Shadow's Apex Part 6: Setting Up the Sandbox

Last time, I briefly discussed the Shadow's Apex campaign as a sandbox style game. Today, we actually begin moving in that direction by following the steps in this post over at The Hydra's Grotto.

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.

1. 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
2. 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?
   
3. 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.
   
4. Fiendish Footprints: An adventure I never got around to running which contains that magical phrase: "Can be dropped into any campaign".
5. Ruins of Undermountain: A classic... no real explanation needed here...
6. 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.
   

I'll stick with these for now, though I might add more later. There is one thing that troubles me, however. With the exception of Garroten, none of these adventures come with a ready-made town. I could use Waterdeep, but it is too big for my tastes. I'll throw Saltmarsh into the mix, using the updated version from the 3.5 Dungeon Masters Guide II.

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).