So I've been kicking around this idea for a level 1-16 campaign for while but it need some refinement, care to input some thoughts?
The setup: We start with the large cosmopolitan city-state of Liierathymbul. About 10 years ago refugees started pouring out of the Underdark, fist as a trickle, then a stream, now in a torrent. This has thrown the world in disarray, economies all over the continent have been upended, food supplies are being stretched like they never have been for, and the balance of power has been completely reset in regions where whole armies pledge themselves to surface lords that offer land. Liierathymbul has a larger population of refugees than anywhere else because half of the city is actually in the Underdark. Deep Gnomes, Grey Dwarves, and Dark Elves are now common place throughout the city. Prejudice and mistrust abounds.
Level 1-4: I'll mine the PCs Backstories to try and connect them to a local up and coming gang. This gang is made up of surface dwellers who's livelihoods has been threatened by the Deep Folk. These early levels will probably be about protecting the refugees in a particular neighborhood and combating this gang. If you have any ideas for conflicts or ways to make this more compelling let me know.
Level 5-10: Their dismantling of the gang will probably gain them notice from the city government. They will probably have a few self contained missions before they get into the meat of the arc: the disappearances. Deep Dwellers have been disappearing left and right but now one has really cared, but now even surface dwellers are disappearing at an alarming rate. The players will unravel a trafficking conspiracy, Drow slavers have been taking people back into the Underdark and have been becoming increasingly desperate. This arc will end with them destroying this operation.
Level 10-13: at this point they are big damn heros. A Mordenkainen-type wizard, frustrated that world leaders are too distracted by the refugee crisis to worry about the root concern, has a job for the players: find out what the hell is going on in the Underdark. The Underdark is infested with a seemingly infinite horde of strange monsters. The players will eventually make it to what turns out to be the last Drow city. There, the Drow have made an alliance of desperation with the last of the Lillithed. There they make their stand, with most of the Drow population being offered up as puppets to the Mind Flayers who conduct the endless meat grinder of a battle against these mindless grey monsters. This arc will end with an epic battle for the Drow city.
Level 13-16: It is the Aboleth. After millions of years, an Aboleth known as The Center has unleashed its plan. Trillions of Thralls will blanket the world, starting in the Underdark. The world has one hope. Deep in the Underdark, a weapon of the gods sleeps, the Tarrasque (not the MM Tarrasque, this is a statless godlike creature). The party must awaken the beast and point it like a missile at The Center and escape the Underdark with their lives.
Maybe a follow up campaign set 10 years later? After the Tarrasque kills The Center it makes it's way to the surface causing devastation. A group of new PCs must find a way to make the Tarrasque mortal so that it can be killed.
So any insight? Everything is pretty vague in my mind but I think this could be a pretty cool premise.
I do mostly home brew campaigns and TBH the less work you do the better in some ways. It's fine to have a background and history for the world amd mayybe even a general idea of what direction you want the campaign to go but getting too detailed or invested in a predetermined plot can hamper the whole thing. See what your players come up with or do in game and let that inform how the world progresses.
For one thing it is a super dower as a DM when you spend hours working on something and the players go off in a completely different direction and never get to do the thing you worked on. On the flip side it's super shitty for the players when they get railroaded into a specific series of events with only one possible solution.
Typically I'll have a very vague idea of the end qoal at the beginning of a campaign but will let the who what where when and why be answered naturally through play. And I usually don't have more than 2 or 3 max sessions worth of story planned at a time.
With that said the idea sounds great and I'm sure the players will love it. Could really be a good set up for some interesting party combos IE how do a drow paladin and a high elf warlock come to terms and work on the same side
I agree with you, I've been burned in the past by world building too much. I would have a few prompts at session zero.
1.What is your tie to the city and community? Why did you come here/back/never leave?
2. If your life wasn't interrupted were do you see your life going?
3. How do you feel about how much the city has changed in the last decade?
Hopefully I can foster a sense of shared connection between the players. I'll encourage some of them to already know each other as well, but won't force it.
I'll limit the races to Elves, Dwarves, Goblinoids, Humans, Orcs, Gnomes, and Halflings of all Subraces, excluding Sea elf, Shadar-Kai, Eladrin, or Ghost-Wise.
Use the appendix in the monster manual or the drow stats in the MM to have some small encounters to level them up early on.
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All stars fade. Some stars forever fall. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Homebrew:Magic Items,Monsters,Spells,Subclasses ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- If there was no light, people wouldn't fear the dark.
When you say that the city is half in the underdark do you actually mean the under dark or just underground or like dwarven cities
Most of the city sprawls between a river and a mesa. The city started as a Deep Gnome city under the mesa in the Underdark. Then Rock Gnomes carved a settlement on the surface of the mesa (think santorini) to trade with their deep kin. Humans eventually settled in the valley between the river and mesa and over time these settlements became one metropolis.
