What does the future hold for your campaign?

[Pants]

My current Eberron campaign:
The third session ended Saturday.

The PC's thus far are:
Sli, Changeling Rogue 1
Martinez, Human Bard 2 (has the least Dragonmark of finding)
Zenestro, Half-Elf Sorcerer 2 (Martinez's 'companion')

Two weeks ago, the PC's found the Silver Hand of Morenhoth, an old pirate lord in the Lhazaar Principalities. They are now on a quest to sell the hand and make some sweet cash in the process. Seeing as Regalport isn't a very big city, the PC's have opted to head to Sharn and find a potential buyer there.

They plan on trekking across the Mror Holds and hitching a ride on the Lightning Rail at the Dwarven Capitol City (the name escapes me at the moment) and take that to Sharn.

Along the way, I plan on introducing the Emerald Claw, possibly the Dreaming Dark, nasty bandits, and a couple of run-ins with some old 'friends,' namely a human bard named Enrique that Martinez stole from during the first session and a half-orc tracker of House Tharrashk attempting to 'coerce' Martinez into joining the house (he is currently not a member...). Insert some bandit raids, some encounters with Jorash'tar Orcs, and some nasty winter storms in the mountains and I'm set for a while.

 

[Galethorn]

Well, right now....

The group is in the city of Ft. Tirad--which is under siege by a southron army--and they've discovered that one of the thieves' guilds is working with a southron merchant guild to let the besiegers in. Last session, the group attacked the sea-caves in which the aforementioned thieves' guild makes its headquarters, and managed to cave in part of the ceiling after killing a fair number of thieves.

As for the near future...

Dissidents may ignite open rioting in the streets, and the thieves' guild may try to open the gates. As well, the southrons will try again to blockade the city by sea (they failed the first time, making the siege incomplete). The PCs will likely have the job of putting the southron leadership in the city out of comission...which is the direction they've chosen to go, so far, by attacking the thieves' guild HQ.

And the slightly distant future...

If the defenders keep their sea-superiority, they'll try to move their professional troops (~10,000 men) outside of the city so they can attack their besiegers (~80,000 men) from behind, while the militia (~12,000 men) marches out from the gates. The PCs would either man the walls or go with the professional troops.

And the distant (5+ sessions from now) future...

The PCs may be called on to do all sorts of things...get the Chandaki (not-so-loyal southrons in the deepest south) to rebel against the emporer, seek out and destroy the three siege cannons making their way north towards the city, or maybe even confront Emporer Jangovar himself. There's a lot that might happen.

 

[Sejs]

In the arc of the current adventure/leg of the campaign:

- Defeat the necromancer Rahim, and his remaining minions. Find out what he is (was) doing in the ruins of the Library of M'akem.

- Explore, encounter some traps and stuff, find some more clues about what destroyed the city in ages past (information that'll prove useful later on).

- Encounter the bound janni librarian Taima. Confront a certain jackalwere in the city ruins of the valley below to recover the do-dad needed to free Taima.

- Encounter We, the scarab hivemind. Cut a deal with We in order to get access to the sanctuary of Akem, where the Scrolls of Akem (the goal of this particular adventure) are kept. (GM side note: What would a hive-intelligence of beetles that retain knowledge from books they ate as larvae want from adventurers, anyway?)

- Enter the Sanctuary and encounter the mad ghost of Akem. Set his mind right using clues gained along the course of the adventure. Make Akem realize he was not to blame for the descruction of his people so that his spirit may rest. Get rewarded when the ghost pulls his cache from the borther etherial back to the material plane in thanks for what the PCs have done. Get the Scrolls of Akem, which are part of said cache.

- Return to Calimport and report their success to Hargrim Havlocke, their wizard buddy and middle-man for their employer, Lord Reylan Wordsoph. Finish up any remaining business in the area, charter a new ship, and then it's off to the Lake of Steam for the next leg of the campaign!

 

[Zappo]

Neat! So are the players all playing humans or are they playing other races? I've never played the Warcraft RPG, I've just seen the game.

