D&D 5E Expedition based adventuring

[Tiles]

Worldbuilderblog.me has great hex crawl stuff up from James Intercaso (contributer)

 

[aco175]

I like the idea overall. It has a feel to it like in some movies like Indiana Jones or even older movies where they search for lost cities of gold. An expedition to a far away land removes the players from the known and places them in another land, like Egypt for example. Getting there can take several weeks of play with setting up ships and terrors at sea. Npc's that sneak aboard ships and ones with hidden agendas or ties to another evil group wanting the treasure, or prevent someone from getting it (the movie The Mummy). Treks across the desert or jungle have natural hazards and monsters unique to that environment. Local savages may help the characters in their quest.

The extra npc's that come along all can have more role to play than mundane. A dead character can be replaced from this pool rather easy. A bad guy can emerge who tries to con locals into hurting the characters. These npcs also have skills like smithing and arrow making that the party may need. One can be a sage or sorts who knows a lot about the region. A guide that once visited here. 10 years in Dragon Magazine there was a campaign based on the Isle of Dread which has a lot of similarities.

Don't forget to end the major encounter with lava explosions and falling temples with limited time to escape.

 

[Sunseeker]

Sure, it's really not all that different from standard gameplay conceptually, except that the "town" where you return to after a quest moves with you. I wouldn't have a problem with that at all. Wouldn't be much different than a sailing-based adventure where the party needs a dozen extra hands to crew the ship.

 

[Greg Benage]

I write in the Player's Guide for my B/X exploration-focused campaigns that the adventuring company is modeled more on Conquistadores (perhaps on slightly more solid moral ground) than the Fellowship of the Ring or any other literary characters. I think the Classic D&D default campaign (mostly thinking of Moldvay/Cook here, but I think it also applied to early AD&D) was expeditions of exploration, discovery and conquest. Outfit yourselves, fill out your company with hirelings, henchmen and torchbearers, explore the wilderness (above and below ground), loot its treasures and ultimately claim and tame a patch of it on which to build your stronghold.

The thing you're suggesting that departs from the Classic model (but also brings it closer to the Conquistador one) is the backing of a wealthy patron or patrons. I think there are pros and cons to this, but I think it could be great fun.

 

[Imaculata]

The thing you're suggesting that departs from the Classic model (but also brings it closer to the Conquistador one) is the backing of a wealthy patron or patrons. I think there are pros and cons to this, but I think it could be great fun.

Just have the bad guy(s) assassinate the wealthy patron halfway into the story, and let the fun commence, muhahaha!

But yeah, this is how I run my normal campaigns these days. I don't like having everything be set in stone, with maps being fully filled in. As much fun as it is creating these really elaborate maps, and trying to urge your players to visit everything, -which is less fun.... I think it is way more fun to just have a mostly empty map, and let the players discover things for themselves. It gives the world a bit of magic that might otherwise be missing.

 

[Saeviomagy]

I think this is a pretty interesting idea. To make it really work, I think you're going to want to pre-prepare some logistics numbers, like how much you need to feed your workers per day, how much you pay them, travel times etc. You'll also want to have some numbers for how much a man can dig per day etc etc.

I don't think you need to formalize mechanics for workers dying or revolting or stuff like that - think of those as 'encounters' that need to be solved by the adventurers.

Personally I'm now intending to incorporate something like this into my own campaign: I'll make it really clear that there are large sections of dungeon that are inaccessible due to mundane concerns, along with extremely large, valuable items that require a lot of manpower to shift. I'll also make sure the PCs encounter some sort of labor representative. I think they're smart enough to put two and two together, and I make sure that gold is free-flowing enough that they'll have the funds to do this sort of thing.

I think the main difficulty is doing this early enough that the challenges introduced can't simply be magicked away, while still making the quantity of manpower required small enough to be believable.

 

[FrogReaver]

If you do incorporate it then let me know how it works. Probably be a while till I get a chance to try it

 

[77IM]

For this sort of campaign, I'd find a good set of "wilderness events" or "expedition events" random tables that you can roll on. E.g., disease starts going around, or wild animals eat some of the rations at night, or you get slowed by weather or terrain, etc.

Then I might try to abstract out things like "food" and "equipment" and "treasure" into levels that can go up and down based on the character's decisions. Like if you go out hunting your food increases, but if you explore the dungeon your treasure increases. Maybe you find an old supply cache and equipment increases. Then, random events force you to select between these resources. Like if you encounter a river you need to cross, you can build rafts (which uses up some equipment) or go around a longer way (which uses up some food). The goal of such abstractions would be to make the PC's expedition-management decisions more interesting by clarifying their impact, while keeping things abstract enough to play very quickly.

 

[FrogReaver]

For this sort of campaign, I'd find a good set of "wilderness events" or "expedition events" random tables that you can roll on. E.g., disease starts going around, or wild animals eat some of the rations at night, or you get slowed by weather or terrain, etc.

Then I might try to abstract out things like "food" and "equipment" and "treasure" into levels that can go up and down based on the character's decisions. Like if you go out hunting your food increases, but if you explore the dungeon your treasure increases. Maybe you find an old supply cache and equipment increases. Then, random events force you to select between these resources. Like if you encounter a river you need to cross, you can build rafts (which uses up some equipment) or go around a longer way (which uses up some food). The goal of such abstractions would be to make the PC's expedition-management decisions more interesting by clarifying their impact, while keeping things abstract enough to play very quickly.

You have a totally different conception of this than I do. For me most of your ideas presented here I don't care for that much. While what you are saying would work using the same basic framework I presented I think it's too different to reconcile with what I envision. So if you want to use this framework and add on a system like you described then go for it.

 

[FrogReaver]

I like the idea overall. It has a feel to it like in some movies like Indiana Jones or even older movies where they search for lost cities of gold. An expedition to a far away land removes the players from the known and places them in another land, like Egypt for example. Getting there can take several weeks of play with setting up ships and terrors at sea. Npc's that sneak aboard ships and ones with hidden agendas or ties to another evil group wanting the treasure, or prevent someone from getting it (the movie The Mummy). Treks across the desert or jungle have natural hazards and monsters unique to that environment. Local savages may help the characters in their quest.

The extra npc's that come along all can have more role to play than mundane. A dead character can be replaced from this pool rather easy. A bad guy can emerge who tries to con locals into hurting the characters. These npcs also have skills like smithing and arrow making that the party may need. One can be a sage or sorts who knows a lot about the region. A guide that once visited here. 10 years in Dragon Magazine there was a campaign based on the Isle of Dread which has a lot of similarities.

Don't forget to end the major encounter with lava explosions and falling temples with limited time to escape.

Yes, Indiana Jones was an inspiration for this idea. It would also work well for the Mummy.

I think we can consolidate this kind of adventure down to certain parts that can be either hand waved for your group or played out depending on preferences.
1. Planning the expedition. Are you joining an expedition and want to pick the best one for your team? Are you setting up the expedition and working out all it's details including who and what to bring? Does the DM gives you certain expedition packages you can choose from instead of leaving you to freeform it all?

The point is that there are numerous ways to address the planning phase depending on player preferences.

2. The journey to the ruins You can play out each and every day. You can pause travel when the party needs to do something important fast forward every other time in the form of a narrative. You can bypass most all of the journey and just roll on random tables to see what happened.

3. Exploring the ruins This part needs played out but it can be done with letting the workers be more autonomous or with giving the players more control over where and how the workers operate.

So depending on player preferences you have some choices on how to run these. My preferences may be different than yours. But I think this list more or less includes the essentials and the possible ways to handle them in this kind of adventure.