Appendix Elmcat
I didn't know how to structure this post. I usually want to hand you something gameable, and an Appendix N can feel like the opposite—just a list of "here's what I like". So I flipped it: what principles, themes, and techniques do I actually use at the table? Then I worked backward to the shows, films, and games that planted them.
This was an exploratory exercise. What follows is a handful of media I love and the specific ideas I've stolen from each. It isn't a complete list—just a small batch of where my play comes from.
One Piece
The world should feel bigger than the party. One Piece nails that. There's a prior age you only ever glimpse in fragments; its veterans are still out there—grown up, graying, retired, or vanished. The setting is crowded with these people and with long-running conflicts that keep sending aftershocks through whatever small story you're in. Global factions (Pirates, Marines, World Government, Revolutionaries) push competing agendas while splintering into rival crews, local powers, and sub-factions. The world never sits still: new actors surface, stake claims, and redraw the map whether you're ready or not.
I didn't pick One Piece because it's the most original at this, but because it looks simple and goofy on the surface. You meet extreme, gonzo characters who still feel consistent with the world and its history. Offhand mentions get fleshed out much later. It's a reminder that if you run a world long enough—and keep tying new threads to its people and established events—it will grow deeper and more lived-in over time.
Princess Mononoke
Conflicts are more than just black-and-white. Princess Mononoke taught me it isn't good vs. evil; it's needs vs. cost. Iron Town shelters outcasts—women freed from brothels and people with leprosy—and keeps them fed by clearing forest and forging guns. The wolves and boars fight to guard an older balance—their violence is protective, not evil. The Emperor seeks the Forest Spirit's head for power and immortality; Jigo plays fixer for that demand; Lord Asano's samurai add yet another pressure. People act from duty, fear, pride, or survival and paint each other as villains; only Ashitaka tries to "see with eyes unclouded by hate".
Every "win" leaves a bruise elsewhere: Iron Town's safety scars the woods; taking the god's head earns favor but unleashes disaster; restoring it brings renewal and loss. That push-and-pull between needs is what I love—and it makes the world feel larger than what's on screen.
Mushishi
Violence is rarely the solution. In Mushishi we follow Ginko along back roads and village byways, learning the world's rules through landscapes, folklore, and symptoms left by mushi—primordial lifeforms that behave like indifferent spirits. The series leans hard on show-don't-tell: explanations are brief, endings leave room for ambiguity, and most problems are ecological or spiritual imbalances—often sparked by human expansion or curiosity.
Resolutions come from empathy, close observation, and small acts of restoration: naming a pattern, realigning a boundary, accepting a cost, or choosing to leave something undisturbed. That rhythm stuck with me. It's a reminder that not every crisis needs a blade—sometimes the most meaningful choice is to understand, accommodate, and let the world breathe.
Guild Wars 2
The world moves without you. I'm borrowing the idea more than the execution, but it stuck. In Guild Wars 2, zones run public events that sketch a region's story. Many chain together; success or failure flips the area into different states—towns under attack, vendors gone, routes blocked—and larger "meta" events cycle on their own schedules. When I first played, I'd stumble into fights already in motion, arrive late and only see the aftermath, or show up early with no idea what was brewing in the background. The lesson: events advance offscreen.
My character wasn't the axis of the world (even if the main plot later tries to cast you that way). That feeling of independent motion is what I carry into my games: factions advance, clocks tick, and the map changes whether the players are looking at it or not.
Majora's Mask
Time always moves on. Majora's Mask isn't my favorite of the Zelda games, but it left a deeper mark than I realized. The world runs on a fixed three-day cycle: everyone has a routine, quests open only in specific windows, and some events collide so you have to choose. You literally can't save everyone in a single loop—helping one person often means arriving too late for someone else. That landed for me years later: meaningful play comes from hard, impactful choices. Time is a relentless catalyst, not a pause button while the hero shows up.
Tracking important people and events, and letting them advance offscreen, became a pillar of my sandbox games—and this game planted that seed.
