HI, Im a new dm starting a homebrew as my first campaign (ik crazy) so I was wondering for those experienced dm's what are some cool tricks and tips to help me add fun stuff to my campaign. my campaign is a medieval style archipelago with transportation necessary but needs to be fun. ik a lot sorry.
I think this is what you are looking for-- if not well here are some ideas:
Each island worships a different god which creates some friction between the various populous.
Jurassic Park. Island of Dinosaurs.
An island artifact where the people are able to live underwater in special clear domes.
The island of Giants so everything is giant.
Volcanoes. An Island need at least one.
Sky Pirates. Anamorphic humanoids fly an airship that attacks sea-going boats out on the water of people traveling to and from the various islands.
Sea Pirates. Anamorphic sea humanoids who live on the back of a Kraken or Sea Turtles that attacks sea-going boats out on the water of people traveling to and from the various islands.
Cannibal pigs people.
An island where a powerful artifact is being fought over in a civil war.
You could also “borrow” an idea from back in the day and make this archipelago driven by the tourism industry and have it be a place where rich ponces go to have canned “adventures” on vacation. Look into the “Kingdom of Ierendi,” you should be able to find it online for free somewhere (it’s from 1e/2e), and it shouldn’t be too hard to update to/replace stuff with the 5e versions of things.
You could also “borrow” an idea from back in the day and make this archipelago driven by the tourism industry and have it be a place where rich ponces go to have canned “adventures” on vacation.
First of all, I'll second to the video series.
Second, your idea put a new meaning to Fantasy Island.
I always think archipelago campaigns can be treated a bit like Star Trek, where the islands become basically planets. You can have each one with its own personality, and make the adventures completely different from one to the next: meet new people and try to ally with them, explore ancient ruins, fight the monsters, etc. And then there’s this overarching enemy (Klingons or romulans kind of thing) that you run into sometimes, and they can give the players bits of information that will advance the main plot.
I always think archipelago campaigns can be treated a bit like Star Trek, where the islands become basically planets. You can have each one with its own personality, and make the adventures completely different from one to the next: meet new people and try to ally with them, explore ancient ruins, fight the monsters, etc. And then there’s this overarching enemy (Klingons or romulans kind of thing) that you run into sometimes, and they can give the players bits of information that will advance the main plot.
I think I kind of mislead you guys on the archipelago thing there aren't that many islands but i will use the Star trek approach on the couple of smaller outside islands.
One i came up with is a hunter and gatherer style orc society that kidnaps the main org"s (F.C.I. Federal Council of Iza, they are like a super shady government your trying to crumble from the inside) leader"s son and you have to survive the jungle wilderness to find the dungeon he is captured in. also have a massive urge to make his son a huge nerd and everyone calls him a dork even his kidnappers.
You should use traps. Xanathars guide has good traps. Also there is always the SoA.
Mimics are cool for lower level parties. Also there is this monster from Volos that is called a trapper. Big mimic.
Actual traps though:
Have a crawlway that is very small so you have to squeeze through. Past it is a small 2x1 room. Safe for long rest. But only half the party fits.
Small 2x2 room. When players enter, an iron wall slides in and traps them. Then a vent in the ceiling releases gas into the room. Secret door allows escape and leads back to another secret door in a previous corridor. This allows players to spot the trap beforehand. Bonus points if the players eventually find the person with an invisible window and get to beat the crap out of the trapper.
Abandoned lab or prison. Broken vats or cells. One could have an ooze, aberration or prisoner in it. Unlabelled control board. One opens the cell/vat. The other can save a friendly NPC.
Have a secret door leading into a small room with a powerful monster in it. If they don’t open the door beforehand, monster chases them through a long windy corridor ending into a stuck iron door. There are secret doors along the passage that the monster doesn’t know about so the players can go in there. The stuck iron door could lead anywhere, or be trapped.
Glyph of warding with imprisonment spell. Before doing it, make the party split. When glyph activates, don’t tell anybody what happens. Tell the player he/she screams and then have them either roll up new character or wait.
A word to the wise on using traps - try to make them "life or difficult" rather than "life or death". Most of the basic traps seem to be a case of "if you don't see this, you take damage, and that's it done". These only really generate 2 things - feel-bad moments, and then very slow missions as every step is accompanied with a check for traps. If you do include this sort of trap (tripwire and crossbow, and so on) then make sure to give the players reasons to look for them, rather than putting them at random. For example, put them in every place where there is rubble to hide it, so the party will quickly notice that whenever there's rubble, there's a chance of a trap. But I prefer to avoid them entirely.
My preferred traps, as mentioned above, are "life or difficult", where they can either defuse the trap and escape unscathed/partially damaged, or they get knocked out, swept away, cut off, dropped to a lower floor, and so on, making it more difficult for them to continue. I never put traps in which can result in a TPK! nobody likes dying to something which they can't really fight!
