Building a campaign

[doghead]

This is actually quite likely. I am notorious for asking the wrong question and then being sad when I don't get the type of answer I was hoping for.

Enworld is a pretty cool place, with lots of nice people with a great deal of knowledge and experience of a whole range of gaming. It can be a great place to work though a problem, get suggestions or try out ideas. People here are pretty understanding and generous with their time. Occasionally a thread doesn't get any traction, sometimes it is just a matter of rewording or providing a bit more, as you saw here.

thotd

 

[doghead]

I am wanting to design a campaign and I have an idea of he ending but no idea as to the beginning or how to get from that beginning to the ending I would like, although I do have a few ideas of things I thing SHOULD happen. I don't know if that makes sense.

It does, and I am pretty sure that you are not the only one who starts the at the end. I think (and this has already been mentioned I think) that there is an important difference between thinking "This is what I want the characters to do" and "This is what is happening" and then providing the players/characters with opportunity and incentive to intervene and influence events.

Basically the idea is that a powerful Djinn was imprisoned in a four dimensional space represented on the world by an enormous five stone arcane lock. The PC's stumble upon one of the stones during a completely unrelated adventure. Any inquiries to what this stone is or is for lead them to cult leader who wants to free the Djinn but tells the PC's that they want to ensure the Djinn stays locked up and convinces them that they need to reinforce the lock now that it's been found. However, everything that the Leader tells them is actually ot release the lock.

As Grogg said, sounds like you have a fairly decent outline in your head.

Eventually, hopefully around level 25 or so, the PC's release the Djinn and then must battle it to put it back in its' cage again.

I think the lock would be a highly complex arcane lock with one stone for each of the elements Earth, Air, Fire and Water and the final stone would be the time-lock (not sure how to deal with this at this point). I'm thinking that each stone would need a artifact from it's home plane to unlock it (encouraging plane travel).

As previously stated. I have no idea where to start this or how to build it out into a decent campaign.

One option is to start with some unrelated adventures. There are plenty of free short adventures available online. Running a few of these would give you the opportunity to get to know how the players think and how the characters respond to things. 25 levels is a lot of game time, so you don't have to rush things.

You could start off having them do some work for the main protagonist in his role as a researcher/academic. Perhaps not directly at first, the protagonist is already probably pretty powerful if he is in a position to be planning this stuff. This can be used to set up the researcher or his minion as an expert, someone the characters are likely to seek out when they run across the first lock.

Alternatively, you could have the characters be tasked do do some unrelated things. By achieving them, they come to the attention of the cultist who decides that they could be useful in his plans to free the Djinn.

thotd