My Players Want a World Changing Plot. At Level 1.

[ekarney]

One of my players in-particular seems to want this, he's a level 2 Human Warblade he used in a previous campaign, the other 2 level 1 party members are a Water Orc Lion Totem Barbarian (Yes, i know exactly where he's going with that 1 level dip) and a Nezumi Artificer.

None of these guys are heavy munchkins so throwing an ECL 8 BBEG is out of the question.
This plotline is a RP/Political intrigue sort of line.



They arrive in the town of Stagstead and are surprised to find the local ruling body has been over thrown and 5 warring gangs have taken control of the town.
The gangs are:
1. The White Horses - They're basically a Native American styled tribe that does security/mercenary work.
2. The Common Tongues - Pretty typical thieves guild.
3. Culrin Disast - Another mercenary guild, they've been doing external contracts and are almost a paramilitary force, they're the second largest gang and have taken over the keep.
4. Tunnelers - The result of a heap of the townsfolk banding together, they do security work for a lot of the local shops.
5. Czinachs/Snakes - a gang composed almost entirely of Drow, they're the largest gang in town, the plot twist with these guys is that they're headed by Lolth under the guise of "Melani Ethesin". She doesn't actually care about the situation, shes doing it for giggles. The players, nor their characters know this though.

Our Warblade joined the White Horses, and allied them with Tunnelers. He's currently considering on using the gang leaders to form a government, or at the very least exterminate Czinachs, he thinks they're evil or something. Hr also took a feat that makes him immune to dying of old age, which he thinks gives him plot armour. He doesn't have plot armour.
Our Barbarian joined up with Culrin Disast and has been trying to ally them with Czinachs
Our Artificer joined the Tunnelers, he hangs around the Warblade but just wants to be paid to craft stuff. He's been running recon on the Czinachs.


Since the Warblade player has been the one petitioning the most for some sort of epic Skyrim kinda campaign
You know the whole "Hey look some level 1 - 2 weirdo just appeared out of nowhere and all of a sudden he's the greatest hero of all time you have to defeat the Atropal army and their leader, Harbinger!"
I threw in a bit of plot hook, that Stagstead is cursed, and that every time the town is in disarray a mysterious undead creature comes to the town, will hang some unnamed corpses upside down as a warning sign, and if there's not complete unity in the town he comes in and either chooses a champion to lead the town, or kills everyone. Just to throw him a bone, but he's not happy.

What else can I do for low level players who want some sort of gigantic epic event, when mechanically, anything that could pose a serious threat to them or the town, one of the NPC's in the town could kill with it's eyes closed.'

I'm definitely stuck.

[Troacctid]

Perhaps whatever your world-endangering threat is, stopping it requires several plot coupons, which are obtained through a series of conveniently level-appropriate subquests.

[Milodiah]

Sure, give 'em a world changing plot.

Of course, it ain't gonna be level appropriate.

Let them find out about some wild late-game story arc a DM would drop on a level 15 or 18 party, there's no reason level one dudes wouldn't hear the same conspicuously informative tavern gossip as the 15s and 18s. Maybe they'll even be smart enough to realize "hey, we're out of our league here" when they see the fortress of doom guarded by nigh-immortal titans with halberds made from the bones of slain gods or whatever.

[Jeff the Green]

Look at Elder Evils. They're world-shattering and designed to be run from very low levels until they climax in the mid-to-late teens.

[ekarney]

Sure, give 'em a world changing plot.

Of course, it ain't gonna be level appropriate.

Let them find out about some wild late-game story arc a DM would drop on a level 15 or 18 party, there's no reason level one dudes wouldn't hear the same conspicuously informative tavern gossip as the 15s and 18s. Maybe they'll even be smart enough to realize "hey, we're out of our league here" when they see the fortress of doom guarded by nigh-immortal titans with halberds made from the bones of slain gods or whatever.

That could work, I could expand on my Pale Man threat make him go for a "final" solution kind of thing, seeing as the players haven't encountered him yet.

