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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Yora" data-source="post: 8651676" data-attributes="member: 6670763">I got a specific question about a problem I am currently facing.I am once again feeling inclined to actually run a real campaign using the Forgotten Realms region book Unapproachable East, which has patiently been staring at me from the shelf for the last 19 years!As I imagine the region, it has landscape and culture influences from the Eurasian Steppe around the Black Sea and Caspian Sea, with the Carpathian and Caucasus Mountains. That means plenty of grassland and scattered forests of small pines and birches. Two thousand years ago, most of the region was part of the Narfell Empire that summoned and controlled many powerful demons, and some smaller sections belong to the Raumathar Empire ruled by evil sorcerers. Eventually the two wiped each other out with their dark magic, the surviving Nars becoming horse nomads and new people slowly moving into the area. It specifically states that Nar citadels where usually small bulky keeps on the surface with massive underground tunnels beneath them and that there are still many demons trapped inside the subterranean ruins. I also see this is a great region to have lots of old burrial mounds haunted by the wights of ancient sorcerers. So plenty of opportunity to open up ancient ruins not disturbed for over a thousand years with all kinds of horrors and treasure's inside them. There's also Nar and Rashemi barbarian tribes, and Red Wizards of Thay and Witches of Rashemen to interact and tangle with. This actually makes me think of some Conan and especially Elric stories, and while Forgotten Realms has developed somewhat of a deserved reputation of pastoral quaintness, I think this region could be quite well suited for a more pulpy savage take on Faerûn.Actually, I want to to The 13th Warrior as a whole campaign. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f61b.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":p" title="Stick out tongue    :p"  data-smilie="7"data-shortname=":p" />For reasons of convenience, I am leaning towards taking 5th edition out for another spin for such a campaign. People know that one well, and with Forgotten Realms I'm not feeling a particular need to make it an oldschool hexcrawl experience or anything of this kind. This is a setting build around settlements and NPC factions, and so I feel it should be played with plenty of town adventures and dealing with important people.However, I really don't want to do the whole Quest-Giver-of-the-Week thing ever again. I'm done with writing stories about villains that need to be stopped for the players. I still want it to be a much more open ended thing where the players have a 1000x1000 miles area to romp around in. And I don't have any clue how to start.What I have decided on is that there will be large numbers of low level warriors around in most settlements, as it's just not the barbarian way to hide in your hut and hope for heroes to arrive when you get raided by goblins or starving wolves stroll through the streets. That kind of stuff they can deal with themselves. On the other end, I think wizard should be both very rare but very prominent. When every single wizard is a big deal, it might work out to have magic be both special and powerful without actually having large quantities of magic in the campaign.But the big question is how to give the campaign a structure. Telling the players they have a million square miles to do what they want and there's a some 20 prepared dungeons in it won't work. I guess they could still be treasure hunters, looking for old Narfell dungeons whose locations are known to local villages, but that nobody has ever dared going far into. Even when your village does have a 3rd level barbarian and six 2nd level fighters, that doesn't mean they can simply stroll in and claim all the treasures for themselves. But would that be enough? I think people interested in a 5th edition campaign in an established setting might be hoping for a bit more than that.</blockquote>

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