In this series of articles, I will guide you through the process of designing a sandbox hexcrawl, illustrating each step with Chardauka, one of the continents of my world. Throughout these articles, I will cover both adventure content creation to populate the hexes and the worldbuilding elements that bring the setting to life.
The other day I watched a YouTube video where its author reflected on a fairly common idea: that modern RPGs' obsession with story, with a tight plot, has displaced exploration and, in the process, has worsened the gaming experience compared to Old School approaches.
The critique isn't off base. Many commercial adventures that put the story front and center end up becoming a very narrow rail from which players cannot deviate without derailing everything. Adventure paths are especially guilty: a succession of scenes meant to occur in a specific order, with very little room for the table to explore, make mistakes, or simply do unexpected things without breaking the toy.
However, just because that's a common problem doesn't mean every game with a central plot is doomed to be that way. I sincerely believe it's possible to play very enjoyable games centered around a clear story if it's structured as a network of nodes, not a straight line. Scenes, locations, and conflicts connected to each other, but accessible in different orders and through different paths. In fact, I already wrote about how to transform a linear module into a more open structure in this article.
To this I would add something that for me is almost more important: personalization. An adventure shouldn't be "the DM's story," and it certainly shouldn't be the story of the module's author, who isn't even at the table. Adjusting NPCs, motivations, backgrounds, and consequences to the player characters' past is what turns a generic plot into *their* story.
That said, this article isn't meant to be an exhaustive discussion between games with a central plot and pure exploration sandboxes. It comes more in line with why I think certain modules, even with a minimal story, are magnificent additions to enrich a sandbox. And here is where the module I want to discuss today comes into play.
Depths of Rage is an adventure written by JD Wiker and published in Dungeon Magazine #83, available for download on archive.org.
The plot couldn't be simpler. A primitive tribe of goblins is attacking nearby human settlements. The trigger is that they have recovered the sword of a paladin who defeated them 150 years ago, thanks to the intervention of a half-orc explorer working for them. The villagers locate the creatures' lair in a nearby cave and send the adventurers to recover the sword, hoping that without that symbol, the goblins will lose the drive that led them to resume the attacks.
So far, nothing special. And, honestly, it doesn't need to be either. The truly interesting part of the module is the exploration of the dungeon itself. The caves make great use of verticality: there are makeshift bridges, chasms, vertical shafts, narrow corridors, and low ceilings saturated with torch smoke. Space matters, movement matters, and tactical decisions aren't reduced to "advance or retreat."
Furthermore, when the characters kill the tribe's chieftain, an earthquake shakes the area and the dungeon changes completely. Passages collapse, including the entrance they used, new routes open up, and the need to find an alternative exit. Suddenly, the place stops being a static scenario and becomes a hostile environment that reacts to the players' actions. Here, exploration isn't an ornament: it's the core of the experience.
As I said at the beginning, the plot isn't important, so I won't complicate it unnecessarily, but I will adapt it to my setting. The Chardaukan goblins have simian traits, from macaques to mandrills, with thick fur and prehensile tails.
I will also reduce those 150 years. For a race with a short life cycle like goblins, it's an excessive interval. I don't think the story gains anything with so much time; 20 or 30 years is more than enough for the memory to remain alive and the grudge to make sense.
The paladin, on the other hand, will belong to the Blazing Pact. His weapon serves me to introduce crystalsteel, so important in their culture, and put it in the characters' hands as a reward laden with meaning. He could be a devotee of Kragor, Lord of Giants and god of war, or perhaps of Kael'tar, making him a firenewt. Both options fit well and open interesting doors for the future.
There's another alternative I find tempting: replace the paladin with a jungle green hag that kept the goblins enslaved and from which they managed to escape. The explorer would inform the tribe of his death and bring them his staff as proof, which would end up in the hands of the shaman, Tita, in my setting, inspired by the Lorwyn background of Magic. In this case, I would swap the roles of the chieftain and the shaman. I lose the introduction of crystalsteel, which is a shame, but I gain something I really like: that the goblins don't leave the cave out of fear of the hag, turned into the "bogeyman" of the stories they tell their young.
As for the explorer, I'm quite convinced of making him a nacatl. The nacatl harbor a deep hatred towards the Blazing Pact since their people were nearly wiped off the map during the planar invasion of demons and elemental creatures from Ignia. Although the original module doesn't handle the matter in the way that convinces me most, here it does make sense for a nacatl to incite the goblins against interests linked to the Pact. However, I will change the target of the raids: instead of small villages, I'm more interested in them attacking river trade along the Sulfurous River, for economic coherence and the consequences that can have in the sandbox.
For the rest, I'll leave the module practically as is. In fact, its stat blocks come in very handy for me to reuse them as generic monkey-goblins in random encounters and other locations, with small adjustments: a prehensile tail that allows them to draw weapons or manipulate small objects as a free action, removing riding bonuses and giving them a climbing bonus or speed... details that reinforce their identity without having to invest too much time in it.
And, of course, I'll take advantage of one of the exits created after the earthquake to link this dungeon with Lady Barbata's, as I already mentioned here.
In the end, Depths of Rage is a great example of something sometimes forgotten in the debate between story and exploration: that a minimal, almost functional plot can be the best possible framework for a memorable gaming experience. Not because it tells a great story by itself, but because it leaves room for the story to emerge from the players' decisions, mistakes, and discoveries within an environment that deserves to be explored. And, in a sandbox, that's worth its weight in gold.
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