The Saga of Skaldia

Since our last adventure, our party has started playing through the Pathfinder Adventure Path Rise of the Runelords.  I've opted not to write or journal about our adventures here, because its published material, and I didn't want to post a bunch of spoilers for folks who may not have played it.  Yes, there are many sites out there that do post these spoilers, yet another reason not to journal about our adventures there... it's been done.

So that leaves me with this blog, and yet another thing I may have started only to let fall to the wayside.  Well, as my group only meets once a month, we will be playing in Runelords for quite some time.  That leaves me plenty of time to work on our next adventure... adventure path (?)... if the gang wants me to game master...

I've recently been reading through the Pathfinder AP, Kingmaker, which presents the not so novel idea of the table top RPG sandbox.  What is a sandbox campaign, you ask?  Depending on who you ask, you may get several different answers, but in short, a sandbox campaign is one where the players decide which events will happen next.  Instead of following a structured plot designed by the game master, they decide what course of action will happen next.. where they will go etc... As you could imagine, this could entail a LOT of prep-work for the Game master, and you would be right.

I'm thinking that there are two ways to go about this.
1) flesh out every inch of the setting where the players will be adventuring so that you have something for any direction they may go...
2) Outline the area and have 3 to 5 "quests" on hand for them to select.  As they quest, the area will get fleshed out.
...and of course, always have a bunch of pre-rolled random encounters.

There are also so many other cool things in the Golarion settings that never come into play in the adventures, like the various knightly orders and guilds and the pathfinder society.  I thought it might be cool to also incorporate those in order to have players try to be a knight or a guilds man etc...

I really like Skyrim, and The Land of the Linnorm Kings offers the perfect setting for a Skyrim-esque sandbox adventure.  The only problem is the name of the region.  "The Land of the Linnorm Kings" must be the most ignorant name of any region in all Golarion.  Therefore, that's the firs change I'll make... The people who live in The Land of the Linnorm Kings call it Slakdia... and Skaldia belongs to the Ulfen!!!