[DM Help] - First time DMing 5e something original

[Luizeu]

Hello everybody,
I'm running my first sandbox campaign.
I have a plan for an arc on the long run, but I still feel a little lost on what is happening right now and how the players will get there. I expect to connect some plot points from the PCs backstories to the adventure. All players have created a backstory revelaing origins, allies and antagonists.
A big event happened on the empire 20 years ago and since then necromants and necromancy has been forbidden there. My idea for antagonists is a group of necromancers that want to topple the empire so they can stop hiding and live their lives as they used to. In order to achieve this, the necromancers have organized a cult that is trying to destroy the five places of power that stabilize the realm (a bit cliched, but ok).
Does it make sense?
What kind of encounters can I create?
How can I scale the danger as the characters grow stronger?
Any help would be welcome.
Thank you guys

[Unoriginal]

I'd advise you to start with something low-scale that can still clue the PCs on what is happening.

Ex: smugglers have lost control of a captured monster they wanted to sell to the necromancers (or at least one of their henchmen) and now it's rampaging into town. The smugglers are trying to re-capture it as the PCs try to help the twownsfolks.

[Man_Over_Game]

Hello everybody,
I'm running my first sandbox campaign.
I have a plan for an arc on the long run, but I still feel a little lost on what is happening right now and how the players will get there. I expect to connect some plot points from the PCs backstories to the adventure. All players have created a backstory revelaing origins, allies and antagonists.
A big event happened on the empire 20 years ago and since then necromants and necromancy has been forbidden there. My idea for antagonists is a group of necromancers that want to topple the empire so they can stop hiding and live their lives as they used to. In order to achieve this, the necromancers have organized a cult that is trying to destroy the five places of power that stabilize the realm (a bit cliched, but ok).
Does it make sense?
What kind of encounters can I create?
How can I scale the danger as the characters grow stronger?
Any help would be welcome.
Thank you guys

First and foremost, figure out what level you expect these badguys to be stopped at. Don't plan for level 20, that's an unrealistic goal and a mistake a lot of inexperienced DMs make. When you can set a goal that ISN'T level 20, THAT's when you know that you've given it an honestly decent answer.

For something like this...maybe level 10-12? You can determine the expected level by looking at the spells available to casters for each particular level. Using Planeshift as an example, consider when a caster can regularly move to other planes. Do not be weary of a player's options, but instead realize that they are tools that NEED to be used. If a spell (like Plane Shift) is available, the campaign either needs to be finished up by then, or the threat needs to extend past the players' original plane. When problems can be easily solved/ignored with magic (or some other tool), that's the time that the problem either needs to get big enough to implement that tool or get solved.

Break down those levels into tiers. Figure out where you want the players to be between those levels. Maybe levels 1-4 are about finding out about the Necromancer's schemes and stopping the local cult. Levels 5-7 are about saving the local places of power, and rallying allies. Level 8-10 are about extinguishing the remaining necromancer influence, and level 11-12 is some shocking realization or event that changes the world (maybe they stop a Lich that's been controlling everything, or maybe they find out that the necromancers are actually building an army to stop a planar invasion to take over their world).

Once you've broken it down into those tiers, you no longer have to plan an entire campaign, levels 1-10. Now, you only need to figure out what happens between levels 1-4, and how the events at level 4 tie into the next section. Build an outline from the most basic foundation.

My recommendation is to have it be something like this:

Level 1: Heroes are doing a mission to find someone. They find his cart, but it appears that the horse was ripped out of it and dragged into a local cave. They explore the cave, beat up all the monsters inside, find the dead horse, and a passageway built by people.

Level 2: They explore the passageway, find out that there is a small village of people living here that have hexed the monsters upstairs to be guards. They attack the players on sight with magic. They attempt to close a barrier around the room, and use a Magic Circle to warp their way out while sending a giant summoned monster to keep the players from breaking through. The players saw that the person they were supposed to rescue was in the room with the mages.

Level 3: If the mages escape, the players catch wind that a local Wizard may be able to divine where their target went, and asks them to do some adventuring to pay for it. Otherwise, the players rescue their target, and accidentally release a trap that causes the dead mages to turn into undead and attack the players and their ward.

Level 4: If the players used the Wizard, they track down the mages before they can afford to fortify their new location, and save their friend. Otherwise, the players need to protect their target during his critical state as they get him back to town. In either scenario, they find clues that explain the necromancers' plans, and how the local temple is their first major target.

[Bjarkmundur]

*checks forum*
*sees interesting question, opens thread*
*Sees MoG already replied*
*posts a useful link (https://donjon.bin.sh/5e/calc/enc_size.html) just to participate *
*closes thread *

There's a thread here "I only ever homebrewed" you should check it out. I think it's on the first page.

[Kane0]

Last time I did this I treated it like a game of chess. You set up your bad guys, decide which ones are important/powerful and which ones aren't then each 'turn' choose one to do something in aid of the overall goal and weighing up the risks and rewards for their actions. Of course keep in mind there can be more happening than just these bad guys and the PCs plus sides can be manipulated with new allies, enemies and so forth but you're only doing one thing at a time and everything you choose to do is with one goal in mind.
It also helps limit yourself so you don't end up pulling resources from nowhere, either they were on the board already or someone on the board made the decision to bring them in. That part can be important for actually bringing a campaign to an end, whenever that may be.
But that's just one way of approaching it, plenty of people go for a more cinematic approach for example.

[Puh Laden]

As for how you can scale the danger, you can do one of two things: assign different areas to different levels of adventure and have the players deal with that (a sort of "naturalistic" way of going about it) or you can make it so that no matter where the adventurers go, the enemies they meet are always appropriate for their level (a "Schrodinger's cat" approach). You can still justify the latter approach by saying that the cult's army starts off small and weak but is getting stronger and building its forces as time goes on.

EDIT: Either way, I recommend you build encounters only when you need them. You can have some notes about where is what, but be prepared to change them. Starting off with an adventure the party has to start with and then having them pick a place to go at the end of the session so you have time to prepare is one tactic that can be helpful.

[Luizeu]

Thank you, so much guys.
All these ideas will help me a lot.

[Kurt Kurageous]

Sent you PM to try and get you my favorite all time best helper for a DM.

[ChildofLuthic]

Something I did in my game was to create a network of different people with different interests that were working together to make the evil plan happen, for different reasons. The Evil Plan was letting an evil dragon become ruler of the dwarves, and the groups that were helping were: a dwarven demon cult, a group of orcs that the dragon promised to make the dwarves stop attacking, the thieves' guild that just wanted to get paid, and a group of human bandits who wanted to be rulers of part of the dragon's dwarf empire. (The last part makes sense in context.)

What this does is allow me to throw a bunch of different enemies at the party as they chase the macguffin: demons, dwarves, orcs, bandits, and even a few thieves. When they start out, they can be impressed by the variety, but as they continue, they can be impressed by how everything ties together.

So ask yourself, who are the necromancers working with? In each of those five locations, are there people trying to destabilize it? Who are the necromancers getting supplies from? On a meta note, are there baddies in your world that you want to add to the adventure for fun?