Critique my campaign

[Jinglez]

quite new to DnD. I would like some of the veterans and more experienced players to check out my groups campaign. I been writing it 2 or three sessions at a time using InDesign.(that being said its definatly incomplete, and kinda cuts off at the end) couple of the monsters were made up. but mainly it consists of story line. and leaves the rest kinda open for manipulation as is needed.

Dont be too harsh on me :P but do criticize as you feel. Looking to improve my skills in making a fun campaign and being a good DM. Our whole group is fresh to the game as a whole, and we have been haveing a pretty great time with it so far.

and if you like it feel free to use it as you wish!


https://docs.google.com/open?id=0B4p0CRiSUL3hblBlUnRUTmxBbGc

Let me know what yall think.

EDIT: Fixed some critical errors (overset text and some directional text in the story that was wrong) and updated link

[Invader]

Everything looks pretty good. You obviously spent a lot of time getting things ready and into the story.

I'll make a couple of observations:

Make sure all your encounter levels are correct for the party level. For example I noticed that at one point they'll be fighting 8 harpies and you have CR4 which is correct but only for 1 harpy. 8 harpies would be an encounter for 4 10th level characters give or take. Use this CR calculator to make sure you're not throwing to much or to little at your party. http://www.d20srd.org/extras/d20encountercalculator/

This is more of a matter of taste than mechanics but for treasure for thing like the spiders, its kind of unbelievable to give gold or gems etc. for creatures like that. Its still easy to do just have some other humoids cocooned up dead by the spiders or something as some way to explain why its there. Again thats just a personal matter of taste for me :smallwink:

Also be prepared to deviate from your plan because players always end up doing something crazy an unexpected. Being so well prepared is great but try not to railroad your characters through a predetermined story because it'll feel like they don't really have any control over what happens.

Other than that, it looks great :smallbiggrin:

[Jinglez]

yes weve done that encounter and they did quite good on it. I beleive everyone was lvl 9 at that point. I do beleive i may be doing experience wrong though. for example for 8 harpies with CR 4. when calculating the experience do i use the CR4 column once, or 8 times. or if I multiply 8 by 4 and get CR32 so Id use the highest i could get for their level?

then divide the amount by the players and thats how much each player gets.

And actually the treasure from the spider thing.. thats exactly how they got the gold. was from several corpses that were already sucked dry by the spiders. They did find certain things from the spiders. like i think they found some of the daggers stuck into the spiders.
Which was another thing I was wondering about was the amount of treasure Ive been giving if it was sufficient or too little compared to other games. I been looking at the d% charts for treasure but its just too random for me.

well being new, dont have a good grasp on availible monsters. so for now the players all understand our limitations of knowlege, but they help a little on what they want to do before I write the sessions. so they seem to still have the feel of it being their own adventure, and they like the story. I do need to prepare for some player specific quests like a theives guild type thing.. it usually does still deviate from the script. but the basic story still gets followed. when I get more experience they will be able to go of course more freely and run into status quo encounters i believed its called. instead of constant tailored ones. thats why this is chapter 1. there is a main story here. and in between each chapter they will get some down time to do what they like. and give me a chance to getting used to them randomly being like "well Lets go way over here and see what this place on the map is." and me having not a single thing about it ready. I have a basic outline of about 5 chapters. roughly - 1-Join the resistance. 2- Lead the fight to take down the King. 3- The king was possesed by (name1) find out how to kill him. 4-an inner circle of baddies serve (name1) kill them to get to him and kill him. 5- an evil order from the under dark comes to the surface to try and take over faerun, defeat them and their leader. and then could have 6- we will be trying to do alot of stuff in other planes. or back to the under dark. and other different places..

but what I was wondering is if they ever try and split up. how do i cope with players being in completly different areas of the world. that scares me alittle

[Zombimode]

So let me get this straight:
Your adventure starts with the party as prisoners. Then an opposing force breaks in and defeats the captors. But this new force, instead of just freeing them, drags them involuntarily across the sea and then demands that the party will work for them?
Pretty much all players I know would have their characters leave at the first opportunity.

[Endelehia]

As a rule of thump a couple creatures of a given CR,counts as a CR+2 encounter.
In your case there are 8 harpies of CR 4 each,so that encounter was a CR 10.
8=2^3
3*2=6
4+6=10
and since the PCs were 9 level at the time,it was a perfectly level appropriate encounter :)

good luck on the game

[Invader]

yes weve done that encounter and they did quite good on it. I beleive everyone was lvl 9 at that point. I do beleive i may be doing experience wrong though. for example for 8 harpies with CR 4. when calculating the experience do i use the CR4 column once, or 8 times. or if I multiply 8 by 4 and get CR32 so Id use the highest i could get for their level?

then divide the amount by the players and thats how much each player gets.

And actually the treasure from the spider thing.. thats exactly how they got the gold. was from several corpses that were already sucked dry by the spiders. They did find certain things from the spiders. like i think they found some of the daggers stuck into the spiders.
Which was another thing I was wondering about was the amount of treasure Ive been giving if it was sufficient or too little compared to other games. I been looking at the d% charts for treasure but its just too random for me.

well being new, dont have a good grasp on availible monsters. so for now the players all understand our limitations of knowlege, but they help a little on what they want to do before I write the sessions. so they seem to still have the feel of it being their own adventure, and they like the story. I do need to prepare for some player specific quests like a theives guild type thing.. it usually does still deviate from the script. but the basic story still gets followed. when I get more experience they will be able to go of course more freely and run into status quo encounters i believed its called. instead of constant tailored ones. thats why this is chapter 1. there is a main story here. and in between each chapter they will get some down time to do what they like. and give me a chance to getting used to them randomly being like "well Lets go way over here and see what this place on the map is." and me having not a single thing about it ready. I have a basic outline of about 5 chapters. roughly - 1-Join the resistance. 2- Lead the fight to take down the King. 3- The king was possesed by (name1) find out how to kill him. 4-an inner circle of baddies serve (name1) kill them to get to him and kill him. 5- an evil order from the under dark comes to the surface to try and take over faerun, defeat them and their leader. and then could have 6- we will be trying to do alot of stuff in other planes. or back to the under dark. and other different places..

but what I was wondering is if they ever try and split up. how do i cope with players being in completly different areas of the world. that scares me alittle

In that CR calculator I linked earlier it will tell you exactly how much xp and treasure per person each character should get from the encounter that you enter.

Generally from my experience, players won't intentionally split up very often because they understand the idea is to have a group. If you can't handle 2 groups or just aren't ready for it or simply just don't want them to split just let everyone know at this point you'd like them to stick together to keep the story moving along. If you have a good group. they'll usually understand.

I'd also say you're picking a fairly decent assortment of monsters. I've been playing for years and I saw some things that I've never fought in a campaign.

[Jinglez]

Well Zombiemode to put it crudely, that's pretty correct.
but the incentive (which isnt clearly mentioned in the scripting as alot of it is free to change and for me to add things or remove things from whats listed in the script.)
basicly, they were tortured and taken from wehre ever they were before hand (families, questing, jobs whatever the player chooses for a back story) they kinda wanted to see what these people were about since they whiped the captors asses. and even though the guy that frees him is kinda a ****, they did end up going along with this guy, although they were being smartasses to him and showing distrust. and the paladin who is all about protecting people talks the group into helping the place out, after he went around healing the sick and stuff like that.

Also all the starting equipment they chose for their character, is given to them by the people that saved their asses.