RHoD - Mini campaign running alongside main?

[SpamCreateWater]

I'm currently running RHoD for a 3-player group. The 3 players have their characters and are happy with them. They're just about to leave Drellin's Ferry and head towards Rhest.

In game an ex-PC, Avarthel, and Jorr have disappeared from Drellin's Ferry. I've decided to use these PCs in a short, secondary campaign or series of one-shots that run parallel to RHoD. I still want them to be working on behalf of the Vale against the Hand. I may even have them return to assist with the final days of the evacuation from the Ferry as the main party will be long gone by then.
This second party will be run by the players of the main campaign and will show a different side to the preparation for war.

Are there any short campaigns, or series of one-shots, that could be tied in? Preferably with a Druidic feel or tying Warklegnaw and the Twisttusks in.
Avarthel and the Dwarven ex-PC are both Druids, and Jorr has been flavoured to have a good working relationship with the local Druidic Circle (aka Avarthel).

[Fizban]

It's fairly new (maybe a year old?) and I haven't actually used it, but this is basically the exact purpose of Adventure Lookup (https://www.adventurelookup.com/adventures/).

I tried searching for druid with filters for 3.5, min level 5, max 20 pages, and got 1 result- a 7th level free adventure (with a link on the result page). It's only related to druids in that it mentions a druid as an NPC who's seen some of the monsters in the manor, but it's a result. Searching for treant instead gets a few more results including more free adventures.

You might want to be careful about xp. A smaller party will level up faster and doing extra adventures will level them up still faster, while stock RHoD isn't really meant to go past 9th or 10th level. It might be better to replace the Ghostlord section of the campaign with something more relevant to the PCs- ironically the Ghostlord is supposed to be druid related, but it's done more as interesting trivia than having serious plot ramifications. Alternatively, these side adventures should probably take the place of RHoD's "floating" encounters that you'd normally stick in between the main locations.

-Edit: didn't quite catch that you want it to specifically be another side of the war. Slotting in another adventure is basically never going to work for that.

[Elder_Basilisk]

I'm currently running RHoD for a 3-player group. The 3 players have their characters and are happy with them. They're just about to leave Drellin's Ferry and head towards Rhest.

In game an ex-PC, Avarthel, and Jorr have disappeared from Drellin's Ferry. I've decided to use these PCs in a short, secondary campaign or series of one-shots that run parallel to RHoD. I still want them to be working on behalf of the Vale against the Hand. I may even have them return to assist with the final days of the evacuation from the Ferry as the main party will be long gone by then.
This second party will be run by the players of the main campaign and will show a different side to the preparation for war.

Are there any short campaigns, or series of one-shots, that could be tied in? Preferably with a Druidic feel or tying Warklegnaw and the Twisttusks in.
Avarthel and the Dwarven ex-PC are both Druids, and Jorr has been flavoured to have a good working relationship with the local Druidic Circle (aka Avarthel).

I would look to XCOM 2 for inspiration. Jorr is going to want to shoot a goblin or silently move out of the swamp and slit the throat of the last goblin in the column then disappear into the Witchwood.

That calls for a more player driven setup than the main red hand of Doom campaign. What I would do is rejigger the random encounter table to include red hand patrols and run a kind of overland guerilla campaign. The PCs would be able to scout or gather information by speaking to animals, fey, etc and find out where some less heavily guarded red hand patrols, supply wagons, or supply depots are. Then they have to get to the location, execute their ambush and retreat before red hand reinforcements arrive. And as they go on, they attract more attention and the red hand beefs up their security and then starts devoting some elite units to tracking them down, etc.

So you might have:
Basic ambush missions:
1. Isolated (broken down wagon and guards)
2. Isolated patrol
3. Supply depots
4. Courier.

Big ambush/sabotage missions
1. Prisoner caravan (going back to the fane)
2. Supply convoy
3. Fortified supply base re-established at Vraath Keep
4. Project to rebuild skull gorge bridge (first as a temple of Doom style rope bridge, then maybe in wood or with wall of stone spells)
5. Hobgoblin ferry at Drellin's Ferry. (They need a good way to get supplies across the river and most of the infrastructure is there)
6. Rescue/recruit. There is a small thorp or camp of woodsmen who didn't evacuate. The red hands foragers/raiders are going to attack them. If you save them, you can recruit some allies.

