I'm not sure what third-party adventures are available for 5e that might fit the bill. Out of the rest, Princes of the Apocalypse provides a fairly sandboxy area that could probably converted to a non-heroic investigations and looting fairly easily. But most of the converted adventures from Tales from the Yawning Portal wouldn't require much or any heroics. If you need written adventures for 5e, most of the official WotC adventures are fairly "heroic" adventure path-y. Any reasonably-motivated players will take it from there, and you will be sandboxing like it's 1981 and no one knew what a sandbox was. You should also have some encounter tables by terrain for what's found 10 miles in any direction from the town. You should have 3 humble encounters prepared, one for each of them (although you could cheat and use the Other Dungeon for the location of the real/fake treasure and they'll never know the difference because you can always throw something together if you need to fill the other spot).
Then they meet a merchant crying in his beer because some bandits waylaid his shipment of 10 miles to the south. Someone else makes fun of them because everyone knows there's more treasure in the Other Dungeon 10 miles to the north. One of them meets an old guy who sells them a treasure map (fake or real, up to you) which lies 10 miles west of town. Then, they go back west to town to rest and they meet some people in the tavern. What do you do?" If you have jaded RPG vets (especially if they read and post here) their tastes will vary, but assuming your players have assembled for this kind of fun and you're all on the same page, it really doesn't take much selling.
If they say they are going to the ruined castle, then I'll pull out my DMG and MM and start designing the details.Ĭlick to expand.I and my cohorts, old though we are, have found that with new players it's usually enough to tell them: "You are adventurers, you're outside a ruin that's supposed to be haunted and mysterious and full of treasures. for example a ruined castle, haunted by undead and it holds a lost spell book. Each location I describe will be a rough outline. Instead I'm going to try to get my players to tell me what they want to do ahead of time. I'm not going to fully detail everything I described. Hopefully something tied to their motivations or some interesting treasure will peak their interests enough to become a target for their adventures.Ħ.
they should know (for any given location) what reward they can acquire and also what risk they may face. This will hopefully give the players enough information. I'll also tell them roughly what kind of dangers they may possess.
if I plan a location, I will put it in front of the players as a place they will know about and can decide to go to (secreted places will be handled by a procedural wilderness encounter system). Most of the locations I create will be known to the players. but instead of just giving it to them (or dropping them with monster loot), I'll put them in dungeons around the world, and make them earn it.ĥ. I may do the same thing and ask the players what kind of items they would want their characters to have. 4th edition had a concept of a magic item wish list. These may or may not be tied to character motivations, but will have items that any self respecting D&D player would want their characters to possess. I'm going to create a bunch of locations that are just known to have interesting / legendary treasures. If a player is a monster hunter or something, I'll put some 'apex' monster lairs in.Ĥ. If a player wants their character to be motivated by learning lore, then I'll put a lost ruin of a library or a rumor of a great oracle. I'm going to use those motivations and try to seed the campaign with locations that appeal to them. During or after character creation, I'm going to try to solicit some kind of motivations / goals from the players about their characters.ģ. Get player buy in that it won't be a 'save the so-and-so' campaign.Ģ. The first step is to be clear to your potential players with your game style. Session 0 / Expectations management: explain the nature of the campaign as based primarily on exploration and treasure hunting. Click to expand.I'm working on a campaign with this style play in mind.ġ.