Historical game DM writers block

[xanth_ih]

I am running a historical game vic 520 AD set in the Eastern Roman Empire. Basic Premise is that the 526 earthquake at Antioch broke open a tomb that sealed up plague spirits...resulting in.. the plague of Justinian.
PCs will eventually find out the spirits are to blame and set out to stop.
They are 2nd level and although I know where I want the ultimate goal of the game to go, I am stuck on adventure ideas and have been for several weeks.
Now, players are going to Constantinople to request aid for the earthquake ravaged Antioch (and will bring plague into city) a few games from now they will go to request a truce w/ sassinisds (and end up inadvertently bringing the plague to them).
This is a low magic campaign....need some adventure ideas to help fill out my broad concept. Want to balance the magical and mundane aspects of life in this time..... any suggestions/ideas/ect to get me moving would be helpful. thanks

 

[Empath Negative]

First... Kill all the lawyers.

After we do that, consider "skipped level" advancement for magic users, and replacing each skipped level with a metamagic, item creation, or reserve feat.


This would mean that a Wizard would be level 4 by the time he had access to 2nd level spells and level 20 by the time he got 5th level spells. Limited Wish would be an Epic spell and Wish would only be the providence of the most powerful spellcasters in history.

 

[RUMBLETiGER]

Never underestimate the value of side quests!

A series of funny things happened on my way to Constantinople...

A very large earthquake has occurred. I'd assume Village X and City Y will have tons of fires to put out, people to dig out from under rubble, children missing to be found, thieves taking advantage of the chaos, Monsters attacking the now-defenseless, farm animals to round up.

I quickly Wiki'd your earthquake. Many fires. 18 months of aftershocks after a magnatude 7.0 quake means every few days or weeks chaos is stirred again and something breaks, somebody gets in trouble, or something other creature is released from the ground. So many buildings were damaged. A Gold depository was robbed, go retrieve it. A three decayed bodies were discovered in another building, and the owner is missing, the neighborhood is suspicious. A number of fishing vessels went missing and their families are worried, search the coast and the ocean floor. From the wiki, "The Great Church was destroyed by the fire seven days after the earthquake." That's got to have plenty adventure hooks right there! The rebuilding in the aftermath could be something the PC's can get involved in.

How about a chasm ripped into the earth leads to the afterlife? play with ideas of a brief planar travel where they accidentally stumble into The Plain of Asphodel by climbing into a crack in the earth that they heard sounds from, after climbing down for a while they end up exiting a cave or maybe the underside of another land, some weird things happen that they don't understand, somebody comes with them out of the chasm and it's not until afterward they connect the dots that the weird region-under-the-earth was actually the afterlife. Let them return again when they're many levels larger and journey through Tartarus instead!

This can be an excellent opportunity for the PC's to make NPC friends and contacts. Villagers, members of the Church, Politicians. Build up a series of individuals in debt to your PCs. I imagine the old "Hercules- The Legendary Journeys" TV show in which our heroes walked around the countryside and somebody would come running shouting "Help, Help..." and then ask the heroes to resolve some conflict or another. Hm.. this also reminds me of Scooby Doo.

 

[Water Bob]

Would the [ame="http://www.amazon.com/Last-Days-Constantinople-Role-Playing-Adventure/dp/0970796102"]Last Days of Constantinople[/ame] help you out?

Also, when I'm blocked, I like to read novels and such set in the period for which I'm trying to create.

And, usually, once I get a campaign going, quest ideas seem to pop up all over the place. I try to listen to what my players are interested in with the story, and then create around that.

Another thing I do is grab published adventure modules and convert them. When I'm done, what I have created is usually nothing like the published adventure--not reconizable at all. But, I find some neat ideas in those books. I'll might find a totally unapropriate encounter for the game I'm running and then start thinking about how to change it so that it is appropriate. For example, let's say you're looking at a dwarven temple to Moridin. In your constantinople campaing, the ancient dwarven temple becomes the a temple for the cult that worships the spirits and let loose the plague! Dwarves become cultists. +1 daggers become sacred cultish weapons. And so on.



Last but not least....I've had an idea for a long time that I've never actually tried. And that is to grab a game guide for a computer game that is set in my genre. Older games have cheap game guids at used books stores. In them you have maps and NPCs and story lines and everything you need to set up an adventure.

