DT's Old School Campaign- (Chapter 4: The Guild and The Girl)

Fenris

Adventurer
Rovan sighed I need that head back he thought.

He slumped down next to Craig. "Aye, and you make sure to tell them not to mess with us again. That we are hunting for who did this, and will exact out revenge in untold pain and suffering. Now, did the guild say why they did this? We are innocent folks Craig, and have done no wrong, but by the Gods we shall not abide by such treachery! Tell me what you knwo of the killers, what they said, who sent them, was it a guild faction? Why were we targeted Craig."
 

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Deuce Traveler

Adventurer
OOC: As far as you want. The players made the adventure what it was and I just built the plot around their actions. I honestly had free-styled it before the first mission and before the characters started to develop.
 

Queenie

Queen of Everything
Oh my goodness, is this where we left this thread?? [MENTION=34958]Deuce Traveler[/MENTION] I just reread this thread what an amazing time and a great story! Any change at all of getting ]this going again at some point? :D

[MENTION=2820]Fenris[/MENTION] [MENTION=40413]GlassEye[/MENTION] [MENTION=21353]ScottDeWar[/MENTION] [MENTION=6078]garyh[/MENTION] had a great time playing with you guys!!
 

Deuce Traveler

Adventurer
OOC: This is a coincidence. I was just going through a bunch of Judge's Guild material and remembering this campaign fondly. Life happens, and a lot of folks had to move on, so we ended early. But still, this may be the most successful BECMI campaign in ENWorld history, so I'm still proud of it. The follow-on adventures would have had the team leave the City-State for a jaunt into nearby settlements, and eventually liberate a hometown of a certain cleric PC. From there, the heroes would have gained the notice of powerful patrons in and around the City-State and would have eventually returned to the city to save it from a menace. This would have led to followers and a headquarters being established. Then off again to some of the other powerful city-states of the game world on missions for these patrons. Then titles would have been given, and a frontier town established under the heroes control. So we would have gone from BECMI city adventures from levels 1-3 as per the basic set, then 4-13 in wilderness adventures and exploration as per the expert set, then having titles and holdings of the companion and master sets from levels14+. In this way I could have perfectly merged the Judges Guild campaign world with BECMI.
 

GlassEye

Adventurer
That sounded like an awesome plan, DT. Too bad I had some issues at the time and that I needed to withdraw. :( I've always enjoyed the stories you've crafted, even that crazy post-apocalyptic/sci-fi one. ;)
 

Queenie

Queen of Everything
I agree with Glasseye, I really enjoy your style! The game was a lot of fun, the group got along well and I just had a blast. This was one of my first PBP games! I also enjoyed the surprise Sci Fi / Space game, though I did have some playing issues at the time so didn't get to post as often as I would like,

DT, planning on running any new games soon? :D
 

Fenris

Adventurer
That sounded like an awesome plan, DT. Too bad I had some issues at the time and that I needed to withdraw. :( I've always enjoyed the stories you've crafted, even that crazy post-apocalyptic/sci-fi one. ;)

I agree, DT has always created such amazing stories. I fondly remember all of the great games I have played in, especially the first I played with DT, The Last of the Dorinthians. That was an amazingly long campaign!
 

Deuce Traveler

Adventurer
I still have to write the final post of our D&D 3.5/Metamorphosis Alpha/Star Frontiers game. I finally found my game notes so I could complete it, but work has been extremely busy. Check out an old post from 2007 about me mixing Spaceship Zero with Star Frontiers: http://www.enworld.org/forum/showth...NWorld/page3&p=3540667&viewfull=1#post3540667

:) That post was made in 2007, way before I started the campaign.

