This was one campaign I was going to write/run for a group.
The party at one point (several levels ago) found themselves in the Abyss and found themselves trapped in a war between 2 demons. They were sorta forced to help one or the other and ended up in debt to one of the demons. At about 20th level, what was going to happen was the demon called in the debt, and they traveled off the Prime Material Plane. When they tried to return, they found nothing there. All planets they knew of - gone. All creatures - gone. The gods - gone. Their job was to restore the PMP. To recreate the planets they would have needed to go to different elemental planes and convince the elemental lords to cooperate. To get the creatures back, they would have had to travel to different planes and find certain objects, such as the tree of life for elves, the forge of life for the dwarves, etc. They would have to travel to the Halls of the Gods, where they would see a representation of all the gods who ever existed.
Never got more than a concept in my head, as I got stationed elsewhere and didn't play as much D&D then.
I have an idea I am working on for a Tavern of Heroes, type setting. The basis would be a tavern, where at any time, some noble, royal, or anyone, can post a request for adventurers. These can be quickly cobbled together, for whatever level you wish and would allow for your group to each end up with 3-4 different characters, often at different levels, they could take out on an adventure. Most adventures would be 1-4 session jaunts, I am expecting, and would be part of an ongoing, dynamic world, where things can (and will ) change from time to time.
It's more an idea for groups who like to play a lot, but frequently run into scheduling issues. It would allow as few as 3 folks to settle in (a go-fetch for someone, that a pair of intrepid adventurers could undertake) to a full group of 5 even 6 party members, to maybe go clear a family tomb outside of town. I think this will be a big hit with our group, as the other DM could also partake of developing the area around the town, and we could easily alternate who runs the missions, since each could be independent of the others. A perfect, pre-made, one-shot setting, where over time, players can choose any number of combinations of characters to run through a brief adventure.
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Talk to your Players.Talk to your DM. If more people used this advice, there would be 24.74% fewer threads on Tactics, Rules and DM discussions.
I created a campaign that sounded great on paper but once I put it in front of the players I saw all the problems that came with it to the point where I said to myself, "Man this is dumb!" The campaign and characters are still going but I've since dissected and put it back together totally recreating the idea that has some semblance of "ok".
I've been interested in running a "Domains of mist" idea, which takes place in a setting similar to the Domains of dread from Van Richten's Guide to Ravenloft, but without the dread, terror, and gloom. All the players would have the dark gift that lets them cast misty steps and travel to different domains using the mist, (I think the gift is called mistwalker), and be part of an order of wanderers who travel to different domains shrouded by mist and ruled by a high lord, which is an individual that works as the base of the domain.
I tried to run a homebrew setting I've had in mind for decades. It was based on Ancient Rome and modified to deal with magic. I hoped to get something near the historical version. It didn't work at all. I tried to make it very low magic, and D&D isn't at all good at that. All these neat customs they had way back when? If you needed to understand them well, you had to read a lot of boring stuff. I kept trying to make rules that would bribe my players into playing Humans. Nobody ever did.
At one point, I had five players, and then we weren't able to play anymore because of scheduling conflicts. Since then, I've had plenty of people express an interest, but only two ever got so far as making a character. One of them was my Significant Other, who refused to play in my game because I asked her to change her character's alignment. Sadly, she's too good a player when it comes to how to play Alignments and didn't want to change her Thief to Chaotic Good. That make sense I guess. Being a Thief has never really been a good idea in the real world.
As for that one other player? She did make a character all right. Then she took that one and started playing it in another game.
So I went from 18 pages worth of background information to about one. I took out all the restrictions, I have about a paragraph about how to make a character, and about two paragraphs that talk about the few rules I have and how the setting came to be like it is. I still want to try this. Someday I might get the chance. If my player characters want to learn the customs, they can do it the same way the Romans did. Watch what the other Romans did. My players will figure it out sooner or latter, and don't really need any help from me.
I am running my first campaign since DMing in college decades ago. I had always wanted to run an "evil" campaign, so this is what I came up with...
The characters are hired at level 1 to work for a crime syndicate underboss in the Forgotten Realms city of Westgate. All classes welcome, but players are warned that druids and rangers might be less useful in the city. All PCs must be some flavor of evil alignment. I used a Forgotten Realms wiki as source material and created a homebrew crime family to compete with the Fire Knives and 9 Golden Swords. I also lean heavily on my favorite Tarantino and Scorsese films for inspiration for NPCs and plotlines. Of course, I've taken great liberties with a lot of Forgotten Realms lore.
