On an island not so far away...

[paladin1818]

I'm thinkin of a campaign, my first. I love the idea of an island. I need a first adventure in 3 weeks. Eberron. 3.5 An Elf cleric with Animal & Travel, Dwarven Inspiring Warlord, & a gnome druid. They will start level one in a ship wreck with just basic survival essentials. No people in this campaign. Please help with ideas for starting quests & encounters.:smallconfused:

[MrZJunior]

If the ship is still intact or thr wreckage is confined to a small area it could be fun to try and salvage stuff. Undersea monsters are fun to fight and their could be an interesting mechanic centered around diving time.

[Stellar_Magic]

Encounter #1... Get dinner.

Be it fish in the sea, deer on the island, crabs in a lagoon... this is probably the most important thing to remember for a survival campaign. Plus, getting dinner may mean defending it from other things intent on getting the same dinner, or stealing it.

Going spear fishing will probably involve some sharks showing up. Going deer hunting may involve dealing with what eats the deer on the island...

Do you have a theme for the island, or is it just an island?

[the_david]

I realize you're new to this, but being shipwrecked is just a railroad cliche. Don't do it.

[frost890]

If you choose to start with the ship wreck. I would suggest asking the players to think of a reason that they would be on the ship. That way it is not railroading. You can have them first find supplies, how much and what washed up on shore. Then getting the lay of the land and finding shelters. What kinds of things inhabit the island? Unread? Dinosaurs? Island village? Have you ever seen a coconut crab?

[Balyano]

What kinds of things inhabit the island? Unread? Dinosaurs? Island village? Have you ever seen a coconut crab?

Unread? Oh no, not the brain dead minions of the illiterati!



Is the island remote? Inhabited? By cannibals? By pirates? By pirate cannibals? Are pirate cannibals convinced the PCs are there to steal their hidden treasure? Or are spies sent by the navy? Or potential slaves/crewmen to be press-ganged into service?

[Mechalich]

With a cleric and druid in the party, most anything in a vein of ordinary 'survival challenges' quickly vanishes. They have an effectively limitless supply of fresh water and can feed themselves more or less permanently on berries alone, and they can ignore scorching heat or bitter cold.

To mitigate railroading the characters perhaps should have been intending to go to this island in the first place - just to a different part of it (a sufficiently big island, like Cuba, can have lots of trackless wilderness and still have highly developed civilization on one end) and got blown off course in the storm.

If you're serious about no people, which I presume to mean no standard humanoids or anything else that would actually build a civilization (which also precludes fey, certain classes of outsiders, and certain classes of undead), then you're talking about a truly primeval world. That's an interesting possibility but it has certain problems compared to typical assumptions: no deposits of wealth, no supply of magical items, no traps, and so forth. The kinds of challenges you can throw around quickly become limited as well - you're basically limited to hunting/evading/fleeing various classes of monsters.

This is a big departure from standard D&D assumptions. Do not spring it upon your players without presenting the idea and making sure they're up for it. Be prepared to offer a way out (magical portals work fine) if things start going bad.

As far as quest ideas: well, the classic mode for this sort of thing is that there's some sort of horrible source of dark power in the center of the island and its corrupting the wildlife and making ordinary creatures turn evil and you have to destroy it to preserve the balance of nature (you have a cleric with animal and a druid, this should hit both of them).

[frost890]

[QUOTE=Balyano;19584078]Unread? Oh no, not the brain dead minions of the illiterati!

QUOTE]
LOL Sometimes my fingers type something different then what I intended.