B squad campaign

[Torpin]

its an idea ive been toying around with for a while.the heroes live in a large city state capital of 75k, like 500k total in the nation, and they all get summoned before the king because there is a threat to the kingdom only the mightiest heroes can stop, and then some group of NPCs gets chosen to do it and the party has to deal with the back home stuff, like preventing the horde of undead from breaking in, stopping the fires the red dragons have started from destoring everything et cetra
they would start at level 3 or so. it would be about things like resource management. are you going to run out or arrows/rage/spells before the undead horde is defeated or are more people going to die while you have plenty left to spare. rescuing people from burning building, trying to evacuate citizens to a safe shelter during an invasion but some people are stupid and run away from the group.
any further ideas would be helpful or if you think it would or would not work

[ATHATH]

Make the premise of the campaign well-known and well-understood BEFORE starting the campaign. Trust me on this one.

[Nifft]

its an idea ive been toying around with for a while.the heroes live in a large city state capital of 75k, like 500k total in the nation, and they all get summoned before the king because there is a threat to the kingdom only the mightiest heroes can stop, and then some group of NPCs gets chosen to do it and the party has to deal with the back home stuff, like preventing the horde of undead from breaking in, stopping the fires the red dragons have started from destoring everything et cetra

they would start at level 3 or so. it would be about things like resource management. are you going to run out or arrows/rage/spells before the undead horde is defeated or are more people going to die while you have plenty left to spare. rescuing people from burning building, trying to evacuate citizens to a safe shelter during an invasion but some people are stupid and run away from the group.

any further ideas would be helpful or if you think it would or would not work

All D&D games are also about resource management, so that's inherent in the game already. It's not something you need a special setup to create.


Regarding the set-up, it sounds like...

- There are a bunch of NPCs who do traditional D&D heroic things (slay dragons, defeat necromancers, etc).

- You're not them. You're the PCs who clean up after them.

Basically you want to invert the no-consequences heroic genre conceits and just have a group of PCs who deal with consequences, but without the benefits of being recognized as heroes. Does that sound accurate?

If so, yeah, I'd make really sure the players are on board before any characters are created.

[Torpin]

They all know. we've been gaming for a while and we often joke about completely destroying economies without it affecting us in the slightest

[Torpin]

Also a lot of small time recognition. It would be like they are the Wedge Antilleses of the battle of yavin

[Avigor]

I'd have the problems the nation is beset with be revealed in the big meeting to be caused by something like an evil cult lead by something they'll know they have no chance tackling at their current level, like an ancient dragon, beholder, or a lich. Also, have the group that's chosen to crusade against the primary enemy be obviously epic-looking, like everyone has an ioun stone orbiting their heads, the fighters have adamantine arms and armor glowing with magical power, the wizard has a (identifiable by a glance) staff of power, etc. Emphasize that these guys have to go on foot for some reason (maybe the enemy has a Weirdstone from PGtF or some more powerful variant thereof, or he's done something to screw up the interplanar barriers rendering teleportation completely inert in the campaign) and their journey will take months, and the king is sending a small army with them mostly to help make sure they don't run out of supplies while en route. Then, once they've gained enough power to deal with the main threat, a member of the entourage teleports into the king's throne room as the party is debriefing from some mission or another, revealing that the main anti-teleportation effect has been broken but the other epic party has fallen (allow that the enemy quickly establishes some other anti-teleportation defenses with lesser area of effect, such as Forbiddance), now giving the PC's the chance to do their thing however they want.

[edathompson2]

I can definitely see some players enjoying the backdrop/anti-hero type game. I've run small sessions for players that "created" the issues for their previous group.

That was quite fun and entertaining.