Sandboxing tips: The tentpole dungeon
I recently changed my mind on the big tentpole dungeon. A dominant (if not necessarily the dominant) playstyle in the OSR is the wide-open sandbox. Players usually start as nobodies exploring a frontier beyond which is an unknown, depopulated wasteland, usually brimming with adventure sites and treasure. Taking a cue from Keep on the Borderlands, a lot of these homebrew campaigns seem to feature a dungeon that stands out from the rest. It's usually bigger than other adventure sites, and accordingly features hallmarks of megadungeon play, such as faction interaction (although it doesn't strictly have to be a megadungeon). The idea is that, while the party might discover other adventure sites, this is the one they keep coming back to and chipping away at little by little, as a mainstay of the campaign. This is the tentpole dungeon. I've been aware of the concept of the tentpole dungeon for a while, but I never really got on board. It felt more organic to me to have lots of a