HUGE storyline ideas

[Galazgru]

I'm planning on starting up a new campaign in the near future. I've been DMing for the last 13 years and I'd really like to build a huge immersive world that my players will take my players from level 1 through 20 or beyond. I have maps drawn up and I have a few ideas for places and features in them but I'm struggling with a story-line. In my mind I have pictured a high fantasy epic (i.e. LOTR) but I'd also like to build a very real feeling world full of intrigue and political maneuvering like Game of Thrones. I see players being able to raise and fund armies, over throw rulers, travel to distant ruins, uncover hidden magic, conquer nations, and possibly save the world.

What I really would like is a huge underlying story arch that is playing out behind the scenes that the PCs take part in from time to time but they are still able to explore the world and go off on their own adventures if they so chose. I envision a sort of consequence system where the actions of PCs changes the world in small ways that eventually has a huge impact on the world at end game (i.e. Humans and encroaching on Eleven lands. You can help the elves reclaim the forest or ignore the situation. Unbeknownst to the players, the Elves need something in that forest to summon some BBG or cast a terrible ritual spell down the story line). Anyway, It's that storyline that I'm having troubles with. I just have too many ideas running around my head at the moment and I don't feel like any of them are on a grand enough scale to play out over 20 levels. I am anticipating that this campaign will stretch out over the course of years IRL and possibly over decades of in game time.

It would be great to get some outside opinions and hear some ideas from the community so that I can try and formulate an epic campaign arch that can play out in my world. Thanks in advance.

[ZamielVanWeber]

Read up on elder evils for some ideas. They are designed to do exactly what ypu are sescribing

[QuackParker]

Remember, the bigger your map, the less intimately your PCs will likely get to know any particular NPC or locale. If you want them to continue interacting with certain characters or settings, you might make a more limited, isolated setting for them to journey around. At later levels, you might let them get the means to travel into the greater world, but give them compelling reasons to go home and that way they will be engaged in your story and the people you've populated it with.

Now if you've already created an enormous map, you might simply downplay certain elements of travel to focus on major city interaction. For instance, instead of having encounter after encounter on the road or getting constantly lost in enormous forests, it may be best to narrate a long journey in summary to accomplish other objectives.

[Phelix-Mu]

Alright, so there are couple challenges that you have already realized:

- What is challenging early on is not challenging later on: Low-level enemies are not even worth counting as early as six levels later, but combats with large numbers are slow and cumbersome. Thus, you want a range of enemies that will be connected to the primary plot line and that will still be challenging as the campaign evolves. I suggest using thematic templates and npcs that can be varying levels as good, flexible ways to keep the main plot battles close to the theme while remaining challenging at a given level.

- Keeping the party interested: Unless everyone is playing a do-gooder or someone ambitious, it's likely that various party members will, at various points, not find the main plot line terribly compelling. The best way to get around this is to custom tailor subplots or back story tie-ins such that the characters have a sense of personal stake in the events. This requires knowing something about who the players will be playing, and hopefully getting some useful input from the players on where their characters came from and what interests and connections they have before the campaign starts.

- The curve balls: The party members will likely, as you anticipate, not always act as anticipated, or even know what they are supposed to be doing, or know the full impact of their actions on the larger plot. Building in a level of resilience in your plans, such that even major player-instigated derailment won't totally deep-six your plot, is key. They will screw up you plans, so don't be married to specific events, and always have some backup thing going on to keep them busy while you rejigger the main plot line.

Alright, so those are some salient issues. Now a bit of brainstorming, just for you!

- Dream-scarred Multiverse: So, a multi-tiered threat is facing reality, involving a series of virus-like dreams that are having deleterious effects on creatures, primarily mortals, but with a series of ramifications that are wide-ranging.

