My "realistic" homebrew underground campaign

[MerakSpielman]

I posted this over on the Wizards Boards. The responses were interesting but not too helpful.

By player request, my next campaign (due to start in about 6 months) is going to be as "realistic" as possible within the D&D framework. Of course, this is still a D&D world, with all the stuff from the core books, but I am going to attempt to eliminate logical inconsistancies such as the following:

Characters being led almost as if by fate on a linear progression of adventures towards a climatic, heroic ending

Characters miraculously not running into higher CR monsters until they are at higher levels (and high level characters not running into puny monsters)

Intelligent opponents who don't fight to the best of their abilities

Monsters who can have class levels and, for some reason, usually don't (kobolds, orcs, and trolls for example)

Finding magical items that just happen to fit a current need of the party (giving the druid a magical scimitar just because at this level, he should have one)

ETC....

Again, this campaign is by player request. They want the world to be in no way arrayed to their advantage.

This means, as a DM, that there will be considerable prep work involved. What I am looking for from all of you is suggestions for shortcuts.

This is what I have come up with so far:

Since the characters can explore where they want whenever they want, all locales and items of interest must be worked out in advance, along with a description of the significant creatures, intelligent and otherwise, that live in the area.
SHORTCUT: Have only a handful of these worked out in advance, but leave the details of the map and inhabitants vague so they can be adapted to any area quickly. Keep plot elements (if any) the same, though the inhabitants might shift from orcs (in hills) to tribal humans (plains) to elves (forest) to trolls (swamps).

For Dungeons, the players need to have the perception that I have thousands all mapped out in advance.
SHORTCUT: I'll have about 20 pages of flow charts that could describe anything from a mad wizards basement funhouse to a formian hive to an abandoned undergrond dwarven stronghold to back allys in the city to twisting paths in the forest - just a bunch of circles to indicate rooms and lines to indicate coridors.

Personalities of NPCs: I (and my playes) like NPCs to be unique and have personalities, whether they are friend, foe, shopkeeper, or hermit.
SHORTCUT: have a list of misc personality traits for NPCs. Have them in groups of three: 1) paranoid, soft spoken, and humorless. 2) assertive, intelligent, and rude. Etc.. Every time they run into a NPC, just roll a quick personality or use the next one on the list. Make every statement reflect one of their traits. The players will think you have every NPC in the world worked out as an individual.

misc
SHORTCUT: A random list of things to discover via Gather Information.

SHORTCUT: a list of Tavern/Shop/Ship/NPC names sorted by local dominant race

Literally anything can happen - the characters might very well die early, after running into a terribly nasty moster at first level, but they players think it sounds like tremendous fun, and I like the idea of not having to tailer every encounter to be "just hard enough" for their current level.

Do any of you have ideas for more shortcuts for a campaign like this?

 

[MerakSpielman]

A little later on (to elicit more helpful responses) I added a bundle of more specific information:

Some background on the new campaign:
(if any of my players are here, stop reading)
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At the end of the current campaign, the characters are unwittingly going to initiate a Huge Disaster in their attempts to save Civilization as They Know It. This disaster will simultaniously render the surface of the world magically uninhabitable and open a huge shaft (a mile wide) deep into the belly of my world's Underdark. I have initiated discussions with my players and they don't mind ending a game with the world still in dire straits, but they don't know in what form these dire straits will occur.

Fast Forward 400 years.

The Upper Races have fled the Disaster above ground via the huge shaft into the Underdark. All Upper Races have established at least one successful colony capable of fending off the dangers of the Underdark. All of these colonies are relativly shallow - the Drow and other dark denizens live far far deeper. The shaft (called the Nexus) has been sealed from the surface by creative application of druidical magic to keep the Underdark safe.

Wizards have been driven into hiding - existing only as secret societies - due to the involvement of their old Cabals in the destruction of the Surface. Sorcerers are more common but almost as despised as Wizards due to the public fear of arcane magic. Worship of gods of Nature, Light, etc has diminished to the point where they exist only as semi-official cults. Worship of Dark Gods is increasing, though they are still widely (i.e., publically) considered evil and the bane of civilization. Alchemy is increasingly prevalent, and several dozen new alchemical formulas are available for purchase or creation. Druids are still around, and in fact vital for the survival of many of the Upper Races. Without a fertile world to provide food, the Druids have taken to cultivating large caverns with familiar plants and animals. Still, vegatable material is rare and these caverns allow the Upper Races just enough of an advantage to survive. It takes most of the Druids time and energy to maintain these havens, and they are guarded jelously by the Upper Races.

