To start with I have run a few games irl, and I have put together an order of knights, to include the tenets and oaths and all sorts of information for the Knightly Order. Last night I had a dream that inspired me to run a campaign. The players would build two characters one at first level and one at 11th level. The story would bounce back and forth between the two parties for 10 levels each. The Campaign starts with the 1st level characters sent to retrieve an item from the Order's original fortress. The war room has statues of the great heroes that won a great battle but were turned to stone in the process. While in the war room each member hears a voice coming from the statues. They find a way, through a divine device, to turn the heroes back to living beings. From there the campaign bounces back and forth between the two parties and eventually ends with the higher level party defeating a great evil who is trying to accomplish the goal of the villain who turned the party into stone. The players would only play one character at a time but the story would be different for each party. The lower level party would searching for items necessary for the higher level party to defeat the the great evil.
The other idea is to have the two different parties but separate them by say a hundred years or so, and have the lower level party finale be breaking the curse on the higher level party and and the final mission of the higher level party defeat the great evil from their time and get turned to stone in the process. This would leave a story for both parties and be able to have a new DM run a new adventure for the lower level party until some kind of epic level adventures come out or i can build another adventure for high level characters.
So here are my questions:
Which idea would you run?
Why you would run it?
How hard do you think it would be for a relatively new DM to run?
Seems like the first story has potential; time jumping stories are very difficult to work out, especially if your PCs have questions that can't be answered thanks to not doing the time jump yet. "Through the Ages" stories are tricky, and not only because you basically need to work out more than one setting, keeping tabs on progression of civilization advancement / collapse, but because the "past" might do something that could change something that already happened in the "future" plot. Time travel is extremely difficult to avoid paradoxes in stories, and that's with just one author, not a group of them. Doing a Chrono Trigger / Back to the Future type story, where you have one set of characters making all the changes and seeing them, is possible and doable, but that's different from what you suggested.
"Am I going to have to play two paladins?" If you're doing errands for a knightly order, my first thought is "paladin." Even if you open up the order to other classes, isn't that going to still be heavily leaning towards the more martial classes? This is kind of the thing where you might want to sit down and talk with your players on what kind of classes they want to bounce around with, and that will affect your Order. Let them have a hand in shaping the organization, at least as it pertains to their PCs.
"If there's level 11 characters running around, why hasn't anyone just cast a Greater Restoration at the statues? Or how about a level 10 cleric praying for a Divine Intervention once a week for three months?" High level characters have answers to any problems a low level character might run into. Might want to pull a "Once and Future King" bit here, where the petrified champions willingly put themselves into stasis only to arise when needed. And have the PCs be the ones who ring the alarm, so to speak.
Sounds like a good story, but a difficult campaign to execute. The problem is, you've planned out the entire storyline - and that requires the players doing very specific things, and achieving very specific solutions to progress your story. This is compounded by the switching between two groups, which sounds interesting in a linear game, but in D&D, it would require your players following your vision to the letter. What if they decide not to retrieve the item? What if they don't find the divine device? What if they decide not to reawaken the ancient heroes turned to stone? Are you going to force them? What if the aims of each party started to clash? How would you avoid meta gaming?
I like your creativity and vision, but I think you need to think in broader strokes. I like your idea of venturing to retrieve items from an ancient fortress. Gives you lots of scope to think about why it was abandoned, what the items are, why they're important, and offers plenty of drama and intrigue. I just don't think you need the second group of characters. Discovering a room filled with ancient heroes turned to stone is cool - bringing them back to life so they can warn of impending doom could also be cool. Having to play as those reawakened heroes... why?
As you're a fairly new DM, I'd keep it simple and take it as it comes, rather than trying to map out the entire campaign. Set up the premise, and what you want your plot-information-delivery-system to be, but then give the players the freedom to take it forward.
thanks for the advice. though i haven't planned everything out as i know that the group i am going to run this with will probably not do things exactly the way i want it to be. i am fairly good at improvising and the i intend to lay out some plans as to why the characters are doing what they are doing. how they do it doesn't matter as long as it gets done. the only things i am planning out are combat encounters if the party runs into them, the fortress and what lies inside, like traps and puzzles. other than that the party has the ability to not do certain things and can still accomplish the same goal. i am good at planning multiple solutions to a problem. i am also using a modified version of the 5x5 method if you are familiar with that where the end of each section results in finding the divine device.
