Please review my campaign (Innistrad and Tiamat)

[Pinjata]

Hey guys,

ATM I am playing in a D&D group, which will eventually finish the campaign. From that point on, it will be me who will take on the mantle of a DM and I'd like to roughly represent my idea for this campaign of mine. I'd appreciate all coments on it, this is more of a meta-question thread. I can say I am pretty confident regarding this whole thing.

First of all, some of the players will transfer their characters from this last campaign to mine and they will start with their old, lvl 10 characters. For the sake of clarity, let's place them in two groups:

Group 1:
PC A (lvl 1 paladin)
PC B (lvl 1 Rogue)
PC C (lvl 1 Druid)

Group 2
PC D (lvl 10 Barbarian)
PC E (lvl 10 Wizard)

Modules I intend to use are Army of the Damned(Innistrad) and Tyranny of the dragons.

a)Group 1 will travel from Baldur's gate to Beregost, where everything will rest on Paladin's shoulders. We alredy discussed things with Paladin player and it is clear to him, path of a paladin is a rather limited one - not only, that he should follow the code, but also "must" pick up quest, offered to him by his diety. In this case, here is an intro:

a.1)Tiamat wants to manifest in Faerun. Evil chromatic god Falazure knows this and wants to sell info to someone, who can do him a favor in some other "spot". This "spot" being Innistrad. Falazure himself is not powerful enough to "teleport" his agents to Innistrad, but Helm is. Thus, Falazure has bestowed special powers upon his Cleric, who will travel north to Baldur's Gate to present himself to clerics of Helm. It is expected for Cleric of a high enough level to "examine" him in a divine way and realize, there is something beneficial for Church of Helm and Faerun itself in this and will be willing to cooperate with Cleric in order to get the benefit.

a.2)The benefit in this case is a meta-thing. There is a chance of a player joining us, who has already read Tyrrany of the dragons. Once our party performs the job for Falazure in Innistrad via Helm's support, if this specific player will be in our group, he will be allowed to use all his meta knowledge of Tyrrany module. If this guy will not be on board, I intend to issuea a special item to each of the participants - probably some high-tier dragonslaying items.

b) ABC party will meet the cleric. Paladin A will have a prophetic dream that he must help this evil cleric be heard and not killed by helmites in Baldur's Gate. Hopefully, paladin picks this up, they travel to Baldur's gate, where Cleric is examined and deal is struck: Helm will help teleport a few competent adventurers to Innistrad and Falazure will betray Tiamat.

"A few competent adventurers" in this case would also mean picking up D and E in some inn in Baldur's Gate. (Harpers will ask them for help)

If party goes this way, they run through Army of the Damned. After the jump, they are all reduced to level 1 (appropriate ofr Army of the damned) and slowly climb to level 5 as expected in the module. If a single of original PCs is sucessful in the quest in Innistrad, they get the boons, plus levels they have achieved in Innistrad are bestowed upon characters as they return to Baldur's gate. ABC get level 5 in Baldur's gate, while D and E get same amount of experience to level up appropriately. (I don't know how many levels would lvl 10 get if he got enough XP to level character from lvl 1 to 5)

Then Tyrrany of the dragons starts. If they have The knowlegable player (the one who read the module), he takes point from there. if they do not, Paladin gets a dream of Greenest being attacked. They may travel there and make a nasty surprise for cultists. Still, with hundreds of enemies and an adult green dragon in Greenest, it should be a neat challenge for them. At this point, players enter module far above levels, module is made for - but i like this - I don't mind if players roflstomp a few encounters. After this, loot travels north, they go along, or they capture and interrogate cultists and they go to Castle in the swamp. Level ups for D and E are practically nonexistent at this point, while ABC slowly creep up.

Eventually they come to castle in ice with white dragon and hopefully mess things up there.

With second half of adventure starting, their "level bonus" will ever more dwindle and in the last third of campaign, they should struggle properly. And then we have a big ending with Tiamat and all.

This is all I have. I've been patching this together over a year and I'd appreciate any impression regarding this.

thank you

[Pinjata]

No one? :/ Really, any comment is appreciated.

[LuccMa]

I won't say anything about your planned story arc. I just want to ask about your Group-Level:

1. Will your High-Level Characters stay at their lvl 10 and the other ones have to lvl up? If so, that wont work. Having high lvl PCs in your group will screw over every single encounter, there will be no difficulty and the lower lvl players are just bystanders, not heroes. This might sound ok-ish on paper but in play this is just wont work. Have them roll up new characters and allow them to switch once everyone hits lvl 10.

2. Will your High-Level Characters instead also get reduced to level 1 with the rest of the party? If so, you have to talk to them about that before you do it. If they want to play their old characters, chances are, they want to do that because of their progress they already made. You would screw that progress by reducing them to level 1.

If this is your first time DM-ing i would suggest you make it easy on yourself. Tell everyone to build a new character at level 1. Everyone starts together, no exeptions.

Also if you focus some parts of the story on a single character (like the paladin for example) make sure you focus other parts of the story on OTHER characters. Everyone deserves some spotlight because nobody wants to play the Paladin-Heroes sidekick for a whole campaign :D

[Pinjata]

Amazing input. Just what I needed.

[JoeJ]

Be careful about making too much depend on one character. Real life tends to intervene when you least expect it, and it would be a shame to have to end the campaign early because one player moves away.

[Asmotherion]

Be careful about making too much depend on one character. Real life tends to intervene when you least expect it, and it would be a shame to have to end the campaign early because one player moves away.

Second this.

Basically, if you trust your players to be regulars, go for it. If not, don't plan a whole story arc on a PC, who might or might not be around, or you may get disapointed on the results.

I've tried to plan roles on players who droped the campain in the past, and ended up with a story that I couldn't quite fit on anyone else. So, careful on how you handle this, as it tends to be disapointing in the end.