Starting at skullport
Wanting some advice from people who have run it.
I’m going to be running this campaign for some friends soon and I’m wanting a bit more of a better reason to be invested in digging deeper into the dungeon than “here are vague side quests, jump in and go”. Maybe I’m wrong but the current starting motivation doesn’t feel great.
My players are pretty good, we’re just about finished with Vecna: Eve of Ruin and didn’t struggle much with it at all.
I’m thinking about starting the players on a ship, that’s either caught in a storm and dragged into however skullport is connected to the outside world, or they’re captured by pirates or someone from skullport and taken as prisoners.
Perhaps they are just in Waterdeep and kidnapped by the drow.
Point being, Is it a stupid idea to have them start in Skullport and have to go backwards through levels 3-1 to get to the top of the dungeon?
I’m thinking that for most adventurers who go down there, they probably only get a couple levels down. But if the party escape, they will have found either one of Halaster’s gates or a passage that connects to the lower levels (skullport and beyond)
I am aware that they’d be level 5 going through content for level 7s but with point buy, and some other stuff I don’t think it’d be wildly hard. Also a lot of the encounters seem to have a way to talk out of.
Thanks in advance.