It is never too late to have a session zero. Just have a short one before your next session asking everyone how they like the campaign so far; what areas can be improved; do they want more focus on combat, exploration, or social encounters; do they want to try new characters or stick with their current ones; etc.
And as others have said, there is nothing wrong with copying ideas or outright plagiarizing official sources. In fact, copy and take inspiration from any kind of story you come across: Roman history, Egyptian mythology, King Arthur, Lord of the Rings, Goblin Slayer, Harry Potter, Avatar, etc.
If you do not want to plagiarize too much from others' work because you still want to visit those worlds, what you can do is have the party be employed by a patron of an interdimensional organization, and send your party on adventures into those worlds now so it gives you time to work on your homebrew world before they come back. And after the adventure is done, you can copy whatever ideas you have not used into your homebrew world. For example, if you run the Lost Mines of Phandelver and your party did not finish all the quests, you can recycle some of those unused quests into your homebrew world.
I thank you for your advice and help. I certainly do use Egyptian mythology and LOTR for inspiration frequently!
I hope you don't take it as criticism. Was just trying to give you a hand. Clearly you care about your game, and world building can seem overwhelming. The best reaction is to do as Obi Wan taught us "let go." The game will guide you if you free yourself of expectations, open yourself to discovery (and willingness to not get it right or perfect), and listen to everything else in the game you're not listening to while the creative block is shutting you down.
Also, iisten to King Crimson during the Gregg Lake era.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Jander Sunstar is the thinking person's Drizzt, fight me.
1) I realize that it is never too late to go back from my decision to use a homebrew world, it's just, in all honesty, I much prefer the idea of running a homebrew campaign as opposed to a prewritten module, by "against my better judgement", I simply meant that I knew getting into it that homebrewing the campaign would be considerably more difficult to do than running a module.
2) What I meant by "main conflict" is that I am looking for ideas on both general campaign arc ideas, and a main, central conflict, involving some kind of "world shaking" event and BBE for my players to have to try and deal with. As far as motivations and connections, well firstly, the make up of my party is as follows: an Aasimar Monk, an Aasimar Fighter, a Half-Tiefling/Changeling(Homebrewed) Bard, and a Human Bladesinger(Wizard). Both Aasimars were friends when they were young(however, they are unrelated, just as a note), and the Bard and the Bladesinger knew of each other in their younger years. Each character grew up in the capital/palace city of the kingdom, the Imperial City, which is made up of multiple floating tiers, and modeled after Sharn from Eberron. The Wizard grew up in a middle class family with magical researchers for parents, the Monk grew up as the child of two working class parents in the lower tier, the Fighter grew up in an upperclass family on the top tier, and the Bard grew up in an upperclass family, but on a different tier than the fighter.
3) At some point, each character has had a run-in of some sorts with a criminal organization called the Black Knights, a large syndicate that operates around the Imperial City, stealing, selling, and trading contraband under the guise of a legal trading corporation, and killing or threatening all who get in their way. The bard is the daughter of the two leaders of the Black Knights, who tried(she ran away) to "condition" her to become the heir to the corporation. While this is a good conflict or hook, I have already written it in as a side conflict, and am looking for a different main conflict not involving the Black Knights.
1) Sure, but as everyone else has already said, there's some middle ground here. You can still look at modules for ideas (not that much different from asking for ideas on a forum, really ;) ) or rework them somewhat and fit them into your setting. Very simple example: Lost Mines of Phandelver has at some point a bunch of smaller quests / tasks around Phandelver, one of which is dealing with a bunch of bandits - those could become Black Knights, or at least a group associated with the Black Knights, in your setting and tie a few things together. It's not the best example specifically for your case I think, since things seem to be centered around this Imperial City, but it's a tried and true option for DMs since forever. The Guildmasters' Guide to Ravnica might be a useful source of inspiration, though it doesn't have an actual adventure.
