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madtinker
2013-10-27, 12:42 PM
I've been working on sketching out the skeleton of a campaign I hope to run on these forums sometime in the future, and was hoping to get feedback on the premise and some of the adventures.

I intend to run this in DnD 3.5.

Essentially, the party starts at first level in a village of around 850 people. They have all grown up there. As far as anyone knows, they are the only sentient life around.

The reasons for this are twofold.

1) A small world is easier for me, as a DM to manage

2) The campaign I'm currently running expanded quickly to a large world map with lots of towns to keep track of, but very little detail in any one place. I would like the PCs to explore the smaller area in greater detail.

The village is almost exclusively humans, but if a PC really wants to run one of the longer-lived races he could do so, with some age restrictions and additional in-game setting knowledge.

This is because the village was founded about 150-200 years ago when a cleric convinced a small group of villagers to flee the wrath of a jealous king. Members of the village had supported a movement to depose the king, and in retribution he was set on killing the families of all who opposed him. The cleric was guided to a secret subterranean cave system that lead to the crater of an ancient volcano (think something like, the White Seal, by Kipling). In this crater-valley, the soil is rich, minerals are plentiful, and the people are able to settle and prosper. The crater is about 100 miles in diameter and protected on all sides by mountains and cliffs. As the generations passed, people remember that they were led here by deity, and they revere the memory of the cleric.

However, some misinformation has been passed down, mostly concerned with the existence of the outside world. Outside the village many evil creatures lurk, and only the well-prepared venture out of the village, and never at night. This, together with the myth that the village is alone in the world, keep the youngsters from exploring too much. So, the PCs should be young enough that they believe most of what they're told until evidence suggests otherwise.

At first, the adventure plots would be interactions with other villagers, either with bullies or in contests. Eventually these interactions would reveal reasons for the PCs to leave the village to explore nearby areas. Here, they find evidence of a fallen civilization that challenges what they thought they knew about being alone in the world.

Finally, they discover the reason for the existence of the village, and will seek to leave the crater and ... I haven't planned that far.

All the while they will have ruins to explore, monsters to fight, and the village council to deal with. They must piece together the puzzle of why the village exists and why the civilization fell. I haven't figured all the details, but there will be some item, spell, or technology that caused the downfall of the ancient civilization that the PCs can use to conquer the outside world, make peace with it, or not use at all.

Finally, because the village is small, the availability of high powered weapons and items will be limited by what the PCs can dig up in the ruins, make themselves, or convince the NPCs to make especially for them through the exchange of favors (seeking out new ore beds, for example). This will hopefully prevent what I'll term "item bloat" - having so much treasure that getting more isn't satisfying or interesting. Items and treasure should be special.

I realize that a lot of this might sound vague. That's because I wanted some feedback before working out further details. If some of it sounds cliche, that might be okay, as long as it's classic cliche instead of overdone cliche. But anyway, I would appreciate any thoughts or comments.

Flickerdart
2013-10-27, 04:37 PM
Items and treasure should be special.
3.5's math is predicated upon characters having the right numerical bonuses from magic items, as appropriate for their level. The wealth by level guidelines are not optional, but integral to the system.

If you want to get around this, a post-apocalyptic scenario is a perfect place to sprinkle powerful but depleted loot. A corpse carries a wand of fireball, a bounty for a low-level party...but there are only three charges left. Or the PCs find a magic sword that needs repairing before it can be used, due to its old age. Maybe an ancient relic contains such power that a low-level character cannot tap into it without becoming stronger himself. As long as you find some way to roughly compensate for the numbers and abilities that the items are normally intended to cover, you should be more or less okay.

Have you read Asimov's Foundation series? This reminds me a lot of it.

madtinker
2013-10-27, 04:47 PM
Ooh, I like the flavor of that. I still need to figure out exactly why the civilization failed. And how to reveal it piece by piece, with some red herrings thrown in now and then.

And I loved the Foundation series! Some of the best time I spent during my undergrad was reading books that had nothing to do with my degree.

