Help me decide where the seven parts to the Rod of Seven Parts are!

[DM Magic]

I'm going to be running a mostly improvised Rod of Seven Parts campaign. Using a bunch of aids I've collected over the years (decks of NPCs, wandering monsters, treasure, dungeon layouts, puzzles, traps, etc), I'm going to basically fly by the seat of my pants using inspiration drawn from these decks and the players.

One thing I'd like to do is have a huge list of fun places the rod parts could be, put them in a table, and then roll each time it's time to start searching for the next part.

So hit me with your best ideas and let nothing hold you back! Anything is open -- the plains, time travel, other planets via Spelljammer ships, exotic locals, monsters of legend, deities, etc.

 

[Celebrim]

Are you planning on keeping the traditional or canonical description of the rod as a mighty artifact of law? Or do you have your own interpretation of its role and purpose?

 

[Eltab]

Every part of the Rod should be found in a different climate (prairie, jungle, tundra, desert, swamp, underwater, what else is good?). This allows you to have the PCs meet up with different animals / encounters as the adventure progresses.

If you want time travel, offer a limited Time Machine. It doesn't go anywhere on a map, just between yesterday and tomorrow. The point is to explore the Ice Age, Carboniferous jungle, shallow seas (oops), volcanic fields, magi-tech civilization, &c.
I can SO see where the PCs, in a pinch, have to throw a part of the Rod into an erupting prehistoric volcano (to keep it away from BBEG of the Ancients, say) ... when they travel to The Future, they hire out a Dwarf seismologist and there it is: eroding out of some basalt about half-way down the mountainside.

 

[ccs]

Each part is located in.... A different Edition!

OD&D
BECMI/Rules Cyclopedia (hey, now in PDF & PoD!)
AD&D 1e
AD&D 2e
3x
4e
5e

Mighty convenient that there's 7 parts & (at least) 7 editions.

 

[Caliban]

The various rod parts are

1) Behind the couch at their mother's house. (Whichever PC still has living parents. You know, the weird character who isn't an orphan out for revenge.)
2) Being used as wedge under a table leg to keep the table from wobbling...in a bar in the City of Brass on the plane of fire.
3) Being used as a piston in a steam powered gnomish war machine - one of a thousand such machines currently involved in a war on alternate Prime Material Plane.
4) Being used as a scepter by a king whose kingdom is on the brink of civil war - and if the visible symbol of his authority is stolen, it may the last straw that tips the balance and triggers the war.
5) Being used to power a spelljammer equipped with an artifurnace custom built to use the that piece of the rod. Since the artifurnace will only work that section of the rod, the lich whose ship it powers will not give it up peacefully.
6) In a trapped chest that is bolted to the ground, buried under a pile of gold, as part of Tiamat's treasure horde.
7) Currently adrift on the Astral Plane in a backpack worn by a desiccated corpse. Someone was standing too close when a bag of holding was dropped into a portable hole.

 

[Celebrim]

Personally, I'm not a big fan on relying on random tables for large and important campaign decisions. They are much better at filling in the small details that you weren't able to foresee or which you simply couldn't prepare for.

As such, I'd consider the overriding consideration be that each of the seven parts be in a location that supported a different sort of adventure or at the very least, that you weren't asking the party to do the same sort of adventure two parts in a row.

That is to say, some of the locations need to support dungeon crawls. Some of those dungeon crawls need to me kick the doors down commando assaults, and others need to be more of the trap filled tomb sort. Some of the locations need to support more event driven and/or character driven urban games that may involve as much diplomacy as combat. Some of the locations need to support wilderness exploration of some sort (whether on the material plane or elsewhere). For an epic campaign of this sort, some of the latter locations might involve the PC's in battlesystem scale conflicts that see the PC's take the role of generals and commanders.

If you go by the canonical conception that the rod is a tool of ultimate law that perverts everything toward law, then you have 3 of the four alignments having very good reason to not want to see the rod reconstructed. Chaos has obvious motivation for not wanting to see a tool designed to defeat it reconstructed, and good - possibly even Lawful Good - has reason not to want to see it restored for fear of creating or empowering some amoral or fascist tyrant. As such, there are interesting dynamics where some of the enemies that the PC's end up coming up against are good guys, where as it may turn out there are devils (perhaps initially in disguise) wanting to advance the PC's goals for their own reasons.