2/3) the rise of magitech is a convenient source of pervasive conflict - from Final Fantasy's Shinra company engaging in unethical and risky experiments that might lead to something like what happened in Eberron over naturalist eco-terrorist groups believing some kind of cataclysm is inevitable if magitech progress isn't halted and reversed to cold war arms races between nations. Maybe there's a sudden leap forward, inexplicable progress made due to agents from extraplanar forces with a hidden agenda. Maybe tech suddenly becomes less reliable, due to elder nature spirits waking up and shifting the leylines powering the nexuses of energy magitech cores are built on. Maybe all of the above, they could easily be woven together. Smaller scale arcs could involve work for the Black Knights' competitors, work they might want done by outside contractors to provide plausible deniability or work that can lead to permanent employment if the party prove themselves capable. Figuring out how the law keeps intercepting smuggled shipments, or investigating why there's no more news forthcoming from a remote trading or research outpost, or being tasked with testing security for a local nobleman who wants to know if his mansion is safe, providing retaliation against a rival who stepped out of line, investigating whether a rich trader's wife is having an affair and with whom (or vice versa), and so on.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Want to start playing but don't have anyone to play with? You can try these options: [link].
My preferred world is a half-homebrewed variant of an older setting that is not currently supported. For what it is worth, here’s my 2cp:
Mezzurah>> is totally right. You can totally take whole modules and adventures and drop them directly in your campaign world with very little changes but the names and your players will never know. The older modules were specifically designed to be setting agnostic, and they were shorter so they fit in just about anywhere. Many of them have been updated to 5e, you can find them online. I highly recommend that tactic, whole campaigns can get created by coming up with just a little narrative to help them all string together into one big story. DM’s have been doing it for half a century now, its a time honored tradition. (Mezz is also right about the fact that no matter who beloved a ruler is, someone will be after them. Just ask JFK.)
Quick note: If your players are enjoying what you're doing now, you can keep doing it!
Also, this.^^^
The only real measure of who good any one of us is at DMing is if the players are having fun. As long as everyone is having fun and keeps coming back, then you’re doing well. (That’s actually one of my 3 “core rules” for DMing.)
And since nobody in this forum is a player at your table, none of us has any right to weigh in on that. So, are your players having fun?
MidnightPlat>> is also (frequently) right about a couple of things IMO. As the DM, you write what’s going on the world, and the players write what their characters do in that world. But the actual story itself doesn’t get written until your all doing it together. Everyone at the table “writes” the story. As DM I populate the world with motivated people who do things. Then I create a plausible reason the PCs to care. Maybe they were hired to... or they were camping when suddenly... or they were strangers who just so happened to be in the same tavern when... I don’t write a story, just the setting and some introductions. The story starts getting written when the players tell me what their PCs do in response to whatever filled in those blanks. (The “motivated people” will still continue to work towards their objectives even if the PCs don’t involve themselves in those machinations, they’ll just do it in the background. And maybe after those NPCs have succeeded in their goals, the PCs will care about that enough to move their story that way. 🤷♂️)
Midnight also touched on another point I wanted to make about surveying the players. Only, I do it “in game” when I can. Remembered those “motivated NPCs” I mentioned? Well, most of them are all motivated to do different things and have no idea the other NPCs even exist at all. So while the party is doing whatever they’re doing as the “A plot,” they’ll likely have a run-in with a couple of those motivated people (or their agents), and get exposed to those machinations as well. If the player seem kinda interested then those become “B/C plots.” When they have wrapped up their current adventure then those B/C plots can get moved to A status by the players decision what their characters want to prioritize. So the whole ”campaign“ will end up being a group of smaller storylines that are all fitted together because of the one thing they share in common, their interactions with the party. Sometimes “the world” throws stuff at them, other times the Players decided to stick their characters’ noses into the affairs of ne’re-do-wells. The thing for the church and the thing with the thieves’ guild and that other thing for the Druid clan aren’t related to each other, but from the players’ perspective they are all related to their PCs, in since it’s the PCs’ story it’s all related. (And I can usually tell when one of my NPCs has gone over with them or not. Some they H*A*T*E, even though their not villains, others they liked even though they were villains. It’s a personality thing, and I know my friends’ personalities.)
Finally, I want to leave you with one of my 3 core “rules” for DMing. “It’s okay to make mistakes, everyone makes mistakes. That’s the best way to learn how to avoid those mistakes again in future.” So, make mistakes, just learn from them and you did nothing wrong. 😉
Just remember that Dungeon Mastering is NOT writing. There is no such thing as writers block as a DM, because it is the players job to tell the story. Not yours. All the DM does is create a world (I have a systematic and effective way to do this using queues for thing such as dungeons, towns, etc) around the players that they then choose how to interact with.
