D&D 5E Campaign Help in Eberron's Q'Barra

[Kusodareka]

Can you give me some suggestions for how to plan out my Q'Barra campaign?
I am an experienced gamer, but relatively inexperienced behind the DM screen.
I have started a couple of short campaigns in 3.5, 4e and Savage Worlds, but they never lasted much beyond the third or fourth sessions.

Now I signed up to run a game in 5e. It's with my old group from Tokyo, playing over Roll20. The gamers are all very experienced with DnD, even if we are all new to 5e. I really could use your help fleshing out my campaign ideas so I can impress them.

I will lay out the basic idea and flow, and ask for your help tweaking the ideas, or providing suggestions for how to implement them.

The game is set in Eberron's Q'Barra, a wild jungle full of lizardmen and dragonborn. I have reused Fallcrest from the 4e DMG as the PC's base of operations, re-skinning it a bit to make it fit Eberron better (eg, several of the dragonmarked houses have *minor* offices in the town as well). Baron Markelhay is lord of the town and the surrounding area. Fallcrest is about a week upriver of Q'Barra's capital of New Throne. It is the largest city on the river.

Overall plot:
The Lords of Dust have been following the Dragon Prophecy. The Prophecy indicates that the time is nearly right to release one of the Overlords (a Lizardman Fiend named Masvirik) from eons of imprisonment beneath Q'Barra. The Prophecy requires 2 thing to release Masvirik:
1. The small town of Hope be wiped out by river pirates.
2. Baron Markelhay witness the destruction of Fallcrest

The LoD have already bribed/manipulated a group of pirates to wipe out Hope. The PC's do not yet realize the significance yet. The LoD are currently supporting a lizardman warlord to gather a LM army and wipe out Fallcrest. (When the PCs are around level 6 or 7?).
The LoD are not taking any chances with the second Prophecy requirement. To ensure that Lord Markelhay survives, an Oni has been acting as his seneschal since childhood. The Oni is tasked with ensuring the Lords' survival (and has already saved his life once), but then providing covert help once the attack on Fallcrest begins. I also think it will give a nice "Oh S*&%!" moment for the players once they realize the sensechal's secret. (The Oni has a magical amulet that shields his alignment, but the players probably won't have a chance to try and Detect Alignment on him).

The players seem primarily interested in exploring the region's ancient lizardman and dragonborn ruins. The dragonborn ruins contain murals etc. showing the binding of the fiend Masvirik. The Chamber (a group of dragons who read the Draconic Prophecy and influence its events) have also realized the danger, and could provide the players with some additional information.

FWIW, a rakshasa is in charge of this portion of the LoD. Even if the Oni is killed, the plot will still continue. He could be the BBEG until level 12 or so. The rakasha has lots of minions and treasure and is more than happy to dole them out. He assumes the PCs will die in a dungeon somewhere, so he is not going to worry about them until about level 4 or 5.

Here are my major concerns:
1. How do I give the players some tips about the importance of the Draconic Prophecy without giving it all away? The Chamber could give a copy of the DP (or at least the gist of it) to the PCs. When the Lord "confirms" the info, the Oni will be doing the legwork, so he can tell the Lord that no fiend named Masvirik exists, etc. I am concerned that this will put the Oni under the PC's suspicion too soon, though.

2. How do I avoid having to run a large scale battle against Fallcrest? By the time the PCs figure out the threat, the lizardmen should have already assembled several thousand LM and mercenary troops.
I was thinking of having the players start negotiating individually with the different tribes to forge their own alliances, but I think the players might go in any number of directions.

Do any of you have any suggestions for how to run a campaign like this?

 

[Rabbitbait]

It sounds to me as if you could steal a lot from the classic module "The Red Hand of Doom" and convert it to meet your purposes. It's many years since I ran it, but the overall plot you have given doesn't sound totally dissimilar to that.

From wikipedia "The plot of Red Hand of Doom follows a group of adventurers who have entered the Elsir Vale, a thinly populated frontier region. The party discovers a massive hobgoblin horde that is fanatically devoted to the dark goddess Tiamat and led by the charismatic half-dragon warlord Azarr Kul. To stop the horde, players have to muster the inhabitants of the Vale, battle hobgoblins, giants and dragons, and defeat an overwhelming enemy."

So hobgoblins become Lizardmen, One trapped big bad (Tiamat) becomes another, and the different missions get coverted to fit the Q'Barra feel. Maybe change the Hobgoblin warlord to a Rakshasa - one of the minor lords of dust in the form of a lizardman.

You can buy it on pdf here: http://www.dndclassics.com/product/28797/Red-Hand-of-Doom-3e?it=1 and it's not expensive. It's considered to be one of the best adventures ever written for D&D, so even if it doesn't work out for what you want it should give you some very good ideas of how to handle an army vs town battle.

 

[MarkB]

The Red Hand of Doom suggestion is a good one - if nothing else, it includes a major city battle, handled as a series of individual encounters as the PCs attempt to sway the tide of the battle, which could be readily adapted to your Fallcrest invasion.

For Q'barra as a setting, try to establish the hostile nature of the jungle early on with some survival challenges as the party try to force paths through the dense undergrowth or distinguish the edible plants from the identical looking poisonous ones - but give it a rest after a level or two. That way, the players get a lasting impression of the jungle's dangers, but you then don't need to worry about the details unless it becomes relevant.

 

[Kusodareka]

Thank you both for your suggestions. I am already mining the RHoD for ideas.
Any thoughts/tips for handling conspiracies?

 

[MarkB]

Thank you both for your suggestions. I am already mining the RHoD for ideas.
Any thoughts/tips for handling conspiracies?