Into the Breach
Make risks and consequences visible. In Into the Breach, the enemies telegraph their next moves. You see what will be hit, who's in danger, and how the map will change—then you get one turn to rewrite that future. The clarity doesn't remove tension; it sharpens it. Every fix has a cost, and the choice is yours to make.
That nudged me toward openness over gotchas. Give players the information that matters—intentions, timers, likely collateral, and what happens if no one intervenes—so they can choose their risks on purpose. Telegraph not just threats but opportunities, and be explicit about tradeoffs. The game lands harder when players can see the consequences coming and decide which ones to accept. Chris McDowall's ICI doctrine fits perfectly here.
RimWorld
Emergent stories beat scripted ones. In RimWorld you usually shepherd a handful of crash-landed colonists on a remote planet. You spend your days building a fragile little society—shelter, food supply, defenses—while the game's AI storytellers toss complications: raiders, mechanoids, disease, wildfires, solar flares. Colonists come with skills, flaws, and relationships, so a botched surgery, shoddy construction, or an ill-timed mental break can turn a quiet day into an adventure. The fun is adapting; no two runs play the same.
As a referee, I chase that feeling. I seed procedures and well-curated random tables, then let outcomes surprise me. The emergent story we discover together usually beats anything I meticulously hand-scripted—and it's less stressful, because I get to be delighted too. The game also taught me that failure can be memorable: a colony's last stand is a good ending, and a reason to start fresh with different scars and ambitions.
Dragonheart
Monsters are people. The old "slay the dragon, save the day" trope never did much for me—and Dragonheart is why. The heart of the story is a bond between a human and a so-called monster: Draco, a wise dragon whose dignity throws human failings into relief. He shares his heart to save a prince; that prince grows into the real tyrant. Bowen, the disillusioned knight, learns the obvious-that-isn't: the worst harms are human—fear, pride, and smiling ambition—while the "beast" carries honor, memory, and restraint.
It taught me to treat nonhuman beings as people with desires and obligations, not props for a fight. If a creature is there only to be slain, I'm probably missing the more interesting story.
Curb Your Enthusiasm
Pettiness drives people. Larry David's constant testing of social rules—and his own petty impulses—sets off chains where tiny slights snowball into real consequences. People keep grudges, enforce made-up etiquette like law, and rewrite motives after the fact.
That's a cue for me: [make communities (and individuals) distinct by giving them arbitrary rules they care about. Let small slights matter. A heroic deed often lands better when the motive is human—even petty, like doing it out of spite to prove someone wrong. Relationships and motivations feel truer when a little pettiness is in the mix. Amanda P has a great post about that!
The Leftovers
Aftermath matters more than answers. The premise of the Leftovers is brutal and simple: 2% of the world vanishes in an instant, and the show is less interested in solving it than in how the people left behind live with it. It embraces ambiguity and grief, letting communities metabolize the loss in different, messy ways. That restraint taught me to focus on fallout—how events reshape people and places—rather than racing to explain every mystery.
In play, I let the world keep moving and spotlight the consequences of player actions and faction moves. They don't have to be epic: an influx of adventuring gold can warp local prices; opening a dungeon near a settlement and leaving it half-explored can draw the wrong attention; a saved life might sour a marriage. Sometimes even the NPCs don't understand what's happening to them—and it still matters to show those ripples.
Conclusion
These aren't canon—just the principles I keep reaching for. They won't fit every table, and that's fine. Taken together, they're the levers I pull for long, player-driven sandboxes.
I wanted to run games like this long before I knew how. The shows, films, and games above planted the seed; the RPG blogosphere helped me name it and sharpen it. Big thanks to that crowd—I keep finding posts that echo these ideas and nodding along.
Writing this made the through-line clearer for me. If it sparks anything for you, try your own appendix: what you like, why you like it, and where it comes from.
Further Reading
This post is part of Marcia's Appendix N Blogbandwagon hosted by the Prismatic Ostrich himself. Check out the other awesome participating bloggers: