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View Full Version : Looking for Help with Urban Undead Campaign Design



HawkeNorrington
2013-03-15, 04:05 PM
So, I had an idea for what I think could be a pretty cool campaign location, but I need some serious help pulling it together and thought this would be the best community to point me in the right direction.

The basic idea is a city overrun by undead, quarantined within the city walls. No one knows what's going on in there, or if there are any survivors, so the king has assembled a group of adventurers (by whatever means fit the characters, be it monetary reward, royal pardon for past crimes, etc) to investigate what's going on inside the city. The party is escorted through a side gate to the city, and then the campaign begins as they explore the city, investigating the cause of the undead outbreak and rescuing survivors. (Note: I plan to run this campaign with D&D 4th Edition, but the design elements I'm asking for here aren't really dependent on the edition)

I think the best way to construct the campaign would be to make one continuous map of the whole city and allow the players to discover it block by block as they went where they choose, gaining objectives as they run into survivors and enemies. The interesting part would be that they'd have to keep track of where they've been, find ways to sneak around groups of enemies too powerful or plentiful to fight, make decisions about when to retreat vs fight, and most importantly, they'd have to find safe places to rest between encounters/sleep. I think it would make for a pretty unique, frantic campaign which allows the players a pretty free hand in making their own decisions.

The largest difficulty, obviously, is building the city. My plan was to steal structural elements from existing maps (walls, doors, flooring, etc) and construct the whole city from scratch. This, obviously, is a pretty ambitious goal, but one I think would be worth enabling the high level of player autonomy within the campaign world. However, I'm having trouble finding enough map elements to lift for my map. Any suggestions on where to pull urban map elements from, specifically of roughly similar artistic styles?

I'd also be happy to hear suggestions about what sorts of buildings, encounters, survivors, etc to put into the city. I've got a fair number of ideas, but the more to choose from the better!

Thanks in advance everyone, for both the logistical and conceptual advice! This project is obviously in the very earliest stages of development, and any advice, suggestions, or other input at all would be incredibly welcome!

mjlush
2013-03-15, 04:56 PM
I think the best way to construct the campaign would be to make one continuous map of the whole city and allow the players to discover it block by block as they went where they choose, gaining objectives as they run into survivors and enemies.

No, this is absolutely the worst way you can do it... you can't create enough good content to fill a city

Come up with a vague map of the city and spend your time creating a "doughnut of coolness" of about two blocks round the party, if they ever manage go more than three blocks (which should be more or less impossible) they get caught up in some big long battle which uses up the rest of the session (you probably want to have an emergency encounter to drop in if they manage to fly to a totally different section of the city).

In the downtime between games you can create another doughnut built out of new ideas, knock on effects from the last games and unused ideas from the previous doughnut.

Your time is really valuable, spend it on things that will actually enrich the game, do it right and your players will never realize that the whole thing wasn't all prepared in advance... do it wrong and your players will still appreciate that they can go in any direction and not derail the plot.