Help me flesh out this campaign beginning

[ThomasBJJ]

Ok, I'm starting a campaign soon. I'm loosly basing it on the Forgotten Realms. I'm thinking somewhere on the Sword Coast.


-------Spoilers-------

Dr. Confoundo---keepout--- Thomas FR Campaign players--- keep out --- Tom V, Josh, Mike R, Jim R, Jim C., Mike G, Richard

--------SPOILERS!!!!!


This will be more rural/frontier setting with lots of misty forests and swamps. Travel is dangerous and commoners are afraid of the forest. No one would even dare to think about traveling without many guards. Magic is uncommon. Towns are small. Money isn't easy to come by.

My basic starting plot: Small town with 6-7 fully fleshed out NPC's to interact with the PC's.
1. A couple hours ride west of town is the coast. There are some old docks and fishing piers, but they are not well used. There is a lighthouse here that is either maintained by a hermit or abandoned. Small ships occassionally stop here and ride into town to trade for supplies. At some point I'd like the PC's to explore the lighthouse area. Haven't done much work on this yet. Just seems like a cool setting.

2. North of town is a dense forest that the locals are scared to death of. There is going to be an extra-dimensional gate here that is the source of some bad things in the forest. The PC's will probably investigate the forest, find the gate, and have to find some way to close the gate. My initial thoughts are to have to make a brief excursion into this alien dimension to retrieve a crystal or somesuch from another gate on the otherside and insert it into a pattern of crystals on their gate. have not worked out the details on this yet. **What I need to figure out is WHAT is coming thru this gate? I want it to be something mysterious and frightening. My first thought is something that bites and drinks blood, but is not vampiric. I want victims to be found with hundereds of bite marks all over and a look of terror on their face.
What could I use for this? The other thought is something more sinister and intelligent, but still scary.

3. North-East of town is one of the main roads (trail in some spots) that is used for trade and travel to the rest of the world. This area is plagued by VERY organized, militaristic Hobgoblins. They will be fitted with fighter feats and some reach weapons. Thier tactics will be second to none. This will supply some fights and be an obsticle to trade merchants in and out. Not sure how I want to use this to advance a plot though.

4. South of town, there are some ravines (sp?) and mountainous areas. These are littered with some very hard to reach ruins from an ancient civilization. This will be a good dungeon crawl area. I'm thinking some ancient magical society (based on Nethril) that went to ruin in the cataclism. Think ancient Atlantis with all its advances, waiting to be explored, but littered with magical beasts spawned from the broken magic of the area. Blocking the PC's path to here are savage Orcs. My orcs are going to be mostly Barbarians. unorganized, hit and run tactics, but very vicious. They will be well known for Coup de gras-ing fallen foes in mid combat as part of their M.O. (makes it more scary to fight them).

Ok, that's my initial outline. I would like for the PC's to eventually close the gate (or somehow resolve that issue). Only to find that the "gate-people" were scaring off the majority of the Hobgoblins who are actually more north of the town. The Hobgoblins gave wide berth to the dark forest of the gate, but relied on raiding the road, so made a round-about path to hit it where they could. With the "Gate-people" out of the picture, the Hobgoblins will become more of a threat to the town.

The lighthouse, I'd like to have some catacombs under it, maybe some subterranian caves that are partially under water. Throw in some shaugin-like things.

I'd also like to have something going on in town to make things interesting, something tied in with one or more of the elements above. Maybe the mayor is having political trouble due to all the hardships on the town (victims of the gate forest, caravans getting sacked by the hobgoblins). This will be a small town, but there's room for politics and underhandedness.

PC's: a few PCs are interested in rangers, and one wants to be a druid possibly. That could be a lead-in to get them into town to investigate. One may be a paladin, the rest look like fighters and possibly one wizard/sorcerer. Rangers, paladin, druid come to investigate the dark forest of the gate, fighters ride in with a caravan and fight hobgoblins, the wiz may be looking for the ruins rumored to be nearby, etc.

I know this is long, any ideas would be great. How do I put a more interesting angle on the Hobgoblin side of the story? Seems a little bland, but I intend on making the combats very memorable. And I REALLY need to work on the "Gate" side of the campaign. That's the big thing for the moment.

