I will be running a short campaign with my group while my DM is away due to a family emergency.
The main campaign is going to centre around a mediaeval battle tournament. The prize for winning the whole tournament, will be 12,000G and a vile of Tarasque blood.
This brings me to the subplot of the campaign.
20 years ago, Asmodeus used his Avatar to impregnable a mortal woman. That woman then gave birth to and raised the child of Asmodeus on the Prime Material Plane.
Asmodeus gave his child powers in addition to the power that she naturally possessed by being the child of such a powerful Archdevil. However; this child has never fallen, she is not evil by definition, and because she is half mortal, can exist on, interact with and change the material plane, without incurring the wrath of other beings like high ranking celestials and so forth.
Asmodeus has a plan for his child. Her purpose initially is to prepare the material plane for her father's arrival, and then secondly; once preparations have been made and through a dark ritual, Asmodeus will again use his avatar to impregnate his half mortal daughter, only this time, with his avatar as the medium, transfer his soul into the resulting son.
The ritual will cause his daughter to becoming "fallen," but the resulting son will be born innocent.
In this way, Asmodeus will get around the laws preventing him from leaving Nessus and be born into the material plane, where he will proceed to become a mighty hero and then a great king, slowly turning the material plane into a layer of hell and eventually becoming lord of all mortal souls.
With the power of all these souls, he plans to finally win the blood war and then to crush the other Gods, removing all in his path and opening the way for him to create his version of paradice, in which all beings have a place and a purpose in the infernal order - ending all wars, removing all wants and desires and creating a kind of Eutopia, with himself as the undisputed overlord.
To perform the ritual that will allow Asmodeus to be born onto the prime material, the blood of the Tarasque is needed, and it just so happens that Tarasque blood is part of the prize won by the tournament champion - the perfect way to legally acquire the most important ingredient.
And so Asmodeus instructs his half mortal child to win the tournament and acquire the prize. She is to win without breaking any of the rules, so that when the prize is won, his enemies won't be able to claim that he cheated and thus his victory is void.
His daughter forms a party from the most capable cultists of Asmodeus, and instructs them to win her the prize - without cheating.
In response to this, other evil beings and good aligned beings, who want to stop Asmodeus for whatever reason, send their own champions to win the tournament.
Only the players characters are unaligned and as the tournament progresses, each faction will try to pull them over to their side.
So the main purpose of the campaign is to win the battle tournament, and the subplot is one of intrigue and danger, while the whole concept of a mediaeval tournament style campaign creates a ticking clock effect as well.
Can I have the opinions of other DMs and players please. What do you think of my ideas for the campaign and would you play in it?
Also any other thoughts that you might regarding the lore and stuff would be appreciated as well.
I'm not a fan of "tournament" style games in general, so that sort of plot wouldn't interest me.
I'm generally not a fan of them either, but the campaign I'm going run is only going to last for 8 to 12 weeks, but I really don't like tournament style games myself because arena fighting week after week without any real reason, gets quite boring.
So I came up with the whole subplot to add some story to it, and allow for some exploration and intrigue and puzzle/mystery solving in-between fights, while still keeping the ultimate goal of winning the grand prize and becoming tournament champion.
Any thoughts on how I could spice it up and make it more interesting. I'm open to suggestions. I have asked my players for opinions too but it's harder to ask them as I can't really reveal too much to then or I'd give the entire story away.
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A caffeinated nerd who has played TTRPGs or a number of years and is very much a fantasy adventure geek.
I think your B plot has enough legs to stand as an actual campaign. If you just stick the vial of blood into just about any dangerous place, you can have an exciting adventure that doesn't involve a tournament. If you do want some sort of competitive aspect to the adventure, I suggest looking up the Dungeon Magazine adventure Owlbear Run. It has a pretty dynamic race system that can easily be ported into 5E from 4e and there are already a handful of competitor teams in the race that would slot into your story pretty well. Plus the party gets to race owlbears.
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"The mongoose blew out its candle and was asleep in bed before the room went dark." —Llanowar fable
I just did a tournament game. My suggestion would be that the "tournament" parts only take up one out of every three sessions or so, and that the tournament activities are something other than an arena battle (Mine were knocking over candles on top of the odeon from the stage, clearing a dungeon, winning an airship race, and killing off a monster threatening the town). I think the plot here is strong, but there is a lot of it. Are the players going to learn about the Asmodeus connection? Will there be an encounter with the dark prince at the end (it seems like a pretty intense thing to bring up without a payoff). I'm also wondering why your party wants Tarrasque blood in the first place; that may impact their choices. Twelve Sessions actually goes by pretty fast, and I think that you have a lot of interesting stuff, but it may be a challenge to fit it all in. Still, I would totally play a mini campaign with that premise.
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Fenchurch, Gnome Wizard, Red Skies in Mourning
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Hi guys,
I will be running a short campaign with my group while my DM is away due to a family emergency.
