Points of Light

I picked up Points of Light a few weeks back and I've been reading it and wishing I had picked it up so much sooner. What a great resource - even if a "sandbox" campaign isn't your thing. Every section is chock full of short little snippets about each of the campaigns (three in all) that could be pulled out and put into any campaign. I've even hit some that could be extrapolated upon and made into entire campaigns all themselves.

I just hit the Southlands section the other night and I'm thinking of using this for my current group a bit down the road. I had planned on moving to the Ruins of Undermountain, though I may just give them a choice. I don't know if this is how a sandbox game is supposed to run, but I plan on giving them a blank sheet of hex paper, with maybe a few hexs surrounding their starting point labeled. Then just tell them (through an NPC of some sort, that their task is to scour the entire land, sweeping the land clean of the darkness that pervades there. To do so, they'll need to establish outposts and keeps in many areas (which will require a significant amount of gold, which will have to come from their pockets, which will give them a reason to adventure) in order to maintain a relative peace. They'd probably gain followers based on their Charisma (just like the old 2nd Edition rules) who they can have follow them or they can be assigned to run the keeps.

I love this idea, I would love to have had someone run a campaign like this for me.