Chequers makes a valid point but I don't think you should abandon the concept entirely. You're stuck dealing with the free will of your players in the 'past' campaign, and how that might affect the situation of the characters and setting in the 'future' campaign. You would probably have to write them as you go, and not get too married to any specific story concepts that are conditional on the actions of your characters. Maybe some great, calamitous event happened between the past campaign and the future campaign that caused the characters in the future to lose their memories. One problem I might foresee is that your players might simply get bored with 1st or 2nd level play once they've tried 11th or 12th level play. But it would be cool to give them a sample of what it was like. Maybe it would work best as a single, side quest adventure, where due to dimensional/time travel, or whatever, they become much older or younger versions of themselves for a short period of time. Or you could have the PCs being told a legend about heroes from the past, and have the players get to play those heroes. I think it's a cool concept, but a bit of a gimmick, and maybe not enough of an idea to build an entire campaign around.
okay i see what you mean but i believe in my ability to run this sort of game and believe that my players will like it. yes it may require a lot of thinking on the fly but i feel like that is what i need to do in order to become a better DM. that is the true reason behind this campaign. i can run any module just fine even with the players changing the way it goes. but i feel my next challenge is to write my own stuff and adapt it to the choices of the players. this edition of D&D to me does not require as much knowledge as say 3.5, which i have DMed a lot. this edition looks easier and i have every intent on running this game i would just like to know how hard people think it would be and how they would run it. it seems to me that nobody would really run this game as it is complicated jumping back and forth through time in the setting.
...I'm struggling to understand what you're needing help with? You've said you'd like to know how hard it would be to run; you've had a couple of replies suggesting that it'd be a bit tricky to make the narrative work. Nothing to do with the rules of the game, really. D&D is designed with playing one character in mind - this, in my mind, is where your idea would struggle - especially as the two parties of players directly interact with one another. It sounds a bit meta for me.
But then you say you believe in your ability to make it work, and that your players will like it. So go for it! If you want a very specific answers to your questions: How hard would this be to run? No 'harder' than any other campaign - the rules don't change. How would I run it? I wouldn't, for above listed reasons - doesn't mean you shouldn't.
To start with I have run a few games irl, and I have put together an order of knights, to include the tenets and oaths and all sorts of information for the Knightly Order. Last night I had a dream that inspired me to run a campaign. The players would build two characters one at first level and one at 11th level. The story would bounce back and forth between the two parties for 10 levels each. The Campaign starts with the 1st level characters sent to retrieve an item from the Order's original fortress. The war room has statues of the great heroes that won a great battle but were turned to stone in the process. While in the war room each member hears a voice coming from the statues. They find a way, through a divine device, to turn the heroes back to living beings. From there the campaign bounces back and forth between the two parties and eventually ends with the higher level party defeating a great evil who is trying to accomplish the goal of the villain who turned the party into stone. The players would only play one character at a time but the story would be different for each party. The lower level party would searching for items necessary for the higher level party to defeat the the great evil.
The other idea is to have the two different parties but separate them by say a hundred years or so, and have the lower level party finale be breaking the curse on the higher level party and and the final mission of the higher level party defeat the great evil from their time and get turned to stone in the process. This would leave a story for both parties and be able to have a new DM run a new adventure for the lower level party until some kind of epic level adventures come out or i can build another adventure for high level characters.
So here are my questions:
Seems like the first story has potential; time jumping stories are very difficult to work out, especially if your PCs have questions that can't be answered thanks to not doing the time jump yet. "Through the Ages" stories are tricky, and not only because you basically need to work out more than one setting, keeping tabs on progression of civilization advancement / collapse, but because the "past" might do something that could change something that already happened in the "future" plot. Time travel is extremely difficult to avoid paradoxes in stories, and that's with just one author, not a group of them. Doing a Chrono Trigger / Back to the Future type story, where you have one set of characters making all the changes and seeing them, is possible and doable, but that's different from what you suggested.
"Am I going to have to play two paladins?" If you're doing errands for a knightly order, my first thought is "paladin." Even if you open up the order to other classes, isn't that going to still be heavily leaning towards the more martial classes? This is kind of the thing where you might want to sit down and talk with your players on what kind of classes they want to bounce around with, and that will affect your Order. Let them have a hand in shaping the organization, at least as it pertains to their PCs.
