Hi! This is my first post here in D&D Beyond, and i came here as this seemed like the right place to get this kind of help.
I'm not new to being a Game Master but i'm definetely new to Dungeons and Dragons, and while playing my homebrew worlds were fun, i have decided to try out running a game set in the official scenarions and of course, Forgotten Realms seemed like the right place to start.
My goal is to start small with a open ended campaign, giving enough space for my friends to get used to their characters and wait for the right time to zoom out and present them the rest of the world all the while giving me time to learn more about the details on each corner of this scenario to make a overall better experience. And my eyes landed on the Moonshae Isles.
They are perfect for the campaign i'm planning to run. There are these bunch of isles, full of lore, each with their own problems to my party to fix and a very detailed official map publicly avaiable. A perfect playground to my players that don't know nothing about the Forgotten Realms to get used to the high-fantasy medieval feeling of the world just so i can turn the tables with the grand magical reveal that there is a whole world outside these island that they spent all this time exploring. Sweeet~
However, and i'm having this problem a lot, is that there are a lot of places which seems to have missing information that i can't find anywhere online. For example:
- It is not clear what destroyed Caer Corwell.
I initially planned to start around Wyngate and make the first missions to be getting there, but i found out that it was left in ruins and the culprit is unheard of. The most likely to have destroyed the population seems to be the new Fey Queen that has been strutting around, but if that were the case, why would the humans try to make peace with these elfs that razed a human settlement?
- What are all the moon symbols scattered around the Isles?
Through observation, my more educated guess is that they are locations of Moonwells however there isn't any source to confirm my suspicions so a educated guess is the most i can get.
And lastly, but the one which i can't even hope to get all the aswers i need but here it goes...
- What are all these unmetioned places?
There are several locations which i can only assume i'll learn about if i buy the novels. But here are some of them which i'm aching to know more about because even before the campaign starts i KNOW that these questions will pop up in my player's mind as they did in mine:
1) What are Tetauctaa and Hyoclaatl? These locations have such a different name than the other, and as far as i can guess, it seems like Lizardfolk settlements because they follow the Astec motif the race seems to be going with. And what is the relationship between these with the city of Wyngate (which i assume is a human settlement?)
2) What's going on with Flamsterd? And why it has a Sunken Tower? Also, who is the Wizard the map speaks of? AMERICA EXPLAIN!
And the last one because i don't want this to be an exhaustive list of things:
3) What is the Castle of Skulls by the Dragon Head? Seems like Skeletorg vacation home.
Are we supposed to fill these locations with our own lore or is there a place where i can find these informations? Let me know!
That's all for now, but i'll largely appretiate anyone that replies. I'm really looking foward to this campaign and just want to start off right.
Probably quite late to help you out, but I too am running a Moonshae campaign. Since this was the first D&D (5e) game that I have run since the mid 80s, I chose to start my party with the last game that I ran: the 1E game "Treasure Hunt". It starts with the entire party at level 0 and is an excellent first adventure because it takes place on a tiny island in the archepelago. I added a few new components to the adventure and once the party escaped the island, one of the characters found a message in a bottle bequeathing Caer Corwell to him since Tristan is lost at sea. I began introducing dieties (The Earth Mother and Umberlee...to continue a plot point from the 1E adventure), and building out the town of Caftenor, capitol of the island of the same name. Since maps of the Moonshae do not give any real info about the island, I created it to suit my campaign. I use the Forbidden Realms wiki to gain major lore, and filled in the rest on my own. I picked a point of time in the published Moonshae timeline which made sense to me (1375DR) and I create within the existing lore, but twisting it a bit for my needs.
“Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one's lifetime.” - Mark Twain - Innocents Abroad
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Hi! This is my first post here in D&D Beyond, and i came here as this seemed like the right place to get this kind of help.
I'm not new to being a Game Master but i'm definetely new to Dungeons and Dragons, and while playing my homebrew worlds were fun, i have decided to try out running a game set in the official scenarions and of course, Forgotten Realms seemed like the right place to start.
My goal is to start small with a open ended campaign, giving enough space for my friends to get used to their characters and wait for the right time to zoom out and present them the rest of the world all the while giving me time to learn more about the details on each corner of this scenario to make a overall better experience. And my eyes landed on the Moonshae Isles.
They are perfect for the campaign i'm planning to run. There are these bunch of isles, full of lore, each with their own problems to my party to fix and a very detailed official map publicly avaiable. A perfect playground to my players that don't know nothing about the Forgotten Realms to get used to the high-fantasy medieval feeling of the world just so i can turn the tables with the grand magical reveal that there is a whole world outside these island that they spent all this time exploring. Sweeet~
However, and i'm having this problem a lot, is that there are a lot of places which seems to have missing information that i can't find anywhere online. For example:
- It is not clear what destroyed Caer Corwell.
I initially planned to start around Wyngate and make the first missions to be getting there, but i found out that it was left in ruins and the culprit is unheard of. The most likely to have destroyed the population seems to be the new Fey Queen that has been strutting around, but if that were the case, why would the humans try to make peace with these elfs that razed a human settlement?
- What are all the moon symbols scattered around the Isles?
Through observation, my more educated guess is that they are locations of Moonwells however there isn't any source to confirm my suspicions so a educated guess is the most i can get.
And lastly, but the one which i can't even hope to get all the aswers i need but here it goes...
- What are all these unmetioned places?
There are several locations which i can only assume i'll learn about if i buy the novels. But here are some of them which i'm aching to know more about because even before the campaign starts i KNOW that these questions will pop up in my player's mind as they did in mine:
1) What are Tetauctaa and Hyoclaatl?
These locations have such a different name than the other, and as far as i can guess, it seems like Lizardfolk settlements because they follow the Astec motif the race seems to be going with. And what is the relationship between these with the city of Wyngate (which i assume is a human settlement?)
2) What's going on with Flamsterd?
And why it has a Sunken Tower? Also, who is the Wizard the map speaks of? AMERICA EXPLAIN!
And the last one because i don't want this to be an exhaustive list of things:
3) What is the Castle of Skulls by the Dragon Head?
Seems like Skeletorg vacation home.
Are we supposed to fill these locations with our own lore or is there a place where i can find these informations? Let me know!
That's all for now, but i'll largely appretiate anyone that replies. I'm really looking foward to this campaign and just want to start off right.
Probably quite late to help you out, but I too am running a Moonshae campaign. Since this was the first D&D (5e) game that I have run since the mid 80s, I chose to start my party with the last game that I ran: the 1E game "Treasure Hunt". It starts with the entire party at level 0 and is an excellent first adventure because it takes place on a tiny island in the archepelago. I added a few new components to the adventure and once the party escaped the island, one of the characters found a message in a bottle bequeathing Caer Corwell to him since Tristan is lost at sea. I began introducing dieties (The Earth Mother and Umberlee...to continue a plot point from the 1E adventure), and building out the town of Caftenor, capitol of the island of the same name. Since maps of the Moonshae do not give any real info about the island, I created it to suit my campaign. I use the Forbidden Realms wiki to gain major lore, and filled in the rest on my own. I picked a point of time in the published Moonshae timeline which made sense to me (1375DR) and I create within the existing lore, but twisting it a bit for my needs.
Most anything can be found for FR Lore on the FR Wiki and Candlekeep Forums.
“Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one's lifetime.” - Mark Twain - Innocents Abroad