Flickerdart
2013-10-27, 04:52 PM
You could also pilfer A Canticle for Leibowitz for ideas - warlord kingdoms, an apocalypse worsened by active suppression of knowledge (possibly with a Dark Sun-esque bent) with hidden enclaves of priests that attempt to piece together science from the past, various mutants and wanderers who are just a touch unusual, and so forth.

Bulhakov
2013-10-27, 05:14 PM
Be ready for the players to want to leave the valley right off the bat, and set up some interesting discouragements that do not intermediately scream "railroading!".

You've mentioned "red herrings" - I love the idea of messing with the players as "figuring out the catch with the valley" will likely be on top of their priorities list.

Some red herring suggestions:
- a crazy old man that ventured beyond the walls as a youth and returned blind (claims to have been punished by the gods). Pressed for information he might send the PCs on a "quest" and reward them with a story (it will turn out he's gotten various young adventurers to do various work for him previously, selling a different BS story every time)
- crashed airship of some sort with exotically dressed corpses
- visions of floating above the wall and seeing nothing but empty space outside
- local religious feud - did the villagers come to the valley to escape a curse, or were they cursed to be locked in the valley
- hints that something/someone is watching them in the valley
- hints at a conspiracy to keep people from leaving

SimonMoon6
2013-10-27, 08:29 PM
Finally, they discover the reason for the existence of the village, and will seek to leave the crater and ... I haven't planned that far.

I had thought about doing something similar, with a background of: Evil monsters from another dimension attacked and wiped out human(oid) civilization. Only this small group of characters managed to hide themselves away from the monsters. They don't think there's any hope of overcoming the monsters and restoring their world... but they don't know that PCs can do anything.

There still might be pockets of civilization, but all under the yoke of the evil monsters. The heroes might be able to overthrow some small bosses, but will have to avoid attracting too much attention until they're ready to deal with the main bosses.

madtinker
2013-10-28, 09:20 AM
hidden enclaves of priests that attempt to piece together science from the past, various mutants and wanderers who are just a touch unusual, and so forth.

This, combined with stuff below, and Foundation, leads me to: instead of a whole civilization, the ruins here are from an ancient library. It contains all kinds of knowledge and arcana, and was destroyed by an invasion from other planes or a coalition of mages, or something.


Be ready for the players to want to leave the valley right off the bat, and set up some interesting discouragements that do not intermediately scream "railroading!".

I go to great lengths to avoid railroading. In fact, that's why I like play-by-post; it gives me lots of time to think of how to respond to unpredictable actions. But, this place is protected by natural barriers: cliffs hundreds of feet high, both to climb out and to descend again. They could try to make all those climb checks, but they would fail at least one. They could try to build a glider or balloon, but that would require a fairly high knowledge(engineering) and craft(contraption) check. They could try to find their way out through the caves, but would probably get lost and attacked by whatever denizens of the underworld inhabit the caves. But they're welcome to try and escape.




You've mentioned "red herrings" - I love the idea of messing with the players as "figuring out the catch with the valley" will likely be on top of their priorities list.

Some red herring suggestions:
- a crazy old man that ventured beyond the walls as a youth and returned blind (claims to have been punished by the gods). Pressed for information he might send the PCs on a "quest" and reward them with a story (it will turn out he's gotten various young adventurers to do various work for him previously, selling a different BS story every time)
- crashed airship of some sort with exotically dressed corpses
- visions of floating above the wall and seeing nothing but empty space outside
- local religious feud - did the villagers come to the valley to escape a curse, or were they cursed to be locked in the valley
- hints that something/someone is watching them in the valley
- hints at a conspiracy to keep people from leaving

I was considering the crazy old man (somebody must have tried to leave (think of Fooley and his balloon in The Gamage Cup)), and I really like the crashed airship (maybe left over from the attack that destroyed the library)


I had thought about doing something similar, with a background of: Evil monsters from another dimension attacked and wiped out human(oid) civilization. Only this small group of characters managed to hide themselves away from the monsters. They don't think there's any hope of overcoming the monsters and restoring their world... but they don't know that PCs can do anything.

