A new campaign (now with play report)

[Quickleaf]

More thoughts on story...but first, a picture!

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A while back I'd written up some backstory for the kings who were traditionally annointed in dragon's blood shortly after being born. The tradition goes back to the mythical progenitor of the kingdom whose life was saved by a dragon that donated is blood (more or less at sword point from the mythical King's wife). The blood is preserved in a magic chalice. This is a secret that was never fully revealed in our last campaign.

Interestingly, the current king was never so annointed because he was a bastard child by a prince and a commoner. So that might help answer the question "why is this red dragon attacking on thek King's 18th birthday?" Because the dragon senses the ruler hasn't been annointed...I'm not sure what huge implications of that would be. So it thinks the kingdom is weak? Doesn't consider the king legitimate (but why would a dragon care?)? Is the dragon out for vengeance for the death of its forebear who saved the mythical progenitor king way back when? Maybe the red dragon knows a secret about the annointing process that the royal family doesn't? Maybe this is *the* dragon which gave its blood for the mythical progenitor king (I which case why is it attacking?)?

Also looked up the SRD entry about orbs of dragonkind. Interesting stuff! So if this is an orb of red dragonkind, that could potentially swing the battle dramatically in the PCs' favor. While it makes a lot of sense for a red dragon to go after a like-colored orb, it might be more interesting if the orb is keyed to a different color...but in that case why is the red dragon intrerested in it? Th orb is a gift from the emissary of a magocracy (with spies and expansionist pretensions) commemorating the King's ancestors who subdued the regions dragons centuries ago. Maybe it's a green dragon orb? Or maybe a metallic dragon for a twist?

The Orbs of Dragonkind

Each of these fabled orbs contains the essence and personality of an ancient dragon of a different variety (one for each of the major ten different chromatic and metallic dragons). The bearer of an Orb can dominate dragons of its particular variety within 500 feet (as dominate monster), the dragon being forced to make a DC 25 Will save to resist. (Spell resistance is not useful against this effect.) Each Orb of Dragonkind bestows upon the wielder the AC and saving throw bonuses of the dragon within. These values replace whatever values the character would otherwise have, whether they are better or worse. These values cannot be modified by any means short of ridding the character of the Orb. A character possessing an Orb of Dragonkind is immune to the breath weapon—but only the breath weapon—of the dragon variety keyed to the Orb. Finally, a character possessing an Orb can herself use the breath weapon of the dragon in the Orb three times per day.

All Orbs of Dragonkind can be used to communicate verbally and visually with the possessors of the other Orbs. The owner of an Orb knows whether there are dragons within 10 miles at all times. For dragons of the Orb’s particular variety, the range is 100 miles. If within 1 mile of a dragon of the Orb’s variety, the wielder can determine the exact location and age of the creature. The bearer of one of these Orbs earns the enmity forever of all dragonkind for profiting by the enslavement of one of their kin, even if she later loses the item.

Each Orb also has an individual power that can be invoked once per round at 10th caster level.

Black Dragon Orb: Fly (Will DC 17 negates).
Blue Dragon Orb: Haste (Fortitude DC 17 negates).
Brass Dragon Orb: Teleport (Will DC 19 negates).
Bronze Dragon Orb: Scrying (Will DC 18 negates).
Copper Dragon Orb: Suggestion (Will DC 17 negates).
Gold Dragon Orb: The owner of the gold Orb can call upon any power possessed by one of the other Orbs—including the dominate and breath weapon abilities but not AC, save bonuses, or breath weapon immunity—but can only use each individual power once per day. She can use dominate on any other possessor of an Orb within 1 mile (Will DC 23 negates).
Green Dragon Orb: Spectral hand.
Red Dragon Orb: Wall of fire.
Silver Dragon Orb: Cure critical wounds (Will DC 18 half).
White Dragon Orb: Protection from energy (cold) (Fortitude DC 17 negates).

 

[Quickleaf]

This is my first stab at the stage 1 red dragon, sort of a merger between the solo on AngryDM's blog and the MV red dragon. The basic idea is that the dragon alternates between raining down fireballs/walls of fire and making swoop attacks (followed by un-glamorously tossing the grabbed victim several stories ).

One thing that needs to change is the "Tail Strike" from MV, since that's better suited to a melee combat. Maybe there's something I can replace that with? I'm thinking there's a traitor on the inside who is magically aiding the dragon in some capacity (perhaps the dragon can see through their eyes, or they're in telepathic contact, not sure yet)....so the power I replace "Tail Strike" with could tie into this "eye on the ground." Or it could be a fire manipulation/wall minor action...

