D&D 5E New 5e Campaign idea, want some diffrent thoughts on it

So my group works by me pitching 2-3 game ideas, we vote then that will be the next campaign, when things go well we play for 10ish levels and about a year (in theory meeting weekly but especially end of year we miss weeks). Every once in a while (every 3-4 campaigns) someone takes a shot at DMing other than me, but right now it’s me.

So my group voted, and since we are walking into a hella hard fight over the next two weeks I’m starting to prep incase things go bad. At the same time I have been hit in my face online here and other places about how differently I could be DMing…so I’m opening up my good, bad, and ugly ideas here to see what people would do different.

1st, what we all agreed to:

The rock is an island that has been avoided for almost a hundred years. Legends and rumors say it is haunted and or cursed. 17 days at sea doesn't sound like much, but when it's the closest civilization, it's pretty bad. The private boat "starlight dancer" is out of a set of islands far to the south west, but has been in these waters for the last ten years. The captain is currently a very bossy and greedy half elf named 'Timet of the tides' although most believe that's a fake name. He is very interested in partnering with your expedition for a share of the money and treasure...

Once the spring comes though, the island is closer to a northern port that will open... but that's a few months off. So in theory you could go back to the City of Alton point at any point (17 days away) or try to use landing craft at Camina a small fishing cove (15 1/2 days away) but once the thaw hits Winterbridge is just under 10 days away...

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[sblock=history]The empire used to be huge, spanning two contents and dozens of islands, it was 90% of the known world. Then the cyatastraphy knocked down all of civilization back to a stone age... the elves rebuilt first, the gnomes and dwarves next. It took almost three hundred years before humans had reestablished themselves at all. No longer was the world united now it was fractured and people made small kingdoms. One such person was an evil necromancer/demonologist who set himself up as Sorcerer king of some islands.

When the Necrodemon king tried to expand he was stopped, and killed. His evil empire broken. Most of the islands reclaimed by people... except the one that held his personal keep. That one has sat for over a hundred years... no one has dared to claim it, and stories say even pirates avoid the place like the plague.[/sblock]

An old school dungeon crawl monster fest game... We make some crazy characters we get on a boat and try to reclaim...the rock. Straight forward play style, although hard.

So here is what I have so far… the island is a nexus between the shadowfel and feywild and our world. The necromancer that lived here was using that nexus as power, but has left the island a bit unstable.

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Drawing on some inspiration for Zelda, and some from castilevania I have 3 maps I’m working on. There are places where when the PCs get there they can be thrown into the shadowfel or feywild…I also have similar themed dungeons in the same spot on each of the 3 maps… Taking an idea from Zelda (link to past) I have a magic hand mirror that can return you to the prime plane, but not take you from it. SO they have to find ‘cracks’ to get to the other worlds but can always come back.

It will take several games before the PCs find out about the shadow and fey realm connection, but I think it will open up new ways to play with the options.

I then had this crazy idea to add a 4th layer to the game…I have the necromancer make pocket realms inside paintings. Doing so I have mini dungeons inside the keep, village, and areas around the island. I give a magic item that can open them, and it gives even more space to explore.
So I have a really small island you could walk across it in 3ish days, and I have a few sites (docks, fishing village, three women’s hut*, a keep on a hill, a mining village, a valley(inside the valley is the necromancers castle), a swampy area, and some cliffs...but by then having shadow and fey versions I triple that up.
*one of the funny ideas I have is to put a twist on the old crone/queen/maiden idea from fey myths… my ‘crone’ is a 45 year old who thinks she’s too young and pretty to be a grandmother, and my ‘maiden’ is a 7 year old girl

So I’m open to ideas, and any constructive critique of my ideas. SO far we haven’t made the PCs, but I have concepts from most of the players.

[sblock=PC ideas] I have a PC who wants to play a 5th level necromancer who is looking for the old necromancers spell books. He isn’t a ‘bad guy’ but he is wanted because he stole corpses to study when he was an apprentice, and instead of being honest about wanting to learn to use arcane magic to heal, he was flipent when questioned ‘why’ and answered “because dead bodies don’t scream as much when you cut them open”
I have a PC who wants to be the first mate of the pirate/privateer ship brining them there who would be a sailor multi classing mystic and rogue (3/2). He pictures himself somewhat of a superhero build, self buffing and fighting for the crew. He did make quite a few star trek jokes during his pitch though (So my away crew will just be the whole command staff and one unnamed guest star…I’m sure ensign Ricky is coming home)
I have a PC who wants to be a noble born who is part of a HUGE family that normally ships there suns off to the clergy to get them out of the house, but being the 7th son of a 7th son the gods will not grant him cleric or paladin powers…he is cursed. He is a 5th level fighter looking to find a cause worth fighting for and signed up for ‘adventure’ (he also wants to be albino)
I have a player who gave no real story background but wants to multi Barbariann with Ranger
My final player has waffeled back and forth between warlock, and druid but also has no story yet. [/sblock]

So it's a bit of a sandbox (although a small one at first) as the PCs find ways to access each other part of the game it will expand (I also bet in a few levels the planeshift spell will be taken)

I think it sounds like a good set up. You've got plenty of dungeons and a clever way to have them bunched up so closely without interfering with each other. You've got some interesting backstory with the necromancer and with the Feywild and Shadowfell conmections with the island.

You've got NPCs established, with room to expand. You've got players interested enough to tie their PCs to your ideas.

At this general level of detail, I don't have any major criticisms. Perhaps my only concern would be the Shadowfell/Feywild angle and the painting demiplanes maybe a bit too similar? Maybe a bit too much extraplanar stuff? I'm not saying that's the case, but I figured I'd point it out as a possible area of concern.

