Building a campaign without the use of large exterior tile sets
Chili_Texas
Member Posts: 4
Say I wanted to build my entire campaign out of set pieces with a tavern to serve as a hub where players could select a quest from the job board or as NPCs enter the tavern looking for help.
Example: Job board has a quest to kill some rats in the sewer, player accepts and goes to the tavern exit where he is presented with options of where to travel, including blacksmith (repairs/buy/sell armor and weapons), potion shop, magic shop, stable or your quest destination (sewer) and the player is taken to the sewer instead of traversing a large outdoor city. There could be random encounter events that would take place during the "travel" like a back alley ambush or even a side quest starter.
Most of the campaign would take place this way, no actual exterior set pieces like cities aside from random encounter travel events.
Would this be a feasible way to craft a story or would elaborate city set pieces with lots of activity and places to explore be worth the extra effort to put time into?
*edit*
This would be for a SP/MP or DM ran campaign and not a PW.
Example: Job board has a quest to kill some rats in the sewer, player accepts and goes to the tavern exit where he is presented with options of where to travel, including blacksmith (repairs/buy/sell armor and weapons), potion shop, magic shop, stable or your quest destination (sewer) and the player is taken to the sewer instead of traversing a large outdoor city. There could be random encounter events that would take place during the "travel" like a back alley ambush or even a side quest starter.
Most of the campaign would take place this way, no actual exterior set pieces like cities aside from random encounter travel events.
Would this be a feasible way to craft a story or would elaborate city set pieces with lots of activity and places to explore be worth the extra effort to put time into?
*edit*
This would be for a SP/MP or DM ran campaign and not a PW.
0
Comments
Dont port directly into the adventure area from the tavern, even if there isnt a random hook for a possible ambush/side adventure. Port to the exterior of the adventure. Like in the case of the sewer, before the sewer proper, you could have the back alley with the sewer entrance. Then, on enter, where the character is ported to right in front of the sewer using Jump to Location scripts, include floating text of a short sentence that summarizes (you make your way to the sewer entrance without incident or whatnot).
This not only makes it less disruptive to the player's suspension of disbelief, but it also allows you to later implement things like how PCs in the Tomb of Horrors had to find their way into the Tomb, upon arriving at a bald hill where the Tomb was purported to be. Or, a situation where the adventure lead was a set-up like in Keep On The Borderlands and the evil Cleric Hireling.
Its a very feasible idea, I feel - as in reality, real cities are impossible to walk about "exploring", at least, not the whole thing. It would literally take years to do so in a modern city, and RPG representations of cities and worlds are really unrealistic in that regard.