Urd

Map of the Azure Sea is licensed under CC-BY 4.0. 

This is the province of Urd, a home province I wrote for D&D. It shows the idea of zooming in  -- you start with the map, and then flesh out detail as needed, as well as of growing out -- you add additonal  bigger picture context or neighboring cultures as needed. On the Darlene map of Greyhawk, it is located south of Celadon Forest, nestled between the Bright Desert and the Gnatmarsh.

[Players in my Greyhawk campaign: stop reading here, unless you want to spoil your fun of discovery.]

The province is a sleepy backwater that harbors a big secret. Eons ago, a wizard of epic power lived here and forged a ring that granted immortality through godhood. The gods were not pleased, and sent a terrible three-headed dragon to punish the land, which led to the desolation now known as the bright desert, nearby. (No lame scropion crown. That was one of the most disappointing artifacts I ever saw.)

With time, the wizard tired of immortality. He forged a lance tipped with the ring, and a valiant knight, Sir Karl von North, used it to kill the dragon. The ring's fragments were forged into three lesser rings to grant near-immortality to the wizard's sons. Three huge dragons crawled from the corpse of the dragon as a result, and now terrorize the bright desert, the Yortmil Mountains, and the jungles in the far south.  

Sir Karl rammed the lance with the remaining fragment into the rock and fastened his banner to it, and a fountain sprang forth that is said to grant health and long life. Around it the town of Northflag grew. Only a true heir of Sir Karl in free will can pull the lance out.

In the god-wizard's keep, the secrets to re-forging the ring from its fragments still await. Before he died, the wizard gave care of the keep to his apprentice, whose family safeguarded the secret entrance for many generations. A couple of years ago, one of the two sons of that family turned evil and slew his father by collapsing the family tower. The son, now an evil necromancer, wants to reforge the ring to attain goodhood. To this end, he plans to conquer the area with his undead hordes, secure the rings of parts, and manipulate a true heir of Sir Karl for the band. (In the campaign, the players beat back the undead invasion before he could get all the rings, delaying this for now.)

You can tell I like wizard towers, but there is a reason why there are so many here. Three of them are the sons of the god-wizard, two are the two rivaling brothers, one is the ghost of the father. Leaving only one abandoned tower unaccounted for.

I like giving background information and maps to the players. This enables them to find interesting places to explore, in free choice.

• Player Intro
• Campaign secret
• Player Map
• Master Map 
• Random Encounters & Holidays
• Province Knights
• Northflag Map (Main Town)
• Town Cathedral and patriach
• Town Mage
• Town Traders
• Town Crime Scene
• Thorp of Urdingen
• Druid Grove 
• Village of Furton (from Beyond the Glittering Veil)
• Leuchos' House (original scribble notes)
• Winterland* Extra-Dimension
• Hamlet of Anforst (Luskwald from Redacap's Rampage, Dungeon #54)
• Player Map
• Master Map
• Extra NPCs
• Chapel  in woods with secret tunnel to ruins
• Village of Walden (or Buhr Ailgra, Delminster from Horror's Harvest, Dungeon #38)
• Forest of Urd
• Entry to Underdark (from Witches Fiddle, Dungeon #54)
• Abandoned Mage Tower
• Keep of Sir Macelot (region's abducted feudal lord)
• Towers of the Brother (in perpetual winter)
• Tower of the Wizard of Urd
• Mad Mage of Charburner Rock
• Ruined Ghost Tower
• Margarethe's Cottage
• Old Mill
• Ghost Mountains
• Goblin Peak (NPCs, background)
• Map
• Map Goblin Town 
• Mount Hammer (NPCs, clans, history)
• Map Old City
• Ventilation Shafts
• Key and random encounters
• God-Wizard's Keep at Sorcerer's Pass
• The dream jewels of Utnampitschi
• Taxes 
• Traveling Circus 

