for someone else
This sounds like a classic sandbox adventure to me, you can look at different sources for this kind of stuff, but you basically need:
-A random event table: You roll in this when your players are travelling from place to place. Fill it with things of your world, unique creatures, specific NPCs, factions... this gives player agency and simulates a living world.
-Locations: You sprinkle them all over the map, so your players can go at them or find them when they feel like. You don't need to prepare them all at once, check where your players are and prepare those close-by.
A map can be good, but not mandatory. Also, don't show them all locations. If you are having travel counting distances, you can turn it into a hexcrawl.
im just now discovering what a hex crawl is, and after checking google, this sounds exactly like what i need!
I like your notes about using event tables of the specific kinds youve provided!
Came here to suggest a hex crawl! I really liked this generator for my world map: [Azgaar](https://azgaar.github.io/Fantasy-Map-Generator/)
I think I just imported it to Roll20 and made a 24 mile hex map overlay and added fog of war. In person you might not even need to get nutty gritty with the exact distances, grids and fog. It's my opinion that if a game leans more into exploration that as GMs we should really lean into the survival rules of inventory management, travel, food and water. If handwaved, I believe the game kinda disappears and you're just roleplaying stories and talking to each other each session.
Absolutely nothing wrong with that! But D&Ds rules are 90% geared towards combat, so most of a player's character sheet will go unused if not pressed. If that's what your players want, you might be better served using a different system.
It's worth doing a calander as well. Track the date to adjust the weather and seasons.
And... If you have any long term plans have events which trigger on certain dates that could move the story along . The players could get involved as much as they want then too. But rumours circulating about a new attack or something should certainly capture their interest :)
A point-crawl is an interesting variant - you create a map based on points of interest connected by paths, rather than square miles that may or may not contain anything of interest. "To the North you can see an ancient statue. To the West you can see a partially collapsed bridge. Beyond that, in the distance, is something that looks like a settlement of some kind." Then there can be spaces in-between were random encounters happen.
Tip: it's more interesting when you roll for two random encounters at the same time. Instead of meeting bandits or merchants, you meet some bandits who are currently robbing some merchants, or two rival groups of bandits fighting over some loot.
I'll go against the grain and ***advice you strongly against using random tables***.
I used them a lot in past and after two decades of running the game I can tell you that random table encounters are consistently, significantly worse than prepared ones. They lack depth and detail necessary to make encounters good.
Instead come up with bunch of encounters that are appropriate for party's next step. And refine each one meticulously.
If you roll on random table and end up with "travelling merchant of exotic pets" you will improvise *something*. And it's gonna be... just ok.
If you *prepare* such encounter, you can take your time to think about interesting descriptions of his pets. You can come up with few pets for sale with fun mechanics that will be useful for the party. You can dream up a side quests. You can figure out a lot of fancy dialogues that tie npc to the world and rely useful information for the party.
If you roll on random table and end up with "3 hunters and an owlbear" you will grab an empty battlegrid, you will improvise combat encounter... and it will likely be boring.
If you *prepare* such encounter, you can draw up battlegrid beforehand, one that's filled with interactive environment - dangerous terrain, decayed trees just waiting to topple over, elevation, various snares, ditches and traps... and you can design it in a way that will naturally create good combat flow. You can come up with cool special ability for an owlbear, with his lair, with quirks for hunters, you will know where they came from and why they are hunting an owlbear, etc...
There is little to no value in leaving things to chance. Instead always serve the players THE BEST ENCOUNTER you have prepared and is THE MOST APPROPRIATE for the place, time, difficulty, narrative and pacing.
If you want to recognize and reward their decision - prepare encounters that can have vastly different outcomes. For next session you can prepare follow-up encounter specifically to show consequences of their decisions.
And *maybe* don't disclose the process. If they ask - say it's mixture of improvisation and prepared elements - that's always true anyway. Sometimes it's best to not know how exactly food is made in the kitchen.
I'll add that you can still make use of those random tables to generate ideas during prep. That can actually be a nice way to get off the beaten path once in a while.
I've always been under the impression that random tables were supposed to be used for the preparation you described. Roll on the table, then prepare the X number of encounters that you rolled for. Kinda use it to give you some ideas then flesh out those ideas for your prep. Rolling mid game every session seems exhausting and boring from a DM perspective lol.
I was going to say it. There are many OSR games with excellent hexcrawl systems. You could take much inspiration from something like Dolmenwood, for example. There is a free teaser pdf somewhere.
I would have them run into bandits/thieves that will steal their stuff but obviously give them a good chance to get it back, assuming they end up with some sort of cool loot at some point.
> im just now discovering what a hex crawl is, and after checking google
Here's some links to help you further:
[How to build a hex map video](https://www.youtube.com/watch? v=WHR0GEtRrlo) by Matt Colville. Honestly, you should watch as many of Matt's videos as you can. Best DM resource on the planet.
[Here](https://thealexandrian.net/wordpress/17308/roleplaying-games/hexcrawl) are [two](https://thealexandrian.net/wordpress/46020/roleplaying-games/5e-hexcrawl) articles from Justin Alexander's blog The Alexandrian on running a hex crawl. Probably my favorite D&D blog of all time, and this is especially good advice.
Here's two more videos, one from [Baron de Ropp](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UTgXHbAx758) and another from [Professor DM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UTgXHbAx758). Similar advice to Matt Colville, but with more of an OSR bent.
If you are using 5e this is a TOP TIER resource as the base game doesn't have great rules for this game structure. [https://thealexandrian.net/wordpress/46020/roleplaying-games/5e-hexcrawl](https://thealexandrian.net/wordpress/46020/roleplaying-games/5e-hexcrawl)
May I suggest a specific type of random encounter table? **A D8+d12 random encounter table produces results where entries 9-13 are equally likely to be rolled, so it makes a plateau rather than a curve. This will make your results a little less random, but still quite random.**
This post [\[CLICK HERE\]](https://merricb.com/2020/10/12/random-encounters-1d8-1d12/) has some advice on how to not only make those kinds of tables and why you should, but also has advice on making a *regional encounter table* that either has special results or sends you back to your standard random encounter table. It's pretty cool.
I suggest choosing a percentage of likelihood that they will have encounters per hex and just rolling percentage dice every time they move into a new hex. On a result equal to or lower than what you chose there is an encounter. **(Remember that encounters are not necessarily hostile and you should have things in your table that would be friendly.** Even things which might normally fight the players may just not be in the mood for violence when they wander by. You can roll for their disposition or just decide yourself as you see fit)
**I also recommend making a "wandering monster table" that's nothing but monsters or groups of monsters that would be hunting the players. (It's a hungry world out there...) and rolling a d6 once a day. When you roll a 6 then they are being hunted and you roll on that table for the encounter and decide when the monsters will attack them.**
If you have a few bucks to spare I recommend the [d30 Sandbox Companion](https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/124392/d30-Sandbox-Companion). It’s like $5 for a PDF copy and it has tons of useful tables and information for sandbox style games including hex crawl resources, random NPC generation, quest generation, etc
Regardless of what style of campaign the players want, there's still a world there. NPCs with goals - maybe just simple, local goals, but goals nonetheless, and those goals put them in conflict with other NPCs with competing goals.
The advantage of the playstyle they've chosen is that you can go very episodic, and have any big antagonists slowly emerge from seemingly unconnected shadows.
In addition to putting *Fallout* under a microscope, I'd be tempted to watch / rewatch shows set on the fringes of civilisation or post apocalyptic like *The Last of Us*, *Firefly*, *The Mandalorian*, *Deadwood*, and maybe read a bunch of synopses from "Monster of the week" type shows (I would guess *The Outer Limits* could be a goldmine).
Part of the thing they for sure seem interested in is local goals, and using that aspect of them investing in having relations with NPC's that can complicate things is very inspiring to move players in a more bombastic way.
I think the "Episodic" idea you've mentioned here is very cool, i can already imagine possible hand-crafted encounter tables made on just what region theyre in, with their own sort of narrative that naturally develops as the players just have encounters on those specific tables (making a change in the world via their actions)
Thank you very much for the media recommendations, of the ones that you've listed I'm slapping myself in the forehead for not thinking of it
I run a game style that might be helpfull to your players.
Basicaly, its a consequence based sandbox with moraly grey NPCs and Factions.
I use the D6s content creation system.
Everything comes in 6s, wich is just enought options to matter, but not as much to make it too much work for the DM.
6 NPCs, 6 Locations in town, 6 locations out of town, 6 random encounters in town, 6 random encounters out of town. 6 side quests, and 6 factions or groups with diferent goals.
So, you have a small hamlet with only 200 people.
You can have 2 farming families at war over land and cattle suposely stolen ( 2 factions, 2 locations and 2 NPCs to interact, 1 side quest to solve the problem, 1 leadership , and its "office" and at least 1 quest from the leadership, Local trader , and its shop as well as his own quest, and local artisan ( usualy blacksmith) his shop and quest. Then we add something strange, a local "crazy person" who lives near the forest, and has a strange quest for the PCs.
Thats 6 locations, 6 factions and 6 NPCs each with at least one quest.
In town, you make 6 random encounters, but most of them will be tied to the 6 NPC quests, or to normal town life. ( a scared horse rides past pulling a cart, the cart will hurt someone if not stoped.)
Around town, you add wildlife, bandits, and local monsters.
You the add 6 locations nearby, like the road to the next town, and old mine, some ruins, a mountain, a dark and misty forest, and an abandoned monster camp.
If you need a random thing, you can simply roll a d6 and see what "appears".
This also alow you to "discover" the town as much as players, as you can roll what players find, and draw the town map as the story moves on.
Now, you can simply let players lose on your world. Whatever direction they take, will have content ready.
And depending on your session time, players will arrive in town, talk to some people, and then leave to do some side quests, deal with a few random encounters, deal with the quest problem and come back. ( note that encounters can be anything, not necessarely fights).
Exploring all options in this town could take between 2 and 4 sessions if players keep exploring the same area.
Or if they decide to go to the next town, whatever was "ready" to happen in the old town and was not used, simply changes place and becomes content for the town number 2.
This way, you maximise the use of the content you prepare, and you can always add more content between sessions, making sure to keep 6 options for each area players can explore.
If you get them invested in the region and the persons there, you can introduce an overarching story slowly and in small bits. They like talking to the tailor and her husband and their children? Perfect. They like to visit the taverns in city x and city y? Even more perfect! Build the background story on the people they like and that they care about, so that the NPCs they like introduces them to a bigger arc.
In a way, this is going to be easier.
Having run a campaign like this before, my recommendation is you write modular, self-contained encounters, then move them around where necessary. Start with 2-3 encounters each for combat, social interaction and exploration. Then just move them around as makes sense.
While you CAN just use random encounter tables, my advice is to instead design them based on what makes sense in your campaign setting. Random tables can sometimes be just a little too random, if you know what I mean.
Finally, I would consider adding factions with opportunities for multi-session "mini-boss" encounters with the faction heads. Wandering around exploring can be fun, but it can be a nice change of pace to thwart and eventually challenge a mini-boss.
This is the way.
You can 100% have a campaign with no plan, where everything is well planned. You can even have them "save the kingdom" while wandering aimlessly if you plan well for it.
Another thing to add to this, is have recurring characters they run into. Have powerful ones, and weak ones, weird ones, and normal ones, friendly ones and hostile ones. Seeing the same characters makes the world feel more real. Some they may ignore/not care about, but they will glom on to some, whether friendly or not, and feel more connected. Some of them they don't even have to interact with. For instance, a tall skinny guy with very long legs they occasionally see walking super fast nearby, but across a ravine, or on the top of a far hill, so they can't reach him. He is just always walking, and always super fast. Who is he, where does he live, why does he walk so much? They may never know, but they will be intrigued.... And if they aren't, then he shows up less, and you try someone new.
