So I am starting a new campaign in the sword coast setting, and the very beginning sets off with a villager coming in the middle of night and alerting the adventurers that the town of Leilon is under attack. The adventurers go, find zombies crawling everywhere and cue the doom music cause it's butchering time. They eventually get overwhelmed, and the zombies drag their unconscious bodies back into the mere of dead men, where they are held in prison for "processing" while they wait to get transferred to the big bad's lair.
I've never had any kind of sneaky stealthy kinda vibe campaigns, and I need ideas for weaknesses, layout, anything you can provide would help.
I hope your group has enough experience with you to trust this opener. Typically players hate being railroaded into a hopeless combat situation.
Be as prepared as you can be for things to go squirrelly, like one or two of the PCs running away, escaping from the zombies.
Once captured, I'd also say, make sure they can get their equipment back quickly. Players also hate being separated from their gear. Most especially the non-spellcasters that are super dependent upon armor and weapons.
In terms of the environment, maybe crumbling walls they can break through, and things they can turn against their opponents, leaking oil barrels to light the floor on fire beneath some enemies.
Dark chambers with enemies that don't have dark vision where they can sneak around them (perhaps especially before they get their equipment back, so they can sneak without any disadvantage from heavy armor).
I'd skip having the players go through an impossible scene and instead use that as the setup to the first play session. "You find yourself in a prison after a night of horrors and..."
Then you can focus on their agency and the prison break vs. telling how they got there. Especially if you want them to deal with the prison break - open with it.
+1 to agile DM. Players do not allow their characters to be captured. They will fight to the death or in some very, very rare cases, flee. Just start in the prison. It has the side bonus of getting them all together
Second, don’t assume a sneaky, stealthy escape attempt. Characters will use their powers, skills, etc. that may or may not mean stealth. Also, honestly, a stealth “mission” rarely works as well as you might think. Unlike a video game, you have 4-6 people trying to sneak, and at least one of them is likely to have a bad dex, and at least one will flub a roll and alert the guards.
When you design a prison break, (as when you design a heist) don’t make the place with an intended way for them to beat the security. Just design the security, tight or loose as the situation calls for, and leave it to the PCs to find the flaws in it.
Echoing something I shared in a different thread - a prison break might be a great skill challenge. Instead of them all having to make the same checks you let them call the check they want to make and how it helps the escape.
Fighter: I would like to make an Athletics check to see if I can bend the bars open.
Bard: I want to make a persuasion check to befriend a guard.
I'm in the middle of this right now. Echoing some of the other posts here, do NOT play out a combat scenario where you've pre-determined the ending. It won't go your way, your players will realize you're railroading them, and then they won't trust you as a neutral source of rulings. Plus, they'll think the hour+ they just spent in combat was a waste of time. I just gave them player briefs since it was the first session. The brief had their basic backgrounds, and at the bottom, I had the heading "The Day Before..." which just described how each of them wound up in jail. It was different for everyone in my case, but it'd work for you, too. That way, when they get to the prison and play actually starts, there's no fudging required on your part to move things forward.
And as far as escape goes - take it from me, one possible escape route is not enough. You need several because they'll flat miss most of them. You also need to play the NPCs to the hilt. I have three prison gangs who have exploitable politics going on between them; two prisoners who know of possible escape routes but can't use those themselves without PC help; I've got a Srgnt Schultz-type guard who is easily corrupted and fooled; I've got torturers coming so they have a time limit before things get really ugly. And I STILL had to create another escape route on the fly because they missed almost all of that. And then they came up with their own escape plan, which I found pretty ingenious. That's why I whipped up an escape possibility so that it might work. Don't hand it to them, but if it's a good idea, especially one you didn't think of beforehand, give them a chance to try it.
And if you're thinking about a "hot pursuit" session after they escape, then be prepared for *multiple* possibilities, not just the one you're considering. I originally mapped out a dungeon-style pursuit because my two escape routes led underground. But now that they're trying their own thing, I had to make sure I had the surface well mapped and keyed. They're looking to go out through the roof, which would put them in the town and then the area around the town. Originally, I had very little of that, and what I did have was mostly for flavor. I had to put in a bunch more hours thinking up outdoor chase hazards and opportunities, and those all have to be moveable since I have no idea which way they'll go if they make it out. Plus, I had to tweak my move-to-the-next-arc scenario since I probably can't run that underground anymore if the outdoor thing works.
Oh, and make sure you have some plausible reasons for the guards NOT killing all of them when an escape attempt fails. That's a crappy reason for a TPK, so make sure that if they do eff up an attempt, there's a good reason the guards just punish them, not execute them. In my case, there's a work camp and a profitable arena fighting operation in the prison, so the warden needs bodies. Killing prisoners doesn't help him much. If they screw up too much, then people will start getting waxed, but I want to give them a couple of opportunities, at least before things start heading in that direction. And even if they do, I'm still not going to execute them outright. I'm going to have the warden drop them into a difficult fight in the arena that he expects them to lose. Maybe they will; maybe they won't.
Bottom line: dungeons are easy. It's room after room, so you know where they're going. This kind of thing is very fluid, so you need as much surrounding detail as you can get. The only way to be ready for the inevitability of them doing something you didn't anticipate.