After reading the campaign setting, I've explained them that they should choose between playing a Horde campaign (with orcs, tauren and goblins) or an Alliance campaign (with humans, dwarves, high elves, night elves and goblins; gnomes exist but they never reached Kalimdor and can't be played).

One week later, the players showed me their characters: an orc, a tauren, a goblin, a human, a dwarf, a high elf, a night elf, and a goblin. And a player complaining about the absence of gnomes. They pointed to a small paragraph in the book which said something to the effect of "you may want to play a mercenary/neutral/unaligned campaign, but it isn't a very good idea". Even after the events in Warcraft 3, the hatred between horde and alliance is very strong on Azeroth.

[minor personal rant]At the time, I found the thing rather irritating. In fact, I still do. After the first two or three PCs made, everyone else just had to pick a different race, simply for the sake of being different. When I said to one player, "why don't you play a human?", he answered "I would, but that other guy is already playing one" as if that was the most obvious answer in the world. When I tried to explain him that this wasn't an issue, he gave me a blank stare, and an unconvinced "well, yes, but...". He simply didn't understand. It was as if somewhere in his mind, there was an axiom that someone has to play every new race. A second PC of the same race can only be chosen after every other race has been covered. He isn't the only one with this syndrome, either. Honestly, if there is something I would change about my gaming group, this is it. I mean, when we got the Epic Level Handbook, one player made a shambling mound barbarian. Another made a zelekhut monk. Good thing that I wasn't DMing. The fact that these choices were uninteresting and unfunny except for the first half hour or so, and ineffective in battle to boot, didn't stop them or even slow them down. You don't want to know what happened when we got Savage Species. Recently, a PC bit the dust in CotSQ, and the player convinced the DM to let him play a troll. He got bored and changed it after one session. I'd better stop now; I could go on for hours on how much I hate this mindset.[/minor personal rant]

Nevertheless, this doesn't stop me from enjoying the game. I've put together a good story arc which justifies and makes use of their weird composition. The party has troubles everywhere they go because of their composition. There is just one truly cosmopolitan settlement in the world; anywhere else, either the orc and tauren or everyone else are going to face anywhere from a serious disdain to being killed on sight.

Ah... Another typical day in the Abyss.

Make that a typical three months and still no sign of getting better. This adventure is nasty. Link in my signature for details. R-rated; this is the Abyss, not Disneyland.

 

[The Shaman]

So far the adventurers in my d20 Modern homebrew have been the pursuers, searching for a missing girl on the streets of Los Angeles, in the jungles of Belize, and in an old Scottish castle. They've found the girl in the grip of a mysterious affliction, and now their attention has turned to finding a cure for the mystery ailment.

Here's where things get interesting.

While they search for the cure, the cabal of necromancers who kidnapped her will be sending more of their minions to get her back - at the same time, the adventurers have unwittingly acquired some top secret military R&D information and corporate security for the contractor intends to recover the disk by any means necessary.

The pursuers are about to become the pursued...

 

[Imret]

Odds are, sadly, that the near future is about to include a mass burial of PC's.

The Blacktusk orcs have been getting bolder and bolder, and shocked survivors babble about horrible 'things' coming with them, devouring peasants and orcs with equal abandon as battle begins. The PC's have slain a handful of warbands (now bordering on 11th level), a vile something that very nearly rendered the wizard unresurrectable, and a dire ape band that happened to be in the wrong place. Now, they've infiltrated an orc encampment, right into the central tent.

It isn't the leader's tent, or the shaman's. It's practically empty, just a small idol half-buried in the ground. Belonging to no god they recognize, it's assumed to be oddly-placed treasure. This despite the fact that the fighter still hasn't stopped gibbering and wetting himself in terror after touching it, and his hand may never be the same. Despite the fact there's not another tent within 200 feet of the idol. Despite that it's been described as "while partially obscured by dirt, it's difficult to look at for long periods, as if it were squirming of its own volition". Despite that it radiates blindingly powerful abjuration and conjuration magic. So, ignoring all logic to the contrary, they've dug it out, and the plan is to snatch it up in a bedroll and run like he().

