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View Full Version : [any] Themes of campaigns you have DM'd



weenie
2010-01-29, 04:45 PM
This thread is meant for DMs who would like to share the stories of their campaigns with the rest of the world. Tell us how your PCs met, why did they party up and what was your campaign all about!

I'll go first: This was my first time DMing. A dark cult was spreading artifacts throughout the world, that corrupted all those who spent enough time close to them making them greedy and ruthless. This lead to an invasion of the continent where my PCs started by a foreign nation. The PCs joined the badly organized defending army to stop the invasion and contributed quite a bit in defending their homeland. Once the other nation retreated a counter attack was launched against the invaders and the PCs were sent ahead of the main force to free some hostages and scout the land for the counter attack. The artifacts were intended to create a war, that would weaken the material plane, which would facilitate an invasion from the demonic world, but my players never got around to finding that out, because the campaign ended too soon due to OOC reasons. :smallfrown:

Magicus
2010-01-29, 05:37 PM
In the first D&D campaign I ran, the major villain was none other than Boccob himself - although the PCs didn't know that until around 11th level. Boccob, having learned all there was to know about most of the "normal" planes, started doing experiments with creatures from the Far Realms, inadvertently letting some into the normal planes. This would, of course, eventually have destroyed creation. The other gods would have tried to stop him, obviously, but, being immensely clever, he had woven spells to keep them out that were rooted in six locations, mostly on the Prime Material. The higher levels of the campaign consisted of the PCs (an Elven Druid, a Human Ninja/assassin-type character, a guy who changed his character about every three sessions, and a Dragonborn (refluffed from Bahamut to the CE Blue Dragon Vordor) Half-Giant Psychic Warrior) going around to places like the Underdark, several abandoned keeps, the Negative Energy Plane, etc. in order to break the seals.
Of course, all of this was going on while the Psychic Warrior had his own agenda - he was trying to conquer a small kingdom to dedicate to his patron dragon, in order to garner worship for him and make him a god. Eventually, with the help of many allies and an interesting session where the PCs raided an abandoned crypt and armory of Nerull to obtain some experimental weapons of war, he succeeded. This would have gotten a lot of gods angry with him, except that the party was their best shot at stopping Boccob.
Eventually, the party got to and broke the last seal, only to be confronted by the Avatar of Boccob himself, who inserted his own energies into the spell to keep it going. Clearly, this backfired, and Boccob was wiped out, but it did serve the purpose of releasing a very potent (homebrew) Aberration into the Prime Material, which the PCs narrowly defeated. Then they got to attend a meeting of all the gods to witness them decide on a new god of magic to take up Boccob's power... And Vordor, the new dragon god was there as well. What ended up happening was that the Psychic Warrior provided a distraction (offering to become the new god of magic himself, which was confusing) in order to let Ishtar, an ally of Vordor, seize the power secretly.
All in all, it was a good campaign - a bit higher-scale than anything I'd run nowadays (never again will my PCs converse directly with the gods!), but it was well worth running.

Zaydos
2010-01-29, 05:43 PM
The only campaign I ever finished the PCs were members of an order of "knights" dedicated to slaying illithids (most of these knights were wizards). The PCs were assigned to work together by their bosses originally, even being made regional commanders in a certain kingdom at one point, but with the exclusion of my little brother's character they developed a general liking and bond. They fought the illithids for 7 levels (12-18), in various places and locations. The game included hopping between three almost geographically identical prime material planes, an evil illithid mastermind who knew the DMPC (no PC had given me a backstory of any sort yet so I hooked it on him) who quickly knew and hated all the PCs (with a special vehemence). They fought a fallen aberration demigod, a beholder hive mother (beholders and illithids were allies in this setting) and it was a rather generally aberration heavy campaign.

One PC got married to an elf maid. They moved up in the organization, one PC even getting a place on the high council (only one to fulfill the council's prerequisite abilities), and liked the campaign enough that they didn't want to quit it when I finished it. The follower up was: Amazing Elemental Fortresses of Insane Evil Wizard (On the MOON!!!).