> Normally peaceful [insert race x] creatures have become agitated and belligerent. Might be something to investigate at early levels, but unless dealt with, these creatures form into groups and go on the warpath. The cause is persistent insomnia resulting from tainted dreams. The creatures are only marginally aware of the cause of their behavior, but investigation will turn up common symptoms and reports of dreamless sleep. Their sleep is, in fact, not dreamless, but rather they are totally incapable of remembering their dreams. Soon, they don't even remember sleeping, or waking up, and go about in a restless state of agitation, which eventually drives them to violence and insanity.
> Political trouble: The virus dreams spread to the common humanoid races, but seem to target only certain people. Leaders of [insert nation z] become highly suggestible, and some advisers have taken advantage of this to covertly usurp power.
> Off-plane trouble: The Lower Planes are abuzz; the larva on which the commerce of the Lower Planes are based are mutating in bizarre and incomprehensible ways, to the extent that normal processes that lead to a larva being transformed into a dretch (for example) instead result in a formian, a slaad, or a rilmaani (for example). There seems to be no rhyme or reason to the changes, and this is causing widespread turmoil among many powerful fiends and evil gods. The truth is that the larva were infected with the virus dreams while they were alive, and the effects of the dreams have bled over into their souls, affecting the ways in which nominally evil souls can be warped by the fiends and evil gods. This leads to a few important things, the first of which is that many fiends no wish to hunt for souls directly harvested from the Prime, usually via shadow demons (Manual of the Planes), or by minions sent to use soul binding or magic jar directly on evil mortals, or good mortals. The next observable thing that happens is that isolated cases of good-aligned fiends start popping up, and these fiends flee the Lower Planes, looking for asylum on the Prime or elsewhere in the multiverse. These fiends were formed from diseased larva that had been tainted by the warping dreams while they were alive.
> Party members or important npcs affected: The dream infections become noticeable when main characters or their friends/employers/colleagues are affected. The dream sickness is hard for the infected to notice; the primary symptom is gaps in memory that begin during sleep and begin to creep into waking moments. Over time (multiple failed saves), the person's behavior changes, which friends will eventually notice. Be careful not to force personality changes onto pcs, but feel free to establish periods of amnesia if they fail saves (best be short in duration, and don't force the pcs to do anything tasteless or heinous while they lost their memory). Investigating the problem, the party may learn that a strange magical dweomer has been noticed by spellcasters or clining to magic items. This dweomer is tied to a form of unusual magical energy, oneiromancy, involving dream magic. Normally, use of this form of magic is limited and esoteric at best (maybe only known to some remote culture far away). These oneiromantic dweomers have started to bleed into reality willy-nilly, and it seems that everyone infected has come into contact with such a dweomer (and now radiates that dweomer)

Alright, the big bottom line is that a very advanced dream larva (Epic Level Handbook) became even more warped after contacting a sentient mushroom from the Far Realm. Now, the dream larva (maybe with one of the pseudonatural templates) has an even more infective form of dream contamination that spontaneously spreads oneiromantic dweomers around reality. The dream larva enjoys the process, eating the parts of dreams that have been forgotten (and bits of the mortal's personalities at the same time), and the way that the dreams are warping reality.

Woo, sorry, that was rather more ambitious than I intended. I can come up with other ideas (I clearly have a bit of a creative backup going on in my head) if you wish, and reserve the right to steal my own idea for my own campaign, lol. That was actually a pretty good concept, as far as random brainstorming goes.:smallsmile:

[Galazgru]

Read up on elder evils for some ideas. They are designed to do exactly what ypu are sescribing

I ran an Elder Evil campaign last time using an awakened Old God that accelerated growth on the planet to the point where people overhealed took corruption damage and died of old age in months. Looking to try something a bit different this time.

[Galazgru]

Phelix-Mu that is a really awesome idea and I will have to take it under advisement (as well as bust out my ELH; forgot all about dream larva)

[Phelix-Mu]

I may have overstated how advanced the dream larva would need to be. The standard dream larva is pretty badass, and would work just fine as a campaign-ending boss (and might even need to be toned down a bit).

[Fyermind]

Make many villains striving to achieve the same goal with similar means.

For example: If the goal is to ascend to godhood by building a large enough following and activating certain rituals, you have many powerful villains working to conquer locations, build kingdoms, and amass knowledge all of whom might be at various times allies or enemies of the PCs. The plot hook overall might be that a greater god is dying, and the seats at the table of the greater gods cannot go empty. So many powers are striving to take this position.

