D&D General Advice for revolutionary campaign

[goldfish5432]

I have a group of new-ish players: everyone's either played through a published campaign I ran, played Baldur's Gate 3, or watched Dimension 20/Critical Role. They want to play a campaign as leaders of a revolution in Faerun. This will be my first time making a homebrew campaign, so I'd love some advice on how to make it better! Apologies in advance for the wall of text; there's a TLDR and some questions at the very end.

Here's what I've got so far:

Background

• Setting: Sword Coast of the Forgotten Realms, around the late 1500s/early 1600s DR (so I don't have to build a world from scratch but can change the canonical state of the world if necessary)
• In the mid-1500s DR, a new mineral called arcanite was discovered in mines around Faerun; wizards and artificers discovered arcanite gems could be used to mass-produce magic items at a much lower cost (wands/staffs/rings that can cast a finite number of a specific spell). The companies that mined the arcanite, processed it into magical gems, and sold the magic items became insanely wealthy overnight.
• These companies soon overtook the old Lords' Alliance in terms of wealth, power, and influence, buying politicians, judges, and police. With the easy availability of magic items (for those who could afford them), other sources of magic largely fell by the wayside. Widespread magic items made put a lot of industries out of business, and many were forced to seek dangerous, underpaid work as manual laborers in the mines and factories. Others who didn't find work instead became part of the growing urban poor, living on the streets as beggars.
• The usual oppressive conditions: growing inequality, overbearing surveillance, draconian punishments. A small class of oligarchs lives in luxury with magic items galore and a middle class of managers and assistants strives to become wealthy themselves, while the majority are in a lower class of impoverished and exploited workers or beggars.
• The oligarchs' footsoldiers will be well-equipped with these magic items that let them cast spells, but the PCs may not want to use them once they find out what's really powering them (see below).

The PCs

• An impoverished drow rogue and a tiefling, two friends who steal to feed their families.
  • The tiefling wants to be an archfey warlock with Tasha as his patron, but we're gonna make that happen in-game.
• An aasimar cleric of Waukeen, heir to a wealthy family that owns several arcanite refining factories, and his aasimar oath of the ancients paladin bodyguard.
  • The paladin has become disgusted with the way society has discarded life and light, and has secretly begun to pray to Lathander (a forbidden act, as the Lord of Rebirth and Renewal is worshipped by rebels and would-be revolutionaries).
  • The cleric is a spoiled brat, but has plenty of tensions with his family that have weakened his faith in Waukeen. The player wants the character to transition to a light cleric of Lathander once he finally renounces his family's ways and embraces revolution.
• An aasimar world tree barbarian seeking revenge on the cleric's family after one of them murdered her daughter.
• A gnome wizard -- backstory TBD.

What's really going on

• Demons suffered a humiliating defeat in a battle of the Blood War, so they sought new strategies to defeat the devils and claim sovereignty over the entirety of the lower planes. Tasha, being a demonologist, saw an opportunity: she approached the demon lord Graz'zt and convinced him that the devil armies were more powerful because they recruited petitioners into their ranks as lemures and lesser devils. She showed him a ritual from the Book of Vile Darkness that could use mortal souls to power magic items made with arcanite; this would permanently destroy those souls, preventing them from moving on to an afterlife in the outer planes, and eventually reducing the numbers of the devil army.
• Graz'zt approached the clerics of a heretical sect of Waukeen (who saw her power as stemming from the Abyss, due to her past stay there as a prisoner of Graz'zt) and revealed the knowledge of arcanite to them. They quietly bought up all the mines where it could be found, built factories to refine it, and opened storefronts. By the time they announced their discovery of arcanite-based magic items, they held a monopoly over it and could easily outmaneuver any others who tried to do the same.
• Tasha's ultimate goal is to become a demon lord, by any means possible. On the off chance her plan actually works and the demons do finally win the Blood War, she hopes she'll be rewarded with a lofty position in the Abyss. But that's unlikely, so as a backup, she decided to recruit a band of adventurers and push them to lead a revolution in the hopes that they'll uncover the truth and eliminate Graz'zt, allowing her to take his place. The PCs are unwitting agents of Tasha's plan.
• The gods of the upper planes have noticed the absence of new petitioners; in particular, Lathander is seeking champions to lead an era of rebirth and renewal that will purify Faerun with his light.

