D&D 3E/3.5 New campaign pathfinder or 3.5

So I am constantly making new campaigns, as my group of players is constantly changing. My goal is to make a solid campaign that kind of has a flair of everything because every time I run something my players always have a new goal or want a new experience from that. It's hard for me to find a pre-made campaign because sometimes they're not free enough for my player group, while others are too free and the direction of play is lost. I am most familiar with D&D 3.5 and pathfinder.
I have recently come to the conclusion that I was dming with the wrong mindset that it was a game, and that game was players v dm, similar to a labyrinth where the maze is set, foes are put in and however the players arrive to the end is the experience.

But upon watching the PAX D&D next live session and the ask a dm panel, I have realized that this is about story telling. And I need to provide the setting and basic plot and the players write the rest, I just help narrate.

That being said, my campaign takes place in a setting where 100s of years ago a cult awakened an ancient god, and intended for him to enter the world and make cult, rulers of the new world which they would then shape in their image. Upon success the god began to enter the world, however as he entered and his portal was opened, the environment of his plane seeped into the natural world. Giving the world a chaos, where magic's effect had a chance to be intensified or diminished dramatically. The chaos then on happen chance diminished the ritual and prevent the god from entering the material plane. However the chaos did not leave, and every time the chaos effects something on the material plane it thickens. Eventually the chaos was not only effecting magic but everything on the material plane. Anything that tapped into the chaos was warped by the chaos, giving different monsters.

Common folk, now afraid to live outside the norm changed their society to civilization seen mostly in western films. However magic is still taught but frowned upon my society, even divine casters refrain from magic when possible.
Every 5 years nations gather parties of adventurers to find an ancient tome and hopefully find a way to dis-spell the chaos or find a new agent to counter act it.
This where the players enter, for any persons who save the world from the chaos and present the tome will rest in eternal glory. The goal is for them to eventually find out what the tome is, how to get there, and then what must then be done to save the world.

My reason for this plot is it gives me a setting where players who know too much about the strict offical mechanics of the game can't metagame as much.
Do you have any suggestions for my campaign, anything I could change, add, or maybe pre-made settings I should explore? Thanks for reading all that and for any help you can give.

Sounds to me as if you wanted to replace the classic "good vs. evil" struggle with a "chaos vs. order" conflict. I'd think long and hard about what the ramifications of Chaos as the great enemy entails. This doesn't only affect the use of magic. For example, individual freedom, art, (certain kinds of) music, certain professions etc. might be seen as unsavory or even restricted and prohibited outright.

I'd implement the "civilized" world as an autocratic regime where every action, even every thought is controlled by the powers-that-be. Laws are enforced to the letter. All this out of fear of what would happen otherwise, were anybody to open the gate on chaos. The lawful aspect of life in this part of the world could have developed self-enforcing power: neighbours report on neighbours, thieves find themselves confessing and delivering themselves to jail, lotteries produce the same row of numbers every time, children go to sleep on time, never cry, always eat up... the force of law has become so believed in, and so powerful, that it is starting to become universal.

There might also exist large swathes of countryside which are overrun with chaos. Here, monsters abound, but there's more, too: crops fail or bloom without connection to weather or soil, gangs and loose-knit clan structures are the only way to band together even temporarily (and people you once knew seem to drift away and be forgotten about quickly), people easily bicker and fall out, and in the wilder regions, sometimes cause and effect are reversed, things fall upward or sideways or not at all, spoken words come out garbled or french etc.

Obviously, the world is unbalanced, and dangerously so. Only in the border regions is life as we know it possible - everything else is either a more-or-less benevolent tyranny, or pure unadulterated arbitrariness. But even in the border region, the twin lure of either security (order) or freedom (chaos) is hard to resist.

The PCs will likely have to travel into both "extreme" regions, try to fit in, and mellow people's stances - maybe through some highly symbolic, spectacular act of some kind.


I know this is still very abstract, but maybe it gives you some ideas. Could make for a very unique, very memorable setting, which can even allow good and evil PCs to work together - the true conflict lies elsewhere anyway!

I'd advise looking closely at everything to do with the Far Realm- that's supposed to be the place where Madness dwells, a home for the sort of tainted Chaos the OP appears to be going for. The original cultists probably opened a Far Realm portal, and that's what's been spreading; 3.5 rules for Far Realm corruption were published in Dragon #330. Dungeon #134 (oddly, published almost a year after the Dragon issue) has one of the best Far Realm adventures put to paper in it, "And Madness Followed." That adventure features the King In Yellow (the play, and indirectly, the creature) and what happens when a traveling troupe performs the play in various locations.

The above post about a Law v. Chaos conflict is also good; I myself featured Law/Chaos conflicts in my own games frequently- including a civil war started among the world's (rather civilized) Dragon clans that split Dragon society along the Law/Chaos axis rather than the standard Good/Evil. So the war featured Golds and Blues fighting against Reds and Coppers, among other examples I could give. Got savage pretty quickly.

There was a Babylon 5 1st edition book called 'Darkness and Light' dealing with the history of 'Vorlons' and 'Shadows', elder races of the Babylon 5 universe that pretty much were order and chaos incarnated. The book (and the TV show) manage to show how both cannot be considered 'good' of 'evil'. I imagine the book could offer some inspiration for your world. Interestingly enough both races used 'magic' in mortal races as a weapon in their war - the Vorlons (order) created/strenghtened telepathic powers (mind control magic, divination magic...) while the Shadows used 'technomagic', which was more flashy and destructive. That model could be mirrored with different magic philosophies in D&D as well.