I wouldn't say it's that big. The Mesa district and Under district each make up about 20% of the city. The sprawling surface districts were spread out but not densely populated until folks started pouring out of the Underdark. The city's population has almost quadrupled in the past 10 years. The Glass maker guild has made a killing selling sun glasses lol
You could start with say a festival of some kind where the party all meet to compete in various competitions. Simple stuff like archery wrestling or races. At the end of the festival there is a big distribution of free food for the refugees. But a few hours later hundreds of the refugees fall sick and dozens die from an unknown poison.
Have the party hear about it or maybe even get sick depending on their races.
You you have a group of angry humans elfs dwarfs or such be behind it and set themselves up as a take back the city type terrorist group. Could have a good 5 6 session arch with the party hired to investigate and bringing the terrorist to justice
There could be a tavern that only caters to surfacers. The owner and barkeep wouldn’t personally keep the “Unders” out, but the gang that has adopted it as their social hotspot takes it on themselves to remove Unders that come in and make it unpleasant enough that no more will come in. This place should be a paradox to the players because it’s really a fun, lively place with great atmosphere and games. There could be card games at tables they can play, Get some Liar’s Dice in there. Beer pong. Some 3 dragon ante (which I believe is like 3 card monty). All playable by the players who can be in there without being identified as an “other” race. But at the same time, these are the racists, possibly the antagonists of the story arc. But here, they seem like fun, pleasant people.
An encounter that could happen there is one gang member is always looking for a game of darts. If the party is seeking information, this guy will talk if someone plays a match with him. If they somehow beat him, he’ll take them to the front door of the place they need to go (and disable the trap on the door, but there’s no reason to give away the knowledge of traps being involved, so he doesn’t tell them it’s part of the bargain.).
It could be fun to see anxiety on the party if they have to split up (“We don’t serve their kind here.”) to interact with this location. They may decide to start a barfight to defend their discriminated party mates, or they may go along to get along. There are rules for darts games using dice and character stats out there. If you’re interested, I’ve created my own that’s fun enough my kids have asked to play with me out of game. I can DM the rules to you. They’re short. As befitting a quick game within another game.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
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So I've been kicking around this idea for a level 1-16 campaign for while but it need some refinement, care to input some thoughts?
The setup: We start with the large cosmopolitan city-state of Liierathymbul. About 10 years ago refugees started pouring out of the Underdark, fist as a trickle, then a stream, now in a torrent. This has thrown the world in disarray, economies all over the continent have been upended, food supplies are being stretched like they never have been for, and the balance of power has been completely reset in regions where whole armies pledge themselves to surface lords that offer land. Liierathymbul has a larger population of refugees than anywhere else because half of the city is actually in the Underdark. Deep Gnomes, Grey Dwarves, and Dark Elves are now common place throughout the city. Prejudice and mistrust abounds.
Level 1-4: I'll mine the PCs Backstories to try and connect them to a local up and coming gang. This gang is made up of surface dwellers who's livelihoods has been threatened by the Deep Folk. These early levels will probably be about protecting the refugees in a particular neighborhood and combating this gang. If you have any ideas for conflicts or ways to make this more compelling let me know.
Level 5-10: Their dismantling of the gang will probably gain them notice from the city government. They will probably have a few self contained missions before they get into the meat of the arc: the disappearances. Deep Dwellers have been disappearing left and right but now one has really cared, but now even surface dwellers are disappearing at an alarming rate. The players will unravel a trafficking conspiracy, Drow slavers have been taking people back into the Underdark and have been becoming increasingly desperate. This arc will end with them destroying this operation.
Level 10-13: at this point they are big damn heros. A Mordenkainen-type wizard, frustrated that world leaders are too distracted by the refugee crisis to worry about the root concern, has a job for the players: find out what the hell is going on in the Underdark. The Underdark is infested with a seemingly infinite horde of strange monsters. The players will eventually make it to what turns out to be the last Drow city. There, the Drow have made an alliance of desperation with the last of the Lillithed. There they make their stand, with most of the Drow population being offered up as puppets to the Mind Flayers who conduct the endless meat grinder of a battle against these mindless grey monsters. This arc will end with an epic battle for the Drow city.
Level 13-16: It is the Aboleth. After millions of years, an Aboleth known as The Center has unleashed its plan. Trillions of Thralls will blanket the world, starting in the Underdark. The world has one hope. Deep in the Underdark, a weapon of the gods sleeps, the Tarrasque (not the MM Tarrasque, this is a statless godlike creature). The party must awaken the beast and point it like a missile at The Center and escape the Underdark with their lives.