"If there's level 11 characters running around, why hasn't anyone just cast a Greater Restoration at the statues? Or how about a level 10 cleric praying for a Divine Intervention once a week for three months?" High level characters have answers to any problems a low level character might run into. Might want to pull a "Once and Future King" bit here, where the petrified champions willingly put themselves into stasis only to arise when needed. And have the PCs be the ones who ring the alarm, so to speak.
Sounds like a good story, but a difficult campaign to execute. The problem is, you've planned out the entire storyline - and that requires the players doing very specific things, and achieving very specific solutions to progress your story. This is compounded by the switching between two groups, which sounds interesting in a linear game, but in D&D, it would require your players following your vision to the letter. What if they decide not to retrieve the item? What if they don't find the divine device? What if they decide not to reawaken the ancient heroes turned to stone? Are you going to force them? What if the aims of each party started to clash? How would you avoid meta gaming?
I like your creativity and vision, but I think you need to think in broader strokes. I like your idea of venturing to retrieve items from an ancient fortress. Gives you lots of scope to think about why it was abandoned, what the items are, why they're important, and offers plenty of drama and intrigue. I just don't think you need the second group of characters. Discovering a room filled with ancient heroes turned to stone is cool - bringing them back to life so they can warn of impending doom could also be cool. Having to play as those reawakened heroes... why?
As you're a fairly new DM, I'd keep it simple and take it as it comes, rather than trying to map out the entire campaign. Set up the premise, and what you want your plot-information-delivery-system to be, but then give the players the freedom to take it forward.
thanks for the advice. though i haven't planned everything out as i know that the group i am going to run this with will probably not do things exactly the way i want it to be. i am fairly good at improvising and the i intend to lay out some plans as to why the characters are doing what they are doing. how they do it doesn't matter as long as it gets done. the only things i am planning out are combat encounters if the party runs into them, the fortress and what lies inside, like traps and puzzles. other than that the party has the ability to not do certain things and can still accomplish the same goal. i am good at planning multiple solutions to a problem. i am also using a modified version of the 5x5 method if you are familiar with that where the end of each section results in finding the divine device.
Great - sounds like you've got it all in hand. And if you can make the dual party mechanic work, then awesome. Let us know how it all goes!
Chequers makes a valid point but I don't think you should abandon the concept entirely. You're stuck dealing with the free will of your players in the 'past' campaign, and how that might affect the situation of the characters and setting in the 'future' campaign. You would probably have to write them as you go, and not get too married to any specific story concepts that are conditional on the actions of your characters. Maybe some great, calamitous event happened between the past campaign and the future campaign that caused the characters in the future to lose their memories. One problem I might foresee is that your players might simply get bored with 1st or 2nd level play once they've tried 11th or 12th level play. But it would be cool to give them a sample of what it was like. Maybe it would work best as a single, side quest adventure, where due to dimensional/time travel, or whatever, they become much older or younger versions of themselves for a short period of time. Or you could have the PCs being told a legend about heroes from the past, and have the players get to play those heroes. I think it's a cool concept, but a bit of a gimmick, and maybe not enough of an idea to build an entire campaign around.
okay i see what you mean but i believe in my ability to run this sort of game and believe that my players will like it. yes it may require a lot of thinking on the fly but i feel like that is what i need to do in order to become a better DM. that is the true reason behind this campaign. i can run any module just fine even with the players changing the way it goes. but i feel my next challenge is to write my own stuff and adapt it to the choices of the players. this edition of D&D to me does not require as much knowledge as say 3.5, which i have DMed a lot. this edition looks easier and i have every intent on running this game i would just like to know how hard people think it would be and how they would run it. it seems to me that nobody would really run this game as it is complicated jumping back and forth through time in the setting.
...I'm struggling to understand what you're needing help with? You've said you'd like to know how hard it would be to run; you've had a couple of replies suggesting that it'd be a bit tricky to make the narrative work. Nothing to do with the rules of the game, really. D&D is designed with playing one character in mind - this, in my mind, is where your idea would struggle - especially as the two parties of players directly interact with one another. It sounds a bit meta for me.
But then you say you believe in your ability to make it work, and that your players will like it. So go for it! If you want a very specific answers to your questions: How hard would this be to run? No 'harder' than any other campaign - the rules don't change. How would I run it? I wouldn't, for above listed reasons - doesn't mean you shouldn't.