PDA

View Full Version : City Based D&D help



TheWerdna
2010-02-03, 09:43 PM
Okay, basically I am running a campaign for my friends using the Eberron Campaign setting. Though the main plot is planning to spread across the world, the players told me they want large portions to be city based, though not the whole campaign.

The basic plot is the players are trying to fight the Order of the Emerald Claw, who are trying to find 12 pieces of a artifact. This artifact is the activating mechanism for a ancient Giant super-weapon, the super weapon that was used to end their war with Dal'qori (yes i butchered the spelling on that).

So far the players have succeed in stopping the cult from getting one piece of the artifact, which they now have in their possession. The party is currently in Sharn, having survived a dungeon getting the piece.

There is a major ally , a Ken (changeling Rogue/fighter) and agent of The Chamber, has told them the location of the previous piece. The players know very little about the artifact, besides that it is very important that the Emerald Claw don't get there hands on it.

Anyways back to my current problem. I am not a very good DM, being put into the DM position due to knowing the rules better then my friends. So due to this i have no idea about how to go about the city part.

My basic plan is to have Ken tell the players of a location of a former member of the Emerald Claw who is willing to tell them the location of the Emerald Claw's base in the city. Unfortunately when they arrive they find him dead. the corrupt guards will not let them into the building, which they will have to sneak into later.

Once they sneak in they find a paper saying to find Jerek Shade. Hes a member of the Emerald Claw, but the players do not know this. He will try to trick them into doing work for him and lead them into a bunch of ambushes untill they realize hes evil.

From this point on I have little idea for what to do besides the fact that this section of the campaign will end with them finding the base, going in, kill some vampires (who have repeatedly tried to kill them BTW). and find out that the cult has a veige idea of where the next piece is.

Basically i need ideas for what the players do during this time consisting of

- Stuff Jerek Shade tricks them to do
-Own investigations
-Finding info to lead to base

The party consists of

Illnore d'Medani (NG Half-elf L2Fighter / L7 Swordsage)
Airum d'Mendani (CG Half-Elf L3 Rogue / L6 Ranger)
Mcgraw (CN Human L9 Sorcerer, is completely insane)
Wolf (NG Human L9 Cleric)
Arteimis (NE Changling L2 Fighter / L4 Rogue / L3 Assassin, clone of Altier from Assassins Creed)

Yes i know the party consists of 3 good people, 1 evil person, and one completely insane person)

Kol Korran
2010-02-04, 04:51 AM
ok, first of all, you may not believe yourself to be a good DM, but your trying, your improving, and your inveting in your players fun. those are big points allready. plus, it seemed your players are coming back, so there must be something good you're doing.

a few things i think off:
1) if you can, try and get "Sharn, the city of towers". that book is really, really detailed about the city, and can give you plenty of great ideas.

2) do note that if you call your character Jererk, your players are likely to call him Jerk. is that intended? it is very suiting considering.

3) 12 pieces of the artifact? unless each piece has a unique plot/story/ adventure behind it that might get tiresome fast. i suggest that you either narrow down the pieces (7/ 8 are good numbers) or have some of them allready found by allies or their enemies- it will give the players a feel they are not alone in this.

4) errands by Jerek: you first need to either decide who/what he is or tell us. i suggest to avoid another changling. but i do suggest a rogue, maybe an assasin, with an item that hides his alignement. as to what he can send the party after:
- seek out other parts! for some reason of fate some of these parts may have drifted into Sharn of all places. some ideas for the parts and related adventures/ complications:

one artifact may be a docent that is now part of an influential warforged spiritual leader down at the cogs. (youdecide his agenda but it could be motivated by scripture from he docent, calling warforged to travel back to Xenderic, to their origins, or maybe some dogma akin to the The Becoming God from Faiths of Eberron, just in Sharn, or maybe he is a desciple of the lord of blades). the order have tried to get the docent from him, but have failed. the party could involve strange contrucs, artificers, and the war veterans of the warforged. the docent can be taken out only while the warforged is unconcious, or willing to part with it. the docent (or warforged) could also relay a bit about the artifact's history, and possible uses. do some foreshadowing here. i suggest this to be the 2nd/3rd errand he sends them on.
one relic is either kept in the great temple for the silver flame in the higher parts of the city (i forgot where it was), or the clues for it's whereabouts are kept secret by the temple head. (and are protected against divinations). the church itself knows this is powerfull, and maybe part of it's origins, but they don't know the specifics. Jerek fears that they might grow suspicious if followers of the Blood of Vol start snooping around ,so he sends the PCs. being true to his name, he even tells the PCs that his sources have told him that the higher ups of the churchs have been replaced by changling agents of the emerald claw, and that they are getting close to the artifact, so exterminating them would be fine. if the characters are not carefull, they could really complicate things for themselves by pissing off the silver flame. this task is quite suspicious, so i suggest you send them to it amongst the last errands.
you could change the previous idea with a temple of the Undying court, again saying that some are actually agents of the emerald claw.
Sharn is a manifest zone to Syrania, the azure sky. have some small part of the city "merge" occasionally with Sharn. Jerek has found out that part of the artifact was entrusted to same angelic being on the other side, but that this being can easely discenr good and evil. he decides to send the (mostly) good party into the other plane, to retrieve the artifact (he can say that they were prophecised to do so, or something like that) the angle might give out some test to prove they are good, or some challange, which can be very custom made. the evil character might have an interesting time convincing an angelic being of his intentions.
an artifact part might be entrusted into a Khundarak maximum high security vault, owned by a whimsical rich collector noble. (maybe an agent of the Aurum?) the dwarf house immediatly investigates everyone who questions about the artifact piece (who's existence is supposed to be a secret) this adventure demands tact, thought, and caution most liekly in dealing with the house. they can break into the vault (should be really tough), persuade the noble, impersonate as him and pass security measures (against falsehoods), or so on. maybe they could run a really huge favour for the noble? persuade someone to love him? acquire another otherwise inaccesible item? kill an opponent? try to involve moral choices in this one.
thieves race: the emerald claw used a criminal organization within the city to try and obtain an artifcat piece. they succeeded, but now they won't let it go. Jerek sends the PCs to retrieve it, since most other emerald claw agents are known to the thieves. the party needs to locate the thieves, deal with them, only to learn the item has been sold/ had been stolen by another criminal organization/ mage/ religious fantaic/ and so on. have the characters scamper through the various distircts of sharn in order to find the artifact. have them make connections, get a feel of the city and so on. in fact, i think this should do well to be the first errand Jerek sends the PCs after- it sounds legit, and it's a good intro to the city.

- eliminate competitors: mostly under the guise of "they are actually emerald claw agents": this could be incorporated with the silver flame/undying court ideas, or against other more focused threats, such as an investigating Karrnathi company (maybe with some undead of it's own? maybe led by a vampire close to king Karrn III?), or perhaps Agents of the dreaming dark, seeking the artifact to perhaps enable their realm to get in touch again with Eberron, or believers in the Path of Light, wanting to make sure it won't?
- an idea related to a possible long term goal of the Claw (see 6) may cause Jerek to ask the characters to gain all kind of strange reagents and materials, maybe even obscure magical items or tomes from all over the city. morgrave university may be one source, as do the enclaves of the dragonmarked houses.
- as long as the characters aren't suspecting and are usefull, i suggest no ambushes. except for maybe competitors? once they are unto things Jerek may try to give them the slip and arrange one major ambush (preferably with some hoorifying undead, perhaps an abberation as well, see onwards)

5) own investigations: you can add all kinds of interesting things here- the party could be approached by agents of the Daughters of Sora Kell, saying they are linked to a great prophecy, and give all kind of cryptic warnings and omens. the party could research the artifact in morgrave university. maybe they'll have to do a task for the expert sage on Xenderic artifacts before they can do so (there is also a sphinx at the university which is linked to prophecy, if you wish to use that). the party could venture on a small expedition to Xenderic itself, maybe to the dig site of one of the artifacts to try and find more (maybe when they need a vacation of Sharn)