Campaign start

• I'm thinking we'll spend around half a session or so with the PCs living their lives separately in Waterdeep. Then, for different reasons, they will all end up traveling to a remote arcanite mine in the Moonshae Isles:
  • The rogue and tiefling get caught stealing and are sentenced to hard labor in the mines,
  • The cleric's family sends him there to learn about arcanite so he can be prepared to take over the family's factories later on, with the paladin bodyguard coming for his protection,
  • The barbarian gets faulty intel that misidentifies the cleric as the person she's seeking, so she follows them to the mine,
  • (I'll figure out the gnome wizard's reason for being there once he has his backstory ready).
• Toward the end of the first session, they'll witness a guard abusing a laborer who's lost the will to work; hopefully, at least some of them will be spurred into trying to stop it. The resulting combat will trigger a mine collapse that drops the PCs into a cavern below, in the Underdark.
  • I'm thinking trapping them in the Underdark together will force them to work together to escape, even if they wouldn't otherwise be ready to join up as a party yet.
• At some point in a later session, they'll discover something in the Underdark that will be their first clue that something is deeply wrong: maybe that mortal souls aren't becoming petitioners after death? Not 100% sure about this yet, but maybe they find a scroll of resurrection or raise dead or something and try to use it on a dead NPC and discover that resurrection spells don't work.

Ideas for the future

• After escaping from the Underdark, they meet the Ffolk and Northlanders of the Moonshae Isles and have to help them bridge their differences in order to liberate the Isles.
• Sail back to the Sword Coast -- ship-to-ship combat? maybe pirates? Could be an opportunity to recruit them as allies into a growing rebellion.
• Making contact with and uniting the various factions across the Sword Coast:
  • Harpers -- they've secretly been organizing a spy/resistance network
  • Emerald Enclave -- engaging in sporadic raids against cities and outposts to try to stop the destruction of nature for industry
  • Order of the Gauntlet -- tried and failed to launch open rebellions against the new oligarchy; their leaders are now imprisoned in Revel's End and must be freed (prison break!) and escorted back to their cities
  • Lords' Alliance -- the former nobility resents the usurpation of power by the new oligarchs; might provide funding to the rebellion.
• I feel like the Zhentarim would definitely have sold out to the oligarchs; they'd probably be enforcers and strike-breakers. Maybe the PCs have to dismantle their operations or take out their leadership
• Raiding an armory for weapons and armor to distribute to the rebellion
• Sabotaging industrial arcanite factories
• Recruiting defectors from the oligarchy as spies; dealing with double agents or infiltrators in the rebellion; counter-intelligence
• Stealing food and supplies and smuggling them into a city to feed the poor
• Final, all-out assault on the last stronghold of the oligarchy with the entire rebellion behind them -- maybe the PCs can act as a strike team or something while a larger battle is being waged.

I'm thinking I can split these up into various cities: Neverwinter, Baldur's Gate, and Waterdeep. It can be more of a sandbox-style campaign, with the PCs deciding what they want to do to help the growing revolution.

At some point, maybe after they've defeated the last of the oligarchy in Faerun, Graz'zt will launch a counteroffensive to punish mortals for interfering with his plans. Perhaps portals open up and allow demons to enter the Material Plane, wreaking havoc on the newly-liberated lands and taxing an exhausted revolutionary army. The PCs will be forced to travel to the Abyss, defeat Graz'zt, and close the portals, at which point they'll face the final big bad: Tasha.


TLDR

• A new mineral "arcanite" was discovered and is being used to power cheap, mass-produced magic items like wands/rings/staffs with spell charges in them.
• The secret: arcanite items consume recently-deceased mortal souls and are preventing them from passing into the afterlife.
• Tasha is behind it all: she manipulated the demon lord Graz'zt into giving it to mortals in order to gain an advantage in the Blood War, but she seeks to profit no matter whether demons win or lose.
• The PCs, as Tasha's unwitting pawns (one of them is her warlock), will lead a revolution to liberate Faerun from a new oppressive oligarchy. Lathander will also seek to recruit them as his agents (the cleric may become his Chosen) to begin an age of rebirth and renewal and restore his light to the world.

