New Year, New Campaign - Build a World Together?

[Mister]

So as a long time lurker on these forums, I decided to finally stop skulking through post after post after post, drooling at some of the amazing content that has been displayed here, and make an account. I know, I know, I'm so impressive (sarcasm). But allow me to get on to the reason that I finally made an account and posted something.

I have been playing with the same group of friends for nearly a decade now. I have time after time been the DM for all of the many hours that we have sat around a kitchen table on any given afternoon and pretended be fantasy characters and rolled dice to determine what sort of heroics or villainy would take place on that day. And what a glorious almost decade it has been. And therein lies the problem. After all these years of playing together (which I'm sure cannot even come close to comparing to the time spent by some of you real vets out there), I'm beginning to run out of content to surprise and intrigue them. I, being only myself, have a limited amount of patterns that my brain goes through when presenting an encounter to my players. I have spent many a day sitting behind my computer screen reading about how some of you masters of wondercraft have provoked the hearts and minds of your players into foolishly diving into your obvious traps and setups, only to come out victorious against all odds. And my players were once like that. They were once brave and foolhardy, ready to tackle any danger thrown at them. But in later years, they've caught wind of my schemes and have learned the tricks necessary to avoid winding up being suffocated in a pit of coins while treasure goblins dance around them, mocking them as they draw their last and final breaths.

So I come to you with an idea that I had just moments ago and decided would be a fun experiment to try. My players are itching for another long year of scratching their itch for adventure and glory, and I beseech you to help me give them just that. For years, I have striven to create my own settings, rich with lore and history. And at that I have succeeded. For the last three years, we have been adventuring in one of the mighty realms of my creation, and it has served us so very well. But alas, it is time to lay down this particular realm in favor of a new one. And this is where you come in. As I am sure has been done many times before me, and will be done many times after, I'm asking you to help me come up with this new setting.

Anything and everything you can think of will be appreciated greatly, and I hope to document the journey that you kind people help me set up for my players. I am looking to create a darker and grittier campaign, but not devoid of the occasional lightheartedness or tomfoolery. Yes, a world where truly anything can happen (but more often than not, it will be something vile and dastardly).

So this is the challenge that I present you with. Provide for me something, anything, that you think would be fun and interesting for my players and I. I will do my part to come up with a portion of the material myself and will do my best to work the material into a great adventure for the players to enjoy. I'm asking for locations, NPCs, themes, lore, encounters... anything you wish to contribute. My only requirement is that I ask for original content from you yourselves. Let's all work together to create an expansive world filled with our most fantastical creations.

[Thrathgnar]

Do you have a basic framework you want to work with? I'd love to help out with this, I'm a new DM and I'm currently running Greyhawk but I'd like to try some world building

[Mister]

Do you have a basic framework you want to work with? I'd love to help out with this, I'm a new DM and I'm currently running Greyhawk but I'd like to try some world building

Well really, I'd like to get a few suggestions together and try to analyze them and piece them all up into a coherent, singular worldseed and use that as the base to build from. Like I said, all ideas are welcome. I'm currently juggling around a few things I have thought up on my own, but would like to see some community input before I start throwing in much of my own material. As stated before, my players have learned what I do and how I do it.

[Thrathgnar]

Ok makes sense well I'll throw a couple of my noob ideas out from a short campaign that I ran in a custom world of mine

One concept was Murder Cities, where criminals are sent to live instead of imprisoning/killing them. My PCs actually woke up in one without any memories

My favorite of my ideas was a Magic Council consisting of eight powerful members, one being the head of each school of magic (as per 5th edition). Their home was the Magic Islands, 17 islands connected by magic. The idea was that there is a main island that is surrounded by eight other islands, each for a school, and to get to each one would require taking a magical path based on that school. For example, for Necromancy you would have to "die" and be immediately resurrected on the island, or for Conjuring you would have to be summoned. Then, each of the eight islands would have a path to another island, which would be the home of the Magic Council member and accessible only to the most talented of the school, who would have to cast a certain spell themselves to get there.

I had both of these set up, and I even fleshed out personalities for each member of the Magic Council.

[Feldarove]

Welcome!

and....you need to post this elsewhere on the forums....like homebrew. Best of luck!