I never said my themes were any good.

valadil
2010-01-29, 06:35 PM
I always have themes although my players rarely see them. The theme gives me something to go back to and use as a source of inspiration when I'm otherwise out of ideas.

My first game was about Joseph Campbell's assertions that society is full of cogs that spin and how heroes break free of that. I didn't like Campbell so in this game the heroes were manipulated into doing their deeds. This didn't work so well because the PCs resented it, but it was my first game so I was allowed some mistakes.

After that I wanted to do something to show that I'd learned from the early mistakes. I did a game where the players started out being manipulated but as their power grew they flew up in the world and started controlling other people.

More recently I did a game about censorship and whether its right to withhold information.

Yeah, I try and make D&D deeper than it should be.

Swordgleam
2010-01-29, 07:27 PM
I usually run silly games; my current 4e game is the first one with a theme. The entire campaign springs from the quote, "'tis better to light a single candle than curse the darkness."

The setting is post-apocalyptic. The players are all from the small village of Candle, the only civilization they've ever known. The world is a grim, hostile place, and as the heroes soon discovered, Candle is only slightly friendlier than the surrounding wilderness. The village was built on violence, bigotry, and secrets, and many of the people there have no desire to change that, but they are the only people the heroes know. Light a candle, or curse the darkness?

Totally Guy
2010-01-29, 07:42 PM
I did one campaign, played completely straight, on the theme of... "this game is like an MMORPG". One player, about 4 sessions in, all off a sudden announced, "He's spawn camping!" And they never saw it coming.

The next campaign was about edition wars. A nation was trying to power up their pet got by making all people worship their new, streamlined, religion. They never realised that I'd done that until... session 6 or 7. It was good when they spotted it.

Ormur
2010-01-29, 08:12 PM
I'm aiming for an epic campaign where the players resist the evil empire trying to reunite the old empire. If I'm making a point it might be that attractive concepts from history might be a lot worse in practice than theory. Reuniting the old empire seems like a noble cause at first but that means wars and perhaps the petty fiefdoms weren't worse than the stiffing centralization and organized brutality of the old empire. After reading A Song of Ice and Fire I realized that my world wasn't all that gritty but there's still plenty of time to fix that.

In the country they are now I'm also highlighting the emergence of a modern state from feudalism. It's a different kind of centralization with more emphasis on infrastructural power and representation than that of despotic power as in the empire. Two solutions to the weakness feudalism that will vie for power. Which wins might depend on the PC's unless they do something completely different.

Slayn82
2010-01-29, 08:29 PM
I've been preparing a campaign to play with my usual group, for levels 17-epic, where the pcs are evil persons, long ago defeated by great champions of the good, that were choosen by a ancient entity older than the gods themselves to be the bringers of the apocalypse.

In order to do that, they would have to raise armies and battle 4 kingdoms, while searching for an lost artifact left long ago by outsiders.

That artifact would turn out to be a space transmissor, that would atract a starship near their world. Then, as a final act, they would have to invade the starship, defeat the awakened tripulation of psionics and their technology, and direct it on colision route against the planet. Or use the resources of the starship to rebel and defeat the ancient entity, and them rule forever as gods their planet. Or travel the stars.

Xallace
2010-01-29, 08:35 PM
My current campaign is run entirely randomly. Everything from the plots to the locations to the NPCs are randomly generated, and I just have to put them together. Good times.

My biggest campaign was set in a magi-steam-tech-punk world, a mere four years after the humanoid races finished up a planet-spanning war against every aberration that ever existed (the aberrations started it, in the humanoids defense).

The tenuous peace between nations was just starting to break up, when an old noble named Stanford Runesmith pulled out a crazy invention that he claimed would "change the world forever." Turned out to be a massive generator powered by an ancient magical crystal! The thing could light up an entire city with only a fraction of the juice it was emitting.