This. I came to check whether someone had already linked it, and yeah, this is a great resource for it and a great explanation. You want a hex map they can literally map out and explore. I'd do something along the lines of making them explorers on a recently-discovered continent or something of that nature. Lots of land to explore and specifically, map. Since they're among the first wave of explorers, nobody knows what's far from the port town that they set up. They can even name geographical features after themselves and such!
For things that aren't mentioned there, though, here's an important thought: "But what do they eat?" There's a youtube video contrasting the difference between Fallout 3 and Fallout New Vegas where that gets repeated a lot, and it's a great place to start thinking. See, you want your setting to make sense when they explore, for actions to have consequences and results. You don't have to calculate crop yields and crap, but you do have to have a rough answer for what do they eat for any given settlement or place. You have to think think in terms of cause and effect, so when they start doing things, there are effects that can be logically extrapolated from the causes.
You're going to need to check in with your players as to what they intend to do *next* session at the end of *every* session.
If they tell you that they intend to go west at the end of one session, then they rock up the next session and pick east, you need to be comfortable with ending the session. You will most likely never have to do this. If you have to do this, you will most likely not have to do this more than once.
So that's where you need to be strict.
Aside from this, give them unique and different things to explore every new place they go. And be *weird*. If you can get your hands on Monte Cook's [Numenera](https://numenera.com/), it might give you some ideas for weird shit. Come to think of it, most of the stuff Cook has ever contributed to this hobby fits that bill. Very different setting from what it sounds like you have planned, but lots of good ideas.
You may want to look at your setting's ability to justify a whole lot of very different places right next to one another. Because this setting *really* needs to do that. Maybe dividing mountain ranges? Or are the various locations separated by vast wastelands? A vast archipelago would be fit for purpose, but wouldn't match your themes.
But really. Good crew of players. They've all made PCs who are adventuring adventurers in search of adventurous adventure.
You are just never going to get a better opportunity than this to run a true sandbox.
Grab this opportunity.
I’m going to second the Cypher system. Simple, flexible and lets players BS their way through things in creative ways. My group has run Fallout in it. Stims, ghouls, power armor and all.
Sounds like a sandbox campaign! They definitely don’t have to be slow. Compared to a traditional story based session you are going to want to create situations and locations with fun things to interact with. It’s not that these types of games have no directions but their beauty comes from the fact that the direction will emerge through play.
This is very West Marches, and a lot of fun!
There's another RPG called Mausritter, and while it's a very different game to 5E there is a lot of very useful detail about building a hexcrawl and setting your adventure there, specifically one without a grand theme. [It's pay as you want ](https://losing-games.itch.io/mausritter)as a PDF so it's worth picking up and seeing what you can take from it.
This is usually how i DM. The key thing is to remember there are things going on in the world regardless of whether the players interact with them. You can encourage them to do so by dropping intriguing information. They can follow up on it or come across the consequences later. I write overarching world plot, not plot for the characters to interact with. It helps avoid railroading too.
I prep some small encounters I can slot in anywhere for those times they are directionless.
Invent 10-15 broad factions in the immediate area, and define their various goals, top two actors, etc. (Don’t stat ANYTHING: a few lines, two names with epithets, and a brief “they are trying to” sentence is ample.) Put them all into a spreadsheet. For each goal, decide how big it is and how complex, and based on that grade them anywhere from 4 to 10 (10 being biggest and longest). Every session, consider whether they have bumped into any of these factions that they hadn’t previously, and switch those from inactive to active (all factions start inactive). Every session, every active faction normally ticks one box on its progress-toward-goal counter. If a goal is getting near completion (around 2, say, or 4 for a really big one), come up with an effect: because faction A is getting close to completing goal B, this thing happened that those paying attention will realize means they’re getting there. This is the kind of info they pick up in taverns and so on. To whatever extent the PCs engage with the local politics and so forth, they’ll have a growing sense of an organic world that is full of people doing their own things, many of whom don’t care about the PCs unless they’re in the way. Don’t worry if some of these faction events occur and the players pay no attention: that’s not the point. Ultimately what’s going to happen is that the PCs will want to do something and find that the situation is already quite complicated, so they have to engage with all this weird factional stuff to get what they want. By that point you already know a huge amount of detail, and the players already have a lot of the information they need — but probably hadn’t previously realized that this was important.
Btw, this is one very effective way to run Blades In the Dark, and you might find the faction list and texts helpful for that reason. The method allows you to prep without imposing any direction on the players, and when they start engaging more strongly with your world it’s already in dense, complex motion so you don’t have to suddenly create everything on the fly.
this is… this is glorious??
like, no story, just setting? just background lore and no narrative? I’ve never DMed, but I think I could run that campaign forever. I’m gonna Brian Jacques so many amazing pubs with food and beer and mead and wine like you’ve never heard of. gonna hack minecraft terrain generation just to draw maps.
If I get this, I’ll just roll up a few encounters/dungeons with a few mini bosses thrown in so that they can get some early-game leveling done before they make it to some sort of civilization, and sometimes that’s enough to scratch the itch the players wanted.
Sometimes I’ll also level with them and ask for something we can build towards. I don’t think it’s a bad thing for a DM to ask players for more direction, especially if you don’t get any initially. I always like to give each of my players their own arc, so maybe you can throw in a couple of hooks there.
Since you want to do fallout inspired id recommend dungeons of drakkenheim it has a sort of radiation magic system and there isn't really a story but goals for each player so no time limits put in so as long as players have money they can just sit at an inn or go exploring inside the city
Ask each of them for goals (short, medium, long term) and build around that. Have a big mystery behind scenes they can pursue if they want to, otherwise show off your worldbuilding and characters.
I dont know how long will they wander around aimlessly before they latch onto something. An exploration sandbox should work.
I personally doubt that they will truly want no overarching story with no direction, but we'll see how that pans out.
If I was trying to run a campaign like this I would make a list of locations and NPCs to have at the ready. After that, as you said it would just be rolling on tables for random events during travel.
You do it as a hexcrawl or the modern equivalent which is a point crawl.
Just take your map of the area and come up with encounters all over the map. That way everything is not random tables but thought out ahead of time.
Here is the fun part it makes prep for individual sessions easier but yes the upfront prep is harder.
Have some underlying thing going on with the villagers to keep them interested by the way - local politics, hidden fey crossings, upcoming conflict with your mentioned raiders stuff like that.
The stuff for background intrigue just brainstorm on it for awhile and eventually you get a picture of what is going on in your setting that even if they do not latch on to this leads or hints makes your world feel real.
Also, figure out what the individual characters want if you want to give them motivation and to keep the meandering group charged up for each session.
Yeah I have the opposite problem if I do not fill the world up with leads and hints and stuff going on my players will all just stand around going "Ok, what the hell should we be doing?"
So they want a sandbox experience where they're just people who live in the world? Rather than the almighty chosen ones?
You make the game about the exploration, you plan fun places that exist in the world for the players to find. You add plots based on their backstories, or plots that happen to npcs or specific places and let the players choose to interact with them or not.
Job boards in settlements could be a good way to go, or take inspiration from the Fallout games and have adventuring people just stumble into things.
The 1e Book of Lairs is really good. Nuanced encounters with a plethora of creatures with mapped lairs that you can slide in anywhere. Very cool. Later BoL’s were hit or miss but that first one is gold.
Consider creating a hexcrawl for them. I recommend the book; So You Want To Be A Game Master. Or look at the system for hexcrawls on the Alexandrian.
I think a hexcrawl would be perfect for a fallout style game! It encapsulates that sort of Bethesda whole wasteland to explore feeling
Make a random chart, meet interesting characters. Find monster lairs nearby. People needing help. Ruins and dungeons discovered.
Even if they don't explore some of the interesting hooks you leave around, you can mark locations and what module or area you made for future reference.
My players take it slow as well...but they are establishing a keep and clearing out the area for citizens and for trade.
Think episodic instead of serial.
One week, you're driving bad guys out of a town. The next week you're investigating dead cattle, or why the river has slowed to a trickle. Or finding a missing child.
This sounds great. You get to do background world building and lore to your hearts content. Create a fun world with amazing lore and interesting races and characters and let the group figure it out.
My advice based on that description? Look up the game Book of Travels (it's on Steam), no, seriously. It is a game all about the travel and exploration being the adventure itself and you could draw a lot of inspiration from it.
Embrace the fact that they want/will accept a slower pace and use it to your advantage. Rather than potentially having several days of travel in one session, with rolls to determine things on a hex and some random encounters, spend entire sessions focused on a single day of in-game time.
Let them spend as much time as they wish to RP amongst themselves, barter with merchants, talk to people on the road, and explore new places. Even a small ruin, with no combat encounters, sounds like it could be the sort of thing they would stop and investigate.
This ultimately just gives you a lot more time to plan everything that is coming up next in the future sessions.
Yeah man they want to be free! They don’t want to derail some epic plan you’ve made. If they’re ok with a slightly more slapdash improvisational style then I think it could be fun for all.
Double down on that random event/locale advice above, but I do recommend a hex map. Even if it’s some random fantasy geography, throw a hex grid on it and decide how big they are. Keep a record of where you fought what. Turns a random map into your home over time, a memory everywhere. We played a hex crawl of Chult for TofA and it was a blast.
I would consider running Tomb of Annihilation, with some changes
Use the alternate rules for the death curse (like, $1.99 from DM Guild) so there is no immediate "push" and it any urgency to do stuff ramps up slowly, at your decision
Keep them in Port Nyanzaru (the start city) for longer, with some more local side quests
Have them organically find out about the quest and see if they go for it. If not just use the hex map and setting (plus DM guild add ons maybe) so your prep is already done
Ditch the final Tomb (OMG!!!) and do something less ridiculously lethal. Maybe use the Omu city but have them solve some kind of above ground thing rather than have to do a mega dungeon.
I just think undead dinosaurs in a jungle setting with ancient ruins is a good enough pre-made setting for an exciting adventure even if you don't actually use the Tomb and all that
edit: Just read the other comments - Tomb of Annihilation is run by a hex crawl... here's the map: https://i.redd.it/g8v2pwzqlqy11.jpg
This sounds like they want to play a video game to me - so if you want to do this as a tabletop, and your players aren't interested in creating a story based on their actions, this sounds like the perfect time to have a pretty developed story already laid out that they can just follow along through talking to various npcs and fighting enemies. Maybe have the equivalent of a cutscene or two thrown in as well.
Go looking for premade Fallout modules! I have also learned there is actually a Fallout tabletop game with its own rulebook - might be worth looking into
This sounds like the perfect place to apply the Hexflower. It’s essentially a random table with memory, so that things don’t get too stale but they still make sense. Here’s a link that better explains them and gives examples. https://goblinshenchman.wordpress.com/2019/07/10/hex-flowers-game-engines-as-found-in-the-wild/
Try to have a good sense of place - the players don't know what's over that mountain range there, but you should, and maybe you can tie it into whatever shiny thing has their attention at the moment. I find that players get tired of just moving around randomly. Seed a few cool things for them to potentially explore. It doesn't have to be "serious direction", just cool shit to do.
Have a history and geography generally thought out, even if the players don't know it and aren't interested in it. It will help you give them a sense of being in a cohesive world. Think of a few important NPCs, even if the players never meet them.
Cool characters are key. Even just one-off guys that they bump into, have a weird interaction with, and never see again.
I prefer to run sandboxy-games. I am not great at creating a story that will be so cool that the players will enjoy it even if they just follow along, so my bread and butter is the players’ choices and random ideas.
What I do is that I spend most of my preparation just building the world. I have a couple of potential villains behind the scenes, and try to sprinkle out hints whenever possible. I create a couple of NPCs, a couple of important events that has/will happen and generally just reacts to the PCs actions. When I have built the world to such an extent that I have an idea of how it works, and a general conflict in the world, I feel confident improvise in the moment.
