Hello! I am DMing my third long-form campaign and it is loosely inspired by Ghosts of Saltmarsh and the Sea Princes.
Set up:
We are only 4 sessions in and I am building up the player character's backgrounds and conflicts. We have a Leonin being hunted by his fellow felines for a smuggling deal gone wrong, A Tortle with a group of Kou-Toa attempting to help him achieve Godhood, and a Swashbuckler with a sentient sword guiding him to collect the treasures of pirates lost to Legend. The PC Captain of the crew wants to be a cleric of Umbrelee, having made a deal with her when the captain was marooned and at their lowest.
I would love to give this plotline attention, and also not overshadow the other threads that will be weaved through the story.
Behind the scenes:
For this campaign, I plan to have Aspects of Gods in the world. There is a (currently undecided) God who has turned a Queen into their Aspect, and uses this to rule a substantial kingdom whose navy is attempting to break up the Sea Prince's hold on the Sword Coast.
Then there is Umberlee, who attempted to turn a drowning sailor into her Aspect as the other God did and ended up turning him into a Broken Vessel. He is an adversary for the party to face a few times as an undead Captain of drowned sailors; I want him to be a cautionary tale for the Captain of what can happen when dealing with Umberlee.
The Captain is in an interesting position that she wants to become the Pirate Queen among the Princes by entering "The Game," but doing so goes against the creed of Umberlee's Church; never overshadow her. The Player admits that her character was meant to be Lawful Evil and a shrewd businesswoman, but after finding a found family in the players' crew and developing relationships with NPCs met in these 4 sessions, she says she sees her Cleric having a change of heart and regretting her alliance with Umberlee. To back out of the deal means losing her power and at worse, making an enemy of a God.
Ideas:
I plan to take the characters relatively far in terms of levels, and for this to be a campaign that will take over a year to tell if we meet consistently.
My current thought is that Umberlee is going to double-cross the Cleric. She is aware of the second thoughts and waning hold on the Captain, and makes an offer to assist the pirate in becoming the Pirate Queen-- planning on turning her into an Aspect once she achieves power over the Seas. It is a long con but could lead to an interesting finale, and if the Kou-Toa have anything to say about it there will be a Kaiju fight between the Tortle and Umberlee.
The part I am struggling with is
1. Writing Umberlee into scenes, especially when the Captain starts to go against her Church,
2. Roleplaying as the Goddess in session, and making her attempts to keep her hold over the Captain believable,
3. Preventing this from becoming a plotline that overshadows the other players' storylines. *I.E a 20-minute session where Umberlee taunts the Captain with offers while the other players just watch.
*At present, the crew does not know the Captain worships Umberlee, and the one NPC from her past that does is trying to find a loophole to get the Captain out of it.
Conclusion:
Sorry to prattle on about this, I am excited to see where the crew goes in their adventures, but I haven't incorporated active Deities into a storyline before, and want to make sure it is handled well without leaving the rest of the party out. Have you guys had any similar experiences, and how have you incorporated Gods into your campaigns?
Thank you for taking the time to look at my post by the way! I look forward to seeing what we can come up with!
1. I usually use dreams when I want to bring in patrons/deities in my campaign. Perhaps you could make Umberlee inhabit the player's shadow, so she's always there whispering in the back of the mind and when it's a big scene, she manifests a form from the shadow.
To begin with I would say Umberlee would offer warnings - this also gives the player the chance to try and work something out or maybe trick Umberlee. When one of my players (a warlock) was having trouble with his patron he managed to successfully deceive them into believing the fault lay with another PC - Such warnings can be kept short. Eventually if/when the PC refuses to change, however, I think you're going to have disown her in some way
You could potentially have Umberlee 'disown' the cleric and then have a new spirit/entity offer her support, spouting some line about how she admired PC's courage in challenging their beliefs at the risk of losing their power and that this new entity seeks humanoids like the PC to do her will (However, this new entity is Umberlee in disguise. To make it really tricky, you could have Umberlee disguise herself as male entity or perhaps they're a servant of Umberlee sent to keep the character in her thrall, while letting them think they got away).
