Diachronos
2014-07-31, 01:10 AM
With the group I'm currently playing with, we have one player who's DMing his own campaign every Sunday, but usually he ends up not running it because of one reason or another (to be fair, he's somewhere between 11-15, so...). I offered to run something with Pathfinder on the off weeks when he doesn't run his, but I'm having a bit of trouble planning things out. So far there's been one session, which was mainly character creation and a little bit of actual gameplay.
This isn't my first time DMing, but it's probably the first time I'm running one that's likely to go anywhere; my previous attempts fell apart because people stopped showing up and I couldn't really run something with only 2-3 players, but this group is consistent enough that it probably won't fall apart unless I lose interest or really screw up.
That said, I'm in need of advice. The starting dungeon is being mapped out now (the party didn't get very far when we started, so there wasn't much that needed to be put together), but I'm at a loss for encounters. The current dungeon is an ancient tower that's been basically non-existent for (some arbitrarily long time) years in the world, and the party's been dropped into the lowest depths after being plucked from their home world. Since the place has been sealed up for a long time, it severely limits the things that could realistically be found inside; I'm assuming that undead would be the best idea for the early encounters, but would anything else be suitable for a place that doesn't really have a reliable source of food that wouldn't slaughter a party of 1st level characters?
If it helps, the current party consists of a Cleric, a Fighter, a Summoner, and Oracle, and a Magus/Arcanist gestalt (there will probably be a few more players joining in, but I don't know what they'd build).
I'm also still trying to work out the world itself. The climates and nations have been somewhat worked out:
A tropical island inhabited mainly by the elemental-blooded races (Ifrit, Oread, Undine, Sylph, and Suli-jann)
A swampland inhabited by Lizardfolk
A heavily mountainous area (still deciding whether to make this ruled by kobolds or goblins; tempted to have multiple mountain ranges, each ruled by one of the two)
A nation in the tundra to the far north, ruled by a Vampire (thinking of having undead/half-undead races be the predominant inhabitants)
A dense forest ruled over by fey (mainly fairies and a plant-based race)
The central plains, which is where the core races (human, elf, dwarf, etc) are usually found
A vast desert, mainly inhabited by monstrous humanoid races (likely ruled by a Medusa)
A land of semi-nomadic beastfolk races (kitsune, catfolk, etc.) in the taigas between the tundra and central plains
The tower that the party is starting in is going to be situated in one of those areas; the simplest solution would be the plains, seeing as only 2 characters are non-core races (one's a Changeling, the other's a custom, earth-based Outsider race), but would any of the others be a good fit?
The only other thing I have worked out at all right now is the first NPC they're going to encounter: a Vampire Wizard/White Necromancer who set up shop in the ground level of the tower in order to study it. He's your typical "nice but eccentric" hermit mage sort of character, and his interest in the tower is mainly academic. The party may have some issues with their initial encounter with him, seeing as he has his undead servants working to open up other parts of the tower so they can explore it further and he's going to try to take away the magic items they found inside (temporarily, of course) so that he can study them, but he's going to end up being one of their best allies in the campaign.
This isn't my first time DMing, but it's probably the first time I'm running one that's likely to go anywhere; my previous attempts fell apart because people stopped showing up and I couldn't really run something with only 2-3 players, but this group is consistent enough that it probably won't fall apart unless I lose interest or really screw up.
That said, I'm in need of advice. The starting dungeon is being mapped out now (the party didn't get very far when we started, so there wasn't much that needed to be put together), but I'm at a loss for encounters. The current dungeon is an ancient tower that's been basically non-existent for (some arbitrarily long time) years in the world, and the party's been dropped into the lowest depths after being plucked from their home world. Since the place has been sealed up for a long time, it severely limits the things that could realistically be found inside; I'm assuming that undead would be the best idea for the early encounters, but would anything else be suitable for a place that doesn't really have a reliable source of food that wouldn't slaughter a party of 1st level characters?
If it helps, the current party consists of a Cleric, a Fighter, a Summoner, and Oracle, and a Magus/Arcanist gestalt (there will probably be a few more players joining in, but I don't know what they'd build).
I'm also still trying to work out the world itself. The climates and nations have been somewhat worked out:
A tropical island inhabited mainly by the elemental-blooded races (Ifrit, Oread, Undine, Sylph, and Suli-jann)
A swampland inhabited by Lizardfolk
A heavily mountainous area (still deciding whether to make this ruled by kobolds or goblins; tempted to have multiple mountain ranges, each ruled by one of the two)
A nation in the tundra to the far north, ruled by a Vampire (thinking of having undead/half-undead races be the predominant inhabitants)
A dense forest ruled over by fey (mainly fairies and a plant-based race)
The central plains, which is where the core races (human, elf, dwarf, etc) are usually found
A vast desert, mainly inhabited by monstrous humanoid races (likely ruled by a Medusa)
A land of semi-nomadic beastfolk races (kitsune, catfolk, etc.) in the taigas between the tundra and central plains
The tower that the party is starting in is going to be situated in one of those areas; the simplest solution would be the plains, seeing as only 2 characters are non-core races (one's a Changeling, the other's a custom, earth-based Outsider race), but would any of the others be a good fit?
The only other thing I have worked out at all right now is the first NPC they're going to encounter: a Vampire Wizard/White Necromancer who set up shop in the ground level of the tower in order to study it. He's your typical "nice but eccentric" hermit mage sort of character, and his interest in the tower is mainly academic. The party may have some issues with their initial encounter with him, seeing as he has his undead servants working to open up other parts of the tower so they can explore it further and he's going to try to take away the magic items they found inside (temporarily, of course) so that he can study them, but he's going to end up being one of their best allies in the campaign.