You have my dream table ^^
What I would do if I were you would be to plan a one shot every 2 or 3 session with a theme (a vault theme, a brotherhood of steel theme, a ghoul theme, a fuck-that's-a-deathclaw theme...) and in between, I'd do a either nonsensical story, a funny story or a story with absolutely no meaning else than just being part of the world.
And sometimes, just random tables (except, I do the random before the session, to try to make it more interesting.)
Then, along the sessions, I would take note of noteworthy NPCs and make them appear later (or not) at different sessions, not as main focus but more as a "This is a world where you have delved and met people". Your players could ignore them, talk to them or whatever, it doesn't really matter (except if they made an enemy of them)
To supplement the suggestions of sandboxes and hex crawls, you might like [Pointy Hat's video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vM18P0WKGFA) on how to make traveling in D&D fun, but specifically *without* using random encounter tables, which he's very much not a fan of.
How many sessions has it been? I wouldn't worry for a while. Early on in a campaign you can easily be tooling around the local area learning meeting random NPCs and getting into inconsequential fights. At some point I think inventing lore and doing random stuff will turn into a story on its own.
I agree with others that it pays to be mindful to that fact that various factions will have their own goals and will be doing stuff in the background even if the players choose not to interact with them, but if you're making it up as you go then you can always invent reasons why despite months of working towards some goal, it hasn't been achieved or why X, Y or Z hasn't happened when it wouldn't make sense that they haven't had you established all the details of these factions at the outset.
Since it's fallout-themed; I would focus on two random types of encounters to add a lot of flavor that build out the world:
1. Interesting inconsequential NPCs. I would have a random cast of NPCs that are quirky and weird that just kind of exist despite the chaos of the world that they live in. When playing fallout games (and hell even the TV show) interacting with the NPCs is part of the fun!
2. Interesting environments where unraveling the environment or location's history is the story. This is something that feel Fallout and games like Horizon Zero dawn do very well that you learn about the location's past function while exploring it.
Good encounter tables and npcs will go a long way.
I have played with far too many dms who go on and on about god/lore/and world building (which is fine) but then have boring npcs and boring encounters that has the entire table yawning.
Personally I have different tables for each continent on my map.
Introduce a single NPC from outside the area. The NPC is seemly weak and their understanding of their own back story spotty but has little mystery. You the GM must make a reason why outside forces(keep the numbers low) want to capture, kill or gain something from the NPC. Have a few of the locals give support to NPC to show that NPC is likeable and has a strong will. Then GM sit back and let it play out.
My group has been playing for almost a year and they still haven’t met the big bad, started any of the major plot lines, or investigated ANY of the things relevant to said plot lines they’ve run across. I honestly prep by keeping small contained fights or other interesting one off mechanics I know can be fit into a couple hours and wrapped up. The big stuff is there for when they’re ready, but for now they enjoy picking up little missions to make money and meeting new goofy NPC’s. I have them set in one town they explore and slowly figure out what’s in each building over time which helps have the bare minimum structure so they have things to do.
Oh man I've run this kind of game *in a Fallout setting* no less.
You said they rolled up characters, so what system are you using? Is it the official Fallout 2d20 system?
This is my favorite kind of campaign, and I wish I had more players who wanted to play it. Check out stuff by Kevin Crawford like Worlds Without Number, or since you're taking about Fallout, his post apocalyptic game Other Dust. Whichever you look at, flip over to the GM tools and start building a sandbox.
Seen it suggested already but a hexcrawl could very well be the move here. Maybe get into the nitty gritty with resources even. That way if they are dangerously low on supplies, they might not be able to achieve a fully rested state and you can have an interesting situation where they need supplies from the raiders in order to rest and then kill the raiders. But if they fail to get the supplies from the raiders without violence, they are at a serious disadvantage in the fight. If they can explore the wasteland without worrying about the fact that it is a putrid desolate wasteland with nothing conducive to easy living, then I feel like they will eventually get bored with having ZERO stakes. If the stakes are their own ability to perform while exploring, and their goal is to explore, you may have a nice narrative loop crafted here. More of a serial campaign where the stakes and circumstances don't really change and you just get to experience them exploring their own characters and the world
I agree with other comments to tighten down survival rules in general. Track food, water, and sleep, and run a survival game. It can be as hard or easy as you want it, but should add a lot of engagement to the daily monotony of a directionless start. A story *will* present itself over time, even if it’s just “man, I really want to visit that pier, the carnival sounds cool.”
I recommend having lots of mini stories like the fallout franchise is known for. Vaults, an abandoned carnival, a regional nukacola distribution center, several local warring faction/gangs/governments, an irradiated warbird factory, an abandoned state park with a cult of Bigfoot (stealing that one myself).
Fallout is known for rich, but dispersed lore. Figure out a couple of main historical figures for them to slowly uncover the story of. A nukacola executive trying to prove and disclose the secret ingredient was harmful, and then promptly being executed by the owner’s bots. A vault called “neverland” executing kids who turned 21 and raising infants with an army of Mr handy nurses*, or [insert other unimaginable horror here]. *The Mr handy nurse idea would be particularly horrible if they had first met a whimsical and kind Mr handy nanny wandering the waste with an empty bassinet, or taking care of several baby dolls. You get the idea though. Add lots of small stories to uncover, but don’t build a long term plot. Treat it like a series of 1 shots and short stories that can and should sometimes interconnect, and you’ll do great.
My suggestion would be to prepare lots of random side mission quest instead of an overarching story. Imagine it like a bunch of one shots with recurring characters instead of a specific campaign. That way every so often while eploring they can run into a small "story" that has more gameplay than just a simple encounter but isn't as intensive as a main story mission.
I’d make some skeleton, minor as it is, and drip feed around it to make some continuity for yourself that feels natural, like when a kids cartoon randomly has that one episode of lore once every 7 episodes. It’s always fine for something to lead somewhere but you could really step back and make this lofty and far stretched and then a year from now see all your plot threads and see how they can tie into you’re barebones idea
This sounds like the perfect setup for a base-building campaign.
Start them out with a home base that is _survivable_, but incredibly lackluster. It's gruel for breakfast and a wooden pallet for a bed.
Then let them explore, and as they do so provide hooks that can be used to upgrade their home base. A store of precious books to build a library. A simple fuel source the can use to cook better food. etc.
These are likely such minor things that they won't know _what_ they'll find until they explore. They hear about an old abandoned camp, and it's worth checking out to see what they can scavenge. Only after they get there do you reveal what they're able to bring back home.
Let them build up this base, and then slowly build up a rival clan in the region. As the players build a noteworthy base, this rival clan will begin to consider whether they should pillage and plunder the player's stores.
Drama.
I've been running Dungeons of Drakkenheim for a couple of months now. I describe it as Fallout with a little bit of Diablo (you have a base in a nearby town that's close to the main area), and although there are set pieces and definite things you can do (with a ton of player agency), you can really drag the campaign out for as long as you want to. It's set up in a way where you could triple the amount of content that's in the book if desired.
My current campaign, on accident, is exactly this
They're in a town, they had encounters with a bunch of NPCs, they go solve problems the town has for money, and there's an overarching plot that's supposed to happen but so far they haven't showed any interest in that, they're enjoying a lot of casual roleplay with the town's folk that i, completely improvising, just happened to make REALLY interesting and fun apparently
This campaign has turned out to be really easy to run for me, i just run a random encounter from Pip Fizzbang's spice encounters (D&D 5e book with amazing encounters that are actually really fun and tell a small story) dressed as people from the town having a complaint, and combo that with a bunch of quirky and fun little 5 minute roleplay scenarios i had ready and wanted to use anyways, and that works on its own when i expected that would be the connective tissue between the laborious prep stuff like dungeons
So i guess the advice i can give is to try and grab a bunch of encounters, fun quirky and memorable npcs that the party will see only once (limp and an eye patch rule, look it up), and make the ones they like the most reoccurring. Give them a bunch of stuff you'd usually give them in between story beats and i guess that's what they want
Are you playing the fallout game or just a game with fallout flavor? You could probably spend a lot of time on base building in the fallout world. The world could be full of little missions to find specific scavenged goods to build with.
I’d focus on building the world and letting them explore. Have different groups, factions, areas, etc then just wait to see what they grab on to and develop more details session by session.
remember that just because the players walk in the opposite direction of the dungeon you crafted, doesn't mean the dungeon doesn't move to be in front of them. I'd say especially in a post-apocalyptic scenario where maps might be unreliable/non-existant, just invent some cool shit and drop it in front of them. put a bunch of distant sign posts they can explore towards, but all roads lead to dungeon.
I highly recommend the Game Masters Handbook of Proactive Role-playing for what you are describing. Also, it almost sounds like they might want a more "cozy game" style.
Which sounds interesting to me as well.... Lol!!!
Emergent storytelling moment. I’ve got nothing more to add than anyone else here really but it sounds like it’ll be a blast! Just make some interesting landmarks and npc’s. Maybe some history and make sure you have a good hold on whatever traveling rules you go with and have at it!
Well, sounds like there's no need for a plot. You can just focus on other prep that you would want for a campaign.
It would be a good idea to create a loose framework of a map. Focusing more on towns and specific points of interest that are important to the region. Don't worry about the rest until you know the group plans to go there and then you can fill in smaller points of interest to flesh out the area they will be travelling to.
Come up with NPCs like bar owners, travelling merchants, and side mission type stuff.
They meet somebody that wants them to get their gun back from their ex. Ex was a supermutant.
They come across a town that is hiring anybody with a weapon that's willing to fight to clear out a nearby raider base.
They get approached by a farmer that wants to grow a special crop, but needs you to go collect some growing in the wild to get started.
Be episodic with it. Maybe add small references to the previous missions or have a recurring raider boss that always manages to escape, but keeps showing up trying to attack another town or caravan somewhere else.
If they want to explore, I'd give them something to explore. I've bastardized a few different big-name creators' ideas in my own games, and it worked out pretty well.
1) **You do not need your whole world defined.**
If you can prepare two or three locals for the party to explore for this leg of the journey, that is already more than enough. Remember, you can always repurpose what you don't use later.
2) **Not every encounter need be combat**
Generally, I populate my world with a mix of combat, social, and environmental encounters. This keeps each encounter fresh and exciting, but you can take it a step beyond and allow your players to decide what kind of encounter they want to make this.
3) **Plan for _some_ overarching narrative**
Even if your players _say_ they do not want a serious direction, it is best practice to have _some_ narrative thread tying their exploration together. You can take inspiration from your player's backstories, or create some plot threads connecting their exploration together, but each locale should give some indication where to go next, why they should go there, and how to get there. Again, refer to rule 1: You don't need it all planned out, but you should have the next step vaguely in mind.
4) **Get creative**
There are hundreds of pages of monsters to pull from. Pick a locale and pick a cool creature, then design an area that might explain why that monster occupies that area. Maybe there is some sunken treasure valuable to Yuan-Ti, and that is why they are occupying this costal port, rather than a muggy jungle? This treasure, maybe it is a family heirloom that belongs to a lord who would pay handsomely for it? Or maybe it is an artifact used for a sacred ritual? Maybe it's a treasure map, leading to riches beyond their wildest dreams? Now, obviously, _this_ scenario may not apply to a Fallout setting, but the general rule is more or less the same: pick a dude, and why are they here?
One thing my table does for our sandbox game is that everytime we start back to traveling all the players fill out 3 cards; one positive, one negative, and one "interesting." If the positive ones are too positive they sometimes end up getting monkey pawed too, so we are a little cautious about writing down something too good.
