Is this a good campaign idea?
- Thread starter zakon
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Stormborn
Explorer
Take a page from an old Shadowrun Campaign and have vermin avatars making contact w/ beings on the material plane. Strange cults start appearing in cities with fly, spider, bee, and wasp themes. Strange mutations start to occur, lycanthropic spiders for example. Start the campaign in a major city and just sprinkle these things along, maybe in the midst of a low level thieves guild war or the like that the PCs get invovled in (there are pleanty of good low level city adventures out there you can run.) After a clue or two, or even a low level villan in a side quest or recovered artifact for someone who is more than they appear, start having the PCs encounter more obvious signs of the vermin avatar's influence. Monsterous vermin, the poor section of the city walling itself off and creating a giant hive etc. This would be in the low to mid levels. If the players like the way things are going and the PCs pick up on the hooks and don't do anything total stupid and unexpected (never mind, they will, just deal with it) you start introducing the vermin lord's high level henchmen at about 8th level. The vermin lord is trying to raise these various avatars to serve him, but they are warring amongst themeselves as well as causing problems for everyone else. Unless the PCs put a stop to things, a couple of the henchmen merge with the avatars and become real problems, all while opening things up for their master. Perhaps this vermin lord is actually a centuries old lich or mummy who needs to power of the avatars to be brought back to unlife. The hencmen sacrifice themselves to their master, he wakes up. Swarms happen. World dies with a thunder of chtinous clicks not a bang nor a whimper. Unless of course the PCs have rallied the forces of good (and possibly evil) and are ready to deal with it when it all hits the fan.
Or just run something premade. But heed the advice: don't plan too much too soon, players always derail big campaign plans. If you set this up and the PCs don't take the hooks then maybe someone else deals with it while the PCs get deeper into a struggle with the thieves guild and a family of fiendish sorcerers who want to take over the kingdom with fake coins that have spells/prayers attached to them.
Or just run something premade. But heed the advice: don't plan too much too soon, players always derail big campaign plans. If you set this up and the PCs don't take the hooks then maybe someone else deals with it while the PCs get deeper into a struggle with the thieves guild and a family of fiendish sorcerers who want to take over the kingdom with fake coins that have spells/prayers attached to them.
If you can find it, pick up a copy of Fritz Leiber's The Swords of Lankhmar to mine for ideas. Its plot centers around a plague of rats, not vermin, but it ought to translate readily. Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser do a whole lot more than just kill rats in that book, which may help you come up with ways to switch things around if your players get bored of carving up bugs.
LostSoul
Adventurer
That's a cool idea for a game, and I like the giant vermin city.
When it comes to making the adventures, try and get as much input from the players as possible. Ask what kind of stuff they want to see, that sort of thing. The more investment they have in the game/story, the more they will want to see it come to its conclusion.
Good luck!
When it comes to making the adventures, try and get as much input from the players as possible. Ask what kind of stuff they want to see, that sort of thing. The more investment they have in the game/story, the more they will want to see it come to its conclusion.
Good luck!
silentspace
First Post
Eight Legged Freaks is fun too
Mystery Man
First Post
Sideplot - The guy riding the devastation whatever is a formian general clearing the area (by area this could be the entire country/privince etc for his queen. The queen isn't planning on moving in for the next 200 years.
Nareau
Explorer
Quoted for truth.shilsen said:
If you do this, consider the following:
1) Fighting a bunch of bugs will get boring. Maybe you could have a type of mind-controlling bug that burrows into the brain of its victim. Gives the PC's to fight just about anything, from innocent villagers to beefed-up trolls. Yet still ties into the main plot. Bonus points if you can include a "Kill....me..." scene.
2) Big bugs can be scary, but lots of little bugs can be scarier. Part of what makes bugs so viscerally terrifying is their numbers and tiny size. Consider having the BBEG be able to shapechange into a swarm. Or replace the giant city-size bug with a carpet of beetles that goes for miles and miles.
Sounds like it could be a fun campaign! Don't worry so much about railroading...just providing a BBEG and a global threat doesn't mean the characters can't decide how to tackle the day-to-day problems.
Spider
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