Thanks Zoombie. Do you have links to any online resources that I don't have to buy, at least not initially. I want to get a feel first. Some of the offerings sample pages at the DM Guild site seem to have good layout, design, art, but I can't see enough of them to get a sense of where they are in Forgotten Realms time or geography, or how the adventure is laid out, NPC descriptions, available quests, level appropriate xp per party per encounter, stuff like that.
For the module I'm contemplating I wanted to do a location based campaign set on a hard to find inhabited island. Players would arrived as shipwrecked galley slaves from a ship destroyed in a storm....maybe some thrown overboard to lighten the load. They come to on the beach to find a few scattered supplies and crap weapons, and the opportunity to explore. The key encounter places would be a local fishing village, a modest mountain with a dragon visible sunning itself on the ledge of a cave mouth, and a path that leads to a set of ruins near an old forest.
The quest centers are the village (minor) and the dragon (major), the basic premise being the dragon is quite civilized and has assemble a large and extensive private library in his caves. Storms and time bring vermin, it's time the various wings of his library need cleaning from pests. He'll pay and reward the cleansing of his library, which will offer the opportunity to discover new magic and tales a bard might trade upon, and a little coin.
The long story is the discovery of a small pantheon of starving gods among the ruins who need to reconnect with their ancient people, what few are left) who were scattered long ago in some calamity/upheaval, or soon their long forgotten gods will die. My hope is to build a three to five part series that will take a group from level one to about level 15 or so...no more than 20. The Dragon and his tasks (including those of the starving gods), and the village with NPC errands move the party off the island to follow leads, discover clues, and track down an all but forgotten people...and where they find opportunity for a random act of vengeance, then that too.
A little comic effect would be as well. The dragon speaks with a very formal erudite manner, but constantly quips and jokes about obscure things barely known, if at all to the party. He also loves and has bountiful spells for hot chocolate. Affable, but superior...a bit like John Cleese without off color remarks. He is very particular about his books...steal his gold and he may forgive you for the price of a good story. Steal his books and you are on the menu...forgiveness there will come hard. I would also like a mostly nuisance book entitled Read Me. If you don't it will follow and annoy you, if you ignore it too long it will attack you. Utterly ignore it for several days and it will attack you in a number of vicious dice determined ways. The trouble is, if you do read it, it gets even more attached and harder to appease. The reward is that occasionally when read it will reveal some arcane bit that will come in hand later. Otherwise it can be anything, inventories, teenybopper diaries, histories, fables, mathematical treatises, gardening tips, etc. In the meantime it follows the party out of the dungeon, and it looks like they have stolen a book to the casual observer...and that shuts down sympathy from the village. The end effect though is intended to be comic, a story thread resolved when the dragon collects and reshelves it.
