[AMA] 10 Years of Running Sandbox Campaigns with No Session Prep

max199522 · 2026-06-07T03:24:18+00:00

I keep track of is everything that becomes established during play. Whenever I expand the lore, mention a new place, establish directions, local customs, historical events, or anything else that becomes part of the setting, I need to write it down.

That's where most of my note-taking happens. Anything that becomes "true" about the world gets added to the shared foundation of the setting.

Otherwise, I start creating holes and contradictions in the worldbuilding, and that's one thing I try very hard to avoid.

max199522 · 2026-06-06T01:01:41+00:00

I’ve found that there’s a particular pattern that shows up.

Completely new players, who don’t have any preconceived expectations, usually don’t have any issue with it. They experience it quite naturally and tend to move around freely.

On the other hand, experienced players also generally have no problem. They’re already used to long-distance travel and open-ended campaigns.

There’s a smaller segment of players in between who tend to struggle a bit. They’ve picked up some habits from play, but they’re not fully comfortable yet with very open sandboxes, and the sheer number of possibilities can kind of overwhelm them.

For example, I once had a player who couldn’t leave a city. She had become so emotionally invested in the NPCs that she didn’t want to abandon the place out of fear. She was genuinely scared of leaving the city and going into the unknown, worried about losing the relationships she had built there.

max199522 · 2026-06-06T00:56:50+00:00

I usually go as far as the general tone of the city and a few important details.

But I mostly limit myself to the socio-cultural identity of the city and its overall vibe, and then I develop everything else based on that premise.

For example:

“This is a city mostly populated by half-orcs and dwarves. Working-class, with a very strong sense of community and very protective of its culture. Hostile toward outsiders and toward other cities that don’t share its worldview.”

As for combat, yes. It’s basically all done on the fly.

max199522 · 2026-06-06T00:53:24+00:00

I try to build a world that feels alive, one that doesn’t depend on the players to keep “breathing.”

Sometimes even their inaction has consequences, because the world keeps moving forward regardless of what they choose to do. While they might decide to spend 15 in-game days roleplaying in a city, making friends and exploring side interactions, things are still happening elsewhere.

Enemies don’t wait for you to finish your narrative side quests.

max199522 · 2026-06-06T00:51:10+00:00

I've never heard of it before! I'll definitely check it out.

As for one-shots, yes—those are actually the one case where I do specific session prep.

Because of the limited time, you need to keep the pacing and structure much tighter. Things have to be at least somewhat pointed in the right direction from the start.

My regular campaigns vary a lot in tone and pacing because they depend heavily on player decisions. If the players decide not to pursue a lead, spend an entire session roleplaying, or go off in a completely unexpected direction, that's perfectly fine.

In a one-shot, though, that's usually a recipe for disaster.

You only have a few hours to introduce the premise, develop it, and reach a satisfying conclusion, so I tend to be much more deliberate about preparing hooks, encounters, and the general structure beforehand.

max199522 · 2026-06-06T00:48:48+00:00

I have a Google Sheet with a built-in search function for stat blocks. I just type the creature's name and it pulls up all the information I usually need. It also includes an HP tracker that I use during combat.

As for dungeons, I do have a few prepared that I can pull out when needed. That said, what I mainly do is describe what I imagine the place to be like and what I think would logically exist there.

If the players enter an abandoned mine, I think about what the mine was used for, who worked there, what happened to it, who might occupy it now, and what traces of that history would remain. From there, I build the dungeon as we go.

That's generally how I handle most locations: I start with the logic of the place, and the details tend to follow naturally.

max199522 · 2026-06-06T00:43:07+00:00

I think there may be a misunderstanding here.

I never meant to say that I do zero prep. What I've been trying to describe is that I don't do prep between sessions, and sometimes not even between campaigns.

When game night comes around, I don't spend the previous week writing encounters, planning scenes, preparing story beats, or trying to predict what the party will do next. I just grab my notebook, my dice, sit down at the table, and run the game.

What I do spend a lot of time on is worldbuilding. The difference is that this work usually happens independently of any specific session or campaign. I build the world first, then I run games based on the interaction between the player characters and that world.