[Fax Celestis]

Take a gander at War of the Burning Sky.

[Novawurmson]

Have you ever played Final Fantasy X?

There's a titanic monster called Sin going around wiping out cities. The creature is obviously way out the party's reach at low levels, but the creature leaves "sinspawn" in its wake that the protagonists have to kill.

It's all about building up and scaling up properly. Maybe the bad guys are summoning an ancient demon king - sure, eventually they're probably going to fight a CR 20+ outsider, but at level 1, they're disrupting a summoning circle made by some of the Herald of the Apocalypse's henchmen. Maybe the bad guys are a cabal of mind flayers that are plotting to control every intelligent civilization on earth. They're not going to be fighting the cabal themselves at level 1, but they can fight their dominated henchmen and aberrant experiments gone wrong.

If you want to crank it up a notch, make it a world in which the bad guys have already partially succeeded. Maybe the demon king has already been summoned and an entire kingdom is now literally hell on earth; the party will be fighting low-level demons and demon worshipers at level 1, but they'll be immediately involved in a plot to reclaim the country and save the world. Maybe the party learns that all the world governments are already under control of the cabal of mind flayers; everywhere they go they have to be paranoid of every authority figure, a significant portion of whom are directly dominated or reporting to their squid-faced masters.

[Milodiah]

Maybe the bad guys are a cabal of mind flayers that are plotting to control every intelligent civilization on earth. They're not going to be fighting the cabal themselves at level 1, but they can fight their dominated henchmen and aberrant experiments gone wrong.

Mind Flayers are ideal for what you want here, OP. You can have whatever you want in the "foreground" of the campaign, be it thief's guild, foreign warmonger, Underdark threat, deadly beasts, etc (in your case one or two of the gangs), and then as the players deal with the recently altered behavior of aforementioned group they slowly discover hints that lead back to the cities of the squiddiemen. There's your slow escalation right there, and who could deny that "stopping the mind flayers" doesn't count as a world-changing plot?

[NotScaryBats]

Your world needn't necessarily be populated by NPCs that could destroy EL 5 encounters with their eyes closed. Or, it needn't have them in abundance. Perhaps an EL 3 threat is a serious threat to the town and only the PCs can stop it. Perhaps there isn't a huge standing military in every bit of civilization the PCs come across.

Try to do things to make the PCs special, even from level 1.

If the PC wants an epic story, have an artifact chose the PC as its champion -- that feels pretty epic and you can scale the magical powers as the PC gains power, and it gives an in-game reason for the PC to be 'better than everyone else'.

As the PC grows in power, have villagers and people recognize the PC as 'the chosen one' or whatever.

Build NPCs off a normal array or an elite array if they are especially powerful. This automatically makes the PCs special (IE not every fighting person has 16 strength).

-----

That said, it sounds like you want to run a game where the level 1 PC is nothing, which is the polar opposite of the game that the PC wants. Neither way is wrong, but one of you will have to compromise, and if you still think "he thinks wasting a feat will give him plot armor, but it does not give him plot armor" that is a clear sign to me that your desires are different. At level 2, he wasted one of his -- what? 2 feats? on a completely irrelevant bonus because he wants his character to be special? Work with him/her.

[golem1972]

SPOILERS FOR WRATH OF THE RIGHTEOUS




Pathfinder Wrath of the Righteous.

Even without the mythic rules (the game runs much better without them), this is a very epic story that focuses on the players as the chosen champions of the world right from level one.

I do recommend 3 basic changes if you want to run the adventure path rather than just use it for ideas.

1: do what a lot of dms have done and have them participate in the first battle rather than have it be a cut scene. Few things will match the epicness of the players fighting for their lives against tough (but level appropriate) demons and cultists while higher level npcs fight around them (there is even a demon General versus dragon battle in the sky above them). Make sure you focus on the actions of the characters while painting the battle around them.

