I love the Frog God Games adventures for the Swords & Wizardry system (and you can get these for 5E), but sifting through my library of them, I was not finding many great starting locations and those classic level one to six adventures. I had a lot of level 5-8 adventures and only a few great campaign starters. It is a bit of a confusing collection of random adventures, and I spent a night reading and coming up with a plan of "how to start here."
First up, I would start with the Stoneheart Valley module. This is a solid level 1 to 6 campaign that takes you through a bunch of linked adventures and starts you in the archetypical "small starting fantasy village" as a home base. Perfect! It has one problem, the map of where it is is not the best. Where is this place?
This is the old Necromancer Games map, and it is more of a historical addition than something very useful. I had a hard time finding this area in the Lost Lands world book, but I finally did and made some notes about other adventures and things to consider buying in case you wanted to support a campaign in this area.
The area is known in the Lost Lands as the Central & Sothern Sinnar Coast, and it contains several great adventures and reference books worth noting. I highlighted a couple areas of the published adventures and put in two areas that could fit other mega-dungeons.
First up in the upper left is Fairhill and the Stoneheart Valley adventure, and this should be your first buy for a starter book. Right next to that is the city of Bard's Gate, and you can buy a book describing the entire town. These two could anchor a campaign for many sessions, and they are close enough for a great one-two starting area.
Down in the lower-right is the city of Endhome in the Lost City of Barakus adventure, and this is another good starting campaign set. A little bit to the north of that on the coast is the mega-dungeon Rappan Athuk, and this is hundreds of hours of play worth of adventure.
To the south of Endhome is a large swamp area, and you guessed it, a perfect place for the Barrowmaze mega-dungeon. There is one blog playing this module with Castles & Crusades, and they are over 100 sessions and 400 hours of play.
To the west, I highlighted another area that would be perfect for dropping the Forbidden Caverns of Archaia into. This is another 100+ sessions, 400+ hour mega-dungeon, so if you want to go completely overboard in this area, it is entirely possible. I am sure other published adventures are hiding on this map, and I will discover them as I go. I would need to check the scale of these areas to make sure they fit, but I am sure I could just make it work.
So with this setup, I have two starting areas, two major cities, and three mega-dungeons. Rappan Athuk really needs Expansion Book 1 to be considered a starting adventure, but the other two mentioned are ideally suited as starting areas as well. Also worth noting are the areas south of the Forest Kingdoms are details filling in the Borderlands Provinces book, so you have more background detail about this area at your hands.
There are 5E versions for most of these books, along with Swords & Wizardry/Labyrinth Lord versions that are all compatible with the OSR game of your choice. I play with Castles & Crusades because I can run 20-30 characters as a solo player in different parties with ease and minimal record-keeping. Not having to track skills, saves, thief abilities, cleric turning, endless ability modifiers, and dozens of other things on every character sheet means I get to play more and do less paperwork.
There, this is a great plan! I have areas and adventures to get starting parties up to level 5, so they can tackle adventures in the Quests of Doom series or begin Rappan Athuk. I have plenty of room to expand and explore, and I can add adventures as I see fit. And this is just a seven-book set, with thousands of hours of play locked away in them, all in that tremendous old-school flavor.
In the game of your choice.
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