West marches style game in a published 4E campaign setting?

[crash_beedo]

My 4E crew has lately been expressing interest in doing an old-school wilderness exploration game in 4E - maybe it's a bit of burnout on the H/P/E series and the long modules. 4E and the huge lists of encounter groups that are published would make it a snap to build and populate a sprawling hex crawl style wilderness ala West Marches, and jumpstart the ruins and dungeon population with 'delves' and 'sidetreks'. Pretty much plug and play, or I love Dungeon Delve.

So here's my question - for those who adore the 4E campaign settings - are there any good locations in the Realms or Eberron to place a forsaken wilderness, dotted with ruins, lost settlements, and monsters?

Maybe it's just me, I look at the Realms' map and everything is filled in, ruled over, settled or otherwise spoken for. I don't know much about Eberron, but from what I've heard of Xendrik, the whole continent is a forsaken wilderness and could work. But doesn't an exploration game kinda defeat the point of playing Eberron (ie, intrigue, House conflict, politics and skullduggery).

Otherwise I'll probably start from scratch or use something like 'Points of Light: Wildland' as a starting point - something with a dark ages feel.

If folks have opinions on the suitability of FR/Eberron for a hex crawl game, thanks!

 

[Stormonu]

for Eberron, Xen'Drik would probably work best; it's an entire continent devoted to exploration, not the skullduggery and such you mention of the mainland.

My memory of geography of FR is foggy, and I'm not really familiar with post-spellplague FR. From what I remember, the Dales (especially Daggerdale), The North or the new continent - Aber, I think - would be a good bet. You possibly could use the Moonshaes if you wanted to include island-hopping in the adventures.

Edit: And there's always Myth Drannor, unless it's been repopulated after the spellplague.

Overall, I don't think any area is too well fleshed out that you couldn't do what your planning without disturbing all but the most die-hard fact conscious fan.

 

[Kurtomatic]

For the Realms, may I direct your attention to this thread by Windjammer:

New Realms = Old School

Now there are a lot of other practical questions such as hex size and total area and such, so your mileage may vary. However, I am working on a sandbox-flavored framework for this same area of the Realms, and I find "The North" plus some Sword Coast and Western Heartland areas to the south (Baldur's Gate, High Moor, Najara, etc.) to be very suitable for a points-of-light hexcrawl. It's fairly large and pretty saturated with adventure sites.

I'm working on my hex map for this area, and since I don't like the 4E FRCG map, I'm photoshopping the 3E map into shape for the 4E setting. The very first task I performed for this effort was to erase all the extraneous roads, trails, and towns from 3rd edition to match the 4E map. Once you do that, it's very clear how isolated Loudwater and the surviving Delimbiyr river valley is from the rest of civilization.

As Windjammer points out, that seems to be the very purpose behind the Loudwater chapter in the FRCG.

Good luck whatever you decide!

 

[S'mon]

As you mentioned, Rob Conley's Points of Light: Wildland or Points of Light: Southland already do the work for you; Southland looks closest to the classic West Marches setup with a frontier & base town, whereas Wildland is closest to the 4e Points of Light paradigm with the collaped empire (Conley's Bright Empire for WotC's Nerath) and new dark age. Points of Light II has some interesting 'New World' type frontiers for a more exotic, Age of Discovery feel.

That said, Forgotten Realms has tons of wilderness and the default setting start in the FRCS looks great to construct a sandbox out of, with a bit of work.

 

[fuzzlewump]

I second Eberron and Xen'Drik. There is a 3.x source book just about it, something like the "Secrets of Xen'drik."

Also, the great thing about Eberron, and probably lots of published settings, but I only have real experience with Eberron to be honest, is that it gives you a ton a different gamestyles to choose from and you can pick and choose from there. Different from say, a setting that focused only on dungeon crawling where you have to write your own political intrigue.

The other side of Eberron, a major influence, is fast-paced Pulp Adventure. Particular sites in your west marches could function a lot like the settings of Indiana Jones, the Mummy, and what have you.

I think this is a good idea because you have a good base from which to work from. Eberron already has some good background, so I think you're better off coming up with your own ideas and placing them on top of Eberron, it just makes the game that much more rich.

Like I said though, it's the only campaign setting I can speak for.

 

[Cyronax]

So here's my question - for those who adore the 4E campaign settings - are there any good locations in the Realms or Eberron to place a forsaken wilderness, dotted with ruins, lost settlements, and monsters?

First, look to the Nentir Vale map in the back of the DMG1. Its mostly wilderness with just a few small settlements, plus Fallcrest.