You want the major story ark to be something high level characters will have a hard time with (ascending to godhood is never trivial, and spells don't help in making huge kingdoms, just breaking them). You want redundancy in "enemies" so that you can have the PCs influence which enemies they have, but not what encounters they have. The PCs will have the same story ark you planned, but the nature of their encounters (and who the encounters are with) will change based on who they side with and how they fare.

[NichG]

Start from the idea 'X problem happens because of how Y responds to Z unpleasant reality of life' - these are your low-level plots. When you hit high level play, the plot is about 'how do we change the realities of life?'

For example, the world's oceans are slowly dwindling, with the coast pulling back perhaps thirty meters a year - this has been going on for the past five centuries, so its clear 'this isn't what your Lv3 characters should be worried about', but its just a fact of life for everyone. Often this causes problems - fishing villages lose their livelyhoods, ancient things lost beneath the waves are exposed, even new islands are discovered. Its worrisome, but it has lots of effects good and bad that are interesting from the point of view of plotlines.

Then, as the game reaches epic level, the party discovers evidence that there is a Planar Conjunction approaching, a one-in-a-hundred-thousand-year event. The Plane of Water is the first to align and this is disturbing water throughout the multiverse - some worlds flooding, some drying out. Soon other planes will join the alignment, causing even more havoc. Those who stand upon the fabled Ordial plane at the moment of Conjunction will be able to decide the new order of the multiverse, and the various gods, demons, etc, are all trying to find the Ordial and be the ones to stand there when everything changes.

[Fyermind]

I very much like where a combination of my idea and NichG's ideas might go.

I am a fan of recurring themes and characters. Plot cohesion to me requires more constants than just the PCs. Be it their religious affiliations, guilds, academies, countries, or places of business, encourage the PCs to have groups they are tied to that will be major players in the end game.

[NichG]

A good way to do that then might be to say that 'since the waters of this world receded first, it must be closest to the Ordial'. So while the low level PCs are dealing with Sahuagin attacks and other local-level threats, they occasionally see something weird as e.g. there's a Solar literally flying about ignoring everyone in its search for the portal - this could even be described as a meteorological phenomenon (the second sun - a bright light that appears high in the sky every so often) as it literally never lands to talk with anyone or intervene, but people beneath it seem to be blessed, have diseases cured, etc, so it's considered a good omen. Other end-game players could basically be wandering about looking for stuff, sometimes cross paths with the PCs in a non-villainous manner, etc.

I do think however its important not to play the ultimate villain(s) card too early in a campaign designed to be this long. Its one of those things that once the players are aware of what the end-game is going to look like, the midgame loses relevance very quickly and it will be hard to keep them interested in things other than joining the search for the Ordial and trying to control the conjunction. Even having a chance to talk to the solar flying above or the Pit Fiend trying to create an army of undead to scour the land for it means that they may discard all other considerations and beeline towards the conclusion. So you really do have to keep those entities hyper-secretive (which makes some sense considering the stakes), and if they interact with or even ally with the PCs they can't be honest about the true goals until you're ready to have the final run towards the ending.

[Galazgru]

Start from the idea 'X problem happens because of how Y responds to Z unpleasant reality of life' - these are your low-level plots. When you hit high level play, the plot is about 'how do we change the realities of life?'

For example, the world's oceans are slowly dwindling, with the coast pulling back perhaps thirty meters a year - this has been going on for the past five centuries, so its clear 'this isn't what your Lv3 characters should be worried about', but its just a fact of life for everyone. Often this causes problems - fishing villages lose their livelyhoods, ancient things lost beneath the waves are exposed, even new islands are discovered. Its worrisome, but it has lots of effects good and bad that are interesting from the point of view of plotlines.

Then, as the game reaches epic level, the party discovers evidence that there is a Planar Conjunction approaching, a one-in-a-hundred-thousand-year event. The Plane of Water is the first to align and this is disturbing water throughout the multiverse - some worlds flooding, some drying out. Soon other planes will join the alignment, causing even more havoc. Those who stand upon the fabled Ordial plane at the moment of Conjunction will be able to decide the new order of the multiverse, and the various gods, demons, etc, are all trying to find the Ordial and be the ones to stand there when everything changes.