Growing out of the province

• Bert, the hill giant (wandering the hills to the West and South)
• Map of the Great Magic Forest (Southern Celadon Forest, to the North)
• Hut of the Little Witch
• Ruins (from The Seventh Arm, Dungeon #88)
• Entry to Underdark Map (from Headless, Dungeon #89)
• Druid Cave (from Hunt for a Hierophant, Dungeon #63)
• Encounter with Sir Karll von Urnst, hunting (from Greyhawk adventures)
• Map of Hills and Hillsport (to the South)
• Monastery of Montenegro (from Unhallowed Ground, Dungeon #54)
• Wild Boar Inn (werewolf detective adventure)
• Crypt in the Hills*
• Necropolis (not detailed yet)
• Palace of the Twisted King, Dungeon #116 on the road south
• Hillsport (Scalabar from The Scourge of Scalabar, Dungeon #74)
• Vampire Adventure (with Old Captain's house, Villa, Ship, Island, Vampire Castle etc.)
• Villager's safety cave for Sahuagin raids
• Pirate Beach and Pirates
• Map of the Bright Desert (to the West)
• Vassar Desert Elves
• Sighting of Zaxxar, Curse of the Bright Desert (Ancient Blue Dragon)
• Old Sepron & Telar Ruins (from Telar in Norbia, Dungeon #31)
• Omt (Athkatla from Thirds of Purloined Vellum, Dungeon #88) 
• Oasis of Khaldun & Valley of Mists (from Blood & Fire, Dungeon #63)
• Map Gnatmarsh (to the East - nobody goes there due to the Necromancer)
• Tower of the Necromancer (with surrounding swamp, NPCs, etc.)

Growing out of the region

• World Map (I used the Darlene Map)
• Player World Map - Nyr Dyv
• Major Religious Faiths in the region
• World Design (concept of culture spheres and growing out)

This area served as home turf for several groups of adventurers, the first assembled from accross the province, the second from Northflag, the third from Walden, the fourth from Northflag again. The tax calculations were added, as some players came from one of the noble families (Sir Herman von North, the son of the missing lord among them). 

The town cathedral was an example of unneeded effort. As there was no adventuring in its crypts, there was no point to create the floor plans in the first place (but I was on vacation in Navarra, Spain at the time, with many wonderful examples of Cathedral architecture). The same was true for the druid grove. Goblin Town is still waiting to be played, as is the final assault on the tower of the Necromancer, and the keep of the god-wizard (to which you ascend through a number of pocket dimensions with altered rules, similar to the tomb in desert of desolation). As none of the groups even came close to getting to the keep, I never worked that out.

* There was a side story of an evil overlord who had been defeated long ago, with his generals entombed as major undead in seven crypts, waiting for his return, guarded over by an old order of druids. I placed one of the crpyts and the wintery dimension where the evil overlord was jailed away in a chest hidden on an attic in one of the villages. The only other crypt worked out was the one where that backstory came from, the beer adventure. One more crypt was put into the rolling hills. I handed the players a treasure map in two pieces found in different places, that allowed them to put it together and locate the crypt (see above). They found it, but the gorgon at 4. petrified the wizard, and at that point they had enough of it and beat a retreat.

Monmurg Example Campaign

The goal of this campaign was to play up all the way from level one to twenty. We did use milestone XP instead of awarding XP for killing monsters. This avoided bookkeeping and boring combat just to get the XP. You can read the full account of the campaign (in German, start with the oldest post). Here is a nice in depth review on the advantages of either approach. 

For a campaign that goes all the way to 20, you need a story arc that is on the level of "Save the World" so the powerful arch-fiends, liches and elder dragons you later will need to throw at the PCs have a reason to care.  I found from earlier campaigns that a bait-and-switch in the middle of the campaign after the first campaign arc ends does not work as well. 

The story goal of this campaign was literally "Save the World, and others too", although of course the PCs only realized this after they were about seven levels into it. It was build on the premise of Ptolus that the world was a prison the great old ones of Chaos, the Galchutt. (Much of this was taken from Monte Cook's Ptolus setting).

"Canon Hazen" is licensed under CC-BY 4.0. 

In the campaign world cosmology, Praemal is the benevolent god that created the multiverse and the other gods, analogous to to Tolkiens Eru Illuvatar. Tharizdun, the cryptic god of the old first edition modules, is the lord of void that opposes creation. His goal is to undo it all. The Galchutt are his spawn and servants, just as the gods are the progeny of Praemal. Before time, the gods defeated Tharizdun and imprisoned him. To ensure that the Galchutt would not be able to free him, they likewise imprisoned the Galchutt, in the campaign world. The key to this prison is on the Vallis Moon. When the Galchutt first tried to break out, Praemal hid the Moon from the world, similar to what Eru did with Valinor. 

Now the moon has re-appeared and the Night of Dissolution is nigh. Tharizdun sends dreams to his cult at the temple of All-Consumption, instructing them to excavate the old Temple of Elemental Evil and summon the Princes of Elemental Evil, to bind the moon with a four-fold chain. When the moon cannot again be hidden, the Galchutt can reach it, break out, and free him.

To put time pressure on the campaign, the cultists summon one more prince each full moon, and  when all four are summoned, the final ritual is performed and the world will end. The PCs learn about the moon being chained and time running out in dreams their Moon Druid has. 

