Hey guys. So my friends and i recently started playing DnD for the first played. We played the Starter Set " Dragons of Stormwreck Isle " and we had a blast doing so. After we finished the set we decided we want to keep playing DnD. So we decided that i creat a homebrew world in which we play our first campaign. We had a session zero and the players told me that they told me they dont really have a certain plot or something they want to play so they leave everything to me.
In advance i want to apologize if my english isnt perfect, i am not a native english speaker and for the length of the text. So thanks to everyone who reads the whole thing till the end^^
Now to my real question. I want to ask you guys for feedback for the idea for the first story arc i am working on currently called "The Demon Blight". Obviously i cant ask my players for feedback so i guessed this could be a nice place:D Of course i now that i cant plan the entire story because my players a creating the story in a way by playing. So everything i write is just a scenario. I wanted to do something like this scenario so their is a reason that the PCs really form a party and need to work togehter at the beginning even if they dont know each other yet.
The PCs dont know eacht other yet and each of them arrives in a city called Delagia. Everyone for a different reason related to their backstory (My players already created their characters with their backstory etc). Every year the city is holding a tournament (at the beginning i wanted to use a tournament just because i thougt it would be fun for the players but now i want to really use it for the story). All of the PCs want to participate in the tournament, even if one of the PCs just got word of such a tournament after entering the city. Before the start of the tournament the PCs get the opportunity to explore some of the city and meet a few (maybe) important NPS, of course they dont know that.
The Tournament is hold in teams of 5 people, so my players can fill a team by themselfes. But i already prepeard a bunch of other NPC who want to participate and could be talked into forming a team if the PCs dont like eacht other or even dont met at all before the start of the tournament. Among the NPCs they could encounter early on is a certain human man, who gives free drinks to all the participants and a young child. Both of them are really important to the scenario i want to create for my players, especially the man.
This tournament will have various disciplines so that every PC can bring something important to the team. What the players and their characters dont know, this tournament is held to lure and capture strong individuals. The mastermind or BBEG is the man the PCs could encounter earlier, i dont want to go into detail for his backstory but his plan is to caputre strong people on which he can experiment on with a blight he created out of demon blood (in my world demons are long gone and not something ordinary people even think about or would recognize if they see one). He wants to create a demons out of the people he infects with the blight. But because it would be suspicous if the a huge amount of townsfolk would be gone from one day to another he uses the tournament for that. One year prior he already got 50 people of the town to experiment on without any suspicion. Mars, the name of the man, is the personal doctor for the lord of the city. He acused a camp of Bandits near the city to attack the people of Delagia. So he send 50 men to fight them. No one understood why so many would be neccesary for bandits but they kept going with it. He then declared that everyone died in the battle against a huge amount of bandits.
He blackmails the lord of the city into helping him, he infected his daughter with the blight, normally it would turn anyone into a demon, or demon like monster within 3 months but he uses the antidote always before it would be to late.
He uses the free drinks, and maybe someother methods, to infect all the participants of the tournament with the demon blight. The tournament is held over a few days and the city gives all participants free rooms in a few Taverns. Mars used his position as the trusted doctor of the lord to give many citizens of the city free drinks when i examined them and so 3 months before the story starts he already infected a huge amount of people in the town with the blight.
At the last night before the end, the people who were infected prior to the tournament turn into demon like monsters and beginn to go rampage in the city. The players, at least all who drank the free drinks start noticing a strange mark on their bodys (caused by a newer version of the blight) And so they start exploring the city and try to survive while figuring out what is behind the mark to eventually discover that is was this guy they met earlier and fight him in the catacombs under the castle. Here they would discover not only that there is bigger power behin the demon blight but also what happend to the 50 men who where caputured a year ago. After one year of experimenting they didnt durn into demons or monster but their body mutated. They became Tieflings ( I wanted to create a story reason for this race because with the current story of my world their couldnt be any Tieflings prior to this events. Of course 50 Tieflings would be way to few but its not the only city where such things happend at this time)
After the fight with Mars the players can find one antidote for the blight. They could use it for one of them or use it to safe the daugher of the lord, or used it so cure the boy i mentioned above because i too was infected with the PCs)
Of Course the outcome could be complety different depending on what the players will do but this would be my generell ideo for the first part of this story arc. After the events the party would have a reason to stay together, after all they are still infected and need to find i cure:D
I would really appreciate if you guys could give me feedback on my scenario so far. I am only DMing for the second time with this (all my players are also new to DnD) and i dont really have someone i could ask for feedback about this^^
If you read all of this long text then thank you very much you guys are the best^^
Honestly, this seems like a very interesting first premise! It's also impressive that you've written this out as a non-native English speaker, so pat yourself on the back! I do think there are a couple things you should take into consideration though.
