Barry's Heartbreaking Tale: The 4 Pillars in Action

Last week I talked about the 4 Pillars of sandbox prep - location, situation, motivation, and observation. This week I’m going to show you how it works in play. With a story about a kobold named Barry.

The Setup

I ran a sandbox Open Table campaign in two locations simultaneously. One was online with players from across Europe. The other was Monday nights in a local cafe - mostly people who’d never played D&D before.

Same world. One-to-one time. Both groups interacting through rumours of each other.

I set up a Google Site to track everything. Player info, world notes, campaign diaries. The players wrote session summaries - I gave 1 XP for each one and the writing was brilliant.

The Cobalt Escape

First session. I gave them three or four rumours to pick from. They chose: sheep going missing near an old tavern outside town.

They investigated. Sheep were being drained of blood. They found the abandoned tavern, fought some stirges, headed upstairs, killed a spider. In the corner of that room: a web with two bodies in it.

“Are they alive?”

One obviously dead. The other? We rolled dice at the table. Turned out it was alive. I said it was a kobold - I knew there were kobolds in this tavern.

One player, Tag (a cleric), desperately wanted to kill it. Another player, Yara (also a cleric), wanted to save it. She took the kobold out of the web and named it.

Barry.

Once you name something, it changes everything.

Things Go Wrong

Yara hid Barry. Using rations and returning Barry to the family, they managed to make friends with the kobolds. Could have gone either way - it was player interaction that made it work.

Then Tag walked into the room with the kobolds. Saw them all together. Shouted “they’re attacking me!” and started shooting.

It was brutal. The party came in and saw it happening. They joined in. Slaughtered the entire kobold family.

Yara protected Barry. Tag tried to kill him anyway. Shot off one of his arms. Yara gave Barry all their gold. He escaped.

And swore revenge.

Why This Worked

None of this was prepped. Barry didn’t exist before the dice roll. The kobolds’ motivation was simple: they’d left the Caves of Chaos because life was hard. They wanted somewhere to live. Weren’t evil, weren’t good. Just hungry and trying not to die.

Because I knew their motivation, I didn’t have to improvise their behaviour. When Barry got returned, they were happy. When Tag attacked, they defended themselves. It felt natural because it was natural.

Location: The tavern map (Dyson Logos) Situation: Missing sheep / stirges Motivation: Kobolds want shelter and food Observation: Players named Barry, players made friends, Tag betrayed them

The tavern became known as The Cobalt Escape. Because of course it did.

Barry’s Arc

Tag never played in another session. But Barry lived in everyone’s imagination - doing Kickboxer-style training montages in the woods, getting stronger.

Later, a random encounter table rolled kobolds. I threw Barry in. He now had a gang. He’d been training with a druid in the forest. Barry could do little bits of magic.

All from a dice roll and a name.

He’d help Yara whenever she needed it. A relationship formed between those two characters that created story nobody planned. The player who ran Yara, Ruth, wrote session summaries that read like short stories. They set the tone for the whole campaign.

The Point

I couldn’t have written this. I couldn’t have made anything better through planning.

With minimal prep - a map, a situation, a one-line motivation - the story happened. Not mine. Not the players’. Ours.

This is what sandbox play does. You watch your players, listen to what they’re interested in, let dice decide outcomes. The 4 Pillars give you just enough structure to catch whatever emerges.

A line for each pillar is enough. Your referee brain fills in the rest. Between you and your players, you create something neither of you could have imagined alone.

That’s the magic of old-school play.