D&D 5E Expedition based adventuring

[FrogReaver]

What I am proposing is an "expedition based campaign". Players go to a big city and get hired on as adventures to join an expedition that will go out and explore remote places like ruins and abandoned castles and such that some wealthy NPC has determined may contain highly valuable treasures.

The operation will consist of certain NPC workers that help with anything that requires large manual labor. Maybe a large amount of rubble needs cleared away from a passage. Maybe there is just a ton of loot that needs carried back to town. Maybe, a tunnel needs dug. Maybe a bridge needs constructed. Maybe they are just lookouts.

Part of the PC's job is to protect those workers. But the PC's shouldn't just do so because it's their job. Without the workers doing their jobs, it may be extremely hard if not impossible for the PC's to find and bring back the treasure. Also the PC's can't just waste time because the workers have a limited amount of supplies and rations.

The PC's will have a small encampment with the workers where they can rest at of a night. However, such an encampment so far away from civilization can at most be claimed to be a semi safe place to rest.

How this will actually play: The players in the big city will be given a handful of expeditions to choose from. They can use their skills to try and make sure they pick the best expedition. Once they have chosen an expedition they will begin the journey to the expedition site. This can be handwaved or some meaningful choices can be baked into it, such as do you spend time finding a surely safe way across the river or do you brave the rapids and hope you don't lose any supplies or horses or men. Your character skills can come in handy for helping to protect against such losses. Once at the expedition site you can choose to set up a campsite. Any major thing you do can be potential be hand waved or the party can be presented with a small handful of options with certain benefits and drawbacks. Finally once the exploring starts the DM can basically design the dungeon anyway he wants without having to worry as much about the 5 minute adventuring day seeing as their are so many time contraints and the players aren't guaranteed to even get a full long rest even if they desired. (Such a campaign would also play really well with extended long and short rest rules, ie short rest = 8 hours and long rest = 1 week).

Also once one adventure is finished the players can be offered more adventure choices to keep this going. Each expedition can be written as it's own module. This makes mixing and matching them for your world very easy and also incentivises community creation of adventures because they can be used in nearly any campaign like this. To the players the world should feel very open and large and they would have plenty of meaningful choices to make. However, the world wouldn't be a strict sandbox which in some ways helps focus the players toward a single goal. However, if done correctly it would feel semi-sandboxy due to the amount of player agency that can be given.

Thoughts? Opinions?

 

[BoldItalic]

No.

 

[discosoc]

I'm running a side campaign at the moment, that takes place in Pre-Eldrazi Zendikar (a Magic: The Gathering setting). The expedition angle is basically the core of it, and it's a lot of fun. For there's a big focus on things like gearing up for each adventure based on where you're heading, the environment being a deadly enemy, and your antagonists often just being competitors rather than some random world-ending Big Bad (that last part is ironic once you know anything about the setting).

For short rest and long rest, I just rule that you generally don't get a long rest while out on an expedition, unless there's a particularly safe place to rest up (nice inn at a port city on your way to the ruin or something). Beyond that, it's all short rests, and players have to plan accordingly.

It's fun, and sometimes I wish it was our main campaign.

 

[Halivar]

I would not bother writing mechanics for how the laborers perform, or somesuch. You can have inflection points in each expedition where the players have to make a choices about who to protect, and what loot to seek out, and what dangers to take, and each one has an impact on what they an reasonably accomplish later. Beyond that, hand-wave it. Definitely don't stat it out or come up with fiddly resource management that requires bookkeeping of either the players or you.

 

[leonardoraele]

I would not bother writing mechanics for how the laborers perform, or somesuch. You can have inflection points in each expedition where the players have to make a choices about who to protect, and what loot to seek out, and what dangers to take, and each one has an impact on what they an reasonably accomplish later. Beyond that, hand-wave it. Definitely don't stat it out or come up with fiddly resource management that requires bookkeeping of either the players or you.

Unless the players themselves like this approach. Personally, as a player, I like the resource-management thing, as long as the system is well made and I can use it to change the course of the campaign.

What I mean is both approach works, you just have to know your players enough to know which one they will like most.

 

[FrogReaver]

No.

Well that was insightful.

 

[FrogReaver]

I would not bother writing mechanics for how the laborers perform, or somesuch. You can have inflection points in each expedition where the players have to make a choices about who to protect, and what loot to seek out, and what dangers to take, and each one has an impact on what they an reasonably accomplish later. Beyond that, hand-wave it. Definitely don't stat it out or come up with fiddly resource management that requires bookkeeping of either the players or you.

Laborers give a naturally occuring time limit to an expedition.
Their usefulness to the PC's in finding and acquiring treasure serve as incentive for the PC's to protect them.

I'm not sure PC's in a game without such mechanics would leave the dungeon on schedule or care to help the NPC's over leaving them to die and directly finding the treasure.

 

[Rhenny]

I'm a fan of "hub" type adventures like what you are planning. If you are really good at roleplaying some of the npcs I bet you can get the players to really interact meaningfully with them and create bonds so that protecting them is more emotionally charged. I actually see a great opportunity for developing psychological terror if one or more of the npcs go missing or are killed in strange ways. (I.e. Aliens, The House on Haunted Hill, Predator, etc.). I don't know if you want to infuse terror/horror into your campaign, but there is that potential.

 

[ChrisCarlson]

This sounds like a great campaign idea for Primeval Thule! Sending "Conan" and company, along with a horde of laborers, out into the dangerous unknown to retrieve mysterious lore and ancient artifacts (preferably of a Lovecraftian bent...) for a secret organization or rich, shady cabal for some untold future purpose.

 

[Jediking]

Sounds a lot like a hexcrawl with a focus on resource management. There are loads of advice on running hexcrawls, maybe look to those for some ideas.