You want some campaign starters and descriptions? You’ve come to the right place. You are free to take my ideas and use them as your own. I don’t mind.
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I want friends, come talk to me about stuff here. I am the weird hybrid Italian-Australian D&D guy/wannabe comedian.
Thanks to Drummer_The_Dragon_Slayer for my custom title: The Adamantine Warrior, and The ruler of the Sky’s
If you're not willing or able to to discuss in good faith, then don't be surprised if I don't respond, there are better things in life for me to do than humour you. This signature is that response.
this is the Question of the day over in the Anything but the OGL thread, and here was my answer:
Adventure Starts I have used in the past:
"everybody is falling" -- this was for what we would call an isekai game today -- in 1988. They landed on a dragon's back and he was NOT pleased, but things worked out in the end after they got rid of the Mites that were stealing his treasure hoard (mites are a race of two foot tall flight capable bipeds with one eye, one horn, and purple skin, and if they sacrifice enough treasure to the deity they can get really big).
The campaign was nothing like the start, lol.
You wake up on the day of the New Year's Festival in a room that doesn't seem to be quite the same as the one you went to sleep in. You get to go down for breakfast to a bunch of people who started celebrating last night, and there are some vaguely familiar but you can't quite place them other people there...
That one is the traditional opening to my It adventure. Tavern opening, and I get to do the dinner scene from It -- except at breakfast. The underlying hook is that they all knew each other as children, and It has drawn them all back for revenge from when they beat him then.
because I was asked to reintroduce a warforged variant, I have to scrap a lot of that.
and my last favorite:
You can't remember the last time you had a drink of water. It was days ago. The sun scalds your exposed skin, the sand is coarse and bruising, burning and somehow unyielding. you can smell yourself, possibly for the first time in your entire life, and it is not a good smell; you cannot recall any longer how you got here, why you are on your knees in a sea of sand, what you were supposed to be doing, mayhaps even your name. You feel as if the hope has been squeezed out of you and all you have left to do is simply survive, one more foot, one more motion, even as the hunger gnaws at you.
You rest for a moment, your eyes closed so that all you can see is a red haze, for blackness is too far away even now, and your eyes feel like someone has ground the sand into the very sockets themselves. When you open them, in the distance, you see something that every bit of you refuses to believe in -- you've heard the tales of those lost in a desert seeing mirages, and you can vaguely recall glimpses of them, your ashen and filthy mouth still reeling from the sand you tried drink earlier.
It looks like a great and grand ship, sail aflutter, surrounding it in an arc, crashing through the dunes like through the waves of the sea as it moves, and now you can feel the wind yourself, carrying with it more grit, and you find yourself beginning to tremble because that can only mean a sandstorm, and you catch a brief vision of a horse you knew being flayed to the bone. The ship is coming ever closer now, not aiming at you, and you can just barely make out the sight of people moving around the deck as your body begins to list from exhaustion.
You think that maybe it isn't a mirage as the sound of creaking timbers reaches your ears, the snap of sails, the shouts of women, the shush of sand being cleaved...
What will you do now, lost wanderer?
That is the new start. I stole it from roughly 1990 when I did a bunch of the old desert modules and several ideas from Dark Sun and mixed them together with some stuff from both a Moorcock novel and an Alan Dean Foster series. In the original, they were plucked by a goddess who was attacked and ended up dropping them in the wrong world, lol. One of the RP parts was slowly remembering things about their past.
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Only a DM since 1980 (3000+ Sessions) / PhD, MS, MA / Mixed, Bi, Trans, Woman / No longer welcome in the US, apparently
Wyrlde: Adventures in the Seven Cities .-=] Lore Book | Patreon | Wyrlde YT [=-. An original Setting for 5e, a whole solar system of adventure. Ongoing updates, exclusies, more. Not Talking About It / Dubbed The Oracle in the Cult of Mythology Nerds
The events of the following campaign take place 200 years before Crusaders of the North… A disturbance in the rift. A problem in the elements. The primordial forces that shaped the multiverse, released… The sun suddenly disappears, the material plane goes cold. All natural water, disappears, the material plane goes dry. All mountains and forests, disappears, the material plane goes flat. All wind, disappears, the material plane goes still. Imalia is ending. It is your job to find out why, how, and bring everything back, or the multiverse will fall in on itself… A Traveler’s guid to the Elemental chaos, is campaign that takes adventures, through the elemental planes, and into the elemental chaos, a never before seen adventure. The prequel to Crusaders of the North, starts now.
