D&D 4E Campaign brainstorming 4e point of light setting

[Balesir]

After [MENTION=27160]Balesir[/MENTION]'s excellent post I'm not sure I have much to add, except that it's no mystery what orcs eat - anything at all, including other orcs! In 4e, at least, orcs are an expression of unbridled chaos and destruction (and so quite different from, say, goblins and their ilk). They don't have ordinary economic motivations.

On orcs - I agree. I have never been all that clear on the ecology of D&D orcs, but I really like the slant Hârn put on them. Gargun, or Hârnic orcs, have a propagation method akin to ants or bees; a bloated "queen" lays eggs that are buried in offal to gestate and hatch into semi-adult orcs with fairly extensive racial memories. Those that escape the birthing pit without being eaten by their brood-mates are canny and tough enough to join gargun society, perhaps eventually vying to become "king" (and thus get access to the queen). The most vicious fighters among them are the "princesses", who have no wish to become bloated egg-sacs and so keep themselves segregated from the males as a "queen's guard". Orcish society is thus seen as a carnivorous hunger and lust-for-sexual-gratification fuelled chaos held together by a racial memory-led impetus to self preservation and the force of will of the "king"...

 

[Storminator]

Fallcrest can be a good trading spot without actually exporting anything. It sits on the bridge on the Kings road, and the falls on the Nentir - so it can charge tolls for the bridge and hire out porters (elevators?) for the falls. It's also the natural spot to go to switch between road and river. This means it's going to be the place to go no matter what you're trading and where your trade is going. In my world Fallcrest would soon develop trading houses that buy any and all cargoes headed into town, and sell them again to anyone headed out. Why go all the way to Hammerfast to get dwarven steel when it's for sale in Fallcrest?

Fallcrest might also start to develop a surplus of vehicles (if folks start dropping off carts and buying/leasing/borrowing boats, frex), which could be an additional business itself.

Once Fallcrest starts setting itself up as the place to buy and sell things, the principles will need to know who needs what and where, and information itself becomes another market. I would expect factors in Fallcrest to have a detailed knowledge of all the civilization in the Vale.

PS

 

[Agatheron]

I'm currently running a campaign in the Nentir Vale. I started off with Keep on the Shadowfell for various reasons, but since I had given one of my guys a history with the Iron Circle from the MV: Threats to the Nentir Vale, I knew I had to do Reavers of Harkenwold to pull in the character's background. As such, my crew was 4th level when they finished Keep, and it established a history in Winterhaven for the group. I upscaled Reavers, replaced the Bullywug encounters with Daggerburg Goblins as allies of the Iron Circle. They're in the throes of it right now. I'm going to have Nazin Redthorn in possession of one of the cards from the Deck of Many Things, and make it clear when it comes into their possession that the Deck is the MacGuffin that the players need to get before agents of the Iron Circle do.

Because I upscaled Reavers from 2-4 to 4-6, it will transition very smoothly into Madness at Gardmore Abbey. I am thinking that post Gardmore Abbey, if they do manage to come into possession of the Deck, they'll have to figure out what they're going to do with it. That I'm leaving open, and will probably do semi-homebrew after that.

As for Fallcrest, there are farms that surround it, and the King's Road and the Trade Road to Hammerfast are important routes. Fallcrest's size has mostly to do with it being a trading hub, as others have pointed out.

 

[NotAYakk]

On orcs - I agree. I have never been all that clear on the ecology of D&D orcs, but I really like the slant Hârn put on them. Gargun, or Hârnic orcs, have a propagation method akin to ants or bees; a bloated "queen" lays eggs that are buried in offal to gestate and hatch into semi-adult orcs with fairly extensive racial memories. Those that escape the birthing pit without being eaten by their brood-mates are canny and tough enough to join gargun society, perhaps eventually vying to become "king" (and thus get access to the queen). The most vicious fighters among them are the "princesses", who have no wish to become bloated egg-sacs and so keep themselves segregated from the males as a "queen's guard". Orcish society is thus seen as a carnivorous hunger and lust-for-sexual-gratification fuelled chaos held together by a racial memory-led impetus to self preservation and the force of will of the "king"...

My Orc/Goblin biology is close to this.

Orc/Goblin babies are Larva. They eat meat to develop into an adult. When they do so, they turn into a Goblinoid version of what they ate to develop.

