SuperTD
Explorer
My party decided to all play tortles, so I had them sent on a mission by the village elder who wanted to speak to all her children again before she died. The party started in Port Nyanzaru looking to pick up the trail of the four children they were looking for, and found out the last places they'd each been heading to in the jungle (all conveniently placed in different directions of course).
I didn't even mention the death curse until further into the hex crawl and they'd had time to explore and chart part of the jungle, by which time they'd discovered one of the children they were searching for had been captured by the Yuan-Ti, so they had a reason both to head to Omu, and to try and solve the death curse (the dying elder would lose her soul forever).
So, my recommendations based purely off my own play experience which went well:
1. Give the party a mutual acquaintance they care for coming to the end of their days (hopefully the party will buy into this one, as you won't be able to have them naturally bond with someone over time and THEN find out they are dying).
2. Give them specific goals in different parts of the jungle, but not exactly landmarks so they just have a general direction to go in. More detailed directions could be "2 weeks down the river Soshenstar then head west", or "Deep within the Kobold Mountains".
3. Don't give them an immediate timer or they will be pressured into not exploring the map and bee-lining for Omu.
4. Give strong hints of an interesting location in the area if the PCs come within one hex of a location of interest. This means Each landmark effectively can be found by walking into one of seven hexes, rather than one single hex. This means they are much less likely to walk straight past adventure sites while passing within spitting distance of them.
5. Be aware that the random jungle encounters can be absolutely lethal for low level parties. My group went straight into the jungle at level one, and one character was dealt 30 points of damage by a stealthed Jaculi in a surprise round. We all agreed to ignore the massive damage rules at the very low levels because of this, mostly because the death was unfair and we didn't want the faff of making a new character in session two, after the first encounter. I know you've said they'll level up exploring the city, but consider what will happen if they instead decide to just Leroy Jenkins out into the wilderness without exploring the city. As written, there's actually very little to do to gain experience in the city so presumably you're planning to add your own content there.
I didn't even mention the death curse until further into the hex crawl and they'd had time to explore and chart part of the jungle, by which time they'd discovered one of the children they were searching for had been captured by the Yuan-Ti, so they had a reason both to head to Omu, and to try and solve the death curse (the dying elder would lose her soul forever).
So, my recommendations based purely off my own play experience which went well:
1. Give the party a mutual acquaintance they care for coming to the end of their days (hopefully the party will buy into this one, as you won't be able to have them naturally bond with someone over time and THEN find out they are dying).
2. Give them specific goals in different parts of the jungle, but not exactly landmarks so they just have a general direction to go in. More detailed directions could be "2 weeks down the river Soshenstar then head west", or "Deep within the Kobold Mountains".
3. Don't give them an immediate timer or they will be pressured into not exploring the map and bee-lining for Omu.
4. Give strong hints of an interesting location in the area if the PCs come within one hex of a location of interest. This means Each landmark effectively can be found by walking into one of seven hexes, rather than one single hex. This means they are much less likely to walk straight past adventure sites while passing within spitting distance of them.
5. Be aware that the random jungle encounters can be absolutely lethal for low level parties. My group went straight into the jungle at level one, and one character was dealt 30 points of damage by a stealthed Jaculi in a surprise round. We all agreed to ignore the massive damage rules at the very low levels because of this, mostly because the death was unfair and we didn't want the faff of making a new character in session two, after the first encounter. I know you've said they'll level up exploring the city, but consider what will happen if they instead decide to just Leroy Jenkins out into the wilderness without exploring the city. As written, there's actually very little to do to gain experience in the city so presumably you're planning to add your own content there.