Make many villains striving to achieve the same goal with similar means.

For example: If the goal is to ascend to godhood by building a large enough following and activating certain rituals, you have many powerful villains working to conquer locations, build kingdoms, and amass knowledge all of whom might be at various times allies or enemies of the PCs. The plot hook overall might be that a greater god is dying, and the seats at the table of the greater gods cannot go empty. So many powers are striving to take this position.

You want the major story ark to be something high level characters will have a hard time with (ascending to godhood is never trivial, and spells don't help in making huge kingdoms, just breaking them). You want redundancy in "enemies" so that you can have the PCs influence which enemies they have, but not what encounters they have. The PCs will have the same story ark you planned, but the nature of their encounters (and who the encounters are with) will change based on who they side with and how they fare.

I really like where this is going and can already start to see how some ideas about my world and the power figures and organizations within can interact with the situation. Not totally sure if I want to do receeding oceans; I'll need to give that some thought.

NichG, is the Ordial plane one that exists in D&D cosmology or is it an invention of yours?

I really like the idea of Solars flying around ignore everything in a vie to control the conjuction. I also like the idea of kings and rulers sending the PCs off to track down hermit scholars without telling them the whole story.

[Biffoniacus_Furiou]

Illithids doing their standard thing, dragging people away, devouring brains, turning humanoids into illithids, etc. Plenty of cults dedicated to them, cultists wanting to join their ranks, etc. On further investigation the PCs will learn of an elder god that slumbers deep beneath the ground/ocean/whatever. This elder god is due to awaken soon, as part of a regular cycle. The mind flayers are actually expanding their population so that when this elder god does awaken, they can cast themselves into his maw so their combined intellect will satisfy his initial hunger and send him back into his thousand-year slumber. Cultists will speak about becoming one of the honored chosen who will be eaten first and similar.

Of course, that's just a story that the illithids have been spreading to deter anyone from meddling in their affairs. There really is an elder god who slumbers in the deep, but he is the father of all mind flayers and he was defeated and imprisoned there long ago. The deity whose clerics defeated him is long dead, but the eternal bonds they put in place hold fast. The illithids must swell their ranks so they have enough individuals to perform a powerful ritual that will free it. Hopefully the PCs will catch on to this before it actually happens, though if the game goes to a high enough level this would be the perfect final boss fight.

For adventures, even at all levels, the PCs can investigate the cults and will of course be suspicious at first. Once they catch on to the fake story they may end up helping the cults and furthering the mind flayers' goals! The direction the game goes would be entirely dependent on what they learn and when. You could even make either of the above two stories the actual ending: If they believe the illithids seek to free the elder god and they prevent them from their real goal of casting themselves into his maw to save the world, the PCs will have to fight the elder god to fix their mistake. If they believe the illithids seek to cast themselves into his maw to save the world, they really perform the ritual that unleashes him and they have to fight the elder god to fix their mistake.

[atomicwaffle]

Pantheons have erupted in chaos, gods are being hurled to the prime material plane as mortals. Every position is available. Those who know what is going on are attempting to claim (or reclaim) a position of divinity in the pantheon. Currently there is no 'management' for existence. Everything is in chaos. It's up to the party to save all of existence by either claiming divinity, or helping others to do so.

[Yorrin]

Chthulu plot

I actually ran almost that exact plot about five years ago. It turned out very well, and the PCs had a ton of fun fighting the ancient elder god himself.

Galazgru: Your setting sounds similar to the one I run almost all of my games in. But I have a slightly different take on a way to go about this. The first time the players run a campaign in this world it may just be a generic high-fantasy setting with any of the good plots above. But don't necessarily force players to play the setting 1-20. My setting is internally consistent, and the actions of PCs effect things over the course of multiple campaigns, but those campaigns don't always have a lot to do with each other.

