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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Herobizkit" data-source="post: 6264176" data-attributes="member: 36150">Anything that gives you and the players a tie to the campaign world is almost always successful (it tends to be less successful if the DM runs pre-generated 'modules' as many are designed to be play-and-forget).That said, consider the campaign I'm playing in now.  At level one, the PC's started on a prison island.  I was playing a lowly clerk who got out of menial labour by being a brown-nose who was good with paperwork and languages.  Using said paperwork, he was able to identify a couple of folks who were unjustly imprisoned (including the other players), rallied them together and stages a boat robbery.We sailed for a month, dealing with bad weather, monster attacks, low food supplies, and one ship-on-ship battle that doubled our strength.  We sailed into (what essentially was) a pirate's cove, whereupon we learned that there were two main "gangs" in the city - one who ran business like a Mafia (using toughs/muscle and intimidation, gaining respect out of fear), and one who ran business like the Triads (running "white-collar" crimes, controlling the money and import/exports and generally leaving the non-gang members alone, gaining respect by keeping the Mafia in check).  When we arrived, the "Mafia" were gaining ground and the very reclusive Mayor supported them.Team PC took it upon themselves to find out why the Mayor was so reclusive; through Stealth, Diplomacy, and Streetwise, we learned that someone was rallying a horde of Wererats in the sewers and capturing Crown soldiers to make more.  We put a stop to it, learned the Mayor had been replaced by a Changeling, removed him, and promptly took over the city - all without the city's populace catching wise.From the shadows of the mayoral estate, we explored this new land and discovered tribes of assorted races, all living on their own, all trying to avoid the heavy hand of the Crown Empire and their puritan ways (the Empire is a Monarchy who believes in the purity of their bloodline and abhor anything non-human; while they create no active campaigns against humanoids, they make no qualms of crushing any who impede their expansion).So, being slaves ourselves, we weren't happy with other races being looked down upon and chose to rally them to our own banner.  We made roads.  Forts.  Created and explored mines.  Met Underdark folks.  Gathered resources.  Eventually, we came to forge a "province" of assorted Humanoids, all working together-ish for mutually assured assistance.  Then the Emperor showed up, patted us on the head and said 'keep it up' as long as we could assure that the Humanoids weren't going to be an issue.This took us to level 9.  We're now investigating a rival country with rumours of war preparations.Much of the activity involved in all of this required no fighting; we played many 4-5 hour sessions where all we did was talk and run skill checks.One player's character is a Thri-Kreen who is a "Japanese tourist".  Everything he sees, he wants to somehow make part of himself.  He has learned skills, feats, and powers that are very similar to my own (as a Human Hexblade) and our other player, who is playing a Goliath Druid in the style of Aang from Avatar: The Last Airbender (a man-child with an elemental-themed destiny who is to accomplish a great deed before unlocking his full potential).Phew.I guess that's long-winded, but I wanted to show you how a series of random events (as the DM is running a fairly loose sandbox-style adventure) can turn into a large campaign involving a lot more than "go here, fight that".</blockquote>

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