2: Condense the encounters. Many of the encounters feel random and are just there to give out xp. Level grinding is not epic. Drop the unimportant encounters and add in fewer fights that give the same total xp.

3: Drop the mythic rules. They are a headache and will turn the second half of the adventure into a game of rocket tag that is either boring or a total party kill.

You don't have to play the adventure, but you could mine it for ideas.

[Kelb_Panthera]

World-class threats are pretty strictly in the province of low- to mid-teen level characters (high level, 17+, have the potential to change things on an interplanar scale). What your player is asking for -can- be done, but it will require one of several things.

DM assistance: perhaps a mcguffin that can stop the world-class threat that would otherwise smash the PC's, or an NPC touched by destiny whose sacrifice is necessary, or something else along that line.

That the state of the world is such that governments operate nations that cover most of the known world. City-states just don't interact in a way that's meaningful on the whole world's stage.

A threat that's neutralized by exposure. The idea someone upthread suggested with mindflayers would be a good example though this can easily move from here to the first bullet point once the machinations of whatever threatens the world reach a certain point.

Without something to mitigate the power discrepancy between low level characters and high level threats the only option is to pose the high level threat and then spend a lengthy campaign building toward it so that the players are of the appropriate level when they do face it head on.

[ekarney]

Your world needn't necessarily be populated by NPCs that could destroy EL 5 encounters with their eyes closed. Or, it needn't have them in abundance. Perhaps an EL 3 threat is a serious threat to the town and only the PCs can stop it. Perhaps there isn't a huge standing military in every bit of civilization the PCs come across.

That said, it sounds like you want to run a game where the level 1 PC is nothing, which is the polar opposite of the game that the PC wants. Neither way is wrong, but one of you will have to compromise, and if you still think "he thinks wasting a feat will give him plot armor, but it does not give him plot armor" that is a clear sign to me that your desires are different. At level 2, he wasted one of his -- what? 2 feats? on a completely irrelevant bonus because he wants his character to be special? Work with him/her.

I have it organized in a way where CL 1 - 2 NPC's with average arrays make up 50% of the population, CL 3 - 4 NPC's with mixed (though mostly average) arrays make up 30%, CL 6 - 8 with better than average make up 10%, CL 9 - 10 is 5%, 3% is CL 10 - 14 and 2% is CL 15+

Theres a few exceptions obviously, and all the NPC's higher than CL 4 are fully justified.
The way I figure it, is if they've gotten enough experience to get there and are also very talented, basically they've seen a lot of the stuff the PC's have, except they did it first, so a CL 8 Fighter isn't just going to be a town guard, he'd be hardened military veteran who's seen a lot of things, or the commander of a mercenary company.

That's exactly it, I guess that's the difference between me as a munchkin and him as a RP'er, and as a DM I tend to be very loose with my plots so that the players can go and do as they please with it, to the point of throwing them plot cookies and see which one they want the most. So to have a huge over-arching story across 14+ levels is probably more than I could handle.

Unless, I did several different stories, like I've been doing now (Story 1: The Gangs, then next I might have them assist with fending off some Orc attacks then after that segment maybe have them investigate a cult or something so on so forth) and have all these little things that make the players go "Oh, that's really weird why is the leader of X guild a mindflayer?" "Whoa, who knew that one Orc company was made up of shapeshifting mind-flayers" "It's kinda coincidental that those cultists hand out in an old mind-flayer ruin" and then have them start the "Mind-Flayer Are Going To Kill The World" arc*. Could that sort of thing work?



*Assuming I use Illithids, but you guys get the gist?

[Kelb_Panthera]

Ah, a group that you're really gotta wind up when you hit 'em with the clue-by-four, eh. My sympathies. Perhaps a "conspiracy theorist nut" could clue them into the fact that mindflayers do what mindflayers do. Or whatever big bad threat you choose to use.

[Spore]

We had a "collectathon" quest from level 1 onwards. Collecting ancient technology is an allrounder for engaging quests from Lv 1. You stumble upon a vital part of a machine needed for [insertplot device] that [insert BBEG] needs to complete world conquest.