Several factors of centuries of underground life are apparent in the economy. Things that one could find rather commonly several centuries ago are now very rare. Examples: Pearls (little to no access to oyster beds), Bows (good wood is hard to find - ranged attacks are less useful underground anyway), Rope (cotton is grown, but expensive) and other things. Items made of stone or metal are common and cheap. Gems are still rare and valuable. Interestingly enough, Quall's Feather Token: Tree have become worth a great deal.

The Underdark is riddeled with so many tunnels, passages, abandoned colonies, secret shrines, access to the surface, accesses to the Depths, and natural caverns that is has proved impossible for the Upper Races to map more than a tiny fraction of it. "Trails" are marked clearly and patroled regularly. Everywhere you travel, there are side passages, chasms, and other openings that lead into the Unknown. Most who venture off the marked Trails are lost forever. The colonies are under constant bombardment by monsters and monsterous races that consider the civilized areas to be simply richer hunting grounds in their own territory. Rumors persist of creatures that no Upper Race has ever seen, lurking in dark, isolated caverns.

The name of this Campaign is "Return to the Upper World" and the plot revolves around returning the Upper Races to the surface. Even the Deep Races want this to happen because having the Upper Races in the Underdark is a big hassle.

All alignments are allowed, as are all classes. Races allowed are: PHB races, Drow, Svirfneblin, Duergar, Derro, Deep Halfling, Kobold, and Half Ogre. ECLs will be componsated for by increased personal challange to the character (Example: Drow have to follow the tenants of their House and are forbidden in civilized cities - those slave raids kinda made them a little prejudiced). All races that had normal vision now have low-light vision, and all races with low-light vision now have Improved low light vision (see 50% further)

How the characters get together:
Growing political discontent is preventing the races from working together efficiently, especially between the Upper and Deep races. The uneasy truce between Elf/Human colonies and the Drow has been strained to the breaking point. The Upper Races have started on the road to isolation and xenophobia, though still at the very early stages, even from each other.
Noticing this, and realizing that the only hope for peaceful (or profitable) relations between the races is to return the Upper Races to the surface, where they can live as they have for eons, a secret, cross-racial group has formed known as the Recoverers of Destiny. Their goal has been for over 100 years to return things to the way they once were. The characters are all apprentices of these RoDs, who seem outwardly to be normal members of their society, often with significant political power. One day, they meet in secret near the Nexus with their apprentices and give some cryptic and incomplete description of their goals and explain that they need the characters to act as agents to accomplish the more difficult, exploratory projects. The RoDs, meanwhile, are keeping their governments in check and doing research to help the PCs.
After the first couple (small, staged, to-get-used-to-your-character) missions, the RoDs all mysteriously vanish, without having explained the complete plan to the PCs. The PCs are left with very few clues and the ability to travel anywhere and do anything.
The classes and races the character choose will significantly determine the nature of the RoDs plan (which races are involved, for instance) and alter the plot. The players will create their characters independantly from each other, with no input from me as to what classes the others have chosen. If we end up with all Drow Rangers with dual scimitars, then that's just the way it goes. The party will face the same challanges regardless (the world will already be created and more or less set). It is their responsibility to forge an effective party with their characters. Characters will be submitted to me with a rough history (which I will flesh out to make it consistant with the campaign) and a short Character-Concept detailing what PrCs or straight-multiclasses they are aiming for, if any, what their goals are with the character, etc... They will need a good, in-character reason to deviate from their life plan (more than, "well, we didn't have a cleric, and we're hurting for fast healing, so I took a few levels of Cleric").
The campaign probably will not take place completely underground, as the characters discover what has happened on the surface and try to fix it (assuming they decide that this is worth doing). I will map out the political situation for several game months in advance, only changing it if the characters do something directly to alter it (in which case I will simply re-map it). Cities (colonies) will probably play a significant role and be a major setting for important things to happen.

What do you think?

 

[Munin]

If I can put two and two together, it sounds like magic items would be pretty rare in this setting.

At least within the upper races community, there would be few people creating magic items, and I can't imagine the remaining arcane casters handing them out like candy.

The adventurers could acquire some drow equipment, but that wouldn't do them any good on the surface. Of course, the party probably would not know that!

This kind of adventure would be relatively easy to run underground. Just design the map in such a way that any areas that you have not prepared are not available yet. Once you've fleshed them out, then open it up for exploration. You have control here.
I give my players free reign when it comes to what they want to do in the world. Anything that holds them back is in game. When a session ends, I always get feedback from them, so I know what to expect next week and what to prepare for. This is a simple yet effective way of keeping ahead of the game.

