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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Castellan" data-source="post: 1392295" data-attributes="member: 639">I'm running a heavily-modified Forgotten Realms campaign with 5 players (and 6 PCs) at about 13th level. The group is quite low on magical firepower, having only a single druid as a dedicated spellcaster. Included in the party are a monk, paladin, bard/psychic warrior, ranger, and ranger/wolf brother (from Wheel of Time).I benefit (?) from the fact that my players are avid gamers but seem to hate to read, so I'm blatantly stealing a lot of obvious plots (can you believe that among the players, only my wife has read Lord of the Rings? And she's read it multiple times... Nobody else seems to be interested. *shrug* More plot for me...).I'm running and Incursion-based game, though the players don't know it, yet. My BBEGs are Mind Flayers, and they're slowly working to take over the surface world. I figured early on that the Mind Flayers needed some way to work together to coordinate their attacks, and decided on the "fallen empire/lost secrets" plot element. Specifically, I've decided that Elder Brains can spawn multiple Brain Golems (more than the stock allows, but only, say 6 each) and that the contact range for a Brain Golem is greater than normal. I'm treating the Brain Golems like a WiFi base station, allowing Elder Brains to network together, with the root-level EB hidden under the Moonshaes (a place the PCs have never been). As the Mind Flayer communities join the network, they begin building domination-devices to control surface communities. Brain Golems also act like strong, roving domination-devices to exert control on areas in-between cities and towns.So far, the PCs are caught up in the events of a war between one faction of the Church of Tyr (a major force in my Realms, and probably very different from the FR novels (never read any of them)), the Zhentarim (who seem, strangely enough, to be allied with this faction of the Church of Tyr, and the Western Heartlands and Cormyr. The Mind Flayers are using power groups on the surface to weaken resistance before they come bursting forth. The players are soon to realize that the evil they thought they were fighting is not the real evil after all, and will (hopefully) deceide to chase down the Elder Brain causing all the chaos and destroy it. There's a long distance between the current place in the plot and the end result.Player-driven sub-plots have abounded throughout this game, including the monk knowing nothing about his past, but seeming to have a strange connection with the bard's sister -- who lost her psionic abilities and memory when fighting a Mind Flayer; the druid who knows little of her family, but seems to have something in common with a blind psion from the Moonshaes; the ranger/wolf brother (wolf-sister, actually) who just wants to live a peaceful life in harmony with wolves and nature; the bard/psychic warrior who learned of her mother's supression of psionic abilities and a disowned sister who embraced psionics and ran off for adventure; and a paladin whose father and older brothers joined a campaign in the Goblin Marches north of Cormyr, only to never return, leaving the young knight suddenly in charge of a small manor he never thought he'd inherit.Combats have ranged from the mundane to the epic, and roleplaying (though somewhat less-important to most of the players than it is to me) has occasionally been really good. My wife -- the ranger/wolf sister -- practically seethes with hatred toward nearly all of the authority figures in my game. Perhaps, it's just an opportunity to express how she really feels about me.  <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f609.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=";)" title="Wink    ;)"  data-smilie="2"data-shortname=";)" /> Our game has continued nearly weekly for 3 years. It was our first 3e game, and has become the longest-running campaign I've ever been a part of. It's a lot of fun.</blockquote>

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