First his agents send lackeys. Then his agents show up one after another until they cannot hide their failure and BBEG himself shows up.

[AvatarVecna]

Here's an idea from a campaign I'm currently running; incidentally, if you're playing Darlish, Khaeldek, Radek, or Caliban, don't open this first spoiler.

So, I'm running an Eberron campaign, which is about halfway over at this point. My players know I tend to make epic adventures when I make long campaigns, so one of them (the guy playing Radek, a Valenar Elf Fighter focusing on bows) ended up making a character with a really interesting background tying his character to elven history in an unspecified way. His honored ancestor is a great elven hero (dating back to the Age of the Giants) who's rarely been the specific honored ancestor in the years since his passing. Every time someone turns up who emulates him, they are given the Scourgebow and sent off into the world to continue the Scourgebow legacy, along with a prophecy indicating how they are to do so, even though no one's quite sure what the original Scourgebow if famous for, other than being a master of the longbow.

Seeing the openings available, I worked with him and ended up giving him the equivalent of the Ancestral Weapon feat, except I had control over the item's properties. Over the first 6 levels or so, the whole group took down bad guys and gained power: they took out a gang in Sharn, went on a dungeon delve in Xen'drik, met a drow high priest who let them live (she was around 14th lvl, and they were like 4th), took down some train robbers on the way to Thrane, and escorted Jaena back to Flamekeep, dodging enemies of the church along the way (don't ask how that happened). It's finally all coming together: Jaena was meeting with members of the western druid organization to discuss strange changes in the planar cosmology, and some old prophecies that are starting to come true.

Although the players aren't aware of it yet, the main plot hook is that Dal Quor is drifting closer to the Material Plane, and will be properly aligned with a couple of months. Furthermore, a failed attempt to tap into Dal Quor's power is what blighted the Mournland, and there's at least 5 separate groups who intend to take advantage of the plane's much-closer position to truly tap into it and use the power to defeat their enemies and conquer the Material Plane: the drow of Xen'drik, the Lord of Blades, Kaius III, the inhabitants of Dal Quor (and their mortal allies), and a sea-roaming psionic cult.

The campaign will lead them from Karrnath to Sarlona, back to Xen'drik, and finally into the heart of the Mournlands. By the end of it, they'll be right around 18th level and can retire, assuming the Scourgebow can complete his ancient duty and keep the Dream demons from taking over the world.
It's all about set-up: your players can have an epic goal, but you don't need to dump them straight into it. I find that discovering a cult can be a great start to an epic adventure at low levels: the ECL 1 group invades a random dungeon surrounded by folklore and stories of unclaimed riches. Among other things, they find a small-scale cult attempting to summon something in the basement, as well as clues throughout the dungeon that the cult has pretty much taken over it, as well as various texts indicating larger-scale plans of destruction or domination (of the world variety, that is). Upon investigating these plans, the players can stumble on a conspiracy stetching across the globe and the planes. A good "Final Boss Fight" for this kind of set-up is to discover the cult leaders just as they're summoning something huge, such as the forgotten god/archdevil/whatever that the cult is based on; now you have a big baddie and at least three high-level casters to worry about, not to mention you're fighting them on their own turf. It's tons of fun.

Also, I find it interesting that one of the ways to take out the tarrasque without killing it is to bury it under more rock than it can lift. Have a cult/deurgar group/mad wizard unearth it, and you have instant disaster for anyone nearby (not to say that tarrasque is particularly difficult for an optimized party to take down).

[Slipperychicken]

Just make them travel across the world for their epic quest. They'll just need to grind encounters and side-quests along the way until they're high-level enough to stop it.

http://i.imgur.com/JCiXqGQ.jpg

[JusticeZero]

For one, glance at E6 because it's flat enough that you don't have to have layers on layers of power level. Second, I liked an idea from earlier. Imagine an epic campaign leading up to a final battle with a powerful enemy. The heroes came through your village. You met them, you saw how powerful they are, and how decked to the gills they were. On the way out, one of them struck up a conversation with you about the Evil they faced. Then they went off to battle.
... And they lost. Now everyone is under the thumb of BBEG. but nobody noticed you guys, and the adventurers dumped some vendor trash on you, and you got some info straight from the heroes.

