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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Faraer" data-source="post: 3677734" data-attributes="member: 6318">Gargauth, you've already got some great advice. Let me add a few things.Rather than Shadowdale, I'd start in another dale that would provide a comparable but different experience: Mistledale, Battledale or Deepingdale.Adventuring in the Dales combines four cornerstones:-- exploring ancient ruins-- the goblinkin, brigands, beasts, and other monsters of the elvenwood (see Ruins of Myth Drannor)-- the 'current clack' of the world around, including adventure hooks (as in the 1356 and 1357 rumours in the Old Grey Box)-- complex interwoven intrigues of competing interests: the Dales, expansionist Archendale, Hillsfar, Sembia, Cormyr, Mulmaster, the Zhentarim, the Dragon Cult, Red Wizards, Harpers, priesthoods, trade costers and local merchant cabals, rival adventurers, and so on.Go <a href="http://www.candlekeep.com/library/articles/sse/sse_070809-05.htm" target="_blank">here</a> and search for Ed's reply of "August 10, 2005", for an example of what this can look like. This density of goings-on is what "ties all this together", as you say, and makes the Realms feel a real place. At some point your group is likely to focus in on some theme -- such the rising merchant class, use and misuse of Art, the overhang of past empires in the modern Realms, or some set of personal and group objectives. Encourage your players to choose a good name for their adventuring band.But I would include the possibility of visiting Shadowdale. There are many plot threads there you could use:-- exploring Castle Grimstead, Castle Krag, or Alokkair's lair-- forestalling a drow incursion from the Realms Below (Shadowdale: The Scouring of the Land will help with these two)-- tracking down Lashan of Scardale and finding Aumry's staff-- working with Storm and the Harpers of Shadowdale (see <a href="http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/rl/20040609a" target="_blank">"Storm Silverhand's Quieter Days"</a>)I would set campaigns in the 1340s and 1350s DR over the WotC 'present' every time: I think they're more plausible, atmospheric and adventure-pregnant in almost every way.When the players have got a hang of it -- uncovered a local spying ring, braved monster-infested ruins, 'won their spurs' as adventurers -- let them go wherever personal interests and ongoing subplots take them. I would stress local concerns, maximize the pre-modern sense of distance, not at first show them a map of Faerûn, and avoid overusing gates -- make them special! Visit Cormyr and Waterdeep, but don't rush to show too much.Ed's new novels of the Knights of Myth Drannor, starting with Swords of Eveningstar which recently came out in paperback, will give you first-rate inspiration.rounser has posted what may be the best summary of the Realms ever written -- reminds me to get on with writing the one I've had in my head for years. I mean, it's not perfect or nearly complete, but the Realms would so benefit from a widely distributed outline of those sort of fundamental points (like the Eberron Campaign Setting has) -- which are obvious to us, but are sometimes obscured in the latest sourcebooks, though always there, underneath. There is so much more to say about Faerûn's adventuring culture, the way the Realms makes humble folk matter quite as much as mages of power, . . .I'll check back later.</blockquote>

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