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Message: <blockquote data-quote="ajanders" data-source="post: 5196990" data-attributes="member: 3271">A couple of things spring to mind.1. The campaign might be centered around the activities the merchant caravan your PC's own and operate. The PC's go from town to town buying and selling goods. In a points-of light setting, that travel will probably generate enough adventure for them.At heroic levels, they're moving from town to town in merchant wagons.At paragon levels, they're moving from country to country in trading ships.At epic levels, they're moving from plane to plane in ...something. Planar spaceships?Challenges include:Finding goods-where can we find twenty swords for Sir NewlyKnight's guard? A dozen 10K gp diamonds for the resurrection demands of the Church of Holyland? A cord of veneer-grade duskwood from the Shadowfell?Finding customers: who wants forty sheep? Three unholy maces? A dimensionally stable castle overlooking the Elemental Chaos?(And how do you deliver the things? And how do you make sure you get paid?)Bandits: halfling highwaymen, sahuagin pirates, githyanki raiders.Rival companies: race for the goods or for the customersLaw enforcement: city guards, Royal Road Wardens, erinyes troopers. Maybe you're smuggling, maybe they think you are, maybe they just want to arrest you for smuggling, whether you are or aren't.Road troubles: taking shelter in caves from the snow (the dire bear objects), shipwrecked on a haunted island, the spell went wrong and stranded you on the corpse of a dead god.This has some real advantages: as the caravan moves around, you can add or remove  PC's very easily: some people decide to settle down, others decide to join up. Adding new magic items or classes can just be done in the next town.This also has a disadvantage -- it becomes very much about exploring and seeing new things. If your campaign stops moving, it dies.2. Horatio Alger. The PC's start as low-level clerks and stevedores, but must overcome street criminals and business rivals to ascend to the upper ranks of the company.In the paragon tier, PC's get to establish branch offices, hire adventuring parties to protect their caravans, and recruit adventurers to explore for new customers, trade routes, and products. Characters are working to overcome opposed or rival groups now: another trading combine, the isolationist faction of the AngryTribe people, the halfling criminal guilds, the cult of Zehir. These things are too big to be solved with your own swords and spells...you'll have to hire or recruit help.In the epic tier, the party is...heck, I don't know. That's where this starts to break down for me.</blockquote>

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