[Celcey]

This looks like it will be an excellent idea, but the forum you're looking for is worldbuilding- it's a subforum of hombrew. You can ask a mod to move your thread, though. It's a common mistake.

If your looking for grittier, I would suggest some sort of kingdom wide problem. Famines, droughts, plagues, and corrupt politicians are all handy tools. Have them see the effects of these things- if there's a drought, send them through a farming town. If there's a plague, have one of their quests be for a hospital (of sorts) with dead bodies piled up, because no one can spare the time to bury them. Maybe have churches actively recruiting clerics that will help with the healing.

[newguymatt]

Since this is still here, I'll just offer a few tidbits.

First, bleak is an important word. It helps your brain really get to the heart of the matter. Gritty seems too post-apocalyptic at times. Bleak would be, rain or shine, a world in which good sentient beings are struggling at every turn. Major establishments are rare, weather is probably harsh (too much rain, too much cold, too much drought), people are distrustful, money is tight, food is scarce... There are points of light, but it is mostly darkness.

In that darkness, however, there is so much adventure, so much old, so much fear, and so much discovery. On a grand scale there is only survival, but on a local level, every conflict imaginable exists. Maybe there was a cataclysm long ago that the world is just now recovering from and the races are coming to the surface once again. Maybe there is a cosmic or planetary cycle that is making the world less habitable that it once was. Maybe this is a new world, with the races not yet dominant. Maybe I should have one more glass of wine and then go to bed. :smallsmile: Have fun with it. Keep reading the forums. Your imagination is endless. There will always be new places to explore.

[Louro]

I'm planning on building a sort of sandbox world for a campaign, just the theme idea going around but could match with what you are looking for.

First session to create characters, they just pick race and them a few of gameplay to introduce lore and stories they hear when they were child (possible problems with some races growth rate)

- like an old war: a horde of whatever was defeated and the land divided into 2 or 3 prosper kingdoms, ruled by the heroes who leaded the war or their sons.

- the obsidian fever: many people came to a near mountain to exploit a recently found obsidian mine but it was a failure. Some say the mine is doomed, others say there never was obsidian there...

- A red dragon who fought on that war, some say with the horde, others say with the heroes.

Add an encounter they barely remember and make them throw a save, the highest one fails to "forget" the experience and will suffer nightmares every night (stuff that will come handy in the future).

Fill in with notable NPCs of almost any profession, so at age of 12 you give them a few years of "downtime" to learn a profession. They can enroll in the guard, become acolite on a small temple, assistant of a sage... Give them a class and a mundane profession.

First session.
An herald from the court calls for people to meet at the central plaza to.... ENROLL!! Everyone who is above 18 must enroll in the army. They are 17 so...

War is coming. War is he perfect setup to provide famine, basic goods shortage, manpower shortage...
As most of adults are gone they will start in a relatively important and responsible position. Next year another enroll call will occur, so they have one year to become important/relevant enough to be not used as cannon fodder, or just disappear.

TIPS: you need to plan every detail, just the important ones. Plan ahead for each session while having at hand 2 or 3 other routes players might take.
Build the 2 kings carefully, as they will lead the story with their actions until the players become relevant enough to mess with them. If your players are fool enough to pick the war route... you are doomed. This will require a bit of work to house rule wars as some ad-hoc things to give them utility in battles.

Hope this is not too messy, but feel free to ask about anything.

[Mister]

Thanks for the suggestions so far. I've asked the mods to move my thread so hopefully it'll get into the right place soon.

A little insight into the way I run games may be needed (or not, but I'm still going to give it). I love making custom settings. Modules are fine every now and again, but most the time, I love to just take my own ideas and twist them around until I create a world in which is all (or at least mostly) mine. The only thing I ever sit and plan in detail is the setting and the lore. I spend minuscule amounts of time preparing what will take place each session. Usually, if the players aren't busy with any task, I prepare a few short hooks based on where they are and what they've done, and let the session go from there, with 95 or some greater percentage of the game being improv. Occasionally I will sit down and figure out what the important NPCs of the world are up to whilst the PCs have been wandering around and doing this and that great (or evil) deed. My worlds are always planned for sandbox style games.

[Savannah]

The Mod One Out: Moved to Worldbuilding. I also changed your thread prefix to "Brainstorming" -- feel free to edit your original post to change this if you'd prefer something else. Good luck with your world!