The main campaign is going to centre around a mediaeval battle tournament. The prize for winning the whole tournament, will be 12,000G and a vile of Tarasque blood.
This brings me to the subplot of the campaign.
20 years ago, Asmodeus used his Avatar to impregnable a mortal woman. That woman then gave birth to and raised the child of Asmodeus on the Prime Material Plane.
Asmodeus gave his child powers in addition to the power that she naturally possessed by being the child of such a powerful Archdevil. However; this child has never fallen, she is not evil by definition, and because she is half mortal, can exist on, interact with and change the material plane, without incurring the wrath of other beings like high ranking celestials and so forth.
Asmodeus has a plan for his child. Her purpose initially is to prepare the material plane for her father's arrival, and then secondly; once preparations have been made and through a dark ritual, Asmodeus will again use his avatar to impregnate his half mortal daughter, only this time, with his avatar as the medium, transfer his soul into the resulting son.
The ritual will cause his daughter to becoming "fallen," but the resulting son will be born innocent.
In this way, Asmodeus will get around the laws preventing him from leaving Nessus and be born into the material plane, where he will proceed to become a mighty hero and then a great king, slowly turning the material plane into a layer of hell and eventually becoming lord of all mortal souls.
With the power of all these souls, he plans to finally win the blood war and then to crush the other Gods, removing all in his path and opening the way for him to create his version of paradice, in which all beings have a place and a purpose in the infernal order - ending all wars, removing all wants and desires and creating a kind of Eutopia, with himself as the undisputed overlord.
To perform the ritual that will allow Asmodeus to be born onto the prime material, the blood of the Tarasque is needed, and it just so happens that Tarasque blood is part of the prize won by the tournament champion - the perfect way to legally acquire the most important ingredient.
And so Asmodeus instructs his half mortal child to win the tournament and acquire the prize. She is to win without breaking any of the rules, so that when the prize is won, his enemies won't be able to claim that he cheated and thus his victory is void.
His daughter forms a party from the most capable cultists of Asmodeus, and instructs them to win her the prize - without cheating.
In response to this, other evil beings and good aligned beings, who want to stop Asmodeus for whatever reason, send their own champions to win the tournament.
Only the players characters are unaligned and as the tournament progresses, each faction will try to pull them over to their side.
So the main purpose of the campaign is to win the battle tournament, and the subplot is one of intrigue and danger, while the whole concept of a mediaeval tournament style campaign creates a ticking clock effect as well.
Can I have the opinions of other DMs and players please. What do you think of my ideas for the campaign and would you play in it?
Also any other thoughts that you might regarding the lore and stuff would be appreciated as well.
Thanks guys
A caffeinated nerd who has played TTRPGs or a number of years and is very much a fantasy adventure geek.
I'm not a fan of "tournament" style games in general, so that sort of plot wouldn't interest me.
I'm generally not a fan of them either, but the campaign I'm going run is only going to last for 8 to 12 weeks, but I really don't like tournament style games myself because arena fighting week after week without any real reason, gets quite boring.
So I came up with the whole subplot to add some story to it, and allow for some exploration and intrigue and puzzle/mystery solving in-between fights, while still keeping the ultimate goal of winning the grand prize and becoming tournament champion.
Any thoughts on how I could spice it up and make it more interesting. I'm open to suggestions. I have asked my players for opinions too but it's harder to ask them as I can't really reveal too much to then or I'd give the entire story away.
A caffeinated nerd who has played TTRPGs or a number of years and is very much a fantasy adventure geek.
I think your B plot has enough legs to stand as an actual campaign. If you just stick the vial of blood into just about any dangerous place, you can have an exciting adventure that doesn't involve a tournament. If you do want some sort of competitive aspect to the adventure, I suggest looking up the Dungeon Magazine adventure Owlbear Run. It has a pretty dynamic race system that can easily be ported into 5E from 4e and there are already a handful of competitor teams in the race that would slot into your story pretty well. Plus the party gets to race owlbears.
I just did a tournament game. My suggestion would be that the "tournament" parts only take up one out of every three sessions or so, and that the tournament activities are something other than an arena battle (Mine were knocking over candles on top of the odeon from the stage, clearing a dungeon, winning an airship race, and killing off a monster threatening the town). I think the plot here is strong, but there is a lot of it. Are the players going to learn about the Asmodeus connection? Will there be an encounter with the dark prince at the end (it seems like a pretty intense thing to bring up without a payoff). I'm also wondering why your party wants Tarrasque blood in the first place; that may impact their choices. Twelve Sessions actually goes by pretty fast, and I think that you have a lot of interesting stuff, but it may be a challenge to fit it all in. Still, I would totally play a mini campaign with that premise.
Fenchurch, Gnome Wizard, Red Skies in Mourning