[larsdangly]

Thanks! I'm the first to admit that the basic architecture of the place isn't original - the huge adventure land is a pumped up version of Runequest's Big Rubble; the city itself is Lhankmar meets Thieves World meets every city in every Conan book; the dungeon beneath the Raj's castle is a ~200 room version of Death Test. But it feels creative because all the details emerge during play rather than being planned out.

Expert hack: these days it is surprisingly easy to get the bones of such a campaign put together yourself. Over the last several years I've swapped out most of my old hand made maps (which had tons of gaps because I have a job other than writing dungeons!), and replaced them with a massive ensemble of Dyson's Delves maps, which I drop into a graphics program and modify to meet my needs. The result is that a surprisingly large sandbox space is mapped to a surprisingly great depth of detail, so players can literally go anywhere and try anything and I'll have a concrete answer for them. The stocking is trickier because you have to use your brain; there I'm relying on a ton of old NPCs and encounter tables Ive made over years. There are so many of them, many with some history of use in prior games, so it is pretty easy to ad lib. And once you get used to doing that you really don't need to pre stock much.