So I've been talking quite a bit lately about this Feywild sandbox adventure I've been working on. And apparently I must have passed some sort of internal threshold for interest because I've begun trying to develop another, different, possible campaign in my usual more or less linear adventure construction fashion.
I think the main reason why has been because throughout developing this it really felt to me like story motivation was lacking somehow. Likely this is the fault of the premise I had for the adventure in the first place which I kept trying over and over to ground a bit better somehow and as of yet I have not developed a satisfactory answer to that problem. Normally I don't have to worry too much about motivation in my more-or-less linear campaigns for what ever reason. But this is a problem I've encountered in adventure making before no matter what the structure and for me the answer is often that I need to set it aside and fiddle with something else for a bit and perhaps in doing so a better answer or inspiration will come to me.
Oddly the thing I have begun working on hearkens back to an idea that I had had prior to working on this setting. I don't recall that I got very far on the idea, really, before I was distracted by the idea of making a sandbox feywild setting.
And in accomplishing that - a setting - I think I have done fairly well. I have a setting set around a series of conflicts which can make for an adventure. Honestly it's the sandbox part of this that vexes me. I have a ton to develop and, for me, it makes far more sense to do more developing while running the adventure itself after I get a handle on where my PCs want to go next.
Also the announcement of a sandbox campaign hasn't seemed to ignite any kind of fire in my gaming group so I'm unsure if all of this would go to waste anyway because they aren't into it. At the very least I shall publish it here because it's been one of those labors of love that you sort of want to show off but I want to give my players the first look at everything in the adventure. So I can't put it here yet. Which sort of bums me out too. *sigh*
I guess instead I'm going to talk about a campaign I did years ago in D&D 3.5. It was set in a world created for the campaign, called Unaria. The basic premise of the adventure was that the nations of man and dwarves and halflings (the elves died out long ago) is divided and scattered and wrapped up in their own petty (and not so petty) problems and meanwhile the nation of draconians (rather akin to Dragonlance but set around the evil dragon types of Fire, cold, poison, acid, etc.) was multiplying and gettting ready for war. The PCs basic goal of the adventure was to unite the free peoples of Unaria to stand against the dragon armies before it was too late and they were all wiped out forever by their rapidly increasing numbers.
All of this was told to two of the PCs who had to sneak their way in to the White City - last refuge of the last of the elves to retrieve the knowledge of the elves in finding some way to defeat their enemies. Key to this effort was a hidden sword called the Blade of Udun which was the only thing that would slay the Draconians' god. The two PCs that were there were told by the goddess the stakes of this whole adventure and to aid them in succeeding she blessed them. They became elves and were gifted with additional powers. This was to be a sign from the goddess.
So the PCs return to their home city only to find that the general that led the forces of good in this area in a city sitting atop a huge cliff running for many miles in either direction had been corrupted into some sort of wraith by some evil force - the force held within the Blade of Udun and the PCs had to fight him then lead the city's defense against the horde of White Draconians that were marching on the city. Revealing to be elves and showing off the blade got the disparate elements of the region to stand together just long enough to defeat the draconian army. The region they began in was safe for now. But there were a lot of lands left to go and the blade kept trying to corrupt those who wielded its vorpal blade.
Then for the rest of the adventure it broke down in similar ways - a new region with new problems to overcome, plenty of awe at the return of the elves and such. Many more surprising revelations were had along the way: One character died and a quest to find the White Fire of the Elves was had to bring her back in a very Gandalf the White sort of way, many evil converts with one arm each only to find out just where those arms went when confronted with the monstrosity spawned by those evil sacrifices, a halfling yoda-like mentor in the ways of the power of the White Fire of the elves. Lots of stuff. Hell, I've forgotten half of it by now.
The reason I talk about this is that it was an adventure that was declared to be the best one I had done to date. So I've been doing some analysis in trying to figure out why that might be. And that analysis is what led me off the track just a few days ago, trying to come up with another adventure. Perhaps in a later post I'll talk more in depth about how that analysis is going and what I've learned from the process. But not now - this post feels rambling enough as it is.
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