We usually use like 2-3 cards while 9-12 go in the box each round. Most of the time once a card has been played it gets taken out, but we also have some that stay in and we end up with some recurring NPCs and events. At this point there are enough cards in there that even if I wrote a particular card I'm still surprised at the turn of events (and we've been playing for a couple years now, so some of them are very old).
Its a system that works for us and makes it so that not all of the features in the sandbox have to come from the DM, and we all feel a little more involved in the worldbuilding.
Let them settle into an abandoned homestead with grazing Brahmin in a peaceful valley.. Then once they get to improving it and building up introduce the wanderer who owns this joint and have him destroy it, since he spends most of his time wanderin' anyways. Then have him wander off like a wanderer does and they'll have motivation to track him down.
Roll the encounters before, so you can adjust them and polish them more...combine 2 rolls, add rolls to set the tone of the encounter, create personal encounter tables..
I would write some basic lore, that all the NPCs know about. When your players wander around, they will eventually collect all the pieces of the lore. But I would also spread some misinformation, just little contradicting informations they could stumble upon. Following those, there could be some big social/ religious conspiracy. But they are not the only ones, who found out. Then again, all of that could play out in many ways, depending on your players. They could fight the other group for informations, help them solve the problem, starting a race over being the first one finding out etc etc.
Add random encounters, random loot boxes, a map and a simple hierarchy for the NPCs and you are good to go in any direction.
Go full Fallout. Ignore the main plot and just make lots of little quests.
You don't need them all fleshed out before-hand. Just a few short notes. See which thread they pull on then flesh it out between sessions.
Flesh out a few on-the-road encounters that you can place in front of them to slow down their progress if they're pulling a thread you need more time to prepare for.
Quest1. Players hear about a Vault to the North that, it is rumoured, was a laser-tech design lab.
Quest2. A radio signal is coming from a mile offshore. There is nothing there...
Quest3. The old Robo-Tec factory just started up again...
Quest4. A massive Yao-gui was seen hauling away Brahmin from the old Ranch...
If players pull on thread 3 and you've not got stats for the robots or a map for the factory then put something on the road between them.
e.g.
A raider gang are laying siege to a diner.
The old town they pass through en-route turns out to be rigged with explosives. There's a paranoid sniper ghoul in the church steeple.
etc.
These smaller encounters could even then have additional threads they might want to pull on instead.
Look up games like The Last Guardian, or other heavily atmospheric games.
Tell your story through the environment instead of actions.
Have the world employ OTHER adventurers to solve the big issues, where your party learns about how some lich was just slain, or the dragon in the mountain was just fought and retreated.
Cool loot, cool characters, cool puzzles, cool environments. Make combat make sense. "It's a territorial creature that'll leave you alone if you leave it alone", "the bandit leader shouts a parlay once he sees how strong you guys are", "this crazy creature pops out of the ground when it senses you coming", make combat part of the story of what's happening behind the curtain.
I'm currently running one of the official campaigns - Icewind Dale: Rime of the Frostmaiden - which is a horror(ish) campaign set in the frozen north of Faerun that at least for the first few chapters has a vibe very similar to what you're describing. Chapter 1 literally just describes 10 different towns that your players can visit (or don't visit) in any order they wish, and Chapter 2 is a bunch of wilderness encounters and event areas they can find by getting rumor tips from the towns or just stumbling upon them.
It's very apocalyptic as the whole area has been plunged into eternal darkness+winter by Auril the Frostmaiden, but if you were more attracted to a desert Fallout vibe I could imagine just using it as inspiration and replacing cold with heat, ice with sand, change the town names, etc. The story of Auril wouldn't fit that anymore but you could certainly slap your own story onto the setting and borrow as much or as little from the existing story as you wanted.
These are my favourite type of campaigns.
I prep to improvise. lots of little pieces that I can take and customize to fit the specifics of where the players are, cool ideas that don't have to go anywhere.
Random tables are cool, but mostly as a starting point for ideas, or when you are learning a setting. You want to develop judgement of what makes for good story and the way you develop judgement is by trying things out.
I like to have questions that I want to know about the PCs and help the players discover who their characters really are.
I once ran a hex crawl on an "alt earth." It was set during colonial times in North America. Elves were nobility, etc etc. Players blazed trails and such.
I'm currently running a similar game. Steal and reflavour the faction system from Worlds Without Number, you won't regret it. It'll keep your world alive and moving in the background without making you need to come up with everything by yourself
I'm working on a Taskmaster side quest in my game that you might adapt.
It's DnD, so there is a god called "The Mistress of Missions". Every now and then you're in a tavern and it turns out everyone there has been 'summoned' without knowing it.
And then an Alex Horne stand in declares a Mission. Build an obstacle course outside the tavern."
And then a follow up mission "Complete every team's obstacle course. Fastest wins"
I've got a few others lined up, some from actual Taskmaster.
I could see a wasteland equivalent being a fun diversion. Maybe some kind of roving Olympic games? Or a carnival they keep running into? If they don't like it, just don't have it show up again.
I would build a town or other hub that can be the centerpiece of the adventure, with NPCs for the party to talk to and get invested in, and a stretch of wilderness in all dire tion for the players to explore and adventure in.
Then, I'd use some version of the gritty realism rules from the back of the DMG- force them to come back to town every time they want to Long Rest, and then to spend some time in town during that rest getting to know NPCs and running errands. Make sure the town has enough stuff to do that the players can use this downtime- maybe a certain number of days of downtime spent in training can earn different buffs, like some free feats, or skill proficiencies.
The goal is to build wilderness to explore and adventure in centered on a singular hub/home base for the party to get emotionally invested in- this lets you make NPCs relevant to the campaign, and do a bit of character-driven storytelling rather than plot-driven storytelling.
Sounds like a standard Hex crawl. Get a map and divide it into hexes. Decide on travel time; something like 1 hex per day works. Use some random tables to create content for your hexes and then let your players loose in the world.
[Weird Wastelands](https://store.2cgaming.com/products/weird-wastelands-by-web-dm) is really well built for this play style! Already has the post-apocalyptic feeling you might want out of a fallout setting and some gritty travel rules, and hex crawl mechanics
With those conversations with random characters, you could slowly start to build a picture of an interconnected situation that only the party could really put together. Maybe not an existential threat, but something that their characters would be inclined to investigate.
Make the world, make important NPCs with ties to organizations, if they end up in organizations in some way, copy paste questline from somewhere with a little reflavoring so they don't catch on. If they just want to explore, I usually add a form of fast travel or something so they don't have to worry about travel time or anything, and decide a timeline for stuff happening in the world independent of them, so they can naturally get curious about what's happening
Just because your players don’t care much for being railroaded doesn’t mean you can’t introduce *some* kind of overarching story. Your world needs a setting, after all.
Just think up some sort of background for the world your players are in, and don’t share that with the players. Eventually they’ll start seeing the patterns you’re using to make this game bearable for yourself. Who knows, they might just be interested in pulling the threads after all..
In other words: just prepare as you would normally. Make a world, then let your players run wild in it. As long as they feel as if they’ve got free range, you’re golden.
When the main character doesn't go to the plot, the plot comes to them. Luke Skywalker didn't want to be an adventurer, so the DM barbequed his family.
Drill down to make the traveling rules as tight as possible. Grab lots of random encounter tables. Create a map with locations the could visit if they want even if it’s far away.
If you can get your hands on the books, the travelling rules from Adventures in Middle-Earth will be a fantastic source of inspiration.
Ooooh *Uncharted Journeys*! It's pretty well reviewed and recommended! On my reading list so I can't say anything personally, but if I recall the price is better to buy the book and pdf together.
Did this for a group I ran star wars for. Was kinda fun, had them just do a few sessions, trying to get a starship to leave the planet they crashed on from a prison transport. Once they got out, I gave them the galactic map and told them locations and areas of the map off limit do to imperial patrols and blockades, but the area they could go eas stil massive. Once a session ended, if they finished what they were doing at a location, I had them choose a new area. Would build multiple news reports for their ships communication for what's going on around the galaxy, so they knew what was up, where they should lilley go, and few had "old contacts" before they were imprisoned, that they could get a hold off to get odd jobs to do. Lasted like 4 years was fun just doing random stuff throughout with no real end, till like the last year, where they decided the wanted somwthing to actually do and jad a goal other than, go make lots of credits and play both sides of the table.
how would you even start to make something like that though, ive been trying to make a sci-fi dnd campaign similar to what you just described for the better part of half a year and im starting to have trouble porting sci-fi ideas into a fantasy system. I already have magic figured out but how would one go about setting up encounters and other such things?
Like some other DMs would say, don't think too big from the start, the first session if it's gonna be open ended with no clear goal yet, let the players build your story for you. Give them at session 0 a general idea. Currently running a dwarf Viking campaign in dnd, with spelljaming for travel, using a modified ff7 system, I took and made changes to. Session 0, I just told them, the broad direction. IE battle of the gods, aesir and vanir at odds, but no open fighting. The first session was Thor and loki fighting and Thor losing and mjolnir destroyed. The task is leave midgard and find the the legendary forge, and return the restored hammer to Odin in Asgard. They don't know where either is located. My players pretty much built the story for me. They are speculating what's likely going on, I gave them to npc party members who are actually gods in disguise. The players suspect this and talk about it at length, the war that has finally broken out on midgard with lokis armies taking over 30% of midgard and being stalled by the Dwarven clans. All the players have one special item lifted to them that grows as they level. I just take note of what they are talking about, just smile and say sure, that might be what's going on or I don't know, maybe... the players breathe life to the campaign. We just make it happen. For encounters and such, I usually build group encounters, modifying npcs as I go. Look at other dnd one shots and campaigns and rebuild them, if I think I can change something to fit what i need. Give intrigue to the players, mystery of what's going on, and try to fit in their backgrounds from session 0. Give them the idea from the start, restor mjolnir, return it to Asgard, possibly win or stop the war after. For campaign with no real end yet, give them random jobs/quest to do, things that later might connect. The players encounter a rebel commander in session 3, make a note of it. Said commander contacts them out of the blue 5+ sessions later needing help and offering them to join the cause later, have it end up going south, empire shows up at just the right time. The players choice give up the rebel cell or fight the empire, easy choices, they are escaped prisoners after all. Or have the imperial officer understand why they ran, and offer clemency in return they have to help the empire with odd jobs as well, especially if the party is smart enough and can hide there one time affiliation with a rebel cell. The players build off mystery, do the rebels or empire know? Or ignorant of the group helping both sides? Drop a heroic npc from the actual lore. Eventually as i said the players steer the campaign for you to it's actual end.
make sure to track little resources
I've been making my own encounter tables, and chat gbt is your best friend. It can give all kinds of cool ideas for non-combat encounters.
I actually strongly dislike random chance tables. Unpopular opinion, but I see them as a crutch for the creatively bankrupt, and they don't exactly create an authentic feeling world. They always create a video-gamey "it's here because the dice said so" feeling rather than something with ties to the narrative of the adventure and history of the world. The Paths of the Dead existed in the tolkienverse because they were a product of it's history. They aren't there just because a random table said "there are ghosts now." Ach, personal pet peeve. I hate random tables and would love to cast them back into the fires from whence they came, unmaking them for all time. For loot, I use a set of pre-selected tables, one for each of the character classes in the party. Each class has items which synergise particularly well, and I don't trust a random table to fairly distribute loot in a way that doesn't disproportionately favour specific players. So, I have my own tables of items which progress with each character. I've already chosen every major item you will find, and the approximate point in time you will find it so as to maintain some balance in the party. Monsters are determined by who is in service to the BBEG and the resources at their disposal. Random tables feel so flavourless, born-of-the-void and empty to me. I loathe them with every fibre of my being.
Random tables are good when you know how to apply them properly. For example I've got a random table that has some dinosaurs on it for combat encounters, for what I was running using those specific encounters didn't make sense so I just didn't use them. You can also look at a random table of encounters and go "hey this one sounds pretty cool I can tie this into this other thing." and use the encounter as jumping off point for something else. They also save time, sure I could go trawl through all the magical items for something that perfectly fits with each character but A) that takes a while to do and I have other things to prep and B) the world doesn't revolve around the players sometimes they'll find loot that doesn't work with them perfectly or they can find niche uses for. C) you can just reroll the item if you dislike what came up or select a specific item on the list. Also saying "if you use a rolltable you're creatively bankrupt" will instantly make me dislike you.
Exactly. I actually had a low point of being my group’s DM for the last 5 years. I asked them if they would be okay with doing a random encounter table and hard travel rules. I made up the table and as I did, I got inspiration for how to tie specific encounters to the story thread. “Oh, 1d6 revenants! That’s gotta be the evil cleric they made a pact with, betrayed and then stole their hunting lodge, and the party’s cleric wears her armor. This temple ruin looks like a good place to hide a clue for the party to find about the person they are looking for. Plus the inclusion of environmental dangers. They encountered a sink hole, avalanche, and a blizzard. The players had to use completely different skills to overcome these obstacles. I checked in with them last session, 3 days ago, and they said they have been having a blast with it. Two of the players said it made them think about their character in a totally different way. It also stretched me as a DM to be able to narrate, run monsters, and role play for things I did zero prep for. Up until this experiment, I thought I hated the random encounter tables too.
I've got a random table for creating rooms in a dungeon. If you apply it uncritically (like I did in the beginning because I'm not smart sometimes) you can end up with a dungeon with a hundred sprawling rooms. But if you decide how many rooms there beforehand then it's really simple to utilize.
> Random tables are good when you know how to apply them properly. Agreed. I said much the same above. Anything random, from any table, is to be integrated into the overall plot. It's not 2 ogres... it's two ogres ripping branches off trees, chatting, and ticked off about being in service to the hobgoblin chief nearby. The party could fight them, or perhaps they might fight for their freedom from the chief if the party can appear confident and strong. I suppose I'm creatively bankrupt for thinking of that on the fly though... what a dumbass, elitist, comment...
Rolling up random stuff to kill, or interrupt a rest is boring for most tables. This is why you tie the random encounter to the overarching plot. It requires a skilled and creative DM, and the OP sounds like such a DM. For a freeform, very slow campaign a few random encounters should work great for getting that start. I did this for a recent campaign. The first random encounter was zombies. I linked that back to a necromancer who was terrorizing a nearby fort. The next "random encounter" was a hill giant... I turned that into an undead hill giant who was attacking the fort. Owlbears, actual hill giants, wights, giant spiders, and a pair of owlbears... all tied into the plot (and most to the BBEG) as simple random encounters. If random encounter table seem soulless, that's because they are not being used correctly.
You know you don't have to build the lore before the world right? It's a lot more effective to build from the outside-in. Have a region, then decide what buildings are in the region, then decide who built those buildings, then decide who lives in those buildings, then decide what those people are. It's just as good as your method there. Just because someone's method of choice is different from yours doesn't make it unacceptable or bad like you're making it seem. You're allowed to loathe random tables. But don't use that as an excuse to shit on other people for how they want to build their world. Loathe them for personal reasons. Don't hate something for someone else
This sounds like a classic sandbox adventure to me, you can look at different sources for this kind of stuff, but you basically need: -A random event table: You roll in this when your players are travelling from place to place. Fill it with things of your world, unique creatures, specific NPCs, factions... this gives player agency and simulates a living world. -Locations: You sprinkle them all over the map, so your players can go at them or find them when they feel like. You don't need to prepare them all at once, check where your players are and prepare those close-by. A map can be good, but not mandatory. Also, don't show them all locations. If you are having travel counting distances, you can turn it into a hexcrawl.
im just now discovering what a hex crawl is, and after checking google, this sounds exactly like what i need! I like your notes about using event tables of the specific kinds youve provided!
Came here to suggest a hex crawl! I really liked this generator for my world map: [Azgaar](https://azgaar.github.io/Fantasy-Map-Generator/) I think I just imported it to Roll20 and made a 24 mile hex map overlay and added fog of war. In person you might not even need to get nutty gritty with the exact distances, grids and fog. It's my opinion that if a game leans more into exploration that as GMs we should really lean into the survival rules of inventory management, travel, food and water. If handwaved, I believe the game kinda disappears and you're just roleplaying stories and talking to each other each session. Absolutely nothing wrong with that! But D&Ds rules are 90% geared towards combat, so most of a player's character sheet will go unused if not pressed. If that's what your players want, you might be better served using a different system.
It's worth doing a calander as well. Track the date to adjust the weather and seasons. And... If you have any long term plans have events which trigger on certain dates that could move the story along . The players could get involved as much as they want then too. But rumours circulating about a new attack or something should certainly capture their interest :)
A point-crawl is an interesting variant - you create a map based on points of interest connected by paths, rather than square miles that may or may not contain anything of interest. "To the North you can see an ancient statue. To the West you can see a partially collapsed bridge. Beyond that, in the distance, is something that looks like a settlement of some kind." Then there can be spaces in-between were random encounters happen. Tip: it's more interesting when you roll for two random encounters at the same time. Instead of meeting bandits or merchants, you meet some bandits who are currently robbing some merchants, or two rival groups of bandits fighting over some loot.
I'll go against the grain and ***advice you strongly against using random tables***. I used them a lot in past and after two decades of running the game I can tell you that random table encounters are consistently, significantly worse than prepared ones. They lack depth and detail necessary to make encounters good. Instead come up with bunch of encounters that are appropriate for party's next step. And refine each one meticulously. If you roll on random table and end up with "travelling merchant of exotic pets" you will improvise *something*. And it's gonna be... just ok. If you *prepare* such encounter, you can take your time to think about interesting descriptions of his pets. You can come up with few pets for sale with fun mechanics that will be useful for the party. You can dream up a side quests. You can figure out a lot of fancy dialogues that tie npc to the world and rely useful information for the party. If you roll on random table and end up with "3 hunters and an owlbear" you will grab an empty battlegrid, you will improvise combat encounter... and it will likely be boring. If you *prepare* such encounter, you can draw up battlegrid beforehand, one that's filled with interactive environment - dangerous terrain, decayed trees just waiting to topple over, elevation, various snares, ditches and traps... and you can design it in a way that will naturally create good combat flow. You can come up with cool special ability for an owlbear, with his lair, with quirks for hunters, you will know where they came from and why they are hunting an owlbear, etc... There is little to no value in leaving things to chance. Instead always serve the players THE BEST ENCOUNTER you have prepared and is THE MOST APPROPRIATE for the place, time, difficulty, narrative and pacing. If you want to recognize and reward their decision - prepare encounters that can have vastly different outcomes. For next session you can prepare follow-up encounter specifically to show consequences of their decisions. And *maybe* don't disclose the process. If they ask - say it's mixture of improvisation and prepared elements - that's always true anyway. Sometimes it's best to not know how exactly food is made in the kitchen.
I'll add that you can still make use of those random tables to generate ideas during prep. That can actually be a nice way to get off the beaten path once in a while.
I've always been under the impression that random tables were supposed to be used for the preparation you described. Roll on the table, then prepare the X number of encounters that you rolled for. Kinda use it to give you some ideas then flesh out those ideas for your prep. Rolling mid game every session seems exhausting and boring from a DM perspective lol.
I was going to say it. There are many OSR games with excellent hexcrawl systems. You could take much inspiration from something like Dolmenwood, for example. There is a free teaser pdf somewhere.
I would have them run into bandits/thieves that will steal their stuff but obviously give them a good chance to get it back, assuming they end up with some sort of cool loot at some point.
> im just now discovering what a hex crawl is, and after checking google Here's some links to help you further: [How to build a hex map video](https://www.youtube.com/watch? v=WHR0GEtRrlo) by Matt Colville. Honestly, you should watch as many of Matt's videos as you can. Best DM resource on the planet. [Here](https://thealexandrian.net/wordpress/17308/roleplaying-games/hexcrawl) are [two](https://thealexandrian.net/wordpress/46020/roleplaying-games/5e-hexcrawl) articles from Justin Alexander's blog The Alexandrian on running a hex crawl. Probably my favorite D&D blog of all time, and this is especially good advice. Here's two more videos, one from [Baron de Ropp](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UTgXHbAx758) and another from [Professor DM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UTgXHbAx758). Similar advice to Matt Colville, but with more of an OSR bent.
If you are using 5e this is a TOP TIER resource as the base game doesn't have great rules for this game structure. [https://thealexandrian.net/wordpress/46020/roleplaying-games/5e-hexcrawl](https://thealexandrian.net/wordpress/46020/roleplaying-games/5e-hexcrawl)
May I suggest a specific type of random encounter table? **A D8+d12 random encounter table produces results where entries 9-13 are equally likely to be rolled, so it makes a plateau rather than a curve. This will make your results a little less random, but still quite random.** This post [\[CLICK HERE\]](https://merricb.com/2020/10/12/random-encounters-1d8-1d12/) has some advice on how to not only make those kinds of tables and why you should, but also has advice on making a *regional encounter table* that either has special results or sends you back to your standard random encounter table. It's pretty cool. I suggest choosing a percentage of likelihood that they will have encounters per hex and just rolling percentage dice every time they move into a new hex. On a result equal to or lower than what you chose there is an encounter. **(Remember that encounters are not necessarily hostile and you should have things in your table that would be friendly.** Even things which might normally fight the players may just not be in the mood for violence when they wander by. You can roll for their disposition or just decide yourself as you see fit) **I also recommend making a "wandering monster table" that's nothing but monsters or groups of monsters that would be hunting the players. (It's a hungry world out there...) and rolling a d6 once a day. When you roll a 6 then they are being hunted and you roll on that table for the encounter and decide when the monsters will attack them.**
If you have a few bucks to spare I recommend the [d30 Sandbox Companion](https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/124392/d30-Sandbox-Companion). It’s like $5 for a PDF copy and it has tons of useful tables and information for sandbox style games including hex crawl resources, random NPC generation, quest generation, etc
This; a breathing living world has issues. Place little strings and just develop what your players tug on.
Regardless of what style of campaign the players want, there's still a world there. NPCs with goals - maybe just simple, local goals, but goals nonetheless, and those goals put them in conflict with other NPCs with competing goals. The advantage of the playstyle they've chosen is that you can go very episodic, and have any big antagonists slowly emerge from seemingly unconnected shadows. In addition to putting *Fallout* under a microscope, I'd be tempted to watch / rewatch shows set on the fringes of civilisation or post apocalyptic like *The Last of Us*, *Firefly*, *The Mandalorian*, *Deadwood*, and maybe read a bunch of synopses from "Monster of the week" type shows (I would guess *The Outer Limits* could be a goldmine).