The campaign consisted of the following adventures (recommended level ranges in parentheses). In the first section the players get dragged into a net of intrigue in the criminal underworld of Monmurg (my version of  Ptolus, a mix of that city, Singapore and Melniboné), with little foreshadowing of the big storm that is about to brew.

• Ptolus (1-5, Monte Cook) 
• The Murderer's Trail, 
• Trouble with Goblins
• Smuggler's Daugther  
• End of the Trail
• Shilukar's Lair
• Sewers and Ratman Nest
• Temple of the Rat God
• Temple of the Ebon Hand

• Mines of Madness (3, Scott Kurtz) This fun adventure had nothing to do with the main arc. As one PC was likely to die right at the start (and did), I played it as a dream-quest.

The characters by now were in the cross-hairs of several powerful crime organizations in the city, so they decided to go to the countryside and wait for things to tide over. Their friends in Castle Shard teleported them to the quaint Village of Hommlet, where they wanted to search for treasure in the ruins of the Old Temple of Elemental Evil. 

• Return to the Temple of Elemental Evil (4-14, Monte Cook)
• Hommlet
• Moat House
• Ruined Temple
• Crater Ridge Mines: Water Temple
• Crater Ridge Mines: Earth Temple
• The Night of Dissolution took place, and changed the World and how magic worked - we switched from Pathfinder to D&D 5e. The back story was that the PCs did not manage to stop the cult from conducting the ritual of the Night, because they left Monmurg, and thereby gave free reign to the chaos cults to execute their plan. No the clock started ticking for summoning the Elemental Princes.
• Outer Fane
• The Sinister Bakery (5, self written based on the story of Krabat), a side adventure to resolve the backstory of one of their NPC henchmen

The PCs learned that the Staff of Rao was their best shot to defeat the elemental princes and stop the cult. This divine relic was held by Canon Hazen, venerable Archcleric of Rao, and was able to banish all kinds of evil outsiders, including the otherwise hard to defeat Elemental Princes. His former use of the staff had shattered his health, and he had taken it with him to Istivin where he wanted to recuperate. When the PCs arrived at Istivin, they found it under a mysterious black dome -- thus kicked off the next campaign arc, and my start of playing classical adventures from the game's dawn with my players.

• GDQ1 Queen of Spiders (8-14, mostly Gary Gygax)
• Steading of the Hill Giant Chief
• Room 23 on the lower level leads off the map, so I had it lead to the underdark. Of course my players went down that way. I just riffed this during play with a portal of ominous warning (didn't stop the players, of course), chasms, gremlins, a huge cavern with a buried dead god crawling with hundreds of carrion crawlers as maggots feasting on his regenerating flesh (inspired by Death Frost Doom), a trapper, and a sepulchre with a mind flayer mummy that wore an iron mask; this was a nasty trap, if you donned the intelligent mask, it granted at-will detect thoughts and levitate, and secretly tried to dominate the wearer and use him to steer new potential slaves to a nearby a mind flayer city. The mask said it knew of a hidden cache of dwarven magic weapons. Lolth's avatar in drow form appeared anonymously to warn them, as she wanted them to continue against the giants and drow to put down Eclavdra. Greed won out in a party vote, and they forged ahead into mind flayer territory and lost three of the party in a narrow escape. 
• They then went back up to the Yeomanry, as they hoped to learn how to buy freedom for their enslaved friends in nearby Sterich. My Yeomanry was a rotten place, modeled after Velen and the bog of crones from Witcher III. They made a deal with a a hag to deliver the head of the forst giant jarl in exchange for knowledge on how to free their friends. This is a good example how you can steer the PCs back to the main adventure path with a bit of improvisation, and without having to force them onto it -- normally they would have gone to the Frost Giant Rift from the Hill Giants directly.
• Glacial Rift of the Frost Giant Jarl
• They managed to find the back entrance with lots of magical scouting, and snuck in from there in a surgical strike to take out the Jarl and cut off his head, but did not manage avoiding the alarm being raised. In the flight from the enraged giant horde, a timely suggestion on the white dragon the giants had sent to intercept them at the back entrance saved their hides.  
• Out of  the Abyss: Mantol Derith
• Here they could deal with the mind flayers on neutral ground and ransom their friends (thankfully they were rich from plundering the Hill Giant treasury). They also hired a renegade drow mage to help them find their way to the Vault of the Drow. He of course would later try to betray them to get back into the good books of his house.
• Hall fo the Fire Giant King
• Again, they avoided most of the encounters by scouting with 5e's advanced magical powers (summoned earth elementals, druid turning into an earth elemental) then found the entrance to the underdark underneath the Giant Hall, and went there directly. 
• Warrens of the Troglodytes
• In the underdark, they again used magic and invsibility to avoid confrontation where possible, for example, sealing themselves in side caves with stoneshape to rest. There was a memorable random encounter with a lich that in exchange for payment in magic items and arcane knoweldge, agreed to not only spare their lives (well, they had to raise one of their number from the dead after it used power word kill to clarify it was not messing around), and traveled with them as a companion. This was quite helpful, as it could get rid of evidence by shoving the drow corpses into a demiplane. 
• Shrine of the Kua-Toa
• Again the players sidestepped the entire city. They had an NPC Drow Mage in tow, too, who helped them navigate the alien environment of the underdark but of course was planing to betray them to his house, once they go to the Vault of the Drow.
• Vault of the Drow
• So he did. They however struck a deal with Eclavdra: they would assassinate the high priestess of Lloth, so Eclavdra could convert back and become the new High Priestess and unite the warring houses under her power. Loth was down with this idea.
• The demonweb pits
• They met Lloth again, who had learned about Tharizdun and his plans through her investigations of the Elder Elemental Eye. She had just wanted to make sure they were strong enough to stand a chance against the elemental princes, gave them gifts and freed Hazen. (This "test if you are worthy" angle is lame, I know).
• Temple of Elemental Evil (1-8, Gary Gygax with Frank Mentzer) Elemental Nodes
• By now three princes were summoned. They killed two, then the forces of the temple pulled back into the inner sanctuary of the old temple with the remaining prince of Air. 
• Return to the Temple of Elemental Evil. Epic battle against all the remaining cult leaders in the inner sanctuary of the old temple. They managed to destroy the altar that was required for the ritual, so the cult was held off for least a year while they built a new one. In that time they wanted to find a way to Praemal via the Jewels of Parnaith, and petition with him. But how to get to the Jewels? The most likely place to learn this was in Jabel Shammar, so the question was how to get in there?

