Limited-Resource Campaign Design

[mhacdebhandia]

Recently, Whizbang Dustyboots mentioned his method for designing his Midwood campaign: go through the Player's Handbook and the Monster Manual, and pick out the items which are most interesting to you. These then become the sole basis for your campaign.

I'm going to try my hand at this, because why not?

Player Character Races

• Human
• Aasimar
• Tiefling

Immediately, this suggests that humans have had significant contact with both celestials and fiends in the past, and that they may do so today. Does this mean, for instance, that the region in which the campaign is set is or once was something of a battleground between the forces of the Upper and Lower Planes? Does the presence of aasimar and tieflings within the region necessarily imply that celestials and fiends were actually mating with humans, or is there another mechanism whereby a human bloodline could be imbued with the essence of such creatures? Are there bloodlines of humanity deliberately blessed or cursed with celestial or fiendish heritage, or is the presence of such people a side-effect of something else?

For example, one could suggest that the region was, in the distant past, indeed a battleground between celestial and fiendish armies. Perhaps the human cities which existed at the time were either occupied by fiends as a base of operations or voluntarily opened their gates to the celestial hosts. Maybe the end of the war came in a cataclysm which utterly annihilated both holy and unholy forces, dispersing their essence in a strange fashion which caused the next generation of children to be born with fiendish or celestial qualities.

Monsters

• Ankheg
• Formian
• Ghoul
• Grimlock
• Shadow
• Wight
• Yuan-ti

The first two creatures on this list quite naturally go together: ankhegs are six-legged carnivorous insect-like creatures which normally behave something like antlions or funnelweb spiders, digging tunnels or pits in which they wait for passing prey.

Formians are intelligent antlike creatures arranged in a hierarchy from worker through warrior, taskmaster, and myrmarch up to queen. It is no great stretch to imagine that a great formian hive exists within the region, breeding ankhegs as beasts of burden and sources of food. A wild population of ankhegs may exist within the region from which the formians periodically capture individuals to improve their domesticated breeding stock.

Ghouls and wights are both recognisable as corrupted humans. Ghouls are said to arise upon the death of those corrupted in life by their cannibalistic habits; an old association with burial mounds (a la the barrow-wight in The Lord of the Rings) suggests to me that wights may arise when powerful heroes and villains are not properly buried.

The existence of ghouls implies the existence of at least a small group of people who practice cannibalism; perhaps this is a cult dedicated to a demon lord which originally arose in a city occupied by fiendish armies, and has since spread covertly throughout the region.

Wights arising from improper burial implies a strong tradition of proper burial practices, which is a lovely flavour element of the setting. It also implies that there is a reason why some people may be buried improperly - perhaps tombrobbers are to blame for disturbing the proper ritual condition of the body, or perhaps someone is deliberately defiling the graves of these great individuals for an insidious purpose. The cannibalistic demon cult could be to blame.

While ghouls and wights are both corporeal undead, shadows are insubstantial. Perhaps shadows are spawned upon the destruction of a ghoul or wight, creating an additional responsibility for adventurers who combat such creatures.

Grimlocks are blind, subterranean creatures who live in barbaric tribal groups. If there are extensive cave systems underground or within mountains in the region, grimlocks could be found there, a menace to humans and formians alike from time to time. Are such creatures related to humanity in any fashion - primitive cousins, degenerate descendants? I favour the idea that grimlocks possess a culture difficult for outsiders to appreciate, possibly strongly religious and under the sway of tribal priests whose auguries determine the pattern of their raids.

Finally, yuan-ti are snakelike creatures ranging from the human-seeming purebloods who often disguise themselves to operate as spies within human society, through the more powerful and respected halfbloods with obvious snake features to the human-snake hybrid abominations at the top of the hierarchy. Yuan-ti must have a malevolent agenda within human society for the purebloods to carry out - perhaps they too serve a fiendish master, who has commanded them to destabilise human society towards some unholy end which could see the halfbloods and abominations reveal themselves in open conflict.