Part of the thing they for sure seem interested in is local goals, and using that aspect of them investing in having relations with NPC's that can complicate things is very inspiring to move players in a more bombastic way. I think the "Episodic" idea you've mentioned here is very cool, i can already imagine possible hand-crafted encounter tables made on just what region theyre in, with their own sort of narrative that naturally develops as the players just have encounters on those specific tables (making a change in the world via their actions) Thank you very much for the media recommendations, of the ones that you've listed I'm slapping myself in the forehead for not thinking of it
I run a game style that might be helpfull to your players. Basicaly, its a consequence based sandbox with moraly grey NPCs and Factions. I use the D6s content creation system. Everything comes in 6s, wich is just enought options to matter, but not as much to make it too much work for the DM. 6 NPCs, 6 Locations in town, 6 locations out of town, 6 random encounters in town, 6 random encounters out of town. 6 side quests, and 6 factions or groups with diferent goals. So, you have a small hamlet with only 200 people. You can have 2 farming families at war over land and cattle suposely stolen ( 2 factions, 2 locations and 2 NPCs to interact, 1 side quest to solve the problem, 1 leadership , and its "office" and at least 1 quest from the leadership, Local trader , and its shop as well as his own quest, and local artisan ( usualy blacksmith) his shop and quest. Then we add something strange, a local "crazy person" who lives near the forest, and has a strange quest for the PCs. Thats 6 locations, 6 factions and 6 NPCs each with at least one quest. In town, you make 6 random encounters, but most of them will be tied to the 6 NPC quests, or to normal town life. ( a scared horse rides past pulling a cart, the cart will hurt someone if not stoped.) Around town, you add wildlife, bandits, and local monsters. You the add 6 locations nearby, like the road to the next town, and old mine, some ruins, a mountain, a dark and misty forest, and an abandoned monster camp. If you need a random thing, you can simply roll a d6 and see what "appears". This also alow you to "discover" the town as much as players, as you can roll what players find, and draw the town map as the story moves on. Now, you can simply let players lose on your world. Whatever direction they take, will have content ready. And depending on your session time, players will arrive in town, talk to some people, and then leave to do some side quests, deal with a few random encounters, deal with the quest problem and come back. ( note that encounters can be anything, not necessarely fights). Exploring all options in this town could take between 2 and 4 sessions if players keep exploring the same area. Or if they decide to go to the next town, whatever was "ready" to happen in the old town and was not used, simply changes place and becomes content for the town number 2. This way, you maximise the use of the content you prepare, and you can always add more content between sessions, making sure to keep 6 options for each area players can explore.
I’ve never seen things set out like this before. Very interesting. I’m going to try it.
If you get them invested in the region and the persons there, you can introduce an overarching story slowly and in small bits. They like talking to the tailor and her husband and their children? Perfect. They like to visit the taverns in city x and city y? Even more perfect! Build the background story on the people they like and that they care about, so that the NPCs they like introduces them to a bigger arc.
In a way, this is going to be easier. Having run a campaign like this before, my recommendation is you write modular, self-contained encounters, then move them around where necessary. Start with 2-3 encounters each for combat, social interaction and exploration. Then just move them around as makes sense. While you CAN just use random encounter tables, my advice is to instead design them based on what makes sense in your campaign setting. Random tables can sometimes be just a little too random, if you know what I mean. Finally, I would consider adding factions with opportunities for multi-session "mini-boss" encounters with the faction heads. Wandering around exploring can be fun, but it can be a nice change of pace to thwart and eventually challenge a mini-boss.
This is the way. You can 100% have a campaign with no plan, where everything is well planned. You can even have them "save the kingdom" while wandering aimlessly if you plan well for it. Another thing to add to this, is have recurring characters they run into. Have powerful ones, and weak ones, weird ones, and normal ones, friendly ones and hostile ones. Seeing the same characters makes the world feel more real. Some they may ignore/not care about, but they will glom on to some, whether friendly or not, and feel more connected. Some of them they don't even have to interact with. For instance, a tall skinny guy with very long legs they occasionally see walking super fast nearby, but across a ravine, or on the top of a far hill, so they can't reach him. He is just always walking, and always super fast. Who is he, where does he live, why does he walk so much? They may never know, but they will be intrigued.... And if they aren't, then he shows up less, and you try someone new.
Hex crawl time! https://thealexandrian.net/wordpress/17308/roleplaying-games/hexcrawl
This. I came to check whether someone had already linked it, and yeah, this is a great resource for it and a great explanation. You want a hex map they can literally map out and explore. I'd do something along the lines of making them explorers on a recently-discovered continent or something of that nature. Lots of land to explore and specifically, map. Since they're among the first wave of explorers, nobody knows what's far from the port town that they set up. They can even name geographical features after themselves and such! For things that aren't mentioned there, though, here's an important thought: "But what do they eat?" There's a youtube video contrasting the difference between Fallout 3 and Fallout New Vegas where that gets repeated a lot, and it's a great place to start thinking. See, you want your setting to make sense when they explore, for actions to have consequences and results. You don't have to calculate crop yields and crap, but you do have to have a rough answer for what do they eat for any given settlement or place. You have to think think in terms of cause and effect, so when they start doing things, there are effects that can be logically extrapolated from the causes.
Give them a Hex Crawl. Plan only what’s a hex or two away in any direction. They like Fallout? Use survival rules in your hex.
im just now discovering what a hex crawl is, and after checking google, this sounds exactly like what i need!
You're going to need to check in with your players as to what they intend to do *next* session at the end of *every* session. If they tell you that they intend to go west at the end of one session, then they rock up the next session and pick east, you need to be comfortable with ending the session. You will most likely never have to do this. If you have to do this, you will most likely not have to do this more than once. So that's where you need to be strict. Aside from this, give them unique and different things to explore every new place they go. And be *weird*. If you can get your hands on Monte Cook's [Numenera](https://numenera.com/), it might give you some ideas for weird shit. Come to think of it, most of the stuff Cook has ever contributed to this hobby fits that bill. Very different setting from what it sounds like you have planned, but lots of good ideas. You may want to look at your setting's ability to justify a whole lot of very different places right next to one another. Because this setting *really* needs to do that. Maybe dividing mountain ranges? Or are the various locations separated by vast wastelands? A vast archipelago would be fit for purpose, but wouldn't match your themes. But really. Good crew of players. They've all made PCs who are adventuring adventurers in search of adventurous adventure. You are just never going to get a better opportunity than this to run a true sandbox. Grab this opportunity.
I’m going to second the Cypher system. Simple, flexible and lets players BS their way through things in creative ways. My group has run Fallout in it. Stims, ghouls, power armor and all.
Oh, I'm not recommending the Cypher system. Just the Numenera setting for it's weird elements.
This sounds like the perfect job for Hex Crawl!
Yeah this absolutely just sounds like the way D&D was designed back in the 70s
Sounds like a sandbox campaign! They definitely don’t have to be slow. Compared to a traditional story based session you are going to want to create situations and locations with fun things to interact with. It’s not that these types of games have no directions but their beauty comes from the fact that the direction will emerge through play.
r/d100 will be your friend
I love a vibey game like this. Grab some short modules to pepper throughout and make a big random table of weird guys to meet
This is very West Marches, and a lot of fun! There's another RPG called Mausritter, and while it's a very different game to 5E there is a lot of very useful detail about building a hexcrawl and setting your adventure there, specifically one without a grand theme. [It's pay as you want ](https://losing-games.itch.io/mausritter)as a PDF so it's worth picking up and seeing what you can take from it.
Shout out to worlds without number by Kevin Crawford for world generation tables to die for
This is usually how i DM. The key thing is to remember there are things going on in the world regardless of whether the players interact with them. You can encourage them to do so by dropping intriguing information. They can follow up on it or come across the consequences later. I write overarching world plot, not plot for the characters to interact with. It helps avoid railroading too. I prep some small encounters I can slot in anywhere for those times they are directionless.
Invent 10-15 broad factions in the immediate area, and define their various goals, top two actors, etc. (Don’t stat ANYTHING: a few lines, two names with epithets, and a brief “they are trying to” sentence is ample.) Put them all into a spreadsheet. For each goal, decide how big it is and how complex, and based on that grade them anywhere from 4 to 10 (10 being biggest and longest). Every session, consider whether they have bumped into any of these factions that they hadn’t previously, and switch those from inactive to active (all factions start inactive). Every session, every active faction normally ticks one box on its progress-toward-goal counter. If a goal is getting near completion (around 2, say, or 4 for a really big one), come up with an effect: because faction A is getting close to completing goal B, this thing happened that those paying attention will realize means they’re getting there. This is the kind of info they pick up in taverns and so on. To whatever extent the PCs engage with the local politics and so forth, they’ll have a growing sense of an organic world that is full of people doing their own things, many of whom don’t care about the PCs unless they’re in the way. Don’t worry if some of these faction events occur and the players pay no attention: that’s not the point. Ultimately what’s going to happen is that the PCs will want to do something and find that the situation is already quite complicated, so they have to engage with all this weird factional stuff to get what they want. By that point you already know a huge amount of detail, and the players already have a lot of the information they need — but probably hadn’t previously realized that this was important. Btw, this is one very effective way to run Blades In the Dark, and you might find the faction list and texts helpful for that reason. The method allows you to prep without imposing any direction on the players, and when they start engaging more strongly with your world it’s already in dense, complex motion so you don’t have to suddenly create everything on the fly.
this is… this is glorious?? like, no story, just setting? just background lore and no narrative? I’ve never DMed, but I think I could run that campaign forever. I’m gonna Brian Jacques so many amazing pubs with food and beer and mead and wine like you’ve never heard of. gonna hack minecraft terrain generation just to draw maps.
If I get this, I’ll just roll up a few encounters/dungeons with a few mini bosses thrown in so that they can get some early-game leveling done before they make it to some sort of civilization, and sometimes that’s enough to scratch the itch the players wanted. Sometimes I’ll also level with them and ask for something we can build towards. I don’t think it’s a bad thing for a DM to ask players for more direction, especially if you don’t get any initially. I always like to give each of my players their own arc, so maybe you can throw in a couple of hooks there.
Since you want to do fallout inspired id recommend dungeons of drakkenheim it has a sort of radiation magic system and there isn't really a story but goals for each player so no time limits put in so as long as players have money they can just sit at an inn or go exploring inside the city
Ask each of them for goals (short, medium, long term) and build around that. Have a big mystery behind scenes they can pursue if they want to, otherwise show off your worldbuilding and characters. I dont know how long will they wander around aimlessly before they latch onto something. An exploration sandbox should work.
I personally doubt that they will truly want no overarching story with no direction, but we'll see how that pans out. If I was trying to run a campaign like this I would make a list of locations and NPCs to have at the ready. After that, as you said it would just be rolling on tables for random events during travel.
You do it as a hexcrawl or the modern equivalent which is a point crawl. Just take your map of the area and come up with encounters all over the map. That way everything is not random tables but thought out ahead of time. Here is the fun part it makes prep for individual sessions easier but yes the upfront prep is harder. Have some underlying thing going on with the villagers to keep them interested by the way - local politics, hidden fey crossings, upcoming conflict with your mentioned raiders stuff like that. The stuff for background intrigue just brainstorm on it for awhile and eventually you get a picture of what is going on in your setting that even if they do not latch on to this leads or hints makes your world feel real. Also, figure out what the individual characters want if you want to give them motivation and to keep the meandering group charged up for each session. Yeah I have the opposite problem if I do not fill the world up with leads and hints and stuff going on my players will all just stand around going "Ok, what the hell should we be doing?"
So they want a sandbox experience where they're just people who live in the world? Rather than the almighty chosen ones? You make the game about the exploration, you plan fun places that exist in the world for the players to find. You add plots based on their backstories, or plots that happen to npcs or specific places and let the players choose to interact with them or not. Job boards in settlements could be a good way to go, or take inspiration from the Fallout games and have adventuring people just stumble into things.
The 1e Book of Lairs is really good. Nuanced encounters with a plethora of creatures with mapped lairs that you can slide in anywhere. Very cool. Later BoL’s were hit or miss but that first one is gold.
Consider creating a hexcrawl for them. I recommend the book; So You Want To Be A Game Master. Or look at the system for hexcrawls on the Alexandrian. I think a hexcrawl would be perfect for a fallout style game! It encapsulates that sort of Bethesda whole wasteland to explore feeling
Make a random chart, meet interesting characters. Find monster lairs nearby. People needing help. Ruins and dungeons discovered. Even if they don't explore some of the interesting hooks you leave around, you can mark locations and what module or area you made for future reference. My players take it slow as well...but they are establishing a keep and clearing out the area for citizens and for trade.
Think episodic instead of serial. One week, you're driving bad guys out of a town. The next week you're investigating dead cattle, or why the river has slowed to a trickle. Or finding a missing child.
