D&D 5E My new 5E campaign is looking for feedback

[Pandamonium87]

Hi! First of all thank you very much for you observations, I truly appreciate them.

Actually the plots and the hooks you read in the first post have a sort of link between each other (or at least some of them), there is a "big plan" behind some of these requests, but I don't want to spoil it here because some of my players could read it however I put a lot of simple minor and straightforward quests because I want them to feel like the world they are in is real and things are evolving, but also (since I'm playing with two new players that I barely know) to understand what my party likes doing. Just to give you an example now that they have left the city of Ravensburg if they come back to it the other quests will most likely be resolved: Moe the horse breeder has lost the race and now looks no more people to investigate about his horse, or at least not with the same rush. I wanted to give them the feeling of a city full of possibilities that varies on from another but they are all related one another in a way that now it's not clear of course.

As regards the cult of Auriel the reason here is linked to a major plot in the campaign that I'm not writing here for the same reason, but Earthwood is not just a minor wood in faerin, it has a spell that protected it from freezing and that spell let the people of the southern Arcata/Carmathan barony live In that area. By turning this spell off the cult would have make the people of these regions to fear Auril again, thing that cause Auril to raise in power. This is just a piece of the puzzle, they found a mysterious symbol on the rear of the holy symbol of the dead priestess and now the PCs want to go to the capital of Heliogabalus because they felt there's something more and they want to investigate upon it. In fact the story of 3/4 of the party is linked to Auril (Aramil is trying to discover an ancient secret about a winter fey, Alena has Sossal origins and there's a cult of Aurilandur there, even if she doesn't know that she want to investigate upon it and Grigir lives in very cold regions and he has the fear that if these cultist managed to come here in this southern Damata region, maybe they are planning something worst at the Great Glacier where he lives). Shortly there are things around and of course those 1st session hooks were just... Hooks, a mere instrument to start the things and convince player To explore the land around them.

The reversing of the ritual thing however maybe was too simple you're right. It wasn't meant to be there, but since the player of Aramail started to be interested a lot in the ritual and kept asking me questions about the arcane mechanic behind the circle I improvised a solution letting him make an Arcana check. Maybe I could have done something better of course, but that was the only thing that came up to my mind the other night. How would have you handled the situation? I thought about collecting something to fight the human scruffiness evil influence, but I had no ideas.

Thanks for your comments again! Today or tomorrow I will post the report of our last session we made yesterday I hope to receive other observations

 

[GreenTengu]

The reversing of the ritual thing however maybe was too simple you're right. It wasn't meant to be there, but since the player of Aramail started to be interested a lot in the ritual and kept asking me questions about the arcane mechanic behind the circle I improvised a solution letting him make an Arcana check. Maybe I could have done something better of course, but that was the only thing that came up to my mind the other night. How would have you handled the situation? I thought about collecting something to fight the human scruffiness evil influence, but I had no ideas.

Hmm.. I think I would have simply pointed out that the ritual that created the snowstorm required the sacrifice of souls to a god. If they want to reverse it right now on the spot no questions with the tools right here right now, they are going to have to do much the same. The ritual can be reversed in other ways, but not with what they brought out here. But if they head back and inform the church in the city about how the unnatural winter was created, the church probably has the tools to undo it.


I think the main point I was trying to get at though was that none of the plot seemed to directly involve the PCs. No enemies were targeting them or anything they loved or was threatening anything that was important to them. At least from what I observed from your notes. You might want to involve their backgrounds, bonds and motivations a little more directly, because right now they are just sort of random sell swords who are doing all this for money or out of boredom or maybe because it is doing good things and well... that can start wearing thin quickly.

I think ideally that there ought to be a villain that they are going to feel personally affronted by so that they will want to destroy it. Or maybe an NPC who can endear themselves to the players by being interesting and dynamic and granting them something that allows them to big, bad, powerful heroes... and then killing that NPC in a horrific manner. Or it ought to be very clear that by engaging in this missions they are concretely getting closer to something they desire or are seeking. And that might require letting them lose and/or letting something terribly be done that is irrevocable or at least well beyond their power to reverse.

 

[Pandamonium87]

That's exactly what I want to achieve, but I wanted this to be a slower process rather qthan putting them right in front of their backgrounds at first level. I wants to understand what kind of game they like so I can tailor the plot to fit their idea of d&d. With these first session I figured out some way to build a story based on them and of course this is the kind of game I'd like to run.