There still might be pockets of civilization, but all under the yoke of the evil monsters. The heroes might be able to overthrow some small bosses, but will have to avoid attracting too much attention until they're ready to deal with the main bosses.

I'll be using something like this for how the library was destroyed, except the survivors eventually mutated from earnest seekers of knowledge to jealous guardians of evil secrets.

Eldest
2013-10-28, 10:08 AM
I go to great lengths to avoid railroading. In fact, that's why I like play-by-post; it gives me lots of time to think of how to respond to unpredictable actions. But, this place is protected by natural barriers: cliffs hundreds of feet high, both to climb out and to descend again. They could try to make all those climb checks, but they would fail at least one. They could try to build a glider or balloon, but that would require a fairly high knowledge(engineering) and craft(contraption) check. They could try to find their way out through the caves, but would probably get lost and attacked by whatever denizens of the underworld inhabit the caves. But they're welcome to try and escape.

And at level one a warlock can get out. Spiderclimb.

madtinker
2013-10-28, 10:13 AM
Spiderclimb is a 2nd level spell. Not available until 3rd level. I forgot to mention, I only use PHB for character generation. And they wouldn't be able to bring the party with them. If they aren't a team player, they aren't the kind of player I game with.

Eldest
2013-10-28, 01:05 PM
Spiderclimb is a 2nd level spell. Not available until 3rd level. I forgot to mention, I only use PHB for character generation. And they wouldn't be able to bring the party with them. If they aren't a team player, they aren't the kind of player I game with.

Warlock. They can get it as their level one invocation. They can carry smaller races with them, or using a hammer and pitons thread a rope up there, or use a scroll of Floating Disk to bring people with them. The point of it is that either you will find a way to shut down each and every way to get over the cliff, which is railroading, you will let them get over it if they wish, or you can talk to the players and ask them not to try to get over the cliffs yet.

madtinker
2013-10-28, 04:35 PM
Warlock is not one of the core classes, so they won't be playing it.

Regardless, if they did something unforeseen to try to escape, I'd let them. And they would land in a world of a much higher encounter levels than they were prepared for.

the_david
2013-10-28, 05:37 PM
You've got an area of roughly 7854 square miles there. That's a population density of about 0.1/square mile. Normally, you would expect 30-120 per square mile in a medieval period. That's okay though, as the crater is probably one of those hard to reach places that aren't settled yet. This does give you a few options though:

- Abundant wildlife. Make up your own subspecies to give the setting a not-Earth vibe. This might turn your village into a hunting community.
- The other village. About 100 years ago a group of people left the village over a disagreement and settled somewhere else. This group is largely forgotten, but they still exist somewhere in the valley.
- Primitive technology. During the migration, they must have lost access to a lot of knowledge and technology. They might not be able to make metal weapons without a smith, or they might not be able to read. They might have reinvented the wheel, who knows? You might want to figure out which families came to the valley, and what their trades where.
- Monstrous races. I'm not sure what you want with this. Maybe they haven't caught on to the humans yet, or maybe they are just fighting amongst themselves. I'd build a couple of tribes of one monstrous race, just to keep it simple and in line with the low population density.

madtinker
2013-10-28, 06:09 PM
You've got an area of roughly 7854 square miles there. That's a population density of about 0.1/square mile. Normally, you would expect 30-120 per square mile in a medieval period. That's okay though, as the crater is probably one of those hard to reach places that aren't settled yet. This does give you a few options though:

- Abundant wildlife. Make up your own subspecies to give the setting a not-Earth vibe. This might turn your village into a hunting community.
- The other village. About 100 years ago a group of people left the village over a disagreement and settled somewhere else. This group is largely forgotten, but they still exist somewhere in the valley.
- Primitive technology. During the migration, they must have lost access to a lot of knowledge and technology. They might not be able to make metal weapons without a smith, or they might not be able to read. They might have reinvented the wheel, who knows? You might want to figure out which families came to the valley, and what their trades where.
- Monstrous races. I'm not sure what you want with this. Maybe they haven't caught on to the humans yet, or maybe they are just fighting amongst themselves. I'd build a couple of tribes of one monstrous race, just to keep it simple and in line with the low population density.