The campaign is episodic, as each adventure begins with the boss handing the PCs a new mission. Missions bring the PCs in contact with other family members, rival gangs, and all sorts of criminal shenanigans. So far, the PCs have robbed a caravan, rescued a bunch of smugglers, assassinated a minor noble, and protected drug dealers from Shadowbane inspired vigilantes. The campaign is a little railroad-y because the PCs don't get to choose what missions they go on, but I give them total freedom in how they get things done. I created a table that determines how long it takes the city watch to show up when the PCs start slugging it out in the streets and the crime families have a Game of Thrones-esque number of minor characters as NPCs.
I wrote a one page player guide and created a one page lore sheet for the players, knowing some of them wouldn't pay tons of attention to them.
So far, it's been a lot of fun. Some players were a little nervous that evil characters would create constant betrayal and infighting, but once they saw they had an entire city to mistreat and terrorize, they quickly forgot about turning against each other.
I have also divided the campaign into Acts that correspond to the PCs rising in the ranks of the gang. If we make it to the point where the PCs become bosses and shotcallers, the campaign will have to become more of a sandbox. I am still trying to figure out how to plan for this. We play on Foundry VTT and I find it difficult to improvise because all the maps, tokens, etc. have to be loaded in advance and it would take way too long to come up with something in session.
Possibly seen in some of my other threads on this site, but, in no particular order...
High-magic post-apocalytic fantasy. The sun has been Shattered, yet the world somehow lives on. And this is not the only endgame scenario in the works; something else is at play.
A game that begins at level 20 and devolves to level 1. Something is trying to unravel time itself and all that it entails.
An epic-level game that is post-20 play. The gods are athirst.
This concept is more of a modification of an existing module (Curse of Strahd) so there will be some spoilers
Strahd, in his study of the arcane arts, used the clone spell to create copies of his body. He hid them away in the Amber Temple under Exethanter's protection. At first, Strahd thought that perhaps he could escape his curse by transferring his soul out of his vampiric form. He tried with different humanoid bases for his clones, but after the first attempt found that as his new body took on his soul, so too did it take on his vampiric curse. The other forms were left in the temple, abandoned. Strahd counts on using each body over time, and taking his time to study their differences. What Strahd didnt count on, was Mordenkainen
When the wizard confronted him, an epic battle was undertaken between the two forces. Strahd managed to steal away his spellbook and toss it off of the cliff of Castle Ravenloft. With this power over him, Strahd relentlessly accosted Mordenkainen with spells which would cause the mage to go mad. Just before the last of his sanity flickered away, Mordenkainen tried to pull Strahd's soul from his body so as to entrap it. Strahd resisted with all his might until his soul began to rip apart. As the Mordenkainen lost his concentration and the spell broke, most of Strahd's soul returned to him; however, small fragments split off and found their way to the clones he had created rather than return to their master.
Now, the clones awaken. Each bears a similarity to the dark lord's appearance, but lack many of his powers. Whats more, with his soul, Strahds memories were split between himself and the clones. Strahd still retains the majority of his memory, but is missing certain key fragments.
Upon awakening, the clones have a basic understanding of the world around them, but do not know who they are nor who Strahd is. They are plagued by occasional visions or dreams of the fragments of memory they retain. Now they must wander Barovia to find their purpose, all while Strahd hunts them to try and regain his lost parts.
Setup: All of the players appear as being different races, but each will use the Dhampir lineage to reflect the portion of vampiric power they control.
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Ever since I was a kid I wanted to run a campaign of initially low-level monsters who rebel against the BBEG. I would homebrew some races, and races would have features that unlock at higher levels. You'd have to sneak and fight your way out of the bad guy's lair, win the trust of humanoid societies, build your power, and come back to defeat the BBEG and free your monster races from his enslavement.
Races would include skeleton, ghost, dragonborn, ooze, beast, giant, etc.
Ever since I was a kid I wanted to run a campaign of initially low-level monsters who rebel against the BBEG. I would homebrew some races, and races would have features that unlock at higher levels. You'd have to sneak and fight your way out of the bad guy's lair, win the trust of humanoid societies, build your power, and come back to defeat the BBEG and free your monster races from his enslavement.
Races would include skeleton, ghost, dragonborn, ooze, beast, giant, etc.
Skeleton could be the Reborn lineage, dragonborn? Aren't kobalds the draconic minion race? Beast is kinda vague, and giants could be Goliath or firbolgs.
Ever since I was a kid I wanted to run a campaign of initially low-level monsters who rebel against the BBEG. I would homebrew some races, and races would have features that unlock at higher levels. You'd have to sneak and fight your way out of the bad guy's lair, win the trust of humanoid societies, build your power, and come back to defeat the BBEG and free your monster races from his enslavement.