The plan for the campaign (level 15 to 20) was as follows

• Ptolus.
• Prison (entry to the crypt of the "demon-lich"), with bronze dragon guardian, and undead guards -- the backstory of one of the PCs from level 1 had the maps to find this place, in a chest of adventuring heirlooms he inherited.
• Self written upper level of the crypt.
• Tomb of Horrors (10-14, Gary Gygax). Learn that there is a portal to Jabel Shammar in Goth Gulgamel. No need to fight Acerak, I put his library with the clues in an earlier room.
• Ptolus
• Goth Gulgamel (13-14)
• Jabel Shammar (19-20) learn how to access the Jewels of Parnaith
• Homebrew Finale (the Jewels are barely described in Ptolus, I planned each jewel had different laws of reality, and was its own little adventure, similar to the way it is towards the end of Desert of Desolation, to make this all a bit of a dream-like quest, where the PCs powers would wildly fluctuate from Jewel to Jewel.)

However, the entire party was annihilated at the Green Devil Face in Tomb of Horrors, so other heroes will  have to step up and save the world. In another campaign. Maybe if I had not put a Green Devil Face that was a teleporter to a location with a dangerous fight at the other end into my prequel level to the tomb, they would not all have lined up and jumped in...

High Seas Example Campaign

I feel this campaign is the best of all I ran, a mashup of D&D, Firefly, Elric, Dracula, King Kong, and Lord of the Rings. Because of all the maritime travel and sea adventures, this was called the High Seas campaign. I learned:

• If you read inspiring stories, play them in video games, or watch them in a movie - steal and remix them. They make great adventure. It is not even bad if your players realize what is going on -- it gives them an edge for making the connection, and they love it when they realize it.
• It helps to prepare a single page containing a short list of the adventures you plan to run, and key plot elements for the campaign. I made one for each major section. Yeah, that type of scrawly scribbles is all you need. 
• The best way to make a city feel real is to mash together two or three adventures that go on at the same time. It feels much more like a living place. 
• An economic way to create background for a campaign is to make a history timeline of empires, wars, rulers and events that cast their shadows over what is happening in the campaign. 
• Knowing adventures that will happen later allows you to foreshadow what is to come, create meaningful prophecies, and have the players learn hints early on. You can build up the name of key villains, or mystical places. Players will forget most of these hints, but the few times they remember, creates very powerful moments of realization.
• Have site based-adventures for the players to explore if they want, so they do not feel railroaded. Let them run off to do side adventures, if that is what they enjoy. 
• You never worry about hooks. The campaign will tie everything together.
• The published adventure CRs are too easy for experienced players with optimised characters. You can easily run something that is labelled 1-2 levels higher for them.
• It does not hurt at all to run an adventure that is serveral levels below the player CR. Exploration remains, and it feels great for the players to just stomp their opposition into the ground for a change.
• Two unrelated story arcs do not work. If you want a twenty level campaign, design an arc to 20.