Questions

• Any suggestions for interesting missions/quests/combats? The PCs would need to be pretty high-level in order to take on Graz'zt and Tasha, so I think I need a lot more missions to help level them up.
• Are there any published adventures about leading rebellions/revolutions/uprisings that I can draw inspiration from?
• How should I distribute the lore drops about what's really going on? I want to split it up so they slowly start gathering clues, but I don't want to reveal Graz'zt's involvement until later on, and finding out Tasha's behind it all should come near the end.
• How far ahead should I be planning stuff? Obviously I want to have some stuff fleshed out for where the PCs might go next, some NPCs they might meet, etc., but how about further down the line?
  • E.g. it's obviously impossible to come up with every NPC in the world from the start, but on the other hand, I want to be able to foreshadow stuff in the future, like important enemies and allies, future quests, etc.
• Any other advice?

Thanks in advance!

 

[Theory of Games]

Nice lil railroad you got there! You're literally planning out the PCs actions and reactions to events you created. If I was a player I'd just hand you my character sheet and let you tell your story

 

[jgsugden]

Nice lil railroad you got there! You're literally planning out the PCs actions and reactions to events you created. If I was a player I'd just hand you my character sheet and let you tell your story

This is a bit heavy handed of a way to say it, but I agree that this outline takes away player agency.

Man plans. God laughs.

DM plans. Players laugh.

The rough idea is something to build around, but I would back off from the detailed plan and instead think of ways to drop options before the PCs and then figure out where to go with the options they select.

That being said....

Leading a revolution is not a great RPG option - because the players end up being dictating leaders rather than adventurers. This can work at higher levels as the PCs 'outgrow' the adventuring role to an extent, but putting them in that role early on when they want to use their heroes to do stuff is a bit challenging. I'd instead focus on putting others in charge and having the PCs be asked to go on missions - without an expectation they will or will not do it.

 

[goldfish5432]

Hmm, I hear you. To clarify one part: I gave the players the background, told them we're starting in a mine, and asked them to tell me why they're there. So that's where the campaign start came from, and how they'll end up in the same place at the same time.

But the bit about getting trapped in the Underdark together... yeah, that's definitely a railroad. I mainly came up with that in order to get the party together initially, since otherwise they'd be pretty unlikely to work together. Then we'll figure out what happens, and whether or not they stick together, after they escape. But I agree that this part feels weak -- without a bit of a railroad here, I'm not sure how to make sure I don't end up with separate groups who don't meet back up again.

And I agree about putting others in charge! What I'm imagining is they'd be a sort of strike team. Like maybe the Harpers/Emerald Enclave/Order of the Gauntlet already have plans in motion, but they need certain missions undertaken in order to move those plans forward. That's where the "ideas for the future" bit comes in -- I'm imagining these as tasks the revolutionary leaders need accomplished, that the PCs could take or leave depending on their interest/motivations.

 

[Voadam]

There was a pathfinder 1e rebels six part adventure path set in Cheliax the Asmodeus theocracy empire. Hells Rebels? Worth checking out for both plot ideas and a rebel downtime subsystem (bards shine).

I think it is Spire for Forged in the Dark where the premise is oppressed dark elves in light elf city lead secret rebellion. A very player choice driven system that might offer some good thoughts on the theme.

 

[Piperken]

...But the bit about getting trapped in the Underdark together... yeah, that's definitely a railroad. I mainly came up with that in order to get the party together initially, since otherwise they'd be pretty unlikely to work together. Then we'll figure out what happens, and whether or not they stick together, after they escape. But I agree that this part feels weak -- without a bit of a railroad here, I'm not sure how to make sure I don't end up with separate groups who don't meet back up again...

Let's start with the premise. If the intent is to have the party be plummeted into the Underdark, why not open with that? Some are in the mine because they were ordered there as laborers. Some go in ostensibly on a tour. As the latter descend, their elevator has a mishap. The ones in the elevator possibly lose, or have some gear damaged on the way down; everyone has to find a way out together.

If your structure is such that the party arrives at this location for different reasons, but the idea is to encourage them to go into the mines, then I feel like you must provide juicy, fictive hooks to do so. Not just one or a few. Several, at least. Different personalities they meet at the location could provide these possibly.

What if the party decides to deescalate the situation between the laborer and the guard peacefully? Or don't bother to intervene at all?

 

[Morrus]

Nice lil railroad you got there! You're literally planning out the PCs actions and reactions to events you created. If I was a player I'd just hand you my character sheet and let you tell your story

That was just plain rude. Don’t be a jerk.

 

[DinoInDisguise]

Your biggest issue for the "railroading," assuming you don't intend to do that, is that you are planning actions and not events.

