Idea: Death on the Reik as a sandbox adventure

As noted in Part 2 of my review of Death on the Reik, I don’t think either the 1st Edition or 4th Edition version is a proper sandbox adventure. How could you make it one? This is a brief attempt at laying out how you might go about that – the intention being that you end up with quite a similar adventure, but with increased player freedom in how they progress through it. (It won’t make any sense unless you’re familiar with the adventure, or at least have read my review.)

I think the key features of this are to have lots of available locations – giving options for where the PCs go next – and multiple strands for the PCs to investigate – so they have a choice of what thread to follow.

In fact, both these are already present in the adventure. Given the PCs’ method of transport, the locations can be the settlements along the Reik between Altdorf and Grissenwald. We already have some detail on Kemperbad, Grissenwald and Wittgendorf (plus Unterbaum on the River Stir), so we could do with a bit of info on the other settlements (at least the major towns). This doesn’t necessarily need to be a huge amount of detail – just some information on population, names of an inn or two, and a unique fact or two about the settlement would be great.

Naturally we also need a better overall map, with an actual scale (!) and proper information on travel speed for the PCs’ barge.

As I see it there are three major strands to the adventure:

1. Tracking down Etelka Herzen (the initial adventure hook)
2. Finding the warpstone meteorite (which actually becomes the main plot in the published adventure)
3. Working out what the Purple Hand are up to with their odd warnings

As noted we need a much stronger hook (for instance reintroducing the wizard Heironymous Blitzen to the core plot, or perhaps using Quintus Fassbinder, the researcher into Chaos cults referenced in Enemy in Shadows). And we need to introduce a bit more concrete information for the PCs to discover about the Purple Hand (as written, all their encounters basically stymie any attempts at investigating the cult).

Then what I’d do is to seed clues to the above strands in the settlements. I’d recommend using Justin Alexander’s Three Clue Rule to minimise the risk of PCs running into a dead end – if they miss one clue, there’s at least two others for them to find. Clues for Strand #1 will naturally lead to Strand #2 (since the meteorite is Etelka’s own target), leading eventually to the PCs discovering the laboratory at the signal tower. Meanwhile I would leave Strand #3 (the Purple Hand) as completely separate issue (so it doesn’t feel like the world is all about this one single plot) – although eventually the lead in Castle Wittgenstein to Middenheim will rather conveniently dovetail with the PCs’ discovery that the Purple Hand have a centre of power in the same city.

I am also be tempted to suggest providing information at some stage (perhaps in Grissenwald) to the PCs so that they know they’re in a race against the Red Crown. Ideally they’d be able to ascertain the cultists’ route and (rough) departure date, so that they can proactively try to catch them or set an ambush for them – rather than more-or-less just happening across them at some point.

That’s a very broad-brushstrokes idea but it is a starting point. Comments very welcome – how would you do it?