Getting a new module is exciting. Digging through a setting gazetteer or dungeon, envisioning all the adventures you might have within it. Some modules are easy to get into - take some notes, get a group together, dive the dungeon. Order Up.
But the products that get the most press - and the modules I like the most, at any rate - aren't often so straightforward. They're big, sweeping sandboxes, epic in scope. Campaign frames like Gumshoe's Dracula Dossier or Mongoose Traveler 2e's Pirates of Drinax. I am a shameless maximalist, and so are all of my favorite RPG products.
And those games are work!
Not just for the GM! The struggles of running a sandbox game are myriad and have been elaborated on by bloggers who've been around longer than I. But as a veteran GM of many a big, showy RPG Bookshelf Setpiece, I can say sometimes the hardest thing is to just get the ball rolling and get players playing. Especially if there's homework involved - sourcebooks to read, lore to parse, dense conspiracies to unravel. Many players don't have the time or energy to put in the effort that a GM, exciting about the Big Shiny Sandbox they just bought, in learning or thinking about all the things they could possibly do.
"What do we want to do now?" is one huge killer of momentum if the party doesn't have an answer ready.
In the above games, and other sandboxes like Beyond the Wall and Godbound, players working out what to do next is often times a lot of sitting around and talking through possible options, eating up precious time at the table with 'dead air.' This is especially punishing in games that have a high overhead of player investment (see D.Doss) or for tables short on time. By the time the party has a working plan for what's next, an hour has passed and sessions' almost over.
I've tried to solve this problem any number of ways. Extra sessions where the party can plan 'away from the table'. Discord Servers and group chats where players can plan ascynchronously. Sometimes, with the right group, these methods can be effective - my Drinax planning sessions were, but that was mostly due to COVID and the free time the pandemic created.
Usually? They don't work very well, or they work lopsidedly. People only have so much time in their lives, and the fact your friends have pledged 3-4 hours of their week for potentially years is a commitment that should be respected and honored by everyone there. When confronted with the enormous freedom of a sandbox, some players and groups struggle to work out just what direction to go in, and that hurts your ability to prep as a GM.
My solution are Arc Menus
An Arc Menu from a (mostly) very silly game of Godbound. I tag PCs whose deal is likely to come up during play in the tags, too.
…In Only Five Microwave Minutes
Think of an Arc Menu like a 'preview' of each plot hook you've thrown your players way. This is you telegraphing to your players that you, as a GM, have content prepared for this specific eventuality. Adventures loaded and ready for bear. You may not know how they'll resolve, you may not know all the pieces, but these are ideas in the world you are excited about. Loaded, in the chamber, ready to go. The writeup is like an episode blurb on a Netflix preview.Depending on the adventure in question, some will stick around. Some won't. I as a GM usually telegraph this, to let players know there's a time sensitive factor at play, even if they might not be aware of it in character.
As a group, this takes some of the pressure off of the planning. There's no agonizing about wasted time, you have a hook to get you excited and sometimes the hint of what you might be getting into builds the suspense in a way it otherwise might not. As a GM, this is also very useful because you now know what your players are excited about and why, and you can't present a menu if you're not ready to cook a meal.
Extra Dips
I've experimented with other bits and pieces of 'Menu Tech' - for more winding adventure paths I sometimes split things between plot critical "Tent-Pole" adventures and 'side' adventures that are less pressing. I've tinkered with a voting majority for arc selection, compared to a rotating hotseat, where each player gets a chance to pick an arc they care about. Tailor things to your group. Talk to your players. The GM doesn't have to do everything alone, and the admin of how you all decide to share your limited free time on this planet is one of those.
The arcs in my Drinax game came with clocks, for example. The clocks are urgency ticks, and we rotated through every arc with one person choosing which arc to tackle next.
Check Please
I'm aware that this sort of thing is probably more in the style of 'Railroad' than a true-blue Sandbox campaign. I'm sure there's nomenclature and game philosophy debate we could have about it, and I welcome that discussion. But my goal with this post isn't to get into a "Sandbox GM vs Railroad GM" nomenclature debate - words are only tools to further our understanding, and the above is a tool to help folks run smoother, better games. I don't use Arc Menus for every game I run. I don't use it in my current games. But when I've got a group I know wants a lot of choices, but absolutely hates planning, I bust out my prep and I start scribbling up a menu. I hope this helps you run your games the way it's helped me run mine.