Races would include skeleton, ghost, dragonborn, ooze, beast, giant, etc.
Skeleton could be the Reborn lineage, dragonborn? Aren't kobalds the draconic minion race? Beast is kinda vague, and giants could be Goliath or firbolgs.
Those could work, but I want dragons to start out as kobolds at level one and level up to at least young dragons by level 20.
Skeletons might level up to zombies or liches.
Beast is deliberately vague. There could probably be the same mechanics, but you could choose what type of beast for role-playing purposes, or maybe different beasts would be different subclasses. Like you could choose wolf or snake and level up from a basic wolf or snake to warg / giant constrictor snake and then to werewolf / yuan-ti.
I've been pondering for a while to do a "lord of the rings but backwards" campaign, but not in the most common way.
The campaign will be set during the time when Frodo is taking the ring to mount doom. The party will comprise of a variety of evil characters, using normal dnd rules (though with some additions and replacements to make the game feel a little more LOTR-y).
The characters will be called to meet Sauron, who will be taking a shadowy form in his office atop his tower. And this is where the campaign becomes... a little silly.
Sauron greets the party in that typical way that people in power greet their underlings who they want to ask to do something they know they don't want to do - bigging them up, acting like they're their biggest fan, saying things like "Grognak, there's the strongest barbarian in the army! Whew! are those arms real or made of wood?", before going deadly serious and saying "I need you to do something".
Sauron then explains that he has seen that the enemy seek to destroy the ring of power. he feels that they cannot possibly succeed, but having had some human chop his fingers off all those years ago, he's not taking any chances.
He explains to the party that the ring of power can only be destroyed in the fires of mount doom, and so he needs to make sure that they never get to the fires. He then plonks on the desk a large, red, lidded bucket with the word "Fire" stenciled on the side in black. Where it touches the wood, it starts to smoke slightly.
When the players ask what's with the bucket, he will explain that it contains the Fires of Mount Doom. He's pushed them into this bucket with his magic, and he needs the party to take them to the one place which can quench them, putting out the fires and preventing the ring from ever being destroyed.
"In a far off land to the west, there is a small, peaceful place, in which the idiotic inhabitants shuffle around all day, never killing or eating each other, and otherwise being horridly insipidly good and peaceful. But do not hold this against them, for it is not their fault that they live such idyllic, charmed lives - it is because of a magical spring which wells up in the ground beneath them, which calms and placates any and all who drink from it. This spring is the only thing in middle earth with the magic to calm the fires of mount doom. I need you to draw upon your courage and daring, for I need you to go into the greenest, lightest place imaginable. I am sending you to the Shire, to cast the fires of mount doom into this spring, and save our kingdom."
Then will follow a mighty quest, through the wars and such, to get to the Shire and destroy the fires of mount doom, which are now contained in a red fire bucket!
The Planar War- The sky has turned blood red and the sun has become eclipsed, signaling that the barrier between the upper planes, lower planes, and material plane has weakened and a war between the celestials from the upper planes and the demons from the lower planes is about to begin, with the material plane as the battlefield. If the war isn't stopped, the material plane will be decimated. If either side wins the war, the balance of good and evil will be thrown off and the entire multiverse will be destroyed. The only way to save the multiverse is to travel to the world's oldest temple and find an artifact and/or spell that can end the war before it starts.
My current campaigns really have no overarching thing. They are completely character driven. Basically each has a thread that will spiral out into a main thrust (like one of them has an ancient map so that will be come a huge thrust in uncovering where it lead etc). I honestly take whatever seems to trigger a response or the characters latch into and take that and make it a multi-session thread.
Basically they are helping me take my fledgling homebrew world and allowing me to flesh out the details based on what excited them.
Honestly this makes me a little nervous as I have to be really on my toes but it has already led to some cool things which I never would have imagine from the start.
I am making/thinking of making the following adventures. They are listed in terms of cruciality.
Without the Candlelight. Levels 11-13, Agnostic. A coven of hags have cloaked a village in twilight. They have also taken all magical and nonmagical light from the village, so not even a mere candle can be lit. The characters must find and stop the coven before they use their stolen light to summon a foul elemental of fire to raze the Material Plane to the ground.
Evereska: Assimilation of the Fey. Levels 4-12, Faerun. The characters are given several quests, most of which relate to drow and fey appearances around the city of Evereska. Eventually, the characters discover a group of isolationist, extremist drow (even for stereotypical drow) planning to raid Evereska. They must thwart the raid with the aid of Silverymoon's troops. Once the drow are dealt with, the characters discover a fey plot - a cult are attempting to merge the Material Plane with the Feywild in order to destroy all drow in a horrific genocide. The characters have to stop this plot by venturing into the plain of faerie...
