Need help/advice with campaign ideas

[Feebral]

Hi, first time post here. I'm trying to generate a "campaign", though the why and how isn't very conventional. Basically, I've been asked by a friend, who is going to DM sometime during the next months, to come up with a campaign - this includes story, some NPCs, and locations. This sounds easy if not for one detail: other than a handful of sessions around 15 years ago, I haven't played D&D or any other role-playing P&P game ever since, though on occasion I do play computer RPGs. Not knowing or remembering much of D&D, I'm stuck on a couple of points regarding how to best do this; the only thing I "know" is he'll be running 3.5 with four players. I was given freedom to come up with the scenario, and he'll use it however he wants (in terms of how much RP'ing or dungeon crawling).

An initial idea is to have the campaign occur in a custom setting or area. So far, it involves a somewhat Arabian/Middle Eastern kingdom. The party has just arrived in town after hearing of the festivities associated with the Everbond of Nobles, wherein the current ruling monarch will transfer his power - politically and physically - to an heir of his choosing. Everyone expects it to be the king's older son, a warrior/poet/studious adventurer who just returned from an overseas campaign. However, the king announces the youngest son instead - a boy, not even eighteen yet. The older son is visibly affected by this and disappears for a while.

On the day of the crowning ceremony, the older son storms the city with a group of unknown men, torches the castle and barricades himself inside it. The PCs are drafted into help securing the castle back. After a series of fights inside the castle walls, they find both sons in a room - just in time to witness the older one assassinate the boy. As this moment, the king and several guards enter the room but instead of escaping or fighting back, the younger son surrenders. The king then orders two of his advisers and the PCs, who have proven capable of securing the castle, to escort his son into a penal colony in the massive mountains of the continent's wastelands.

The PCs brave the wastelands but, just as they arrive with their prisoner, the advisers attack the party, their features somewhat alien beneath their robes. The PCs are thrown off a considerable height and lose conscience for a while. They awaken inside the house of a mountain community, sculpted and inhabited off the side of the mountain where the colony is set in. They are told a bit more about the colony in detail. The colony is a series of caverns and mines which over the years have seen massive changes, which have been built, destroyed and rebuilt according to their occupiers' motives and needs, becoming a labyrinthine prison - where the criminal, insane or politically bothersome are cast into. But there's little to no hope of paying for their crimes as there is no longer any penal system: the wardens have long left or been killed. The mountain now houses raiders, tribes, and whatever creatures have infiltrated its stony interior. Should the PC's go look for the king's older son, and should they want to discover why they were attacked, they have little choice - the trade caravan is running late and it might be a while before they can find passage back to the kingdom. If they want answers, exploring the colony is all they can do for now.

There are of course details about the colony which I won't go into here, but the basic set up is this. There is an underground vault at the very bottom, unknown to many, and where resides the "BBEG", so to speak. The above floors are a composite of ruins, derelict mines and a network of caverns. I'm still undecided on having another community inside the colony, or moving the one outside inside it, or simply have a diverse set of smaller communities. Also, at the top of the mountain are the remains of a temple - dedicated to what deity, no one is sure - and the main entrance to the underground colony.

An approach at the backstory to the place would be: some clan (maybe dwarven) had chosen the mountain as the foundation for their home but during some excavations, they found something encased in a wall of ice and accidentally awoken it. This presence begins manipulating the dwarves, first subtly but later on with much more powerful psionics. The dwarves understand this and try to save themselves, decide to cause various cave ins and collapses to bury the creature. Unfortunately, doing so opens the way to a cadre of doppelgangers who feel threatened by the dwarven presence. Also influenced by BBEG they effectively manage to destroy all the dwarves, though some, escaping to the surface before dying, have left several coded warnings as to what was below. The creature - whatever it is - longs to obtain a powerful physical form, while the doppelgangers wish to know - and become - as many multiple lives as they can.

I'm not sure if so far this is too little to show him, or too much even, and I haven't entirely sold myself on the 'gangers being there, though I'd like to explore (or see him explore) the idea of shapeshifters, and only the king's older son realizing what is happening (and of course alerting the PCs to this along their journey). Basically, the attack on the kingdom would be the 'gangers doing (the king's younger son was one of them, for instance, as were the advisers). Neither the creature nor the 'gangers would be able to satisfy themselves with the occasional adventuring party or desert raiders.

All that said, I could greatly use some help here in terms of story/plot/pacing. Thanks in advance :)

[MisterKaws]

but instead of escaping or fighting back, the younger son surrenders.

Did you mean older son here?

I think it's a great start. However, there's a problem I found: Doppelgangers return to their normal forms when killed, so how would you go with hiding the fact that the (now dead) younger son is actually a Doppelganger?