Starting right with line 1 in this example.

we'll spend around half a session or so with the PCs living their lives separately in Waterdeep. Then, for different reasons, they will all end up traveling to a remote arcanite mine in the Moonshae Isles

You can remove the railroad here by simply not prepping them traveling to the mine. Instead prep what attracts them to the mine. This turns a rail road into a lead. Most players will follow leads, so you will likely end up with what you want anyways. In case they don't, plan another lead. Sometimes in the first session I have a half dozen of the things.

IN the second bullet, we read;

The rogue and tiefling get caught stealing and are sentenced to hard labor in the mines,

This is a railroad. It's a railroad because you are planning PC actions directly. This one is also fixable. Instead of planning the action, plan a step back from the action. Give an indication earlier in the session, maybe a poem about a golden panther figurine, where the panther is upside down. Have the poem sound important, and have the item "show up" in the town with the mine. Inscribe this poem on a tavern table, or have it on a piece of paper on a desk.

This isnt a railroad, when prepped a step removed from the player choice, because they keep the ultimate choice. Here if they steal the item and fail, the imprison is fine. If they steal the item and succeed you have your macguffin, and the campaign writes itself.

You can do this all the way down. Back your prep up a bit. Prep the situation and events, not the choice itself. And then foreshadow and hint at the choice you want through worldbuilding. You will dodge the railroading, get what you want, and your players will compliment the level of detail and forethought.,

I hope that helps.


EDIT: Welcome to the boards. Its a pretty fun place.

 

[DrunkonDuty]

Hi @goldfish5432. Welcome to the boards.

My thoughts on what you've asked about: there is a lot of potential for railroading to happen. Railroading isn't always bad. But it doesn't take much railroading for the players to feel left out of the game they are meant to be playing.

So the following is some (hopefully helpful) advice to reduce railroading potential. By the way, this comes from personal experience of having done all the bad rail-roady things myself.

Let the players work out why they want to work together. And let the players know that it's their job to work out why the characters want to work together. The only character who doesn't have an immediate reason to go against the oligarchs (as opposed to their family) is the cleric. And the group may find going against their family a sufficient place to start.

I'd avoid capturing PCs. Players hate that.

Your instincts to get the PCs together in one place with a common foe/goal are the right ones. But let the players choose what it is. You can certainly give them some helpful suggestions based on their characters. There might be a ball the thieves and barbarian decide to crash. The priest and paladin could be guests. Maybe barby decides to break into priest's house looking for some righteous murder the same night thieves break in looking for goodies.

You lay out the land, major NPCs and places. Some major events. Let the players work it from there. Or maybe they ask about something completely different that you've not thought about. Don't say no to such suggestions (unless they are completely out of your area of interest.) Work them into the story.

Give them a common enemy right off the bat. Ask the cleric if there's one person in their family who represents all the worst and is cleric's especial enemy. A parent/uncle/auntie/older sibling. They can be the leader, or possibly come to be the leader, of the oligarchs. Or maybe they die in the opening act. Dice can be finicky.

But it sounds like a fun campaign! And it sounds like you've got good players who are invested in giving you PCs who have reasons to be involved. Yay!

 

[AlViking]

You've gotten some good advice (and one rotten reply, sorry), but I thought I'd throw in my 2 coppers.

There are a couple of general definitions and approaches to how people run their games, terms you may see used around her and argued endlessly about.

• A railroad means that the DM is dictating absolutely everything along the way. What the PCs will do and when. It's considered a bad thing because you want to allow the players to make decisions for themselves, at least at a small scale.
• A linear campaign us related. In this kind of campaign you do have major events figured out and a basic outline of how the campaign will proceed. This is typical for most purchased modules and a pretty popular style of running games, with a little tweaking what you describe below would be considered a linear campaign.
• In a sandbox the DM sets up some locations, NPCs, factions, figures out some interesting things going on that the PCs might find interesting and then let the characters decide what they're doing and the NPCs, factions and world react. So the players have a lot of influence on the direction of the campaign. That's what I normally do but it's not necessarily better than a linear campaign, it's just a preference.

The labels sometimes get quite blurry and honestly I think some people get too caught up in labels but it can be helpful to know what they are. If you're going to do a linear campaign which I think works best with what you're thinking, let the players know what you're doing and get some buy-in. I have no issue with these kind of campaigns as long as I know what's coming.

