Campaign fluff - plz read and comment!

[curiosity]

Ok, bare bones of my campaign world:
* PCs live in a small village at the edge of a peaceful & prosperous land.
* There has been no serious military threat to the nation for centuries.
* Nation is reasonably magic-rich: e.g. mages have mastered art of constructing fixed portals through which people can travel - there is one of these portals in the local mage's tower in most towns and cities.
* Govt = magocracy of 7 Archmages + King with ceremonial functions only. Lower level mages perform admistrative functions throughout the land, magic and mages are regulated.
* The 7 Archmages also entrusted with defence of nation - the people assume they are so powerful that they are all that is needed. Only a token army in the present day.
* Over the centuries successive Archmages have declined in power: these days the 'Archmages' aren't all that powerful (say 10th-12th level max). But no-one knows this (it's their dirty little secret).

That's the setup, now the campaign:
* Early games will set up the home village, flesh it out so that the players establish some emotional bonds with NPCs etc.
* PCs (who will be 1st or even 0 level, very green), will be sent on some errand/mission into the mountains. Of course it will go pear-shaped and there will be some battle etc etc.
* When the PCs are returning home, they will see a flight of DRAGONS flying overhead. Presumably they hurry home to find...
* ...Village burned by dragonfire, people enslaved by the minions of the Dragons (but actual dragons & most of their minions have moved on to capture the major cities). Perhaps the invaders have hijacked the portals and conducted a blitz attack through them.
* Because nation is poorly defended it will fall quickly to the invaders, who will then...(not sure - put the population to work doing something? Hunt for an important artifact?).

* PCs will have to try to free their village, prevent word of their resistance getting back to the invaders, then go from there - try to work out how to eventually save the day (which would take most of the campaign presumably).
* Eventually they will find out that the dragons are coming from another world where dragons are (relatively) commonplace, and colours vs. metallics are locked in eternal struggle. PCs homeworld is in some way strategically important to this struggle.

Various inspirations here: Transformers; Dragonlance; RE Feist; 'V'. Idea is sort of to put the PCs out of their depth from very early on and see how they react.

Any thoughts? Too ambitious perhaps?

 

[JoeGKushner]

Doesnt' sound bad but... argh, the damned village again! Why can't it start in a city. Have the characters do some city work for a while, you know, vermin extermination, body guard work, etc..., hear some concerns from various factions like the priesthood, mad hermits and oracles, and be sent off to discover information and when then they see the attack of the dragons in its full glory knocking out a city.

It could be a city state as opposed to part of an empire, or it could be a 'backwater' city that's not considered important to the empire.

Just my thoughts though. I worry that GMs must always start in the stix and work their way up. The action's all going on in the city man!

 

[mythusmage]

To combine the two, it's a neighborhood. A long established neighborhood in an older part of town. Life is steady, stable, and good overall. With a few excitements to liven things up.

Then things begin to happen. Accidents and incidents increase. Tempers get short. Even the best laid plans oft gang aglay (to borrow a phrase). Something is going on.

The PCs live in that neighborhood. Somehow they find themselves involved in most of the incidents and other events. During one event the learn that there is something behind it, and possibly other happenings. Which leads to...

Have fun with it.

 

[Doug McCrae]

If I was the PCs I'd run away. They're first level. Their nation has just been conquered by an army of dragons. What good would freeing their village do? Such a tiny uprising would soon be crushed.

There's no way you could keep the fact that one village has been freed a secret. Even if they ensured none of the occupiers escaped (highly unlikely), it would be revealed next time a dragon flew over the place, or relief forces arrived, or the draconian tax collecter turned up.

 

[JDowling]

PCs will have to try to free their village, prevent word of their resistance getting back to the invaders, then go from there

Just so you know, if I were a PC I would probably try to save the people, but maybe not in a way you'd expect.

I will need to go on a lot of assumptions here:
1 - My group is out numbered
2 - The populace of the town is too scared to be any use freeing themselves
3 - I am "out gunned"

So, what I'd do is coordinate ambushes in (town/wild - depending on classes and party) to try to thin out the guards. I'd try to run a stealthy campaign of terror against the attackers so they are frightened and uneasy, can't sleep well at night, et cetera.

Basically resort to a head-on confrontation as only a last resort... Once I managed to free everyone I'd set about leading them cross country to "somewhere safe". If I don't know "somewhere safe" I would still leave town, go quite some distance and try to establish some sort of wilderness town/camp.