This adventure could go for 3-10 sessions, depending on how it's played, but it needs a bit more of bulk readied just in case the PCs do something unexpected. Protip: they always do.

[BowStreetRunner]

I have to second the advice from MisterKaws, to prepare yourself for unexpected behavior from the PCs. Once you have your main story you need to cover your bases.

The PCs will all have their own personalities and motivations. Without knowing these in advance, it can be problematic trying to make sure they follow a plot-hook. Where it is imperative that the PCs follow a particular course of action you can either attempt to railroad them or do a really good job of baiting the hook.

To truly railroad them you need to create limitations that they really can't get around. You mentioned having their transportation back to the kingdom be gone. Keep in mind the abilities which the PCs possess and make sure they can't just find their way around the limitations you impose. Railroading has to be done with extreme care in RPGs, as the players are already in a frame of mind to overcome challenges, so will often look at the limitations imposed by the DM as just another set of challenges to overcome. In this case, having them set out on their own without waiting for the caravan would certainly throw a wrench in your plans.

Baiting the plot-hook is a better idea, but the incentive needs to be strong enough to motivate all the characters. If the party doesn't all agree on the course of action, you don't want the one who decides to do something else to be able to convince the rest of the party to go along with them. Multiple types of bait might be in order. Solving the mystery of why they were attacked might be okay. Recovering something or someone who was taken from them might be a better motivator. Try to come up with three or four good reasons to make the PCs want to go exploring.

[Harlot]

I like your start of the campaign.

Writing a campaingn from scratch is not an easy task. I am writing my 3.rd now. Here's a few thoughts of what I've learned.

1) I have gotten a lot of help from the blog 'roleplayingtips.com. There's a newletter too, and loads of articles on campaign building. Also it pretty much non commercial. Did I mention helpful?

2) Avoid railroading. i cannot state this enough. It is crucial that the players always (feel that they) have their options open, that they have more than one choice and more than one way to go. It is frustrating as hell to play a game in which you cannot go any way but where the DM takes you. Never ever tell a player that he 'cant go there'. Instead, let them go wherever they want. One thing that's for certain is that they NEVER EVER do what you intended them to and ALWAYS do something unexpected.
So make encounters and places flexible. You want them to go to a village/a wasteland/ another plane? Make sure that they could start the same plotline in other locations as well. You want them to help the village - keep the idea ofthe ceremony, the siege etc, but make it possible for the same line of events to happen somewhere else. Basically. Construct events and places and timelines, but make sure they're interchangeable. That is really the very best advice. Improvisation is key.

3) Have multiple plotlines starting from the same place, flaring out in multiple directions, only to all end the same place - at the BBEG.
In your world, for instance, the priests in the temple, the people from the mountain village AND (VIP) prisoners from the underground colony all have different tasks that they want the Party to help them with - and all of these quests lead the party to the dungeon to solve different diplomacy missions/puzzles/battles there, and lead them to the mainquest - the evil in the deep.

4) mix motivation. Sometimes loot is not enough. The party could be coerced into doing something, or bespelled, or lured into working for evil while they think they do good. Or a PC has to right a wrong done in the past, to him or by him. Also Vengeance is one hell of a motivator (with my players at least. like a red cloth to a bull. So I tend to humiliate them in order to lure them in.)

5) Backstory is very important - to you, as you write, to get to know your world and improvise better. But remember that the Party just entered a new world, everything is confusing and may very well be kept so. They have no idea who they can trust, who are allies and foes. They can be manipulated easily, and all locals will do just that: Try to make the new powerful group of warriors in their midst work for them with as little hassle and expenses as possible. So the backsory is not necessarily something you should let the players in on.

Well, that were my initial thoughts anyway. On the doppelganger issue, MisterKaws is right, so maybe realign the campaign. They realise it is a doppelganger, so now goes the hunt for the lost son/his killers/those who imprisoned him. And THOSE people are then to be apprehended and escorted to the dungeon penal colony.

Adapt, improvise, overcome.
Best of luck with your campaign.
/Harlot

[Gildedragon]

Get a bunch of Qcards it will involve some railroading but that is inevitable: planning power and time are finite.
On one write your end goal (BB's endgame)
On 5-6 cards write a possible route to that goal.

Write a number of steps (5-6) for each route, each step building on the last.
You now have 25 different mini plots.
Then write a Handful of salvage options; ways a route can benefit or be hindered from another route's success or failure (destroying a keep reveals a mineral deposit, for example)

This branching path structure helps give the PCs a sense of achievement and makes their exploration dynamic

Oh almost forgot: write for each step some proto seeds or hooks pointing to some step down the line. If the seed can refer to a couple of steps that's great. (Henchman says: "the X Valley forges will have to double their output now" or something to that effect) 3 or 4 hooks of varying obviousness so they can't miss the breadcrumbs