[the_david]

Well, to shake things up a bit, you could just ask your players to come up with whatever they want to play next and a bit of background information and use that to make a setting. (Beware of the player that wants to play a kender/gully dwarf.)

You might want to build a setting around a villain/plot, though you seem to be more of a sandboxy kind of DM.

Or you could just "old man Logan" the PCs. (Send them on a dangerous quest halfway around the continent, then let them find out all their loved ones are dead because they weren't there to protect them.) Okay, that might be a bit too cruel but it also might help if you want your players to actually hate a villain.

[Mister]

Thanks for the replies guys.

I take into the account what my players would like to see, but they're so undemanding about what I put into the world. They're have broad enough interests that I can throw just about anything at them and they enjoy it well enough. Having played with them for so many years has helped me learn how to jog their interests in things they would normally pass over, as well.

Keep the replies coming. Still looking for material I can use. It would be great to get enough input to start piecing larger things together. Can't wait to show you all what the world is looking like.

[Louro]

So....
Watch "the colour of magic".
Make an adventure from it.
Have fun (100% guaranteed).

I did it with "Going Postal" and the 3 sessions mini adventure is on its 10th session.

[ReturnOfTheKing]

One cannot go wrong with steampunk. Other than that, I have little to add, except that you add little. Go the route of 4e's Points of Light setting and make this a world difficult to define, where the last great empire fell long ago and no maps exist of the savage world beyond the last few kingdoms and city-states. That way, both criteria are fulfilled - there's elements of darkness, and anything can happen. A simplistic view, I'll grant you, but I believe I've captured the essence of what you meant to say?

[Tragak]

My biggest specific advice is not to start with world elements and then see if conflicts come up, but rather to start with world elements that are already in conflict (preferably with at least 3 sides to most of them):

Multiple villains are fighting each other through their armies of minions, inflicting massive collateral damage, and the PCs acting directly against one side would simply strengthen the other (which one villain or the other might specifically try to persuade/force the PCs to do)

(Example: an overlord has brought great prosperity to a region through a small number of great atrocities, and the largest revolutionary group is committing a greater number of smaller atrocities against the people they claim to be protecting)

A villain is working to frame groups of innocents for crimes against each other, starting a war that neither "side" would truly fight if they knew the truth

…

In general, however, I would talk to the players out-of-game about whether they have their own ideas: what goals they want their characters to accomplish, what obstacles to those goals (possibly old enemies that the players write into their characters' backstories) would be the most fun for the players to attempt to overcome...

If the players set their own goals for their characters that they will actively pursue in-game, and you simply introduce obstacles to the players' own stated goals, then you don't need to worry about coming up with a ideas that you *hope* they will be excited to play: they've already come up with ideas that they will definitely be excited to play.

When a lot of people here this approach for the first time (myself sadly included), their first concern is "but how would the players be surprised if they decided the story ahead of time"? In practice, however, 1) the players do not have a hive mind, which means that they are just as surprised by each others ideas as they would be by the DM's (or more, if you don't feel you're surprising them anymore), and 2) people can be a lot more surprised by their own ideas than most give each other credit for.

If two disconnected story elements have already been established, and one player realizes that the two can be connected in a way that nobody had noticed, then the player who made the connection is just as surprised as the rest of us because just minutes earlier, s/he hadn't made the connection either.

…

If you're interested in seeing one of my success stories with giving the players this kind of narrative control, I've copy/pasted an example that I'd previously mentioned here (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showsinglepost.php?p=18173475&postcount=8):
I was running a game about a year ago where I had a chance to bring in one of my favorite BBEGs: Bloodsauger Nightshroud, High Priest of Nerull, a lich Hell-bent on conquering the world with his church-army of liches and vampires. Nightshroud was established as being Epic, and the PCs were each in the level 12-15 range, so they had never confronted him directly, but had scored numerous key victories against his lieutenants.

One time that stands out, however, is when the party’s Kobold Wizard – named Tangri – got killed by some of Nightshroud’s mortal cultists. I give my players a lot more control over the game world than a lot of DMs we've met and/or heard of, and one of our specific house rules to that effect is: a player can bring his/her character back to life in the middle of a battle, instead of waiting for a high-level Divine spellcasting later on, as long as the player comes up with some terrible knowledge that the character brought back from the netherworld and which would make the campaign more challenging in the future.