For example I started the setting with new players who played it levels 1-12 or so. Then that plot wrapped up, and I started a new plot a few years later in the aftermath of their actions with new characters who played level 5-16 or so. That one wrapped up and I moved the next campaign back in time to a few decades before the first campaign to look at some origin stories of some kingdoms and such. That one actually went levels 10-30, and a couple PCs ascended to godhood, which was cool. So those PC-deities became viable worshippable gods in the next campaign that ran lvl 5-24 in the same setting that started a century later.

What I'm getting at is don't try and have a single plot that accommodates 1-20 if that's not the sort of game your players want. Reuse a growing and evolving setting that covers multiple plots and allows for multiple PCs.

[Galazgru]

Pantheons have erupted in chaos, gods are being hurled to the prime material plane as mortals. Every position is available. Those who know what is going on are attempting to claim (or reclaim) a position of divinity in the pantheon. Currently there is no 'management' for existence. Everything is in chaos. It's up to the party to save all of existence by either claiming divinity, or helping others to do so.

I actually played in campaign very similiar to this idea. Each player was a god who had been cast down and stripped of all power so we had to attempt to reassend. The catch was that every player was randomly assigned a god and we didn't know who we were since we lost all of our previous memories when we were cast down so we had to actively try and discover which god we were and what phanteon we should control. Easy for the player who was Yondalla, not so easy for people who were human gods (Pelor, Nerull, and St. Cuthbert).

[Galazgru]

I actually ran almost that exact plot about five years ago. It turned out very well, and the PCs had a ton of fun fighting the ancient elder god himself.

Galazgru: Your setting sounds similar to the one I run almost all of my games in. But I have a slightly different take on a way to go about this. The first time the players run a campaign in this world it may just be a generic high-fantasy setting with any of the good plots above. But don't necessarily force players to play the setting 1-20. My setting is internally consistent, and the actions of PCs effect things over the course of multiple campaigns, but those campaigns don't always have a lot to do with each other.

For example I started the setting with new players who played it levels 1-12 or so. Then that plot wrapped up, and I started a new plot a few years later in the aftermath of their actions with new characters who played level 5-16 or so. That one wrapped up and I moved the next campaign back in time to a few decades before the first campaign to look at some origin stories of some kingdoms and such. That one actually went levels 10-30, and a couple PCs ascended to godhood, which was cool. So those PC-deities became viable worshippable gods in the next campaign that ran lvl 5-24 in the same setting that started a century later.

What I'm getting at is don't try and have a single plot that accommodates 1-20 if that's not the sort of game your players want. Reuse a growing and evolving setting that covers multiple plots and allows for multiple PCs.

Yorrin, that is probably the coolest thing Ive heard in a while. Ive played in some huge campaigns in the past and I've played with DMs who only run massively long games (last campaign was 1-15 and took 5 years) but I've never had one reuse a world so the players could see what happened as a result of their last character's actions. Such a cool idea!

[Mootsmcboots]

If you are going to try and blend LOTR style high fantasy with the whole song of Ice and Fire political intrigue thing it could be taxing on both you and your players.

Just as a mental exercise try to consider just blending those books together. LOTR hooks you for the journey dotted with moments of adventure and danger. But it's pretty straight forward. Go here, over come challenge, move closer to goal. Sauron evil. Ring dangerous. Destroy ring, defeat Sauron. Save middle earth.

A song of fire and ice is entirely opposite. Martin spends whole books laying down layers of betrayal, posturing and deciet, marked with few moments of excitement and most of that comes from a book long laid plan coming to fruition. Ned's beheading, the Blackwater battle etc come to mind.

They find their intrigue and hooks in very different ways, at an entirely different pace. I'm not saying it would be impossible to blend these into a fictional world, it could just be taxing.

Suggestions: keep it simple but grand. Story tellers and DMs run into this issue it seems. Where they confuse "living breathing world" with overly complicated and detailed. Too many names, houses, and things to keep track of and your living world becomes homework for players trying to remember it all. Think of how few locations characters in LOTR actually spend time in. It's maybe a dozen locations over 3 books.