Here’s one of my campaigns, but you can use it if you want
One of my favorite campaign openers was for an open world campaign I ran for my friends in early covid (online don't worry). They start out stranded in a little out of the way town, and people in town are concerned because the merchants from the town north on the other side of the forest haven't come for a few weeks.
Couple that with the fact that the baron's guards have started charging exorbitant rates for the tolls on the bridge a day's ride south of town, AND something (a dragon-worshipping cult, unbeknownst to anyone) displacing a flock of Dinosaurs from their homes in the mountains to the west, causing dinos to frequently attack the townsfolk's livestock when out to pasture.
Then I peppered in rumors of a mad wizard, a goblin mercenary, and a baking competition, and then sat back and watched which way they would go.
One of my favorite campaign openers was for an open world campaign I ran for my friends in early covid (online don't worry). They start out stranded in a little out of the way town, and people in town are concerned because the merchants from the town north on the other side of the forest haven't come for a few weeks.
Couple that with the fact that the baron's guards have started charging exorbitant rates for the tolls on the bridge a day's ride south of town, AND something (a dragon-worshipping cult, unbeknownst to anyone) displacing a flock of Dinosaurs from their homes in the mountains to the west, causing dinos to frequently attack the townsfolk's livestock when out to pasture.
Then I peppered in rumors of a mad wizard, a goblin mercenary, and a baking competition, and then sat back and watched which way they would go.
Now, see, my groups would all pick the baking competition first off. And would want to use my kitchen.
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Only a DM since 1980 (3000+ Sessions) / PhD, MS, MA / Mixed, Bi, Trans, Woman / No longer welcome in the US, apparently
Wyrlde: Adventures in the Seven Cities .-=] Lore Book | Patreon | Wyrlde YT [=-. An original Setting for 5e, a whole solar system of adventure. Ongoing updates, exclusies, more. Not Talking About It / Dubbed The Oracle in the Cult of Mythology Nerds
One of my favorite campaign openers was for an open world campaign I ran for my friends in early covid (online don't worry). They start out stranded in a little out of the way town, and people in town are concerned because the merchants from the town north on the other side of the forest haven't come for a few weeks.
Couple that with the fact that the baron's guards have started charging exorbitant rates for the tolls on the bridge a day's ride south of town, AND something (a dragon-worshipping cult, unbeknownst to anyone) displacing a flock of Dinosaurs from their homes in the mountains to the west, causing dinos to frequently attack the townsfolk's livestock when out to pasture.
Then I peppered in rumors of a mad wizard, a goblin mercenary, and a baking competition, and then sat back and watched which way they would go.
Now, see, my groups would all pick the baking competition first off. And would want to use my kitchen.
The baking competition was also to the south, tricked you! Have fun dealing with not-Saruman!
One of my favorite campaign openers was for an open world campaign I ran for my friends in early covid (online don't worry). They start out stranded in a little out of the way town, and people in town are concerned because the merchants from the town north on the other side of the forest haven't come for a few weeks.
Couple that with the fact that the baron's guards have started charging exorbitant rates for the tolls on the bridge a day's ride south of town, AND something (a dragon-worshipping cult, unbeknownst to anyone) displacing a flock of Dinosaurs from their homes in the mountains to the west, causing dinos to frequently attack the townsfolk's livestock when out to pasture.
Then I peppered in rumors of a mad wizard, a goblin mercenary, and a baking competition, and then sat back and watched which way they would go.
Now, see, my groups would all pick the baking competition first off. And would want to use my kitchen.
The baking competition was also to the south, tricked you! Have fun dealing with not-Saruman!
Damn
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
I want friends, come talk to me about stuff here. I am the weird hybrid Italian-Australian D&D guy/wannabe comedian.
Thanks to Drummer_The_Dragon_Slayer for my custom title: The Adamantine Warrior, and The ruler of the Sky’s
One of my favorite campaign openers was for an open world campaign I ran for my friends in early covid (online don't worry). They start out stranded in a little out of the way town, and people in town are concerned because the merchants from the town north on the other side of the forest haven't come for a few weeks.
Couple that with the fact that the baron's guards have started charging exorbitant rates for the tolls on the bridge a day's ride south of town, AND something (a dragon-worshipping cult, unbeknownst to anyone) displacing a flock of Dinosaurs from their homes in the mountains to the west, causing dinos to frequently attack the townsfolk's livestock when out to pasture.