My player decided to bring Tangri back then and there, declaring that the Gatekeepers of Death (yes, G o D :smallbiggrin: ) had sent her back to warn the party that Nightshroud had discovered a ritual that would plunge the continent into darkness to give his vampires free reign, and that he was less than a week from using it.

After a bit of back and forth between her and the rest of us, Nightshroud’s plan – that the Gatekeepers wished to prevent, so as to protect the natural cycle of life and death – grew into:

Before testing the ritual on a continental level, Nightshroud was going to practice a smaller version (the Epic spell Eclipse: 8 hour duration, 5 mile radius) to conquer a city on the Winter Solstice (the next day), when the shortness of the day and the size of the city would allow him to start with as little of the ritual as possible.

A vampire army would not normally be able to commit to a battle-plan that would take more than one night without interruption, but if Nightshroud managed to use his Eclipse to connect the two longest nights of the year, then his vampires would have 2 long nights + 8 hours uninterrupted as opposed to one night, and their presence across most of the city would give the liches an easier time dealing with the parts of the city still exposed to the Sun.

If Nightshroud found himself comfortable with sustaining the ritual enough to conquer a city, then he would continue to escalate with larger and larger castings (which would not be the official Eclipse anymore).

The party escaped from the cultists and rallied the city to prepare for war. It was agreed that the party’s stronger NPC allies would try to fight Nightshroud himself to prevent the immediate Eclipse, while the PCs would destroy his troves of ritual supplies to prevent him from attempting more in the future. While the city braved the first night of the living dead, the PCs fought their way into Nightshroud’s vault, and were preparing to break through the protective wards (with the help of a vampire double agent) when one of them declared that his character - a Catfolk Barbarian named Mairsarshas – had just received a dying telepathic message from one of their NPC allies, warning that Nightshroud’s guards had killed most of the would-be executioners and that the Eclipse was going to happen.

The party feared that they would have no chance at killing Nightshroud where their stronger allies had failed, so they agreed to continue their own mission of destroying his ritual supplies, at very least ensuring that the imminent Eclipse would be a one-time disaster instead of an eternal Hell on “Earth.” They succeeded, escaped the vault, and returned to the city to join the battle against Nightshroud’s servants, hoping to minimize the damage. I had the vampire ally point out that the Sun would be coming up soon, and that Nightshroud was probably about to start the Eclipse very soon.

Tangri and her player then realized, on the ridiculously absurd off-chance that they could keep Nightshroud occupied until sunrise, that the entire vampire army could be destroyed just by being out in the open without a protective Eclipse, and then the liches could be easier for the city to defeat.

Of course, even if the party could distract Nightshroud long enough for the Eclipse to become moot, they would still have an Epic level Lich Cleric now devoted to killing them rather than to performing the ritual, but they decided that it would be worth it just in case they could destroy the vampire army.

They tracked down Nightshroud and his guards to a basement under the city hall, and I rolled for the number of rounds before the spell was completed (I believe it was 3d6 = 14). The party set about creating distractions as dramatic as possible to make Nightshroud lose focus on controlling the spell. Tangri summoned an Earth Elemental to burrow under the guards, emerge behind them, and bull rush Nightshroud. Mairsarshas ran circles around the guards and threw a bunch of ditherbombs around the room. Sharek (a human Cleric of Kord) brought down large portions of the building with Earthquake (his first ever casting of an 8th level spell). Nightshroud's guards couldn't risk allowing his ritual to be interrupted, so they spent all of their efforts trying to keep up with - and divert - all of the distractions that the PCs were throwing at their lord, not taking the risk of engaging the PCs directly until the Eclipse was assured.

Nightshroud eventually failed a Concentration check with just a few rounds left on the casting. The entire Eclipse was averted, and the vampires in Nightshroud's army were obliterated by the sunrise.

Then came the hard part :smalleek: Nightshroud had over twice as many levels as the strongest PC, and the party now had his UNDIVIDED attention. :eek::eek::eek::eek::eek:

Within 3 rounds, Sharek was forcibly transported to Gehenna, Mairsarshas to Hades, and Tangri to Carceri.

