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Message: <blockquote data-quote="tobiasosir" data-source="post: 5410431" data-attributes="member: 98357">Hello!I'm completely new to D&D, but it has absolutely captured my imagination. I used to be a writer, until I "grew up" and started concentrating on things like family and full time jobs and being generally dull...but D&D has got my creative juices flowing, and I'm loving it. Despite being completely new, I've started tooling around with Masterplan in an attempt to write my own campaign, just to get some of these ideas down. I hope to run it someday, but for now am concentrating on learning to play the game. Anyway, i wanted to run my ideas by the community, just to see how close I am to a decent adventure. I'll happily welcome feedback, criticism, anything, in the name of ending up with something fun to play!Here's my basic plot:The players are enjoying a long needed respite when they come across a fight--a wizard is being chased down by bad guys sporting cloak-clasps in the shape of a black gate. After rescuing the wizard, they learn that wizards have been going missing a lot lately in this area, and the only ones who have turned up again have been horribly charred and mutilated. The wizard they rescue ends up getting killed by more pursuers, leading the players to find the attackers.Which leads them to Orric, a wizard who has escaped their captors as well (with the help of wizard #1), but is now lost in some caverns. They bring Orric back to town,  where the King has heard of our heroes, and wants an audience. He puts them to the task of finding the culprit, and asks Orric--as the only living survivor--to act as a sort of researcher/adviser. He gives bits of information to the players between encounters. It turns out that the wizards are being kidnapped by a cult led by the Dark Guardian, who wants to drain their arcane energy for some nefarious purpose. The Guardian is experimenting with ways to contain the energy (with ugly results...lots of zombie monsters), and is using a material Orric calls Tenebrous Obsidian. Orric tells the players that if they could fashion a Dark Blade out of this material, they might be able to channel that energy in such a way as to destroy the guardian. So the players search the Underdark in the hopes of finding enough Obsidian to do this.Once they do that, they players venture to fight the Guardian, only to discover that it is Orric himself (revealed once he is bloodied). Orric manipulates the fight such that he is stabbed by the Dark Blade (after reaching 0 hp). The Blade channels the energy of the kidnapped wizards directly into Orric, fusing him with the weapon and turning him into the Guardian of the Gate, who escapes for the players to fight at the end of the campaign.It is revealed that Orric has found a way to use pieces of the Living Gate (the Obsidian) to turn himself into a sort of hybrid Shardmind; once in this form, he intends to open the gate and unleash the Shadowfell into the natural world, so he can rule over all. And that's as far as I've gotten. What do you think? Is this too convoluted? Am I railroading the players, inasmuch as if they don't allow Orric to survive or help the king or advise them on how to build the Blade, they have nobody to fight? Is it a cliche idea? Any input is appreciated!</blockquote>

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