The Mines of the Dark Delve (TBC). Levels 5-15, Agnostic. The characters are sent to investigate a massive subterranean dwarven city-mine. However, unbeknownst to them, the dwarves that occupied the mine delved too deep and awoke a primordial Elder Brain, which has created enough illithid servants to turn the whole city into the most deadly dungeon imaginable...
Mists of Ba'ar (TBC). Levels 1-5, Lyrlore (custom). A murder is committed in the lawless city of Ba'ar. If the murderer isn't caught and brought to justice, the ruling crime families will begin a civil war that will result in total disaster. However, the murderer is more than they seem...
When the Wind Blows (TBC). Levels TBD, Faerun. A great storm threatens the whole of the Sword Coast. The adventurers must take control of a ship, gathering crucial supplies from places such as Waterdeep, Baldur's Gate, and Fireshear, before they journey into the Storm's Eye, a day's journey off Chult, to take down the formidable and slightly insane Giant Tempest Council before they destroy most of Northern Faerun's civilization as they know it.
The characters are in a dangerous natural area (eg a jungle or a desert) and are running from the BBEG. Track the BBEGs forces so that it is a world where not all encounters are balanced, long testing is dangerous and they actually can make a huge impact on the BBEG. Bonus points if it is in another plane(eg Ravenloft).
ive got a thing set in spelljammer with a mind flayer villain who is mind controlling a bunch of Kuo-toa to reshape reality and so he can get out from under the thumb of the DM as he got out under the thumb of the god brain of Bluetspur. i put things called Reality Phases on every random encounter table and when one of them happened, i would describe reality going wack, just really strange, unexplainable things happening. once i rolled one of these i would replace the entry with something that happened because of the reality phase, sutch as half of a sea monster from Pathfinder. when a reality phase happened, the walls between realities would be weak so everything, Pathfinder, SCPs, things from domains of dread, things that couldnt happen or shouldnt happen, would happen. im epsecally proud of the statblock i made for the boss. normally i hate lair actions, but one of the boss' was to change what the dice were. this could be anything to spinning a spinner instead of rolling, eating a fortune cookie, or asking a magic 8 ball. this had no in game concequences, but it would ROYALLY f*** with my players
About Me: Godless monster in human form bent on extending their natural life to unnatural extremes /general of the goose horde /Moderator of Vinstreb School for the Gifted /holder of the evil storyteller badge of no honor /king of madness /The FBI/ The Archmage of I CAST...!
Alignment: Lawful Evil
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I had one idea for a campaign a ways back, and I thought the premise was interesting enough to share.
The premise is that all the characters start... dead. Each player creates a basic backstory of how they died, how long ago, and what they did before they kicked the bucket. The reason this is the case is that the entire campaign's map consists of a chain of islands that... have some interesting history.
A long while ago, these islands were the center of an unstable kingdom, ruled by a monarch known as the Gilded King. The Gilded King formed their domain from the foundation up, previously being a minor lord in a neighboring region before fleeing and leaving the villages under their rule to rot. Why? So they could have power over others how they saw fit, without adhering to the rules of their higher-ups. Sure, the kingdom did well enough in its upbringing, but started falling into decline quickly after it was formed- much to the Gilded King's dismay. As a last-ditch effort to ensure their control over their subjects, the King and their most loyal subordinates used the might of a Wish spell to create an aura of immortality around the isles, ensuring that not even death can take away their power.
This curse of immortality, due to poor wording at the time of being cast, affected everything in the Gilded Isles' vicinity, meaning that nothing is allowed to die on the islands: Even dead and rotting things, like the player characters, are forcibly taken from the afterlife and brought back to the living world when they touch the ground on any of the islands. The curse does not stop decay, however, so everything and everyone in this used-to-be-kingdom that is or was alive is in a constant state of undeath and dying. The King and their few remaining loyal subjects still reign over what little is left, and they don't take kindly to anything that may threaten their positions of power. Even if something is killed on the islands, unless the body is completely and utterly destroyed, the curse resurrects them at dawn each day.
As one can imagine, everything and everyone 'living' well beyond their natural lifespans can cause some... interesting effects. Most of the Gilded King's soldiers and servants have nary a shred of their souls remaining, wandering the ruined towns and castles and prisons as feral husks. Plants that should have wilted decades ago still persist to bear blossoms reeking of rot, and the orchards refuse to stop bearing poisoned fruit. Some animals on the islands or in their waters have grown to unnatural proportions, and many of them are still-living mangled corpses that still try to move with their broken limbs. Rarely, creatures become horridly intertwined within one another, leading to maddened abominations that bear shreds of multiple souls. Not the kind of island vacation that most are hoping for.
