Got any tips for a sidetrek campaign?

[Decamber]

Greetings fellow D&D players!

As an attempt of getting my group to play more often, (we have had about four sessions this year), we've decided that our DM will take a break with his campaign and I will shoot up a smallish sidetrek. While playing this sidetrek, the original DM will have less pressure to plan for his campaign as well as we all will get the good ol' spirit back.

I guess this is a fairly common way of handling a period of DM burnout, (although I'm not sure this is the case of our DM), so I hope you have some tips for me. Oh, I just realized I forgot to check Johnn Four's tips first... he's got to have some great tips. Well, I'll check that out as soon I've posted this thread. Chuckle.

I thought that the sidetrek campaign will be of a not-so-serious kind. It will have an easy atmosphere where the main goal is to have fun. The adventures will be one-shot modules (well, modules or improvised stuff).

Do you have any tips for this sidetrek campaign? Any free modules? The PC's level will be around 10th, I guess. Any comments on that? We consider having 'loose' rules (not strict, that is... don't blame my Swenglish... ). One player wanted to play a Final Fantasy-kind of wizard, something that isn't so compatible with the D&D-rules (and I don't want to start a flame war!). Would you recommend not to?

Thanks in advance!

 

[smetzger]

RttToEE

 

[Redyak]

RttToEE

Sorry, I have to disagree. Return to the Temple of Elemental Evil is a mega-adventure, suitable for the entire campaign, not for a sidetrack, which is what he's looking for.

The Wizards of the Coast Website has many free adventures, some entirely new and some published from 2nd edition (but now free online). I don't tend to run modules, so I can't comment on the quality of any of these adventures.

Personally, I wouldn't go with the Final Fantasy type Wizard. That's too far away from the DnD vancian style magic system, so it would be quite hard to balance. If you're dead set on using an alternate FF wizard, look around ENWorld or the Wizards of the Coast message boards, you may be able to find a balanced version on one or the other.

 

[diaglo]

check out the freebies on WotC board.

http://www.wizards.com/dnd/article1.asp?x=dnd/oa/adventure,3

also try the free downloads. but you'll need to convert them.

http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/downloads

 

[EOL]

[shameless plug]
Over here at DireKobold.com we have a fair number of adventures with three more coming out every month. By using our Xenogenic System you can customize the adventure so that it can be run right out of the gate without you having to modify anything by hand. We have a free demo subscription if you want to kick the tires, unfortunately the two adventures you can access for free don't go all the way to tenth (they both dynamically scale between 1st and 7th) but the demo subscription has snippets of several really great adventures that are suitable for a tenth level party which are available to full subscribers. Take it for a spin, it can't hurt (much... )
[/shamless plug]

I ran "Return to the Tomb of Horrors" as a side trek it was light-hearted insofar as the PC's knew they were going to die.* The big pain was converting it to third edition. On that not converting old 2E or even 1E modules can be a lot of fun.

*Classic moment: Party encounters high level Necormancer. She screams. Player remarks, so what she casts Shout on us? No Wail of the Banshee it kills all but one player...

 

[Decamber]

Thanks for the replies.
Concerning the final fantasy wizard, that is now a closed chapter. All the players are going to create regular FR characters that follows the rules of D20.

I will check out those free modules you tipsed about. But on a further thought, I guess I'll create most of the adventures myself based on the characters and what the players want.

 

[Jeph]

*Classic moment: Party encounters high level Necormancer. She screams. Player remarks, so what she casts Shout on us? No Wail of the Banshee it kills all but one player...

It might just be me, but I find I get in a lot less trouble when I kill the characters. When I go after players, now, the families tend to get on edge.

 

[EOL]

It might just be me, but I find I get in a lot less trouble when I kill the characters. When I go after players, now, the families tend to get on edge.

I prefer my campaigns to be very realistic. Though it does make it very hard to find people willing to play with me.