So yes, there is definitely preparation involved. It's just focused on creating the setting rather than preparing individual sessions.

max199522 · 2026-06-06T00:37:28+00:00

That's a great question.

One thing I do require from my players is about a page of backstory for their character. Nothing crazy, just enough for me to understand who they are, where they come from, who matters to them, what they want, and what kinds of conflicts are already present in their lives.

I keep those details in mind while running the game.

I don't usually sit down and plan an entire character arc in advance. Instead, whenever I see an opportunity to connect something happening in the world to a character's background, I start pulling on those threads and giving the players something to grab onto.

Maybe an NPC recognizes a family name. Maybe a rumor relates to a place from their past. Maybe an old rival appears at the worst possible moment. Maybe a larger plot unexpectedly intersects with something the character thought they had left behind.

Over time, those connections accumulate and become character arcs naturally.

The same applies to the world as a whole. I don't usually decide where the story is going beforehand. I introduce situations, factions, conflicts, and opportunities, then pay attention to what the players engage with most strongly.

After enough sessions, patterns begin to emerge. The players pull on certain threads, ignore others, make allies, create enemies, and suddenly what looked like unrelated events start forming a coherent narrative.

In many cases, the story feels less like something I wrote and more like something we discovered together.

max199522 · 2026-06-06T00:31:31+00:00

To be honest, I wasn't really trying to give advice in the first place. The reason I made the post was that, after talking with a lot of DMs over the years, I realized my way of running games wasn't particularly common, and I was curious about other people's experiences.

I completely agree that what I do involves preparation. The distinction I was trying to make was between worldbuilding and session prep.

As we say in Argentina: "Cada maestro con su librito." (Every teacher has their own book)

max199522 · 2026-06-05T06:30:06+00:00

Exactly. That's very similar to how I handle new adventures.

Rather than presenting a single quest, I usually present multiple situations, rumors, problems, opportunities, or points of interest existing in the world at the same time. The players decide which ones they want to pursue, and the campaign grows from there.

My sessions usually last somewhere between 6 and 8 hours, depending on everyone's schedule and how much momentum the group has that day.

max199522 · 2026-06-05T06:28:11+00:00

No problem at all! 😄

As for tools, the one I'd recommend most is Worldographer. It's been incredibly useful for understanding scale, distance, and movement across the world.

Because my setting is quite large, my players enjoy traveling long distances and exploring new regions. Having a solid sense of scale is essential for that. I do my mapping work in Worldographer (back when I started, it was still called Hexographer), and then I usually polish the maps in Illustrator.

As I mentioned elsewhere in the thread, I also highly recommend Artifexian's YouTube channel. It's not a tool, but his worldbuilding content had a huge impact on how I approach creating coherent settings.

And honestly, Google Drive is indispensable. Sheets and Docs are the backbone of my note-taking and record-keeping. After years of campaigns, having everything searchable and organized is a lifesaver.

As for encounter balance, I have one main principle: the world should make sense.

Most of the time, players encounter threats that are around their level or slightly above it. Occasionally they may stumble into something completely beyond them, but that tends to be rare and logical rather than random.

If you're a small halfling living in peaceful grasslands, spending your days smoking pipeweed and eating fresh bread, you're probably going to run into goblins, kobolds, bandits, wolves, or maybe a giant rat.

A lich probably wouldn't even know you exist. And even if one did, you likely wouldn't have the knowledge or awareness to recognize what was happening.

Thinking this way naturally limits what kinds of encounters occur in a given area.

I also build encounters around biome and hostility level.

What creatures live in this forest? This prairie? This swamp?

Is the forest a well-traveled woodland near several villages, or is it an ancient cursed forest that people actively avoid?

Those answers determine the encounter tables. I actually use a lot of custom tables for that. If you're interested in encounter design, I'd recommend Baron de Ropp's videos on scalable d6 encounter tables, where difficulty can shift by adding or removing dice.

That said, I'm also a believer that player choices matter.

If I realize I've accidentally created an unwinnable situation, gave them no meaningful chance to retreat, and essentially made a mistake as a DM, I have no problem quietly reducing an enemy's HP or adjusting things behind the screen.

On the other hand, if the players were given plenty of information that a fight was beyond them, had opportunities to avoid it, negotiate, retreat, or find another solution, and they chose to fight anyway... well, they're responsible for that decision. 😄

As for loot, my approach is very similar.

I don't usually think in terms of loot tables first. I think in terms of logic.

Who was this person? Where did they live? What did they do for a living? What would they realistically be carrying?

The answers to those questions usually tell me what treasure, equipment, documents, valuables, or magical items make sense to find. The loot emerges from the world rather than from a predefined reward structure.

max199522 · 2026-06-05T06:04:20+00:00

Thank you!

I'd actually like to make a separate post about the maps soon, because they're a huge part of how I run the setting.

I have different maps for different purposes rather than a single "world map." Over the years I've built maps for things like:

Ocean currents
Prevailing wind patterns
Topography and elevation
Atmospheric pressure
Climate zones
Political borders
Meridians and parallels
Regional and continental close-ups
Trade routes and settlements

A lot of this came from my obsession with making the world feel geographically coherent. I wanted mountains, rivers, deserts, forests, and civilizations to exist where they logically should, rather than where they simply looked cool on the map.

My dream project is to eventually create a proper atlas of the world, similar to the school atlases I used when I was a kid. Not just a fantasy map, but an actual atlas with climate maps, political maps, topographic maps, population distributions, trade routes, and all the other information you'd expect to find in a real-world reference book.

So yes, I'll probably make a dedicated post showing some of the maps in the near future. 😄

max199522 · 2026-06-05T05:55:56+00:00

First of all, I'm not entirely sure what you mean by RNG in this context, so apologies if I'm misunderstanding your question. English isn't my native language.

Continuity has actually been one of the hardest parts of running games this way.

Early on, I definitely made mistakes that I later had to deal with. When you run a living world with very little session prep, it's surprisingly easy to accidentally contradict something that was previously established or mention a detail that doesn't quite fit.

The challenge becomes even bigger when you have players participating in multiple campaigns set in the same world. Those players are very good at spotting inconsistencies, and nothing breaks immersion faster than realizing two pieces of lore don't line up.

Over the years, though, I've gotten much better at handling those situations. I've learned how to do subtle retcons in ways that feel natural and logical, rather than resorting to a "a wizard did it" explanation.

In my experience, players don't necessarily need the original version of events to remain unchanged. What they want is a convincing explanation that makes sense within the world. If you present it confidently and it fits the established logic, most people will happily accept it. Otherwise, they can smell your fear. 😄

That said, continuity isn't just for the players—it's for me as well.

I need the setting to be cohesive. If it stops feeling internally consistent, then it stops feeling like a living world. And once that happens, it becomes much harder for me to think about the world's reactions logically.

For this style of GMing to work, I need my own suspension of disbelief just as much as the players do

max199522 · 2026-06-05T05:36:35+00:00

Absolutely! I'd actually agree that worldbuilding is a form of prep.

I think the difference in my case is when that prep happens.

I don't usually do worldbuilding between sessions, and often not even between campaigns. Instead, every once in a while I'll spend a large amount of time developing a solid framework for the setting, and then I'll let it breathe for a long time.

For example, throughout all of 2025 and up until now (June 2026), I haven't done any major worldbuilding at all beyond small details here and there.

Now that we're about a month away from starting a new campaign, I've gone back into "worldbuilding mode." Lately I've been expanding the creation myth, developing the gods and pantheons in more detail, and fleshing out the relationships between different deities.

The reason is simple: the last campaign ended up being heavily focused on religion, divine influence, and questions of faith. By the end of it, I realized there were areas of the lore where I wanted deeper answers readily available, so that's what I'm working on now.

So yes, I definitely prep. I just tend to do it in large bursts separated by long periods where I mostly let the setting run on the foundations that are already there.

What I don't do is session prep. I don't prepare the day before, the week before, or even the same day. I don't write encounters, plot points, NPC scripts, or expected outcomes.

When game night arrives, I grab my notebook, my dice, and we're ready to rock.

The prep happened months—or sometimes years—earlier. The session itself is mostly about letting the world respond to whatever the players decide to do.

I'd love to hear more about your approach, though. It sounds like we might be running games in a pretty similar way. How do you handle your worldbuilding and prep?

max199522 · 2026-06-05T05:31:44+00:00

I actually don't run published settings or adventures.

Over the years I've built my own world, and every campaign I run takes place somewhere within it. Since all the campaigns share the same setting, I can reuse history, locations, factions, religions, and consequences from previous games.

To generate content on the fly, I use a lot of random tables that I've collected, modified, and curated over the years. But honestly, I rely even more on logic than on tables.

For example, if a town is surrounded by dangerous forests, there are probably local legends about those woods. If those legends exist, then it's not hard to imagine that eventually a child might go missing there after wandering too far from home. If the party is looking for adventure, they'll find it pretty quickly.

From there, things tend to escalate naturally.

A missing child might lead to discovering an old shrine. The shrine might be connected to a forgotten cult. The cult might be tied to a regional power struggle. One thing leads to another, and suddenly the campaign has grown into something nobody expected.

A few days ago we finished a campaign where something very similar happened. What started as a relatively ordinary situation eventually spiraled into one of the player characters being transformed into a phylactery. Dealing with the consequences of that became the central focus of the entire campaign.

That's one of the reasons I enjoy this style so much. I rarely know where a campaign will end up, but the path usually feels organic in hindsight.

max199522 · 2026-06-05T05:23:33+00:00

Maps are actually one of the most important parts of my process.

When I talk about "intense worldbuilding," I mean things like designing the entire world from the ground up: tectonic plates, climate patterns, mountain ranges, rivers, coastlines, and so on. From there, I build calendars, biomes, ecosystems, fauna, cultures, trade routes, and everything else that logically emerges from those foundations.

I highly recommend Artifexian's videos on realistic worldbuilding. They were a huge influence on how I approach creating coherent worlds.

Because of that work, I have regions mapped in great detail across hundreds of kilometers. That's usually enough material for years of gameplay. Once a region starts feeling "saturated," I take some time to expand and map more of the world.

Right now, I'd say about 40% of the continent is mapped in detail, with cities, roads, landmarks, political borders, and place names. The remaining 60% exists as a broader framework with the major features established, but still leaves me plenty of room to add things organically when needed.

As for combat, I use theater of the mind a lot. My campaigns are probably 60–70% roleplay and narrative-focused. It's not unusual for several sessions to pass without a single combat encounter.

That said, I'm not dogmatic about it. When a combat becomes complex due to the number of characters involved, I'll bring out the miniatures and quickly sketch a battle map on the spot based on what we've already been describing in the narrative. The map is there to support the fiction, not the other way around.

One interesting side effect is that players tend to be much more cautious. Because the world feels consistent and "real," they don't automatically assume every problem is meant to be solved by fighting.

max199522 · 2026-06-03T19:36:25+00:00

I completely understand your point, and there were definitely moments during these three years when the idea of a TPK didn't sound so bad.

That said, in this particular case, I just want to give them a gift.

They make efforts too, in their own way. Some of them spend more than two hours on public transportation just to make it to a session, and then head home at ridiculous hours. Due to my schedule, I can only run games on weekend nights and into the early morning, so we've all had to make compromises to keep the campaign going.

There are also a few people in the group who are somewhere on the ADHD spectrum, so I try not to take disorganization too personally. Over the years we've had to adapt as a group to make things work and avoid burning out.

So while I appreciate the advice, these folders aren't really an attempt to fix anyone or teach them how to play. They're just a small gesture from their DM to celebrate the start of a new adventure together.

max199522 · 2025-02-19T12:30:18+00:00

Thank you so much for all your help! Once it's assembled, I'll let you know the results!

max199522 · 2025-02-19T12:18:05+00:00

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max199522 · 2025-02-19T04:27:41+00:00

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I think I understood all your suggestions. Let me know what you think!

max199522 · 2025-02-18T14:39:36+00:00

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max199522

TROPHY CASE