In case you are interested, below is the gestalt of the campaign, along with the list of adventures.

You can also read the full campaign story with all the details in German.

The kick-off adventure, Nosferatu, is one I wrote myself many years ago as a teenager. It has the plot and cast of Dracula mixed with King Kong. I patched it up with 3e stats and a few more detailed maps of the village, orc army camps, and the castle. In the campaign, the vampire was spawned by an evil artifact, the campaign gimmick. It is a black iron fly, created by the Chaos God Anarch (i.e., Arioch) and it makes its owner immortal by slowly turning them into a vampire. The players obtain it,  and travel through many dangers to the place where it was forged to destroy it (this obviously is the core plot of Lord of the Rings). A Melniboné-like empire (located in Monmurg on the Darlene map) is where long ago Anarch gave the artifact to the depraved king who craved immortality, and where the characters need to go to learn more about it. The Firefly part comes from the characters winning a sailing boat early on that will be their home for the campaign, and the characters notoriously being short on cash.

Cast: Brother Heiner, pious Paladin of St. Trudbert. Lanfear, sexy female Barbarian. Silverhand, minmaxing Monk and Anton Urbach, beer brewing Bard and entrepreneur. Later on, Dirk Quarzon, ship captain and Fighter/Rogue replaced Anton (as the players changed). This was a peculiar group, as they had no wizard and after Anton left, no-one knew about Magic. The barbarian in time decided to pick up a few levels of Sorcerer.

Hook: one of the characters dreams of great evil coming to Hillsport, a small port town to the south, and in his dream feels he is chosen to avert it. A paladin made this an easy sell. The others tag along for protection and to conduct business in Hillsport, and then are drawn in by the flow of events.

The rough plan for the campaign and how it developed looks like this (adventure levels in parens, if not mentioned otherwise, all the adventures where adapted from Dungeon magazine): 

• The characters start at level one in the little sleepy province and travel south. 
• Encounter with Bert, the Hill Giant on the road (1, negotiation).
• Wild Boar Inn at an enduring Snowstorm in the Desert (both self-written, 1-3 or higher). Not part of main story; the players opted to not investigate further, as delay could risk bad things happening in the meantime. They were right.
• Palace of the Twisted King  (1-5) On the path, they avoided that too.
• Scourge of Scalabar ("Hillsport" in my game; 1-3, by Chris Perkins); instead of a submarine, I used Sahuagin who control a real giant shark, as I dislike steampunk. With Wreck Ashore (1) thrown in for more investigation and encounters with the pirates. An agent of smith's coster, the nefarious trading company of Monmurg is the brain behind the pirates and briefly seen. There also were Sahuagin raids on seaside villages, with the players and villagers living through the night in a shelter cave, and allies in the lizardfolk in the swamp, as one of the PCs spoke Lizardman and had great diplomacy skills. This was going on at the same time as the next one.
• Nosferatu (1-3, Dracula, with the plague breaking out caused by the vampire and his flies and rats. The adventure had a timeline of what happened unless the PCs interfered. King-Kong Island side story to retrieve a curative pendant that can stop the plague. In gratitude the city gifts a house and the schooner Sea Star as a reward. The combination of these three adventures in Hillsport makes this into one of the richest roleplaying experiences I can remember.
• MAIN PLOT: The players learn about the fly through letters from the young real estate agent  to his love Cecile, the vampire's target. He is still stuck in the vampire's castle, turning into a vampire, and he begs her to learn more about the fly in Chatold before sending help. So she comes to ask her saviours if they can help. This is the root of the evil, so they took this up for sweet Cecile.

The PCs were now about level three.

• Storm and Tammermaut's Fate (6). The players had taken on debt to buy trade goods for their journey, which they had to jettison during the storm; the ship was also badly damaged, and needed costly repairs. (We skipped the harder part at the underwater rift, the tower defense against the undead at night was too much of a close shave.)
• Practical Magic (9; using Cathold for Marsember, this was a side adventure and much too hard for them -- they broke off and negotiated their way out after being badly maimed) 
• MAIN PLOT: The PCs learn the fly's story in a curio shoppe I ripped from Vampire: Bloodlines. The shopkeeper is really an agent of hell and hell wants the fly destroyed. His address was on the box because he sent it to the original count in remote Devil's Pass to get it out of the way until someone shows up who could potentially destroy it.  He does not know how and where to destroy it, and tells them they can find answers for anything from the hags at Scrag Rock. Difficulty is only that the rock shipwrecks ships, and nobody knows where it is. 