Whenever I sit down to DM I have absolutely no idea what my players will do next. That is the true joy of DMing. Let the players tell the story.
That isn't really how stories work. A story is not dropping a handful of protagonists into a world and seeing what they do. A story is having something happen to a handful of protagonists and seeing how they react. That thing that happens and what might then happen when they react to it - that's what the DM writes.
True, but it isn’t the DM’s job to write a story. We can wrote the most epic story in the world, but if the players decide for their characters to go do something completely different then we just have half of an unpublished novel. We write the setting, the supporting cast, and the hooks. We create the steady state and interrupt it with an inviting incident. But that isn’t writing a story.The actual “story” only gets written until the players are around.
The only reason I have any clue WTF the party intends to do next session is because I asked their players what they intend to do at the end of the last session. And if when they decide to go completely off script I have only two options:
Put a pin in things and tell them they have to wait a week because I hadn’t prepped that.
Make shit up on the fly.
The only reason option 2 is viable for me at all is because I never tried to write a story, I am writing an adventure instead. I may not know what’s about to happen anymore than the players do, but I know my NPCs enough to know what their responses will be, if any. (🤔 In that regard, it’s more like being a player with millions of PCs.)
After much thinking, contacting all my players, reading through this forum, and rereading the Silmarillion for inspiration, I have come upon the main conflict for my campaign. Within my universe there is a magical compound that can be found deep beneath the surface of the earth and can, through a special magical process, be converted into a plasma-like substance that functions similiarly to real-world electricity, and is used to power and light cities, and is also the fuel for the multitude of hovercars that traverse such cities' crowded streets. This compound is called Plasmadine.
Now, similiar to fossil fuels in some ways, this compound is far from a renewable source of energy, and recently, the known Plasmadine veins have began to dry up and go away. Of course, such an event rocks/will rock the economy, and the price of unrefined Plasmadine already in the kingdom's markets will sky rocket, with the original price of Plasmadine already extraordinarily high, going for about 30,000 platinum per pound. However, there is one last place on the continent that Plasmadine can be found, the Arctic Wastes.
The Arctic Wastes make up about a quarter of the continent, and, like the name suggests, is a snowy, deathly cold region filled with white dragons, Bheur Hags, and other hostile creatures. Within this land, one must wear layers and layers of fur merely to survive the biting cold, and because of this, not many humanoid civilizations exist within the Arctic Wastes, save the Glacethian Dwarven Alliance, a large, militant and powerful clan of Ice Dwarves(basically regular dwarves with even higher CON + cold resistance). While they are technically part of the kingdom, they operate with a degree of autonomy by proxy of the difficulty of travel through the region, and because of their traditions that clash with the rest of the outside, humanoid world. These dwarves claim the Arctic Wastes as their Holy Lands, and no other humanoids may travel in or out of the Arctic Wastes without approval of the leaders of the Glacethian Alliance, and have claimed all rights to the Plasmadine within, believing Plasmadine to be a gift of one of their patron dieties, Gaeus, the Earth Mother.
Now, seeing the high demand created by the drying up of Plasmadine, the dwarves "open the floodgates" so to speak, flooding the kingdom's markets with abundant, but exhorbantly priced, Plasmadine(of course they could have sold it for little to nothing since they have so much of it, and undercut all the other mining corporations, forcing the kingdom to rely on them for Plasmadine, and being able to have complete control on the pricing, but you will see in a moment why they did not/will not take that opportunity), with just ten pounds of the stuff going for millions more than the national budget. Of course, the king had/has to refuse the offer, being as he literally cannot afford their price, and instead tries to get the price lower, but the Glacethians refute every offer, with the simple claim that it is their Holy Land, and therefore is sacred and invaluable to them. Desperate, with the kingdom beginning to use up the last of its stockpiled Plasmadine, he asks the Glacethian leaders if there is anything they would trade for Plasmadine, and the Glacethians reply: freedom. For years they have existed under the rule of the Khalar family, and although priviledged to operate under a degree of autonomy, have always wished to be a seperate nation, with their own rules, their own government, and their own land. Begrudgingly, the king agrees, allowing the Glacethian's ownership of the Arctic Wastes, and with seven thousand pounds of Plasmadine already streaming into the kingdom's industry.