6) base: i don't have that many ideas for this one, except two:
- the base could be linked directly to the embassy of Karrnath. secretly one of the staff (perhaps even the ambassador?!) is a blood of Vol supporter, wishing to become a vampire if s/he behaves good. if the party invetigates here before, theis person does his outmost to help them "weed out the traitorous dogs!" but actually gives up a warning to the Claw, and maybe arraning ambushes. if the party finds the entrance to the Karrn base, have it undead themed, but also with plenty of flesh and blood opponents. all these guys should be the elite of the elite though.
- an idea that sprung to me: what if the karrn's have another venture in Sharn? they have contacted powers from Khyber, namely the creations of the Daelkyr and arranged fro them to give them a base, in turn of giving them access to undead powers, maybe even turning some of them! Mindflayer Lich, Dolgaunt Wights, Ghost Beholder? could be a very satisfying end to this part. you can even have the head of this operation of the emerald claw, maybe someone they have met before (Jerek?) turn into some sort of new abberation! (boss)

these are my ideas, i hope it helps. and since i wrtoe this long post, please tell me if they do.

Kol.

AslanCross
2010-02-04, 05:34 AM
I was supposed to post this earlier, but my break ended before it was done.


Okay, basically I am running a campaign for my friends using the Eberron Campaign setting. Though the main plot is planning to spread across the world, the players told me they want large portions to be city based, though not the whole campaign.

Good luck! Sharn is a huge place, but that's what makes it great for adventures. The underbelly is a massive place to hide things. As Kol suggested above, I highly recommend the book Sharn, City of Towers. Sharn is just such a rich setting that they gave it its own book.


The basic plot is the players are trying to fight the Order of the Emerald Claw, who are trying to find 12 pieces of a artifact. This artifact is the activating mechanism for a ancient Giant super-weapon, the super weapon that was used to end their war with Dal'qori

Cool idea---you mean the Quori. The Daelkyr are the guys from Xoriat who trashed the goblinoid empire. The Quori are the guys from Dal'Quor, the realm of dreams.


Anyways back to my current problem. I am not a very good DM, being put into the DM position due to knowing the rules better then my friends. So due to this i have no idea about how to go about the city part.

My basic plan is to have Ken tell the players of a location of a former member of the Emerald Claw who is willing to tell them the location of the Emerald Claw's base in the city. Unfortunately when they arrive they find him dead. the corrupt guards will not let them into the building, which they will have to sneak into later.

The players will likely just kill the guards or knock them out. Part of being a good DM is being able to read your players and anticipate what they might do and then act accordingly.


Once they sneak in they find a paper saying to find Jerek Shade. Hes a member of the Emerald Claw, but the players do not know this. He will try to trick them into doing work for him and lead them into a bunch of ambushes untill they realize hes evil.

This is highly dependent on the players actually going ahead with getting into the building. If they just give up, your string of events planned may collapse. Give them other ways to get in.


From this point on I have little idea for what to do besides the fact that this section of the campaign will end with them finding the base, going in, kill some vampires (who have repeatedly tried to kill them BTW). and find out that the cult has a veige idea of where the next piece is.



Illnore d'Medani (NG Half-elf L2Fighter / L7 Swordsage)
Airum d'Mendani (CG Half-Elf L3 Rogue / L6 Ranger)
Mcgraw (CN Human L9 Sorcerer, is completely insane)
Wolf (NG Human L9 Cleric)
Arteimis (NE Changling L2 Fighter / L4 Rogue / L3 Assassin, clone of Altier from Assassins Creed)

Yes i know the party consists of 3 good people, 1 evil person, and one completely insane person)

You have two members of a Dragonmarked house. Surely they can tap into their resources to find ways around problems. Sharn is an excellent mix of potential social encounters and dungeon delves. There's a LOT of ruins underneath the city from the Pre-Galifar period, plus the Cogs (the industrial sector that's full if metal smelters, furnaces, etc.)

It's easy enough for the Emerald Claw to double cross them since they want the parts of the superweapon for themselves. It depends on how competent you would like the Emerald Claw to be. In a previous campaign (Eyes of the Lich Queen), the ECs were depicted as an incompetent but persistent nuisance.

This being Eberron, I suggest someone ELSE actually manipulating the Emerald Claw. There's always another thread of conspiracy there somewhere. Make use of the Lords of Dust---shapeshifting spellcasting outsiders are hard to catch and deal with.