These are some fun ideas. Your point on population density is a good one. A splinter group would be a perfectly logical addition to the setting.

I was thinking about using dinosaurs for most of the local wildlife. They have a good supply of craftsmen (I rolled for highest levels of each class by the DMG guidelines, and craftsmen are actually one of the most powerful groups in the village). So craftwise, they're good. And with dinosaurs running around, they still have a reason to manufacture at least some types of weapons.

Finally, a lot of the possible social interactions will be based on familial interactions. I'm trying to decide how to flesh that out.

You playgrounders have a lot of great ideas. Keep 'em coming!

GungHo
2013-10-29, 09:37 AM
Finally, a lot of the possible social interactions will be based on familial interactions. I'm trying to decide how to flesh that out.
Agrarians vs Hunters

Mages vs Clerics

Old money vs nouveau riche

Capulets vs Montague

Hatfields vs McCoys

You can even mix and match some of these. The clerics can be the old power and the mages could be new power... especially if arcane magic is being "re-discovered". The divine folks would have good reason to suppress them, as the mages represent a way out... which, rightly or wrongly, could be seen as heresy, especially if someone tried to blink or teleport away and got mangled in the process (or succeeded and never came back).

madtinker
2013-10-29, 07:40 PM
I rolled for highest level of each class from DMG, and there were no sorcerers or wizards. I like the idea of the splinter group leaving to practice arcane magic.

Now, for the dueling political centers, the clerics and the craftsmen could be at odds: the craftsmen want to expand to access more resources, while the clerics want to stay put because that's where Pelor led them.

And the conflict between the hunters and the herders would work well too. I like it.

Dawgmoah
2013-10-29, 08:54 PM
Be ready for the players to want to leave the valley right off the bat, and set up some interesting discouragements that do not intermediately scream "railroading!".



Though not after an apocalypse or anything, I did start a group once in a small remote village with a mixed population of humans and gnomes. The second adventure they were itching to leave and see the world!

madtinker
2013-10-30, 08:58 AM
I'm hoping there is enough of interest here that they'll stay in the crater for a good while.

AttilaTheGeek
2013-10-31, 06:52 AM
If your crater is 100 miles in diameter, then what that means is:
-walking from one side to the other is roughly a three to four weeks' journey if it's flat, easy terrain. (100 miles * 2 hours / mile * 1 day / 8 hours is 25 days, or 20 days if you walk for 10 hours a day, or 13 days if you walk for 16 hours a day, but walking for 16 hours a day is not practical at all.)
-If the terrain is dangerous jungle, it could take months to cross.
-Your crater is roughly the area of New Jersey.
-Especially if leaving the village is dangerous, it's completely possible that there could be other villages out there.

Also, what happens to all the water that enters the crater via rain? Is there a lake in the middle, or does it rain just enough to keep the flora alive and the rest dissipates? Are there rivers of water that fall on the outer, more elevated edges and then make their way to the lower center? Is flooding a problem?

madtinker
2013-10-31, 08:06 AM
there's a salt water sea in the middle, with tributary steams. And a sea monster. Because of the difficulty of access, the only other settlement is the splinter group of arcanists. Travel time isn't a problem.

Garimeth
2013-11-01, 01:59 PM
If your crater is 100 miles in diameter, then what that means is:
-walking from one side to the other is roughly a three to four weeks' journey if it's flat, easy terrain. (100 miles * 2 hours / mile * 1 day / 8 hours is 25 days, or 20 days if you walk for 10 hours a day, or 13 days if you walk for 16 hours a day, but walking for 16 hours a day is not practical at all.)
-If the terrain is dangerous jungle, it could take months to cross.
-Your crater is roughly the area of New Jersey.
-Especially if leaving the village is dangerous, it's completely possible that there could be other villages out there.