Your Idea about the ritual is good, maybe I could have forced them to come back and try to figure out the solution with a longer procedure involving maybe research or stuff like that. We'll it's an idea for other similar situations

 

[Pandamonium87]

Ok, here we are reporting another game session. We left the group in Earthwood after completing a ritual to end the magical effect who caused the lake coast in Sudrav to freeze. Looking for clues to understand the nature of the cult the faced, the group found a star-like rune behind the holy symbol of Auril weared by the priestess. Nobody knew the meaning of the rune so Aramil (thanks to his Sage bg) suggested looking for more information at the Heliogabalus library.

In the meanwhile they decided to come back at Sudrav and tell the major and the company of Dell the story of what happened. By the time they came back the ice at the port of Sudrav was completely melted and the fisherman were putting their boats in the water again to restart their activities. In order to celebrate the end of this unnatural cold they were invited at a public party organized in the main square of the city where they ate some fish and drank some good ale kindly offered by the city tavern.

While eating they discussed about what to do next: 3/4 of the party wanted to investigate about this star-like rune, so they decided to go to Heliogabalus after having completed the work on the Galena Mountains taken by Warryn the gnome. They organized their stuff and they left the city early on the next day morning travelling for three days towards the city of Valls, the main town of the barony of Arcata.

In my Realms (see the first post) this barony is in decline since the king Pavel Frostmantle decided to prefer the liberation of the Northern mines rather than focusing on the mines in the south. This led to a migration toward the Bloodstone pass and a lot of miners set their residence in Bloodstone or Ironspur to restart their mining activity. Today the town is just a shadow of what was in the past and the over-sized fort and watch tower are here to remember the inhabitants of Valls their good-days were their ruler (Duke William) didn't want to bend the knee to Gareth Dragonsbane with the historical quote "Duke William is king in his lands".

Perrin the halfling was her during his long journey from Luiren to Damara and guided the PCs through the town, suggesting them a good place to stay: a family run inn called "Berth Mill" much better (so he said) than the more advertised "The Old Man" inn right in the main street. Here Perrin met Berth again, a 40y old woman who run the inn and who is also his friend. Chatting with this very kind woman they tried to gain some informations about the mines, about the road from Valls to the Grooteg cave and, in general, about some rumors in the city. They discovered that the old abandoned tower out of the city is said to be haunted by the ghost of Duke William and that his image appears to those who approach the tower frightening them. During the next day they decided to explore the city and they kept gathering informations about the events in the city and what awaits them from here to the mines. After having heard some rumors of a flying and trained owl who is stealing little valuable item in the night and after having understood that the road from Valls to the Grooteg cave have suffered many landslides they were ready to leave Valls and to go towards the mines. However, before leaving the city, they decided they wanted to investigate about what's happening in the tower and they wanted to see the ghost of the old duke William.

In the morning they reached the tower and they started to look for tracks and clues about some people who could have been wandering around this location, while Perrin tried to open the old and rusted lock. After some tries and some brute-force operated by Grigor they managed to enter the tower just immediately after having heard the voice of the spectre. "Duke William is king in his lands. Leave the tower or die by my wrath". With a little chill they went on and started to explore the tower going up floor by floor. They discovered nothing but old stuff left by the city watch who used this tower many years ago.

In one of the floor, however, the ghost appeared to them trying to scary the party who tried to hit him, but without success. Aramil, however, became suspicious and decided to cast a Detect Magic spell to verify his hypothesis: the "ghost" was actually an illusion spell, so the group decided to reach the last floor to discover who is responsible for this "joke". Here they found a Tiefling sorceress hidden in a closet and his owl familiar who used the ghost story to keep out people from her hiding place. the Tiefling, whose name was Galuthien, trained his familiar to recover precious things like jewelry or coins and she was collecting a little treasure to leave the city with some extra gold. When the group discovered her she silently casted a Charm person (with the metamagic sorcerer stuff) on Grigor succeeding in winning his friendship, causing the party starting to argue about the guilt of Galuthien (they hadn't find the loot of the tiefling at that moment). Taking advantage of this confuse situation, Galuthien tried to escape from a window using a Feather Fall spell, but Aramil reached her with a Magic Missile spell accidentally killing her. This ended the effect on Grigor, but also shocked the rest of the party that now has to face the fact that they have killed a person who was at most guilty of some thievery.

I leave you with some pictures of the gaming session

Valls​

Galuthien

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