D&D 5E Mish Mash campaign - advice needed

Rabbitbait · Jun 3, 2019

Hi all,

I'm just thinking about my next campaign (currently in the last chapter of Tomb of Annihilation) and the concept I have come up with is:

Set in Stormreach, Eberron - so crazy jungle frontier port town on a jungle continent where time and distance are really weird and everyone is competing to find and loot ruins. (effectively a gold rush town).
Bring in the new 5e Numenera - since time is weird, ruins from the future and the past might be found
Aim for a campaign that is set around a base that the party sets up - so a solid place they return to.
Start with the new Saltmarch adventure
Also start with Dragon Heist - so have the two campaigns crossing over each other.
Possibly head into some of the later 'Giants' adventures later on.

My question is - will Dragon Heist and Saltmarsh work in this context? I know that they are set elsewhere, but will they be able to be moved without too much hassle? I haven't read them as I am hesitant to buy them if they are going to not work with the concept I have put together.

ccs · Jun 3, 2019

Yeah, both DH & Saltmarsh will work. There's nothing so intrinsic to either that makes porting them to your own setting any more difficult than plugging them into a spot on your map.
Dragon Heist will work in any large city.
Saltmarsh all you need is a coastal town & an area of coastal swamp.

Before you do that though I'd suggest asking your players if there's anything they'd like for the next campaign.
That's what we always do when we approach the final section of a campaign (be it a AP or homebrew).

Rabbitbait · Jun 3, 2019

My players have requested an urban campaign. Other than that it's up to me. Stormreach is smaller than Waterdeep and probably bigger than wherever Saltmarsh is centred, but hopefully it is in the middle enough that it is believable.

Fenris-77 · Jun 3, 2019

Smaller than Waterdeep might be good anyway. Waterdeep is frickin' huge and the sheer scope can be daunting to run an urban campaign in. Something smaller with a more manageable set of NPCS and factions might be the way to go. I like the goldrush town idea - maybe watch some Deadwood to get in the mood. Great source for social interaction pillar stuff in a frontier town.

aco175 · Jun 3, 2019

A few good recurring NPCs and you are good. Good and bad.

DEFCON 1 · Jun 3, 2019

Personally, I don't think Stormreach is the best place to set Ghosts of Saltmarsh. The most obvious place for that book in Eberron is Q'Barra-- there are meant to see several small towns on Adder Bay, and the entire area is surrounded by many lizardfolk tribes. So the land is already set up for Saltmarsh to be dropped in with a minimum amount of necessary changes to the area. In addition, as mentioned in the 3E Eberron Campaign Setting, Q'Barra has three distinct communities of the common races in the Adder Valley-- New Galifar, the refugees of the Last War in the area of Hope, and the Cyran refugees-- and these could be aligned to the three factions within the book (or swap in Lhazaar pirates or the Emerald Claw for the Scarlet Brotherhood faction for a "more bad guy" group.)

The other question though is do you really want to run another jungle campaign after just finishing Tomb of Annihilation? Seems to me its almost too bad you've just run ToA, as out of all the WotC adventure books, ToA would be the best one to be used for a Xen'drik focused campaign. Heck, you could have just plucked all the adventure sites out of that book and dropped them into Xen'drik, along with three Against The Giants modules.

Rabbitbait · Jun 4, 2019

DEFCON 1 said:
Personally, I don't think Stormreach is the best place to set Ghosts of Saltmarsh. The most obvious place for that book in Eberron is Q'Barra-- there are meant to see several small towns on Adder Bay, and the entire area is surrounded by many lizardfolk tribes. So the land is already set up for Saltmarsh to be dropped in with a minimum amount of necessary changes to the area. In addition, as mentioned in the 3E Eberron Campaign Setting, Q'Barra has three distinct communities of the common races in the Adder Valley-- New Galifar, the refugees of the Last War in the area of Hope, and the Cyran refugees-- and these could be aligned to the three factions within the book (or swap in Lhazaar pirates or the Emerald Claw for the Scarlet Brotherhood faction for a "more bad guy" group.)

The other question though is do you really want to run another jungle campaign after just finishing Tomb of Annihilation? Seems to me its almost too bad you've just run ToA, as out of all the WotC adventure books, ToA would be the best one to be used for a Xen'drik focused campaign. Heck, you could have just plucked all the adventure sites out of that book and dropped them into Xen'drik, along with three Against The Giants modules.

Looking at the information that is available, I think you are right. It looks like Saltmarsh is set around a tiny village, so trying to expand that to a city would be quite a job. So I think I will go with Dragon Heist. Maybe I should stick with the location in the module, or transfer it to Sharn instead.

Does anyone know another city based adventure that would partner nicely with that (not Dungeon of the Mad Mage, that does not inspire me at all)?