DARKSUN: Dregoth vs. Giants Cleansing War

[megamania]

I am currently fleshing out an Epic Level story involving Athas as the Cleansing Wars begin. I am centering my attention on Dregoth vs the Giants.

I have re-read 2nd edition books of City by the Silt Sea which deals with Dregoth and hints at his battle with Thasknor (lion headed giant leader) and the updates of the campaoign world for what is happening in the world at that time.

The basics of the storyline is what if complete strangers to the world arrive and find themselves being pulled and influenced by each side of the battle.

The battle would be political at first then go full scale war.

Any thoughts on how to go about this? Has anyone tried to do a similiar event even if not on Darksun?

Any thoughts or suggestions would be appreciated.

 

[Prism]

For a campaign arc like this I would use the ideas in the 3e Heroes of battle book. Having played the Red Hand of Doom adventure which is heavily based on this source I can say it works really well. The players really feel that they are part of the build up to war and then influencing the final battles. Basically split the war up into smaller encounters along the lines of a flow chart. The success or failure to complete earlier encounters dictates the difficulty and outcome of the final battles

I often mix in a bit of D&D mini's play for mid size skirmishes too - say up to 50 combatants per side. In my last campaign I got each player to convert their character to mini's rules and create a themed warband up to 100 points (they were 5th level). I also got each of them to create an enemy warband too - goblin themed in this case. Then we had a mini tournament where each person played twice - once with their own characters warband and once with enemies. Just to make sure they didn't pull any punches with the enemy warbands I gave a free magic item to anyone that won with the goblins.

We have also used the minis rules where we had a pitched battle vs the DM. If any character was dropped in the fight we used 50/50 dead or unconcious

For the political aspects I would create encounters using the 4e skill challenge rules and again have the success or failure of these affect later skirmishes, other skill challenges or combat encounters

 

[megamania]

bump for exposure

 

[megamania]

One final bump before I finalize plots