Over the next few weeks, great, adamantine walls will be built around the now Glacethian capital city, and dwarven troops will be sent to the borders to begin building great, stone walls around the land. The independence of the new nation will be announced by the king during the Harvest Festival(An annual, week long festival at the Hourglass City, at which the party is currently staying), and mines around the kingdom(not just Plasmadine mines, mind you) will go out of business as their dwarven workers begin to migrate en masse to the new empire. But all is not/will not be said and done.
The greed of major corporations know no bounds, and will begin to send small work forces, in secret, across the border into Glacethian territory to set up camoflaged mining operations deep beneath the snow, and, if discovered by Glacethian troops, violent skirmishes will occur, and, after enough of these skirmishes, the Glacethians will decide that any unannounced intrusion upon their land will be seen as an act of war, and may declare war upon the kingdom. Guilds and corporations will begin to hire and be hired to explore previously unexplored regions of the empire in hopes that they will "strike gold" and find an undiscovered Plasmadine vein to keep for themselves. Great gallions will be sent out in all directions to scout out new lands on which to mine, possibly coming in violent contact with the inhabitants of these new lands. And when a high profile Glacethian Tiamat cult secretly bewitches the leader of the clan, allying with the chromatic dragons and cutting the kingdom's supply of Plasmadine, leaving the great cities of Khalar to go silent and crumble, war is sure to come(* Insert borderline antagonistic DM evil laughter). Such events will give the players many options; perhaps they will hire themselves out as explorers and explore unknown lands in search of Plasmadine, or maybe they will be payed off by a corporation to guard their illegal operations within Glacethian borders, maybe, even, they will gather evidence and rat the Black Knights out to the king, tying up many of their personal grudges? Who knows!
Finally, I would like to thank everyone who has helped me in my time of need, every single post I have read has been helpful in some way, and, this being my first forums post, I am pleasantly suprised and delighted to see such a large amount of helpful feedback(and in so little time too!). Thank you everyone, I really appreciate your help! Also, if you would like to post any plot holes or suggestions that you think of, feel free to do so!
I sorta did the same thing, so i appreciate the issue you are in. Look at some of the first adventures the party went on. Do they tie together in any way? If not, that is fine, as not every quest has to advance a particular storyline, but you can start having new adventures reference some of the previous quests. I am running a campaign in the Moonshaes and I have 40 modules planned out, with some liberal modifications to some of them, plus a few slots where I wrote something.
Major theme is that the PCs were thrown together at 0 level on a boat trip around the Moonshaes. One PC was there to do some trading for his father who had, unwittingly, invited a vampire into his business. Once he learned, he was trying to get rid of it and had his seneschal, who was a retired cleric of Oghma, try to kill him at sea. Didn't work out that way, and in their struggle, the cleric died, the vampire lived and the PCs managed to escape to a small island. This was the prelude to Treasure Hunt.
Little did they know, the vampire lived. In later adventures, they returned to the son's house, to find that the father was punished and turned into an undead skeleton knight as a trap for the party. The whole estate was sold was the motivation for their return, and they found the father had managed to sell everything, in an attempt to give the party the tools to defeat the vampire. He had 3 homebrew weapons started (rapier for Bloodhunter, staff for wizard, bracers for rogue assassin) but the items were started and not completed. The instructions for completing them were lost and every couple of levels, the party manages to get what they need to go to Candlekeep to get more information. First upgrade was 5th level, next at 7th, then 9th.
Along the way, they made enemies of a corrupted satyr druid, and a Red Wizard. Plus they are getting the feeling that there is someone behind the scenes in these attacks on the Kingdom of Calllidyr. End of this story arc puts them against the BBEG at around level 11. Then the Red Wizard takes them into Hoard of the Dragon Queen.
If you look at one shots or even campaigns, can you adapt some to your world? Can you change NPCs?
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I thank you for your advice and help. I certainly do use Egyptian mythology and LOTR for inspiration frequently!
