Any tips for making a tier 3 adventure set in a small town?

[Rfkannen]

So I have a problem with almost every single campaign I run, I make the players go too far from their starting location, and I always regret it. They lose touch with the npcs they were talking to, I lose touch of the tone because I am trying something diffrent, ect.

So for my next campaign I decided I am going to make an area smaller than 24 miles square for an entire tier 1 to tier 3 campaign!

I have a basic idea of the campaign already, its sort of a cross between amphibia and wolf walkers? Levels 1-5 you do small jobs around town, get the farmers to trust you ect. Levels 6-8 you deal with a small cult in town and deal with the local fey in the nearby forest. Level 8-14 the town gets a new lord (sent by the king who took over in my last campaign) who turns people against the forest's fey and you have to mediate the outcome. I also really like the idea of a lot of downtime, players can the town priest and run the church, get a farm, start a tavern, ect. Really let players engage with the area.

ALSO as a fun experiment, I am going to try to turn this campaign into a adventure book and put it on the dms guild after I run it! My campaigns already have pretty extensive notes, and I use InDesign professionally, so why not combine those and make a book out of my campaign!



However I am nervous about keeping the tension in tier 3. I plan on making the lord pretty intimadating, a high level paladin type with a bunch of lieutenants who do stuff around the area that the pcs have to stop. But pcs can do stuff like teleport and DESTROY towns with singular spells at higher levels. I am afraid that pcs of that level will feel really constrained by mostly adventuring in a small town.

Any tips for running an adventure set in a small town at tier 3? Is there a way to keep pcs entertained at that level withought having them interact with big picture setting stuff? Do you think having an invading lord works? (the tier 3 content is the stuff I am the least certain on, I am mostly excited for the fey and town stuff, but I also really want this campaign to get to tier 3). Any other advice?

[Samwich]

I would say the most important thing is to go heavy on the worldbuilding within the town. If players are going to be interacting with the same cast of characters and the same scenery through three tiers of adventure, they need to be in love with every square inch of the town. Then as you play, take note of which characters seem to resonate with players and make sure those characters frequently appear.
This also plays into making the campaign feel threatening at higher levels. Instead of having threats target the players, have them target people and places the players care about. And make at least a few threats something that the players cannot simply target with their world shattering powers. Maybe the lord establishes a controversial new tax that threatens to put the player's friends out of business, or begins a smear campaign to turn the town's opinion against the party.

[MrStabby]

It... depends on the players.

At one end, you may have to rip up the town and transport it to a demiplane to stop some groups going to the big city to find an NPC who they think should know about these things.

At the other end of the scale you get PCs who are so excited to hit level 14 because it finally means they can get on top of that rat problem in the cellar ONCE AND FOR ALL!


Taking the town to the feywild (or even shadowfel) might actually work though, and making some of the old problems bigger could also provide some continuity but also challenges. The shopkeeper shortchanging customers is metamorphosed into a demon of avarice, the wolves attacking sheep at level 2 come back as Lich-wolves that eat the souls of villagers and leave every carcass as a phylactery and so on. Bonus marks if you can let the temples/taverns/strongholds the players have built in the town be part of the solution.