Then I peppered in rumors of a mad wizard, a goblin mercenary, and a baking competition, and then sat back and watched which way they would go.
Now, see, my groups would all pick the baking competition first off. And would want to use my kitchen.
And now I am seeing all the ways I can build intrigue into a simple cooking competition. Forget the mad wizard that’s an old trope. Gangs of Bakers who work to disrupt each other, the party hired by each “faction” sent out to gather rare and dangerous ingredients. While meanwhile the Druid works to concoct their own recipe winning the prize from under the bakers noses, now the party need to get out of town before they risk being baked in a pie. Yep at that point the wizard is gone from my memory as a DM and I am just going with it.
One of my favorite campaign openers was for an open world campaign I ran for my friends in early covid (online don't worry). They start out stranded in a little out of the way town, and people in town are concerned because the merchants from the town north on the other side of the forest haven't come for a few weeks.
Couple that with the fact that the baron's guards have started charging exorbitant rates for the tolls on the bridge a day's ride south of town, AND something (a dragon-worshipping cult, unbeknownst to anyone) displacing a flock of Dinosaurs from their homes in the mountains to the west, causing dinos to frequently attack the townsfolk's livestock when out to pasture.
Then I peppered in rumors of a mad wizard, a goblin mercenary, and a baking competition, and then sat back and watched which way they would go.
Now, see, my groups would all pick the baking competition first off. And would want to use my kitchen.
And now I am seeing all the ways I can build intrigue into a simple cooking competition. Forget the mad wizard that’s an old trope. Gangs of Bakers who work to disrupt each other, the party hired by each “faction” sent out to gather rare and dangerous ingredients. While meanwhile the Druid works to concoct their own recipe winning the prize from under the bakers noses, now the party need to get out of town before they risk being baked in a pie. Yep at that point the wizard is gone from my memory as a DM and I am just going with it.
Oh yeah when I say they were both to the south, I don't mean in a railroading sense that they had to fight the wizard to unlock the baking contest. It was more the baking contest drew them into the area and then while they were doing it they learned all about the wizard operating out of the ancient tower who'd hired an army of goblin mercenaries and was looting towns on the other side of the lake, which then naturally piqued their interest.
I ran the baking contest as like a great British bake off style contest except with teams instead of individual competitors, and very few rules-- basically sabotage was ok as long as you could get away with it. The contest was run by an eccentric lord who wanted to find the best baker in all the land, and wasn't picky about who he invited, so there were the adventurers, a group of rival adventurers, a knight, but then there was also a professional assassin, a hag (in disguise as a sweet old lady, who's disguise would slip when she got flustered), and a foreign noble who hated everyone of lower class.
The challenges were fun too. For one, they all had to drink a vial of what turned out to be a potent hallucinogenic drug before beginning baking and had to make a pie while tripping (I had a random effects chart for the hallucinations they suffered each round and it's effects on their performance), and the finale was they had to navigate a booby-trap filled mansion with a three-tiered cake while racing the other teams to find the lord's secret dining room to present their bakes. It was really fun watching the players engage in combat with a giant, delicate cake to protect. Gave it a very fun strategic element.
The events of the following campaign take place 200 years before Crusaders of the North… A disturbance in the rift. A problem in the elements. The primordial forces that shaped the multiverse, released… The sun suddenly disappears, the material plane goes cold. All natural water, disappears, the material plane goes dry. All mountains and forests, disappears, the material plane goes flat. All wind, disappears, the material plane goes still. Imalia is ending. It is your job to find out why, how, and bring everything back, or the multiverse will fall in on itself… A Traveler’s guid to the Elemental chaos, is campaign that takes adventures, through the elemental planes, and into the elemental chaos, a never before seen adventure. The prequel to Crusaders of the North, starts now.
Crusaders of the North
The Axeolas Mountain Pass is the only thing keeping the Phaduqar Empire safe from the monsters that live on the north side of the continent, and the Crusaders. A savage tribe of freaks, that have weird, and dangerous magical powers, that can manipulate the elements as they are. But when a purple flare flashes across the sky. They are chosen. You are chosen. You can feel it to the very essence that you live on. The Crusaders are coming. For you… This is the second of three, and first of the main series in the saga Crusaders of the North. This campaign sets place in Imalia, the monster slaying adventure seeking home brew campaign that sets place in the modern medieval time period.