So, Runesmith needed more of them, because he wanted to install one in every major nation; or so he claimed. Our heroes end up working for him, of course, traveling the globe to find the rest of these suddenly-there crystals.

Along the way, the met a man named Jeremy Cross, another noble, who knew about the endeavor and wanted the crystals all to himself. What's more, he claimed that Stanford was a liar! He really wanted the crystals to build a death machine and take over the world!

Well, when questioned, Runesmith claimed that Jeremy wanted to use the crystals to take over the world. So the PCs don't know who to trust, and the exploration becomes a race as Cross sends out his own hired adventurers to get the job done.

The twist? Cross and Runesmith are working together. The other twist? Cross and Runesmith are actually two parts of a six-part entity called "The Xammux," a horrible, emotionless deity-like creature that exists outside of space and time! Each of the "crystals" is actually a chrysalis for the other parts of the entity, and when they get all six together the Xammux will be re-created!

Worse than that, the Xammux pulls the strings behind both the ethergaunts and the aberrations (which, of course, could not be fully wiped out). The ethergaunts have begun a shadow-infiltration of the Prime Material, Eberron's Inspired-style. The remaining aberrations (mostly mind flayers) are pooling their resources with the last remaining Elder Brain. Cross and Runesmith are pawning unwitting adventurers into getting them what they need. And the PCs? Well, they're right in the middle of all of it.

Harperfan7
2010-01-30, 12:24 AM
I've started, but never finished, several campaigns in the last several years.

The first A half-green dragon/kobold barbarian/sorcerer was a king of a small nation of kobolds in a forested river valley otherwise inhabited by halflings and gnomes. He roused the kobolds into a war against the halflings and gnomes (for a reason I handn't thought of yet). The first adventure started at a large foritifed bridge-fort crossing the river just upstream from the river delta (which was swampy and full of lizardfolk tribes).

Halfling merchants coming down stream with boats/rafts full of halfling/gnome goods to sell to the gathered merchant caravans at the bridge (Irontide Bridge) were being robbed. The merchants awaken on their boats to find their goods stolen but don't remember when or how. It turns out that while the halflings and gnomes were fighting the kobolds, some kobolds snuck into their villages and stole their young. When the halflings and gnomes returned, they were warned to quietly come with the kobolds or their young would be killed.

Not knowing what to do, the halflings went along with it. The kobolds had them pirate the merchants coming down stream from the safety of a hidden kobold cave in the night. They were originally using blunt arrows and alchemical sleep gas sling bullets, but this would mean the merchants could tell the soldiers at the bridge about when and where they were attacked, and maybe by who. But a local pixie discovered what was going on and supplied them with some of her sleep and memory loss arrows while trying to come up with a solution to the problem.

Meanwhile, a halfling priestess of Yondalla returning from war discovered that her twin sister and her family were missing. The cleric divined the situation and snuck into the caves to trade places with her sister in order to keep the captives alive with her magic. Her sister then went to Irontide Bridge to find some adventurers to help.

Also meanwhile, a merchant lord stuck at the bridge waiting for his goods hired one of the more vicious garrisoned soldiers (and his lackeys) to go and find these pirates, kill them, and return the goods. The commander of Irontide sent his own scouts (two good hearted half-elves) to find the pirates himself. His scouts found the caves but were confronted by the pixie, and have teamed up with her to keep anyone else from finding the caves (they are charmed, but would have helped anyways).

Once this adventure was dealt with (the pcs were supposed to be small sneaky types themselves, given how touchy of an adventure it was), they had to find the fence the kobolds had hired to smuggle these stolen goods to pirates in the delta of the river. This was lizardfolk territory however, and kobolds suck at fighting lizardfolk in swamps, so they hired a company of evil adventurers to guard their stolen goods from the lizardfolk until the pirates could buy them.

