[3.5] Looking for adventure/campaign ideas

[Thurbane]

Hi all,

First of all MY PLAYER'S STAY OUT! Thanks.

Anyway, I'm running a campaign at the moment (Against the Iron Tower), where the main focus/enemy is a cult of Dispater, who are allied with tribes of Hobgoblins.

The game is set just outside the City of Greyhawk.

The current group is: Human Bard 3, Human Warlock 3, Illumian Duskblade 3, Aasimar Warblade 2, Catfolk Rogue 1/Swashbuckler 1 and Half-Ogre Fighter 2 (NPC).

I'm looking for ideas on adventure hooks and foes to challenge the group (devil and hobgoblin related, especially). Currently they are investigating rumours of an abandoned fort in which Hobgoblins allied with the cult have taken up residence.

Any and all suggestions welcomed.

Cheers - T

[Raul Leão]

My last adventure was like this (sorry for bad english)

Walking around the city, the adventurers are stoped by 3 couples that lives in a near village asking for imediate help, sayin some monster with bat wings and scorpion tail steal their children, one per night (3 in total). So they are asking for a rescue.

All they saw was the monster that flew with their children for the abbyss about 1 hour of run from the village, but it suddenly vanished.... when they get near the abbyss they couldnt find anyting.

In my table, the adventurers divided and each of them was sleeping in different houses with children so they can get the monster, but in the middle of the night the monster appeared and cought the dwarf (one of the party member thinking that he was a kid), the party members hear the noise, get their stuff and start running after the monster. After 1 hour running they saw the monster vanishing in the air again.

Getting near the abbyss they are attacked by 2 griffs, they find it very strange bacause griffs lives in hills and mountains and they are in a plain florest. After killing the griffs they saw another one coming but it takes a bolt coming from nowere and die imediately byt their feet. Then an arrowhalk passes at hight speed by them, another fight starts.

After the killing the get as nearest as they can from the abbyss and some little rocks drop from nowere in the sky. The mage fount it really strange, griffs and rock from nowere... he used identify magic and found a illusion spell, dispell it then, the abbys is turned into a enormous mountain and a large open in it, seems like a cave. The players entered in it.

They get to a hall with a fountain (working) in the center, some decoration in the right, stairs in the far right, a simple door in the left, a table with some eaten food after the fountain. Passing by the fountain they feel a good energy, deciding to drink the water, they recovered HP. Entering the door, they find some books about traveling the world, things to do in free time (they know the owner loves to enjoy its life). Some sheets writing abou a kind of magic that allows the user to canalize souls into theirself to rejuvenate, and the person was trying to do the same.

In a table there was a diary from 1000 years ago, that say:

1_ I canalizes the first soul, my body feels like 100 years ago.
2_ Seems that im getting older, faster than normal, years are like months to my body.
3_ Juvenile ouls are more powerfull, a 12 old children just rejuvenate me 300 years.
4_ Oh no, its getting worse, a year is like a week for me
5_ I found a way to stop getting older, lets start the experiment now.
6_ Just some tests and my invention will be completed.
7_ Im desperate, seems like im getting older like 1 year per day, no time for tests, lets do it now!

Getting out of the door they decide to climb the stairs. (this part was very funny, i saw the idea in the forum) They find a door with no open and a hourglass above it, the hourglass starts and marks bout 30secs, at 20s they saw a button and pressed it, the hourglass started again (one players just screamed: Man we are getting older, but nothing was really happened. Then they decided to get back to the hall, they loose sight of the hourglass so when they got back, the houglass did the same thing.) With nothing more to do, they wait it to 0s, the door oppened then.

The door leads to a room with lots of fake floors and the exit in the other side (lots of traps here, they make some `see` check to see whats the right floor.

After getting the other side, they emter a room and the spellcasters sense a powerfull magic energy in the room. They are attacked by a Wyvern. After killing it tey get in the center of the room a fell a strong energy that want to "enter" them, if they let, just recover 2 magic they have used in the day.

Entering the next door they see a very thin man, almost dying from old with a crown with 4 jewels in it, than the old man said:

Finally its done, all the 4 souls are here, now ill me the most powerfull and imortal being in this land! So he puts the crown and transform into a man of like 34 years old, muscular and very healthy.

"whats wrong? i dont fell that powerfull im supposed to be..."
So now that his vision is good, he saw that the last soul wasnt from a children, but from a adult dwarf.
Very angry he decided to attack the adventurers using some drain life magics, lighting bolts and some very strong fists.