BTW, this is for starting out 1st lvl characters.

 

[Nopau]

helping flesh out

Hi,

I'll try to go point from point.

1. If the lighthouse is abandoned perhaps the light starts working causing the PC's to go there. Perhaps hear some strange noises below to investigate, could be the wind going through the catacombs. Perhaps they find a second entrance to the catacombs that lead them to the light house.

2. There are all kind of Dark Shadow creatures the could come through the gate, perhaps the forest is dying turning grey because of the evil there. I have played such creautres that the PC's (and players nearly hide under the table!). Bite marks, strange burns, and bodies that are deformed and undescribable. It is all in the monster manual, you can just add a bit of imagination.

3. I would just use this as a side adventure, or as an obsticle, perhaps link it with the finding of the second entrance to the catacombs.

4. Some good reading for ideas here might be the Sunless citadel.

You could really do some awesome stuff with this, if you where to focus on the Druid. I am not sure how the party knows of each other, the druid could come in as the party going through the woods and hear all hell breaking loose and either have to save the druid or druid runs into them.

Druids usually will despise all evil done to the forest, and it is hard to find a really good true Neutral.

Hope this helps. If you need some help with the druid, I play mostly a druid and can give you some ideas. A new book is out called Master of the Wild, I don't have it either but it is suppossed to be good.

Nopau

 

[Furn_Darkside]

Salutations,

1) The light house- the keeper of the lighthouse is actually working for the hobgoblins. They have promised him a position of power in the town once it falls under their commands. He uses a light in the tower to flash messages to the hobgoblins.

Check out the WOTC site for free adventurers- they have one (maybe two) on a lighthouse (with a map).

Other ideas: The keeper is having and affair with the mayor's wife. She knows the mayor is up to something (see below), but is not sure what. She thinks the mayor may be contacting some pirates in hopes of hiring them to fight the town's enemies.

2) Hmm- hundreds of bites? How about undead stirges?

Or, you could go with one hole in the neck and have the portal lead to a dopple-plane. In this plane, vampires developed around the mosquito motif instead of the bat motif. They can walk around during the day, and have tongues that can sharpen into the probus-thingies mosquitos have.

Unlike undead bat vampires, the mosquito vampires are alive and vulnerable to loud sounds.

Or maybe a combination of both?

Other ideas involving the gate:

The mayor is the one who opened the gate recently. He has watched his town terrorized by the forces to the north and south, and has little money to entice adventurers. In a deserperate plan, he used his grandmothers old journal to track down a portal she found in the forest.

The mayor had hoped to make a deal with whatever was on the otherside of the portal- trading cattle/whatever in exchange for protection.

Of course, these evil creatures from the portal have had no intention of keeping their side of the deal- so they have attacked anyone stragglers they can find. (Maybe sound travels differently in their world- and very softly, so everything is much louder to them here. It is taking them some time to adjust.)

The mayor has another plan though, when he went through the portal and met with one of the leaders of these creatures- he noticed how many centered around some crystal on a pedistal. He is not sure its purpose, but he figures it is very valueable to them. His plan was to sneak into their lands and steal the crystal- to use as blackmail to force the mosquito-people to uphold their part of the deal. Since the "heroes" just happened to show up when they did, he hopes to play upon their greed and sense of justice to get them to steal the crystal.

3) I would make this a small outpost of a much bigger (and growing) army of hobgoblins. They have seized and attacked anyone on the road, but have not attacked the two due to their lack of numbers and lack of orders to do so.

Since the hobgolins have no wish to become farmers, they no they need to enslave towns of other races to work fields for them. As the hob army grows, they set up these minor outposts to draw attention away from their homelands.

The hobs may also attempt to instigate the orcs to the south to raid the town- something along these lines: They have captured a wagon of weapons with the town's markings. They use these weapons to slaughter a small camp of orcs and leave behind some of the weapons.

4) Sounds good. You may need to come up with a reason (outside of orcs) for why the ruins have not been picked clean as of yet. Perhaps the main gate to the ruins have been sealed for so long and no key or magic has been found in this world to open them.. (perhaps leading back through the portal to visit the dopple-ruins to get the key to use in their world).

