Must all Blackmoor Campaigns be epic?

[Havard]

I tend to not see the edges of a map as a limit at all. It is something that prompts me to doing too much work in my own designs - I keep going further and further afield.

Exactly. This is a pretty good idea. I loved the map from the BECMI Master's Set (by Frank Mentzer) since it showed several continents and provided some names, but left all the details for the DM to flesh out for himself.

Players almost never like to keep it small, they always (at least in my games) go off in some random direction or go to follow the rumour of some distant place. I have always hated railroading, and my players always seemed to be conscious of that.

Small can mean alot of different things. My most successful campaigns have been those where the PCs have gotten attached to some community or other where they felt that they really knew the NPCs. If they saw a chance to help this community or protect it from danger they would feel much more motivated than when asked to help the villagers of random village #15 from the local orc tribe.

On the down side, it sometimes takes a while for my new players to start showing initiative. It has been about five years since a player has built a castle in my world.

This is my challenge at the moment as well. I have been trying to use the strategy above for this, but the fact that so much time passes between each session makes it difficult.

Havard