HalfAlbinoMidget
First Post
This thread contains spoilers on Freeport material including Death inFreeport 3.5e module.
I am seeking advice and suggestions for my recently created 5e campaign. I could use help on tying some ideas together and to get new ones. I am going from memory on a few ability names so bear with me. I will try to update them to the correct names at some point soon.
The campaign goals for the group are vague and open. They want to...
*be pirates
*fight pirates
*have a pirate army
*fight elementals
*have a Kraken as a pet
The overall D&D experience is very new to extremely rusty. Everyones(mine too) 5e experience is... well, we can spell 5e.
MyDM campaign goals are to
*have pirates
*give them a pirate army
*attack them with a Kraken (would love to lure them with the "pet"idea and then have it eat have the boat)
*be on boats (navel combat, seize/sink other ships)
*visit new areas/islands
*have some political intrigue
*setup a base of operations with infamy/reputation as some factor of how much they are harassed.
*light dungeon crawl
*very little plane hopping (if at all)
*stay in a local area +/- 100 miles of Freeport
*Campaign world is open, though possibly sitting Freeport in the InnerSea of Forgotten Realms.
*I have said there are no dragons or dragonborns allowed. This gives me the plot hook of dragons are now showing up and raising hell.
* thieves guid/gang wars involvement. help us do X or I'll break your legs.
* key city officials/guild leaders backstabbing the group
My players are very much "Whatever. Lets have fun. Whatever you decide will be great, I'm sure." Not having a lot of needs for the players or characters is nice overall but not much happened in 'session 0' aside from picking pirates and a kraken and a strong lean toward evil characters. So when session 1 came about, there are a few (a lot) of loose ends but I was not worried much because most of the night was dealing with finishing character creation.
So far we have had one session and the next session is in a few days(Saturday). In this previous session we have finished character building and some background connections and concepts. We have not gotten to the overarching "this is what is wrong with the world" idea yet (planned for session 2). We then started game play with the adventure starting with the Death in Freeport 3.5e module. In short, I read Pirates Guide to Freeport and found it interesting. After that, I picked up Death in Freeport from my bookshelf. Owned it for 10-15 years and well... you guessed it... never played it. Lets finally get my moneys worth,right?
The party is composed of:
*mountain dwarf barbarian, axes, gruff and punches people in the nose.
*wild/wood elf druid, chaotic and throws rats and starts forest fires(long story for each)
*human (variant) fighter, light or med armor, two handed spec with Polearm Mastery feat and halberd
*half-elf warlock, noble on the run, accused (and guilty) of desecrating a church to advance warlock abilities
*lightfoot halfling bard, happy go lucky wants to sing and dance
I have tossed around a number of level 1 to 5 "campaign wide"issues and am partially settled on stealing Neverwinter Nights PC game, the city has a plague idea. Still using the crazy cultist idea from Freeport/Death in Freeport, they tie together IMO. The crazy cult releases a plague on the city thinking to destroy the weakest and unworthy. Party would run around a few levels collecting reagents to build a cure. Most of the party is likely evil (the player's don't have their alignment truly figured out The lawful good bard is spreading rumors and gossip and the druid is throwing animals into the city canals).
The city has already detected the plague and closed these flood/protection/water gates in response. The merchant ship the party was on raced past nearly tearing up the boat in the process to get locked into the harbor. This specific event happened before I gave the PCs control of anything. In short, they were starving, went through three weeks of miserable storms, and are about to die. Dropped off at Freeport, they have no money or connections to their original lands.
At this point the party is unaware why the gates are closed or that people are sick. (So if I decide to go with a different 'citywide event', I just need to explain the closed gates.
Once the party got off the boat, a press gang attacked them but the party defeated them and captured three of them (has not had a chance to interrogate them so I can use this to fuel the overarching ideas). The key NPC in Death in Freeport has not even met them yet which is a priest who is looking for a missing priest. It's later discovered a cult is behind the missing priest and a few other weird things in the city. I plan on expanding on this.
So... This following part is very open and can be rapidly adjusted because my plan for session 2 and 3 is to drop pieces of tons of ideas and get a feel on what the players want (because directly asking them as resulted in them not knowing), then, I'll tailor plots and adventures to the ideas they are picking up and running with.
The party is tentatively trapped in a plagued Freeport which was started by weird cultists. The Death in Freeport adventure would proceed as normal with a few more hooks about the plague and key NPCs to talk to later. Figured the group would cure the city to save themselves/help others (or die of the plague). In the meantime, I can learn more about navel combat and other ocean/sea/ship stuff such as movement,creatures, and how far does a ship/fleet go when it's scouting territory
As the cure is (nearly) finalized (level 4?), its discovered the cult knows about the dragon world/artifact/blah and is trying to reintroduce dragons to the world. Dragons come out causing trouble in the Inner Sea or about 100ish miles of Freeport (again, trying to build them an army and base of operations) which probably is causing trade route issues and whatnot.
Put the PCs on a boat (make them work up from a POS dingy to a real ship)and sail the open waters. Preferring to stop here and there on this island/dungeon crawl to another.
So it's late, a long posting, and a ton of info and “food for thought”which hopefully makes sense. I'm trying to get the campaign to feel more nautical and some impactful world issues so even evil characters can work toward the same goal. Feel free to ask questions because my brain is not working 100% right now, and I can't figure out how to better organize this info to you or what to add/remove. So …yeah... =)
I am seeking advice and suggestions for my recently created 5e campaign. I could use help on tying some ideas together and to get new ones. I am going from memory on a few ability names so bear with me. I will try to update them to the correct names at some point soon.