When I DMed a short campaign therein, I made the southeastern town of harkenwold the equivalent of BECMI/Classic D&D's Black Eagle Barony. Fallcrest had a similar feel to the town of Threshold. Google 'Karameikos.'

As for Forgotten Realms:
- The Vilhon Wilds (p.193 FRCS). "Frontier unclamed by any sate, containing the wreckage of cities devastated by the Spellplague, separated by rough open country and plaguelands." For a better sandbox type feel however, I'd look for pdfs of the original FR boxed set.

As for Eberron:
- The Droaam-Breland frontier. Its an area rife with exploration and mission-based adventures.

C.I.D.

 

[crash_beedo]

Thanks for the opinions - that thread on the Loudwater area and hexmap for 4E FR is really good. It would need to be redone as smaller subhexes (5 miles per hex or so) but it's a great starting point to look at.

My basic idea came about from my frustration waiting for the 'Chaos Scar' series of delves to go anywhere (quickly). So I'm going to adapt my own version - The Valley of the Ancients, or some such similar name.

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**Sandbox Background**

When Tharizdun was chained by the early deities, a corrupt piece of the evil deity sloughed off into the astral sea, eventually crashing into the mortal world as a meteor. This 'chunk of Tharizdun' held some of his divine essence, as well as being corrupted by the shard of pure evil he planted in the Abyss. In the times leading up to the Dawn War, the massive valley and crater carved out by the meteor was a frequent battleground as servants of the deities and primordials fought over pieces of the shard.

After the Dawn War, after the time when the Primal Spirits rose up and ejected the gods from the mortal world, the valley was sealed by the Primal Spirits to prevent immmortals and other extra-planar entities from escaping the valley. The walls between the planes are thin in places where Tharizdun's scattered essence rained down in the valley, allowing frequent incursions by creatures of the astral sea, the elemental chaos, and the reflections of the world.

The shards themselves are beacons to creatures of evil, they slink across the dismal wilds and take up residence in the valley, vying for lairs and searching for pieces of the rocks... the deeper into the valley one goes, the more powerful the creatures need to be to maintain their place in the whole. The shards are sought after for their divine spark, perhaps a source of demigod power or immortality; they can be fuel for artifacts or powerful magic items; servitors of the gods seek them out to learn about the shard of evil and the origin of the Abyss; perhaps the Elder Elemental Cult seeks a way to free the Chained God by reconstituting enough of his essence; finally, they can be mutagenic agents corrupting or transforming creatures.

Nowadays, the old empire has collapsed, and the borderlands fortresses and watch towers that kept watch on the valley have fallen into disrepair. Barbarian tribes control vast tracts of the surrounding wilderness (and unbeknownst to most, the Shamans and Druids still employ ritual magic to bolster and defend the ancient menhir's and wardstones that keep extra-planar invaders from spilling out of the valley).

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I love the idea of the Chaos Scar, but I wanted a much larger valley, on a scale that would support all 3 tiers of play, giving it a 'funhouse wilderness' quality where the group could fight a wide range of encounters in a concentrated area. Deep enough in the valley, there could be caves and passages that connect to the Underdark, portals for elemental explorers, angels on missions of their deity, a small fortress of giants, the lair of a great dragon guarding it's own pulsing shard. Oh, and if I populate it with simple delves / lairs and use lots of encounter groups, I can present it quickly instead of waiting the next few years for WOTC. If any of the higher level Chaos Scar delves are solid, I'll plug them in.

I'll take a look at the Loudwater/Luruar areas for placing a long valley - Spine of the World could work, too. North of the Nentir Vale would work as well, although our current 4E used it. I know this could be placed in Xendrik, and will check out Droam-Breland.

 

[S'mon]

Oh, you might consider the Wilderlands of High Fantasy - the 3e box set or pdf I think is especially good for use as a 4e Points of Light setting.

 

[Kurtomatic]

One of the things I liked about The North was very little in the way of geography changes for 4E (and why I'm getting away with using a 3E-based map), but just off to the east, on the border of the new Netheril shadow empire, is a HUGE rift called the Deep Maw. It's one of several new rifts or collapsed regions that appeared between editions, so it doesn't exactly fit your narrative, but it is freaking huge, right next to the area I described previously (about 320 miles NE from Loudwater), and WotC has said absolutely nothing about it except that its there.

 

[Roger]

With Eberron, I'd consider Q'barra or Cyre, depending on what level of desolation I was aiming for.


Cheers,
Roger