After killing it, the crown drops on the floor, all the 4 gems are broken and the souls are back to their owner and the episode is done :)

[Yahzi]

A group of hobgoblins approaches them. It is a dissident faction that wants to overthrow the ruler and replace him with their own guy. The rebel leader promises to make a peace treaty with the PCs nation afterwards.

After a few battles the current leader contacts the PCs secretly and tries to bribe them into leading the rebel leader into an ambush. Meanwhile the current leader also arranges for faked messages to show up in the PCs hands purporting to show that the rebel is about to lead them into an ambush.

So you can have as many battles as you want, and each one the PCs have to deal with the fear of being back-stabbed and the lure of backstabbing their "allies" for a big pile of gold. Keep it up until the PCs crack and finally turn on the rebel; then have him die with a big noble speech about how he was told never to trust other humanoids and how he would rather die than live in a world without honor.

Unless of course the PCs help the rebel win his throne; then have him poison and ambush them during the big celebratory feast.

[Kanthalion]

Flip the script. Make the big bad of the cult (or maybe the inner circle) CE and summoning an army of demons and the party has to ally with the hobbos to defeat them.

EDIT: looks like Yahzi beat me to it. :D how about a job where they find the story hook for Red Hand of Doom? They should be able to make level 5/6 by then.

[atemu1234]

Have the hobgobs have fiendish grafts (Fiend Folio) and maybe find trapped celestials willing to give mortals gifts upon their holy smite-y quest thingy.

[Kol Korran]

Hmmmm... I think there may be a few things you can take from the Red Hand of Doom module (I never played it, but I read some of the campaign logs).

Anyway, here are some ideas:
- The party learns of an expedition of the cult to some location, where they are trying to uncover something. COuld be the regular McGuffin, or perhaps some ancient powerful undead, buried demon, buried dragon or some other creature, or maybe a small army of constructs or elementals? (You can use warforged for low level, perhaps the large sized ones from MM3)

- Also an expedition, but this time to another faction, that is currently neutral to this conflict. Could be another tribe of certain humanoids, maybe giants, maybe a dragon, maybe some sort of casters?

- The cult is trying to build/ research portals to bring more devils into the world. The opening of such a portal could be a sort of a riddle, or require soem sort of event to occur or such?

- Similar to the graft idea- the cult is trying to make hardier soldiers, partly fiendish soldiers, out of the hobgoblins. You can slap on different templtes of various power with the appropriate themes on soldiers, which make them tougher, maybe even create your own template for the campaign, somethign to challenge and surprise the players. The current soldiers are more powerful, but not overwhelming. Hints and discoveries however suggest that the process of "purification" is only at it's start... If the cult could make it work better, who would know?

- Secret factions somehow manipulate the politics of the region to make the cult actually acceptable, and legal! (Maybe under some other guise). As the cult's people move into key positions of power, to progress their plans, the party must find a way to uncover the truth- both behind the cult, and behind the jig that gave them such freedom to act.

Again, all quite general ideas, but I'm sure they can be improved upon.

[yellowrocket]

I like yazhi's idea. It's open ended and allows for a great deal of role playing.

IF they're big in to hack and slash a trip to another realm to close a portal would be a tack on adventure.

Also make them under threat from something more dangerous than what they're summoning.

[Thurbane]

All good suggestions, thanks.

Don't want to run this as a lead-in to RHoD, as we've run through it twice with different groups, and it was the last campaign (under a different DM) for my group before my current one.

[Tragak]

In general

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.

…

Perhaps:

*The Dispater cult tricks demons into attacking major cities so that the Hobgoblins can take the credit for ending the rampages, and cultists inserted into the city governments insist on having the Hobgoblins replace the cities' original guard. If the PCs simply execute the cities' overlords and their soldiers without proof of conspiracy, then the cities' populi will turn against them for assassinating the "saviors" whose own cruelty against the public is seen as "protecting" them from even worse enemies.

*The Dispater cult launches two directions of False Flag Operations: assassinating military leaders in Mechanus while planting evidence framing Acheronians and vice versa, hoping to lure the two planes into a war. The cult will ensure that the conflict continues to escalate, and eventually both sides will become desperate to seek Baatorian "assistance" before the other has a chance to ask. If the PCs are discovered trying to save the cult's targets, then the cult will try to frame for the next attempts, hoping that the PCs and Acheronian/Mechanian forces will be so focused on each other (the planes' forces on hunting the PCs, the PCs on hiding from them) that they will be unable to prevent the next attacks.