This was as far as I had it planned out originally. I knew they had to travel to Monmurg to learn more, as that is where the fly originated. Before the next session, I decided to use Test of the Smoking Eye with Prison of the Firebringer as the final adventure, and that they would get to that other dimension via the jungles of Amedio. I also decided that Kaurophon was a son or grandson of the king who got the fly from Anarch, sired with a succubus, and made the succubus in Eye his mother. He would turn on the PCs or stay true to his hatred towards his father and Anarch, based on how the characters treated him during their joint travels, with good or bad interactions adding boni or mali to the final die roll. 

The PCs were now about level 5.

• Sea Battle encounter with Viking Raiders from Onwal This random encounter I just winged, on board was the lost father the barbarian had been searching for, which let them avoid bloodshed, and got the raiders escort them savely to Eldredd.
• Dead Man's Quest (1) the ghost of pirate captain Ned leads them to Scrag Rock in promise of a return service of freeing his soul.
• Shatterhull Isle (5-7, "Scrag Rock", this was from the Stormwrack supplement). I cribbed liberally from McBeth for the witches' divination scene. They learn cryptic rhymed answers to three questions (players chose: how to destroy the fly, how to reach Anarch's domain in Limbo, how to find the Mirror of Stars by which it can be reached - they learn that they must find Kaurophon in Monmurg)
• Crypt of the Seventh Lord. (9-13, Homebrew dungeon). This was not part of the plan, the players had found a treasure map to this crpyt in the hills earlier on and wanted to loot to fill their coffers and get out of debt. The wizard was turned to stone early, and they aborted.
• The Setting Sun (5-7) In my game the Wild Coast is overrun by the orc armies with giants and dragons. Eldredd is under siege, elvish griffon riders, high wizards and archers from Celene help defend it. The players get offered transport on griffins across enemy territory, in exchange for help in this side adventure. They also had filled their hold with food, which achieved high prices in the besieged city, and restored their financial position.
• Devil Pass (4-6) second part of the self-written Nosferatu story. The trick is not to kill the vampire, just to impale him, so they do not become the new owners of the fly and will not turn into vampires themselves. They gain the fly, and the players are scared shitless by it. For the rest of the campaign, they will not try to use its powers even once, and only one time open the box to show it to someone. The griffins fly them to Monmurg, then depart, with the Sea Star sailing down separately. (Here the player of Anton left the group for life/time reasons, so Anton was sucked into minimus form in a trapped magical bottle in the adventure). 

The PCs were now about level 7.

• Dead Man Quest. (1-3). Second part, to pay their debt to Captain Ned in the pirate city of Port Jolie. The players have fun flattening the cultists effortlessly.
• Ptolus. Monmurg, the Melnibone-Ripoff uses a modified version of Ptolus co-inspired by Singapore. As the players enter the city for the first time, the Vallis Moon appears and opens the Banewarrens. The players are hungry for treasure, and first spend time in the under-city as they have heard there are lots of old dungeons down there, but with little success. Most of the upper reaches are plundered already. They contact Kaurophon who wants them to obtain the Pipes of Madness from the Banewarrens to open the way to the Mirror of the Stars.
• The Banewarrens (6-10). Lots of intrigue from parties in the city, but once they find the flute, they abort and leave this to the dragon riders and the inverted pyramid to sort out.
• The Night of Dissolution (Pythoness House) (4). Easy side adventure to gain the All-Key for opening a door in the Banewarrens. They also learn about the Night of Dissolution, and that they should try and stop it.

Now the story shifted to the Amedio jungle. I made an overall map, to embed and intertwine the adventures. 

• Dragon Hunters (7) This is one of the best modules, highly recommended. Lots of thinking, discussions, choices, possible creative solutions, and action. 
• The Plight of Cirria (8-12) also great. In my version, the cloud fortress was circling above the Solnor Plateau, unless you called it to the Yuan-Ti Temple by playing the Flutes of Madness. I also had Ezhoran be the Archmage of Monmurg, who did not oppose the PCs, in fact he wanted to help them, as he wanted to imprison the essence of Anarch when the fly was destroyed. He gave them access to the Mirror of the Stars. Making it through the mirror with clues from the witches’ riddle brought them to the next adventure. 