Keep the cast of supporting characters limited and distinct. The name, rank, history, etc of the leader of an elvish town sure, but that much info for his captain of the guard, his grand vizier, and all of the town council? Too much. If you really want to go into super deep detail for a lot of characters, flesh them out very well, but don't fill their back story with a tonne of vital info the PCs may need, or you'll end up having to remind your characters which council member or member of the clergy has a cousin who had a map to a specific location or object.

Towns should be distinct, distinguishing landmarks help. A significant tower, a meteor that crashed in the middle of town, which is now a fixture. Half the town sunk into the port. Etc. Things that make the player say "Oh right thats the port town with the giant skeleton of a prehistoric whale jutting out of the harbour"

It'll take dedication. Just introduce things gradually. Pacing will be more important to investment than just sheer information amount. It's hard to care about a priest you are trying to save from assasination when you are just trying to remember who's who and where you are all the time.

My 2 cents.

[NichG]

I really like where this is going and can already start to see how some ideas about my world and the power figures and organizations within can interact with the situation. Not totally sure if I want to do receeding oceans; I'll need to give that some thought.

NichG, is the Ordial plane one that exists in D&D cosmology or is it an invention of yours?

I really like the idea of Solars flying around ignore everything in a vie to control the conjuction. I also like the idea of kings and rulers sending the PCs off to track down hermit scholars without telling them the whole story.

The Ordial plane is something that is only ever mentioned in a sideways manner by any D&D source I'm aware of. The idea for it cropped up in 2ed Planescape, where the Rule of Three implies that there's a third transitive plane (aside from the Ethereal and the Astral) which should link the Outer and Inner planes but not be accessible from the Material plane. It's not statted out anywhere in any explicit way, and as far as I can tell the idea dropped off the radar completely in 3ed.

[Galazgru]

If you are going to try and blend LOTR style high fantasy with the whole song of Ice and Fire political intrigue thing it could be taxing on both you and your players.

Just as a mental exercise try to consider just blending those books together. LOTR hooks you for the journey dotted with moments of adventure and danger. But it's pretty straight forward. Go here, over come challenge, move closer to goal. Sauron evil. Ring dangerous. Destroy ring, defeat Sauron. Save middle earth.

A song of fire and ice is entirely opposite. Martin spends whole books laying down layers of betrayal, posturing and deciet, marked with few moments of excitement and most of that comes from a book long laid plan coming to fruition. Ned's beheading, the Blackwater battle etc come to mind.

They find their intrigue and hooks in very different ways, at an entirely different pace. I'm not saying it would be impossible to blend these into a fictional world, it could just be taxing.

Suggestions: keep it simple but grand. Story tellers and DMs run into this issue it seems. Where they confuse "living breathing world" with overly complicated and detailed. Too many names, houses, and things to keep track of and your living world becomes homework for players trying to remember it all. Think of how few locations characters in LOTR actually spend time in. It's maybe a dozen locations over 3 books.

Keep the cast of supporting characters limited and distinct. The name, rank, history, etc of the leader of an elvish town sure, but that much info for his captain of the guard, his grand vizier, and all of the town council? Too much. If you really want to go into super deep detail for a lot of characters, flesh them out very well, but don't fill their back story with a tonne of vital info the PCs may need, or you'll end up having to remind your characters which council member or member of the clergy has a cousin who had a map to a specific location or object.

Towns should be distinct, distinguishing landmarks help. A significant tower, a meteor that crashed in the middle of town, which is now a fixture. Half the town sunk into the port. Etc. Things that make the player say "Oh right thats the port town with the giant skeleton of a prehistoric whale jutting out of the harbour"

It'll take dedication. Just introduce things gradually. Pacing will be more important to investment than just sheer information amount. It's hard to care about a priest you are trying to save from assasination when you are just trying to remember who's who and where you are all the time.

My 2 cents.

Thanks Moots, those are some really great tips. I should probably clarify with my reference to LOTR, I meant I would like to use the fantasy elements from those books (i.e. elves, dwarfs, orcs, wizards, demons, fantastical places and items) not the storytelling persay. What I want to craft is a ASOIAF world of intrigue and geopolitical manuevering that can exist within the confines of a high fantasy theme that allows for players to be more than just average humans who happen to be exceedingly clever. I hope that helps clarify a bit.