For adding fun stuff, with your transportation consider what can go wrong, and include this if you're trying to work out a random encounter table. Keep the weather in mind when describing the scenes so you're not describing it as perfectly sunny and then suddenly as they get on a ship to sail 3 miles across to the next island a thunderstorm manifests from nowhere and washes them ashore on another island, that sort of thing. If you miss your opportunity to have the weather affect them, don't be tempted to make it "magically" happen - unless you have a magical reason for it, of course!
Things to consider to make the world feel more real and to help inspire you to add things:
1: Why? Just keep asking it until you have all the answers, and the answers give you ideas. Why did they steal his son? Why did they take him to a dungeon? Why is the dungeon there? Why was it made? Who made it? What's in it? why can the hunter gatherers get inside it, past the traps?
2: Where is the _? for example, "Where are the druids?" and now you add some stone circles, druid groves, and so on to your world. "Where is the conflict?" and now these two islands are at war, these three houses are in a feud. "where are the shops?", "Where do they get their stuff?", "Where is the food grown?", etc.
3: How do people move around? Sounds like it'll be boats for you, so you need huge jetties and piers for loads of small boats to moor at. If people live on boats, a floating market makes sense, so people don't have to leave their boats to shop. Perhaps a floating circus which travels around, and so on.
HI, Im a new dm starting a homebrew as my first campaign (ik crazy) so I was wondering for those experienced dm's what are some cool tricks and tips to help me add fun stuff to my campaign. my campaign is a medieval style archipelago with transportation necessary but needs to be fun. ik a lot sorry.
Foreshadow a few pirate organizations. For example the Red Sails, its a group of pirate minotaur's that takes trade ships and gores all the crew to death. Maybe hear wives wailing for their lost husbands to the Red Sails every now and then. Eventually have them face the dread pirate minotaurs with their captain One Horn Jack.
Use the Morkoth, its a classic and has been around since 1E. Its a telepathic octopus that collects items and confuses players that enter its island.
Pick a main villain in the area the players has to deal with. If you want to go underwater use the sauhagin or you could go more with a trade organization seeing as its an archipelago. Maybe they are too mercurial and are disturbing a forbidden old tomb releasing some great evil.
Adjust your magic spells to act differently underwater. Like fire magic doesn't work or reduced range and damage, lightning magic works as an ae centered around and impacting the caster or feather fall can be used to push a person up in the water to the surface.
I suggest you buy Advanced Dungeons & Dragons of Ships and the Sea. You can derive sea based combat, spell, encounters and some magical item ideas.
If you know your players love lore and exploring things, consider doing something like the classic ancient empire or country that spanned the islands but all thats left are the ruins of their civilization. Its pretty classic standard but you can always explore a lot of things with, like what destroyed? Maybe pirates and rebels of the empire banded together to over throw it for one reason or another, maybe they failed to please the Kraken that was its protector and in return it destroyed everything.
What can also help is talking to the players, see if theres anything they specifically want out of the campaign and try to fit that in there. It doesn't have to be the exact thing they said, instead use it as a baseline for your ideas and go from there.
In the end its all about having fun and making stories together, so never be afraid to include your players in your world building!
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
To post a comment, please login or register a new account.
HI, Im a new dm starting a homebrew as my first campaign (ik crazy) so I was wondering for those experienced dm's what are some cool tricks and tips to help me add fun stuff to my campaign. my campaign is a medieval style archipelago with transportation necessary but needs to be fun. ik a lot sorry.
I think this is what you are looking for-- if not well here are some ideas:
Here’s the best advice I can give you:
Watch Me
You could also “borrow” an idea from back in the day and make this archipelago driven by the tourism industry and have it be a place where rich ponces go to have canned “adventures” on vacation. Look into the “Kingdom of Ierendi,” you should be able to find it online for free somewhere (it’s from 1e/2e), and it shouldn’t be too hard to update to/replace stuff with the 5e versions of things.
Creating Epic Boons on DDB
DDB Buyers' Guide
Hardcovers, DDB & You
Content Troubleshooting
First of all, I'll second to the video series.
Second, your idea put a new meaning to Fantasy Island.
I always think archipelago campaigns can be treated a bit like Star Trek, where the islands become basically planets. You can have each one with its own personality, and make the adventures completely different from one to the next: meet new people and try to ally with them, explore ancient ruins, fight the monsters, etc. And then there’s this overarching enemy (Klingons or romulans kind of thing) that you run into sometimes, and they can give the players bits of information that will advance the main plot.
I think I kind of mislead you guys on the archipelago thing there aren't that many islands but i will use the Star trek approach on the couple of smaller outside islands.
One i came up with is a hunter and gatherer style orc society that kidnaps the main org"s (F.C.I. Federal Council of Iza, they are like a super shady government your trying to crumble from the inside) leader"s son and you have to survive the jungle wilderness to find the dungeon he is captured in. also have a massive urge to make his son a huge nerd and everyone calls him a dork even his kidnappers.
You should use traps. Xanathars guide has good traps. Also there is always the SoA.
Mimics are cool for lower level parties. Also there is this monster from Volos that is called a trapper. Big mimic.