Developments
1. Red hand sends some elite units to track the PCs down
2. Red hand pacifies the twist tusks and takes hostages to ensure the forest giants' good behavior. Rescue the hostage? Or make it look like the Red Hand murdered the hostage so that the twist tusks resume hostilities.
3. Scrying and/ or divination to track down the PCs.
4. All out Red Hand assault on the PCs' base

Coming up with some kind of an alertness/notoriety mechanic to scale the difficulty and determine how much heat the PCs bring down on themselves would be important for this kind of scenario.

[SpamCreateWater]

It's fairly new (maybe a year old?) and I haven't actually used it, but this is basically the exact purpose of Adventure Lookup (https://www.adventurelookup.com/adventures/).

I tried searching for druid with filters for 3.5, min level 5, max 20 pages, and got 1 result- a 7th level free adventure (with a link on the result page). It's only related to druids in that it mentions a druid as an NPC who's seen some of the monsters in the manor, but it's a result. Searching for treant instead gets a few more results including more free adventures.

You might want to be careful about xp. A smaller party will level up faster and doing extra adventures will level them up still faster, while stock RHoD isn't really meant to go past 9th or 10th level. It might be better to replace the Ghostlord section of the campaign with something more relevant to the PCs- ironically the Ghostlord is supposed to be druid related, but it's done more as interesting trivia than having serious plot ramifications. Alternatively, these side adventures should probably take the place of RHoD's "floating" encounters that you'd normally stick in between the main locations.

-Edit: didn't quite catch that you want it to specifically be another side of the war. Slotting in another adventure is basically never going to work for that.

Thanks for the link. I'll check it out.

I level up the PCs at appropriate times instead of using XP. This is why one-shots, possibly with a mini-campaign, will work without extra effort from me. We can do a crazy, off the wall, other side of the war one shot and happily level up their character at the end. It's not the main story, but they still get to see the development of beloved characters.

I do think I can steal mercilessly from the "floating' encounters and make it a tad more obvious to the main campaign that the owls from the Tiri Kitor would be helpful.

The Ghostlord will be altered into an Druid / Ur-Priest and have his story fleshed out from both sides of the campaign. This guy has a major vote in how the Vale looks at the end of the day. They do not want to fight him and will be a repeatedly warned off. If they fight him, they will die. The surrounding Lair will probably be refit into something that both the main and side campaigns can visit.


I would look to XCOM 2 for inspiration. Jorr is going to want to shoot a goblin or silently move out of the swamp and slit the throat of the last goblin in the column then disappear into the Witchwood.

That calls for a more player driven setup than the main red hand of Doom campaign. What I would do is rejigger the random encounter table to include red hand patrols and run a kind of overland guerilla campaign. The PCs would be able to scout or gather information by speaking to animals, fey, etc and find out where some less heavily guarded red hand patrols, supply wagons, or supply depots are. Then they have to get to the location, execute their ambush and retreat before red hand reinforcements arrive. And as they go on, they attract more attention and the red hand beefs up their security and then starts devoting some elite units to tracking them down, etc.

So you might have:
Basic ambush missions:
1. Isolated (broken down wagon and guards)
2. Isolated patrol
3. Supply depots
4. Courier.

Big ambush/sabotage missions
1. Prisoner caravan (going back to the fane)
2. Supply convoy
3. Fortified supply base re-established at Vraath Keep
4. Project to rebuild skull gorge bridge (first as a temple of Doom style rope bridge, then maybe in wood or with wall of stone spells)
5. Hobgoblin ferry at Drellin's Ferry. (They need a good way to get supplies across the river and most of the infrastructure is there)
6. Rescue/recruit. There is a small thorp or camp of woodsmen who didn't evacuate. The red hands foragers/raiders are going to attack them. If you save them, you can recruit some allies.

Developments
1. Red hand sends some elite units to track the PCs down
2. Red hand pacifies the twist tusks and takes hostages to ensure the forest giants' good behavior. Rescue the hostage? Or make it look like the Red Hand murdered the hostage so that the twist tusks resume hostilities.
3. Scrying and/ or divination to track down the PCs.
4. All out Red Hand assault on the PCs' base

Coming up with some kind of an alertness/notoriety mechanic to scale the difficulty and determine how much heat the PCs bring down on themselves would be important for this kind of scenario.

I like this idea a lot. One of the characters is a huge XCOM fan and all of the extra stuff you've put in has given me a lot to think about. Thanks.