Overall, the main goal of the campaign is to dispel the curse, so that the party and everything else on the islands can die permanently, and the islands can return to the natural cycle of life and death. Well, either that, or the party can try to find a ship to leave the isles and spare themselves from the eternal cycle, leaving everything else to rot forevermore. Whichever route the party takes, they'll want to avoid dying too many times. While they are resurrected each day, being forcibly ejected from the afterlife isn't great for one's mental health, and too many deaths can give the characters madness, exhaustion, and other not-so-fun side effects.
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This was one campaign I was going to write/run for a group.
The party at one point (several levels ago) found themselves in the Abyss and found themselves trapped in a war between 2 demons. They were sorta forced to help one or the other and ended up in debt to one of the demons. At about 20th level, what was going to happen was the demon called in the debt, and they traveled off the Prime Material Plane. When they tried to return, they found nothing there. All planets they knew of - gone. All creatures - gone. The gods - gone. Their job was to restore the PMP. To recreate the planets they would have needed to go to different elemental planes and convince the elemental lords to cooperate. To get the creatures back, they would have had to travel to different planes and find certain objects, such as the tree of life for elves, the forge of life for the dwarves, etc. They would have to travel to the Halls of the Gods, where they would see a representation of all the gods who ever existed.
Never got more than a concept in my head, as I got stationed elsewhere and didn't play as much D&D then.
I have an idea I am working on for a Tavern of Heroes, type setting. The basis would be a tavern, where at any time, some noble, royal, or anyone, can post a request for adventurers. These can be quickly cobbled together, for whatever level you wish and would allow for your group to each end up with 3-4 different characters, often at different levels, they could take out on an adventure. Most adventures would be 1-4 session jaunts, I am expecting, and would be part of an ongoing, dynamic world, where things can (and will ) change from time to time.
It's more an idea for groups who like to play a lot, but frequently run into scheduling issues. It would allow as few as 3 folks to settle in (a go-fetch for someone, that a pair of intrepid adventurers could undertake) to a full group of 5 even 6 party members, to maybe go clear a family tomb outside of town. I think this will be a big hit with our group, as the other DM could also partake of developing the area around the town, and we could easily alternate who runs the missions, since each could be independent of the others. A perfect, pre-made, one-shot setting, where over time, players can choose any number of combinations of characters to run through a brief adventure.
Talk to your Players. Talk to your DM. If more people used this advice, there would be 24.74% fewer threads on Tactics, Rules and DM discussions.
I created a campaign that sounded great on paper but once I put it in front of the players I saw all the problems that came with it to the point where I said to myself, "Man this is dumb!" The campaign and characters are still going but I've since dissected and put it back together totally recreating the idea that has some semblance of "ok".
I've been interested in running a "Domains of mist" idea, which takes place in a setting similar to the Domains of dread from Van Richten's Guide to Ravenloft, but without the dread, terror, and gloom. All the players would have the dark gift that lets them cast misty steps and travel to different domains using the mist, (I think the gift is called mistwalker), and be part of an order of wanderers who travel to different domains shrouded by mist and ruled by a high lord, which is an individual that works as the base of the domain.
I tried to run a homebrew setting I've had in mind for decades. It was based on Ancient Rome and modified to deal with magic. I hoped to get something near the historical version. It didn't work at all. I tried to make it very low magic, and D&D isn't at all good at that. All these neat customs they had way back when? If you needed to understand them well, you had to read a lot of boring stuff. I kept trying to make rules that would bribe my players into playing Humans. Nobody ever did.
At one point, I had five players, and then we weren't able to play anymore because of scheduling conflicts. Since then, I've had plenty of people express an interest, but only two ever got so far as making a character. One of them was my Significant Other, who refused to play in my game because I asked her to change her character's alignment. Sadly, she's too good a player when it comes to how to play Alignments and didn't want to change her Thief to Chaotic Good. That make sense I guess. Being a Thief has never really been a good idea in the real world.
As for that one other player? She did make a character all right. Then she took that one and started playing it in another game.
So I went from 18 pages worth of background information to about one. I took out all the restrictions, I have about a paragraph about how to make a character, and about two paragraphs that talk about the few rules I have and how the setting came to be like it is. I still want to try this. Someday I might get the chance. If my player characters want to learn the customs, they can do it the same way the Romans did. Watch what the other Romans did. My players will figure it out sooner or latter, and don't really need any help from me.
<Insert clever signature here>
I am running my first campaign since DMing in college decades ago. I had always wanted to run an "evil" campaign, so this is what I came up with...