Actual traps though:
A word to the wise on using traps - try to make them "life or difficult" rather than "life or death". Most of the basic traps seem to be a case of "if you don't see this, you take damage, and that's it done". These only really generate 2 things - feel-bad moments, and then very slow missions as every step is accompanied with a check for traps. If you do include this sort of trap (tripwire and crossbow, and so on) then make sure to give the players reasons to look for them, rather than putting them at random. For example, put them in every place where there is rubble to hide it, so the party will quickly notice that whenever there's rubble, there's a chance of a trap. But I prefer to avoid them entirely.
My preferred traps, as mentioned above, are "life or difficult", where they can either defuse the trap and escape unscathed/partially damaged, or they get knocked out, swept away, cut off, dropped to a lower floor, and so on, making it more difficult for them to continue. I never put traps in which can result in a TPK! nobody likes dying to something which they can't really fight!
For adding fun stuff, with your transportation consider what can go wrong, and include this if you're trying to work out a random encounter table. Keep the weather in mind when describing the scenes so you're not describing it as perfectly sunny and then suddenly as they get on a ship to sail 3 miles across to the next island a thunderstorm manifests from nowhere and washes them ashore on another island, that sort of thing. If you miss your opportunity to have the weather affect them, don't be tempted to make it "magically" happen - unless you have a magical reason for it, of course!
Things to consider to make the world feel more real and to help inspire you to add things:
1: Why? Just keep asking it until you have all the answers, and the answers give you ideas. Why did they steal his son? Why did they take him to a dungeon? Why is the dungeon there? Why was it made? Who made it? What's in it? why can the hunter gatherers get inside it, past the traps?
2: Where is the _? for example, "Where are the druids?" and now you add some stone circles, druid groves, and so on to your world. "Where is the conflict?" and now these two islands are at war, these three houses are in a feud. "where are the shops?", "Where do they get their stuff?", "Where is the food grown?", etc.
3: How do people move around? Sounds like it'll be boats for you, so you need huge jetties and piers for loads of small boats to moor at. If people live on boats, a floating market makes sense, so people don't have to leave their boats to shop. Perhaps a floating circus which travels around, and so on.
Make your Artificer work with any other class with 174 Multiclassing Feats for your Artificer Multiclass Character!
DM's Guild Releases on This Thread Or check them all out on DMs Guild!
DrivethruRPG Releases on This Thread - latest release: My Character is a Werewolf: balanced rules for Lycanthropy!
I have started discussing/reviewing 3rd party D&D content on Substack - stay tuned for semi-regular posts!
I am a week out of DMing my first session and I am so excited I have used all of your ideas and I am very thankful (btw i just got a new account?)
Excellent, glad you've managed t oget it all together! Look forward to hearing how it goes :)
Make your Artificer work with any other class with 174 Multiclassing Feats for your Artificer Multiclass Character!
DM's Guild Releases on This Thread Or check them all out on DMs Guild!
DrivethruRPG Releases on This Thread - latest release: My Character is a Werewolf: balanced rules for Lycanthropy!
I have started discussing/reviewing 3rd party D&D content on Substack - stay tuned for semi-regular posts!
i know you are close to the first session but i've not seen anything like this so i will as with every other post like this refer you to captain cold
Make the plan, Execute the plan, Expect the plan to go off rails, Forget the plan.
basically have backups for when your players do something unexpected. and they will. give them choices in game and learn up on improv.
have fun and good luck
Foreshadow a few pirate organizations. For example the Red Sails, its a group of pirate minotaur's that takes trade ships and gores all the crew to death. Maybe hear wives wailing for their lost husbands to the Red Sails every now and then. Eventually have them face the dread pirate minotaurs with their captain One Horn Jack.
Use the Morkoth, its a classic and has been around since 1E. Its a telepathic octopus that collects items and confuses players that enter its island.
Pick a main villain in the area the players has to deal with. If you want to go underwater use the sauhagin or you could go more with a trade organization seeing as its an archipelago. Maybe they are too mercurial and are disturbing a forbidden old tomb releasing some great evil.
Adjust your magic spells to act differently underwater. Like fire magic doesn't work or reduced range and damage, lightning magic works as an ae centered around and impacting the caster or feather fall can be used to push a person up in the water to the surface.
I suggest you buy Advanced Dungeons & Dragons of Ships and the Sea. You can derive sea based combat, spell, encounters and some magical item ideas.
If you know your players love lore and exploring things, consider doing something like the classic ancient empire or country that spanned the islands but all thats left are the ruins of their civilization. Its pretty classic standard but you can always explore a lot of things with, like what destroyed? Maybe pirates and rebels of the empire banded together to over throw it for one reason or another, maybe they failed to please the Kraken that was its protector and in return it destroyed everything.
What can also help is talking to the players, see if theres anything they specifically want out of the campaign and try to fit that in there. It doesn't have to be the exact thing they said, instead use it as a baseline for your ideas and go from there.
In the end its all about having fun and making stories together, so never be afraid to include your players in your world building!