Credits: Most names from Fantasy Name Generator
Wizards of the coast for making D&D
Me, for coming with another awesome saga
Disclaimer: Not all content in this campaign is compatible with all D&D 5e content
Sorcerers from the South
50 years later… The black sun burns angrily in the crimson sky, the clouds, so faint, they look like scratches on the face of heaven. The oceans, a desert wasteland where monsters thrive. Magic, lost to the forces of nature. A world with no Gods. This is Imalia… The monster slaying apocalypse survivor setting home brew campaign, for D&D 5e. This is Sorcerers from the South, the sequel to Crusaders from the North, set 50 years after the events of that campaign, and the third epic saga of the Crusaders of the North Odyssey. Disclaimer; not all materials in this campaign are compatible with normal D&D content.
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I want friends, come talk to me about stuff here. I am the weird hybrid Italian-Australian D&D guy/wannabe comedian.
Thanks to Drummer_The_Dragon_Slayer for my custom title: The Adamantine Warrior, and The ruler of the Sky’s
The events of the following campaign take place 200 years before Crusaders of the North… A disturbance in the rift. A problem in the elements. The primordial forces that shaped the multiverse, released… The sun suddenly disappears, the material plane goes cold. All natural water, disappears, the material plane goes dry. All mountains and forests, disappears, the material plane goes flat. All wind, disappears, the material plane goes still. Imalia is ending. It is your job to find out why, how, and bring everything back, or the multiverse will fall in on itself… A Traveler’s guid to the Elemental chaos, is campaign that takes adventures, through the elemental planes, and into the elemental chaos, a never before seen adventure. The prequel to Crusaders of the North, starts now.
Crusaders of the North
The Axeolas Mountain Pass is the only thing keeping the Phaduqar Empire safe from the monsters that live on the north side of the continent, and the Crusaders. A savage tribe of freaks, that have weird, and dangerous magical powers, that can manipulate the elements as they are. But when a purple flare flashes across the sky. They are chosen. You are chosen. You can feel it to the very essence that you live on. The Crusaders are coming. For you… This is the second of three, and first of the main series in the saga Crusaders of the North. This campaign sets place in Imalia, the monster slaying adventure seeking home brew campaign that sets place in the modern medieval time period.
Credits: Most names from Fantasy Name Generator
Wizards of the coast for making D&D
Me, for coming with another awesome saga
Disclaimer: Not all content in this campaign is compatible with all D&D 5e content
Sorcerers from the South
50 years later… The black sun burns angrily in the crimson sky, the clouds, so faint, they look like scratches on the face of heaven. The oceans, a desert wasteland where monsters thrive. Magic, lost to the forces of nature. A world with no Gods. This is Imalia… The monster slaying apocalypse survivor setting home brew campaign, for D&D 5e. This is Sorcerers from the South, the sequel to Crusaders from the North, set 50 years after the events of that campaign, and the third epic saga of the Crusaders of the North Odyssey. Disclaimer; not all materials in this campaign are compatible with normal D&D content.
So regardless of how the players end crusaders of the north then the sorcerers of the south will always happen? Are they interlinked, is there any sense for players that there actions in some way affected the world at all?
Large campaign consisting of smaller 1-3 session flashbacks. Think Hyperion, but likely going further back in the PC’s ancestry.
Each flashback would explore one PC’s backstory.
Backstories should explore people and a timeline that influenced the PC. This could be a story of the PC’s parents/ancestors, or something that influenced the PC in some way.
The PC levels in the flashbacks will vary, and may even be higher than where the prime story ends.
Does the player know when the flashback is about their PC?
Maybe the players DM their backstories. I like this idea!
The Party has a Group Patron: Ancient Being
Notes
Prime = The timeline experienced by the PCs in the main adventure.
Backstory Idea Brainstorming
Maybe each party member has a birthmark (Tasha’s tattoo) that prophesies the PC’s destiny.
The last descendant of an ancient king is born with a mark on his hand.
It has been passed down from generation to generation that the one born with the stars on their hand will return restore honor to the family name.
Or, more likely, several ancestors have been born with the mark, but none succeeded.
Some object has been stolen from some village/family/whatever that the prime PC needs to find and return.
This adventure would be fairly small, maybe levels 1-6(ish), and all the PCs would be barbarians of whatever subclass they prefer.
The Setting
In the far north, near the spine of the world, several barbarian villages, collectively known as the Beskyttett tribe (or as, The Protected, in the common tongue), live a peaceful existence far from the other races of Faerun. Occasional trade happens, but most of the tribe is distrustful of outsiders, and few ever travel to other settlements.
