I've read the article several times, and I'm still scratching my head over one thing: why start with the map instead of the adventures? By my thinking, it would be much easier to put the maps of all of my favorite adventures side by side and see where it would make the most logical sense to place them in relation to one another. With this in mind, I'm going to switch steps one and two.
Step One/Two: Choose my adventures.
I'll start with some old favorites.
- The Assassin's Knot: Garroten will easily serve as one of Verge's trading partners as well as providing an adventure location with the assassin's guild
- Shards of the Day: Dylvwyllynn makes for a great adventure location and the magical item that is scattered across the ruined city plays well with the campaign's theme... a sword for light, darkness, and twilight... what more could I ask for?
- Unfamiliar Ground: With goblins and a tiny dracolich, this would be a great place to put near Verge for the PCs to stumble upon early in their careers.
- Fiendish Footprints: An adventure I never got around to running which contains that magical phrase: "Can be dropped into any campaign".
- Ruins of Undermountain: A classic... no real explanation needed here...
- Random Dungeon: Just for old time's sake, I think I'll roll up a dungeon randomly using the tables in the 1E Dungeon Master's Guide. It might be a flop... but it could be a ton of fun.
So as of now, I have five adventure locations ready to go (or at least ready to be converted to 4E), one adventure I need to sit down and generate, and three towns to place (Verge, Garroten, and Saltmarsh).