Twists are very important to any long term campaign. My first impulse is to give the PC's a very charismatic ally in part one who acts as quest giver and party enabler, that turns out to be greater devil in disguise at a much later stage.

Motivations are also key to any long term play. Assuming that the PC's aren't in fact amoral legalistic tyrants that care only about the letter of the law, harmony, and order the PC's are going to need a really strong personal hook for pursuing the rod to the end. After all, it's not at all clear WHY anyone would want to reassemble the rod in the first place. If the motivation is just money or power, I don't think it's going to hold up as the drawbacks of the item begin to stack up. You'll need to think deeply about motivations like keeping the rod out of the hand of a rival organization. Maybe the PC's learn that some powerful mortal Emperor of a decidedly tyrannical bent, perhaps even a benevolent autocrat but one that clearly cares little for personal freedom or individual comfort, has commissioned an multiple groups of adventurers or heroes to search for the rod (and perhaps has even found the first piece). The PCs, armed with knowledge that this is a terrible idea, are sent to steal the first piece and prevent the recovery of the rod (thus, like Frodo, the PC's are on an anti-quest). Another classic motivation is that the enemy that the item was intended to defeat has returned, and now the foozle must be recovered in order to defeat the enemy.

Personally, since I love twists, I'd design the campaign to do both, switching motivations halfway through the game. For example, you could start with the enemy has returned, only to halfway through have that motivation removed by the defeat of the enemy without the intervention of the foozle. But, at this point they get the new motivation of keeping the darn thing from falling into the hands of their original employers. Or vica versa, they might start out on an anti-quest to keep the rod from being reassembled, and halfway through this anti-quest have the great enemy return meaning that they not only have to continue to fight off the Lawful side that now sees them as chaotic threats to the safety of everything, but they also have to do what they never wanted to do in the first place and that's assemble the whole rod so that they can save the universe.

 

[Jacob Lewis]

Lord Seuss has taken the Rod, hiding in unique places and offers a riddle to would-be heroes:

I put one part in a box, I put another with a fox.
The third is found in a boat, the fourth is very near a moat.
You will not find them in a tree, you may not find it here with me.
Find the fifth in a cage, find the sixth with a mage.
The final piece is not on land, it travels free with a band.
Also, green eggs and ham. Hungry for these, that I am.

 

[Morrus]

Each part is located in.... A different Edition!

OD&D
BECMI/Rules Cyclopedia (hey, now in PDF & PoD!)
AD&D 1e
AD&D 2e
3x
4e
5e

Mighty convenient that there's 7 parts & (at least) 7 editions.

That is kinda cool!

But each in a different setting would be fun. Oerth, Krynn, Eberron, Ravenloft, Athas, etc.

 

[Quickleaf]

I'm going to be running a mostly improvised Rod of Seven Parts campaign. Using a bunch of aids I've collected over the years (decks of NPCs, wandering monsters, treasure, dungeon layouts, puzzles, traps, etc), I'm going to basically fly by the seat of my pants using inspiration drawn from these decks and the players.

One thing I'd like to do is have a huge list of fun places the rod parts could be, put them in a table, and then roll each time it's time to start searching for the next part.

So hit me with your best ideas and let nothing hold you back! Anything is open -- the plains, time travel, other planets via Spelljammer ships, exotic locals, monsters of legend, deities, etc.

Reduced (via the spell) and hidden within a vault on a similarly reduced cube of Acheron resting on the desk of Iggwilv, Queen of Witches, hovering over a powerful magnet and slowly revolving counter-clockwise to provide a panorama view 1/2 of Iggwilv's study, and 1/2 overlooking window opening onto the Gray Waste.

 

[MarkB]

The parts are currently assembled together within the humble-looking hollow wooden staff held by the patron who gives the PCs their quest. He's currently still preparing for the perfect time to deploy the Rod, and until he's ready, the best way to divert attention from himself and make it appear that he's not a current threat is by sending out a bunch of loud, obvious adventurers who will make it perfectly clear that they are scouring the farthest corners of the multiverse for it.