The characters are hired at level 1 to work for a crime syndicate underboss in the Forgotten Realms city of Westgate. All classes welcome, but players are warned that druids and rangers might be less useful in the city. All PCs must be some flavor of evil alignment. I used a Forgotten Realms wiki as source material and created a homebrew crime family to compete with the Fire Knives and 9 Golden Swords. I also lean heavily on my favorite Tarantino and Scorsese films for inspiration for NPCs and plotlines. Of course, I've taken great liberties with a lot of Forgotten Realms lore.
The campaign is episodic, as each adventure begins with the boss handing the PCs a new mission. Missions bring the PCs in contact with other family members, rival gangs, and all sorts of criminal shenanigans. So far, the PCs have robbed a caravan, rescued a bunch of smugglers, assassinated a minor noble, and protected drug dealers from Shadowbane inspired vigilantes. The campaign is a little railroad-y because the PCs don't get to choose what missions they go on, but I give them total freedom in how they get things done. I created a table that determines how long it takes the city watch to show up when the PCs start slugging it out in the streets and the crime families have a Game of Thrones-esque number of minor characters as NPCs.
I wrote a one page player guide and created a one page lore sheet for the players, knowing some of them wouldn't pay tons of attention to them.
So far, it's been a lot of fun. Some players were a little nervous that evil characters would create constant betrayal and infighting, but once they saw they had an entire city to mistreat and terrorize, they quickly forgot about turning against each other.
I have also divided the campaign into Acts that correspond to the PCs rising in the ranks of the gang. If we make it to the point where the PCs become bosses and shotcallers, the campaign will have to become more of a sandbox. I am still trying to figure out how to plan for this. We play on Foundry VTT and I find it difficult to improvise because all the maps, tokens, etc. have to be loaded in advance and it would take way too long to come up with something in session.
Possibly seen in some of my other threads on this site, but, in no particular order...
This concept is more of a modification of an existing module (Curse of Strahd) so there will be some spoilers
Strahd, in his study of the arcane arts, used the clone spell to create copies of his body. He hid them away in the Amber Temple under Exethanter's protection. At first, Strahd thought that perhaps he could escape his curse by transferring his soul out of his vampiric form. He tried with different humanoid bases for his clones, but after the first attempt found that as his new body took on his soul, so too did it take on his vampiric curse. The other forms were left in the temple, abandoned. Strahd counts on using each body over time, and taking his time to study their differences. What Strahd didnt count on, was Mordenkainen
When the wizard confronted him, an epic battle was undertaken between the two forces. Strahd managed to steal away his spellbook and toss it off of the cliff of Castle Ravenloft. With this power over him, Strahd relentlessly accosted Mordenkainen with spells which would cause the mage to go mad. Just before the last of his sanity flickered away, Mordenkainen tried to pull Strahd's soul from his body so as to entrap it. Strahd resisted with all his might until his soul began to rip apart. As the Mordenkainen lost his concentration and the spell broke, most of Strahd's soul returned to him; however, small fragments split off and found their way to the clones he had created rather than return to their master.
Now, the clones awaken. Each bears a similarity to the dark lord's appearance, but lack many of his powers. Whats more, with his soul, Strahds memories were split between himself and the clones. Strahd still retains the majority of his memory, but is missing certain key fragments.
Upon awakening, the clones have a basic understanding of the world around them, but do not know who they are nor who Strahd is. They are plagued by occasional visions or dreams of the fragments of memory they retain. Now they must wander Barovia to find their purpose, all while Strahd hunts them to try and regain his lost parts.
Setup: All of the players appear as being different races, but each will use the Dhampir lineage to reflect the portion of vampiric power they control.
Three-time Judge of the Competition of the Finest Brews! Come join us in making fun, unique homebrew and voting for your favorite entries!
Ever since I was a kid I wanted to run a campaign of initially low-level monsters who rebel against the BBEG. I would homebrew some races, and races would have features that unlock at higher levels. You'd have to sneak and fight your way out of the bad guy's lair, win the trust of humanoid societies, build your power, and come back to defeat the BBEG and free your monster races from his enslavement.
Races would include skeleton, ghost, dragonborn, ooze, beast, giant, etc.
Skeleton could be the Reborn lineage, dragonborn? Aren't kobalds the draconic minion race? Beast is kinda vague, and giants could be Goliath or firbolgs.
Those could work, but I want dragons to start out as kobolds at level one and level up to at least young dragons by level 20.
Skeletons might level up to zombies or liches.
