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View Full Version : 4e Adventure Design Diary, Part 1



gareth
2009-03-01, 12:10 AM
Having played a few games online, I thought I'd have a go at writing an adventure. If I can get it into a playable state I'll try running it on these forums. This is my first attempt at creating an adventure and I haven't even been a player for that long. So I thought that as I created the adventure I'd post my material here to get feedback and suggestions from experienced players and DMs. If you're likely to play this once it gets written, you may want to skip the spoiler boxes and any replies to this post.

Requirements
I had four requirements in mind for the adventure.

1) It has to work with just the three core books and the Manual of the Planes. I don't own anything else and I don't want to involve any homebrew rules aside from tinkering with the monsters.

2) The adventure has to give natural opportunities for the players to accumulate treasure. Players expect a certain amount of loot and I don't want it to feel shoehorned in.

3) Besides the treasure-gathering, there has to be some kind of overall goal that could lead on to further adventures.

4) The adventure has to allow players to start at level 1 and level up before the end.

So, with those requirements in mind, I've created:

Claws of the Kruthik


The Disaster
Five years from now, the world will end. Every creature capable of speech, from humans to gnolls to mind flayers to vampires, will be instantly destroyed in a massive psychic cataclysm, the origin of which I haven't figured out. Only non-magical beasts survive, and a side-effect of the disaster increases their intelligence.
The effect is greatest in the kruthiks, who are already the most intelligent natural beast. Afterwards they are as smart as humanoids were, and they quickly enslave or exterminate the other beasts. Within a few centuries they've created a world-spanning civilisation even more advanced than the old human empires, building their cities above ground now that they don't fear attack.

The Timeslip
Three hundred years from now, a city of 250,000 kruthiks is transported back in time to five years years before the disaster. This catches the kruthiks completely by surprise and they have no explanation for it. I don't either, at the moment.
In the human era the kruthik city lies in an isolated wasteland, so it takes a while for the humans to notice. But the city has just been cut off from the farms that fed it. Thousands of starving kruthiks, all as smart as humans, begin to pour out of the city, desperate for fresh meat. They raid human farms and towns, while leaving the city's treasure completely unprotected from goblin and kobold raiders.

The Adventure
The PCs come in when a town is attacked by kruthiks. It's not obvious that the kruthiks are smart, and they don't know about the city yet. Their mission is to track the kruthiks back and figure out where they're coming from, and why they're attacking now. Oh, and rescue the last guy who tried this.
While tracking the kruthiks they run across the goblin equivalent of an adventuring party, carrying loot from the city. Loot like little gold statues of kruthiks, and oddly shaped armour that wouldn't fit a humanoid. This should make them thoughtful.
After a while they get a view of the city, with thousands of kruthiks streaming out of its windowless towers. A month ago there was nothing there. The PCs fight their way in through both kruthiks and looters of all species, collecting loot as they go and gradually realising that the kruthiks are in charge - there's no tieflings or devils controlling them.
They find the lost adventurer, who's being interrogated by the kruthik "mayor". The final battle has them defeat the mayor, and rescue the adventurer. They do a bit more exploring but never find out that the city is from the future. A "natural beast only" plane is probably the best they can come up with.
The PCs are about to fight their way out of the city when the timeslip reverses. They're trapped in the kruthik world, along with hundreds of humanoid looters.


That's all I'll write up at first, but the cliffhanger obviously leads into some more adventures.

Future Adventures

The next adventure involves exploring what the PCs think of as the Natural Beast plane, trying to find a way back home. Just before they succeed, they learn that they're really in the future. Once they get back, they have just five years to save every intelligent race and monster from extermination.

So, any comments?

Rigon
2009-03-02, 10:44 AM
1) It has to work with just the three core books and the Manual of the Planes. I don't own anything else and I don't want to involve any homebrew rules aside from tinkering with the monsters.

2) The adventure has to give natural opportunities for the players to accumulate treasure. Players expect a certain amount of loot and I don't want it to feel shoehorned in.

3) Besides the treasure-gathering, there has to be some kind of overall goal that could lead on to further adventures.

4) The adventure has to allow players to start at level 1 and level up before the end.

1) limiting resources. i agree (i only have the core books so i have to)

2) yep, i always have problems with that. right now i can't even calculate how much gold they should find... not to mention specific items. how do you "explain" loot which is unrelated to the monsters fought? it's just strange to fight kobold throatslicers to find a +2 bastard sword because our warrior needed one.

3) my method for that is that each party member has it's own motivation against the common enemy but they might not be resolved at once. this way i only need to think up new motivations for 1-2 party members at a time (which is obviously much more easier than to motivate a whole party).