2. I'm personally not sure how you could let this PC act against Umberlee and yet keep her patronage, not without making it obvious you're up to something. If you do stick with a direct contract, however, I would personally role-play as a kind of a disney villainess - you know fully of honeyed words and dark threats. First she tries bribes then threats and then finally ultimatums. However, if the PC resists all that then I'm not sure how you could make keeping hold of her believable. You could try and make a re-working of the deal:
For this route, what you'd want is to make a believable way for Umberlee to back down - maybe after all her bribes and threats have failed, she makes the ultimate point of then I will be taking back your powers, returning you to the useless figure you were. There is no way this relationship can work. Then have her finish off with some nice honeyed line like I actually thought you were interesting for a humanoid or I really thought we could have done something great together and then have her very slowly depart - giving the player plenty of opportunity to propose a new deal. If they don't take the bait, have a day or a few days of in game time with the PC without her powers and have Umberlee come back and try and win her back, show her how much she struggled without her powers. If the player says no, have Umberlee act disappointed and then have a 'sudden' thought strike her - what if they made a new deal, something like in exchange for a certain favour, Umberlee will return the powers and they'll both go their separate ways or whatever false deal you think would work best.
A general point for trying to figure out how to make it believable is to think who is Umberlee in your world? What are her goals and plots? What are her preferred methods of achieving said goals? Subterfuge? The direct approach? - the more you understand of her character, the easier it will be to figure out the way she works
If you go the route I've suggested then RP would depend on what form Umberlee takes or the servant she sends to act as her secret envoy. A general point I would make is if you're really trying to be tricksy about this, make the player feel like they have to work to get a new patron. Make a short, group quest out of it - a search for a sacred treasure, repairing a broken shrine or ...
3. I have a lot of situations like this in my campaign - I find the others seem to enjoy this stuff, but talk to your players about this I would say, perhaps after you've done one of these scenes. See their reactions and then plan accordingly. Regardless what you need to do is draw them all into this somehow. For example, I had a player dreaming about a mysterious goblet and cries for help that led the party to a spider infested forest where they all had to work together to free a cursed unicorn servant of the PC's deity who had been corrupted by dark magic. It was great fun. Perhaps the captain's PC will end up taken over by Umberlee and the others will have to rescue her. It seems to me that this is going to become a prominent plot line in your story so just make sure you draw them all into it.
As a general rule of thumb when RP gods and mythic entities, I would say less is better. The more appearances they have, the harder it is to conceal things and the more 'normal' they get. You want them to show up irregularly, offer advice, make threats or demands, or whatever. However, they appear, try to make it mystical - strange dreams, other realms, time stopping for everyone but you, unexpected arrivals. If you want a creepy vibe, talk of empty wastelands, creeping shadows, etc. If you want a powerful, scary vibe then think thunderstorms and lightning.
I'm not sure if this was exactly what you were looking for, but I hope it helps. Best of luck. It sounds like you have a really interesting campaign going here.
Offer the cleric a clear cut from Umberlee (it's funny, I live near a place called "Umberleigh"). Another deity better suited to her goals (or a patron if she wants to swap cleric levels for warlock) offers her a deal. If she takes it, she can do what she wanted to (yay!) but umberlee is now seeking her out for petty revenge.
Not sure on umberlee's personality, but if they want to screw her over they would engineer a situation where she has to come back to her as a servant, rather than just wanting to make her pay. The old deal with a god thing, they don't care about killing mortals - it's their souls that matter!
1. Writing Umberlee into scenes, especially when the Captain starts to go against her Church,
My take, less is definitely more here. If the deity were to directly intervene, what would be the purpose of trying to influence others to do your bidding? Why not just do it yourself and save the headache and potential for failure? I might suggest that a diety wouldn't be able to manifest directly, so some type of vengeful hand or messenger would be manifest to pay the betrayer a visit. Maybe with the intent of reminding said betrayer what is at stake. Maybe threaten to make this known to the crew? (Really just spit-balling the last part)
2. Roleplaying as the Goddess in session, and making her attempts to keep her hold over the Captain believable,
My perspective on gods and belief in them is one of personal choice, not deity choice. The deity doesn't get to decide what the outcome is, only if they grant or withold their particular boons and abilities. RP for the goddess would follow the same vein as that of any other NPC with a goal and a personality. What would be believable to your players as an enticement to stay loyal to someone who is predetermined to betray them, at a critical moment in their life?
3. Preventing this from becoming a plotline that overshadows the other players' storylines. *I.E a 20-minute session where Umberlee taunts the Captain with offers while the other players just watch.
*At present, the crew does not know the Captain worships Umberlee, and the one NPC from her past that does is trying to find a loophole to get the Captain out of it.
