Hello, fellow DM's. I'm in the middle of my first campaign as a DM and it's going well so far. So without writing out the entire storyline (which is pretty long), I'll give you the gist.
There are kingdoms on the land, racially focused. There is the Citidel with human government but not racially focused society. They control the port on the coast, so lot's comings and goings from different races, and as a result the land is mixed.
The rest of the kingdoms are race-based. The Human and Dwarf kingdoms are allied, and both are hostile to the Tiefling and Orc kingdoms (who are allied with each other). The Halfling and Elf kingdoms are allied with each other, and they're neutral regarding the hostilities between the other four.
LONG STORY SHORT: My players must unite all the kingdoms to save the world. They need to get all the kingdoms to unite under one banner to have a final, epic battle against Grahm, the (made up) God of Chaos. Each kingdom has a mini-campaign that must be done before they agree.
DWARFS: There was an underground crime syndicate who has been threatening, bribing, and/or blackmailing high ranking political and military leaders to undermine the king, and they were attempting to organize a coup. My players had to infiltrate and the crime ring, take them down, and expose all of the conspirators. DONE ✅
HUMANS (Reinland): They were dealing with demonic incursions on their land, caused by rips in the veil between realms that were popping up in random places throughout the land. At the Reinland school of magic, a 14 year old student (Melissa Raven) is studying to be a wizard, and she's the most exceptional prodigy the school has ever seen. She managed to find a 3000 year old spell book while she was in the exploring the woods and came up on some old, hidden ruins. Intoxicated by the possibilities, she attempted to perform a summoning ritual from the book, which was too advanced even for her. My players eventually managed to enter the demon realm, solve some puzzles, kill monsters, and eventually kill the demon boss and close the rips in the veil. DONE ✅
That's where we are now. Humans and Dwarfs are on board. I would like to give them a variety of different types of adventures, tied to problems they need to solve for the rest of the kingdoms. They went undercover to infiltrate a crime ring, and subverted and defeated them. They had the dark, demonic type of adventure. What are some more ideas for the next upcoming kingdoms?
To make things interesting, I would suggest making the tensions between nations play a part. You've got the human/dwarf alliance on board, but what if the tieflings ask them to root out the spies from their land, and those spies belong to the dwarves?
I'd recommend working out why the kingdoms don't want to help each other and go from there - why are humans/dwarves at war with tieflings & Orcs? what can the party do to fix that? Will it be legitimate, or will they have to lie to one side? Perhaps if they have to "kill the spies", then go to the dwarves and tell them to recall their spies, then go to the tieflings and say they killed them. Or they might just kill them, but will have to make sure to do it all at once so the dwarves don't hear about it.
As Grahm is a god of chaos why not have something completely chaotic happen which will spin the players understand of the world? Maybe they do some runnof the mill tasks for the Tiefling king/lord and appear to have him/her on side. As they sleep off the celebrations one of the generals, who has lost friends and family in the war, leads a coup, seizes the Palace and kills the leader. The ruckus wakes your party who now have to escape the castle.
To add another layer into maybe the Tiefling/Orc alliance is one of necessity. They could have been at war with eachother recently with the Tieflings coming off worse and losing a disputed piece of land. The new dictator decides to secretly turn on his allies and stabs them in the back without warning.
Now your party needs to get to the orcs in time to warn them as well as escape. It could drive the orcs into the human/dwarven alliance but also would test the resolve of the humans and Dwarves as a depleted orcish force withdraws to offer some kind of defence against the tieflings.
To wrap it up the partner/child/friend of dead Tiefling leader is in the wind. The party must find them, sneak him/her into the city, kill the traitor and put the rightful Heir on the throne. This would make the the Tieflings in particular big allies of the party as their new leader would owe them his/her position.
One of the classic blunders I see DMs fall into is forgetting that the rest of the world continues to turn, focusing only on events that directly surround the party. Governments and nations do not press pause while the camera is off of them, and events occurring in the world, situations caused by the party, or just general politics. Even if it is not mentioned in the gameplay, try to spend some time between sessions thinking about how the political dynamics might be evolving and force your party to react to the ever-changing landscape.
For example, let's say some big, magical event occurs during the course of the campaign. That might drive the Elves and Tieflings closer together--they are both magically-inclined races and might believe the only way to stop some magical event is through cooperation. This, in turn, would affect every other alliance. The dwarves and humans might become afraid of a three-part alliance of orcs, elves, and tieflings, not understanding that the elves and orcs have no alliance and each are independently connected to the tieflings. The orcs might become suspicious that the elves and tieflings are plotting something, which could harm their relationship with the tieflings. The Halflings might feel they are being abandoned or that their neutrality is soon going to come to an end, so might through their lot in with another faction, fearing lack of elf protection.
