Looking back at my past campaigns, the ones I've had the most fun running (and which were arguably the most successful) were the ones where the PCs could take a fairly sandboxy approach to exploring a wilderness region. I'd like to develop a new campaign like this again one day, but what I could use for such a campaign is an interesting premise. I am ruling the following premises out:
- Adventurers plundering old ruins for profit: Too trite.
- Adenturer-archeologists uncovering the deep history of the region for academic bragging rights: A lot of fun, but I have done this before.
- Making the region "safe" for colonization and settlement: While the whole concept of "colonizing the frontier" provides plenty of interesting background drama for a campaign that I don't mind exploring, it is too ethically dubious to make the PCs take the side of the colonizers by default.
So, what other premises can you come up with that provide a justification for player characters to hang around a frontier region and explore it?
@juergen_hubert One frustration with Star Trek, and a lot of science fiction works, is that they rarely show scientists doing science, much less make it central to the plot.
A common Star Trek episode setup is something like, "Captain's Log: we're in the Greek Name system, recording spectral data, which gives us time to..." and whatever the episode is actually about.
Anyway, I'd like some science fiction once in a while that's about scientists doing science. That kind of exploring.