It is usually COLD this far north; in winter, the sun can be up for as little as 6 hours. Summers are pleasant and provide an abundance of food and resources. The tribes live on the Great Expanse, a large and ancient river delta. The river is known locally as The Great Trial (usually shortened to The Trial). Like most rivers, it typically floods during the spring. This can be a dangerous time for the tribes, but is usually manageable.
But in the mountains above the Great Expanse lies an ancient volcano, Old Sleeper. The volcano itself is usually quiet, and even during active periods, simply spews a small layer of ash and dust in the surrounding area. Locals like to say the the Old Sleeper is snoring during these brief rumblings.
But, the volcano hides a secret. Occasionally, every 500 to 1000 years or so, magma moves into a chamber especially close to the surface of the valley next to Old Sleeper. This magma heats the rock above it, and that in turn, melts the glacier above that (a process that can take centuries). The valley runs along the eastern side of the mountain and continues south for several miles before spilling out of a narrow gap between the mountains and into the foothills. And because the southern end of the valley isn’t heated like the northern end, it takes many more years for the ice to melt. This creates an ice damn with trillions of gallons of water behind it. When the damn inevitably gives way, a catastrophic flood spills out of the mountains and onto the Great Expanse. It is said The Great Trial finds the Great Expanse guilty, and wipes away the sins of every living creature.
To save the Beskyttet from disaster, Eldath, the Mother of the Waters, gave the Beskyttet a powerful artifact to shelter their villages as the water rushes around them. Without this artifact, the Beskyttet would have been wiped from Faerun long ago. The Beskyttet know the reasons for the flooding (though they don't know why the ice above the dam melts, and they know the next trial will occur sometime in the next 10 years or so.
Beskyttet: Beh-Sheak-tet
Eldath is the God of the Beskyttet.
The Adventure
Of course, the artifact would be stolen and the Party would need to go into the low country to find it. I imagine the adventure opening during a yearly festival where teams of barbarians compete to become that year's Campions of Eldath. The Party would (likely) finish second. Shortly after completion of the multi-day competition, "someone" teleports into the village and takes the artifact. The newly crowned Champions of Eldath try to fight off the foul forces, but are easily killed. The robbers teleport out, and it's up to the second place team to venture out into the world and recover the artifact before the impending flood.
I started my current campaign by having the players be "recruited" from a crowd. They were all having an evening meal (separately) in a tavern/inn near the docks, when someone outside started screaming for help. Kobolds had stolen something from him, and had run into the warehouse across the street. He offers to pay handsomely for anyone that helps retrieve it. It was a mcguffin, that led into the first phase of the campaign. After returning it, they were offered more gold to ensure its delivery.
Because of the success of the first phase, their names are now known, and they have been hired to find a lost explorer. Secondary to their mission is finding a lost dwarven "highway" through the Sword Mountains. We'll see where it goes from there, once/if they survive.
You want some campaign starters and descriptions? You’ve come to the right place. You are free to take my ideas and use them as your own. I don’t mind.
I want friends, come talk to me about stuff here. I am the weird hybrid Italian-Australian D&D guy/wannabe comedian.
Thanks to Drummer_The_Dragon_Slayer for my custom title: The Adamantine Warrior, and The ruler of the Sky’s
Want some time to relax? Want a place to go on holidays? Want to join my eternal army… Come here! ——————> I think we can all agree that this is a good idea
Come and join the 20 Questions!
You haven't posted any?
If you're not willing or able to to discuss in good faith, then don't be surprised if I don't respond, there are better things in life for me to do than humour you. This signature is that response.
Like you, oddly enough I did expect to see some either posted here or linked based on the original post.
Should we try and save the thread or help each other?
so here are some quick not so great ideas, but hopefully it might save the thread.
How bout an all Monstrous Species campaign.
Take your favorite TV show and use some of the setting or plots to inspire.
Say its a lawyer show, then the party has to get the evidence, and possibly present or be part of the trial
Say its a renovation show - the party needs to clean the house/castle/etc, then aquire the materials and get the build done in time.
clean could mean remove squatters or other pests.
How bout they have to escort settlers from one end of a continent to another "oregon trail" campaign, watch out for disentary. lol
Game over man... Game over! -- Pvt. Hudson
You could do a campaign where the PCs are employed to capture two of every monster in the MM for a collector who keeps them in a big boat.
this is the Question of the day over in the Anything but the OGL thread, and here was my answer:
Adventure Starts I have used in the past:
The campaign was nothing like the start, lol.