The PCs were now about level 9.

• Test of the Smoking Eye (10) / Prison of the Firebringer (13).  I put a few more factions and sites on the map to have this not just be a linear adventure, and put the castle of the Firebringer on top of the entrance to the peristaltic tunnel, in the heart of the domain of the ancient black dragon Vorkaire. The imprisoned slaad lord was a servant of Anarch, who had led the failed attack. There were lots of political maneuvering with the succubus, Ezhoran, the imprisoned fallen angel, before true to the witches prophecy, the paladin sacrificed himself to carry the fly into the fire, and was reborn with his friends as lord of the plane.

This ended the main campaign. The heroes owned their own plane now, even though it contained some denizens more powerful than they were, and the fly had been destroyed. Closure.  

The PCs were now about level 11.

The use of Ptolus and the Banewarrens/The Night of Dissolution had kicked off of a second campaign arc about the sleeping great old demons of chaos, the Galchutt, and about how this world really was just a prison for them. They were in the process of being woken up, so you had to stop that. We played one more retreat, but it felt somehow tacked on:

• The night of dissolution (Surgeon of the Shadows / Temple of Deep Chaos) (5-9, by Monte Cook). I had to spruce up the encounters to keep some challenge, but that was OK. 

However we were now starting to try online game tables and play-by-skype, and initially thought we would do that only as a side activity, to fill the gaps between our full time retreats, and were not sure it would work, so we made a new group of level one characters. 

That campaign also started in Ptolus. When time rolled around for the annual retreat, the unanimous vote was to continue with that story, rather than go back to the old one from a year ago. (It did not help that we had switched to D&D 5e, and nobody wanted to convert their Pathfinder level 11 character into a bounded accuracy one). So the rest of the Night of Dissolution prevention never happened. 

A cool thing of all play being in the same world is that the choices of all the groups matter. What a group does changes the game world for the others. 

• The smoking eye group smuggled the exiled prince and claimant of the throne from Dragon Hunters back into civilisation in Port Jolie. He staged a successful campaign from there, and now is Prince of Monmurg, on of the most powerful and influential positions in the game world.
• With the heroes of the smoking eye not working further to prevent it, the night of dissolution happened and the Galchutt rose and turned Monmurg and the world at large into a horrifying madhouse. The new group in their backwater near Hommlet then had to busy themselves with destroying the elemental chains that had tethered the Vallis Moon, so the Galchutt could not reach it and shatter their prison. This restored the situation where they went to sleep last time, so they might after some time withdraw again. 

White Boar Example Campaign

White Boar Campaign. 

I once had a competition with a friend, where we would build two towers for rivaling high level wizards (2nd Edition AD&D rules) with level adequate g.p. value to spend on magic items. I made a necromancer and used all the tricks I could think of for him to protect himself -- magic jar, having a clone ready, contingency spells.  I created a map of the countryside and placed it on the Darlene Map, between Bright Desert, Celadon Forest, and the Gnatmarsh, where the Necromancer lived. The province was a sleepy backwater behind the enchanted forest. This became a campaign that we played over a couple of annual retreats.

Moritz "Maurice" Kohler, Wizard of the White Boar Group

The premise of the campaign was that, after years of quiet the necromancer was stirring again, black riders were scouring the land for him, and people were worried. They sent group of adventurers with 10,000 g.p. to Greyhawk City for guidance and  help. (The secret part of the story is still waiting to be played, 20 later).

The players first were not in a hurry, and started out exploring various points of interest in the province. They freed the home village of the wizard from some menacing ogres. Then they encountered a ghost in an abandoned tower in the woods, and decided (hair more white now) to get on with their quest. 

The first milestone was to reach Greyhawk City. They trekked through the enchanted forest North towards Leukish, met Sir Karll of Urnst in the woods, made it "Through the Night" (Dungeon #29), solved the riddle of the Goblin stone fairy tale from the Greyhawk boxed set, explored a burned down wizard tower in "A Wizard's Fate" (relocated to Greyhawk, a fantastically fun adventure for low levels, by Chris Perkins, Dungeon #37). Then they got side trekked back into the forest by "Nymphs Reward" (Dungeon #29) and hunted the "White Boar of Kilfray" (Dungeon #37) for the thane of Woodwych, another fantastic adventure that played great -- I really liked the work of Willie Walsh. They loved the keep and because the wild wood elves were their allies, decided to make it their home base, and hence forth called themselves the "White Boar Group". (First retreat, which was one of the best times we ever had with D&D).