For one, the players might not go exploring, because I know that if it was me I'd run. An untold number of demons? Better get the heck out of there! So, here's a suggestion. Make sure that Mars has figured out some way to get the city on lockdown- the last thing he wants is somebody escaping and telling the world what happened. Magic forcefield, demons patrolling the perimeter, or maybe the city is in the middle of some "island" surrounded by a river or a canyon to big to cross, and Mars collapsed the only bridges to get in and out. Maybe he spiked those drinks with a bit more than the blight, and it prevents anyone who drinks it from leaving the city, or else they suffer immense pain and/or death.
Another quick suggestion, you need to think about how the events here would effect the outside world. There was just a reasonably sized tournament, and people are going to get suspicious when nobody comes back home. Also, if you plan to continue the storyline and have it be about the players curing themselves, it could be interesting to have Mars escape somehow, and now the players are after his head. Or they do end up killing him, but they figure out that someone else taught him the method of making the blight. Now scatter a few clues across the world, maybe this "teacher" is just spreading the method randomly in hopes of tearing the kingdom or someone else down, or he's doing it more methodically. I don't want to go to into detail about this scenario though because I'm not sure if you want Mars to still be the main villain of the campaign or not.
Say you do want him to be the main villain- but the players kill him. Mars has a failsafe for this, since he assumed that with all of these strong people around something could go wrong. Maybe he infects himself with a special strain of the blight to revive himself or make it look like he's dead, or maybe he makes a pact with a powerful demon who wants to see the return of it's race to the world. Either way, he gets revived after the players leave. It could be interesting in this case to have the players return later to the ruined city searching for clues- only to discover his body is gone.
Also, make sure that the characters form an emotional attachment to the other infected NPCs if you want them to have a real moral dilemma with that last antidote. Also consider the possibility that none of them will take it, and they may save it in order to show it to someone with the know-how to make more of it later. If that happens, make sure there are other reasons for the PCs to continue the plotline even after being cured. Maybe they discover that Mars has plans to strike again, this time in one of the PC's hometowns, etc.
Anyhow, that was just some spitballing, hopefully some of it is useful to you. But most importantly, have fun!
Honestly, this seems like a very interesting first premise! It's also impressive that you've written this out as a non-native English speaker, so pat yourself on the back! I do think there are a couple things you should take into consideration though.
For one, the players might not go exploring, because I know that if it was me I'd run. An untold number of demons? Better get the heck out of there! So, here's a suggestion. Make sure that Mars has figured out some way to get the city on lockdown- the last thing he wants is somebody escaping and telling the world what happened. Magic forcefield, demons patrolling the perimeter, or maybe the city is in the middle of some "island" surrounded by a river or a canyon to big to cross, and Mars collapsed the only bridges to get in and out. Maybe he spiked those drinks with a bit more than the blight, and it prevents anyone who drinks it from leaving the city, or else they suffer immense pain and/or death.
Another quick suggestion, you need to think about how the events here would effect the outside world. There was just a reasonably sized tournament, and people are going to get suspicious when nobody comes back home. Also, if you plan to continue the storyline and have it be about the players curing themselves, it could be interesting to have Mars escape somehow, and now the players are after his head. Or they do end up killing him, but they figure out that someone else taught him the method of making the blight. Now scatter a few clues across the world, maybe this "teacher" is just spreading the method randomly in hopes of tearing the kingdom or someone else down, or he's doing it more methodically. I don't want to go to into detail about this scenario though because I'm not sure if you want Mars to still be the main villain of the campaign or not.
Say you do want him to be the main villain- but the players kill him. Mars has a failsafe for this, since he assumed that with all of these strong people around something could go wrong. Maybe he infects himself with a special strain of the blight to revive himself or make it look like he's dead, or maybe he makes a pact with a powerful demon who wants to see the return of it's race to the world. Either way, he gets revived after the players leave. It could be interesting in this case to have the players return later to the ruined city searching for clues- only to discover his body is gone.
Also, make sure that the characters form an emotional attachment to the other infected NPCs if you want them to have a real moral dilemma with that last antidote. Also consider the possibility that none of them will take it, and they may save it in order to show it to someone with the know-how to make more of it later. If that happens, make sure there are other reasons for the PCs to continue the plotline even after being cured. Maybe they discover that Mars has plans to strike again, this time in one of the PC's hometowns, etc.
Anyhow, that was just some spitballing, hopefully some of it is useful to you. But most importantly, have fun!
Thanks for the answer. You were a great help. I had already thought about many of the tings you mentioned but nevertheless you were a great help!
You being that far ahead of me means that those players are in for one sick game! Have fun! :D