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Message: <blockquote data-quote="thoth93" data-source="post: 5574145" data-attributes="member: 40716">So a group of friends have asked me to run a D&D campaign for them. We make characters on Sunday, I expect I'll probably start properly with either "Slaying Stones," the revamped and improved version of "Keep on the Shadowfell" available online, or something similar when we play again in two weeks.But I wanted to give them something to do with those shiny new characters, so I whipped up a little dungeon/crypt crawl. A few rooms with animated skeletons, trapped coffins, hidden doors and the like of the sort my D&D buddies and I used to love back in the 1E days. A good old dungeon crawl.Maybe it's because it's 3:15 a.m. and I really should be in bed. Maybe work has just drained my brain. Maybe I'm just out of juice. But for the life of me, I can't even come up with a good, one-sentence explanation for WHY the characters would be engaging in this bit of tomb-robbing. Sure I could go with some handwavy "the local Lord/area hedge wizard/high cleric of Pelor/suspicious character you just met in the local inn has hired you to enter the crypt of Clan Calister and recover a magic bauble of great antiquity," and that might suffice. Maybe the party's wizard found an old map or something and they just wanted to check it out. But I want something a bit more interesting than that, even though this is really just a chance to go in, smash some things, and maybe collect a few small shiny bits before we get into the meat of the matter.I've got in in my head that these were evil folks, back in the wild and wooly days before the Nentir Vale became the points-o-light place it is. They were necromancers, and the whole place is trapped and filled with undead guardians. And it's not because a place of sanctity has been corrupted or because some wizard's broken in and started raising the dead. It's that way because the folks who made the place A) hoarded magic items and power, B) were pretty darned evil and C) believed that since they couldn't take their stuff with them, they would rather inter it in a deliberately-guarded vault to keep away the riffraff.I'm probably overthinking this. And maybe there's nothing wrong with just saying, "you're here, there's treasure, go get it," especially given the goals. But any shreds of creativity the posting community might choose to toss my way would be most appreciated. I'm thinking of placing the crypt itself  near Winterhaven, so maybe there would be a chance to tie it somehow into H1. Dunno.Thanks, all.Brian</blockquote>

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