In a continent of fragile political relationships, a single event--be it something the party knows about or something the DM knows about that the party was not present for--can set off a chain reaction that ripples across the political dynamic. Taking those ripples into account, and having NPCs like bartenders, leaders, commoners, etc. comment on the changes is both going to make your party's job of uniting the nations more difficult and make the world feel more alive.
I would also consider possible alternatives to uniting all the nations--powerful artifacts, ancient magics, etc. that could be used to shore up the party's overall strength as they enter the final fight with the god. If you play the politics believably, it is conceivable the party will engineer a situation where one or more of the factions is permanently alienated (and perhaps the strength of other factions is lessened due to spending resources on warfare against other factions). Having a few other ways the party can find the strength necessary to defeat the BBEG is going to allow your party to make mistakes or make decisions that seem poor only with hindsight.
Assuming the God of Chaos has all the time in the world and isn't involved until the very end - your players have finished getting one alliance on board. Now they have a natural choice in front of them. Do they want to start getting the orcs and tieflings on board next, even though that will be harder? Or do they want to bring the neutral alliance on board and hope to approach the hostiles with an even stronger hand?
If Graham is involved, then once they make a decision about their strategy, then Graham makes a counter strategy, with the objective in mind of preventing the alliance from happening. As DM, you decide whether this happens through diplomacy or subterfuge or plain old violence.
I think the classic way to differentiate the kingdoms would be by biome. So let's say the Dwarven one was underground/urban, maybe the orc kingdom is actually mountainous, as we surface dwellers understand it, with accompanying monsters and skill checks. And the tieflings was volcanic.
As far as just pitches? In the Halfling Kingdom, one of the players has to enter into a political marriage with the High Clan, or broker one with another kingdom. The elves are having their centennial songwriting contest and if the players can get a good enough song written, however it happens, they'll sway the politics of the whole kingdom towards the grand alliance. The orcs have collapsed into infighting and the players need to prop up one warlord. The tieflings can only be persuaded by the word of a spiritual leader. It all hews to stereotype, of course, but once we have these we can mix and match and reverse until we get something we really like.
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Hello, fellow DM's. I'm in the middle of my first campaign as a DM and it's going well so far. So without writing out the entire storyline (which is pretty long), I'll give you the gist.
There are kingdoms on the land, racially focused. There is the Citidel with human government but not racially focused society. They control the port on the coast, so lot's comings and goings from different races, and as a result the land is mixed.
The rest of the kingdoms are race-based. The Human and Dwarf kingdoms are allied, and both are hostile to the Tiefling and Orc kingdoms (who are allied with each other). The Halfling and Elf kingdoms are allied with each other, and they're neutral regarding the hostilities between the other four.
LONG STORY SHORT: My players must unite all the kingdoms to save the world. They need to get all the kingdoms to unite under one banner to have a final, epic battle against Grahm, the (made up) God of Chaos. Each kingdom has a mini-campaign that must be done before they agree.
DWARFS: There was an underground crime syndicate who has been threatening, bribing, and/or blackmailing high ranking political and military leaders to undermine the king, and they were attempting to organize a coup. My players had to infiltrate and the crime ring, take them down, and expose all of the conspirators. DONE ✅
HUMANS (Reinland): They were dealing with demonic incursions on their land, caused by rips in the veil between realms that were popping up in random places throughout the land. At the Reinland school of magic, a 14 year old student (Melissa Raven) is studying to be a wizard, and she's the most exceptional prodigy the school has ever seen. She managed to find a 3000 year old spell book while she was in the exploring the woods and came up on some old, hidden ruins. Intoxicated by the possibilities, she attempted to perform a summoning ritual from the book, which was too advanced even for her. My players eventually managed to enter the demon realm, solve some puzzles, kill monsters, and eventually kill the demon boss and close the rips in the veil. DONE ✅
That's where we are now. Humans and Dwarfs are on board. I would like to give them a variety of different types of adventures, tied to problems they need to solve for the rest of the kingdoms. They went undercover to infiltrate a crime ring, and subverted and defeated them. They had the dark, demonic type of adventure. What are some more ideas for the next upcoming kingdoms?
Thanks for any suggestions!
To make things interesting, I would suggest making the tensions between nations play a part. You've got the human/dwarf alliance on board, but what if the tieflings ask them to root out the spies from their land, and those spies belong to the dwarves?