View my Homebrew Here:
Spells | Monsters | Magic Items | Races
I hope you don't take it as criticism. Was just trying to give you a hand. Clearly you care about your game, and world building can seem overwhelming. The best reaction is to do as Obi Wan taught us "let go." The game will guide you if you free yourself of expectations, open yourself to discovery (and willingness to not get it right or perfect), and listen to everything else in the game you're not listening to while the creative block is shutting you down.
Also, iisten to King Crimson during the Gregg Lake era.
Jander Sunstar is the thinking person's Drizzt, fight me.
1) Sure, but as everyone else has already said, there's some middle ground here. You can still look at modules for ideas (not that much different from asking for ideas on a forum, really ;) ) or rework them somewhat and fit them into your setting. Very simple example: Lost Mines of Phandelver has at some point a bunch of smaller quests / tasks around Phandelver, one of which is dealing with a bunch of bandits - those could become Black Knights, or at least a group associated with the Black Knights, in your setting and tie a few things together. It's not the best example specifically for your case I think, since things seem to be centered around this Imperial City, but it's a tried and true option for DMs since forever. The Guildmasters' Guide to Ravnica might be a useful source of inspiration, though it doesn't have an actual adventure.
2/3) the rise of magitech is a convenient source of pervasive conflict - from Final Fantasy's Shinra company engaging in unethical and risky experiments that might lead to something like what happened in Eberron over naturalist eco-terrorist groups believing some kind of cataclysm is inevitable if magitech progress isn't halted and reversed to cold war arms races between nations. Maybe there's a sudden leap forward, inexplicable progress made due to agents from extraplanar forces with a hidden agenda. Maybe tech suddenly becomes less reliable, due to elder nature spirits waking up and shifting the leylines powering the nexuses of energy magitech cores are built on. Maybe all of the above, they could easily be woven together.
Smaller scale arcs could involve work for the Black Knights' competitors, work they might want done by outside contractors to provide plausible deniability or work that can lead to permanent employment if the party prove themselves capable. Figuring out how the law keeps intercepting smuggled shipments, or investigating why there's no more news forthcoming from a remote trading or research outpost, or being tasked with testing security for a local nobleman who wants to know if his mansion is safe, providing retaliation against a rival who stepped out of line, investigating whether a rich trader's wife is having an affair and with whom (or vice versa), and so on.
Want to start playing but don't have anyone to play with? You can try these options: [link].
My preferred world is a half-homebrewed variant of an older setting that is not currently supported. For what it is worth, here’s my 2cp:
Mezzurah >> is totally right. You can totally take whole modules and adventures and drop them directly in your campaign world with very little changes but the names and your players will never know. The older modules were specifically designed to be setting agnostic, and they were shorter so they fit in just about anywhere. Many of them have been updated to 5e, you can find them online. I highly recommend that tactic, whole campaigns can get created by coming up with just a little narrative to help them all string together into one big story. DM’s have been doing it for half a century now, its a time honored tradition.
(Mezz is also right about the fact that no matter who beloved a ruler is, someone will be after them. Just ask JFK.)
Also, this.^^^
The only real measure of who good any one of us is at DMing is if the players are having fun. As long as everyone is having fun and keeps coming back, then you’re doing well. (That’s actually one of my 3 “core rules” for DMing.)
And since nobody in this forum is a player at your table, none of us has any right to weigh in on that. So, are your players having fun?
MidnightPlat >> is also (frequently) right about a couple of things IMO. As the DM, you write what’s going on the world, and the players write what their characters do in that world. But the actual story itself doesn’t get written until your all doing it together. Everyone at the table “writes” the story. As DM I populate the world with motivated people who do things. Then I create a plausible reason the PCs to care. Maybe they were hired to... or they were camping when suddenly... or they were strangers who just so happened to be in the same tavern when... I don’t write a story, just the setting and some introductions. The story starts getting written when the players tell me what their PCs do in response to whatever filled in those blanks. (The “motivated people” will still continue to work towards their objectives even if the PCs don’t involve themselves in those machinations, they’ll just do it in the background. And maybe after those NPCs have succeeded in their goals, the PCs will care about that enough to move their story that way. 🤷♂️)
(And I can usually tell when one of my NPCs has gone over with them or not. Some they H*A*T*E, even though their not villains, others they liked even though they were villains. It’s a personality thing, and I know my friends’ personalities.)