I have a group of new-ish players: everyone's either played through a published campaign I ran, played Baldur's Gate 3, or watched Dimension 20/Critical Role. They want to play a campaign as leaders of a revolution in Faerun. This will be my first time making a homebrew campaign, so I'd love some advice on how to make it better! Apologies in advance for the wall of text; there's a TLDR and some questions at the very end.

Here's what I've got so far:

Background

• Setting: Sword Coast of the Forgotten Realms, around the late 1500s/early 1600s DR (so I don't have to build a world from scratch but can change the canonical state of the world if necessary)
• In the mid-1500s DR, a new mineral called arcanite was discovered in mines around Faerun; wizards and artificers discovered arcanite gems could be used to mass-produce magic items at a much lower cost (wands/staffs/rings that can cast a finite number of a specific spell). The companies that mined the arcanite, processed it into magical gems, and sold the magic items became insanely wealthy overnight.
• These companies soon overtook the old Lords' Alliance in terms of wealth, power, and influence, buying politicians, judges, and police. With the easy availability of magic items (for those who could afford them), other sources of magic largely fell by the wayside. Widespread magic items made put a lot of industries out of business, and many were forced to seek dangerous, underpaid work as manual laborers in the mines and factories. Others who didn't find work instead became part of the growing urban poor, living on the streets as beggars.
• The usual oppressive conditions: growing inequality, overbearing surveillance, draconian punishments. A small class of oligarchs lives in luxury with magic items galore and a middle class of managers and assistants strives to become wealthy themselves, while the majority are in a lower class of impoverished and exploited workers or beggars.
• The oligarchs' footsoldiers will be well-equipped with these magic items that let them cast spells, but the PCs may not want to use them once they find out what's really powering them (see below).

The PCs

• An impoverished drow rogue and a tiefling, two friends who steal to feed their families.
  • The tiefling wants to be an archfey warlock with Tasha as his patron, but we're gonna make that happen in-game.
• An aasimar cleric of Waukeen, heir to a wealthy family that owns several arcanite refining factories, and his aasimar oath of the ancients paladin bodyguard.
  • The paladin has become disgusted with the way society has discarded life and light, and has secretly begun to pray to Lathander (a forbidden act, as the Lord of Rebirth and Renewal is worshipped by rebels and would-be revolutionaries).
  • The cleric is a spoiled brat, but has plenty of tensions with his family that have weakened his faith in Waukeen. The player wants the character to transition to a light cleric of Lathander once he finally renounces his family's ways and embraces revolution.
• An aasimar world tree barbarian seeking revenge on the cleric's family after one of them murdered her daughter.
• A gnome wizard -- backstory TBD.

Sounds like a solid start. I'd give all of this info to the players from the get-go which it sounds like you have.

What's really going on

• Demons suffered a humiliating defeat in a battle of the Blood War, so they sought new strategies to defeat the devils and claim sovereignty over the entirety of the lower planes. Tasha, being a demonologist, saw an opportunity: she approached the demon lord Graz'zt and convinced him that the devil armies were more powerful because they recruited petitioners into their ranks as lemures and lesser devils. She showed him a ritual from the Book of Vile Darkness that could use mortal souls to power magic items made with arcanite; this would permanently destroy those souls, preventing them from moving on to an afterlife in the outer planes, and eventually reducing the numbers of the devil army.
• Graz'zt approached the clerics of a heretical sect of Waukeen (who saw her power as stemming from the Abyss, due to her past stay there as a prisoner of Graz'zt) and revealed the knowledge of arcanite to them. They quietly bought up all the mines where it could be found, built factories to refine it, and opened storefronts. By the time they announced their discovery of arcanite-based magic items, they held a monopoly over it and could easily outmaneuver any others who tried to do the same.
• Tasha's ultimate goal is to become a demon lord, by any means possible. On the off chance her plan actually works and the demons do finally win the Blood War, she hopes she'll be rewarded with a lofty position in the Abyss. But that's unlikely, so as a backup, she decided to recruit a band of adventurers and push them to lead a revolution in the hopes that they'll uncover the truth and eliminate Graz'zt, allowing her to take his place. The PCs are unwitting agents of Tasha's plan.
• The gods of the upper planes have noticed the absence of new petitioners; in particular, Lathander is seeking champions to lead an era of rebirth and renewal that will purify Faerun with his light.

