D&D General good dungeons to populate a sandbox setting?

[Scott Christian]

PF's The Midnight Mirror looks great to add as a hamlet in that island chain of yours. I have not run it, but have read it. It's pretty sweet if you want to add a few more NPC's.

As far as straight up, "Whoa! What's this place?" kind of feel, I'd shoot for an old school module: White Plume Mountain. And maybe add a misty island - Isle of Dread in for good measure.

 

[Eltab]

Oh, what a great idea: use the 9 temples of the false gods as small puzzle dungeon to dot the map. Maybe if you get them all, you can unlock a super cool dungeon with nice loot. You can get a nice Legend of Zelda vibe with that!

It would be a hoot to allow their "possession" to come and go from time to time. "I hear voices in my head! No, really!"

 

[mrswing]

And X1 has also gotten the update treatment from Goodman Games so there's a ton of new material for that - and it fits in with Saltmarsh, the Sags can easily be under the sway of the new evil race trapped on the island.

 

[Matrix Sorcica]

N5 Under Illefarn contains a series of short adventures, one amongst with lizardmen risin to arms in a nearby marsh. There's also a longer dungeon crawl with orcs and bandits. It's for 1E, we played it in 3.x and had a great time.
Just replacing Daggerford with Saltmarsh should do the trick.

 

[amethal]

I've thought of a few more.

The Shackled City adventure path has some good dungeons in chapters 1 to 5 (or parts 1 to 4 if you use Dungeon magazine rather than the book) with some lovely maps.

The Pathfinder module From Shore to Sea has a good island to explore. I also like the first part of the adventure, with a village of suspicious and insular fisherfolk, but you can easily cut that bit if you don't want the plot.

 

[THEMNGMNT]

The Shackled City adventure path has some good dungeons in chapters 1 to 5 (or parts 1 to 4 if you use Dungeon magazine rather than the book) with some lovely maps.

+1 to Shackled City

 

[Orius]

It's a coastal/maritime setting, so two obvious ones are X1 Isle of Dread (even pre-fits the tropical theme!) and L1 Secret of Bone Hill if you put Restenford on an island.

Isle of Dread's great for sandboxes, though it's not a dungeon, it's a sandbox of its own. But it's a pretty good mini-setting, and I'm going to add it into my own world somewhere, right near the continent I have that's infested with dinosaurs. I'm in the early stages of fleshing things out:

Hand drawn Isle of Dread copy - Dragonsfoot