Ah, the Nerrath campaign, the D&D 4E "default setting" that felt like more of an example of a starting area that every player wanted to see fleshed out as an entire game world. This was part of 4E's "rebel nature," and people loved this since it wasn't Greyhawk, the Realms, Dark Sun, or anything else we have seen before. The game had a lot of things we never saw before, such as elevating tieflings, dragonkin, and eladrin as core rulebook races. The world was new, the planar cosmology was new, some of the gods were new, and the world's model felt more interesting than we had in 20 years of 3 and 3.5E.
Then, 5E comes along and quietly rolls back many of the changes. Back in the cave with you! I get why; 4E's design was horribly broken, and everyone in this uni-class acted and worked exactly the same. The entire experience was MMO-ized. It felt like a card game in book form. High-level play was a disaster. The game needed a reset and back-to-basics to survive.
But we loved this little place like it was home. We built a world around it that was our own.
When we tried to create 5E characters to fill this world back in 2014, when 5E came out, the characters felt lacking. Something was missing. We never replaced 4E with 5E and put the game aside as "meh" compared to other things we were interested in.
Ten years later, I designed some of my NPCs from our game using the A5E rules, and what a difference a solid core design makes. A5E tightly links your character to the world unless you choose a more nomadic background and happen to wander into this area. Otherwise, if you say I am in a trades guild, the game asks you, "What guild? Who do you know? What connection do you have?" In every case, you must answer specific questions about the world that tie your character to it.
We had a character, a female tiefling town guard from Winterhaven, and in 4E she was what she was - tiefling fighter. In A5E, she had this background where she still had some of the responsibilities of that background in the sandbox. She could get called upon to serve if the town were in danger. The guards could ask her to investigate mysterious caravan attacks on the north road. If a killer were on the loose in Winterhaven, she could be asked to bring her friends in to solve the mystery. And if she did enough for the town, she could have skilled retainers, a 4-person squad, assigned to her permanently. This is great if the party were on a long trip and needed a small group of trusted, trained guards to guard their camp, look after their treasure, and watch over them while they rest.
She went from bland to fabulous.
I don't get that in D&D or 5E.
I get all this for every background in A5E by default.
One of the problems many adventures have is the "wandering adventurer" mentality. They are written from the standpoint of "you wander into town," and it feels like such a tired cliche. I love my sandbox settings and a system that forces me to say this person came from that place and knows these people. You can tweak this relationship to your liking, so if you want to be more of an outcast - that is your choice. But you will still have to say who threw you out and why.
I could run a fantastic Nerrath campaign with A5E. The one I wished we could have run. Nobles could have been linked to Eladrin families looking to restore their manors in the Moon Hills. Traders would have contacts in every town. Guards would be linked to actual towns and NPCs. Members of different guilds would have NPCs and guild houses to visit and deal with. Entertainers could make names for themselves and earn a living in different towns. Clerics could perform religious ceremonies at temples in exchange for room and board.
As the PCs level, the importance of their groups and circles grows. The cleric is brought to a council of faith for a larger area. The guild invites the player to a regional meeting to discuss significant issues. The guard becomes an officer and is sent to the local monarch to represent the area in significant security issues.
The PCs would still be adventurers and free to go where they wish, but having a world to fall back on helps. This world can also be a source of adventure hooks and opportunities. The PCs are part of the world, and the world is a part of the PC's experience.
My adventures are mostly "you wander into town," which limits my options. Most 5E adventures are written like this so they can "drop-in" anywhere. Even if I use these, I would like to establish a "home area" and "why the PCs are here together."
I would do that work before I ran the adventure; even though they could be a hundred miles away from home, the questions of "where do they come from" and "why are they there?" must be answered.
Starting with a more robust sandbox helps like some of the classic OSR mega-dungeons converted to 5E that come with starting towns. These have NPCs you can use during character creation, where you can point to someone and say, "I worked for him, or she was my guild master." That makes for a great game; you are tied into the setting, and your motivations are clear and personal.
D&D suffers from a plague of "the adventurer class" like they were a caste middle class between peasants and royalty. They assume these people have no connections to the world and just exist as a wandering group of thrill seekers. This feels like the people who go to Burning Man and other festivals, one after the other, and you wonder if these people have real jobs and real lives.
And every adventure is written for them. "The wandering band of adventurers stumbles upon..." is now equivalent to "it was a dark and stormy night." It is a lazy cliche, tired, and invites the players to care less about the world and adventure since another one will be waiting for them just down the road a little.
I love the concept of a system that forces a tighter connection to the game world. You could house rule in "I am a wandering X," but that should be the outlier, not the norm.
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