I have an idea of starting a game where the party plays ambassadors to nations on their frontier in order to repair alliances, create trade, solve disturbances before they lead to humanitarian crises, etc. I already have three or so adventures in mind, but I am not sure what genres I should merge. I was thinking I could do it in space, with Pathfinder characters and the Dragonstar campaign setting. The mood would be a combination of Poul Anderson's Flanery series and Keith Lamar's Retief series. Though one adventure is based on a work by Jack Vance I don't want to reveal yet...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dragonstar
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dominic_Flandry
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jame_Retief

The other option is to make it entirely high or low fantasy, depending on the system used. In the high fantasy system, the party would be made entirely of Bards and alternative Bard classes as found in Pathfinder, since negotiation and diplomacy would be so important and a party made entirely of alterations of one main class type is interesting to me. I recently played in an abandoned game here on ENWorld where we were all deviations from the main Thief Class (bruiser, counterfeiter, etc). However, the players might not want to play an all Bard cast of diplomats. In that case I would lean more on Jack Vance and Glen Cook for tone and I would likely use something like the BECMI, OSRIC, or Castle and Crusades for the rule-set, just because I love the retro systems that much, especially with low fantasy. The campaign setting would be ambiguous, and the party would likely serve an advanced elven kingdom amongst poorer vassal states and nations of dubious moral quality. I would still borrow familiar tropes and twist them a bit, though. For instance, I want to use the drow/dark-elves, but take some examples from Jack Vance to explain their culture and society rather than anything made by Salvatore. Anyway, those are my random thoughts I have yet to really do anything with, so if you have any thoughts or ideas I'd love to hear them.
 

GlassEye

Adventurer
I think I was in that all-thief campaign. Very promising start, brief play and then the DM vanished. I think PF archetypes make a group of characters all with the same class easier but I don't think any class manages that quite as nicely as the rogue. It would be interesting to see how it worked with bard and a diplomacy focused campaign.

Retief novels are a fun read...
 

Deuce Traveler

Adventurer
For Queenie, pulled from the OOC thread:
http://www.enworld.org/forum/showth...ands)/page50&p=4848790&viewfull=1#post4848790

[sblock]
The overall plot:

I figured at this point the characters would have been tired of the City-State and its corruption and decadence. The characters would most likely have decided to leave the city, which would have been possible since they had a new patron with connections with nearby towns: Vernik. As a weapon's master Vernik would also have taught each character how to be an expert with a weapon of their choice (a 1,500gp value, so 1,500xp for each character trained).

If the characters were not willing to leave the city, then they would have run into several factions that were hunting them and would likely have been driven from the city or the Overlord's minions might have convinced them to escape (more on that in a minute).

So who was involved in what?

The headless witch seemed to be alive and well in people's dreams. She visited in dreamland and pushed Ben and his minions (on page 6) to attack Rovan and his friends. This was because she knew Rovan had been affected by the chemical vapors in the first adventure with the evil wizard. It was better that Rovan seek a cure after dealing with a lout like Ben instead of Rovan finding out he was magically diseased during a critical fight. This was also my way to bind Hilmdyn and Rovan together. Rovan would have continued to learn spells from the witch in the dream world when away from civilization, but whether or not she was real, a shade of herself, or a figment of various dreamers' imagination would have not been revealed.

The priest that had knocked Lola unconscious, dressed her up in tasteless clothes, then tried to sacrifice her was a priest of a secret cult to Set and an ex-priest of Harmakhis the death-god whose followers took over Hilmdyn's town. This allowed me to pick and choose a religious faction the characters would run into later. The priests of Harmakhis and Thieves' Guild operate openly and are so closely allied that they are actually intertwined. This is because the power of Harmakhis helps the undead guild leaders of ages past maintain their existence on the world and provide aid to the Guild, and the Guild helps fund their church in return. The final straw came when the party had went to the Pleasure Dome and completely laid out into the open the illegal local slaver operation that the Thieves' Guild had been profiting from. This caused priests of Harmakhis start using divining spells to track the party down. The characters revealed their identity further when they went to the Mermaid's Rest. The inn there was run by low-level thieves who acted as serving girls and were the eyes and ears of the Guild in that quarter of the city.

The party had killed the members of the Beggar's Guild and Assassin's Guild when they conducted the cart ambush, also antagonizing these groups. The party had also upset the Assassin's Guild when they were held responsible for the theft of the Serpent's Eye, a gem valued by the Cult of Set who were now allied with the Assassins. A friend of Edvan's had taken the eye in the end, and all three Guild's wanted it for various reasons. Each of the Guilds now suspected the party of working for another.

