Hello, i'm fairly new to dming (10 sessions total over a year, but most in last 3 months). My current campaign started as typical "orcs bad - stop them" kind of campaign but it evolves quickly with new and new ideas i have.
What happened so far: players got to know about orcish ritual, which they stopped and are now working for the army at the outskirts stronghold. In the mean time they have seen a lot of wild magic activity in the world, changed beasts, old labs with abberations etc. Currently there is a saboteur in the stronghold-city and they are doing the detective work to stop him. Wild magic is also involved here. This is basically what happened and what player know.
The whole idea is that the ritual that they "stopped" actually worked and the victims that they thought are meant to be sacrificed can now be controlled by the Orcish shaman. The idea is that the saboteur is controlled by this shaman and does the sabotage at nights (Dual personality kind of character, cleric at day, wild magic warlock at night). The sabotage is done by some more people and the orcish plot is to basically take over the stronghold.
For that there are 4 saboteurs at the moment.
The young cleric - does sabotage to decrease morale and wear out the stronghold slowly but also to make the army focus more on the stronghold and less on scouting
Scout - gives information about movements of armies and marks places for totems (part of big magic circle with purpose of putting city wide spell - either silence or something that blocks magic in some way, i'm not certain yet)
Merchant - basically a spy but also helps the saboteur with inventory and so on
Mage - does abberation experiments in old canals because he believes in wild magic
Now the underlying plot is that the wild magic is getting stronger because the magic users in the kingdom are too abudant, it will lead to cataclism and the wild magic mostly surges in the orcish realms. Thats why they want to stop all magic - destroy the weave in some sense. They are still brutal and power oriented orcs but they got solid reason for this whole invasion.
The end game of the sabotage part is them finding out that saboteurs are controlled by shaman (with help of high level divination mage) and going on the mission to find his lair and kill him. But first there is orcish siege happening (though players can ignore that part, but they probably won't since they like killing orcs)
Up until this point it was fairly easy but i am having some doubs now. Having said all that i have couple questions:
Does that sound coherent?
Are the sabotage roles logical? I feel like the whole plans is kind of weak at the moment but i'm not sure how to strenghen it
How should i allow players to find out about other saboteurs? At the moment they got the idea of checking the canal after finding some clues and i'm not sure if i want them to find out the hidden lab yet. Should i just leave some other
Obviosly the whole plan is reaching far into the future so i wonder how big are the chances of getting there?
3. - If the Party is intuitive enough to check geography point X, reward them if they found it. Just because it is found, does not mean they can enter/destroy it.
Have a reasonable DC in finding it. Let the dice roll to determine if successful.
If found early, have some "guards" at a slightly higher level. If there is a fight, let the PCs escape with no following.
Remember, the party does not have your context, so many times a PC party never actually gets the clue no matter how obvious the DM thinks it is.
4. depends on the PCs and the story line. Don't rush it, but don't dawdle and extend the story out so the PCs get bored. That is a key point opt learn via experience. Do an occasional survey to see how the pacing is. Figure out if party is happy with pace or it needs to be adjusted.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
To post a comment, please login or register a new account.
Hello, i'm fairly new to dming (10 sessions total over a year, but most in last 3 months). My current campaign started as typical "orcs bad - stop them" kind of campaign but it evolves quickly with new and new ideas i have.
What happened so far: players got to know about orcish ritual, which they stopped and are now working for the army at the outskirts stronghold. In the mean time they have seen a lot of wild magic activity in the world, changed beasts, old labs with abberations etc. Currently there is a saboteur in the stronghold-city and they are doing the detective work to stop him. Wild magic is also involved here. This is basically what happened and what player know.
The whole idea is that the ritual that they "stopped" actually worked and the victims that they thought are meant to be sacrificed can now be controlled by the Orcish shaman. The idea is that the saboteur is controlled by this shaman and does the sabotage at nights (Dual personality kind of character, cleric at day, wild magic warlock at night). The sabotage is done by some more people and the orcish plot is to basically take over the stronghold.
For that there are 4 saboteurs at the moment.
Now the underlying plot is that the wild magic is getting stronger because the magic users in the kingdom are too abudant, it will lead to cataclism and the wild magic mostly surges in the orcish realms. Thats why they want to stop all magic - destroy the weave in some sense. They are still brutal and power oriented orcs but they got solid reason for this whole invasion.
The end game of the sabotage part is them finding out that saboteurs are controlled by shaman (with help of high level divination mage) and going on the mission to find his lair and kill him. But first there is orcish siege happening (though players can ignore that part, but they probably won't since they like killing orcs)
Up until this point it was fairly easy but i am having some doubs now. Having said all that i have couple questions:
1 and 2 sound good.
3. - If the Party is intuitive enough to check geography point X, reward them if they found it. Just because it is found, does not mean they can enter/destroy it.
Have a reasonable DC in finding it. Let the dice roll to determine if successful.
If found early, have some "guards" at a slightly higher level. If there is a fight, let the PCs escape with no following.
Remember, the party does not have your context, so many times a PC party never actually gets the clue no matter how obvious the DM thinks it is.
4. depends on the PCs and the story line. Don't rush it, but don't dawdle and extend the story out so the PCs get bored. That is a key point opt learn via experience. Do an occasional survey to see how the pacing is. Figure out if party is happy with pace or it needs to be adjusted.