Arid Hills. Preferably canyons. I love the crumbling vertical terrain along with some good suspicious crevices for things to jump out of.

Not to say that a social revolution plotline is weak. With the return of magic, there will be political winners and losers. What will the winners do with their new power? What will the losers do to hold on to their positions? Those questions can drive the politics of an entire setting IMO.

Your whole reply just now feels like a good campaign basis to me. Imagine a found family theme in a time of chaos and lawlessness where unlikely peoples are banding together. The players will likely find a cause to latch on to and, +their backstories, you'll have enough to hang a campaign plot on.

I've got to run back to work for a bit, but I promise I'll be back later. In the meantime, what themes or ideas are you interested in exploring? Suggestion: You have the return of magic after 26 years. That leaps out to me as a fun story element.

I think all creatives are tough on themselves. Imposter syndrome is also common. Confession: Every campaign I've ever run will have a segment where I hate the campaign and regret running it. But I believe that DMing mistakes eventually float on down the river. You can recover from nearly anything.

Honest praise. It looks like you've made fun dramatic plans. Why do you feel like you're struggling with creating a strong narrative?

I think you've structured things well. Big moves, player choice, and gutsy hooks to the next campaign. Yeah. You've got this!

He's based on the Once King? I'm going to cherish this reply for years to come. ^_______________^ (I might also happily perish from unprocessable emotions :)

Since you need to link or foreshadow the next campaign, I'd say that act 4 is a great place for such, but if you want the players to defeat the BBEG and then discover the next campaign hook on his corpse or something - that's always a solid place. IMO. Doing both is also good.

Once they have the derailing element (knowledge, power, npc, MacGuffin, etc...) in hand, they can proceed to act 5 which is the final dungeon or whatever deadly sequence you have surrounding the BBEG.

I think your best move as DM in act 4 is in making a big villain move. This will make it look like the BBEG could win and signals that the end of the campaign is in sight. The players ideally spend the rest of act 4 scrambling to get whatever it is that they need to derail that train.

However, TTRPG play almost never adheres well to 5-act structure because the players get a vote. D&D is fundamentally emergent storytelling which is good at turning story structure into soup. That said,

I think act 4 of the current campaign is a good starting spot. Act 4 is commonly called the darkest hour. Basically, the villain needs to be heading at high speed towards their goal which, traditionally, forces the heroes to get over themselves and make an all-or-nothing play.

Thanks! I'm blushing now though ^_^ I'd love to help out. Thanks for @ing me.

Playing Final Fantasy 4 as an adult-> Cecil and Kain: "we must rescue Rosa from Baron" Rosa: is a healer with low offense yet she escapes, crosses the mtns, crosses a desert, gets hella poisoned, still makes it to freedom - all SOLO. Day after being cured, goes to a war zone w Cecil. Holy crap!

I'm learning how to do layout in Affinity cause BYE ADOBE!

Affinity's file extension cracks me up "Book1.af" Hahaha. Yes, this book 1 is book 1 AS F-

A good fresh Star Trek take on those fake isekai title jokes