Welcome to the Watch.

[Cavara]

Well I do see this as a good suggestion time.
I am currently setting up yet another 3.5 campaign, this one being fairly free roam. My general idea is to have the players start at level 2 (cause i find level 1 is very limiting) and have them be enlisted into the town watch of the city of Bastion. Just saying right now, BASTION IS AN A-HOLE. The city is situated on one of the most southern points of the continent in a freezing snow plain that ranges from ****ing cold to negative RETARDED TEMPERATURE.
-Now to the point of all of this. The watch is required to be bad asses but i am open to suggestions on cool little missions they can pick up while they are members of the watch. I already have megalomaniac necromancer as the big baddy in a sorts so I am open to any other suggestions.

-Creator of the GM Divinity Laws
Cavara.

TLDR: new campaign need ideas for little side missions and the like.

[Hirax]

Frigid southlands? Have Wendigos (Fiend Folio) be rampant in the wilds and on the outskirts of town. Have your heroes venture out into the wild to rescue people that have gone missing. Once they find them, it turns out they've been infected, and they need to go on a quest for the plot device that will cure these people.

[Kol Korran]

some other, fairly simple ideas:

1) there is a sealed message / package to deliver. should be simple enough, but who'd want to get out to the cold? ahh... luckily there are the newbies, send them!

only it seems someone doesn't want the delivery to go as planned, and the simple errand turns out to involve poisoned food, ambushes and more.

2) murder in the keep/ town, wherever they are holed in! the junior watch men (party) are sent to investigate a small lead, that turns out into something much bigger. bonus points if at somepoints the party is accused of the murder.

3) wasteland, the frontier, perfect setting for a frost themed druid, who dislikes civilization encoraching on his/ her turf. s/he sends minions, and animals after caravans and so on. someone needs to put an end to this.

4) at the night of the half moon, in the seventh month of... you get the idea, the tundra comes to life, and the world of gripping cold comes closer- make some time in which temperatures grow even colder, colder, colder, and ice elementals, mephits and the like appear. is it just a matter of time? (survival mode) or finding a way to appease the gripping cold? (plot hook device)

hope this helps.

[Trekkin]

If you want things for the watch to break up, consider effectively placing a tax on heat by taxing fuel, then having smugglers dodge that tax and smuggle in things like oil and firewood. The Watch can then have a merry time tracking down fuel on which import fees have not been paid.

[faceroll]

I believe all but the most dire of cold dangers, outlined in Frostburn, can easily be overcome with a single 1st level spell and a warm jacket. Just be aware of that, if your players start looking for ways to circumvent freezing to death. It's rather trivial and won't consume many resources past level 5.

[Fitz10019]

I like the basic idea, but I keep tripping over the size of the party. I tend to think of cops going in pairs, but you'll have 5 or 6 PCs, right? When are cops sent out in that quantity?

Breaking up a barroom brawl. (Just for fun, or learning to work as a team; or it seems like a normal brawl, but one guy is dead. Was the brawl just a diversion?)
Into the sewers to follow up on a lead about smugglers/disappearences/cultists (or just an initiation prank pulled on new watchmen, but they actually find something)
A nobleman wants a group of 'ruffians' removed from his estate. (After extracting the 'ruffians,' they party finds that these are people with a legitimate gripe of some kind.)
An annoying (known to cry wolf) nobleman has been receiving death threats, so the Watch Commander sends his least experience recruits to serve as body guards. (Or a celebrity bard instead of a nobleman)
Watchmen have been disappearing during their two-man patrols. (So the patrol size has been increased.)

The common sense of the law being contradicted by the priviledges of nobility could be an interesting recurring theme.

I think as watchmen they should be able to subdue people easily. Either issue them truncheons (a club with optional subdual like a sap), or say their badges are a magic item at allows subdual with any weapon.

[Cavara]

Thank you for all the great suggestions. Keep them coming if you can, these are awesome.

-Cavara

[dspeyer]

Tracking down a criminal gang that largely operates outside the walls -- led by a white half-dragon and mostly consisting of his cold-resistant children and grandchildren.

[PirateLizard]

They need to procure some warm water to get a kid's tongue off a pole.

[faceroll]

They need to procure some warm water to get a kid's tongue off a pole.

"Hey kid, I got your warm water right here"

[Greenish]

Just saying right now, BASTION IS AN A-HOLE.I'm playing a warforged named Bastion at the moment. :smalltongue:

[Safety Sword]

Since it's a frosty, snowy place you can make the entire town like a site dungeon.

Let's call it "Snow falls. No one can leave" (Side plot: A wizard did it)

How about rumors of an assassin in town, here to kill the Mayor etc. He's already here. You now have to track him down and eliminate him before he strikes.

Bonus points if the mayor is actually an evil bastard who killed the assassin's children 20 years ago.

[Cavara]

These are fantastic. Keep them coming.

[NNescio]

Crib ideas from the Ankh-Morpork City Watch. (http://wiki.lspace.org/wiki/Ankh-Morpork_City_Watch)

Don't forget to give them this motto:
"Fabricati Diem, Pvnc."

Dog Latin: "Make my day, punk."

And insert a reference to this painting (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Night_Watch_%28painting%29) while you are at it.

[Hirax]

Give a boss DR/blue ice, or otherwise create a macguffin requiring the players to obtain blue ice. The only known vein of blue ice in the region is deep underground, coveted by an underground race of your choice. Perhaps goodly dwarves, who would happily supply your heroes with blue ice weapons in exchange for a favor. Mind flayers recently captured an one of their expeditions, have your heroes go and free the slaves, only to be find out they've been turned into voidminds, who are now hostile. This would force them to subdue the voidminds non-lethally in order to bring them back alive. If they kill all of them, have the dwarves be furious and run them out, since voidminds can be freed if you kill the mind flayer masters. This would force your players to seek out a new vein of blue ice in the poorly explore southern reaches.

[Cavara]

@ Hirax
DEVIOUS. I love it.
problem is i am starting them at level 2 so that would be a very end game thing. Also i can easily do that with my very VERY obnoxious necromancer who has a nasty habit of raising corpses and augmenting them so they look like him. Every time they think they kill him they just killed another raised corpse.

[gibbo88]

Corruption in the Watch would be a simple enough one. The Wendego idea at the start is a pretty good idea, and if the PCs find the people are infected before returning to town and they don't know of a cure but do know it is crazy contagious it gives them a moral dilemma - take them in to those who know more or put them out of their misery and burn the corpses. Obviously have either path have repercussions: if they take survivors back one starts infecting townfolk or they face an inquiry for their decision to put the survivors down, maybe leading to a demotion or being given the jobs where there might be hard decisions of a similar kind to make.

[Cavara]

So since i am doing a city centric campaign i decided to have 5 noble houses each with different views and huge political BS try to come into the campaign. ONe wants military expansion. One wants magical Research. One wants Religious expansion. One wants economic expansion, and the last one wants to be a political powerhouse through subterfuge and backroom dealings.

My idea is that i have the houses approach the watch on certain assignments and be like, "hey we want you to blame the recent events on demons that way the church can get more support"
or
"hey we want you to let some monsters/bandits/hostile individuals into this area of the city that way we can convince the Council that defense spending is worth it"
For extra points i was thinking of having different houses approach different party members in secret so the party members can decide if they want to be corrupt and in the end they will conflict with each other over the houses interests.

[holywhippet]

A recent avalanche might have uncovered the entrance to some old ruins. Either the players are dispatched to investigate or to check on the adventurers/archaeologists who've already gone to check it out.

A turf war could have broken out between rival gangs/crime syndicates. The players have to restore the peace - one way or another.

[Machinekng]

Maybe some anarchists are at work in the city.

Yes, druidic, city hating terrorists who wish to let the frozen tundra reclaim the city. They're actions could range from freezing pipes so they burst, to freezing entire buildings.