4) you mean just once? strange. a quest which stops world's end should be more... epic, don't you think? (my quest is ment to pull characters from level 1 to level 6 ... and will possibly have a paragon tier and an epic tier aftermath as well).

Yakk
2009-03-02, 11:46 AM
Some notes, Re kruthiks.
Few PCs will know what these are. So attempting to 'oh my, they are intelligent!' is going to be less dramatic than maybe you intend.

It's a magical world -- things being intelligent aren't much of a surprise.

Now, if you had a number of adventures before this event to 'frame' it, it would work.

...

Have you read any of the 'dies the fire' stories by SM Stirling? Your "the city is cut off from supplies" reminds me of it. By the time the PCs reach the city, would there still be Kruthiks "pouring out of" anything? The time of initial panic would be long gone.

I'd expect social collapse -- maybe roaming bands of cannibalistic Kruthik. and either the remnants of a government or some strong-arm gangs that control what is left of the food storage.

Do not forget the tools of civilisation: in order to build a 'greater civilisation', that typically requires greater tools. In the D&D world, that means great martial, magical, divine or other power. Much of this can be dislodged by the fact that they are cut off from their civilisation -- but still, one should expect some tricks from these civilised Kruthiks.

...

So if I where to build this campaign, I'd be tempted to plan for 3 stages:
1> Dealing with a Hive. Kruthiks are being used by Evil Empire X to cause problems. Goal of adventure: give players a baseline assumption about that Kruthiks are.
2> Side-adventure. Can be short. Leads into...
3> City is time-slipped into the wasteland. Kruthik raiders are found, and players are sent to deal with it, with the assumption that it is Evil Empire X pulling off their old tricks. It isn't.
4> The City itself. Most of the 'raiders' where actually starving 'peasant' Kruthiks. In the city, the players run into a mixture of cannibalistic bands of Kruthiks and what is left of Kruthik civilisation.
5> The displacement. They are lost in an alien world, where Kruthiks rule.
6> The players get a clue, followed by the players figuring out how to get back to their world.
7> The apocalypse, this time forwarned -- maybe some humanoids survive. Fight against the dying of the light.
8> The plan. Attempt to gain the macguffin that is doing the serious time mojo, maybe try again.
9> Discovery of the real enemy -- who actually destroyed the world.
10> The facedown: taking out the being of power (tm) that destroyed the world, in order to get the power to save the world.

If each of the above bullet-points has 30 encounters, they'll be early-paragon for the city itself, and hitting early-epic when the apocalypse happens, then end-epic when they face down the being who destroyed the very world they live in.

If you don't want the campaign to be this long, change the advancement rate to fit.

A 'quick' version would have 9 encounters per plot point, and 3 encounters per character level, taking 90 encounters to finish the plot. At 3 encounters per week, that would take a good half a year+ to finish the story.

gareth
2009-03-02, 07:40 PM
Thanks for the feedback. Combining responses:


4) you mean just once? strange. a quest which stops world's end should be more... epic, don't you think? (my quest is ment to pull characters from level 1 to level 6 ... and will possibly have a paragon tier and an epic tier aftermath as well).

Oh, for the whole story I'd expect them to get to epic levels. But for just the city rescue mission I'd only expect them to level up a few times. I know The Keep on the Shadowfell goes from Level 1 to 3 but I don't own it. Does it seem to be at a similar kind of scale?


Few PCs will know what these are. So attempting to 'oh my, they are intelligent!' is going to be less dramatic than maybe you intend.


Good point. I can see two ways to go here. First, substitute rats for kruthiks, so everyone understands what's so shocking. Second, de-emphasise the "they are intelligent" shock. An huge city from the future is interesting enough, even if you don't know much about the things that inhabit it. I'm not sure starting with an adventure just to show what a normal kruthik is like would be worth it.


Have you read any of the 'dies the fire' stories by SM Stirling? Your "the city is cut off from supplies" reminds me of it.


Yes, that was an inspiration for this. Also his "Island in the Sea of Time", which is about Nantucket Island travelling back thousands of years.


By the time the PCs reach the city, would there still be Kruthiks "pouring out of" anything? The time of initial panic would be long gone.


The idea is that the whole city is no longer viable without the farms and transportation that kept it fed. Stay in the city and eventually you starve to death. Move out and you probably starve too, there's just not enough meat in the surrounding country. But there's still a chance of survival.


So if I where to build this campaign, I'd be tempted to plan for 3 stages:

This is really helpful. I like the quick version better, with enough decision points the number of encounters can get huge.