Also solid information I wouldn't share right away. Try to think of ways as you go along to hint at what's really going on, potentially including some red herrings here and there if you want.

Campaign start

• I'm thinking we'll spend around half a session or so with the PCs living their lives separately in Waterdeep. Then, for different reasons, they will all end up traveling to a remote arcanite mine in the Moonshae Isles:
  • The rogue and tiefling get caught stealing and are sentenced to hard labor in the mines,
  • The cleric's family sends him there to learn about arcanite so he can be prepared to take over the family's factories later on, with the paladin bodyguard coming for his protection,
  • The barbarian gets faulty intel that misidentifies the cleric as the person she's seeking, so she follows them to the mine,
  • (I'll figure out the gnome wizard's reason for being there once he has his backstory ready).
• Toward the end of the first session, they'll witness a guard abusing a laborer who's lost the will to work; hopefully, at least some of them will be spurred into trying to stop it. The resulting combat will trigger a mine collapse that drops the PCs into a cavern below, in the Underdark.
  • I'm thinking trapping them in the Underdark together will force them to work together to escape, even if they wouldn't otherwise be ready to join up as a party yet.
• At some point in a later session, they'll discover something in the Underdark that will be their first clue that something is deeply wrong: maybe that mortal souls aren't becoming petitioners after death? Not 100% sure about this yet, but maybe they find a scroll of resurrection or raise dead or something and try to use it on a dead NPC and discover that resurrection spells don't work.

I've started campaigns many different ways.

• Ask the players how they know each other and why they're together in your session 0. Help them with details and ideas but let them make the decisions. I've also started them in the middle of a fight, as prisoners, recruited by some sponsor.
• If starting in the middle of a fight you'll have to have a bit of a flashback after the fight is over, but it can be a fun way to get things going.
• With starting in prison (or the Underdark) I give people ideas of how they could have gotten there which in this case could easily be false arrest. Let the players decide how they got there which may include something you did

For the future ... this is where it gets a bit tricky. I think it's best to put the options for the future in front of the PCs in game as much as possible. The PCs hear about all the terrible things going on, someone important (personal tie or otherwise) begs them for help before dramatically dying and so on. You'll have to find your own voice as DM on this one but if people know they're in a linear campaign you just have to leave obvious breadcrumbs for them to follow.

Ideas for the future

• After escaping from the Underdark, they meet the Ffolk and Northlanders of the Moonshae Isles and have to help them bridge their differences in order to liberate the Isles.

So this is where you can do this all in-character and something I actually think is okay. Not my personal preference but I've been doing campaigns for a long time and we all have to find what works for us.

From this point on you've basically kicked off the real story arc of the campaign. It's fine to start thinking about these things but you don't really have to plan out much detail more than a session or two ahead. It's good to have a general outline because it really helps you come up with rumors and motivations for NPCs on both the opposition side and in support of the oppression. All of the ideas are decent but running this kind of campaign is kind of like eating an elephant. You do it one bite at a time.

• Sail back to the Sword Coast -- ship-to-ship combat? maybe pirates? Could be an opportunity to recruit them as allies into a growing rebellion.
• Making contact with and uniting the various factions across the Sword Coast:
  • Harpers -- they've secretly been organizing a spy/resistance network
  • Emerald Enclave -- engaging in sporadic raids against cities and outposts to try to stop the destruction of nature for industry
  • Order of the Gauntlet -- tried and failed to launch open rebellions against the new oligarchy; their leaders are now imprisoned in Revel's End and must be freed (prison break!) and escorted back to their cities
  • Lords' Alliance -- the former nobility resents the usurpation of power by the new oligarchs; might provide funding to the rebellion.
• I feel like the Zhentarim would definitely have sold out to the oligarchs; they'd probably be enforcers and strike-breakers. Maybe the PCs have to dismantle their operations or take out their leadership
• Raiding an armory for weapons and armor to distribute to the rebellion
• Sabotaging industrial arcanite factories
• Recruiting defectors from the oligarchy as spies; dealing with double agents or infiltrators in the rebellion; counter-intelligence
• Stealing food and supplies and smuggling them into a city to feed the poor
• Final, all-out assault on the last stronghold of the oligarchy with the entire rebellion behind them -- maybe the PCs can act as a strike team or something while a larger battle is being waged.

I'm thinking I can split these up into various cities: Neverwinter, Baldur's Gate, and Waterdeep. It can be more of a sandbox-style campaign, with the PCs deciding what they want to do to help the growing revolution.