An attempt to prevent overshadowing could be to include them in the plotline. Allow the other players to have an impact on the overall outcome. D&D is a group sport, let the group participate.
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“Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one's lifetime.” - Mark Twain - Innocents Abroad
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Hello! I am DMing my third long-form campaign and it is loosely inspired by Ghosts of Saltmarsh and the Sea Princes.
Set up:
We are only 4 sessions in and I am building up the player character's backgrounds and conflicts. We have a Leonin being hunted by his fellow felines for a smuggling deal gone wrong, A Tortle with a group of Kou-Toa attempting to help him achieve Godhood, and a Swashbuckler with a sentient sword guiding him to collect the treasures of pirates lost to Legend. The PC Captain of the crew wants to be a cleric of Umbrelee, having made a deal with her when the captain was marooned and at their lowest.
I would love to give this plotline attention, and also not overshadow the other threads that will be weaved through the story.
Behind the scenes:
For this campaign, I plan to have Aspects of Gods in the world. There is a (currently undecided) God who has turned a Queen into their Aspect, and uses this to rule a substantial kingdom whose navy is attempting to break up the Sea Prince's hold on the Sword Coast.
Then there is Umberlee, who attempted to turn a drowning sailor into her Aspect as the other God did and ended up turning him into a Broken Vessel. He is an adversary for the party to face a few times as an undead Captain of drowned sailors; I want him to be a cautionary tale for the Captain of what can happen when dealing with Umberlee.
The Captain is in an interesting position that she wants to become the Pirate Queen among the Princes by entering "The Game," but doing so goes against the creed of Umberlee's Church; never overshadow her. The Player admits that her character was meant to be Lawful Evil and a shrewd businesswoman, but after finding a found family in the players' crew and developing relationships with NPCs met in these 4 sessions, she says she sees her Cleric having a change of heart and regretting her alliance with Umberlee. To back out of the deal means losing her power and at worse, making an enemy of a God.
Ideas:
I plan to take the characters relatively far in terms of levels, and for this to be a campaign that will take over a year to tell if we meet consistently.
My current thought is that Umberlee is going to double-cross the Cleric. She is aware of the second thoughts and waning hold on the Captain, and makes an offer to assist the pirate in becoming the Pirate Queen-- planning on turning her into an Aspect once she achieves power over the Seas. It is a long con but could lead to an interesting finale, and if the Kou-Toa have anything to say about it there will be a Kaiju fight between the Tortle and Umberlee.
The part I am struggling with is
1. Writing Umberlee into scenes, especially when the Captain starts to go against her Church,
2. Roleplaying as the Goddess in session, and making her attempts to keep her hold over the Captain believable,
3. Preventing this from becoming a plotline that overshadows the other players' storylines. *I.E a 20-minute session where Umberlee taunts the Captain with offers while the other players just watch.
*At present, the crew does not know the Captain worships Umberlee, and the one NPC from her past that does is trying to find a loophole to get the Captain out of it.
Conclusion:
Sorry to prattle on about this, I am excited to see where the crew goes in their adventures, but I haven't incorporated active Deities into a storyline before, and want to make sure it is handled well without leaving the rest of the party out. Have you guys had any similar experiences, and how have you incorporated Gods into your campaigns?
Thank you for taking the time to look at my post by the way! I look forward to seeing what we can come up with!
1. I usually use dreams when I want to bring in patrons/deities in my campaign. Perhaps you could make Umberlee inhabit the player's shadow, so she's always there whispering in the back of the mind and when it's a big scene, she manifests a form from the shadow.
To begin with I would say Umberlee would offer warnings - this also gives the player the chance to try and work something out or maybe trick Umberlee. When one of my players (a warlock) was having trouble with his patron he managed to successfully deceive them into believing the fault lay with another PC - Such warnings can be kept short. Eventually if/when the PC refuses to change, however, I think you're going to have disown her in some way
You could potentially have Umberlee 'disown' the cleric and then have a new spirit/entity offer her support, spouting some line about how she admired PC's courage in challenging their beliefs at the risk of losing their power and that this new entity seeks humanoids like the PC to do her will (However, this new entity is Umberlee in disguise. To make it really tricky, you could have Umberlee disguise herself as male entity or perhaps they're a servant of Umberlee sent to keep the character in her thrall, while letting them think they got away).