Finally, I want to leave you with one of my 3 core “rules” for DMing. “It’s okay to make mistakes, everyone makes mistakes. That’s the best way to learn how to avoid those mistakes again in future.” So, make mistakes, just learn from them and you did nothing wrong. 😉
Creating Epic Boons on DDB
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True, but it isn’t the DM’s job to write a story. We can wrote the most epic story in the world, but if the players decide for their characters to go do something completely different then we just have half of an unpublished novel. We write the setting, the supporting cast, and the hooks. We create the steady state and interrupt it with an inviting incident. But that isn’t writing a story.The actual “story” only gets written until the players are around.
The only reason I have any clue WTF the party intends to do next session is because I asked their players what they intend to do at the end of the last session. And
ifwhen they decide to go completely off script I have only two options:The only reason option 2 is viable for me at all is because I never tried to write a story, I am writing an adventure instead. I may not know what’s about to happen anymore than the players do, but I know my NPCs enough to know what their responses will be, if any. (🤔 In that regard, it’s more like being a player with millions of PCs.)
Creating Epic Boons on DDB
DDB Buyers' Guide
Hardcovers, DDB & You
Content Troubleshooting
Dear Forum Users,
After much thinking, contacting all my players, reading through this forum, and rereading the Silmarillion for inspiration, I have come upon the main conflict for my campaign. Within my universe there is a magical compound that can be found deep beneath the surface of the earth and can, through a special magical process, be converted into a plasma-like substance that functions similiarly to real-world electricity, and is used to power and light cities, and is also the fuel for the multitude of hovercars that traverse such cities' crowded streets. This compound is called Plasmadine.
Now, similiar to fossil fuels in some ways, this compound is far from a renewable source of energy, and recently, the known Plasmadine veins have began to dry up and go away. Of course, such an event rocks/will rock the economy, and the price of unrefined Plasmadine already in the kingdom's markets will sky rocket, with the original price of Plasmadine already extraordinarily high, going for about 30,000 platinum per pound. However, there is one last place on the continent that Plasmadine can be found, the Arctic Wastes.
The Arctic Wastes make up about a quarter of the continent, and, like the name suggests, is a snowy, deathly cold region filled with white dragons, Bheur Hags, and other hostile creatures. Within this land, one must wear layers and layers of fur merely to survive the biting cold, and because of this, not many humanoid civilizations exist within the Arctic Wastes, save the Glacethian Dwarven Alliance, a large, militant and powerful clan of Ice Dwarves(basically regular dwarves with even higher CON + cold resistance). While they are technically part of the kingdom, they operate with a degree of autonomy by proxy of the difficulty of travel through the region, and because of their traditions that clash with the rest of the outside, humanoid world. These dwarves claim the Arctic Wastes as their Holy Lands, and no other humanoids may travel in or out of the Arctic Wastes without approval of the leaders of the Glacethian Alliance, and have claimed all rights to the Plasmadine within, believing Plasmadine to be a gift of one of their patron dieties, Gaeus, the Earth Mother.
Now, seeing the high demand created by the drying up of Plasmadine, the dwarves "open the floodgates" so to speak, flooding the kingdom's markets with abundant, but exhorbantly priced, Plasmadine(of course they could have sold it for little to nothing since they have so much of it, and undercut all the other mining corporations, forcing the kingdom to rely on them for Plasmadine, and being able to have complete control on the pricing, but you will see in a moment why they did not/will not take that opportunity), with just ten pounds of the stuff going for millions more than the national budget. Of course, the king had/has to refuse the offer, being as he literally cannot afford their price, and instead tries to get the price lower, but the Glacethians refute every offer, with the simple claim that it is their Holy Land, and therefore is sacred and invaluable to them. Desperate, with the kingdom beginning to use up the last of its stockpiled Plasmadine, he asks the Glacethian leaders if there is anything they would trade for Plasmadine, and the Glacethians reply: freedom. For years they have existed under the rule of the Khalar family, and although priviledged to operate under a degree of autonomy, have always wished to be a seperate nation, with their own rules, their own government, and their own land. Begrudgingly, the king agrees, allowing the Glacethian's ownership of the Arctic Wastes, and with seven thousand pounds of Plasmadine already streaming into the kingdom's industry.
