In pre-printed tabletop games, and even morein freeform adventures, we know our location from the start. Your pre-published map shows all three levels of the castle, along with a a list of shops and other points of interest in the town. The spaceship blueprint has a list that covers crew quarters, the engine room, gunner stations, etc. Or maybe your book doesn’t have maps or blueprints, and presents flavor text and broad descriptions of the the people and places it covers. Both maps and descriptions, even general ones, are helpful when you’re running a game, and can cut down prep time for a scene. For those of us who fly by the seat of our GM pants in sessions, though, these may sometimes become a hindrance when we haven’t had a chance to go over them in advance. When presenting players a location, knowing where things are placed, what's secret or hidden, what doors are sealed/locked, where all of the traps are and so on, are all things you should probably know ahead of time. But ...

There have been a lot of box sets when it comes to the history tabletop games like Dungeons & Dragons . Red boxes , Blue boxes , white boxes , reprints , fan collections , etc. That isn’t the kind of box we’re talking about this time, though. On the surface, roleplaying games may look like the ultimate sandbox: you can do or create anything within the context of the agreed-upon rules. When it comes to actually running your own campaigns, of course, your actual mileage may vary. One key factor in that is the nature of the Game Master's role. Even a seasoned storyteller with years of experience may not have the bandwidth to keep up with a campaign that allows a very wide latitude - this is likely why pre-printed campaigns and adventures remain fairly popular. While we all want to tell our own stories, it's a huge benefit for the GM to have a framework of  pre-made challenges, pre-rolled bad guys, and previously-seasoned flavor text . For those running game, the time savings ...