Kol Korran
2010-02-04, 06:28 AM
originally by AslanCross

Make use of the Lords of Dust---shapeshifting spellcasting outsiders are hard to catch and deal with

you and your Rakshasa! :smallwink: just kidding i love those evil tiger headed demons too. :smalltongue:

TheWerdna
2010-02-04, 06:57 PM
3) 12 pieces of the artifact? unless each piece has a unique plot/story/ adventure behind it that might get tiresome fast. i suggest that you either narrow down the pieces (7/ 8 are good numbers) or have some of them allready found by allies or their enemies- it will give the players a feel they are not alone in this.



Ya I already had that solved. The EC have 4 already, and The Chamber has 2. 1 piece will be in Xendrrik, and the other 3 I have no clue (players have 1).

As for the Book, I am way ahead on that part a bought it for this section in particular.

Also, the name Jerek being similar to Jerk was intentional :smallbiggrin:

Edit: Oh, i am also going for the Dragonic Prophesy thing. The main reason the Chamber is helping the party (without the knowledge that they are begin helped) is due to the players matching a part of the prophesy. I already droped hints with them finding the prophesy part that relates to the main story of the adventure, but half the words could not be read due to half the words being erroded.

TheWerdna
2010-02-04, 09:55 PM
Well due to all the great ideas given heere as inperation, i think i am starting to formulate a plan... but sinc ei only have a week untill my next game i have though of a way to stall for a few games.

Instead o having Ken tell them about the former EC member who gets murdered before they can question him, he will say he is going to be trying to find a lead into the location of the EC's base in the city, and that the Players should do the same on their own.

One way or another depending on how the players will go about it, they will find out about a small meeting place for the EC, and from breaking in on the meeting they will find out that the EC has had a piece of the artifact sent to the city. they will have to steal a shiping record to find out where the piece was sent, head to a warehouse, only to find its already been taken. A few days later they will meet with Ken, who tells them of the former EC member qand yada yada yada.

Yes, i know its a evil way to stall for 2 weeks while my real stuff is in the works.


... also, AslanCross, i think you can read minds. How did you predict you know that the EC was really not going to be a big antagonists and that the Lord of dust are really behind this... then again that is a very predictable plot turn, so i kinda would see it coming if i was a PC and not the DM

TheWerdna
2010-02-05, 01:28 PM
I am thinking have having roughly half of the Campaign taking place in Sharn, the other Half will be split between multiple other locals. Any ideas on where to make the other campaign parts take place?

So far the pieces of the Artifact are as so.

One is currently held by the players

Two are held by The Chamber

Three are loctated at the EC's main headquarters

One is located at the EC's headquarters in Shard (smaller base)

One is in Xendrek

One is elsehwere is Sharn.

The other 3 i still need to figure out where they could be.

Pharaoh's Fist
2010-02-05, 01:30 PM
Advice:

Look up the rules for collapsed buildings. You will need them at some point.

Kol Korran
2010-02-05, 01:48 PM
lets see... ideas for artifact pieces (tese are faily generic, but still could be fun):
1- a few i mentioned in the previous post- a temple to the Silver Flame or the Undying Court could be great. if you wish- move those to Thrane/ secret SF base or even to Shai Mordai (i hope i haven't messed up the spelling). also- Khundarak vault. that could lead to a specially built extraplannar space of theirs.

2- an Emerald Claw team got a piece from Xenderic but the ship sunk/ the crew kidnapped by the Sahuagin (and maybe an Aboleth or a few?) now it lies in the depths of the sea- go underwater adventure!

3- somewhere in Droaam. i think the nation of monsters make a fantastic place for adventure- full of violenace, but also more subtle approach. maybe the artifact piece is hidden and protected by the hags, and the heroes must parley with them for it? or maybe it's held with an aspiring local "lord"? bring on the savagry!

4- Mournland- i don't care how it got there, but you must adventure in the mournland if you're playing Eberron. maybe it got intercepted by agents of the lord of blades, maybe an airship of the EC got blasted by a living spell and it crashed there? bring on the weird and creepy!

5- some sort of a manifest zone: i've allready mentioned Syrania, but you can have lots of smaller manifest zones littered around the place, perhaps temporal. unfortunatlly, i don't currently have an exact idea of where and how. though a manifest zone to Mabar might prove an interesting adventure, especially since the undead of the EC are strengthened by it.

i hope this helps,
Kol.