Urban D&D plots

[On Puget Sound]

I also had a campaign set in a mytho-historical version of Byzantium. In my game, Romania (under the vampire lord Vlad Tepes, called Dracula) was the big threat, and the Byzantines' primary defense was an anti-undead barrier invented and maintained by the wizard Thanalycos. The main plot concerned the discovery that the barrier was fueled by human sacrifice...Thanalycos had always made sure the victims were people who wouldn't be missed, and who deserved it (as far as he could judge), but as Dracula's assaults on the barrier increased more sacrifices were needed and Thanalycos was becoming less choosy. Once discovered, the PCs had to decide whether to end the sacrifices (likely dooming the city to being overrun by undead hordes) - and if they did, they had to defeat a high level werewolf wizard to do it.

A subplot involved a young half-celestial named Alexander (we were seriously anachronistic in this campaign) who was trying to raise support from the Greeks and Byzantines to retake his homeland of Macedonia, which had already been lost to Dracula's legions.

 

[Robbs]

Couple of storylines I've used in the past.

One of the players was running a lothario. He hooked up with a beautiful woman who happened to have a room nearby. Upon disrobing and hopping into bed, the woman was revealed as a doppleganger and the bed a mimic. They were working for a mindflayer that had a taste for certain unusual brains. After subduing him, they smuggled him out of town. The other PCs had to piece together what had happened and pursue the kidnappers.

I introduced a DnD equivalent of a big game hunting club (monsters and archeological knowledge) and one of the players received an invite to meet one of the members. The club had diminished over the years (less actual big game hunting and more telling stories and drinking, followed by elaborate plans for future big game hunts that never actually happen) and the PC was being asked to relate anecdotes. This gave me a chance to introduce a number of different potential plotlines and NPCs via the club membership (for example, certain local mages have joined the club to keep track of possible arcane artifact stories, etc.) and get the ball rolling on a bunch of different mini storylines of significance to one or more members of the party (one player desperately wanted to be invited to actually join the club-which requires a club sponsor, another was acting as frontman for a winery-handing out free samples and trying to schmooze members, another-who was playing a warforged-was in danger of being stolen by certain members who collect interesting constructs, etc.). Part of the fun was having the PCs trying to figure out who was actually powerful and who was a poser (the players know that in the campaign there is no guarantee that possible villains will be approximately their level). And, as the club has multiple chapters, it has worked itself into a semi-regular element of the game-with the players checking towns of any size to see if there is a chapter (for things like magical research, etc.).