That one is the traditional opening to my It adventure. Tavern opening, and I get to do the dinner scene from It -- except at breakfast. The underlying hook is that they all knew each other as children, and It has drawn them all back for revenge from when they beat him then.
because I was asked to reintroduce a warforged variant, I have to scrap a lot of that.
and my last favorite:
That is the new start. I stole it from roughly 1990 when I did a bunch of the old desert modules and several ideas from Dark Sun and mixed them together with some stuff from both a Moorcock novel and an Alan Dean Foster series. In the original, they were plucked by a goddess who was attacked and ended up dropping them in the wrong world, lol. One of the RP parts was slowly remembering things about their past.
Only a DM since 1980 (3000+ Sessions) / PhD, MS, MA / Mixed, Bi, Trans, Woman / No longer welcome in the US, apparently
Wyrlde: Adventures in the Seven Cities
.-=] Lore Book | Patreon | Wyrlde YT [=-.
An original Setting for 5e, a whole solar system of adventure. Ongoing updates, exclusies, more.
Not Talking About It / Dubbed The Oracle in the Cult of Mythology Nerds
If you want me too post some stuff I will. Just ask. I’m making one now.
I want friends, come talk to me about stuff here. I am the weird hybrid Italian-Australian D&D guy/wannabe comedian.
Thanks to Drummer_The_Dragon_Slayer for my custom title: The Adamantine Warrior, and The ruler of the Sky’s
Want some time to relax? Want a place to go on holidays? Want to join my eternal army… Come here! ——————> I think we can all agree that this is a good idea
Come and join the 20 Questions!
A Traveler’s Guide to the Elemental Chaos
The events of the following campaign take place 200 years before Crusaders of the North… A disturbance in the rift. A problem in the elements. The primordial forces that shaped the multiverse, released… The sun suddenly disappears, the material plane goes cold. All natural water, disappears, the material plane goes dry. All mountains and forests, disappears, the material plane goes flat. All wind, disappears, the material plane goes still. Imalia is ending. It is your job to find out why, how, and bring everything back, or the multiverse will fall in on itself… A Traveler’s guid to the Elemental chaos, is campaign that takes adventures, through the elemental planes, and into the elemental chaos, a never before seen adventure. The prequel to Crusaders of the North, starts now.
Here’s one of my campaigns, but you can use it if you want
I want friends, come talk to me about stuff here. I am the weird hybrid Italian-Australian D&D guy/wannabe comedian.
Thanks to Drummer_The_Dragon_Slayer for my custom title: The Adamantine Warrior, and The ruler of the Sky’s
Want some time to relax? Want a place to go on holidays? Want to join my eternal army… Come here! ——————> I think we can all agree that this is a good idea
Come and join the 20 Questions!
One of my favorite campaign openers was for an open world campaign I ran for my friends in early covid (online don't worry). They start out stranded in a little out of the way town, and people in town are concerned because the merchants from the town north on the other side of the forest haven't come for a few weeks.
Couple that with the fact that the baron's guards have started charging exorbitant rates for the tolls on the bridge a day's ride south of town, AND something (a dragon-worshipping cult, unbeknownst to anyone) displacing a flock of Dinosaurs from their homes in the mountains to the west, causing dinos to frequently attack the townsfolk's livestock when out to pasture.
Then I peppered in rumors of a mad wizard, a goblin mercenary, and a baking competition, and then sat back and watched which way they would go.
Now, see, my groups would all pick the baking competition first off. And would want to use my kitchen.
Only a DM since 1980 (3000+ Sessions) / PhD, MS, MA / Mixed, Bi, Trans, Woman / No longer welcome in the US, apparently
Wyrlde: Adventures in the Seven Cities
.-=] Lore Book | Patreon | Wyrlde YT [=-.
An original Setting for 5e, a whole solar system of adventure. Ongoing updates, exclusies, more.
Not Talking About It / Dubbed The Oracle in the Cult of Mythology Nerds
The baking competition was also to the south, tricked you! Have fun dealing with not-Saruman!
Damn
I want friends, come talk to me about stuff here. I am the weird hybrid Italian-Australian D&D guy/wannabe comedian.
