Level Up (A5E) DM advice request

[MegaloRob]

Hey guys.

I am getting ready to run a campaign called Have you found it? By Peterson games.

I am looking for advice/insight on adding in more exploration tier stuff from A5e. I would love any brainstorming you guys could help with.

This campaign takes place in a fantasy city modeled after New Orleans. It doesn't travel anywhere else.

At level 1 the party are outsides hired to come in and solve some murders. As it turns out a group of bards have found the king in yellow okay and it has driven them mad. Now they are trying to summon the king in yellow.

It should go from level 1 to 14.

But total urban setting, fantasy horror/noir/mystery.

What are your thoughts.

 

[Steampunkette]

The first piece of advice I'd like to give you is: Focus on Tier not Environment.

Find stuff that fits your players level range and is an interesting challenge to them... then change the environmental trappings to make it fit your setting. Or don't, depending on how Cosmic Horror you wanna go.

A sucking quagmire type mechanic where a party member succumbs to Quicksand is all the more implausible and terrifying if the city streets simply go from being asphalt to watery black sludge. Or you could keep exploration challenges in a realm of Dreams that the subconscious mind of the King in Yellow presses against like a radioactive slime.

Nightmares and Dreamscapes are, after all, just as much reality to Yog-Sothoth as any other.

 

[MegaloRob]

Steampunkette I had not though about the dreaming! That is clever.

What I love about exploration challenges and journey activities at how they are the small moments that really let the player tell their characters story.

I will found times to incorporate this in with dreams.