So Goblin Wolves are made by hunting wolves or dogs, then feeding them to larva. Goblins are made by raiding the small peoples, and Orcs by raiding the larger peoples.

Orc and Goblin societies keep slave populations in order to breed new generations, plus they raid humanoids.

It takes a relatively small amount of meat to imprint a larva with a pattern, the rest can be from offal and other sources of food. So butchering one human can be enough to quicken a dozen orc larva.

Half-orcs, under this biology, are a result of ancient Tuathian magical cross breeding, an attempt to generate a race of humans with the ferocity of orcs that they can use in the legions. Same with half-elves (my elves grow to adulthood as plants), which where bred as diplomats and prettier looking house servants. The Tiefling race itself was produced by the Tuathian empire creating a ruling super-race from the base human stock.

 

[DEFCON 1]

There actually is a very workable way you can connect Harkenwold to the Gardmore Abbey adventure, and it's BECAUSE of the Red Dragon in MoGA ironically enough.

If you either are subscribed to DDI and can go into the Dragon Magazine archives *or* you own or can pick up the Dragon Magazine Annual 2009 hardcover book... there is an article called "The Longest Night". This is (I believe) the very first article written that gave any sorts of details about the Barony of Harkenwold. The article goes over a little bit of info about Harkenwold itself, and also gives the basics of an adventure plot-- a red dragon named Cazakk The Blessed has terrorized the villages of the barony by demanding tribute from them in the name of Tiamat. Right now the villages have to give quite a bit of their wealth and supplies on the winter solstice to this dragon in exchange for not getting destroyed. Baron Harken offers to make anyone who can rid them of this red dragon his actual heirs to the throne.

The several encounters in the article (not really a module per se, more just an outline) include Cazakk arriving on the winter solstice to claim his tribute, the party confronting him, Cazakk flying back to his lair if the party is too much for him and he's hurt, and then the party invading his lair to defeat him.

So what we have here is a red dragon who is threatening Harkenworld itself *and* a red dragon that appears in the Gardmore Abbey module (although I am unfamiliar with the module so I have no idea what that dragon's story is). All you would need to do is merge/change/combine these two dragons together so that it's a singular red dragon, and construct a reason why the red dragon from The Longest Night flies to Gardmore Abbey. Like perhaps Cazakk's lair *is* Gardmore Abbey, so that when the party beats him up on the night of the winter solstice, rather than fly into the Dawnforge Mountains to his lair (like the article suggests), he instead flies to the Abbey and the party then follows him (thus leading you right into that module). Or if you wanted to add some encounters to fill in the levels between Reavers of Harkenwold and Madness of Gardmore Abbey... you go through Reavers as written (while dropping hints of the village's additional money problems), then once Reavers is done you detail the arrival of the red dragon for tribute, with Baron Harken then offers his barony if the party gets rid of Cazakk. They confront the red dragon on the solstice, Cazaak flies away back to his lair in the Dawnforge Mountains, they then go on the road to invade his lair and try to defeat him a second time. But before they can kill him, Cazakk once again (gravely injured) makes his escape and flies to the Abbey thinking he'd be safe there to recover from his wounds. Thus the party can claim the treasure of the dragon's hoard, as well as return a lot of it to Harkenwold.

This Longest Night plotline and the invasion of the dragon's lair can take the party from 4 to 6... and when they return to the Baron, he tells them that if they can find and kill Cazaak for good... they will become his heirs. A little bit of sleuthing... the party discovers Cazaak hid out at the Abbey... and you are now good to segue into the Madness of Gardmore Abbey module as they go off to hunt Cazaak down.

I'm sure the whole thing will require a bit of massaging to get the plotlines to come together... but I do think it's cool that WotC created a perfectly viable adventure plot to tie these two modules together several years before either of them had gotten written. If you can get a copy of the article, I'd highly suggest checking it out. I ran the scenario for my players several years ago, and it was really, really fun.

 

[Blackbrrd]

[MENTION=7006]DEFCON 1[/MENTION] thanks a lot, I don't know if I can get my hands on that article, but I can use the plot idea here anyway. I do like tying things together, and this seems like a really good match. Maybe I should make the hunt for the Red Dragon the main plot, and let the Deck of Many Things be there to complicate matters? It's going to surprise my players when the slew of complications around Gardmore Abbey appear if they are just expecting to go and kill the dragon.