Good luck!
FD

 

[ThomasBJJ]

Yeah, the ruins need some development. They are basically nearby, but hard to get to, both due to terrain and the orc barbarians in the area. Then once you're there, its a dangerous place due to magical beasts and probably some other nasty monstrous factions lurking about.

Why they haven't been picked clean? This is a rural area, not only is there not too many people, but adventurers in the whole campaign will be uncommon at best, and very few high level ones. This is going to be a darker setting that the official FR. I'm trying to put in some of the mystery and sense of danger that I felt back when i first started gaming in 1980. I had no clue what was going on, but it was all very dark and mysterious, and scary.

thanks for the ideas, keep em coming.

 

[DoctorB]

My first suggestion for the campaign is to think about what kind of theme you want for your game. It could be "overcoming fear" (see below), it could be "evil is returning" or perhaps "power has its price." Along similar lines, is this going to be a D&D horror campaign in which every victory has a cost, or a Tolkienesque world in which the players are great heroes? All are viable options. I think it is useful to think about this because it will help fit your initial plots into that theme.

1. A couple hours ride west of town is the coast. There are some old docks and fishing piers, but they are not well used. There is a lighthouse here that is either maintained by a hermit or abandoned. Small ships occassionally stop here and ride into town to trade for supplies.

The lighthouse could be a relic of the dead civilization. It could be contaminated by magical beasts to a lesser degree than the mountains. Perhaps the hermit is a slightly mad survivor.
Alternatively, this could be someone in towns father or mother who went insane from studying about the civilization.

2. North of town is a dense forest that the locals are scared to death of. There is going to be an extra-dimensional gate here that is the source of some bad things in the forest.

I have two suggestions here. One would be that the gate leads to the realm of nightmare. This could be a subplane of the negative material. If the players go inside, they will have to face their own worst fears come to life in order to survive. Those who die can have different marks because they died to different nightmares.

The other possibility is to use the anarchic template from the Manual of the Planes. The gate would lead to a chaos world then in which creatures exist as in our world but horriibly changed.

Either way, someone probably had to create that gate either intentionally to protect the town or accidentally by playing with secrets man was not meant to know. Closing the gate can be a matter of acquiring what the person used to open it (a crystal perhaps, or a scroll of a long forgotten spell). It might also be interesting if the person opening the gate went insane in the process. This person could be wandering the town raving mad as the townspeople avoid him/her. Fun role-playing here. Can the opener of the gate be saved?

3. North-East of town is one of the main roads (trail in some spots) that is used for trade and travel to the rest of the world. This area is plagued by VERY organized, militaristic Hobgoblins.

One idea is to have these be only the vanguard of a greater army. They are sent to scout the area and cause havoc with trade to isolate the town. The main army might be choosing what area to attack next. The PC's could intercept orders sent to the scouts by some mysterious General or Warlord. Perhaps they can cause the destruction of the scouting force, or arrange for them to have misleading information about the strength of the town's defenses to hold off the attack until they can prepare the town to meet it.

4. South of town, there are some ravines and mountainous areas. These are littered with some very hard to reach ruins from an ancient civilization.

You will want to flesh out a little bit what happened to this society. Did they become so proud that they delved into magics they could not control? Were they destroyed in a magical civil war?
If they were destroyed through magic, one could have survived as a kind of lich, tormented by the death of his/her people.
If it was a civil war, maybe two still survive, fighting over long-forgotten issues that led to the destuction of their society.

Perhaps the object that opened the gate came from one of the outlying sites of this civilization. Give them a distinctive marking and let the PC's do research to discover what it means.

A couple of other thoughts:
1) If you want to go for the save-the-world thing, you could say that the magic the ancient society awakened will slowly destroy the world unless the characters stop it.
2) You could build a major military plot from the attack of the hobgoblin armies. Can the PC's force or trick them into backing off? What will be the result to surrounding towns if so?

Your initial ideas can set the tone for the whole campaign.
Good luck!

 

[kengar]

There can be all sorts of reasons the ruins aren't "picked clean." Perhaps a recent tremor opened a breach to catacombs previously sealed off. There can be a powerful monster that leaves in the ruins that has no interest in the loot but has kept others away. In a lower-magic level campaign, a good haunting by undead can be a great deterrent for most folks. Just a few random thoughts, hope they help.