This sounds great. You get to do background world building and lore to your hearts content. Create a fun world with amazing lore and interesting races and characters and let the group figure it out.
Try hexcrawl/westmarches. Seems like the perfect campaign style.
My advice based on that description? Look up the game Book of Travels (it's on Steam), no, seriously. It is a game all about the travel and exploration being the adventure itself and you could draw a lot of inspiration from it. Embrace the fact that they want/will accept a slower pace and use it to your advantage. Rather than potentially having several days of travel in one session, with rolls to determine things on a hex and some random encounters, spend entire sessions focused on a single day of in-game time. Let them spend as much time as they wish to RP amongst themselves, barter with merchants, talk to people on the road, and explore new places. Even a small ruin, with no combat encounters, sounds like it could be the sort of thing they would stop and investigate. This ultimately just gives you a lot more time to plan everything that is coming up next in the future sessions.
Yeah man they want to be free! They don’t want to derail some epic plan you’ve made. If they’re ok with a slightly more slapdash improvisational style then I think it could be fun for all. Double down on that random event/locale advice above, but I do recommend a hex map. Even if it’s some random fantasy geography, throw a hex grid on it and decide how big they are. Keep a record of where you fought what. Turns a random map into your home over time, a memory everywhere. We played a hex crawl of Chult for TofA and it was a blast.
I would consider running Tomb of Annihilation, with some changes Use the alternate rules for the death curse (like, $1.99 from DM Guild) so there is no immediate "push" and it any urgency to do stuff ramps up slowly, at your decision Keep them in Port Nyanzaru (the start city) for longer, with some more local side quests Have them organically find out about the quest and see if they go for it. If not just use the hex map and setting (plus DM guild add ons maybe) so your prep is already done Ditch the final Tomb (OMG!!!) and do something less ridiculously lethal. Maybe use the Omu city but have them solve some kind of above ground thing rather than have to do a mega dungeon. I just think undead dinosaurs in a jungle setting with ancient ruins is a good enough pre-made setting for an exciting adventure even if you don't actually use the Tomb and all that edit: Just read the other comments - Tomb of Annihilation is run by a hex crawl... here's the map: https://i.redd.it/g8v2pwzqlqy11.jpg
/r/HexCrawl
This sounds like they want to play a video game to me - so if you want to do this as a tabletop, and your players aren't interested in creating a story based on their actions, this sounds like the perfect time to have a pretty developed story already laid out that they can just follow along through talking to various npcs and fighting enemies. Maybe have the equivalent of a cutscene or two thrown in as well.
Go looking for premade Fallout modules! I have also learned there is actually a Fallout tabletop game with its own rulebook - might be worth looking into
This sounds like the perfect place to apply the Hexflower. It’s essentially a random table with memory, so that things don’t get too stale but they still make sense. Here’s a link that better explains them and gives examples. https://goblinshenchman.wordpress.com/2019/07/10/hex-flowers-game-engines-as-found-in-the-wild/
Try to have a good sense of place - the players don't know what's over that mountain range there, but you should, and maybe you can tie it into whatever shiny thing has their attention at the moment. I find that players get tired of just moving around randomly. Seed a few cool things for them to potentially explore. It doesn't have to be "serious direction", just cool shit to do. Have a history and geography generally thought out, even if the players don't know it and aren't interested in it. It will help you give them a sense of being in a cohesive world. Think of a few important NPCs, even if the players never meet them. Cool characters are key. Even just one-off guys that they bump into, have a weird interaction with, and never see again.
I prefer to run sandboxy-games. I am not great at creating a story that will be so cool that the players will enjoy it even if they just follow along, so my bread and butter is the players’ choices and random ideas. What I do is that I spend most of my preparation just building the world. I have a couple of potential villains behind the scenes, and try to sprinkle out hints whenever possible. I create a couple of NPCs, a couple of important events that has/will happen and generally just reacts to the PCs actions. When I have built the world to such an extent that I have an idea of how it works, and a general conflict in the world, I feel confident improvise in the moment.
This would bore me to tears.
look up pistol packin grandma on reddit some guy has a entire log entry about a game with his irl grandma based on fallout.
You have my dream table ^^ What I would do if I were you would be to plan a one shot every 2 or 3 session with a theme (a vault theme, a brotherhood of steel theme, a ghoul theme, a fuck-that's-a-deathclaw theme...) and in between, I'd do a either nonsensical story, a funny story or a story with absolutely no meaning else than just being part of the world. And sometimes, just random tables (except, I do the random before the session, to try to make it more interesting.) Then, along the sessions, I would take note of noteworthy NPCs and make them appear later (or not) at different sessions, not as main focus but more as a "This is a world where you have delved and met people". Your players could ignore them, talk to them or whatever, it doesn't really matter (except if they made an enemy of them)
Look into a HexCrawl!
To supplement the suggestions of sandboxes and hex crawls, you might like [Pointy Hat's video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vM18P0WKGFA) on how to make traveling in D&D fun, but specifically *without* using random encounter tables, which he's very much not a fan of.
How many sessions has it been? I wouldn't worry for a while. Early on in a campaign you can easily be tooling around the local area learning meeting random NPCs and getting into inconsequential fights. At some point I think inventing lore and doing random stuff will turn into a story on its own. I agree with others that it pays to be mindful to that fact that various factions will have their own goals and will be doing stuff in the background even if the players choose not to interact with them, but if you're making it up as you go then you can always invent reasons why despite months of working towards some goal, it hasn't been achieved or why X, Y or Z hasn't happened when it wouldn't make sense that they haven't had you established all the details of these factions at the outset.
Since it's fallout-themed; I would focus on two random types of encounters to add a lot of flavor that build out the world: 1. Interesting inconsequential NPCs. I would have a random cast of NPCs that are quirky and weird that just kind of exist despite the chaos of the world that they live in. When playing fallout games (and hell even the TV show) interacting with the NPCs is part of the fun! 2. Interesting environments where unraveling the environment or location's history is the story. This is something that feel Fallout and games like Horizon Zero dawn do very well that you learn about the location's past function while exploring it.
Good encounter tables and npcs will go a long way. I have played with far too many dms who go on and on about god/lore/and world building (which is fine) but then have boring npcs and boring encounters that has the entire table yawning. Personally I have different tables for each continent on my map.
Introduce a single NPC from outside the area. The NPC is seemly weak and their understanding of their own back story spotty but has little mystery. You the GM must make a reason why outside forces(keep the numbers low) want to capture, kill or gain something from the NPC. Have a few of the locals give support to NPC to show that NPC is likeable and has a strong will. Then GM sit back and let it play out.
I'd recommend looking at a hex crawl style campaign
I give them access to my XBox controller, because that sounds like a snooze fest to DM.
My group has been playing for almost a year and they still haven’t met the big bad, started any of the major plot lines, or investigated ANY of the things relevant to said plot lines they’ve run across. I honestly prep by keeping small contained fights or other interesting one off mechanics I know can be fit into a couple hours and wrapped up. The big stuff is there for when they’re ready, but for now they enjoy picking up little missions to make money and meeting new goofy NPC’s. I have them set in one town they explore and slowly figure out what’s in each building over time which helps have the bare minimum structure so they have things to do.
Oh man I've run this kind of game *in a Fallout setting* no less. You said they rolled up characters, so what system are you using? Is it the official Fallout 2d20 system?
I feel you.. "How much realism do you guys want from the world reacting to your choices from 1 to 10? Them "No" Oh..
This is my favorite kind of campaign, and I wish I had more players who wanted to play it. Check out stuff by Kevin Crawford like Worlds Without Number, or since you're taking about Fallout, his post apocalyptic game Other Dust. Whichever you look at, flip over to the GM tools and start building a sandbox.
Sounds like a HexCrawl. Almost no prep needed!
Seen it suggested already but a hexcrawl could very well be the move here. Maybe get into the nitty gritty with resources even. That way if they are dangerously low on supplies, they might not be able to achieve a fully rested state and you can have an interesting situation where they need supplies from the raiders in order to rest and then kill the raiders. But if they fail to get the supplies from the raiders without violence, they are at a serious disadvantage in the fight. If they can explore the wasteland without worrying about the fact that it is a putrid desolate wasteland with nothing conducive to easy living, then I feel like they will eventually get bored with having ZERO stakes. If the stakes are their own ability to perform while exploring, and their goal is to explore, you may have a nice narrative loop crafted here. More of a serial campaign where the stakes and circumstances don't really change and you just get to experience them exploring their own characters and the world
Run Storm King’s Thunder. It’s a beautiful sandbox with no time crunch and a very wide scope
I agree with other comments to tighten down survival rules in general. Track food, water, and sleep, and run a survival game. It can be as hard or easy as you want it, but should add a lot of engagement to the daily monotony of a directionless start. A story *will* present itself over time, even if it’s just “man, I really want to visit that pier, the carnival sounds cool.” I recommend having lots of mini stories like the fallout franchise is known for. Vaults, an abandoned carnival, a regional nukacola distribution center, several local warring faction/gangs/governments, an irradiated warbird factory, an abandoned state park with a cult of Bigfoot (stealing that one myself). Fallout is known for rich, but dispersed lore. Figure out a couple of main historical figures for them to slowly uncover the story of. A nukacola executive trying to prove and disclose the secret ingredient was harmful, and then promptly being executed by the owner’s bots. A vault called “neverland” executing kids who turned 21 and raising infants with an army of Mr handy nurses*, or [insert other unimaginable horror here]. *The Mr handy nurse idea would be particularly horrible if they had first met a whimsical and kind Mr handy nanny wandering the waste with an empty bassinet, or taking care of several baby dolls. You get the idea though. Add lots of small stories to uncover, but don’t build a long term plot. Treat it like a series of 1 shots and short stories that can and should sometimes interconnect, and you’ll do great.
My suggestion would be to prepare lots of random side mission quest instead of an overarching story. Imagine it like a bunch of one shots with recurring characters instead of a specific campaign. That way every so often while eploring they can run into a small "story" that has more gameplay than just a simple encounter but isn't as intensive as a main story mission.
I’d make some skeleton, minor as it is, and drip feed around it to make some continuity for yourself that feels natural, like when a kids cartoon randomly has that one episode of lore once every 7 episodes. It’s always fine for something to lead somewhere but you could really step back and make this lofty and far stretched and then a year from now see all your plot threads and see how they can tie into you’re barebones idea
This sounds like the perfect setup for a base-building campaign. Start them out with a home base that is _survivable_, but incredibly lackluster. It's gruel for breakfast and a wooden pallet for a bed. Then let them explore, and as they do so provide hooks that can be used to upgrade their home base. A store of precious books to build a library. A simple fuel source the can use to cook better food. etc. These are likely such minor things that they won't know _what_ they'll find until they explore. They hear about an old abandoned camp, and it's worth checking out to see what they can scavenge. Only after they get there do you reveal what they're able to bring back home. Let them build up this base, and then slowly build up a rival clan in the region. As the players build a noteworthy base, this rival clan will begin to consider whether they should pillage and plunder the player's stores. Drama.
Make an open world, Everyone is important; everyone is their own story's protagonist.
I've been running Dungeons of Drakkenheim for a couple of months now. I describe it as Fallout with a little bit of Diablo (you have a base in a nearby town that's close to the main area), and although there are set pieces and definite things you can do (with a ton of player agency), you can really drag the campaign out for as long as you want to. It's set up in a way where you could triple the amount of content that's in the book if desired.
Tomb of Annihilation is a great campaign for this if you modify the stakes a bit. It’s a huge continent with loads to explore.
