First time posting here and was looking for some assistance, i am starting a game in about a weeks time and am still struggling with the overall story. My two campaign ideas follow similar structure but have a few differences, im looking for feedback and help fleshing out these stories overall.
Background: This is a homebrew realm consisting of Dwarves, Humans, Elves, Halfling. There are no orcs, tiefling, or dragonborn. Other monster races exist. The realm was historically ruled by dwarves, they held the largest land mass consisting of ~50% total land. The other races split the remaining land areas. The dwarven capital of Brazenthrone was the largest city with a population of around ~23k. Shortly after the coronation of a new king the gates of the city were mysteriously and suddenly closed, entombing anyone inside. Once the the seat of the empire was lost, with all the high clans, army, and access to the treasury and the power that money buys was lost, the empire went into a steep decline. At the time of the campaign start only ~1k dwarves remain, the elves and man filling the power vacuum. The players will by DM magic make their way to the long closed gates of the city. They will of course for reasons unknown be granted access to the city, starting a few session long dungeon crawl, once overcoming the many dangers of the city, they will obviously make their way to the treasury. Once they interact with anything they will be hurled back in time by an artifact to about a year before the events that caused the collapse of the city.
BBEG 1: The first idea for a BBEG and motivation was a Single Archmage, the head of the elven Shadow Ministry (see CIA) who was acting as a rogue, bad actor, intent on causing the collapse of the dwarven kingdom.
BBEG 2:The second idea for a BBEG was a cabal of wizards acting as a defacto illuminati in the realm, guiding the realm by puppeting the governments and organisations of the realm. Each of the 4 wizards would specialise in Divination as well as an additional school of magic. This could be 4 completely different wizards, or a single wizard utilising cloning. This would give a boss for every tier of play 1-4.
Motivation 1: BBEG(s) have divined a future war between the elves and dwarves, as well as an astohereforth unknown enemy, causing the Elven dominion to fight a two-front war, one which they know will be lost. Potential ideas were for Orc's (previously an unknown race in the world) to invade the known realm lead by Gruumsh.
Motivation 2: BBEG(s) have divined that without intervention the dwarven city will unwittingly unleash a god-like evil on the world, this offers some interesting opportunities as the PC would see the loss of the city framed as genocide, trying to stop it, and if they ultimately succeed they will unknowingly be complicit in allowing a god-tier evil to be unleashed on the realm as a whole, instead of a single city being lost the stakes are raised to the entire world.
I would love feedback and ideas about different combinations of these ideas and help fleshing them out.
I love this idea. It reminds me of a Skyrim quest mod, but honestly it's a perfect campaign. The illuminati idea sounds good, perhaps a player is enticed to join them?
So that is something I didn't discuss in the first post, one of my players is actually an agent for the Elven Shadow Ministry (Elven CIA) that is run by the BBEG, they know that they work for the ministry but not that the ministry was involved as they are essentially a low level informant/thief
Purely out of curiosity, where do gnomes fit into this world? Probably just an oversight, but it would be interesting to see how they fit into the world. I would definitely put them into a consortium with the dwarves, seeing as to their industrious and craft, though their personalities may or may not clash. Overall, they might have some interesting dynamics (I'm assuming races outside of the PHB don't exist either, so I won't ask).
Purely out of curiosity, where do gnomes fit into this world? Probably just an oversight, but it would be interesting to see how they fit into the world. I would definitely put them into a consortium with the dwarves, seeing as to their industrious and craft, though their personalities may or may not clash. Overall, they might have some interesting dynamics (I'm assuming races outside of the PHB don't exist either, so I won't ask).
They actually have their own district within the massive capital and the two kingdoms are very close allies, the gnomes in the realm are primarily deep gnomes however small pockets of rock gnomes can be found if you know where to look ;)
Motivation 2 is very interesting and will set up a potentially very powerful choice for the characters to make, as they try to determine the "lesser of two evils."
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WOTC lies. We know that WOTC lies. WOTC knows that we know that WOTC lies. We know that WOTC knows that we know that WOTC lies. And still they lie.