Maybe one of these days I'll get around to doing that.

 

[xanth_ih]

Never underestimate the value of side quests!

A series of funny things happened on my way to Constantinople...

A very large earthquake has occurred. I'd assume Village X and City Y will have tons of fires to put out, people to dig out from under rubble, children missing to be found, thieves taking advantage of the chaos, Monsters attacking the now-defenseless, farm animals to round up.

I quickly Wiki'd your earthquake. Many fires. 18 months of aftershocks after a magnatude 7.0 quake means every few days or weeks chaos is stirred again and something breaks, somebody gets in trouble, or something other creature is released from the ground. So many buildings were damaged. A Gold depository was robbed, go retrieve it. A three decayed bodies were discovered in another building, and the owner is missing, the neighborhood is suspicious. A number of fishing vessels went missing and their families are worried, search the coast and the ocean floor. From the wiki, "The Great Church was destroyed by the fire seven days after the earthquake." That's got to have plenty adventure hooks right there! The rebuilding in the aftermath could be something the PC's can get involved in.

How about a chasm ripped into the earth leads to the afterlife? play with ideas of a brief planar travel where they accidentally stumble into The Plain of Asphodel by climbing into a crack in the earth that they heard sounds from, after climbing down for a while they end up exiting a cave or maybe the underside of another land, some weird things happen that they don't understand, somebody comes with them out of the chasm and it's not until afterward they connect the dots that the weird region-under-the-earth was actually the afterlife. Let them return again when they're many levels larger and journey through Tartarus instead!

This can be an excellent opportunity for the PC's to make NPC friends and contacts. Villagers, members of the Church, Politicians. Build up a series of individuals in debt to your PCs. I imagine the old "Hercules- The Legendary Journeys" TV show in which our heroes walked around the countryside and somebody would come running shouting "Help, Help..." and then ask the heroes to resolve some conflict or another. Hm.. this also reminds me of Scooby Doo.

Ah yes the old side quest....could be used to get pcs to a level where i can abuse em more.... This timeperiod is difficult to find info on (most is either a century prior or several just after). Well I have 3 major events thus far

1. Bringing Plauge to Constantinopel

2. PCs piss off the Sassinids (a plauge spirit possessed ambassodor is escorted to Sassinid king by Pcs...then instead of brokering a peace deal he insults/thretens/kills king or members of the court...bringing sassind wrath down on hapless pcs who were just along for the ride)

3. Eventual defeat of Plauge Sprits (No real plauge spirits in D&d) So Ill probally subsittue a plauge spewer or some such

Now I just gotta fill in the rest of the :in between stuff"


Random though I know I shouldnt pursue: what if the plauge made people into ZOMBIES!!!! nah, I wont go there....yet


Thanks for ideas, keep em coming

 

[Samloyal23]

A Gaulish druid is convinced the empire is too big and overpopulated, so he wants the plague to spread so it can cull the human herd. He plans on stopping the heroes from completing their quest to end the plague so he's sending waves of savage warriors to the East to interfere...

 

[Empirate]

A young boy is the only survivor of the plague in [place a], everybody else there is dead. The boy seems to be in a trance much of the time, and he bears holy stigmata. It is found that his touch can heal the plague! Escort the boy to Constantinople, protecting him from the many groups (monophysite heretics, a power-hungry local bishop, a band of brigands whose leader has fallen ill, plague spirits possessing normal townspeople, a guild of barber-surgeons seeing their profits in danger) interested in stopping him.

[place b] has been fortunate enough to escape the quake and the plague. Their neighbours suspect foul play - maybe witchcraft is involved? It is said the mayor of [place b] consorts with foul spirits, possibly the devil himself. Stop him!

One of the PCs is possessed by a plague spirit. Find a way to cure him/her.


Etc.

 

[Betrayor]

You could include the Nica riots Nika riots - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia .....
Maybe the plague spirits are what caused the riots and maybe they would destroy the entire city unless the characters intervene.....

 

[Leif]

Building on the 'cure the plague spirit' idea of Empirate, you could send them to China to get rare, magical[?] herbs for plague medicine. Throwing in a few Mongol warrior archers would be a fun twist, but I'm truly not sure whether this would fit in with your proposed 'timeline' if you're going for any historical verisimilitude.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

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