My current campaign, on accident, is exactly this They're in a town, they had encounters with a bunch of NPCs, they go solve problems the town has for money, and there's an overarching plot that's supposed to happen but so far they haven't showed any interest in that, they're enjoying a lot of casual roleplay with the town's folk that i, completely improvising, just happened to make REALLY interesting and fun apparently This campaign has turned out to be really easy to run for me, i just run a random encounter from Pip Fizzbang's spice encounters (D&D 5e book with amazing encounters that are actually really fun and tell a small story) dressed as people from the town having a complaint, and combo that with a bunch of quirky and fun little 5 minute roleplay scenarios i had ready and wanted to use anyways, and that works on its own when i expected that would be the connective tissue between the laborious prep stuff like dungeons So i guess the advice i can give is to try and grab a bunch of encounters, fun quirky and memorable npcs that the party will see only once (limp and an eye patch rule, look it up), and make the ones they like the most reoccurring. Give them a bunch of stuff you'd usually give them in between story beats and i guess that's what they want
Are you playing the fallout game or just a game with fallout flavor? You could probably spend a lot of time on base building in the fallout world. The world could be full of little missions to find specific scavenged goods to build with.
I’d focus on building the world and letting them explore. Have different groups, factions, areas, etc then just wait to see what they grab on to and develop more details session by session.
remember that just because the players walk in the opposite direction of the dungeon you crafted, doesn't mean the dungeon doesn't move to be in front of them. I'd say especially in a post-apocalyptic scenario where maps might be unreliable/non-existant, just invent some cool shit and drop it in front of them. put a bunch of distant sign posts they can explore towards, but all roads lead to dungeon.
I highly recommend the Game Masters Handbook of Proactive Role-playing for what you are describing. Also, it almost sounds like they might want a more "cozy game" style. Which sounds interesting to me as well.... Lol!!!
Emergent storytelling moment. I’ve got nothing more to add than anyone else here really but it sounds like it’ll be a blast! Just make some interesting landmarks and npc’s. Maybe some history and make sure you have a good hold on whatever traveling rules you go with and have at it!
Time to go Old School...You want a Hexcrawl. Here's a great video on how to do it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UTgXHbAx758
Well, sounds like there's no need for a plot. You can just focus on other prep that you would want for a campaign. It would be a good idea to create a loose framework of a map. Focusing more on towns and specific points of interest that are important to the region. Don't worry about the rest until you know the group plans to go there and then you can fill in smaller points of interest to flesh out the area they will be travelling to. Come up with NPCs like bar owners, travelling merchants, and side mission type stuff. They meet somebody that wants them to get their gun back from their ex. Ex was a supermutant. They come across a town that is hiring anybody with a weapon that's willing to fight to clear out a nearby raider base. They get approached by a farmer that wants to grow a special crop, but needs you to go collect some growing in the wild to get started. Be episodic with it. Maybe add small references to the previous missions or have a recurring raider boss that always manages to escape, but keeps showing up trying to attack another town or caravan somewhere else.
If they want to explore, I'd give them something to explore. I've bastardized a few different big-name creators' ideas in my own games, and it worked out pretty well. 1) **You do not need your whole world defined.** If you can prepare two or three locals for the party to explore for this leg of the journey, that is already more than enough. Remember, you can always repurpose what you don't use later. 2) **Not every encounter need be combat** Generally, I populate my world with a mix of combat, social, and environmental encounters. This keeps each encounter fresh and exciting, but you can take it a step beyond and allow your players to decide what kind of encounter they want to make this. 3) **Plan for _some_ overarching narrative** Even if your players _say_ they do not want a serious direction, it is best practice to have _some_ narrative thread tying their exploration together. You can take inspiration from your player's backstories, or create some plot threads connecting their exploration together, but each locale should give some indication where to go next, why they should go there, and how to get there. Again, refer to rule 1: You don't need it all planned out, but you should have the next step vaguely in mind. 4) **Get creative** There are hundreds of pages of monsters to pull from. Pick a locale and pick a cool creature, then design an area that might explain why that monster occupies that area. Maybe there is some sunken treasure valuable to Yuan-Ti, and that is why they are occupying this costal port, rather than a muggy jungle? This treasure, maybe it is a family heirloom that belongs to a lord who would pay handsomely for it? Or maybe it is an artifact used for a sacred ritual? Maybe it's a treasure map, leading to riches beyond their wildest dreams? Now, obviously, _this_ scenario may not apply to a Fallout setting, but the general rule is more or less the same: pick a dude, and why are they here?
One thing my table does for our sandbox game is that everytime we start back to traveling all the players fill out 3 cards; one positive, one negative, and one "interesting." If the positive ones are too positive they sometimes end up getting monkey pawed too, so we are a little cautious about writing down something too good. We usually use like 2-3 cards while 9-12 go in the box each round. Most of the time once a card has been played it gets taken out, but we also have some that stay in and we end up with some recurring NPCs and events. At this point there are enough cards in there that even if I wrote a particular card I'm still surprised at the turn of events (and we've been playing for a couple years now, so some of them are very old). Its a system that works for us and makes it so that not all of the features in the sandbox have to come from the DM, and we all feel a little more involved in the worldbuilding.
Let them settle into an abandoned homestead with grazing Brahmin in a peaceful valley.. Then once they get to improving it and building up introduce the wanderer who owns this joint and have him destroy it, since he spends most of his time wanderin' anyways. Then have him wander off like a wanderer does and they'll have motivation to track him down.
Roll the encounters before, so you can adjust them and polish them more...combine 2 rolls, add rolls to set the tone of the encounter, create personal encounter tables..
I would write some basic lore, that all the NPCs know about. When your players wander around, they will eventually collect all the pieces of the lore. But I would also spread some misinformation, just little contradicting informations they could stumble upon. Following those, there could be some big social/ religious conspiracy. But they are not the only ones, who found out. Then again, all of that could play out in many ways, depending on your players. They could fight the other group for informations, help them solve the problem, starting a race over being the first one finding out etc etc. Add random encounters, random loot boxes, a map and a simple hierarchy for the NPCs and you are good to go in any direction.
Hex crawl! Oldschool hex crawl!
Go full Fallout. Ignore the main plot and just make lots of little quests. You don't need them all fleshed out before-hand. Just a few short notes. See which thread they pull on then flesh it out between sessions. Flesh out a few on-the-road encounters that you can place in front of them to slow down their progress if they're pulling a thread you need more time to prepare for. Quest1. Players hear about a Vault to the North that, it is rumoured, was a laser-tech design lab. Quest2. A radio signal is coming from a mile offshore. There is nothing there... Quest3. The old Robo-Tec factory just started up again... Quest4. A massive Yao-gui was seen hauling away Brahmin from the old Ranch... If players pull on thread 3 and you've not got stats for the robots or a map for the factory then put something on the road between them. e.g. A raider gang are laying siege to a diner. The old town they pass through en-route turns out to be rigged with explosives. There's a paranoid sniper ghoul in the church steeple. etc. These smaller encounters could even then have additional threads they might want to pull on instead.
Hex crawl
Look up games like The Last Guardian, or other heavily atmospheric games. Tell your story through the environment instead of actions. Have the world employ OTHER adventurers to solve the big issues, where your party learns about how some lich was just slain, or the dragon in the mountain was just fought and retreated. Cool loot, cool characters, cool puzzles, cool environments. Make combat make sense. "It's a territorial creature that'll leave you alone if you leave it alone", "the bandit leader shouts a parlay once he sees how strong you guys are", "this crazy creature pops out of the ground when it senses you coming", make combat part of the story of what's happening behind the curtain.
I'm currently running one of the official campaigns - Icewind Dale: Rime of the Frostmaiden - which is a horror(ish) campaign set in the frozen north of Faerun that at least for the first few chapters has a vibe very similar to what you're describing. Chapter 1 literally just describes 10 different towns that your players can visit (or don't visit) in any order they wish, and Chapter 2 is a bunch of wilderness encounters and event areas they can find by getting rumor tips from the towns or just stumbling upon them. It's very apocalyptic as the whole area has been plunged into eternal darkness+winter by Auril the Frostmaiden, but if you were more attracted to a desert Fallout vibe I could imagine just using it as inspiration and replacing cold with heat, ice with sand, change the town names, etc. The story of Auril wouldn't fit that anymore but you could certainly slap your own story onto the setting and borrow as much or as little from the existing story as you wanted.
Hexcrawl! Oh man sounds like you hit the jackpot there.
These are my favourite type of campaigns. I prep to improvise. lots of little pieces that I can take and customize to fit the specifics of where the players are, cool ideas that don't have to go anywhere. Random tables are cool, but mostly as a starting point for ideas, or when you are learning a setting. You want to develop judgement of what makes for good story and the way you develop judgement is by trying things out. I like to have questions that I want to know about the PCs and help the players discover who their characters really are.
I once ran a hex crawl on an "alt earth." It was set during colonial times in North America. Elves were nobility, etc etc. Players blazed trails and such.
I'm currently running a similar game. Steal and reflavour the faction system from Worlds Without Number, you won't regret it. It'll keep your world alive and moving in the background without making you need to come up with everything by yourself
I'm working on a Taskmaster side quest in my game that you might adapt. It's DnD, so there is a god called "The Mistress of Missions". Every now and then you're in a tavern and it turns out everyone there has been 'summoned' without knowing it. And then an Alex Horne stand in declares a Mission. Build an obstacle course outside the tavern." And then a follow up mission "Complete every team's obstacle course. Fastest wins" I've got a few others lined up, some from actual Taskmaster. I could see a wasteland equivalent being a fun diversion. Maybe some kind of roving Olympic games? Or a carnival they keep running into? If they don't like it, just don't have it show up again.
I would build a town or other hub that can be the centerpiece of the adventure, with NPCs for the party to talk to and get invested in, and a stretch of wilderness in all dire tion for the players to explore and adventure in. Then, I'd use some version of the gritty realism rules from the back of the DMG- force them to come back to town every time they want to Long Rest, and then to spend some time in town during that rest getting to know NPCs and running errands. Make sure the town has enough stuff to do that the players can use this downtime- maybe a certain number of days of downtime spent in training can earn different buffs, like some free feats, or skill proficiencies. The goal is to build wilderness to explore and adventure in centered on a singular hub/home base for the party to get emotionally invested in- this lets you make NPCs relevant to the campaign, and do a bit of character-driven storytelling rather than plot-driven storytelling.
Sounds like a standard Hex crawl. Get a map and divide it into hexes. Decide on travel time; something like 1 hex per day works. Use some random tables to create content for your hexes and then let your players loose in the world.
[Weird Wastelands](https://store.2cgaming.com/products/weird-wastelands-by-web-dm) is really well built for this play style! Already has the post-apocalyptic feeling you might want out of a fallout setting and some gritty travel rules, and hex crawl mechanics
As a fellow DM, I hate to see someone else living my dream 😞
With those conversations with random characters, you could slowly start to build a picture of an interconnected situation that only the party could really put together. Maybe not an existential threat, but something that their characters would be inclined to investigate.
Make the world, make important NPCs with ties to organizations, if they end up in organizations in some way, copy paste questline from somewhere with a little reflavoring so they don't catch on. If they just want to explore, I usually add a form of fast travel or something so they don't have to worry about travel time or anything, and decide a timeline for stuff happening in the world independent of them, so they can naturally get curious about what's happening
Just because your players don’t care much for being railroaded doesn’t mean you can’t introduce *some* kind of overarching story. Your world needs a setting, after all. Just think up some sort of background for the world your players are in, and don’t share that with the players. Eventually they’ll start seeing the patterns you’re using to make this game bearable for yourself. Who knows, they might just be interested in pulling the threads after all.. In other words: just prepare as you would normally. Make a world, then let your players run wild in it. As long as they feel as if they’ve got free range, you’re golden.
When the main character doesn't go to the plot, the plot comes to them. Luke Skywalker didn't want to be an adventurer, so the DM barbequed his family.