2. I'm personally not sure how you could let this PC act against Umberlee and yet keep her patronage, not without making it obvious you're up to something. If you do stick with a direct contract, however, I would personally role-play as a kind of a disney villainess - you know fully of honeyed words and dark threats. First she tries bribes then threats and then finally ultimatums. However, if the PC resists all that then I'm not sure how you could make keeping hold of her believable. You could try and make a re-working of the deal:
For this route, what you'd want is to make a believable way for Umberlee to back down - maybe after all her bribes and threats have failed, she makes the ultimate point of then I will be taking back your powers, returning you to the useless figure you were. There is no way this relationship can work. Then have her finish off with some nice honeyed line like I actually thought you were interesting for a humanoid or I really thought we could have done something great together and then have her very slowly depart - giving the player plenty of opportunity to propose a new deal. If they don't take the bait, have a day or a few days of in game time with the PC without her powers and have Umberlee come back and try and win her back, show her how much she struggled without her powers. If the player says no, have Umberlee act disappointed and then have a 'sudden' thought strike her - what if they made a new deal, something like in exchange for a certain favour, Umberlee will return the powers and they'll both go their separate ways or whatever false deal you think would work best.
A general point for trying to figure out how to make it believable is to think who is Umberlee in your world? What are her goals and plots? What are her preferred methods of achieving said goals? Subterfuge? The direct approach? - the more you understand of her character, the easier it will be to figure out the way she works
If you go the route I've suggested then RP would depend on what form Umberlee takes or the servant she sends to act as her secret envoy. A general point I would make is if you're really trying to be tricksy about this, make the player feel like they have to work to get a new patron. Make a short, group quest out of it - a search for a sacred treasure, repairing a broken shrine or ...
3. I have a lot of situations like this in my campaign - I find the others seem to enjoy this stuff, but talk to your players about this I would say, perhaps after you've done one of these scenes. See their reactions and then plan accordingly. Regardless what you need to do is draw them all into this somehow. For example, I had a player dreaming about a mysterious goblet and cries for help that led the party to a spider infested forest where they all had to work together to free a cursed unicorn servant of the PC's deity who had been corrupted by dark magic. It was great fun. Perhaps the captain's PC will end up taken over by Umberlee and the others will have to rescue her. It seems to me that this is going to become a prominent plot line in your story so just make sure you draw them all into it.
As a general rule of thumb when RP gods and mythic entities, I would say less is better. The more appearances they have, the harder it is to conceal things and the more 'normal' they get. You want them to show up irregularly, offer advice, make threats or demands, or whatever. However, they appear, try to make it mystical - strange dreams, other realms, time stopping for everyone but you, unexpected arrivals. If you want a creepy vibe, talk of empty wastelands, creeping shadows, etc. If you want a powerful, scary vibe then think thunderstorms and lightning.
I'm not sure if this was exactly what you were looking for, but I hope it helps. Best of luck. It sounds like you have a really interesting campaign going here.
Offer the cleric a clear cut from Umberlee (it's funny, I live near a place called "Umberleigh"). Another deity better suited to her goals (or a patron if she wants to swap cleric levels for warlock) offers her a deal. If she takes it, she can do what she wanted to (yay!) but umberlee is now seeking her out for petty revenge.
Not sure on umberlee's personality, but if they want to screw her over they would engineer a situation where she has to come back to her as a servant, rather than just wanting to make her pay. The old deal with a god thing, they don't care about killing mortals - it's their souls that matter!
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My take, less is definitely more here. If the deity were to directly intervene, what would be the purpose of trying to influence others to do your bidding? Why not just do it yourself and save the headache and potential for failure? I might suggest that a diety wouldn't be able to manifest directly, so some type of vengeful hand or messenger would be manifest to pay the betrayer a visit. Maybe with the intent of reminding said betrayer what is at stake. Maybe threaten to make this known to the crew? (Really just spit-balling the last part)
My perspective on gods and belief in them is one of personal choice, not deity choice. The deity doesn't get to decide what the outcome is, only if they grant or withold their particular boons and abilities. RP for the goddess would follow the same vein as that of any other NPC with a goal and a personality. What would be believable to your players as an enticement to stay loyal to someone who is predetermined to betray them, at a critical moment in their life?
An attempt to prevent overshadowing could be to include them in the plotline. Allow the other players to have an impact on the overall outcome. D&D is a group sport, let the group participate.
“Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one's lifetime.” - Mark Twain - Innocents Abroad