Advice on sandboxy multiple adventure path mishmash

[3catcircus]

So I'm thinking of converting several older adventures for our new 5e game.

Anyone have any experience with combining/overlapping several adventure paths with addition of single or short campaign arc adventures into a multi-thread sandbox? I've had some difficulties in the past with this - tried multiple breadcrumbs to weave in RHoD (in Channath Vale) into the main plot from Mysteries of the Moonsea, but my players wouldn't bite because they were too hung up on murdering the thorn in their side guard captain from Hillsfar in the second section of Mysteries of the Moonsea. I was able to weave in Sons of Gruumsh very easily, and throw in links to converted adventures from the 2e Myth Drannor boxed set, but the overall architecture of Mysteries of the Moonsea resulted in the campaign petering out before I could get them to bite on RHoD as a means of shifting the campaign focus so they stayed interested. They quickly asked why they should stay in Hillsfar when it was a racist town so I had difficulty laying groundwork to get them willing to travel to Mulmaster.

Is there a solid main adventure path that anyone can recommend where I could readily throw in a bunch of different breadcrumbs leading to other adventures/adventure paths?

Which ones (from any editon of D&D, as well as the 3.5 DCC or PF adventures) are recommended?

 

[Lanefan]

My off-the-cuff suggestion would be to have your first adventure or two be stand-alones, not specifically tied to any one path, into which you can lob hints and clues and breadcrumbs leading to one or more possible arcs/paths/series. Then see which one(s) your players/PCs pick up on and follow, and run that. From there, interweaving the others should be relatively simple.

Assuming you're going for a long and intricate campaign, another option is to have the party split after a few adventures such that one group* follows one path or series while the other group* does a different path or series, and you find a way to tie them together down the road...and then maybe split them again, who knows?

* - depending on time and availability you can run these concurrently on different nights or run one group for a few adventures then drop it, run the other for a few adventures, then jump back to the first...repeat as required.

Lan-"our crew does this sort of thing on a regular basis"-efan

 

[Yaztromo]

A classic group of adventures that may be usedful for you is In search of adventure, that is a collection of parts of the BECMI adventures B1-B9. You can add easily more threads and hooks to this collection.

 

[Libramarian]

Your hooks should mostly be rumors rather than scenes. Remove the information from irrelevant attachments to particular NPCs/places/events. Then you can weave them into conversation as seems natural and appropriate with whatever NPC the party chooses to talk to.