Also, what happens to all the water that enters the crater via rain? Is there a lake in the middle, or does it rain just enough to keep the flora alive and the rest dissipates? Are there rivers of water that fall on the outer, more elevated edges and then make their way to the lower center? Is flooding a problem?

I think somewhere your math got off. It would take no where near that long to cross. Using the 3.5 SRD overland movement speed is a base 24 miles/day. From my experience in the military I would say the average person in decent shape can hike 3 miles an hour for 8 hours at a time, pretty easily. So using the base numbers provided by the SRD and my anecdotal experience, a party could reasonably cross it in just over two weeks, even if you quadruple the movement for the terrain.

Its entirely plausible for there to be other villages, and actually unlikely for there NOT to be. Also, given the proximity to the other villages, it is unlikely for themnot to be in contact unless there is a fued.

AttilaTheGeek
2013-11-01, 05:38 PM
I think somewhere your math got off. It would take no where near that long to cross. Using the 3.5 SRD overland movement speed is a base 24 miles/day. From my experience in the military I would say the average person in decent shape can hike 3 miles an hour for 8 hours at a time, pretty easily. So using the base numbers provided by the SRD and my anecdotal experience, a party could reasonably cross it in just over two weeks, even if you quadruple the movement for the terrain.

Aah, yeah, I had the walking speed wrong. Don't know where I got that from.

madtinker
2013-11-01, 06:04 PM
Actually, there are only two civilized villages in the whole crater. The people in the Village (I settled on New San-Angrial for a name) believe Pelor led them here in their hour of need and that Pelor has saved this valley as a place for them to prosper, sort of old testament promised land.

The only entrance is through a hidden underground passage, and if you were on the outside there's nothing that would indicate that the crater is worth exploring, thus someone would be unlikely to try to climb in.

AttilaTheGeek
2013-11-01, 11:23 PM
Actually, there are only two civilized villages in the whole crater. The people in the Village (I settled on New San-Angrial for a name) believe Pelor led them here in their hour of need and that Pelor has saved this valley as a place for them to prosper, sort of old testament promised land.

The only entrance is through a hidden underground passage, and if you were on the outside there's nothing that would indicate that the crater is worth exploring, thus someone would be unlikely to try to climb in.

What about the other village you mentioned? Also, is it a coincidence that San-Angrial sounds so much like Shangri-La?

Ravens_cry
2013-11-02, 12:54 AM
A compelling adventure should involve the PC's in a deeper way than 'We do X quest for X gold/plot coupon'. They should be enmeshed in the world, made part of its social and political structures. A cleric isn't just somebody with superpowers, they might be called upon not to just smash skulls (particularly undead ones) but might be called upon to preform weddings, funerals, and last rites. They also might find that they are called in for questions regarding their actions if their superiors feel they are dishonouring their god's dogma. Heck, they might even be promoted!
On a more general note, encourage relationships, both positive and negative, between PC and NPC. The players will care more about saving village X if they have kith or kin there, and a personal enemy adds an extra tasty barb to a plot hook.

madtinker
2013-11-02, 04:48 AM
The resemblance to shangri-la might be a coincidence, but my brain might have done it on purpose. I haven't worked out the details of the other village, except that they left New San-Angrial about fifty years ago.

I think the personal connections are what's missing here. I'll have to put some thought into that.

Garimeth
2013-11-04, 01:12 PM
The resemblance to shangri-la might be a coincidence, but my brain might have done it on purpose. I haven't worked out the details of the other village, except that they left New San-Angrial about fifty years ago.

I think the personal connections are what's missing here. I'll have to put some thought into that.

Keep in mind that based off of proximity it would be really unlikely for the two villages to have no contact - at the very least hunters and woodsman would run into each other, and logically there would probably be trade between the two villages.