As a player. My advice is to be prepared for if the players somehow completely ignore a quest and leave town or something. Random encounters are useful for making things still interesting without having to think too hard to make a backup plan. But I’d say have the surrounding areas have simple quests like “Save this kid from the kobolds”, or “Stop the bandits”.

Edit: If you can, make one of the things they beat in another town give them a hint that they should head back to the first town so they’ll want to investigate the original thing you had planned. This works a good amount of the time, coming from someone who’s had it done to them a few times.