Beast is deliberately vague. There could probably be the same mechanics, but you could choose what type of beast for role-playing purposes, or maybe different beasts would be different subclasses. Like you could choose wolf or snake and level up from a basic wolf or snake to warg / giant constrictor snake and then to werewolf / yuan-ti.
I've been pondering for a while to do a "lord of the rings but backwards" campaign, but not in the most common way.
The campaign will be set during the time when Frodo is taking the ring to mount doom. The party will comprise of a variety of evil characters, using normal dnd rules (though with some additions and replacements to make the game feel a little more LOTR-y).
The characters will be called to meet Sauron, who will be taking a shadowy form in his office atop his tower. And this is where the campaign becomes... a little silly.
Sauron greets the party in that typical way that people in power greet their underlings who they want to ask to do something they know they don't want to do - bigging them up, acting like they're their biggest fan, saying things like "Grognak, there's the strongest barbarian in the army! Whew! are those arms real or made of wood?", before going deadly serious and saying "I need you to do something".
Sauron then explains that he has seen that the enemy seek to destroy the ring of power. he feels that they cannot possibly succeed, but having had some human chop his fingers off all those years ago, he's not taking any chances.
He explains to the party that the ring of power can only be destroyed in the fires of mount doom, and so he needs to make sure that they never get to the fires. He then plonks on the desk a large, red, lidded bucket with the word "Fire" stenciled on the side in black. Where it touches the wood, it starts to smoke slightly.
When the players ask what's with the bucket, he will explain that it contains the Fires of Mount Doom. He's pushed them into this bucket with his magic, and he needs the party to take them to the one place which can quench them, putting out the fires and preventing the ring from ever being destroyed.
"In a far off land to the west, there is a small, peaceful place, in which the idiotic inhabitants shuffle around all day, never killing or eating each other, and otherwise being horridly insipidly good and peaceful. But do not hold this against them, for it is not their fault that they live such idyllic, charmed lives - it is because of a magical spring which wells up in the ground beneath them, which calms and placates any and all who drink from it. This spring is the only thing in middle earth with the magic to calm the fires of mount doom. I need you to draw upon your courage and daring, for I need you to go into the greenest, lightest place imaginable. I am sending you to the Shire, to cast the fires of mount doom into this spring, and save our kingdom."
Then will follow a mighty quest, through the wars and such, to get to the Shire and destroy the fires of mount doom, which are now contained in a red fire bucket!
One day I will run this... one day...
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The Planar War- The sky has turned blood red and the sun has become eclipsed, signaling that the barrier between the upper planes, lower planes, and material plane has weakened and a war between the celestials from the upper planes and the demons from the lower planes is about to begin, with the material plane as the battlefield. If the war isn't stopped, the material plane will be decimated. If either side wins the war, the balance of good and evil will be thrown off and the entire multiverse will be destroyed. The only way to save the multiverse is to travel to the world's oldest temple and find an artifact and/or spell that can end the war before it starts.
My current campaigns really have no overarching thing. They are completely character driven. Basically each has a thread that will spiral out into a main thrust (like one of them has an ancient map so that will be come a huge thrust in uncovering where it lead etc). I honestly take whatever seems to trigger a response or the characters latch into and take that and make it a multi-session thread.
Basically they are helping me take my fledgling homebrew world and allowing me to flesh out the details based on what excited them.
Honestly this makes me a little nervous as I have to be really on my toes but it has already led to some cool things which I never would have imagine from the start.
I am making/thinking of making the following adventures. They are listed in terms of cruciality.
Without the Candlelight. Levels 11-13, Agnostic. A coven of hags have cloaked a village in twilight. They have also taken all magical and nonmagical light from the village, so not even a mere candle can be lit. The characters must find and stop the coven before they use their stolen light to summon a foul elemental of fire to raze the Material Plane to the ground.
Evereska: Assimilation of the Fey. Levels 4-12, Faerun. The characters are given several quests, most of which relate to drow and fey appearances around the city of Evereska. Eventually, the characters discover a group of isolationist, extremist drow (even for stereotypical drow) planning to raid Evereska. They must thwart the raid with the aid of Silverymoon's troops. Once the drow are dealt with, the characters discover a fey plot - a cult are attempting to merge the Material Plane with the Feywild in order to destroy all drow in a horrific genocide. The characters have to stop this plot by venturing into the plain of faerie...
The Mines of the Dark Delve (TBC). Levels 5-15, Agnostic. The characters are sent to investigate a massive subterranean dwarven city-mine. However, unbeknownst to them, the dwarves that occupied the mine delved too deep and awoke a primordial Elder Brain, which has created enough illithid servants to turn the whole city into the most deadly dungeon imaginable...