So I am starting a new campaign in the sword coast setting, and the very beginning sets off with a villager coming in the middle of night and alerting the adventurers that the town of Leilon is under attack. The adventurers go, find zombies crawling everywhere and cue the doom music cause it's butchering time. They eventually get overwhelmed, and the zombies drag their unconscious bodies back into the mere of dead men, where they are held in prison for "processing" while they wait to get transferred to the big bad's lair.
I've never had any kind of sneaky stealthy kinda vibe campaigns, and I need ideas for weaknesses, layout, anything you can provide would help.
Idk I'm just a guy ig
I like Warlocks
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Recently obsessing over Warhammer 40k, specifically the T’au empire
I hope your group has enough experience with you to trust this opener. Typically players hate being railroaded into a hopeless combat situation.
Be as prepared as you can be for things to go squirrelly, like one or two of the PCs running away, escaping from the zombies.
Once captured, I'd also say, make sure they can get their equipment back quickly. Players also hate being separated from their gear. Most especially the non-spellcasters that are super dependent upon armor and weapons.
In terms of the environment, maybe crumbling walls they can break through, and things they can turn against their opponents, leaking oil barrels to light the floor on fire beneath some enemies.
Dark chambers with enemies that don't have dark vision where they can sneak around them (perhaps especially before they get their equipment back, so they can sneak without any disadvantage from heavy armor).
I'd skip having the players go through an impossible scene and instead use that as the setup to the first play session. "You find yourself in a prison after a night of horrors and..."
Then you can focus on their agency and the prison break vs. telling how they got there. Especially if you want them to deal with the prison break - open with it.
+1 to agile DM. Players do not allow their characters to be captured. They will fight to the death or in some very, very rare cases, flee. Just start in the prison. It has the side bonus of getting them all together
Second, don’t assume a sneaky, stealthy escape attempt. Characters will use their powers, skills, etc. that may or may not mean stealth. Also, honestly, a stealth “mission” rarely works as well as you might think. Unlike a video game, you have 4-6 people trying to sneak, and at least one of them is likely to have a bad dex, and at least one will flub a roll and alert the guards.
When you design a prison break, (as when you design a heist) don’t make the place with an intended way for them to beat the security. Just design the security, tight or loose as the situation calls for, and leave it to the PCs to find the flaws in it.
Echoing something I shared in a different thread - a prison break might be a great skill challenge. Instead of them all having to make the same checks you let them call the check they want to make and how it helps the escape.
Fighter: I would like to make an Athletics check to see if I can bend the bars open.
Bard: I want to make a persuasion check to befriend a guard.
etc.
I'm in the middle of this right now. Echoing some of the other posts here, do NOT play out a combat scenario where you've pre-determined the ending. It won't go your way, your players will realize you're railroading them, and then they won't trust you as a neutral source of rulings. Plus, they'll think the hour+ they just spent in combat was a waste of time. I just gave them player briefs since it was the first session. The brief had their basic backgrounds, and at the bottom, I had the heading "The Day Before..." which just described how each of them wound up in jail. It was different for everyone in my case, but it'd work for you, too. That way, when they get to the prison and play actually starts, there's no fudging required on your part to move things forward.
And as far as escape goes - take it from me, one possible escape route is not enough. You need several because they'll flat miss most of them. You also need to play the NPCs to the hilt. I have three prison gangs who have exploitable politics going on between them; two prisoners who know of possible escape routes but can't use those themselves without PC help; I've got a Srgnt Schultz-type guard who is easily corrupted and fooled; I've got torturers coming so they have a time limit before things get really ugly. And I STILL had to create another escape route on the fly because they missed almost all of that. And then they came up with their own escape plan, which I found pretty ingenious. That's why I whipped up an escape possibility so that it might work. Don't hand it to them, but if it's a good idea, especially one you didn't think of beforehand, give them a chance to try it.
And if you're thinking about a "hot pursuit" session after they escape, then be prepared for *multiple* possibilities, not just the one you're considering. I originally mapped out a dungeon-style pursuit because my two escape routes led underground. But now that they're trying their own thing, I had to make sure I had the surface well mapped and keyed. They're looking to go out through the roof, which would put them in the town and then the area around the town. Originally, I had very little of that, and what I did have was mostly for flavor. I had to put in a bunch more hours thinking up outdoor chase hazards and opportunities, and those all have to be moveable since I have no idea which way they'll go if they make it out. Plus, I had to tweak my move-to-the-next-arc scenario since I probably can't run that underground anymore if the outdoor thing works.
Oh, and make sure you have some plausible reasons for the guards NOT killing all of them when an escape attempt fails. That's a crappy reason for a TPK, so make sure that if they do eff up an attempt, there's a good reason the guards just punish them, not execute them. In my case, there's a work camp and a profitable arena fighting operation in the prison, so the warden needs bodies. Killing prisoners doesn't help him much. If they screw up too much, then people will start getting waxed, but I want to give them a couple of opportunities, at least before things start heading in that direction. And even if they do, I'm still not going to execute them outright. I'm going to have the warden drop them into a difficult fight in the arena that he expects them to lose. Maybe they will; maybe they won't.
Bottom line: dungeons are easy. It's room after room, so you know where they're going. This kind of thing is very fluid, so you need as much surrounding detail as you can get. The only way to be ready for the inevitability of them doing something you didn't anticipate.