The campaign goals for the group are vague and open. They want to...
*be pirates
*fight pirates
*have a pirate army
*fight elementals
*have a Kraken as a pet
The overall D&D experience is very new to extremely rusty. Everyones(mine too) 5e experience is... well, we can spell 5e.
MyDM campaign goals are to
*have pirates
*give them a pirate army
*attack them with a Kraken (would love to lure them with the "pet"idea and then have it eat have the boat)
*be on boats (navel combat, seize/sink other ships)
*visit new areas/islands
*have some political intrigue
*setup a base of operations with infamy/reputation as some factor of how much they are harassed.
*light dungeon crawl
*very little plane hopping (if at all)
*stay in a local area +/- 100 miles of Freeport
*Campaign world is open, though possibly sitting Freeport in the InnerSea of Forgotten Realms.
*I have said there are no dragons or dragonborns allowed. This gives me the plot hook of dragons are now showing up and raising hell.
* thieves guid/gang wars involvement. help us do X or I'll break your legs.
* key city officials/guild leaders backstabbing the group
My players are very much "Whatever. Lets have fun. Whatever you decide will be great, I'm sure." Not having a lot of needs for the players or characters is nice overall but not much happened in 'session 0' aside from picking pirates and a kraken and a strong lean toward evil characters. So when session 1 came about, there are a few (a lot) of loose ends but I was not worried much because most of the night was dealing with finishing character creation.
So far we have had one session and the next session is in a few days(Saturday). In this previous session we have finished character building and some background connections and concepts. We have not gotten to the overarching "this is what is wrong with the world" idea yet (planned for session 2). We then started game play with the adventure starting with the Death in Freeport 3.5e module. In short, I read Pirates Guide to Freeport and found it interesting. After that, I picked up Death in Freeport from my bookshelf. Owned it for 10-15 years and well... you guessed it... never played it. Lets finally get my moneys worth,right?
The party is composed of:
*mountain dwarf barbarian, axes, gruff and punches people in the nose.
*wild/wood elf druid, chaotic and throws rats and starts forest fires(long story for each)
*human (variant) fighter, light or med armor, two handed spec with Polearm Mastery feat and halberd
*half-elf warlock, noble on the run, accused (and guilty) of desecrating a church to advance warlock abilities
*lightfoot halfling bard, happy go lucky wants to sing and dance
I have tossed around a number of level 1 to 5 "campaign wide"issues and am partially settled on stealing Neverwinter Nights PC game, the city has a plague idea. Still using the crazy cultist idea from Freeport/Death in Freeport, they tie together IMO. The crazy cult releases a plague on the city thinking to destroy the weakest and unworthy. Party would run around a few levels collecting reagents to build a cure. Most of the party is likely evil (the player's don't have their alignment truly figured out The lawful good bard is spreading rumors and gossip and the druid is throwing animals into the city canals).
The city has already detected the plague and closed these flood/protection/water gates in response. The merchant ship the party was on raced past nearly tearing up the boat in the process to get locked into the harbor. This specific event happened before I gave the PCs control of anything. In short, they were starving, went through three weeks of miserable storms, and are about to die. Dropped off at Freeport, they have no money or connections to their original lands.
At this point the party is unaware why the gates are closed or that people are sick. (So if I decide to go with a different 'citywide event', I just need to explain the closed gates.
Once the party got off the boat, a press gang attacked them but the party defeated them and captured three of them (has not had a chance to interrogate them so I can use this to fuel the overarching ideas). The key NPC in Death in Freeport has not even met them yet which is a priest who is looking for a missing priest. It's later discovered a cult is behind the missing priest and a few other weird things in the city. I plan on expanding on this.
So... This following part is very open and can be rapidly adjusted because my plan for session 2 and 3 is to drop pieces of tons of ideas and get a feel on what the players want (because directly asking them as resulted in them not knowing), then, I'll tailor plots and adventures to the ideas they are picking up and running with.
The party is tentatively trapped in a plagued Freeport which was started by weird cultists. The Death in Freeport adventure would proceed as normal with a few more hooks about the plague and key NPCs to talk to later. Figured the group would cure the city to save themselves/help others (or die of the plague). In the meantime, I can learn more about navel combat and other ocean/sea/ship stuff such as movement,creatures, and how far does a ship/fleet go when it's scouting territory
As the cure is (nearly) finalized (level 4?), its discovered the cult knows about the dragon world/artifact/blah and is trying to reintroduce dragons to the world. Dragons come out causing trouble in the Inner Sea or about 100ish miles of Freeport (again, trying to build them an army and base of operations) which probably is causing trade route issues and whatnot.
Put the PCs on a boat (make them work up from a POS dingy to a real ship)and sail the open waters. Preferring to stop here and there on this island/dungeon crawl to another.
So it's late, a long posting, and a ton of info and “food for thought”which hopefully makes sense. I'm trying to get the campaign to feel more nautical and some impactful world issues so even evil characters can work toward the same goal. Feel free to ask questions because my brain is not working 100% right now, and I can't figure out how to better organize this info to you or what to add/remove. So …yeah... =)
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