Conspiracies can be tough, partly because players are often genre-savvy enough to figure out the likely suspects, and partly due to the Law of Conservation of Detail.

Basically, if you never include any significant indication of the existence of a conspiracy, the players may have no chance to affect it, and get annoyed when it goes ahead and succeeds - but on the other hand, it can be awfully tricky to find a way to keep hints of the conspiracy confined to just background details, and not have the players instantly pounce on them, simply because you wouldn't have mentioned them if they weren't important.

Sprinkle in a few red herrings and a couple of sacrificial lambs, but ultimately, if you allow the players to investigate the conspiracy, be fully prepared for them to unravel it 'prematurely', and have some contingency plans for when they do.

 

[Goemoe]

Here are my major concerns:
1. How do I give the players some tips about the importance of the Draconic Prophecy without giving it all away? The Chamber could give a copy of the DP (or at least the gist of it) to the PCs. When the Lord "confirms" the info, the Oni will be doing the legwork, so he can tell the Lord that no fiend named Masvirik exists, etc. I am concerned that this will put the Oni under the PC's suspicion too soon, though.

2. How do I avoid having to run a large scale battle against Fallcrest? By the time the PCs figure out the threat, the lizardmen should have already assembled several thousand LM and mercenary troops.
I was thinking of having the players start negotiating individually with the different tribes to forge their own alliances, but I think the players might go in any number of directions.

Do any of you have any suggestions for how to run a campaign like this?

1. Confront them with some strange people who foretold some draconic prophecy from the past, which couldn't be stopped in time - the results are ruins. Show some parts or the actual prophecy to them by a mumbling hermit, or a not so bright researcher, or a lizard/dragonborn who will tell something, but is killed in midsentence...

If you don't want the heroes to confront the oni, don't tell them. Shroud this npc in mystery, but don't tell he is an oni.

2. When the large battle arrives, make the group do something very important for a local lord, general etc. which they have to do during the battle. This will prevent them from viewing the battle. When they return they battle is over ... one way or another.

 

[Rabbitbait]

Conspiracies are tough. Possibly in this case the best way is to work backwards. Look at the situation, look through the Eberron guidebook and look at which groups might be interested in this.

The Lord of Dust seems obvious in this case, and I believe leads to the warlord actually being a Rakshasa.
Who else has something to gain from this.
Who else would be trying to stop this.

Being Eberron, you might find the heroes having to co-operate with baddies such as the Emerald Claw, or getting their plans disrupted by goodies who are following a tangental mission. Other protagonists may be following several missions at once complicating what it seems is going on, or followers may be getting told lies by their superiors in terms of motives.

The biggest thing about conspiracies is that you should:

1) Listen to your players and what they are thinking is happening - if you like it, steal it and expand on it.
2) Be prepared for your campaign to go completely off the rails to somewhere totally unexpected.
3) Be prepared for people (enemies, friends, characters) to die unexpectedly.

I have found that if you want conspiracies to work it is almost best to have (sort of) 3 campaigns running at the same time - then the players have solid paths they can follow away from the main campaign but you have somewhere pre-planned for them to go. Then you may find ways to loop back into it, but if you don't then it's obviously because you are having fun with the alternate path.

It takes away the railway while providing the feeling that lots is going on in the world at once and really meaning the players actions will have consequences - one way or another.

In my last campaign, the characters ended up releasing Bel-Shalor and then spent the rest of the campaign trying to re-imprison him as the world collapsed around them. Having him released was felt to be the lesser of two evils.

Other alternate plot threads to follow can come from the character's backgrounds. I try to find a campaign arc for each character - including stuff about the character, his background, his goals or his contacts that the player does not know. Then I try and reveal them throughout the campaign. Again, what the players think is going on can impact on what actually ends up happening - they have some crazy good ideas.

I hope that helps - it's all pretty broad brush stuff, but this worked really well for me in my last campaign. This one is a bit more straightforward as I am just following a module (kind of). I would say that the last campaign is the best one I have done in over 30 years of DMing though.

 

[Werebat]

Ooh, long ago I had the seeds of an idea for a Q'Barra campaign... I think there is a lot you can do with that territory.

Don't forget about the big black dragon brooding in his corrupted ruin, corrupting the lizardmen around him (all three types -- large, medium, and small). IIRC he's keeping some powerful demonic force trapped within the ruins and has gotten corrupted by it. That guy is awesome and should be used somehow, even if only as a font of information that the PCs have to deal with if they want to learn something important. Or perhaps his corruption has been noticed by his bloodline and a younger black dragon has arrived to take his place, if she can find some way of getting a group of adventurers to take him down. Or perhaps rakshasa or some other servants of the fiend bound in the ruin seek to free it from its prison, and trick the PCs into taking a stand against the dragon.

Dinosaurs! The book says that the really huge ones don't live in Q'Barra, but that leaves plenty of room for raptors and etc. Half-dragon dinosaurs sound tempting too.

There's a lot you could do with the politics between lizardman tribes, where some want to repel the humanoid invaders and others engage in cool but peaceful relations with them.

Perhaps a rich deposit of gemstones (or dragonshards) is discovered in the jungle, and the party gets embroiled in conflict between rapacious miners, savage lizardmen who resent their intrusion, and fey or elemental forces that want the gems for their own purposes?

Q'Barra is a pretty cool place to run a campaign, IMO.

 

[Wrathamon]

I ran a modification of the Witchfire Trilogy in q'barra. I made New Galifar similar to the city in the trilogy. I even made it that the 12 do not have a foothold in the city, but you can easily modify it to fit.

I remember at the time it worked very well.