 

[Radiating Gnome]

I ran a long-term campaign years ago that used the Orbs of Dragonkind as the big organizing element.

I added a bit to the orbs -- first of all, as I recall, I didn't think they were powerful enough. But the most important thing I did with the orbs was create a single telepathic connection between all bearers of the orbs.

It was a sort of chatroom. Anyone holding an orb has access to a mental vision of a room with ten thrones, in a circle. Each throne's upholstery was colored to match the orb it represented. If someone was using the orb, that throne was illuminated, and the bearer was visible.

So, a network of Big Evil Badguys were using some orbs as a means of communicating with each other, coordinating their efforts. When the PCs found a lost orb, they were suddenly able to access that "chatroom", and inject themselves into the plotting sessions of their enemies. The enemies knew they were there, of course, but this turned out to be a GREAT way for the PCs to get to know the bad guys before they faced them.

-rg

 

[Quickleaf]

So I'm running with the dragon cult & orbs of dragonkind as major themes - that lets me use a variety of enemies, human and monstrous, and makes for obvious plot hooks. The red dragon originally enjoyed the cult's adulation, but once the cult leader gained the orb of red dragonkind the balance of power shifted and now the red dragon is looking to get out from under the cult's heel (while still being compelled to obey). Kaldwarag (the dragon's name) is sent to Tir Uldeir to kill the king and recover the orb of green dragonkind.

What sort of nasty tactics might a red dragon -without army support- employ in besieging a castle?

Of course if Kaldwarag fails, the PCs might convince the king to let them use the orb of green dragonkind to search out the wielders of other orbs as you suggest [MENTION=150]Radiating Gnome[/MENTION].

Depending on whether Kaldwarag is killed, driven off, or succeeds in conquering Tir Uldeir, I'm thinking the next logical adventure would be finding its lair to search for clues as to what prompted the attack (and go looting for treasure!). That makes sense right? I'm contemplating using a mashup of "Dragon Mountain" and "Claws of Tyranny" (Chris Sims & Bruce Cordell, Dragon #366)...so there's a town at the base of a mountain range where Kaldwarag lairs, only the town is controlled by trolls who revere the "Red God" and treat Kaldwarag as the god's avatar.

 

[Radiating Gnome]

The most obvious thing for the dragon to do is go all trogdor on the countryside around the castle -- It will take a little while, but the dragon should burn everything within a few miles in any direction. Start a forest fire and feed it.

Then you have to think about how the people in the city get water. Can the dragon mess with that? Cut if off, or poison it?

Also, it's hard to underestimate the value of dropping from great heights on people. Just sayin'.

The dragon should avoid direct confrontation with the keep and it's defenses unless it's endgame time or if it has some reasonable advantages -- like the whole keep is blinded in the smoke and ask from being surrounded by forest fires. Or an unnaturally dark night, stars and moon blotted out by the smoke.

The dragon could be smart enough to try to herd peasants towards the keep while not allowing them to take in provisions. More mouths to feed, and so on.

Another warfare (borrowed from a trashy novel I read 20 years ago) thing I roll around when noodling about stuff like this -- sometimes it's better to disable rather than kill your enemy. A disabled enemy is still a drain on resources -- he still has to be fed, cared for, protected, and so on. If that could be done in a way that did allow for the enemy to come back and fight again another day, that would be idea.

So, what if the dragon blinds 9 out of every 10 peasants it sends towards the castle. Find a band of peasants, subdue them with dragonfear, gouge out a bunch of eyes, gobble up their animals, burn their supplies, and let one final sighted peasant lead them to the castle.

-rg

 

[Quickleaf]

Yes! I was thinking the dragon might carry a giant ball of packed hay dipped in pitch, and light it up high above the castle before letting go. Going to do some adventure design today...

My group decided to go with 4e since we're familiar with it and one of the players is non-native English speaker and we have 4e books in Chinese for her. Once again, it looks like it will turn out to be a large group (6-8 players), which I actually love despite the logistics challenges.

 

[NewJeffCT]

The DM of my old group did it sort of that way - he called it the "James Bond" opening. Each PC in his large group got a quick solo encounter (stopping a bandit, fighting a goblin, ambushing some slavers, etc). At the end of each encounter, the PC saw a huge dragon flying overhead - so, naturally, each PC followed the dragon, and ended up at the home of the one PC that did not have an encounter... (well, the mentor of the young wizard PC's home)

 

[Quickleaf]

So I crammed a bunch of adventure design in today. Here's a PDF of what I've got so far. Close to done, but I still need to work up a map and areas of the castle keep.

 

[Quickleaf]

Any feedback?