Over the next few weeks, great, adamantine walls will be built around the now Glacethian capital city, and dwarven troops will be sent to the borders to begin building great, stone walls around the land. The independence of the new nation will be announced by the king during the Harvest Festival(An annual, week long festival at the Hourglass City, at which the party is currently staying), and mines around the kingdom(not just Plasmadine mines, mind you) will go out of business as their dwarven workers begin to migrate en masse to the new empire. But all is not/will not be said and done.
The greed of major corporations know no bounds, and will begin to send small work forces, in secret, across the border into Glacethian territory to set up camoflaged mining operations deep beneath the snow, and, if discovered by Glacethian troops, violent skirmishes will occur, and, after enough of these skirmishes, the Glacethians will decide that any unannounced intrusion upon their land will be seen as an act of war, and may declare war upon the kingdom. Guilds and corporations will begin to hire and be hired to explore previously unexplored regions of the empire in hopes that they will "strike gold" and find an undiscovered Plasmadine vein to keep for themselves. Great gallions will be sent out in all directions to scout out new lands on which to mine, possibly coming in violent contact with the inhabitants of these new lands. And when a high profile Glacethian Tiamat cult secretly bewitches the leader of the clan, allying with the chromatic dragons and cutting the kingdom's supply of Plasmadine, leaving the great cities of Khalar to go silent and crumble, war is sure to come(* Insert borderline antagonistic DM evil laughter). Such events will give the players many options; perhaps they will hire themselves out as explorers and explore unknown lands in search of Plasmadine, or maybe they will be payed off by a corporation to guard their illegal operations within Glacethian borders, maybe, even, they will gather evidence and rat the Black Knights out to the king, tying up many of their personal grudges? Who knows!
Finally, I would like to thank everyone who has helped me in my time of need, every single post I have read has been helpful in some way, and, this being my first forums post, I am pleasantly suprised and delighted to see such a large amount of helpful feedback(and in so little time too!). Thank you everyone, I really appreciate your help! Also, if you would like to post any plot holes or suggestions that you think of, feel free to do so!
View my Homebrew Here:
Spells | Monsters | Magic Items | Races
Well, it looks like you've got things figured out pretty well. Glad we could be of service!
I sorta did the same thing, so i appreciate the issue you are in. Look at some of the first adventures the party went on. Do they tie together in any way? If not, that is fine, as not every quest has to advance a particular storyline, but you can start having new adventures reference some of the previous quests. I am running a campaign in the Moonshaes and I have 40 modules planned out, with some liberal modifications to some of them, plus a few slots where I wrote something.
Major theme is that the PCs were thrown together at 0 level on a boat trip around the Moonshaes. One PC was there to do some trading for his father who had, unwittingly, invited a vampire into his business. Once he learned, he was trying to get rid of it and had his seneschal, who was a retired cleric of Oghma, try to kill him at sea. Didn't work out that way, and in their struggle, the cleric died, the vampire lived and the PCs managed to escape to a small island. This was the prelude to Treasure Hunt.
Little did they know, the vampire lived. In later adventures, they returned to the son's house, to find that the father was punished and turned into an undead skeleton knight as a trap for the party. The whole estate was sold was the motivation for their return, and they found the father had managed to sell everything, in an attempt to give the party the tools to defeat the vampire. He had 3 homebrew weapons started (rapier for Bloodhunter, staff for wizard, bracers for rogue assassin) but the items were started and not completed. The instructions for completing them were lost and every couple of levels, the party manages to get what they need to go to Candlekeep to get more information. First upgrade was 5th level, next at 7th, then 9th.
Along the way, they made enemies of a corrupted satyr druid, and a Red Wizard. Plus they are getting the feeling that there is someone behind the scenes in these attacks on the Kingdom of Calllidyr. End of this story arc puts them against the BBEG at around level 11. Then the Red Wizard takes them into Hoard of the Dragon Queen.
If you look at one shots or even campaigns, can you adapt some to your world? Can you change NPCs?