Within the context of the core D&D cosmology, perhaps the cannibalistic cult serves one of the demon lords of the Abyss, while the yuan-ti serve one of the devil lords of the Nine Hells. The PCs may eventually assume the role of champions of the Upper Planes against these twin threats from the Lower Planes.

The absence of true fiends and celestials is notable. We could assume that the catastrophic end of the war resulted in these creatures being barred from the Material Plane, causing the fiendish lords to turn to mortal agents and motivating the celestial hosts to seek mortal champions.

Thoughts?

 

[el-remmen]

Perhaps shadows are spawned upon the destruction of a ghoul or wight, creating an additional responsibility for adventurers who combat such creatures.

I have an undead template in the works for my game that has a similar idea. They are called "the Unliving".

 

[mhacdebhandia]

How do you envision it operating?

For instance, I was thinking that perhaps a shadow would be spawned at the scene of the ghoul's or wight's destruction within a certain timeframe, but I'm undecided as to whether it should be a known period of time or something random, requiring a conscientious hero to keep vigil at the location until the shadow appears.

Alternatively, the shadow could manifest itself from the creature's corpse within a given timeframe, and the only way to stop it is to have the corpse purified before it spawns - at low levels, this means carting the body back to a local temple, at higher levels it's something a cleric in the party can do themselves.

 

[Aramax]

Love the concept-I have a common monster list and try to use them all the time,come to think of it I think Im gonna go w/a very common list too,I havent limited myself as much as you have but I very much Like your choices.

 

[mhacdebhandia]

Thanks.

Basically, I like the idea that the formians could be a non-evil antagonistic force. I like the idea that there are repercussions from the planar war that are still felt to this day. I like that some creatures are connected - ankhegs and formians, ghouls and wights and shadows - and that others are "wild cards", like the grimlocks.

While I make reference to the cannibalistic cult serving a demon prince, I don't have Orcus in mind. Given that their practices lead to their becoming ghouls, I may well simply use Doresain - I would have the freedom to determine the nature of his cult to suit my needs, and there's no need to delve into the details of Doresain's servitude to Yeenoghu.

The yuan-ti who do the bidding of an archdevil will, I think, be servants of Dispater. I like the idea that he would use yuan-ti purebloods to infiltrate human society and enact his patient schemes.

 

[el-remmen]

How do you envision it operating?

In my case, I planned for the shadow-like spirit to emerge from the destroyed corporeal form and its initial strength depending on the strength of the creature it came from.

I imagined, however, that the spirit would flee to some dark place to grow to full power before emerging again to do evil. So it'd be a kind of destroy it or track it down immediately or you are going to have something even stronger to fight that remembers the pain of its destruction.

 

[mhacdebhandia]

That's cool!

I was thinking of making use of the gravetouched ghoul template because it allows for a greater variety of opponents, along with the ghoul/ghast and wight classes, to be used in much the same way as templates.

It would be nice if there were a shadow template, as well . . . the basic shadow could represent the newly-spawned creature, and allowing it to survive and grow to full strength could lead to the appearance of a properly-templated version.

 

[mhacdebhandia]

I've been thinking that it might be more fun to have the yuan-ti serve Glasya as their patron - she needs to establish Material Plane resources in order to cement her new position in Baator, and I like the idea that she would choose the longer road of manipulating an area the devils cannot physically visit anymore through her yuan-ti servants.

 

[Doghead Thirteen]

Heh, we do this kind of stuff all the time - mainly because we're still developing our game system and setting, so we've got limited amounts of stuff to go on with.

Done right, it makes the setting seem more consistent. It's like, you've got a regular stomping ground and what frequents that stomping ground is a constant. You get to learn the sort of animals and plants. You get an idea of how everything behaves. But sooner or later, bad news like heavily-armed high-experience adventurers has got to spread, or it stops making sense.

That's when you throw in a more powerful invader... sentient or non, it doesn't matter.

 

[Sir Elton]

"Limited Resouce" campaign designing? I don't believe there is such a thing. Our imaginations are truely boundless!