I'm working on starting a new campaign and have a few players who will be playing for their first time, so I'm trying to pick the starting town for my campaign, and I'm down to Diamond Lake or Sandpoint.
But as much as I love both towns, I've never actually gotten to run a game with either of these locations, and I was hoping to get some input from everyone?
To be clear, I'm not really looking for "which is better" but I am looking to hear which of the two you prefer and any experiences or reasons you have for it.
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Diamond Lake is similar to Riddleport(just smaller populace), its a more seedy, darker, harsher town then Sandpoint. If you want a more welcoming start town, Sandpoint. If you want more unfriendly, Diamond Lake.
Diamond Lake is similar to Riddleport(just smaller populace), its a more seedy, darker, harsher town then Sandpoint. If you want a more welcoming start town, Sandpoint. If you want more unfriendly, Diamond Lake.
Thanks! I should clarify a bit, I've read up on both (I own RotRL, Jade Regent and Dungeon issue 124, so I know a decent bit about them, the problem I'm having is that I'm not sure which of the two states of play you mention I'd like more. Which is why I'm curious about other folks experiences with the two towns.
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I love Diamond Lake, because it's so unlike the standard "happy fantasy town" that most other stories put forth. It's a crappy mining town of no importance where people go to be forgotten and die. If you're born there, you're of no consequence - you exist to work in the mines and line the pockets of the mine owners.
Which is why the PCs are so important. They were of no consequence, and only rise to prominence by stumbling across a world-threatening plot in their tiny crapsack town. I really want to run Age of Worms for that reason - people of no consequence end up being the most important people in the world.
That said, Sandpoint is awesome as well, but for completely different reasons. I love how fleshed out the place is, and how much history is in the place for only existing for eighty odd years. There's hidden truths, both within her citizenry and below her streets. There's intrigues great and small, political maneuvering between the noble houses, and criminal opportunities for the Sczarni and other various factions. I wouldn't call Varisia bland myself, but maybe compared to the other unusual places in Golarion, like Cheliax or Osirion. Besides, Varisia's "blandness" is only skin deep. Sure, on the surface, she's a frontier land with a few large cities and many small villages dotted across her landscape, and monsters are around every corner, but there's an ancient history there as well. Varisia today is very much shaped by the legacies of ten thousand years ago, and depending on what's happened when you run your games there, they may not even know the impending threats awaiting them.
I've run games in both (they're both in my version of Varisia!) and I've found the players didn't really care about Diamond Lake.
Although it's no doubt largely due to how I portrayed them, I found that my players wanted to save/protect and generally impress the people of Sandpoint, whereas Diamond Lake was where they wanted to scheme and pull scams/cons.
As such, I'd place scoundrel parties in Diamond Lake and virtuous heroes in Sandpoint.
It depends on what you're going for. Like Steve said, people tend not to give a shit about Diamond Lake, for good reason.
If you want a town where the PCs keep coming back and are attached to the NPCs and their surroundings, go for Sandpoint.
If you want a town where it makes ALL TOO MUCH sense why they would uproot their lives at the first opportunity, leave for good, and only come back to set the place on fire and purge its blighted existence from the face of the earth forever (only to be disappointed that somebody beat them to it), Diamond Lake is good.
Seriously though, screw Diamond Lake.