My Campaign, Tier by Tier (Feedback?)

[Vayden]

Well, I don't know Mystara at all, so I won't give point-by-point suggestions (you already seem to have plenty of those). I will say that you don't seem to have enough in there for 3 full tiers of campaigning, unless you're levelling them up really quickly. Even the H-P-T series gives you 3 full arcs per tier.

For comparison, and because you asked people to share, here's my planned 3 tier campaign Ravensong (players are 8th level at the moment).

Heroic Tier:
Started with Keep on the Shadowfell to get everyone used to 4e. After that ended, Nentir Vale (and for all the players know, the entire world) was sucked into the Shadowfell by priests of Vecna taking advantage of the abilities of the Keep. The players helped the citizens of Winterhaven evacuate, fought their way through a ruined monastery to provide the refugees a safe place to stay, fought a giant army of undead that was attempting to sack Fallcrest, went through a demi-plane dungeon in order to get an artifact that allowed them to recruit an army of gnolls, then went back to Fallcrest at the head of their gnoll army and smashed 2 armies of undead.

That got them to 8th level (with KotS taking up 1-3). Next, in an arc that will get them into the first parts of Paragon, they'll have to find their way to a Shadar-kai fortress, survive the hazards, and recruit the Shadar-kai Witch-Queen to help them get back into the Keep on the Shadowfell, where they'll witness Vecna killing the Raven Queen and be able, if they survive, to return Nentir Vale to the material plane.

Paragon:

Still fleshing out my plans here in more detail, but it's going to be a lot of political wheeling and dealing. They'll have to forge a peace between the remnants of Nerath and the Gnoll Empire, make an uneasy alliance with Orcus, Yeenoghu, and some other demon lords against Vecna, and begin to find th pieces of the clues on how to challenge Vecna, which will be the theme of . . .

Epic:

A massive plane-hopping adventure with one goal - put together the artifacts and lore necessary to confront and kill Vecna, while managing to avoid his attempts to squash them like bugs before they can pull it off. Kas obviously plays a big role, as will the patron gods of the PCs, Moradin in particular.

 

[Ydars]

Weem; have we gone off track or are we still being helpful?

 

[weem]

@Ydars

Weem; have we gone off track or are we still being helpful?

Oh no, still very helpful, thanks everyone - I had much workd the last few days and couldn't get back here quick enough, hehe.

I'm going back now and reworking some stuff, trying to imaging the major milestone/crossroads they will encounter - how I think they will handle them and what other options will be available to them etc - I'm keeping it pretty general and not locking myself into anything though as I am pretty open to following them along this path as opposed to the other way around. But like I said before, the campaign has a trajectory at this point, and my group is very predictable so it affords me the opportunity to prep pretty far in advance.

@Ydars

To incorporate what Jester said, it would help if the Scale did change and to this end, how about using the Isle of Dread?

What if the snake-people were trying to wake Jormunand because they percieve that his other head is about to awaken (Jormunand was sometimes depicted as a snake with two heads in Norse mythology). If the other head is sited on the Isle of Dread and is about to be awakened by the Void-Lords, then you have a nice campaign as follows;

Yea, I really like the idea of this as well - and if not the Isle of Dread, I could have the second location be in some far off plane to really stretch out the scope, etc. Very interesting.

[continued...]

Enter the PCs during Paragon Tier, who have just saved the Hutaakans from a terrible disease and now discover that the evil snake people are trying to awaken their ancient god. They stop the snake people, but in so doing, unwittingly further the agenda of the Void Lords, a fact they only discover after they put the Northern head to sleep for keeps (although how well they do this impacts upon the final battle; meat for another skill challenge me thinks).

The thing I really like about this is it plays into this idea I had of the PC's being to blame for something (even though it was inadvertently) - I was thinking they could inadvertently lead the snake people there the first time, but I think I like this idea for that aspect even better.


@Nightson

As an idea, instead of the Yuan'ti just popping the castle back, maybe they've figured out a way to suspend the castle in two places at once so that they can use it as an unlimited portal to carry troops across.

I really like this idea, thanks. IT would be so daunting to face it knowing that it is more like a doorway spilling in swarms of them as opposed to a box containing a limited amount of them.


@Vayden

Well, I don't know Mystara at all, so I won't give point-by-point suggestions (you already seem to have plenty of those). I will say that you don't seem to have enough in there for 3 full tiers of campaigning, unless you're levelling them up really quickly. Even the H-P-T series gives you 3 full arcs per tier.

Yea, this could be true - but keep in mind, there is a lot of other stuff going on as well that I did not post - this was kind of the major plot line, but there are many others as well - some larger than others. For example, the Dragonborn Fighter is also dealing with the near extermination of his clan that occurred recently and all that's involved with that (investigating the why's and how's) as well as plotting their recovery with the help of the ferw survivors, etc.

@Vayden

For comparison, and because you asked people to share, here's my planned 3 tier campaign Ravensong (players are 8th level at the moment).

Yes! I wanted to see some other campaigns ideas as well!

So, I love the idea of leading an army (gnoll in your story) - too much fun. Thoguh my PC's would not be in charge of one, I imagine them at the head of one charging back into the valley to reclaim it - so again, this idea of leading gnolls via an artifact is really cool, I dig it.

As for the Paragon Tier, that sounds like a lot of fun to me - I would love to do something like that but it would (sadly) put my players to sleep. I would imagine you have a good group for that though, that is really into that stuff? I love it myself.

And as for the Epic Tier, it sounds... well... epic, as it should be, haha. I general the entire thing sounds like a lot of fun, especially the Paragon Tier which really gets into the kinds of stuff I like doing most. Very good!

 

[Ydars]

Weem; I hope this campaign works out very well for you. Let us know if you need any more ideas or someone to act as a sounding board.

Walk Well My Brother!