I've given them plenty of warnings. If they wanna move the only thing keeping the tribe's new patron buried in timeless sleep beneath the earth, that's their perogative. My players should really read more Lovecraft.

 

[Sammael]

A TPK I've been planning from the very beginning. But the campaign will go on and they'll keep playing their PCs. The only difference is that they'll be dead.

 

[jollyninja]

well i've had multiple players tell me they are afraid to do anything in my game because it seems like even when they succeed they get screwed. yet they then proceed to tell me they have never had more fun playing Dnd so i'm not changing anything. it's a rokugan d20 campaign in which they have recently been exiled from the empire for succeeding in saving it from being destroyed by the shadowlands. well thet's their perspective anyway.

I run a pretty free form (as in the first words out of my mouth each week are "so here's what happened last week as i recall........ so what are you guys doing now?") game so i'm not sure what's coming up exactly but i have built in a way for them to return to the empire that is fairly simple and another that will require epic level gaming. oddly the only character who has renounced the empire for exiling it's heroes is the only one who has taken the quick way and he doesn't even know it because nobody seems to have caught the exact details of the terms of their exile. because of the way i run my game, many of my onrunning plotlines come from random encounters (why were those shapshifting ninja's there?, oh well i guess there's some kind of prophesy to do with the peasant monk that the bbeg doesn't want coming true, i should make a note of that for later he he he). they stopped ignoring insane rambling people who turn to dust and float away on the wind and things of that nature recently so they are learning what my games are like after a year and a half. i finally had to tell one of them, every thing that comes out of my mouth at the table other then my choice of pizza topings, which might not, has signifigance at some point in the game. I've been dropping hints left and right about how to get back in but i refuse to drag them back kicking and screaming to the only part of the setting with any documentation or maps if that's not what their characters want to do. the problem with letting the players do anything is that sometimes they exercise their inherant right to be contrary. they also assume that i won't let the stupidity of trying to cross a 500 mile desert with no knowledge of deserts kill them after 5 months of weekly 6-8 hour sessions in this campaign. i wish they were wrong, i hate that much wasted effort and if i don't get all the ins and outs of the campaign in the open, in game, i'm gonna cry.

 

[Tonguez]

The PCs have successfully delivered Apumarire back to her mother the Sea Goddess who awards them with the Bowl of the Winds, which along with the already recovered Stone Adze gives them two of the Five sacred artifacts. However they must now return to their home islands to find them overrun by the Zealots of Orometua who are inpossession of Pele's long club and are seeking the other two artifacts. The Zealots are opposed by Nafanua and the combined clans of Hawaiki but they are lead by Ugly Puna himself and have the Darkwing Matukutangotango on their side.

What happens next? - do the heroes stay with Nafanua and fight the Zealots, do they seek out the remaining artifacts (including recovering Pele's long club) and then travel to Nau Modu and ensure the Dark One does not return...

Thats for the PCs to decide

 

[Lord Morte]

Next session of my campaign, which is sometime in the new year, the party will be searching the cave system beneath the local Lord's newly reclaimed ancestral castle for the monk pennaggollan that turned the new Lord's new wife in a vampire. I'm planning several encounters with undead and evil outsiders, including a nabassu demon, the latter to provide the party's newly acquired swashbuckler a chance to show her mettle.

After that, the party is planning to travel across a large lake, search through a lizardman infested swamp and hunt down a lich-queen whose been troubling the region. To achieve this, naturally they'll have to locate and destroy the lich's phylactery: An ancient tome of unspeakable evil that just happens to be an artifact.

Of course, the party will have to contend with the kidnapping of the local priest's grand-daughter by one of the lich-queen's chief servants, a Wee-Jas worshipping necromancer who happens to be said priest's ex and also happens to be in the market for a new younger beautiful body. After that, there still a Hellwyrm and his legions of orcs to deal with.