Depicting the SF sandbox

[whswhs]

Originally Posted by thrash

The question was not how to steer them to a specific "dungeon" (however broadly defined), but how to let them know in the first place where any of the "dungeons" are. In a fantasy sandbox setting, it's easy enough to mark six or eight places on the map with an icon to indicate "something interesting that is not a city or castle." How, then, does one accomplish the same thing on a star chart or warp network diagram, without it becoming awkward or forced?

I'm not sure I understand this part. Why does it matter how you mark the map? Neither the characters nor the players get to see the map. What matters is what visible sign there is that there's something interesting in a location—visible to the characters.

Much of the time, there will be a visible sign in a fantasy landscape, such as ruins that invite exploration, and that can be seen with the naked eye. But there can also be surprises; for example, when Bilbo and the dwarves went into a cave in the Misty Mountains, they weren't expected to be attacked by goblins and dragged in front of the Great Goblin.

I agree that that's less obvious for an interstellar voyage. But the question is, what kind of voyage is it? If it's merchants, the interesting thing will be a starport where there are people to buy from and sell to. If it's explorers, it will be a planet to be landed on and explored, or scanned, or a solar system with interplanetary traffic. Whatever it is, you need to think in terms of how the travelers go about finding out what's in a system.

But I still think you can have interesting things in a wilderness other than a dungeon or a set of ruins. Run the adventurers into gold harvesting ants, or a forest haunted by giant spiders, or a band of orcs coming back from looting. Both D&D and RQ do have tables for figuring what inhabits a given hex on the wilderness map, quite apart from whether there's a ruined castle there.