I'd recommend working out why the kingdoms don't want to help each other and go from there - why are humans/dwarves at war with tieflings & Orcs? what can the party do to fix that? Will it be legitimate, or will they have to lie to one side? Perhaps if they have to "kill the spies", then go to the dwarves and tell them to recall their spies, then go to the tieflings and say they killed them. Or they might just kill them, but will have to make sure to do it all at once so the dwarves don't hear about it.
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I think your campaign sounds really interesting.
As Grahm is a god of chaos why not have something completely chaotic happen which will spin the players understand of the world? Maybe they do some runnof the mill tasks for the Tiefling king/lord and appear to have him/her on side. As they sleep off the celebrations one of the generals, who has lost friends and family in the war, leads a coup, seizes the Palace and kills the leader. The ruckus wakes your party who now have to escape the castle.
To add another layer into maybe the Tiefling/Orc alliance is one of necessity. They could have been at war with eachother recently with the Tieflings coming off worse and losing a disputed piece of land. The new dictator decides to secretly turn on his allies and stabs them in the back without warning.
Now your party needs to get to the orcs in time to warn them as well as escape. It could drive the orcs into the human/dwarven alliance but also would test the resolve of the humans and Dwarves as a depleted orcish force withdraws to offer some kind of defence against the tieflings.
To wrap it up the partner/child/friend of dead Tiefling leader is in the wind. The party must find them, sneak him/her into the city, kill the traitor and put the rightful Heir on the throne. This would make the the Tieflings in particular big allies of the party as their new leader would owe them his/her position.
One of the classic blunders I see DMs fall into is forgetting that the rest of the world continues to turn, focusing only on events that directly surround the party. Governments and nations do not press pause while the camera is off of them, and events occurring in the world, situations caused by the party, or just general politics. Even if it is not mentioned in the gameplay, try to spend some time between sessions thinking about how the political dynamics might be evolving and force your party to react to the ever-changing landscape.
For example, let's say some big, magical event occurs during the course of the campaign. That might drive the Elves and Tieflings closer together--they are both magically-inclined races and might believe the only way to stop some magical event is through cooperation. This, in turn, would affect every other alliance. The dwarves and humans might become afraid of a three-part alliance of orcs, elves, and tieflings, not understanding that the elves and orcs have no alliance and each are independently connected to the tieflings. The orcs might become suspicious that the elves and tieflings are plotting something, which could harm their relationship with the tieflings. The Halflings might feel they are being abandoned or that their neutrality is soon going to come to an end, so might through their lot in with another faction, fearing lack of elf protection.
In a continent of fragile political relationships, a single event--be it something the party knows about or something the DM knows about that the party was not present for--can set off a chain reaction that ripples across the political dynamic. Taking those ripples into account, and having NPCs like bartenders, leaders, commoners, etc. comment on the changes is both going to make your party's job of uniting the nations more difficult and make the world feel more alive.
I would also consider possible alternatives to uniting all the nations--powerful artifacts, ancient magics, etc. that could be used to shore up the party's overall strength as they enter the final fight with the god. If you play the politics believably, it is conceivable the party will engineer a situation where one or more of the factions is permanently alienated (and perhaps the strength of other factions is lessened due to spending resources on warfare against other factions). Having a few other ways the party can find the strength necessary to defeat the BBEG is going to allow your party to make mistakes or make decisions that seem poor only with hindsight.
Assuming the God of Chaos has all the time in the world and isn't involved until the very end - your players have finished getting one alliance on board. Now they have a natural choice in front of them. Do they want to start getting the orcs and tieflings on board next, even though that will be harder? Or do they want to bring the neutral alliance on board and hope to approach the hostiles with an even stronger hand?
If Graham is involved, then once they make a decision about their strategy, then Graham makes a counter strategy, with the objective in mind of preventing the alliance from happening. As DM, you decide whether this happens through diplomacy or subterfuge or plain old violence.
I think the classic way to differentiate the kingdoms would be by biome. So let's say the Dwarven one was underground/urban, maybe the orc kingdom is actually mountainous, as we surface dwellers understand it, with accompanying monsters and skill checks. And the tieflings was volcanic.
As far as just pitches? In the Halfling Kingdom, one of the players has to enter into a political marriage with the High Clan, or broker one with another kingdom. The elves are having their centennial songwriting contest and if the players can get a good enough song written, however it happens, they'll sway the politics of the whole kingdom towards the grand alliance. The orcs have collapsed into infighting and the players need to prop up one warlord. The tieflings can only be persuaded by the word of a spiritual leader. It all hews to stereotype, of course, but once we have these we can mix and match and reverse until we get something we really like.