Each was mind-controlled into forgetting that they were alive and had been sent to the Infernal Realms because their enemy was evil, believing instead that they had died and been sent to the Infernal Realms because they themselves had brought about evil in their lives.

… And I was not the one who decided that :smallbiggrin:

[ReturnOfTheKing]

I was running a game about a year ago where I had a chance to bring in one of my favorite BBEGs: Bloodsauger Nightshroud, High Priest of Nerull, a lich Hell-bent on conquering the world with his church-army of liches and vampires. Nightshroud was established as being Epic, and the PCs were each in the level 12-15 range, so they had never confronted him directly, but had scored numerous key victories against his lieutenants.

One time that stands out, however, is when the party’s Kobold Wizard – named Tangri – got killed by some of Nightshroud’s mortal cultists. I give my players a lot more control over the game world than a lot of DMs we've met and/or heard of, and one of our specific house rules to that effect is: a player can bring his/her character back to life in the middle of a battle, instead of waiting for a high-level Divine spellcasting later on, as long as the player comes up with some terrible knowledge that the character brought back from the netherworld and which would make the campaign more challenging in the future.

My player decided to bring Tangri back then and there, declaring that the Gatekeepers of Death (yes, G o D :smallbiggrin: ) had sent her back to warn the party that Nightshroud had discovered a ritual that would plunge the continent into darkness to give his vampires free reign, and that he was less than a week from using it.

After a bit of back and forth between her and the rest of us, Nightshroud’s plan – that the Gatekeepers wished to prevent, so as to protect the natural cycle of life and death – grew into:

Before testing the ritual on a continental level, Nightshroud was going to practice a smaller version (the Epic spell Eclipse: 8 hour duration, 5 mile radius) to conquer a city on the Winter Solstice (the next day), when the shortness of the day and the size of the city would allow him to start with as little of the ritual as possible.

A vampire army would not normally be able to commit to a battle-plan that would take more than one night without interruption, but if Nightshroud managed to use his Eclipse to connect the two longest nights of the year, then his vampires would have 2 long nights + 8 hours uninterrupted as opposed to one night, and their presence across most of the city would give the liches an easier time dealing with the parts of the city still exposed to the Sun.

If Nightshroud found himself comfortable with sustaining the ritual enough to conquer a city, then he would continue to escalate with larger and larger castings (which would not be the official Eclipse anymore).

The party escaped from the cultists and rallied the city to prepare for war. It was agreed that the party’s stronger NPC allies would try to fight Nightshroud himself to prevent the immediate Eclipse, while the PCs would destroy his troves of ritual supplies to prevent him from attempting more in the future. While the city braved the first night of the living dead, the PCs fought their way into Nightshroud’s vault, and were preparing to break through the protective wards (with the help of a vampire double agent) when one of them declared that his character - a Catfolk Barbarian named Mairsarshas – had just received a dying telepathic message from one of their NPC allies, warning that Nightshroud’s guards had killed most of the would-be executioners and that the Eclipse was going to happen.

The party feared that they would have no chance at killing Nightshroud where their stronger allies had failed, so they agreed to continue their own mission of destroying his ritual supplies, at very least ensuring that the imminent Eclipse would be a one-time disaster instead of an eternal Hell on “Earth.” They succeeded, escaped the vault, and returned to the city to join the battle against Nightshroud’s servants, hoping to minimize the damage. I had the vampire ally point out that the Sun would be coming up soon, and that Nightshroud was probably about to start the Eclipse very soon.

Tangri and her player then realized, on the ridiculously absurd off-chance that they could keep Nightshroud occupied until sunrise, that the entire vampire army could be destroyed just by being out in the open without a protective Eclipse, and then the liches could be easier for the city to defeat.

Of course, even if the party could distract Nightshroud long enough for the Eclipse to become moot, they would still have an Epic level Lich Cleric now devoted to killing them rather than to performing the ritual, but they decided that it would be worth it just in case they could destroy the vampire army.