[cosmicAstrogazr]

... And they lost. Now everyone is under the thumb of BBEG. but nobody noticed you guys, and the adventurers dumped some vendor trash on you, and you got some info straight from the heroes.

Oh man I love this idea. This is exactly the kind of game I'd run, wow. I'm... just going to shuffle this away in my 'games to run someday' folder. Yes. :smallbiggrin:

[kernal42]

You can play the bluff:

It appears that some magnificent evil power, thought to have been defeated a generation or two ago, has returned. Everyone in the town (and nearby towns?) is terrified and sending tribute/sacrifices/whatever to appease the returned dark lord. The PCs adventure off to confront said evil power, only to find at the end that it's some level 5 illusionist with a few lackeys making a bluff of the whole thing.

You, the DM, get to play up the appearance of a world changing plot, but still have wimpy enemies that a level 1-2 (or so) group can defeat.

Cheers,
Kernal

[StoneCipher]

Make them stumble upon a sealed evil and accidentally release it. Then they gotta spend the whole campaign bottling it back up.

[Urpriest]

"Incursion"-style campaigns can also work. Back when Dragon Magazine was still going strong, they did a special issue (with complementary issues of Dungeon and Polyhedron) in which Githyanki invade the material plane. At low levels you're fighting off footsoldiers, while at high levels you start actually making progress against the oppressive regime.

That sort of situation (evil invades, now deal with the consequences until you're powerful enough to defeat them) seems like a good way to make low-level players feel like they're involved with world-shaking events without having them actually be.

[Honest Tiefling]

Make it a shadow/wight/zombie apocalypse. The problem isn't their power, its the number and the fact that entire towns and villages are wiped out. Throw in a cult that's equipping/controlling/augmenting/experimenting on this new resource to make encounters variable. Else, something in the environment causes (such as defiled temples, and temples to different gods produce different effects) the whatevers in that area to be slightly different.

As time goes on, there are not just more of them, but other things (giants, ogres, trolls, dragons) have succumbed to the hordes. Have fun!

[danzibr]

Make them stumble upon a sealed evil and accidentally release it. Then they gotta spend the whole campaign bottling it back up.
While I like many of the ideas in this thread, I must say this is my favorite. I'll likely be stealing it soon :P

[Max Caysey]

Sorry if I offend anyone here, but your players sounds a little bit like jerks to me... Anyways, I would firstly explain to them that even in the adventuring business there is a strickt Hierarchy, meanning that the really good adventuring parties.. (read world first guilds ;)) are usually contacted for the really dificult ones... If this does not put them off, then given them hell. Run some level 15+ quest at them, giving them chances to back out at numerous point in the quest. The final boss is a red wyrm demi-draco lich with the 21 lvls of sorcerer... or some crazy stuff like that.

[Yael]

Look at Elder Evils. They're world-shattering and designed to be run from very low levels until they climax in the mid-to-late teens.

I strongly second this idea.

[Thrudd]

That really isn't something the players should be dictating to you. Run the adventures you have planned, in the way that you like to run them. I would tell them " at higher levels you characters will likely be facing world changing threats. If your characters survive long enough they will no doubt be involved in such a plot."

If your initial adventure was a "save the world" story, you would have started them all out above lvl 10.

[Kelb_Panthera]

Dictating to the DM in these situations is indeed inappropriate.

However, it is important that the DM be willing to accept player input. The players are well within their rights to say what they want and they're not crossing a line until they demand it or act disruptive until they get it.

[JusticeZero]

That's.. Part of why I like E6,really. Much less grinding before you get to the movers and shakers.