D&D 5E Which setting for my PotA campaign

Hey,

I plan to run princes of the apocalypse this spring with my usual table. They are a group of players that think they like sandbox, open-world, character driven campaigns, but fail to deliver characters with meaningful motivations or background each time, and eventualy each game fizzles after a few sessions. So I want to be able to run with them a full campaign to get them in a D&D mood before running more advanced campaings like CoS and SKT.

The question: Has any of you been confronted that it feel strange that, in a quest to save the world from an elemental apocalypse from obvious cult activity, only 4 heroes are actualy working to save the world, while Waterdeep, Neverwinter, Luskan, Silverymoon, Miranbar etc stand idle while they are only 3 days away? What prevented your players, even more when they grow in ranks in diverse faction, from just asking the large cities to get involve and deploy some troups?

I hesitate between setting my campaing in the actual Dessarin Valley or in the Nentir Vale, from the 4e PoL, where there's an easy answer to the idleness of any organized army: there's none.

All of those places are way more then 3 days away. None of them really have standing armies ether just defense forces. Plus none of them are involved with the Dessarin valley. As they have their own share of problems at their home territories.

They have little reason tot get involved. And would not know how big the situation is anyway.

What about LMoP? It gets higher ratings than PotA and has a lot more variety while still have an overarching plot.

vincegetorix said:

They are a group of players that think they like sandbox, open-world, character driven campaigns, but fail to deliver characters with meaningful motivations or background each time, and eventualy each game fizzles after a few sessions.

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Hmm - traditional sandbox is just 'you are an adventurer' - it only depends on the pcs being willing to proactively go out and do adventurer stuff. In depth backgrounds can actually be a negative for that.

I agree that pcs dealing solo with apocalypse cults makes more sense in Points of Light than in Forgotten Realms. I had this issue a bit running high level 4e FR with Orcus plotting to take over the world, so I made sure to mention how he was active on many fronts, and occasionally tell the players of the successes & failures of other hero groups opposing him - and there were significant off-screen successes by npcs, such as the defeat of Valindra Shadowmantle near Neverwinter. You could do similar with PoTA, give news reports and rumours of NPC heroes battling the cult, how they defeat some cult groups off screen, and are defeated by the parts of the cult you want to run.

S'mon said:

Hmm - traditional sandbox is just 'you are an adventurer' - it only depends on the pcs being willing to proactively go out and do adventurer stuff. In depth backgrounds can actually be a negative for that.

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Yep. That's the problem: they dont create adventurers, they create stats-blocks with voices and wait to be confronted with random encounters in a village They always ask for a big setting like Skyrim or such, but most DMs quit after they realise that my fellow players dont care to discover the world around or get involved with it. They're mostly murderhobos that need to be fast-fowarded to the next fight; they just dont realize it. They actually loved HotDQ because of the railroad.

That's why I thought that PotA was more openworld than HotDQ while being more streamlined than SKT.
I'll probably start with LMoP anyway, but I need a ''high level'' adventure because most of them are use to high-power game.
One started gaming at a table without Dm a few years ago playing a gestalt mage/beguiler lvl 30, and the other were ''trained'' during 4e in a campaign based on a novel idea from the DM who made all characters part of a prophecy so they could not failed or be killed. I swear, we had a dwarven paladin, that once she fell to 0 HP, transformed into an invincible fire giant. Every character had such powers. So yeah, my table is not used to have to interact with a setting, most time they wait until the setting interact with them, then decide if they care enough to go on a quest (generaly a Dm need to promise them magic loot or levels).

The things friendship makes you do...

PotA should be perfect for you.

The group I'm running it for seem to be exactly the same as yours and PotA is easy to give the illusion of sandbox.

[SBLOCK=Minor spoiler]I've made very light the missing delegation and focused more on the individual plot hooks. This has make it easier to keep established political powers out of the picture.[/SBLOCK]

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vincegetorix said:

The question: Has any of you been confronted that it feel strange that, in a quest to save the world from an elemental apocalypse from obvious cult activity, only 4 heroes are actualy working to save the world, while Waterdeep, Neverwinter, Luskan, Silverymoon, Miranbar etc stand idle while they are only 3 days away? What prevented your players, even more when they grow in ranks in diverse faction, from just asking the large cities to get involve and deploy some troups?

Click to expand...

Although it may be presented that way, the end threat of PotA is far from an elemental apocalypse and is certainly not world threatening. Its more like a local problem that could build over time. Besides, none of that is even apparent really until the party is pretty deep into the adventure and able to deal with it themselves. Early on it just seems to be a bit of minor cult activity.

This is partly why I liked this adventure after the world impacting events of HotDQ.

Thanks for all the advices. I'll try the campaign, and if all goes well I'll try to run a mix of SKT and RoT by running a massive campaing in that order to play the two big world events as one big threat to the world, as the sword coast face the danger of the rebirth of the war between dragons and giants in that order:

-Legacy of the Crystal Shard-»level 1 to 4
-SKT's Rumbling + Raid on Greenest as a three-sided battle for Bryn Shander -» level 4 to 6
-The party follow the Dragon cult to their castle, find Harsnag as a prisoner in the castle -» level 6 to 7
-SKT till the end, the party learns that Imryth is an agent of the cult trying to keep the giant occupied while they gathered the mask. Level 7 to 10.
-The Giants Crusade: the party storm the rest of the giants lair and gather an army against the dragons. They then follow the events of RoT till the end, but with the Giants as allies instead of the lord alliance. Level 10 to 15.

Set it in Greyhawk where at least it has a valid history and isn't shoehorned in by a marketing imperative.

Then the factions and powerful individuals that would get involved will make more sense, and it will be self-evident who doesn't get involved and why...