They tracked down Nightshroud and his guards to a basement under the city hall, and I rolled for the number of rounds before the spell was completed (I believe it was 3d6 = 14). The party set about creating distractions as dramatic as possible to make Nightshroud lose focus on controlling the spell. Tangri summoned an Earth Elemental to burrow under the guards, emerge behind them, and bull rush Nightshroud. Mairsarshas ran circles around the guards and threw a bunch of ditherbombs around the room. Sharek (a human Cleric of Kord) brought down large portions of the building with Earthquake (his first ever casting of an 8th level spell). Nightshroud's guards couldn't risk allowing his ritual to be interrupted, so they spent all of their efforts trying to keep up with - and divert - all of the distractions that the PCs were throwing at their lord, not taking the risk of engaging the PCs directly until the Eclipse was assured.

Nightshroud eventually failed a Concentration check with just a few rounds left on the casting. The entire Eclipse was averted, and the vampires in Nightshroud's army were obliterated by the sunrise.

Then came the hard part :smalleek: Nightshroud had over twice as many levels as the strongest PC, and the party now had his UNDIVIDED attention. :eek::eek::eek::eek::eek:

Within 3 rounds, Sharek was forcibly transported to Gehenna, Mairsarshas to Hades, and Tangri to Carceri.

Each was mind-controlled into forgetting that they were alive and had been sent to the Infernal Realms because their enemy was evil, believing instead that they had died and been sent to the Infernal Realms because they themselves had brought about evil in their lives.

… And I was not the one who decided that :smallbiggrin:

That. Is the most epic thing I have ever heard :smallbiggrin::smallbiggrin::smallbiggrin:

You must have some pretty amazing players in your party! Did they ever get out of such dire straights, or was that the end of the campaign?

[Tragak]

That. Is the most epic thing I have ever heard :smallbiggrin::smallbiggrin::smallbiggrin:

You must have some pretty amazing players in your party! Did they ever get out of such dire straights, or was that the end of the campaign? That was game over, man, game over!

I gave them an opportunity to narrate (without mechanics: if we'd brought dice into it, level 30+ Nightshroud would've won automatically) how their characters escaped the impossible situation before them, but they all decided that 1) there was no way to escape, 2) even if they did, nothing they would ever do with the same characters would measure up to the epicness of those last two sessions, and 3) obliterating an entire army of vampires and leaving the lich divisions all but defenseless was a massive victory regardless of whether the PCs themselves survived, so they agreed to end the story on a de facto TPK and start a new one.

A lot of people on the WotC forums say "if you give players control over the game, then they'll just set themselves up to win everything without breaking a sweat," but if the players genuinely want to be challenged by the game, then giving them control over the challenges they face will most certainly not make the challenges go away :smallwink:

I did throw them a small bone, though (this part I did keep to myself, although if somebody else had accidentally overruled my specific idea by doing something else first, then I would've gone along and saved my basic idea for something else later):

The next campaign we played was in the same world we'd been building, but now the focus was on a party of 3 half-dragons embroiled in the war between Bahamut and Tiamat.

(Unknown to the world at large, the leader of a nation honoring Tiamat (Emperor Degimas Futozu, LE Epic Sorcerer) had an alliance with High Priest Nightshroud and a third lich who had not been seen yet (Saganaka, CE Epic Wizard): Futozu held on to Nightshroud's phylactery, Saganaka held on to Futozu's, and Nightshroud held on to Saganaka's.

If an enemy ever destroyed one lich and the phylactery that s/he was protecting, then s/he would regenerate continents away where somebody else was holding on to the destroyed lich's real phylactery, and they would both contact the lich whose phylactery was destroyed, telling him/her to make a new phylactery so that they can return to their original positions.

I originally conceived of this Unholy Trinity as being a major spoiler; after my experiences running the previous campaign - even before the grand finale - I just told them the basics outright and they role-played their new characters as not knowing any of this)

One mini-arc revolved around the party hunting a White Dragon manufacturing magic weapons for Futozu's armies from her hold-out in Krangath, and the party got a lot of healing, material support, and intelligence from a well-established organization of vigilantes who already had their sights set on her. After the PCs destroyed the dragon's operation and sent her running to Prime Material with angry Yugoloth patrons on her tail, I offhandedly had one of their friends mention that a cleric named "Sharek" had founded the group.

Normally, forcing a Chaotic Neutral worshipper of a Good deity to live in a Lawful Evil realm like Gehenna (and further forcing him to spend the first 20 hours thinking he belonged there) would have been a terrifying punishment for a weaker victim, but Sharek had 15 levels of Cleric from his worship of Kord. Turns out that Nightshroud should've warned Gehenna before he sent them somebody that powerful: now best friend Futozu lost one of his most important arms dealers because nobody had been able to kill Sharek first.

