If I had to sum up what the assumption is its "The journey is just as important as the Destination" D&D is in many ways not Journey focused but Location focused. The game isn't about the journey to the fortress of five sides, its about the Tyrannical Sorcerer amassing an army in his labyrinthine Stronghold called the fortress of five sides.
In the 5e D&D games I've played this tends to be inversed, locations are small and under developed and travel is so central that there are entire sessions dedicated to simply moving from one area to another. Now its worth stating that this is not the result of 5e mechanics, 5e travel mechanics are the same they have always been its simply a result of play style.
So lets briefly look at 5e's travel mechanics and discuss it a bit, firstly you travel a number of miles per hour or day depending on the speed your traveling. The Normal travel speed is 3miles per hour and 24miles per day, there's a slower speed that allows for stealth or a faster speed that reduces passive perception. The base speed you choose to move at is then modified by the terrain your moving over, over dense forest or jungle, swamps and rocky uneven ground you move at half speed and over maintained roads you move at double speed. It is recommend that you use hex maps to help run travel as each hex
A lot of complaints I've heard about 5e travel is that its "Just a bunch of skill rolls" yes that's the point... they are abstractions to speed up play, all 3 of the skill checks Tracking, Navigation and Forage reducing the lose of certain resources be it time, food or water. There is no need to make this more complex and the same goes for the rest of travel, it works as intended and allows for fast adjudication of time passing and resource expenditure.
So Sandboxes, a sandbox is an area where the players are free to explore and travel in any direction or way they see fit. This is largely intimidating for DM's it seems like a lot to prep, but the truth is you are focusing on prepping certain things and improvising that which you comfortably can. This is where the location based gameplay I mentioned earlier can help, by focusing on prepping locations such as a town or dungeon and worrying less on the in between you can break you prep down into manageable chunks, it is not your job to worry about how the PC's get to a location only what that locations layout and content.
Improvisation is a useful skill for DM's, it takes a bit to build up the confidence and skill to improvise and I would recommend starting with small things like NPC dialogue or some dungeon dressing. As you go start trying to improvise more and more, the goal is not to make it so you prep nothing but instead that you are able to adapt to the players action and be confident in your ability to deal with the unexpected. Creating tools to help with improvisation can help I generally use name tables and reaction rolls during play, again its about prepping what you need to prep and improvising what you can.
I hope this post was helpful in some way, I enjoy talking about these subjects a lot and will touch on them again in the future.
M.C.
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