Unexpected Inspirations

No, it's not that I'm not writing because I don't have anything to write about. Actually I do have a bunch of ideas floating inside my head at almost every waking hour, and for this blog at the moment I want to write some more lizardman stuff: some more creatures, my take on their religion and culture. And maybe a lizardman class for S&W. But for now, I have quite a tight schedule (thankfully not without hobby related activities), and the useful things have to be postponed.

The unexpected inspirations that I have in mind are board games. There is a game, Small World. It comes in two variants. In both of them one gets to choose some fantasy races during the game and then tries to conquer as much land as he can and gain the profit (namely, gold). And during yesterday's game, two things stuck in my mind. Firstly, we had an actual situation in which a creature resembling Balrog stood on an ancient fortress, being the only occupant. With a little background and spicing it all up it can be a fine location for a game. Secondly, now theoretically, we thought of a race of trolls that fortify their lairs, and the remains of this now dying breed live in the highest mountains. Now, we have a whole set of possible locations, and with a little bit of creative thinking we can even link the Balrog creature to the trolls.

Other thing, one of my players said "Oh, I'd like to finally play a sandbox campaign". He wasn't the first to suggest that I should run such a game, but with a bit of talk and recalling the things I've read on the subject before, its quite possible that I'll finally manage to offer my players a sandbox campaign. My problem with this kind of gaming was the amount of prep needed beforehand. I mean, as a GM who improvises almost all the time, even the idea of compiling my own set of tables is quite overwhelming. And making a whole continent of hexes filled with everything seems even worse. But I can try doing it the other way around. Start the sandbox with only 6 or 8 hexes available, and slowly build upon them, depending on where the players went. This way, the world will actually be a living thing and I will be able to provide more and more details.