Gizzard said:
Tangent: Do people who have played RA feel like it fits into a campaign world? From looking it over and from reading the design philosophy I didn't really feel it was intended to be a part of a world. It's just so lethal that it's not condusive to role-playing; it's more about tactical dungeon exploration. (Which is fine with me; I'm just saying I wouldn't worry about building a complex world around a dungeon that is likely to TPK your group twice in the first session.)
Well, I've built the campaign around RA a bit. You see, The players were in Sigil and wanted to dungeon crawl for money and experience and I had the entire RA series. I also had the web enhancements printed out. So I said there was a portal in Sigil with an easy portal key; simply write and burn a eulogy about your own death.
I placed the portal a few days south of RA and I did a few random encounters before they got there. They cleared out the first two levels, checked out the wilderness a bit and decided to set up shop. I placed a city a day north of where the RA wilderness map ends. I also emphasized the RA wilderness by saying the rest of this world was pretty settled in, so no one would let a yuan-ti pureblood (the PC with the leadership and stronghold feats) build a fortress anywhere else in the world but that area.
It works out pretty well as I've declared that RA has made the region unsuitable for anyone else to bother colonizing so it has remained one of the few 'wild' regions left in the world and the only wild region worth colonizing. The web enhancements have really made it a great place for them to adventure and build on.
It's been pretty fun so far even though they've only gotten to the second level, they're having fun slaughtering monsters to make it their territory. It's a huge area (I calculcated approx. 185 by 135 miles, 25,000 square miles and a little bigger than West Virginia) so I can always throw in more stuff. They just destroyed the troll mound, even though the trolls dogpiled and killed the sorcerer with grappling and coup de grace (bear in mind it was a weretiger sorcerer so it wasn't easy) . I threw in a spellgaunt in the spider nest, which ate the yuan-ti fighter's magic bastard sword and fled, so it's not exactly been an easy battle for them.
Plus, RA draws in adventurers on a regular basis so I can introduce new NPCs. And even if they never enter RA again, I can always have some nasty monsters LEAVE RA to go hunting.
