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Message: <blockquote data-quote="DoctorB" data-source="post: 78188" data-attributes="member: 903">My first suggestion for the campaign is to think about what kind of theme you want for your game.  It could be "overcoming fear" (see below), it could be "evil is returning" or perhaps "power has its price."  Along similar lines, is this going to be a D&D horror campaign in which every victory has a cost, or a Tolkienesque world in which the players are great heroes?  All are viable options.  I think it is useful to think about this because it will help fit your initial plots into that theme.1. A couple hours ride west of town is the coast. There are some old docks and fishing piers, but they are not well used. There is a lighthouse here that is either maintained by a hermit or abandoned. Small ships occassionally stop here and ride into town to trade for supplies. The lighthouse could be a relic of the dead civilization.  It could be contaminated by magical beasts to a lesser degree than the mountains.  Perhaps the hermit is a slightly mad survivor.Alternatively, this could be someone in towns father or mother who went insane from studying about the civilization.2. North of town is a dense forest that the locals are scared to death of. There is going to be an extra-dimensional gate here that is the source of some bad things in the forest.I have two suggestions here.  One would be that the gate leads to the realm of nightmare.  This could be a subplane of the negative material.  If the players go inside, they will have to face their own worst fears come to life in order to survive.  Those who die can have different marks because they died to different nightmares.The other possibility is to use the anarchic template from the Manual of the Planes.  The gate would lead to a chaos world then in which creatures exist as in our world but horriibly changed.Either way, someone probably had to create that gate either intentionally to protect the town or accidentally by playing with secrets man was not meant to know.  Closing the gate can be a matter of acquiring what the person used to open it (a crystal perhaps, or a scroll of a long forgotten spell).  It might also be interesting if the person opening the gate went insane in the process.  This person could be wandering the town raving mad as the townspeople avoid him/her.  Fun role-playing here.  Can the opener of the gate be saved?3. North-East of town  is one of the main roads (trail in some spots) that is used for trade and travel to the rest of the world. This area is plagued by VERY organized, militaristic Hobgoblins.One idea is to have these be only the vanguard of a greater army. They are sent to scout the area and cause havoc with trade to isolate the town.  The main army might be choosing what area to attack next.  The PC's could intercept orders sent to the scouts by some mysterious General or Warlord.  Perhaps they can cause the destruction of the scouting force, or arrange for them to have misleading information about the strength of the town's defenses to hold off the attack until they can prepare the town to meet it.4. South of town, there are some ravines and mountainous areas. These are littered with some very hard to reach ruins from an ancient civilization. You will want to flesh out a little bit what happened to this society.  Did they become so proud that they delved into magics they could not control?  Were they destroyed in a magical civil war?If they were destroyed through magic, one could have survived as a kind of lich, tormented by the death of his/her people.If it was a civil war, maybe two still survive, fighting over long-forgotten issues that led to the destuction of their society.Perhaps the object that opened the gate came from one of the outlying sites of this civilization.  Give them a distinctive marking and let the PC's do research to discover what it means.A couple of other thoughts:1) If you want to go for the save-the-world thing, you could say that the magic the ancient society awakened will slowly destroy the world unless the characters stop it.2)  You could build a major military plot from the attack of the hobgoblin armies.  Can the PC's force or trick them into backing off?  What will be the result to surrounding towns if so?Your initial ideas can set the tone for the whole campaign.Good luck!</blockquote>

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