Mists of Ba'ar (TBC). Levels 1-5, Lyrlore (custom). A murder is committed in the lawless city of Ba'ar. If the murderer isn't caught and brought to justice, the ruling crime families will begin a civil war that will result in total disaster. However, the murderer is more than they seem...
When the Wind Blows (TBC). Levels TBD, Faerun. A great storm threatens the whole of the Sword Coast. The adventurers must take control of a ship, gathering crucial supplies from places such as Waterdeep, Baldur's Gate, and Fireshear, before they journey into the Storm's Eye, a day's journey off Chult, to take down the formidable and slightly insane Giant Tempest Council before they destroy most of Northern Faerun's civilization as they know it.
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The characters are in a dangerous natural area (eg a jungle or a desert) and are running from the BBEG. Track the BBEGs forces so that it is a world where not all encounters are balanced, long testing is dangerous and they actually can make a huge impact on the BBEG. Bonus points if it is in another plane(eg Ravenloft).
BTW this was deliberately vague.
ive got a thing set in spelljammer with a mind flayer villain who is mind controlling a bunch of Kuo-toa to reshape reality and so he can get out from under the thumb of the DM as he got out under the thumb of the god brain of Bluetspur. i put things called Reality Phases on every random encounter table and when one of them happened, i would describe reality going wack, just really strange, unexplainable things happening. once i rolled one of these i would replace the entry with something that happened because of the reality phase, sutch as half of a sea monster from Pathfinder. when a reality phase happened, the walls between realities would be weak so everything, Pathfinder, SCPs, things from domains of dread, things that couldnt happen or shouldnt happen, would happen. im epsecally proud of the statblock i made for the boss. normally i hate lair actions, but one of the boss' was to change what the dice were. this could be anything to spinning a spinner instead of rolling, eating a fortune cookie, or asking a magic 8 ball. this had no in game concequences, but it would ROYALLY f*** with my players
it fizzled out after 2 sessions.
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Alignment: Lawful Evil
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I had one idea for a campaign a ways back, and I thought the premise was interesting enough to share.
The premise is that all the characters start... dead. Each player creates a basic backstory of how they died, how long ago, and what they did before they kicked the bucket. The reason this is the case is that the entire campaign's map consists of a chain of islands that... have some interesting history.
A long while ago, these islands were the center of an unstable kingdom, ruled by a monarch known as the Gilded King. The Gilded King formed their domain from the foundation up, previously being a minor lord in a neighboring region before fleeing and leaving the villages under their rule to rot. Why? So they could have power over others how they saw fit, without adhering to the rules of their higher-ups. Sure, the kingdom did well enough in its upbringing, but started falling into decline quickly after it was formed- much to the Gilded King's dismay. As a last-ditch effort to ensure their control over their subjects, the King and their most loyal subordinates used the might of a Wish spell to create an aura of immortality around the isles, ensuring that not even death can take away their power.
This curse of immortality, due to poor wording at the time of being cast, affected everything in the Gilded Isles' vicinity, meaning that nothing is allowed to die on the islands: Even dead and rotting things, like the player characters, are forcibly taken from the afterlife and brought back to the living world when they touch the ground on any of the islands. The curse does not stop decay, however, so everything and everyone in this used-to-be-kingdom that is or was alive is in a constant state of undeath and dying. The King and their few remaining loyal subjects still reign over what little is left, and they don't take kindly to anything that may threaten their positions of power. Even if something is killed on the islands, unless the body is completely and utterly destroyed, the curse resurrects them at dawn each day.
As one can imagine, everything and everyone 'living' well beyond their natural lifespans can cause some... interesting effects. Most of the Gilded King's soldiers and servants have nary a shred of their souls remaining, wandering the ruined towns and castles and prisons as feral husks. Plants that should have wilted decades ago still persist to bear blossoms reeking of rot, and the orchards refuse to stop bearing poisoned fruit. Some animals on the islands or in their waters have grown to unnatural proportions, and many of them are still-living mangled corpses that still try to move with their broken limbs. Rarely, creatures become horridly intertwined within one another, leading to maddened abominations that bear shreds of multiple souls. Not the kind of island vacation that most are hoping for.
Overall, the main goal of the campaign is to dispel the curse, so that the party and everything else on the islands can die permanently, and the islands can return to the natural cycle of life and death. Well, either that, or the party can try to find a ship to leave the isles and spare themselves from the eternal cycle, leaving everything else to rot forevermore. Whichever route the party takes, they'll want to avoid dying too many times. While they are resurrected each day, being forcibly ejected from the afterlife isn't great for one's mental health, and too many deaths can give the characters madness, exhaustion, and other not-so-fun side effects.
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