Maybe a follow up campaign set 10 years later? After the Tarrasque kills The Center it makes it's way to the surface causing devastation. A group of new PCs must find a way to make the Tarrasque mortal so that it can be killed.
So any insight? Everything is pretty vague in my mind but I think this could be a pretty cool premise.
I do mostly home brew campaigns and TBH the less work you do the better in some ways. It's fine to have a background and history for the world amd mayybe even a general idea of what direction you want the campaign to go but getting too detailed or invested in a predetermined plot can hamper the whole thing. See what your players come up with or do in game and let that inform how the world progresses.
For one thing it is a super dower as a DM when you spend hours working on something and the players go off in a completely different direction and never get to do the thing you worked on. On the flip side it's super shitty for the players when they get railroaded into a specific series of events with only one possible solution.
Typically I'll have a very vague idea of the end qoal at the beginning of a campaign but will let the who what where when and why be answered naturally through play. And I usually don't have more than 2 or 3 max sessions worth of story planned at a time.
With that said the idea sounds great and I'm sure the players will love it. Could really be a good set up for some interesting party combos IE how do a drow paladin and a high elf warlock come to terms and work on the same side
I agree with you, I've been burned in the past by world building too much. I would have a few prompts at session zero.
1.What is your tie to the city and community? Why did you come here/back/never leave?
2. If your life wasn't interrupted were do you see your life going?
3. How do you feel about how much the city has changed in the last decade?
Hopefully I can foster a sense of shared connection between the players. I'll encourage some of them to already know each other as well, but won't force it.
I'll limit the races to Elves, Dwarves, Goblinoids, Humans, Orcs, Gnomes, and Halflings of all Subraces, excluding Sea elf, Shadar-Kai, Eladrin, or Ghost-Wise.
Use the appendix in the monster manual or the drow stats in the MM to have some small encounters to level them up early on.
All stars fade. Some stars forever fall.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Homebrew: Magic Items, Monsters, Spells, Subclasses
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
If there was no light, people wouldn't fear the dark.
When you say that the city is half in the underdark do you actually mean the under dark or just underground or like dwarven cities
Most of the city sprawls between a river and a mesa. The city started as a Deep Gnome city under the mesa in the Underdark. Then Rock Gnomes carved a settlement on the surface of the mesa (think santorini) to trade with their deep kin. Humans eventually settled in the valley between the river and mesa and over time these settlements became one metropolis.
So size and scale is really more like a mega city. IE ravnica in MTG
I wouldn't say it's that big. The Mesa district and Under district each make up about 20% of the city. The sprawling surface districts were spread out but not densely populated until folks started pouring out of the Underdark. The city's population has almost quadrupled in the past 10 years. The Glass maker guild has made a killing selling sun glasses lol
So what I actually need are some good plot hooks and encounter ideas.
You could start with say a festival of some kind where the party all meet to compete in various competitions. Simple stuff like archery wrestling or races. At the end of the festival there is a big distribution of free food for the refugees. But a few hours later hundreds of the refugees fall sick and dozens die from an unknown poison.
Have the party hear about it or maybe even get sick depending on their races.
You you have a group of angry humans elfs dwarfs or such be behind it and set themselves up as a take back the city type terrorist group. Could have a good 5 6 session arch with the party hired to investigate and bringing the terrorist to justice
There could be a tavern that only caters to surfacers. The owner and barkeep wouldn’t personally keep the “Unders” out, but the gang that has adopted it as their social hotspot takes it on themselves to remove Unders that come in and make it unpleasant enough that no more will come in. This place should be a paradox to the players because it’s really a fun, lively place with great atmosphere and games. There could be card games at tables they can play, Get some Liar’s Dice in there. Beer pong. Some 3 dragon ante (which I believe is like 3 card monty). All playable by the players who can be in there without being identified as an “other” race. But at the same time, these are the racists, possibly the antagonists of the story arc. But here, they seem like fun, pleasant people.
An encounter that could happen there is one gang member is always looking for a game of darts. If the party is seeking information, this guy will talk if someone plays a match with him. If they somehow beat him, he’ll take them to the front door of the place they need to go (and disable the trap on the door, but there’s no reason to give away the knowledge of traps being involved, so he doesn’t tell them it’s part of the bargain.).
It could be fun to see anxiety on the party if they have to split up (“We don’t serve their kind here.”) to interact with this location. They may decide to start a barfight to defend their discriminated party mates, or they may go along to get along. There are rules for darts games using dice and character stats out there. If you’re interested, I’ve created my own that’s fun enough my kids have asked to play with me out of game. I can DM the rules to you. They’re short. As befitting a quick game within another game.