So back to the party and the slaughter in the city. The characters' actions against the Pleasure Dome was such a set-back for the Thieves' Guild that they responded violently and without a thought out plan. The characters would not be welcome in their old spots like the Tripping Trident for the owner feared Guild retaliation. So the characters would have had to decide whether or not to leave the city or strike at the Guilds first.

By now the decadence of the city would have made the characters want to set out and escape the corruption, painted dandy noblemen, and unvirtuous women. This would have been similar to Conan setting forth into the wild or a Lieber character doing the same. Also, since the characters were about 4th level, this would mean that it was a perfect time for them to set forth and explore the wild as the expert set of BECMI starts at 4th level and focuses on wilderness adventures. The party would have explored ancient ruins, met strange species, and fought barbaric tribes. This portion of the game would have been as violent and mysterious as the city portion was decadent and corrupt.

Eventually the characters would have returned to Hilmdyn's home, if I could steer them that way, and would have run into a too-powerful Harmakhis faction that had taken over the area. They would have decided that the city might have forgotten them enough and returned to the City-State at level 10 or so, where they would have found that the thieves and assassins at the brink of war. At that point, Edvan's old friend (Erin) would have reappeared. Erin worked his way into the Thieves' Guild as a clerk and knows all of their intelligence when it comes to suspected Assassin Guild operations and planned Thieves Guild operations. He actually does care about Edvan's well being and wasn't trying to set him up, but he did need the gem as it controls the serpents that the Cult of Set has been slowly collecting underneath the city sewer systems. Using the power of the gem, he releases and sets them off prematurely, specifically targeting the Thieves' Guild who he blames for the death of his sister, but he is unable to control the artifact's power. Edvan and the party has to put him down, which saves much of the city from the infestation, but the Thieves' Guild ends up awakening their past undead masters to save their own hide. The undead Guild masters of times before declare martial law on the city and become a menace of their own. They capture the party and put them through a death trap, but only Lola and Edvan are caught in the flooding chambers. The rest of the party fights off some Thieves, then works to find the way to reset the trap. This is a chance for Lola and Edvan to develop a rapport as the death trap is worked through and eventually escaped. The characters eventually would have had a chance to destroy the Harmakhis' artifact keeping the undead Guild Masters tethered to the world.

If the characters did not leave the city earlier, they would have went through a lower level version of the above events, then explored the surrounding wilderness. Through it all they would have developed a dangerous relationship with another patron they were never to directly meet: the Overlord himself.

The Overlord was concerned with the Thieves' Guilds slavery operations, the Harmakhis priests and their control of key players in the city, the actions of the Assassin's Guild, and the return of the Cult of Set. But he could not act without hurting his own political power as they had powerful allies among the nobility. Then the characters began to make those factions' lives a living hell. As the characters broke the power centers of each of these factions, the Overlord's trusted men took note and provided small tokens of support, to include banishment as a 'punishment' (and escape) rather than executing the party members when the nobility began to cry for their heads. The last adventure I had planned was that the characters caused such a ruckus that the Overlord was very pleased, but the powerful men in the city were infuriated. The Overlord 'punishes' the characters once more by banishing them to Hilmdyn's hometown at the head of a small army of liberation and a charter to rule over that town as minor nobility if they were to succeed, which would have put the characters at the Companion ruleset of BECMI.
[/sblock]
 

Queenie

Queen of Everything
I'm not sure if I ever even saw that. I think I was having a lot of technical ENW issues back then, like not getting emails when a post went up. Regardless, I had a really fun time. And wow, our characters would have really gone somewhere in life! Maybe Lola would have had her own Pleasure Dome, minus the slaves of course ;)

Thank you for the big write up that must have taken some time. Let Fenris or I know if you decide to run a game. I am not familiar with any of the ideas you mentioned above but I would follow you almost anywhere ;) That said, I always thought an all rogue game would be really fun, there are just so many different variations on the class. All bards could be similar I am sure. I think with a great GM the classes don't matter as much for the story to work.
 

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