Beastmen campaign ideas

[Afrodactyl]

Hello all.

I'm writing up a homebrew campaign of sorts (it's going to be an episodic campaign made from mini-campaigns), that's going to start of with an incursion of beastmen in the nearby woods. The beastmen are based on Warhammer fantasy beastmen, and I'm responding and tweaking bugbears for the most part.

It's all going to culminate in the party having to stop the beastmen shamans from waking a jabberwock that will go on a murder-rampage. However, I'm having a mental hiccup and I'm struggling for ideas of how to pad the campaign so it isn't done in about three sessions. It's all going to be fairly low end, starting third level.

Any ideas on how to bulk this out?

[Trask]

Hello all.

I'm writing up a homebrew campaign of sorts (it's going to be an episodic campaign made from mini-campaigns), that's going to start of with an incursion of beastmen in the nearby woods. The beastmen are based on Warhammer fantasy beastmen, and I'm responding and tweaking bugbears for the most part.

It's all going to culminate in the party having to stop the beastmen shamans from waking a jabberwock that will go on a murder-rampage. However, I'm having a mental hiccup and I'm struggling for ideas of how to pad the campaign so it isn't done in about three sessions. It's all going to be fairly low end, starting third level.

Any ideas on how to bulk this out?

This sounds perfect for a small sandbox.

I would just create the area, starting with a Burg and some surrounding villages. Detail out the important personalities, factions, and other stuff in the towns. Then loosely detail out the threat, the Wode from which the beastmen come, and the ritual and stuff. You could even put a timer on certain events. Then create a random encounter table for forest exploration as well as an exploration mechanic, whether hexcrawl or survival/investigation checks to progress to the next areas, however you want to do that. Design (or steal and repurpose) some dungeons and wilderness encounter areas with local leaders of the beastmen tribe. Finally just plop the pcs down in the Burg with a hook, "you are mercenaries lured to Valdeburg with the promise of gold per head of each beastman slain". Thats enough to get started. Then have the pcs roll on your rumor table (of course you have a rumor table right? this is what will bring hooks that they can explore) about local problems, beastmen sightings, whisperings about the kinds of magics they use, ect. This should be enough to get any adventurers started in their beastman hunting, which might eventually progress into the PCs leading full blown hunting parties of local volunteers to torch beastmen encampments and drive them off, and encounter the weird magicks of the horde.

Your idea is solid as a premise, but you need to flesh out that premise and not just think about 4 encounters you could string together for a climax. That tends to create very railroady adventures.

TL;DR Create the towns, create the forest, create random encounter and rumor tables, prep a few dungeons, 10gp per pair of beastman horns, let the PCs roam.


A pretty good beastman themed adventure is Sailors of the Sunless Sea for Dungeon Crawl Classics. It would be an easy enough conversion, (although you'd have to beef it up a bit as 5e characters are much tougher than DCC characters).

Also pretty much any adventure that features orcs could easily have them swapped out for beastmen. Forge of fury comes to mind, also the recently released "Mines, Claws, Princesses" is a new, darker take on Forge of Fury that features Orcs (beastmen) capturing a human princess, troglodytes (slime beastmen) and a dragon leading the horde (which could just be some kind of horrific beastman spirit abomination.)

Sons of Gruumsh is a 3.5 adventure featuring orcs (beastmen) where they gather in an abandoned citadel to summon an orc saint or something like that, sounds easy to fit in.

Also id brush up on european fairy tales to make the forest spooky and weird. Use lots of fey (who find the beastmen disgusting but also welcome their presence since it has halted all logging activity, maybe they would be amenable to helping if they got a promise that the humans would limit their deforestation) and slimes (bubbling forth from the earth, a physical manifestation of the filth of the beastmen), stuff like that.

Also the beastmen could, and should, have factions. The horn heads and the snake tongues, etc. They could be turned, tricked, or otherwise messed with. The key to make beastman hunting not boring is to make the beastmen themselves more interesting than bags of hp who attack on sight. To that end, beastmen might be more interested in capturing prisoners than straight up killing. A lot of village rumors and pleas could be rescuing the captured (let your imagination run at the gruesome fates of the hapless folk). PCs themselves might find them having to rescue their fellows.

Just do what I'm doing, sit down and spitball cool ideas for hooks and mini adventures, and place them all over your map and make rumors and hooks accordingly. The PCs will have their hands full with rescuing, slaying, sneaking, and dealing. And finally create some kind of time counter that can be delayed the more the PCs disrupt the beastmen activity. If disrupted their ritual and subsequent flood into the towns might be weaker, if disrupted heavily they might just pack up and return to the deep woods. Or maybe they might break out into civil war if the horde warleader is slain, tribes might massacre each other in the forest and deplete their strength, leading to an easy and heroic mop up of the survivors by the PCs and their cohorts. Then PCs would be made Knights of the Realm and that can be a great springboard for future adventures.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/240094/Mines-Claws--Princesses
https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/3740/Sons-of-Gruumsh-35?it=1

[ErHo]

Yes, a few side quests to engage factions or minor dead ends and red herrings to spread out the sessions.

Otherwise, I love your idea for the Warhammer style beastmen!

[Afrodactyl]

Your idea is solid as a premise, but you need to flesh out that premise and not just think about 4 encounters you could string together for a climax. That tends to create very railroady adventures.

I'm good at the A-Z, just not the B through Y of getting there. Otherwise, thanks for the lengthy and in depth response.

[Trask]

I'm good at the A-Z, just not the B through Y of getting there. Otherwise, thanks for the lengthy and in depth response.

No problem. I've actually excited myself with all this pondering, maybe I should do something similar myself.

Also if you really wanted to go for the zero work, full lazy option, take Lost Mines of Phandelver, reskin the goblinoids into beastmen. Make the redbrands disconnected from the goblins, and act more as rough town thugs but also protectors of the town (basically make them a faction rather than an enemy, one the party could ally with or fight). Make the drow guy into a head beastman who is using an ancient dwarven thingamajig to summon a monster. Make the dragon into an ally of the beastmen with his own little cult, but not a strong ally. He could be persuaded to help the humans for the right price, maybe tribute, maybe a lump sum of treasure, or maybe something more sinister. Run pretty much as is, except instead of Phandalin being a scrappy border town, its a near deserted haunt of grim survivors and hardened woodsmen under martial law by self declared bandit lords.

ALSO i dont know what kind of XP system you favor but xp for killing would not work well here. You should have it more like xp for exploring, sneaking, discovering, and killing. Players should feel that retreat, trickery, and sneak are also good options for them.