Is the general idea to use the Feywild and Shadowfell areas as 'shortcuts' around parts of the complex that are impassable on the material plane? You could basically have it exist simultaneously on all three planes, with slightly varying layouts, and each version of any particular part of the complex has a different set of hazards and potential pathways.

Dishonored 2 did this very well in one chapter, which allowed the player to switch at will between a present-day abandoned and dilapidated mansion and a past version which was still occupied and guarded.

Maybe have some focal areas where all three versions bleed together with each other, occupied by horrific necrotic version of fey beasts.

hawkeyefan said:

At this general level of detail, I don't have any major criticisms. Perhaps my only concern would be the Shadowfell/Feywild angle and the painting demiplanes maybe a bit too similar? Maybe a bit too much extraplanar stuff? I'm not saying that's the case, but I figured I'd point it out as a possible area of concern.

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yea, I'm not sure if it's too much going on...

MarkB said:

Is the general idea to use the Feywild and Shadowfell areas as 'shortcuts' around parts of the complex that are impassable on the material plane? You could basically have it exist simultaneously on all three planes, with slightly varying layouts, and each version of any particular part of the complex has a different set of hazards and potential pathways.

Dishonored 2 did this very well in one chapter, which allowed the player to switch at will between a present-day abandoned and dilapidated mansion and a past version which was still occupied and guarded.

Maybe have some focal areas where all three versions bleed together with each other, occupied by horrific necrotic version of fey beasts.

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yea, the games I was drawing from does that too, and I'm still in the early stages here so I'm not sure exactly how I'm working it...but thanks for the idea

GMforPowergamers said:

yea, I'm not sure if it's too much going on...

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Maybe, maybe not. You know your players best so go with your instinct.

But I have been thinking about your scenario, and if you connected the two ideas a bit more, it makes sense. Like perhaps one of the reasons the necromancer was interested in the Rock was because of the planar nexus aspect. Maybe he studied it in order to master the demiplane/painting thing.

I kind of imagined a scavenger hunt of sorts where the PCs have to recover info/items from several different paintings, and each painting was accesible from only the prime, feywild, or shadowfell. The more I think about the ideas you have, the more I think you can do lots of cool things with them.

I would recommend it has some structure, which guides and/or forces you to go from once area before the next.

So for example, you start in Prime Material, and have to do something to enter the Feywild. There, you have to do something else to enter the Shadowfell, and finally you have to do the final thing to return to the Prime Material and 'claim the island' or whatever the final Goal is (*)

Now, you might want to allow people to return to the Prime Material whenever they want, to rest more safely, or you might want to make the missions in the other-worldy places more dangerous by not allowing escape until they find the McGuffin or push the magic button or whatever; depends on how you expect to manage the passage of time, etc. You might also want to keep it flexible, so it's not a single-path railroad.

But I'd suggest you also don't just let the players go wherever they want right from the beginning, otherwise it's a 100% sandbox where they can easily get themselves killed and in all honesty that's not especially fun for most players, people tend to want at least some kind of 'gated experience' where their explorations, conquests etc slowly unlock more challenging places.

(*) p.s. no offence, but "reclaim the rock" isn't an inspiring Plot, BTW - yes, it's old-school, but times have moved on - can you come up with a better reason for everyone going there, maybe even tie it into their backgrounds? "we work for Bob and he wants his island back", "the Order of Intelligence sent us to figure out what the Evil BBEG is and kill him for good", or even just "we all want to get fabulously rich, or die trying" is ok - something that drives and unifies your group of misfits beyond "oh look, an island!"

[MENTION=67338]GMforPowergamers[/MENTION] Not much for me to really comment on your game – sounds like it's well in hand, and wish ye well, matey

I will point out that if you're planning on any seafaring of the piratical kind, I have a lot of material on ENWorld for Spell & Crossbones you might pillage appreciate. And if you need some unusual sea-themed critters or encounter tables, I have The Buccaneer's Bestiary (DMs Guild, pay-what-you-want). Cheers!

I would stage things so the PCs learn about the paintings, or the multiplanar aspect, first and have time to explore that concept; THEN open up the other concept to locate the Final Mystery.
(I got totally lost in the multidimensional Zelda game; do not pre-program any castle so the PCs can lock themselves out of important places in one version by messing around in the 'echo versions'.)

The necromancer is trapped inside his own painting, in the Shadowfell version. He reasons that he can backtrack the PCs' trail to get back out to the real world. He was not really killed in his final battle because he had a Contingency/'retreat to safety' spell on himself - but he was too weakened to get back out through the barricades he erected that made this place safe (oops). So the PCs have a BBEG they can handle, not an uber-Boss from the depths of time and legend.

I would like to see some sort of village on the rock. It could be some sort of lost village of people from both the feywild and shadowfell, or a scrappy mix of pirates and survivors of shipwrecks. A safety net for the players to enjoy and the PCs to get some rest.

That sounds awesome. I see nothing wrong with it all. It's just all coolness.

I have a couple thoughts you might like to use.

1) Some of the paintings could be something other than a minidungeon. Specifically, they could lead to various domains of dread from Ravenloft. Probably the really small ones, with a single village if even that. If they find a way into these domains you have more NPCs to play with, neat little social-focused sidequests that don't have to interfere with the main setting.

2) This also deals with the paintings, but separate from the first idea. I'm thinking you could have multiple painting linked to the same minidungeon. This way, the players might be able to access an otherwise not accessible location by entering one painting, navigating the dungeon to get to the exit into the second painting . . . the idea here being that the Necrodemon used these paintings as a sort of teleport network.