If at that point my companions and I figuered we had the slightest chance in heck of freeing more people, I'd move to another small town and try the same. Perhaps training the people we had freed already in guerrilla tactics, set up more raids and ambushes. Try to do as much intial damage as I could in a priliminary strike but avoiding prolonged confrontation. Of course, any of the villagers who did these raids would obviously be gaining exp as npc warrior class, or fighter *evil grin*.

Obviously disrupting supply lines would be important in this sort of battle, but that might not be possible (the teleportation transportation) which greatly weakens the powers of the guerrilla movement, you can't intercept shipments of supplies to strengthen yourself as you take from your enemy, et cetera.

Your players would probably approach it in another way. I think it sounds like a fun campaign idea, but I agree that staying in the town would be asking for trouble.

basically I'd approach it as a "harrassment, distruption, and attrition" sort of movement until I had enough backing to reasonably try something bigger.

As a side note - the sort of tactics I'd use are used in the RE Feist books if I recall, Thomas (the golden armor guy, that was his name, right?) and the dwarves harrassing the outlanders, the elves, and also the rangers of Crydee (was it? Pug's town) all employed hit-and-run tactics.

Sounds like it could be a lot of fun.

 

[Laman Stahros]

Just so you know, if I were a PC I would probably try to save the people, but maybe not in a way you'd expect.

I will need to go on a lot of assumptions here:
1 - My group is out numbered
2 - The populace of the town is too scared to be any use freeing themselves
3 - I am "out gunned"

So, what I'd do is coordinate ambushes in (town/wild - depending on classes and party) to try to thin out the guards. I'd try to run a stealthy campaign of terror against the attackers so they are frightened and uneasy, can't sleep well at night, et cetera.

Basically resort to a head-on confrontation as only a last resort... Once I managed to free everyone I'd set about leading them cross country to "somewhere safe". If I don't know "somewhere safe" I would still leave town, go quite some distance and try to establish some sort of wilderness town/camp.

If at that point my companions and I figuered we had the slightest chance in heck of freeing more people, I'd move to another small town and try the same. Perhaps training the people we had freed already in guerrilla tactics, set up more raids and ambushes. Try to do as much intial damage as I could in a priliminary strike but avoiding prolonged confrontation. Of course, any of the villagers who did these raids would obviously be gaining exp as npc warrior class, or fighter *evil grin*.

Obviously disrupting supply lines would be important in this sort of battle, but that might not be possible (the teleportation transportation) which greatly weakens the powers of the guerrilla movement, you can't intercept shipments of supplies to strengthen yourself as you take from your enemy, et cetera.

Your players would probably approach it in another way. I think it sounds like a fun campaign idea, but I agree that staying in the town would be asking for trouble.

basically I'd approach it as a "harrassment, distruption, and attrition" sort of movement until I had enough backing to reasonably try something bigger.

As a side note - the sort of tactics I'd use are used in the RE Feist books if I recall, Thomas (the golden armor guy, that was his name, right?) and the dwarves harrassing the outlanders, the elves, and also the rangers of Crydee (was it? Pug's town) all employed hit-and-run tactics.

Sounds like it could be a lot of fun.

Ah yes, the Red Dawn campaign! The memories, the memories!

 

[random user]

I agree with the above, make sure you have a plan ready if they decide not to save the town (any number of reasonable possibilities here for why not).

Other than that sounds fun. Perhaps they could meet up with other resistance fighters too. It's unlikely they are the only people to have survived the initial attack.

 

[curiosity]

Thanks everyone - some great food for thought.

One extra detail: I was going to run a prelude first up, set 20 years before the campaign begins, where the players play some higher level guys who end up settling down in the starting town. So there would be some grizzled middle-aged adventurers in town to offer advice, help etc once they were freed.

I figure that the initial attack is sort of a 'shock and awe' type blitzkrieg, focused mainly on the major cities, so that resistance in a small mountain village on the edge of the land could plausibly go unnoticed for some time. The invaders might be figuring to use the fixed portals present in

For sure I think the players could react to this in an unexpected way, but I thought that it would be nicely non-linear that way - PCs could go to the elves or dwarves for help, try to get to the dragon home world to enlist the aid of the metallics, run a guerilla force, team up with an Archmage who survived the initial attack etc. I thought the players might enjoy the freedom. Plus this will be a BBS game, so I won't have to react to stuff too fast.

Has anyone run a similar campaign to this?

 

[curiosity]

*sneaks in a bump when no-one is looking*