As far as being realistic with the encounters, you might want to be careful. Give your players plenty of clues if they are about to stumble across a potentially fatal foe.

 

[the Jester]

I'd recommend against balancing increased ECL characters with rp penalties. Look at it very closely before you commit to that. That's a balancing act that doesn't necessarily matter if you can rp around it (never go to a civilized city if you're a party with a Drow in it).

Also, keep in mind that you may end up doing a lot of work for things that the pcs may never encounter. One thing I recommend is rolling completely random treasure. (I've put together a master chart with stuff not from the DMG in it...)

 

[reason]

my way of doing this

I ran a D&D2 campaign back when (92-93, I think) that conformed to a lot of your desired campaign traits. How I managed it:

RULES TWEAKS

To get that dangerous feeling back into conflict, some rules tweaks were put into play.

1) missile weapons cause automatic critical hits when they do hit
2) hit points are not real damage; they're just luck, bruising, fitness, etc. After running out of hit points, take CON damage until dead.
3) critical hits bypass hit points and go directly to CON (but don't do extra damage).

A rules tweak I'd add now is that people can take any or all of their attack bonus and apply it to AC instead of attacks. It makes high-level combat in low-magic games a lot less lethal and much more tactical.

(A better version of this for my 3rd ed SORAS game is up at http://www.twilightminds.com/sorasfull.html in PDF form).

METHODS:

1) The PCs came into a new realm ("The Enclave") from across the seas, so they weren't familiar with the lay of the land. That meant that they were figuring out where things were, who was important, and what was where as time went on. Coincidentally, this gives the GM a lot more leeway in figuring out the same things over time.

2) I religiously kept a campaign diary; it's an immense help when avoiding the more obvious continuity errors. Also made good reading. An 8 hour sesssion amounted to 1-2 pages in the ledger.

3) The Enclave started out as a map with major areas blocked out in it. The Enclave campaign started out as a basic seed idea ("gobbos from the north are being organized by some villain who is tapping into ancient magic of the liths, and they'll slowly press southward as the campaign progresses").

4) The initial opening sessions are fairly steered, in that I presented some obvious plot hooks and they players took them. I needed little preparation for those. As it turned out, they went north to defend a village from evil bandits.

5) Keep NPC cards in conjunction with the diary. If you follow the rule that good games are built on relationships, you don't need to populate everything or work out stats for everything. A village might start out with 10 sketched NPCs before the PCs get there (so you have an idea as to who to run them into first). Each NPC might have a description as brief as Class, Power Level, Mannerisms. e.g. (Ruthus, Warrior, Experienced, high and mighty but clumsy). You only need to start filling out more details if the PCs interact meaningfully with these NPCs. It's also easy to generate new NPCs on the fly or quickly when needed. From my experience, PCs will interact a lot with only about 10% of the NPCs you plan. The ones you create on the fly wind up being campaign centric. Call it Murphy's Law of NPCs, and this card system stops it from being a pain.

6) You can do the same card thing for places too, but I never did. I just filled out places as I found time, doing the most likely ones first.

7) Steal maps. Never do your own unless you're into that sort of thing. I see you have that down. Maps are a big timesink.

8) Keep a big plot going in the background. Drop something about it into the game every so often. Doesn't have to be direct. My players felt that it was damn cool that the Enclave was falling apart and things were happening while they were off doing other things; e.g. that the world wasn't static or only changing because of things they were doing. The Enclave plot started out with the PCs occasionally seeing/meeting translucent magic-using spirit gobbos, and receiving cryptic hints from an evil mage and disease priests that they fought. It wound up with massive destruction and sweeping armies of mithril-wielding gobbos, so you can get to interesting places from small beginnings.

9) You never have to fill in details. So long as you're consistant and have an eye on the big plot, the world only has to be prepared for a session or two ahead of the PCs.

10) If you're not going to match encounters to PC abilities (which is cool), you should do the following: a) encourage PCs to use means other than direct conflict to establish enemy strengths (the PCs in the Enclave included a priest of knowledge goddess, so they were big on lore and divination), b) make sure that the really, really bad areas are flagged as such -- by this I mean legends, local people know not to go there, a particular class of monster that they know is horrific, etc. c) Make sure your rules and setup allow people to escape from a losing battle if they go about it the right way. d) remember it goes both ways; if the 10th level PCs want to go step on that kobold village that's causing the villagers grief, let them wade in without making uber-kobolds to challenge them. The challenge should come from good player consciences, and the realization that half the stuff in the game can do the same to any human village.

Reason