Thanks to Drummer_The_Dragon_Slayer for my custom title: The Adamantine Warrior, and The ruler of the Sky’s
Want some time to relax? Want a place to go on holidays? Want to join my eternal army… Come here! ——————> I think we can all agree that this is a good idea
Come and join the 20 Questions!
And now I am seeing all the ways I can build intrigue into a simple cooking competition. Forget the mad wizard that’s an old trope. Gangs of Bakers who work to disrupt each other, the party hired by each “faction” sent out to gather rare and dangerous ingredients. While meanwhile the Druid works to concoct their own recipe winning the prize from under the bakers noses, now the party need to get out of town before they risk being baked in a pie. Yep at that point the wizard is gone from my memory as a DM and I am just going with it.
Oh yeah when I say they were both to the south, I don't mean in a railroading sense that they had to fight the wizard to unlock the baking contest. It was more the baking contest drew them into the area and then while they were doing it they learned all about the wizard operating out of the ancient tower who'd hired an army of goblin mercenaries and was looting towns on the other side of the lake, which then naturally piqued their interest.
I ran the baking contest as like a great British bake off style contest except with teams instead of individual competitors, and very few rules-- basically sabotage was ok as long as you could get away with it. The contest was run by an eccentric lord who wanted to find the best baker in all the land, and wasn't picky about who he invited, so there were the adventurers, a group of rival adventurers, a knight, but then there was also a professional assassin, a hag (in disguise as a sweet old lady, who's disguise would slip when she got flustered), and a foreign noble who hated everyone of lower class.
The challenges were fun too. For one, they all had to drink a vial of what turned out to be a potent hallucinogenic drug before beginning baking and had to make a pie while tripping (I had a random effects chart for the hallucinations they suffered each round and it's effects on their performance), and the finale was they had to navigate a booby-trap filled mansion with a three-tiered cake while racing the other teams to find the lord's secret dining room to present their bakes. It was really fun watching the players engage in combat with a giant, delicate cake to protect. Gave it a very fun strategic element.
All in all it was very fun, would do again.
The Crusaders of the North Trilogy
A Traveler’s Guide to the Elemental Chaos
The events of the following campaign take place 200 years before Crusaders of the North… A disturbance in the rift. A problem in the elements. The primordial forces that shaped the multiverse, released… The sun suddenly disappears, the material plane goes cold. All natural water, disappears, the material plane goes dry. All mountains and forests, disappears, the material plane goes flat. All wind, disappears, the material plane goes still. Imalia is ending. It is your job to find out why, how, and bring everything back, or the multiverse will fall in on itself… A Traveler’s guid to the Elemental chaos, is campaign that takes adventures, through the elemental planes, and into the elemental chaos, a never before seen adventure. The prequel to Crusaders of the North, starts now.
Crusaders of the North
The Axeolas Mountain Pass is the only thing keeping the Phaduqar Empire safe from the monsters that live on the north side of the continent, and the Crusaders. A savage tribe of freaks, that have weird, and dangerous magical powers, that can manipulate the elements as they are. But when a purple flare flashes across the sky. They are chosen. You are chosen. You can feel it to the very essence that you live on. The Crusaders are coming. For you… This is the second of three, and first of the main series in the saga Crusaders of the North. This campaign sets place in Imalia, the monster slaying adventure seeking home brew campaign that sets place in the modern medieval time period.
Credits: Most names from Fantasy Name Generator
Wizards of the coast for making D&D
Me, for coming with another awesome saga
Disclaimer: Not all content in this campaign is compatible with all D&D 5e content
Sorcerers from the South
50 years later… The black sun burns angrily in the crimson sky, the clouds, so faint, they look like scratches on the face of heaven. The oceans, a desert wasteland where monsters thrive. Magic, lost to the forces of nature. A world with no Gods. This is Imalia… The monster slaying apocalypse survivor setting home brew campaign, for D&D 5e. This is Sorcerers from the South, the sequel to Crusaders from the North, set 50 years after the events of that campaign, and the third epic saga of the Crusaders of the North Odyssey. Disclaimer; not all materials in this campaign are compatible with normal D&D content.
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Thanks to Drummer_The_Dragon_Slayer for my custom title: The Adamantine Warrior, and The ruler of the Sky’s
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So regardless of how the players end crusaders of the north then the sorcerers of the south will always happen? Are they interlinked, is there any sense for players that there actions in some way affected the world at all?
I've been kicking around a couple of ideas...
