The Biggest little thing.....

[Stone Angel]

What has been the most successful detail you have implemented in your campaign. This thread was inspired by the article in Dragon#322 Balefire: The City of Lanterns.

I was wondering how the details affected your own campaign. Maybe an specicfic tabard that the watch wore. Something that really brought out the atmosphere in your game. A City of Statues, a forest of weird lights, etc.

One of these I had moderate success was in a homebrew campaign was a town called Fountaintown. Fountain town of course was littered with fountains. The foremost among the was The Fountain of Rings. This fountain was composed of rings of several different sizes that orbited one another in constant revolution. This town became the PC's home pretty much. Several seeds were planted that clued that some of the fountains held special properties. The Fountain of Rings for instance had a missing ring. When the lost ring was placed a portal would open. This clue was never taken like I thought.

So anyway tell me your best detail. This doesn't have to be magical like mine just something small that mattered.

The Seraph of Earth and Stone

 

[RangerWickett]

It was a song.

Fleeing through the Innenotdar Fire Forest, the group was contacted by the psychic incarnation of Indomitability that had been trapped by a group of fey. Because of Indomitability, the trees could not die, and had been on fire for sixty years. The group agreed to free Indomitability's body in exchange for safe passage through the fire forest.

I had planned the fey to be desperate survivors. Their story was that, because fey live off the life of the land, trapped in this fire forest they were weak and dying. Every few years they sent out a wanderer to find a song of the world and bear it back home. Then this songbearer would sing, filling the fey with the essence of the outer world, sustaining them.

They were gathered in a crater around a lake, one of the few places not overwhelmed by the flames of the forest. In the center of the lake was a wooden sword, its hilt protruding from the surface of the water. Sixty years earlier, when a great flaming stag was rampaging through the forest and killing wildly, an Elvish hero had driven his blade through the creature's body, pinning it to the bottom of the lake. That creature was Indomitability. I thought this would make for some cool flavor, and provide a conundrum for the players of which side to help.

The group arrives at the crater, hears dozens of fey voices singing this mournful song, and they go to talk to the leader of the fey, learning the story. Then one of the players asked, "How can you trap Indomitability?"

I didn't answer, not really knowing. I meant the creature to be more along the lines of 'unkillable,' but they thought it was 'unstoppable.'

The group was having trouble deciding what to do, when the party's psion sensed a new presence. They ran to the edge of the lake and saw a floating mass of black tendrils hovering over the sword hilt. It spoke to them, told them to help it free Indomitability, and it would get them safely from the forest. The psionic PC tried to read the creature's soul, to learn if it was similar to Indomitability, but he couldn't overcome its resistances.

The black tendrils pulled the sword from the water, and a giant stag roared upward from the surface of the lake, flames bursting from its body. Two of the PCs of the group moved to fight Indomitability, but they weren't doing well. The fey were fleeing, screaming.

Then, one of the players said, "I'm going to start singing the fey song. What happens?"

And then, completely off the cuff, I decided:

"As your voice renews the fey song, Indomitability and the new creature recoil. Indomitability seems somehow smaller, more tangible. And Rivereye (the psion), the other creature's essence is finally clear to you. Trapped in a solid body, its defenses are weak, and you can see that it is the incarnation of Deception. It scrambles for the edge of the lake as its body becomes heavy, and soon a humanoid figure stands before you, covered in black tendrils."

They drove off Deception, and convinced Indomitability that fighting would help neither side, eventually gaining its trust. And so was born the fey song, which had power over these psychic incarnations. It allowed me to make the incarnations much more frightening, because to most people they would be incorporeal, ghost-like monsters, but the PCs could use the song of the fey to trap them in a solid body. It ended up becoming a very critical plot point, and one of the most iconic aspects of any of the PCs.

 

[demiurge1138]

The best little detail I threw into my reptilian campaign was The Silent City. It's name was long forgotten; the place had been covered with volcanic ash hundreds of years ago, killing all its inhabitants. But the place was cursed by the cries of thousands of innocent souls; the city's inhabitants rose as undead (skeletons, zombies, mummies and shadows) and the city was silent forever more.

