Working on developing my first campaign. Looking for general advice on how to tie it all together, have appreciate the advice I have received so far but I feel like I needed to make some sort of general plot concept to start to look into those resources more. This is long so no need to read or reply but if you have the time and interest I appreciate it! I mostly want to know if my general plot actually makes sense in some way outside my own mind! Started with Dragons of Stormwreck Isle DnD starter set with the idea of having a time portal appear at the end. PC’s include Paladin Aasimar-goal is to find his grandfather (or more likely information) who was allegedly carried away from the island by a dragon a long time ago Tabaxi Rogue-No clear goal yet but following the will of Bast, ((ancient Egyptian goddess of home, domesticity, fertility, childbirth, and protection)) was suggested here to help her find a powerful form of catnip Sword-wielding human Wizard-being chased by a Wizards guild because they don’t like him pursuing training in sword fighting etc. Guild is called The Trust of the Song Warlock with a patron called the Deity Moander, which I’m just learning is an actual deity in DnD materials. Warlock wants to find some dirt on his patron so he can no longer be manipulated by him. How can you find dirt on a deity? Or am I missing something? Can they just kill him in a future time period? Sorcerer-occassionally when he rolls on the wild magic table he gets pulled to the elemental plane, so he would like some type of power to stop doing this. and/or maybe learn additional wizard magic more easily. The idea is they have just defeated a dragon (in a clifftop observatory) that wanted to perform a magic ritual during a celestial event, they have gotten rumors of some type of time portal potentially opening up during this event. So the next scene would be they’re in the observatory with the dead dragon, and they see the celestial event cause the observatory and telescope to glow and they see someone appear holding a large staff. This is a wizard human named Ebeneezer holding a time staff (I found online has certain stats etc.)

Most game adverts have a description of the setting or story. As I prep advertising for a new in-person game, I was working on some draft language to promote a proactive game... Here is what I have so far, I would love edits and feedback. "I am putting together a group for an emergent campaign using Fishel & Fishel’s Proactive Roleplaying and Collaborative Campaign Design frameworks. The basic concept of an emergent campaign is that the plot emerges as the player characters pursue their own goals and the world reacts to their actions rather than the plot being outlined or written by the GM (or a publisher) ahead of time. Ginny Di made a nice 13min video about Proactive Roleplaying if a video format is helpful to understanding the concept."

I know Dnd 5.5e is not popular with a lot of folks, just wondering why. Also curious what systems are your favorites and why? I'm in my first year of ttrpg-ing and don't feel I can take on learning a new system yet but I'm just wondering in this group what factors influence your likes and dislikes about various systems. I have played some independent systems at conventions and enjoyed them, and I do like the combat mechanics of Pathfinder, but Dnd is really big where I live and I already have a lot of the physical materials so I'm pretty invested in it for awhile. Open to any thoughts though, thanks!

Running my first campaign, characters have goals. Started on stormwreck isle a prewritten dnd starter set (2024 5.5 e) (I took over for someone else who started this) thought I could pivot us to collaborative campaign from there. I mentioned time travel here and a Fishel brother gave me some ideas of how to motivate the players to enter the time travel portal but just to summarize the goals: Couple of the players have knowledge and spell goals, a warlock wants to get some dirt on his patron because he's starting to feel misused, a wizard is feeling chased by his wizard guild because he's becoming a sword expert, the tabaxi rogue just wants to follow the will of his deity (baast I think), and the paladin wants to find his long lost grandfather. So I have the hooks to get them to continue, and to go different places from the previous advice here. I'm working on finding out the players interests and they've mentioned space and dinosaurs. So this was a long way to ask this but.... any ideas about considering space travel? I'm thinking of going into the future for some advanced spell tech or something? I have the spelljammer materials (I practically have access to everything on dnd beyond) but is there something else that might make more sense and is manageable for space travel? Also I know there are dinosaurs in dnd stuff so I could probably have them in some older setting. I think I'm imagining that some time in the future there's some greedy wizard corporate group and maybe they've been stealing and moving around magic items different time periods, maybe the paladin's grandfather was trying to investigate them? I guess I'm just wondering if anyone has general ideas about these specific locations and time periods, but I'm open to anything at all, I appreciate all the advice I got on the last post and am using all of it!

Hope this makes sense. I am continuing a campaign someone else did a couple sessions of, Dragons of Stormwreck Isle, dnd 5.5e if that matters. The concept in my interpretation is several adventurers go there because they're seeking something at the island, wisdom, spells, etc. One PC is looking to find out what has happened to his long lost grandfather. This whole thread has nothing to do with the prewritten material other than there's a dragon type quest to resolve and the rumor about the grandfather is he was carried away by a dragon over 50 years ago. I have planted a couple clues that would lead the crew to think this PC(paladin aasimar) has a "twin" that has been seen on the island and that there are some signs of a time travel vortex or field or something. I'm thinking maybe they'll find the twin and realize it's actually the grandfather and there's a time warp. Then I'm thinking maybe they'll get pulled into some other world/timeframe/something and that might be the new proactive campaign. I'm planning to tell the actual players about these concepts a little bit each week as we resolve the pre-written scenarios/adventures prior to the time warp. Any thoughts on how to transition in a cool or conflict driven way? Or any suggestions on moving forward? While on the island I have a sorcerer & wizard who both want more magical powers/spells etc., a tabaxi rogue who wants cat nip but is holding back on other motivations, a warlock on a quest for knowledge, patron still a mystery. Open to any reactions, thanks.