Basically, the adventure is designed around a 3-stage boss battle with level 15 solo red dragon, with several role-playing highlights throughout. I imagine a significant part of the beginning will be introducing PCs and the players cracking jokes

Once the dragon comes within sight, the three stages are: (1) dragon strafing and swooping, dropping stuff/people, (2) dragon flying high and summoning minute meteors (PCs have access to hippogriffs), (3) dragon being compelled to land and a nasty ground battle. The stages are roughly separated by how many hit points the dragon is reduced to, starts at 750, stage two kicks in at 550, stage three at 350, and the dragon flees once down to 100 HP.

I figure one of three things happens: the PCs are defeated and the castle is taken by the dragon (in which case I give them a "death pass" since it's our first game and just say they're prisoners in the castle which is now governed by the dragon), the PCs kill the dragon through some serious ingenuity, or the PCs drive the dragon off and it sulks back to its lair to nurse its wounds (in these later cases the PCs have great motivation to seek out its lair, either to claim unguarded red dragon hoard or for payback/answers).

 

[Quickleaf]

Wow, with the combined forum and all the 5e threads, things get bumped to the second page fast!

I'm going to use this thread to discuss design of my new campaign in general, not just the dragon attack. To kick that off, here's an overview of the setting...

The Banner Marches are a fecund land carved by retreating glaciers and touched by ancient magic. At the convergence of feuding kingdoms, it is a hotly contested region which neighboring rulers would love to annex. However, it has been many years since any foreign army has set foot in the Banner Marches, fearing each other as much as they do the old magic of the Marches. And so the Banner Marches live free, held together tenuously by the young untested King Arslein and his court at Tir Uldeir.

To the north is Durghess, a dwarven nation following the prophecies of long dead rulers to avenge their betrayal at human hands. The dwarven Ard Reina seeks to honor an ancestral promise by conquering the northern Banner Marches.

To the northwest is Suleistarn, a tyrannical magocracy which has mobilized its citizens on an unprecedented level,creating magical factories and leveling mountains. The Archmage covets the abundant magic in the Banner Marches and it is said he covertly sends out "witch-finders" to abduct youth with the gift for magic.

To the west is Urelgaine, the Coven Throne, a land of mists, marshes, and fell magic ruled by an ancient Witch Queen. Ages ago the Witch Queens sought to master dangerous magics which thrust the world into a dark age, and all the Witch Queens -save one- were killed after this. The surviving Witch Queen remembers what befell her sisters and has plans for the Banner Marches.

Far to the west, beyond Urelgaine, lies Lost Imandel, once a thriving kingdom of elves which was attacked by a massive army of trolls, ogres, and hobgoblins. King Vendremere unleashed terrible shadow magic in defense of his lands – the invaders were repelled but at great cost. Every living being in Imandel became undead, including King Vendremere who became a death knight. Few cross the borders into Lost Imandel anymore.

To the southwest is Paldara, ruled by fierce goliaths in a sort of militaristic meritocracy with distorted socialist values. Their philosophical code -the "Dara"- mandates that they spread the truth of their way of life to the unenlightened...by force if necessary. The southern Banner Marches may be on the Paldishan's warpath.

Underground, roughly between Paldara and the Banner, lies the gnomish homeland Arszudanri. The first victims of the Goliath invasion 100 years ago, the gnomes were divided into two camps: those who remained on the surface (most who embraced the Dara, a few who fought it) and those who retreated into underground cities.

To the south is Kthorvinth, also called the Ravenbanner Freeholds, a hilly land riddled with deep lochs, mysterious coastlines, and thunder-wracked citadels. Once Kthorvinth was ruled by a family of vampires, but they were overthrown in popular revolt. Now fractious bannerlords scheme against once another, though stories abound of a warrior maiden who raises the Ravenbanner to unite her people by the fires of war...

To the southeast is Tarqinia, a cosmopolitan "monarchy in name, oligarchy de facto" with a powerful navy and a stranglehold on trade overseas. Tarqinia exists in a caste system with tieflings at the top and everyone else on the bottom. The current Queen remains coldly neutral, but some whisper that's only because she has devil allies spying in the courts of other nations.

Further to the southeast are the Serpent's Teeth, an island chain of pirates and scallywags who obey no law save for the undying Pirate Lords, and even then only as far as the Pirate Lords can reach. Raiding the eastern coasts of many nations, including the Banner Marches, is a favored pastime.

To the east lies the mysterious Cascadene, Empire of the Dawn Dragon, a landmass equal to the size of all the other kingdoms combined. Folk have always been suspicious of this imperial theocracy, but in the last five years Cascadene ships landed off the shores of Durghess and established a suzerainty. If an invasion is coming, the Banner Marches are the easiest target.