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?
Being on the receiving end of superior military might the player characters are forced into exploring the frontier to escape the military that has conquered or is in the midst of conquest.
Red Hand of Doom is a good inspiration for this premise.
The characters are hired to take a one-way boat journey to deliver a MacGuffin, they are shipwrecked or ambushed once they arrive and are effectively stranded in the frontier until they find a way back.
Gods of the Forbidden North is a good inspiration for this premise
There is some sort of valuable material in high supply but unknown locations within the frontier, the players are developing a stronghold or part of a stronghold that needs this material so the players are tasked with recovering it, during the course of it two factions come into focus one that is neutral or positive of the ecological harvesting as it expands civilization, while the other is negative of the ecological harvesting.