Because of the above (a paraphrase from Orwell) I no longer post to the forums -- PM me if you need help or anything.
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Hi All,
First time posting here and was looking for some assistance, i am starting a game in about a weeks time and am still struggling with the overall story. My two campaign ideas follow similar structure but have a few differences, im looking for feedback and help fleshing out these stories overall.
Background: This is a homebrew realm consisting of Dwarves, Humans, Elves, Halfling. There are no orcs, tiefling, or dragonborn. Other monster races exist. The realm was historically ruled by dwarves, they held the largest land mass consisting of ~50% total land. The other races split the remaining land areas. The dwarven capital of Brazenthrone was the largest city with a population of around ~23k. Shortly after the coronation of a new king the gates of the city were mysteriously and suddenly closed, entombing anyone inside. Once the the seat of the empire was lost, with all the high clans, army, and access to the treasury and the power that money buys was lost, the empire went into a steep decline. At the time of the campaign start only ~1k dwarves remain, the elves and man filling the power vacuum. The players will by DM magic make their way to the long closed gates of the city. They will of course for reasons unknown be granted access to the city, starting a few session long dungeon crawl, once overcoming the many dangers of the city, they will obviously make their way to the treasury. Once they interact with anything they will be hurled back in time by an artifact to about a year before the events that caused the collapse of the city.
BBEG 1: The first idea for a BBEG and motivation was a Single Archmage, the head of the elven Shadow Ministry (see CIA) who was acting as a rogue, bad actor, intent on causing the collapse of the dwarven kingdom.
BBEG 2:The second idea for a BBEG was a cabal of wizards acting as a defacto illuminati in the realm, guiding the realm by puppeting the governments and organisations of the realm. Each of the 4 wizards would specialise in Divination as well as an additional school of magic. This could be 4 completely different wizards, or a single wizard utilising cloning. This would give a boss for every tier of play 1-4.
Motivation 1: BBEG(s) have divined a future war between the elves and dwarves, as well as an astohereforth unknown enemy, causing the Elven dominion to fight a two-front war, one which they know will be lost. Potential ideas were for Orc's (previously an unknown race in the world) to invade the known realm lead by Gruumsh.
Motivation 2: BBEG(s) have divined that without intervention the dwarven city will unwittingly unleash a god-like evil on the world, this offers some interesting opportunities as the PC would see the loss of the city framed as genocide, trying to stop it, and if they ultimately succeed they will unknowingly be complicit in allowing a god-tier evil to be unleashed on the realm as a whole, instead of a single city being lost the stakes are raised to the entire world.
I would love feedback and ideas about different combinations of these ideas and help fleshing them out.
I got a couple of level 1 characters ideas i wanna try out so what platform, I maybe interested in a game, if there is a slot available
I love this idea. It reminds me of a Skyrim quest mod, but honestly it's a perfect campaign. The illuminati idea sounds good, perhaps a player is enticed to join them?
So that is something I didn't discuss in the first post, one of my players is actually an agent for the Elven Shadow Ministry (Elven CIA) that is run by the BBEG, they know that they work for the ministry but not that the ministry was involved as they are essentially a low level informant/thief
ahh okay
Purely out of curiosity, where do gnomes fit into this world? Probably just an oversight, but it would be interesting to see how they fit into the world. I would definitely put them into a consortium with the dwarves, seeing as to their industrious and craft, though their personalities may or may not clash. Overall, they might have some interesting dynamics (I'm assuming races outside of the PHB don't exist either, so I won't ask).
I is the feels good.
- Kefko, the Traveler
They actually have their own district within the massive capital and the two kingdoms are very close allies, the gnomes in the realm are primarily deep gnomes however small pockets of rock gnomes can be found if you know where to look ;)
I like BBEG 2 and Motivation 2.
Motivation 2 is very interesting and will set up a potentially very powerful choice for the characters to make, as they try to determine the "lesser of two evils."
WOTC lies. We know that WOTC lies. WOTC knows that we know that WOTC lies. We know that WOTC knows that we know that WOTC lies. And still they lie.
Because of the above (a paraphrase from Orwell) I no longer post to the forums -- PM me if you need help or anything.