Enter the party. When they realized they couldn't communicate with each other or cast spells in the ash-covered ruins, they freaked. And then the mummies came out...

Demiurge out.

 

[Bigwilly]

Berrin's Bitter

Berrin was a master dwarven brewer killed when the dwarven mines were overrun by goblinoids. As a result Berrin's Bitter is now an increasingly rare commodity and with a pair of dwarves in the party - a treasure worth more than any magic item that turns up in a pile of loot. I even have a campaign arc going at the moment where they need to track down a few barrels that are being used for nefarious purposes - but that's another story.

Bigwilly

 

[soulcat]

The Happless halfling pub, that by a slip of the tongue got turned into the happy halfling one day, and has stuck as that, where the players have a tab that is paid for by a civic leader they saved.

Every now and then they teleport in to their favourite table for some free drinks and local gossip.

Also all of the members of the group have knowledge .....smithing. Their party name is The Smiths. As a comedy aside I descibed to them one day a suit of heavily bejewelled armour the group had been working on in their spare time, and it has stuck, they now collect jewels and gems for it, and it almost got stolen once. It shows up on no character sheets, but it exists as much as any item that they use every day. I can't imagine them ever selling it, but if they did, it wuld be money for old rope!

 

[diaglo]

The God Nail

as the party explored Quasqueton they came to a room where the party cleric was struck down.

he suffered excruciating mental anguish. vivid images of a some other worldly creature wreaking havoc on a world.

the creature lost a fingernail in its destruction of a castle.

the party saw a glowing red orb embedded into the back wall of the next room and assumed (correctly) that it was causing harm to their cleric. so the paladin attacked the orb. and destroyed it. the cleric recovered.

his first words... "Where is the God Nail?"

of course no one else knew what he was talking about.

 

[Rel]

I don't know if this really counts or not because it went from being a "detail" to a major focus of the campaign. But "The City of Endless Summer" started out as a place with the barest mention in Old One's campaign world. I had these Orc minis who were scantilly clad and wore feathers and masks, so I decided that the Orc invaders in my campaign came from The City of Endless Summer.

This place grew from being where the Orcs were from to the hidden refuge of the Cult of Bane (thought to have been destroyed hundreds of years ago) to a thin barrier between the Mortal World and Hell. The City became the focus of the entire second half of the campaign and I was thrilled at how organically it had gone from just a cool name for a mystical place to a site to be dreaded and feared as the focus of major evil.

 

[soulcat]

I have to say, my campaign is completely organic, and something mentioned at the start of the night in jest can quite easily become the focus of 3-4 nights play (I do prepare, but a lot of the prepared stuff gets dumped at short notice).

One night I had a conflict with a Lich planned, and it happened, but the players backed down and came to an agreement with the Lich (and consequently the Zhentarim).

That same night they discovered 2 Gold Dragon Eggs in a Lair that had been attacked and plundered by a demon and his orc army.

These eggs then hatched and the Dragons are now under the protection of the players, and have lead to them breaking their agreement with the Lich.

None of this would have happened if it hadn't been for one of the players mentioning that the demon they had killed the previous week could only have equiped the orcs with a Dragons hoard.

There are things they don't know about the Gold Dragons, the Lich and in fact the trade agreement with the Zhentarim, but none of that is gonna be typed here where they can read it.

I love taking small inocuous things and basing a couple of weeks play on them, and the players I have seem to enjoy just running with an idea. As long as I stay sober it works well.

 

[soulcat]

edit:: aaaarrrrgh double post!! Sorry

 

[GuardianLurker]

I've got two:

1) The Obligatory (Bar) - basically where I started the campaign off (after knocking one PC unconscious in an alley), all newbies must perform some weird act (jumping jacks, singing while standing on one's head, etc.) upon entering. They get a free beer when they do. None of the PCs have refused, so they don't know what happens otherwise.

It's always a good bit of comedic relief.

2) Dwarven Beer: Actually started by one of the players, dwarven beer comes in grades from weak (#1, drinkable by humans) to strong (#11, one drink and under for humans) to lethally potent (#23, which is used as an acid).