I want to run PRINCES OF THE APOCALYPSE campaign with my friends. We tried few one-shots and we're ready for a bigger thing.
As I'm reading the "Running the Adventure" there are these Adventure Hooks and Factions. And I should encourage players to choose from those when building a character. Now my question is - should I give players descriptions of each Faction to choose from? And how about Adventure Hooks? They are pretty vague. How one suppose to choose one of them?
The character must find and defeat Windharrow, the minstrel who attends Aerisi Kalinoth....
I can't say anything about PRINCES, but you already have some decent advice from the last post.
If your current party of players already has a common goal to stay together and look a few "levels & adventures ahead", you are usually prepared for a campaign.
From what I have read off a short description of the adventure, you are out to to fight against four big bad bosses, with cultists with the help from opposing factions. You players could be involved... ... they are hired because of their skills to fight a specific target (most likely a low level cultist at the beginning?) ... some divine character (Cleric, Paladin) gets a vision and is sent to help against the bad guys ... a character has a personal involvement, because e.g a cousin was killed or is part of the cultists ... they seek a special item the cultists have claimed for their rituals to make their patron stronger. The item is part of the loot after one of the early sessions. The party continues to go against the cultists once they found out about the big plot.
As long as the players have an established "team sprit", it is enough to have just one or two characters be involved in the backstory of the campaign. The rest will fall in line. Trying to give everyone in the party a connection to the new campaign is harder to pull off, because you have to resolve so many plots and connections (and still continue with the main story)
When the players create characters, encourage each of them to choose adventure-specific hooks from the list below and align with a faction (see “Factions” below). Doing so ties the characters more to the fight against Elemental Evil.
I figured to give some description about Factions - main goals, what members of faction strive for and so on and then let them choose a faction based on their character preferences.
As to the "Adventure hooks" instead of giving full description of what character must do - give just few details on main goal. For example instead of
Shatterkeel’s Trail
Months ago, Gar Shatterkeel destroyed the character’s ship by conjuring a powerful storm. Dozens of sailors died, and now the character intends revenge. The character earns inspiration for reaching the water temple and again for defeating Gar.
give something like
Shatterkeel’s Trail
Months ago, powerful wizard attacked your ship and destroyed it along with the crew. You barely made out alive by clinging to the broken mast for few days until passing trader ship Wave Strider found and saved you. Sailors in the ship nurtured you back to health and told about Gar Shatterkeel who sometimes sails in these waters and destroying everything in his path. You swore to revenge for your crew and kill evil mage.
I checked the module again and discovered that it is intended to be played from level 1 to 15. Therefore it think you will start a completely new party and the adventure guide wants to create a common goal for the new party. If you intend to use the characters from you one shots, perhaps let them pick one story hook will probably work well. The alternative (if your party want to roll completely new characters - start them at lvl 2 or 3) is to run a "session zero" and create a new set of characters, each with a new story hook suggested by the book. I assume that all the story hooks will be resolved over the course of the campaign and that will create great back story moments throughout the campaign sessions.
Hi,
I want to run PRINCES OF THE APOCALYPSE campaign with my friends. We tried few one-shots and we're ready for a bigger thing.
As I'm reading the "Running the Adventure" there are these Adventure Hooks and Factions. And I should encourage players to choose from those when building a character. Now my question is - should I give players descriptions of each Faction to choose from? And how about Adventure Hooks? They are pretty vague. How one suppose to choose one of them?
Welcome to forums Merllinas. (Your first post)
Before players create characters I recommend to give some information about:
- local area (map if possible)
- environment (snow or jungle?)
- population (humans, dwarfs or drows?)
- commerce (traderoutes, products)
- religion (is religion important thing in daily life?)
- magic (are there lot of wizards? is magic forbidden?)
- history (short version is enough)
- government (who is in charge of things in area)
- factions (who are at war with each other?)
This list is from Dungeon Master's Guide.
My current projects, One click download PDFs:
- Clam Island campaign questbook: https://homebrewery.naturalcrit.com/share/By3s5Uqqf (Levels 1-4)
- Frostglade Tundra campaign questbook: https://homebrewery.naturalcrit.com/share/SyZ_4eEyKE (Levels 1-4)
- Goldfish Archipelago campaign questbook: https://homebrewery.naturalcrit.com/share/-3HajWXM (Sequel to Clam Island, Levels 5-8)
I can't say anything about PRINCES, but you already have some decent advice from the last post.
If your current party of players already has a common goal to stay together and look a few "levels & adventures ahead", you are usually prepared for a campaign.
From what I have read off a short description of the adventure, you are out to to fight against four big bad bosses, with cultists with the help from opposing factions.
You players could be involved...
... they are hired because of their skills to fight a specific target (most likely a low level cultist at the beginning?)
... some divine character (Cleric, Paladin) gets a vision and is sent to help against the bad guys
... a character has a personal involvement, because e.g a cousin was killed or is part of the cultists
... they seek a special item the cultists have claimed for their rituals to make their patron stronger. The item is part of the loot after one of the early sessions. The party continues to go against the cultists once they found out about the big plot.
As long as the players have an established "team sprit", it is enough to have just one or two characters be involved in the backstory of the campaign. The rest will fall in line.
Trying to give everyone in the party a connection to the new campaign is harder to pull off, because you have to resolve so many plots and connections (and still continue with the main story)
Thank you for replies! That helped a lot.
Adventure guide suggests:
I figured to give some description about Factions - main goals, what members of faction strive for and so on and then let them choose a faction based on their character preferences.
As to the "Adventure hooks" instead of giving full description of what character must do - give just few details on main goal. For example instead of
give something like
does that sound reasonable?
I checked the module again and discovered that it is intended to be played from level 1 to 15. Therefore it think you will start a completely new party and the adventure guide wants to create a common goal for the new party.
If you intend to use the characters from you one shots, perhaps let them pick one story hook will probably work well.
The alternative (if your party want to roll completely new characters - start them at lvl 2 or 3) is to run a "session zero" and create a new set of characters, each with a new story hook suggested by the book. I assume that all the story hooks will be resolved over the course of the campaign and that will create great back story moments throughout the campaign sessions.
I will run new characters starting with "Trouble in Red Larch" to build them up to level 3.
I'll transform couple story hooks to be less revealing and more engaging for everyone and resolved in the course of campaign.