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Message: <blockquote data-quote="kenada" data-source="post: 8311827" data-attributes="member: 70468">We ended up rebooting my sandbox hexcrawl into what I suspect will be more of a pure sandbox campaign with less emphasis on the hexcrawl. See the WWN thread for <a href="https://www.enworld.org/threads/worlds-without-number-general-thread.680245/post-8310590" target="_blank">background on what happened</a>.We spent a couple of hours going over the setting. I tried to keep it brief, but my players kept asking questions about various things. They’d point to spots on the map and wonder what those were. The original premise of the campaign is that they were members of a generational expedition sent to explore an unexplored land. After setting generation for WWN, the land was much more settled, and the original premise was mostly gone. I’d tried to keep it tied to the previous incarnation by having them be explorers based out of the same city.One of the things that interested the players is the capital (Donarhus) of the region where they are (Adal-Sinths). What had happened in the past is Adal-Sinths had accidentally created a gate, and Outsiders poured forth. The land was destroyed, turned into a swampy arratu, and one of the neighboring nations (Warin-Graf) got involved in what would become the Ten Generation War. That war is wrapping up now, and the PCs were expected to be based out of one of the frontier outposts established to keep an eye on Dyrstelice in case they decide to cross the Fin River north now that someone else has done the hard work of pacifying the threat there.One of my players was interested in Dyrstelice because they’d come under control of the Caretaker, which I likened to a god-king because it had supplanted the old religion with a new one with itself as the focus. From a setting perspective, it appeared that a forbidden god had taken control, though (and this is not known to the players) it is actually an AI from the era before the world fell to the Outsiders. Anyway, one of the players was interested in liberating people from the Caretaker, but everyone saw Donarhus and was like: we want to loot that.It was funny because they were trying to come up with a group aspiration, but they didn’t want to say it. They were all: well, let’s make it about getting lots of treasure. I was like: you’re really excited about looting the fallen capital, so let’s just make it that instead of something vague. If they accomplish their aspiration, they can pick a new one, or we can make new characters. One of the cool things about WWN is its setting creation tools built me a setting out of adventure hooks. Whatever we decide to do, I’ve got interesting things to say about that (hence why pivoting to this aspiration wasn’t a big ask).One of my players was concerned about just making a beeline for Donarhus. It’s not going to be easy to get into it. It’s sealed after all, and there are unpleasant things inside, but it’s not something that’s specifically set up as a campaign challenge. Everyone was a little uncertain about the change, but (like I said above) I’ve got the tools to deal with doing whatever. I even explained if they wanted to leave the area and go somewhere else (like back to Warin-Graf to do research or whatever), that’s perfectly fine. We’ve had problems in the past with dialing too much into a plot thread that interested the players, but I think it’ll be fine if I stick to my creative agenda (running the campaign as a science experiment — i.e., the Right to Dream).</blockquote>

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