Campaign Help/Ideas

[prodigyxss]

Hello Everyone,

I have a few friends who would like to join my roleplaying group and its my turn to DM a campaign. The friends of mine that joined really like zombie movies, games, and we often get into hour long conversations about what we would do if a infestation occurred and yesterday we were watching jurassic park so I thought I should have both in the campaign. I really want them interested in DnD and im sure something like this would keep them in.

I decided the campaign will be set in the Forgotten Realms in Chult, which is a jungle penninsula. I was thinking of having them begin in a small fort where a mercanary company resides, as mercanaries who have been given the task by superiors to escort someone to a small city south. The infestation would breakout when they got there, which was caused by a disease in the water source planted by a villain for future adventures. Since Chult has many dinasours, I was thinking the city would have a building containing dinasours, which would get infected later which will freak them out.

And that is all I have so far and school has been very busy, so I dont really have a lot of time to work on the campaign. So I am now asking you guys for help and ideas. I need ideas for buildings where they can fortify themselves against attacks, events/plots, npcs, how they can be killed, ect. I will be figuring this out on myself, but I would like additional advice to make a memorable campaign to draw more players into our hobby. Thanks!

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

The best way to make it enjoyable for your zombie-movie loving friends...make it as much like a zombie movie as possible. Consider classics like Night of the Living Dead, Dawn of the Dead, or Shock Waves, modern films like Resident Evil or 28 Days and even comedies like Army of Darkness and Shaun of the Dead your starting point and work from there.

Some of the rules include:

1: Anyone killed by a zombie becomes food.
1a: Some movies are even stricter...anyone killed by a zombie becomes a zombie.
1b: Some movies are even stricter...anyone who dies becomes a zombie.

2: They are everywhere.

3: Some movies have slow zombies, some fast...be consistent.

4: Some movie zombies are marginally intelligent.

5: Decide on how tough they are, and what affects them. Some die only from massive damage to the head. Voodoo Zombies may be destroyed by salt.

6: Determine what animates the zombies: ancient curse, magic gone awry, a virus or fungus that animates the corpes, aliens or spirits that animate the corpses..all these and more have been used in fiction and in rpgs. Once again, pick one and stick with it.

7: Determine WHY the dead walk: Necromancer, God of Evil, Death has decided to quit working, cosmic boo-boo, etc. Pick one and stick with it. Another poster on these boards, interwyrm, found this combo that could be appropriate for your campaign:

I was just reading through some of my books... and I came upon the spell Heart Ripper, from Complete Arcane. It basically has the effect of instantly slaying low hd creatures by ripping out their hearts. Then it dawned on me... there is a metamagic feat in Libris Mortis called Fell Animate, which causes any creature killed by one of your spells to rise as a zombie.

8: If the party is holed up in a fortified area, make sure there are frequent (daily at least) zombie raids. If the party is out in the open, keep them on the run with frequent encounters.

Some other ideas.

Use Forgotten Realms and other published campaigns as your template, not your world. Change things here and there...

For example, you say the players have an interest in dinos...well why not introduce dinos as a PC race instead of Half-Orcs, Half-Elves, or some such. You can easily use Kobolds or Lizardmen in this role if you don't have the time to make your own or if you don't have other campaign materials to work from. However, there are other reptillian PC races out there: Draconians can be found in Dragonlance, Mojh in Arcana Unearthed, and Savage Species has the Reptilian template that allows you to modify any base creature you want into a Reptilian critter AND antrhopomorphic animals as PC races (crocodiles among them, as I recall).

Then there's this race created by ENWorlder Shades of Green:
Celirans