All of the players declared that to be the Crowning Moment of Heartwarming for the campaign series.

[ReturnOfTheKing]

That was game over, man, game over!

I gave them an opportunity to narrate (without mechanics: if we'd brought dice into it, level 30+ Nightshroud would've won automatically) how their characters escaped the impossible situation before them, but they all decided that 1) there was no way to escape, 2) even if they did, nothing they would ever do with the same characters would measure up to the epicness of those last two sessions, and 3) obliterating an entire army of vampires and leaving the lich divisions all but defenseless was a massive victory regardless of whether the PCs themselves survived, so they agreed to end the story on a de facto TPK and start a new one.

A lot of people on the WotC forums say "if you give players control over the game, then they'll just set themselves up to win everything without breaking a sweat," but if the players genuinely want to be challenged by the game, then giving them control over the challenges they face will most certainly not make the challenges go away :smallwink:

I did throw them a small bone, though (this part I did keep to myself, although if somebody else had accidentally overruled my specific idea by doing something else first, then I would've gone along and saved my basic idea for something else later):

The next campaign we played was in the same world we'd been building, but now the focus was on a party of 3 half-dragons embroiled in the war between Bahamut and Tiamat.

(Unknown to the world at large, the leader of a nation honoring Tiamat (Emperor Degimas Futozu, LE Epic Sorcerer) had an alliance with High Priest Nightshroud and a third lich who had not been seen yet (Saganaka, CE Epic Wizard): Futozu held on to Nightshroud's phylactery, Saganaka held on to Futozu's, and Nightshroud held on to Saganaka's.

If an enemy ever destroyed one lich and the phylactery that s/he was protecting, then s/he would regenerate continents away where somebody else was holding on to the destroyed lich's real phylactery, and they would both contact the lich whose phylactery was destroyed, telling him/her to make a new phylactery so that they can return to their original positions.

I originally conceived of this Unholy Trinity as being a major spoiler; after my experiences running the previous campaign - even before the grand finale - I just told them the basics outright and they role-played their new characters as not knowing any of this)

One mini-arc revolved around the party hunting a White Dragon manufacturing magic weapons for Futozu's armies from her hold-out in Krangath, and the party got a lot of healing, material support, and intelligence from a well-established organization of vigilantes who already had their sights set on her. After the PCs destroyed the dragon's operation and sent her running to Prime Material with angry Yugoloth patrons on her tail, I offhandedly had one of their friends mention that a cleric named "Sharek" had founded the group.

Normally, forcing a Chaotic Neutral worshipper of a Good deity to live in a Lawful Evil realm like Gehenna (and further forcing him to spend the first 20 hours thinking he belonged there) would have been a terrifying punishment for a weaker victim, but Sharek had 15 levels of Cleric from his worship of Kord. Turns out that Nightshroud should've warned Gehenna before he sent them somebody that powerful: now best friend Futozu lost one of his most important arms dealers because nobody had been able to kill Sharek first.

All of the players declared that to be the Crowning Moment of Heartwarming for the campaign series.

:smallbiggrin:

Perhaps I could use that technique in my planned campaign, since I need to overcome my urge to railroad…

[sktarq]

Back up two tics,

First question in building a new world: What kind of stories do you want to tell? How social, how much strategy? Mystery? Whodunits? Stories of rulership and mass battles? Stories asking characters to delve into their own souls and answer philosophical questions?

Is the world set up to tell one epic story? Or will it have a more open system but probably less epic?

What kind of tone? How much humour? How dark? How gritty? How much newness vs being in the shadows of the past? How alien from our world? How pulpy? How alien are any mystical elements (as in are the common and well integrated into society or are they mysterious/alien to be treated with wonder and fear)?

Any preferred themes? Family? Salvation? Defining morality? sacrifice? Responsibility? Any such theme or idea can be hard baked into the rules and setting if you are careful and thus provide support for many adventures relating to the idea.

What kind of setting in terms of say time period/tech level/culture have you not worked with but want to?

What system do you plan working with-are you and your players open to changing systems?