On the way out of the woods, the ranger died to giant spider poison  (a random encounter). Still in Norse country, they salvaged the "Cauldron of Plenty" (Dungeon #21) before continuing on to Leukish, corpse of the ranger in tow. On the road, they freed "The Vineyard Vales" (Dungeon #23) from a terrifying "black dragon" who fled, and made friends with the Whiteheart mercenaries. They were robbed by a six fingered brigand leader with two hundred men (another wilderness random encounter straight out of 2e and low point of the campaign). In Leukish, they took a pirate ship over the Nyr Dyv to Greyhawk. A storm standed them with their dead ranger in a barrel at "Wards of the Witching Ways" (Dungeon #11), where the wizard polymorphed all of them into vermin. Lucky for them it was all a bet, and they were put ashore. (This second retreat sucked for the players, and I learned for good that being pummeled by overly powerful opponents is as little fun as getting robbed of your magic items. They were down to gallows humor and joked of playing on in polymophed form Maya the Bee-style).

They trekked along the Nyr Dyv, when an angel of Pholtus appeared to them. Holy relics had been stolen and had to be rescued in "Arms of Nagrash-Tor" (not a dungeon magazine adventure, but one a friend had recommended). They did so, and finally made it to Greyhawk, where the grateful clergy of Pholtus raised their ranger from the dead. Unfortunately, neither the priests, nor Otto the Mage whom they consulted with could divine any information about the necromancer or the black riders, which was very unusual. A setback. The next milestone was to go back home. Demoralized, they traveled the Abbor Alz, when they saw a shooting star in the sign of Pholtus. They followed where it had fallen, and stumbled upon the library of the gods that you can never find if you search for it and that contains all the knowledge of the world, in "Ex Libris" (Dungeon #29). There they found a scroll that revealed the black riders were signs that the thing that had created the bright desert was to raise again if they were not stopped. (Here ended the retreat).

They made their way through the bright desert, where they freed a princess from an efreeti in "Telar in Norbia" (another adventure from Willie Walsh, Dungeon #31) and reunited the thief with his family of desert elves and hunted a behir with them. On returning, they found their home overrun by the undead forces of the necromancer, only the town still held fast. The next milestone was to collect enough armies in support of the town to mount a counter-offense, and defeat the invaders.

First, they sent envoys to the desert elves and the wood elves for support. While these were on their way they looked what could be done in the province to turn the tide. The necromancer had hired the Whitehall mercenaries. Because they were friendly with them from back in the vinelands, the mercenaries agreed to an ordeal in single combat to win their support. 

Next, they traveled to Mount Hammer and retrieved the axe of the dwarf king from the lost city to make the good thane king so he could send help (this was self-written, here is the map of the city, the ventilation shafts, and key. This was a caper/heist where you had to get in and retrieve the crown before the undead overwhelmed you, or a crew sent by the evil rival clan got to it first - that clan was willing to cooperate with the necromancer. Here is that NPC crew along with the genealogy of the competing houses. (End of the retreat).

Then they went on a "Hunt for a Hierophant" (Dungeon #63) in the enchanted forest that had been overrun by the necromancer's bullywugs, to raise the forest creatures and weaken his army. 

Finally, a venerable priest of Pholtus, "the lowest of his servants" (of course, the pope), showed up and used the 10,000 g.p. as material component to create an ark that radiated daylight in a large radius and made shadows and wraiths powerless. The delegations of the desert elves and the grugrach also arrived.

At long last they led the united armies of mercenaries, wood elves, desert elves, mountain dwarves, the remaining town militia and even the hill giant Bert into an epic battle against the necromancer's undead, lizard men and black rider ring-wraith masters, the lord of which rode a black dragon. They routed them. We used the narrative battle system from Pendragon for this, where characters duel with opposing leaders, to influence the outcome and turning fates of the battle. Greg Stafford was awesome. Thus ended the retreat, and the climax for this campaign arc.

The heroes now were important personages and had time to attend to their research, or administer their domains, but they felt the urge to once more head out for adventure. They did not want to confront the necromancer himself, which might have been suicidal. Instead, they explored an old ruin in the enchanted forest, "The Seventh Arm" (Dungeon #88), and  after a short trip to the Underdark, the tower of the mage on the lake, who tended to turn people into frogs and collected fey to extract their essence. They agreed on a stalemate with him in exchange for him teaching that spell to the party wizard.

After that, we started a new group, and did not go back to play in this campaign, as we would not get the same players back together, and the player of the mage, who had died in the last adventure when he could not play him for a short while, and lost a point of constitution in resurrection, did not want to continue playing him.