However, one of these evil adventurers had stolen a black dragon egg from somewhere in the swamp and mama wanted it back, so her half-lizardfolk chieftan son took his powerful tribe and started slaughtering any merchants and villagers in the swamp, along with more peacful tribes.

It never got this far, though.

The second The pcs arrive in freeport one night aboard the same ship. Freeport is known as the city of thieves, as it has more thieves, better equipped thieves, and more powerful thieves than any other city in the world. It is probably the roughest human city in the world and is very corrupt.

The pcs didn't know each other at first, but when they showed up on the docks (one pc was a street thief from the city, so he was just hanging out at that particular dock doing street-thiefy things) and two thugs stole a chest from some merchant, who shouted "1000 gold to anyone who brings that chest!" the pcs were the ones who reacted. They chase the thugs through the docks, down some alleys, through a warehouse, through the sewers, and finally to a safehouse basement and recover the chest, decided whether or not to attempt to open it or return it, find out what the tattoos on the thugs mean, and fight off the competition who also went after the thugs.

The whole campaign revolved around the war between various factions in the city, either rising to rule the underworld themselves or cleanse the corruption from the city. Besides a powerful thieves guild, a huge collection of gangs, several enclaves of monsters who hide amongst the city and have a parasitic relationship with it, discovering and exploring the elven ruins it was built on, fighting off invaders, and so on, they had to deal with a secret society of ancient immortal elven spellcasters from the previous civilization who run the world from their own plane/planet (and what to keep this a secret).

This one was my baby. I still work on it from time to time.

The third A warlord in the wilderness raises a secret army of goblinoids, orcs, giants, and so forth to conquer the nation it grew up in. "The Warlord" turns out to be a beautiful female sorceress who was once a noble. She handpicks her perfect army using illusion and enchantment from all the evil races and hides them in her volcano/mountain lair (the army was led by her consort, a half-drow marshall 16). She uses elite lycanthrope goblins, orcs, and bugbears to do her sneaky guerilla warfare/sapping, devises a ritual to erupt the volcano (spreading fire and ash through the nation she plans to invade), then gates her army of shock troops into key cities (skullcrusher ogres decked out in dwarf crafted armor). Would have been fun.

The fourth Is a solo campaign for my cousin, who wanted to play an evil half-orog (forgotten realms) spellsword in the underdark. We just started this one, and so far, he was with a raiding party of the orc tribe he grew up in while they and other allied tribes were besieging a dwarf hold in the spine of the world mountains. They were running through a dwarven tunnel towards the hold when the tunnel collapsed on them, my cousins guy (fangshaar) who was just a first level half-orog (really just half-orc) barbarian 1 with the fiendish bloodline feat, was the only survivor. Not long after the tunnel collapsed, the way back collapsed too, trapping him in, except he found a crack in the wall leading to winding umberhulk tunnels which wound through the mountain and intersected dwarven mines. He encountered another survivor (an orc warrior), two dwarves guarding a secret entrance to the mines (which he didn't find), and had to navigate his way out of the labrynth of tunnels (which had climbing/falling hazards, water filled tunnels, a literal maze, and finally a web spinning monstrous spider at the end). Anyways, he falls unconcious after killing the spider and is found by duergar slavers. Begin adventure #2.

Anyways, the campaign will revolve around him escaping from slavery in the underdark (which is basically a whole low level campaign itself), collecting a party of evil (or unscrupulous neutrals) along the way (who will turn on him for good opportunities or for other reasons) and join an orc horde as it sweeps down into other lands. Turns out, his father, a half-fiend orog spellsword himself, is the leader of this horde and a nation of orogs from the underdark (who are equiping the surface orcs secretly). Fangshaar will probably try to kill his father and take over the horde himself (and probably found an evil nation, who knows, it just started).

We've never done an evil campaign, but since its mostly evil against evil, it's not so bad, and I'll finally get to run adventures against human towns, elven realms, dwarf holds, and gnome burrows, which I've always wanted to do.