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Flashback Campaign
Notes
Backstory Idea Brainstorming
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Barbarian Ice
This adventure would be fairly small, maybe levels 1-6(ish), and all the PCs would be barbarians of whatever subclass they prefer.
The Setting
In the far north, near the spine of the world, several barbarian villages, collectively known as the Beskyttett tribe (or as, The Protected, in the common tongue), live a peaceful existence far from the other races of Faerun. Occasional trade happens, but most of the tribe is distrustful of outsiders, and few ever travel to other settlements.
It is usually COLD this far north; in winter, the sun can be up for as little as 6 hours. Summers are pleasant and provide an abundance of food and resources. The tribes live on the Great Expanse, a large and ancient river delta. The river is known locally as The Great Trial (usually shortened to The Trial). Like most rivers, it typically floods during the spring. This can be a dangerous time for the tribes, but is usually manageable.
But in the mountains above the Great Expanse lies an ancient volcano, Old Sleeper. The volcano itself is usually quiet, and even during active periods, simply spews a small layer of ash and dust in the surrounding area. Locals like to say the the Old Sleeper is snoring during these brief rumblings.
But, the volcano hides a secret. Occasionally, every 500 to 1000 years or so, magma moves into a chamber especially close to the surface of the valley next to Old Sleeper. This magma heats the rock above it, and that in turn, melts the glacier above that (a process that can take centuries). The valley runs along the eastern side of the mountain and continues south for several miles before spilling out of a narrow gap between the mountains and into the foothills. And because the southern end of the valley isn’t heated like the northern end, it takes many more years for the ice to melt. This creates an ice damn with trillions of gallons of water behind it. When the damn inevitably gives way, a catastrophic flood spills out of the mountains and onto the Great Expanse. It is said The Great Trial finds the Great Expanse guilty, and wipes away the sins of every living creature.
To save the Beskyttet from disaster, Eldath, the Mother of the Waters, gave the Beskyttet a powerful artifact to shelter their villages as the water rushes around them. Without this artifact, the Beskyttet would have been wiped from Faerun long ago. The Beskyttet know the reasons for the flooding (though they don't know why the ice above the dam melts, and they know the next trial will occur sometime in the next 10 years or so.
Beskyttet: Beh-Sheak-tet
Eldath is the God of the Beskyttet.
The Adventure
Of course, the artifact would be stolen and the Party would need to go into the low country to find it. I imagine the adventure opening during a yearly festival where teams of barbarians compete to become that year's Campions of Eldath. The Party would (likely) finish second. Shortly after completion of the multi-day competition, "someone" teleports into the village and takes the artifact. The newly crowned Champions of Eldath try to fight off the foul forces, but are easily killed. The robbers teleport out, and it's up to the second place team to venture out into the world and recover the artifact before the impending flood.
Barbarian Sub-classes
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Anyway, those are a couple of ideas I've been kicking around.
I started my current campaign by having the players be "recruited" from a crowd. They were all having an evening meal (separately) in a tavern/inn near the docks, when someone outside started screaming for help. Kobolds had stolen something from him, and had run into the warehouse across the street. He offers to pay handsomely for anyone that helps retrieve it. It was a mcguffin, that led into the first phase of the campaign. After returning it, they were offered more gold to ensure its delivery.
Because of the success of the first phase, their names are now known, and they have been hired to find a lost explorer. Secondary to their mission is finding a lost dwarven "highway" through the Sword Mountains. We'll see where it goes from there, once/if they survive.
That’s pretty good
I want friends, come talk to me about stuff here. I am the weird hybrid Italian-Australian D&D guy/wannabe comedian.
Thanks to Drummer_The_Dragon_Slayer for my custom title: The Adamantine Warrior, and The ruler of the Sky’s
Want some time to relax? Want a place to go on holidays? Want to join my eternal army… Come here! ——————> I think we can all agree that this is a good idea
Come and join the 20 Questions!
I have thought about setting a campaign right around an event like the Younger Dryas or theorized Younger Dryas Impact.
Either adventuring right after that apocalypse scenario or right before.
I think it would be interesting to have a campaign start where its all great and then the unthinkable happens.
What would be tedious, is you have a world map, and that world map is only good for the first "five minutes" then you need a second DM world map.
What does the party do in the aftermath?
It turns a known world into a hexcrawl, and possibly a survival campaign.
I'm not sure how fun that would be or not, but its an idea, that would take planning and work to pull off.
Game over man... Game over! -- Pvt. Hudson