At some point, maybe after they've defeated the last of the oligarchy in Faerun, Graz'zt will launch a counteroffensive to punish mortals for interfering with his plans. Perhaps portals open up and allow demons to enter the Material Plane, wreaking havoc on the newly-liberated lands and taxing an exhausted revolutionary army. The PCs will be forced to travel to the Abyss, defeat Graz'zt, and close the portals, at which point they'll face the final big bad: Tasha.

I played in a fun campaign a few years back where we supported a revolution. We weren't the leaders but we were a strike team and ambassadors/recruiters. So we were sent out to help unite the different factions, get support from neutral parties and so on. Sometimes we just sought out treasure to support the war effort. It was always an option for us to take more direct control of the revolution if we wanted but that just didn't sound as fun.

TLDR

• A new mineral "arcanite" was discovered and is being used to power cheap, mass-produced magic items like wands/rings/staffs with spell charges in them.
• The secret: arcanite items consume recently-deceased mortal souls and are preventing them from passing into the afterlife.
• Tasha is behind it all: she manipulated the demon lord Graz'zt into giving it to mortals in order to gain an advantage in the Blood War, but she seeks to profit no matter whether demons win or lose.
• The PCs, as Tasha's unwitting pawns (one of them is her warlock), will lead a revolution to liberate Faerun from a new oppressive oligarchy. Lathander will also seek to recruit them as his agents (the cleric may become his Chosen) to begin an age of rebirth and renewal and restore his light to the world.

Questions

• Any suggestions for interesting missions/quests/combats? The PCs would need to be pretty high-level in order to take on Graz'zt and Tasha, so I think I need a lot more missions to help level them up.

As support operations there are any number of things. A few off the top of my head.

• Disrupt supply lines or burn down/steal from storage depots.
• Play Robin Hood, steal from the enemy and give to the rebels.
• Rescue or kidnap missions. Rescue someone who has information or a group of individuals. Kidnap someone important.
• Dungeon crawls in order to get resources. This can be anything from finding the McGuffin to just getting gold either for the PCs to be more effective or support the rebels.
• Find the mole. Someone is providing intel to the enemy, find who it is.
• Recruit a spy. Convince someone to be a spy or if you find the mole turn them into a double agent.
• Reconnaissance missions to find information. These tend to be "don't engage" but then something happens and you end up engaging.
• The leader(s) of the rebellion are in trouble. Do the PCs step into a leadeship? Do they save the leaders? Kind of depends on if you want to do the hero replacing the mentor trope. Just be careful that the mentor(s) aren't as capable as the PCs at what the PCs are needed for.
• Side missions that have little to do with the overall campaign. Or do they? Sometimes it can be nice to have a change of pace for a session or two and do something like pursue something important to a specific PC.

• Are there any published adventures about leading rebellions/revolutions/uprisings that I can draw inspiration from?
• How should I distribute the lore drops about what's really going on? I want to split it up so they slowly start gathering clues, but I don't want to reveal Graz'zt's involvement until later on, and finding out Tasha's behind it all should come near the end.
• How far ahead should I be planning stuff? Obviously I want to have some stuff fleshed out for where the PCs might go next, some NPCs they might meet, etc., but how about further down the line?
  • E.g. it's obviously impossible to come up with every NPC in the world from the start, but on the other hand, I want to be able to foreshadow stuff in the future, like important enemies and allies, future quests, etc.
• Any other advice?

Thanks in advance!

• Don't get too worried about planning everything out too far ahead. I jot down a lot of notes, get general ideas about NPCs and factions ahead of time. But until something has been irrefutably established in the shared fiction it isn't fact.
• Let the campaign get side-tracked a bit here and there if the players are having fun.
• When it comes to information, I try to keep things to what I think the characters and the NPCs around them would know. Especially if there's already established leadership, people who have a better idea of what's going on, if the PCs haven't risen in the ranks those leaders likely won't share. If people knew they were actually up against Graz'zt they may lose hope so it's a closely guarded secret.
• Keep lists of random names and consider using online generators to give them details. I rarely use them as generated but sometimes they can be inspirational. The lists are for both NPCs, businesses, small groups.
• The most important thing? Relax and have fun. Everyone there is just getting together to share in a sometimes goofy hobby.
• Let us know how things are going and if you have questions as they come up.

Good luck!