Defend the town, for the entire campaign

[hafrogman]

If this town out in the middle of nowhere is getting attacked by hordes of monsters every week, why aren't people leaving in droves?

If the characters are saving the town every week, why aren't they being given the best equipment available as soon as it becomes obvious that they are? ("Sorry, you're not high enough level for that.")

I think these two reasons are why it works best with a smaller settlement. Why stay? It's your home, and the safety of your houses may not be much, but it beats the miles of open road and hostile terrain between here and the nearest shelter. But still, before it got this bad, most people did leave. Some may have made it. . . maybe not. But the ones that are left are the stubborn, weak or fearful. Even then, the end of the campaign could feature trying to protect a refuge train to safety, finally abandoning the town, only to find that now your enemies hunt YOU!

And this campaign would work best with found magic items, I think. You kill the orc chieftan, and his shiny sword drops lifeless from his fingers. The disheartened enemies are pushed back as their morale falters. The attack is over, for now. You pick up the fallen orc's blade, and feel its power coursing through you. . .

For a more personalized approach, you could have equipment raids into enemy settlements. The hobgoblins have started mining trace amounts of residium in the hills nearby. The raw stuff is worthless, but if you could raid their refinery, the village wise man says he will craft whatever you desire from your spoils.

 

[Aeolius]

If this town out in the middle of nowhere is getting attacked by hordes of monsters every week, why aren't people leaving in droves?

Perhaps they are nigh immortal, kept young by remaining in near proximity to an artifact or location. Or perhaps I have watched "War-Gods of the Deep" one too many times.

 

[Crothian]

Unless done right it could get old pretty quick.

If this town out in the middle of nowhere is getting attacked by hordes of monsters every week, why aren't people leaving in droves?

Where are they going to go? The town would be remote and the roads would not be as safe as the more easily defended town.

There could be other heroes in the town, the PCs just happen to be the ones that don't get killed as fast.

 

[jdrakeh]

A good place to look for inspiration are television shows like Angel and Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Both shows essentially boil down to small groups of heroes defending a town (Sunnyvale) or city (Los Angeles) from some new kind of impending evil each week, with a bigger, badder, evil that threatens to destroy the world lurking in the background (until it shows up for the season finale).

 

[Lord Xtheth]

I'm doing somthing very close to this in my Saturday 4E games. The PCs came across a "ghost town" that seemed to be shifting back and forth through time and space. They descovered that it was a powerful artifact in the hands of an insane orc that was doing the work. This artifact was a previous quest, so they returned it to the person who wanted it.
When they get back, the city is still being affected by the left over powers of the artifact. The city seemed to either move location or go to a very different timeline where there were a couple close cities. They were also in the line of attack of a mindless warforged army. They defeated enough of the warforged to force them to go arround their city. This led to the defeat of the warforged army at the city they were orriginally attacking. So the warforged declared war on the PC's city.
The war thing didn't quite go as smoothly as I planned, but the PCs did manage to defeat the warforged army by gaining their own from the 2 close cities.
Their next task was to go "shut down" the warforged assembly matrix. Which I presented as a good old-fashioned dungeon crawl. And thats as far as I've gotten in that game so far.

I think it's close to what you were immagining.

 

[ruemere]

A city under constant threat is a staple of many of my campaigns. To keep characters' interest in solving the problems you need to make sure that the threat is not something easily categorized.

For example:
- humanoids are marching south, passing the city-state, pillaging provisions and so on. At lower levels, defenders of the city deal with goblin warbands, lone trolls or ogre patrols. Later, entire tribes of violent races appear to arrive from north... in order to protect crops, to stave off endlessly migrating creatures and to avoid being spread too thin, characters need to try to forge alliances or solve the mystery of the reasons for the mass migration.
- pirate free city. This is the end of the pirate age, navies of numerous countries are patrolling the seas. One of the last major free cities needs support, daring captains and perhaps some deal with a powerful government official. Humble beginnings for pirate crew are simple, but later one has to secure not just the crew and the ship, but also a port to be able to return to.

Regards,
Ruemere

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

If you are intent on having it be a small town, 0one Blueprints just released two keen connected PDFs, one detailing a small mountain cave complex (ostensibly for a dragon and goblins) and one for the town nearby. Stick in a bigger hidden dungeon complex under the basic mountain one (Undermountain style) and you could be good to go for years.

Just have something cooler in there than the Forgotten Realms monster that births other monsters, please, unless said monster birther is something really epic and awesome like Echidna or Lilith.

 

[op1983]

This could work well in a large sprawling metropolis type city as well. In a city so large most citezens wouldnt believe that their town was just attacked by a group of vampires or that the sewer system in their town was a passageway to other groups of nasty badguys.

In a distant type village this could also work along the same lines. All the townsfolk tell what they think are just stories and oh whattya know zombies come and eat your head off!

 

[mattcolville]

This is exactly the game I've been running since the release of 4E.

The PCs begin as slaves, in a slave camp, deep in a massive, inhospitable forest.

The beginning adventure was liberating themselves. Since then, they've been working to turn their camp into a town and defend it against all manner of incursion.

So far, the players love it. The only problem occurred when I tried to take Pyramid of Shadows and incorporate it into the game. That has proven a bad idea, since even though I think it's a good adventure, the complete lack of context for their actions (apart from "these guys are between us and the boss we have to kill") has left the players complaining that the encounters aren't engaging.

There's certainly no problem with coming up with stuff for 20 levels of adventure. They're surrounded by the unknown, various factions of humanoids, and have to manage the humans in the town.

 

[Alzrius]

I agree with a lot of the advice given so far. I think this would work best in a very large town with a lot of potential for adventure right there in the city, ideally though places that can't be accessed initially (e.g. deep, forgotten dungeons below the sewers). That way, the PCs can start off fighting off invaders, and later on turn their attention to the corruption that's been festering there all along (and is probably the reason for the sieges). Ptolus seems very good for this (or even just for having a very large, very well-defined city setting).

A few other ideas:

You might want to consider having the rare adventure where the PCs actually do leave the city for a short time. Perhaps they want to take the fight to their enemies for once, and go on a raid before having to return home. A brief change of scenery can be a nice "vacation" from what's familiar, and allow for changes in the characters' hometown without them being aware of it.

Having there be a coastline can be helpful, as that opens up a lot of new possibilities for threats to be faced. After all, it's one thing to fight off a goblin horde. It's quite another thing when sahuagin start making hit-and-run raids on the docks. How do you fight off an army that can just retreat beneath the waves?