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King of Casuals
2019-10-12, 07:05 PM
So here’s the pitch for this campaign:
The setting is a country similar to the Renaissance era British Empire (known as the Drakish Empire), with a large group of territories either colonized or conquered around the world.
The Drakish Empire has a patron living-saint, Saint Warrick, who gains divine power from the belief of the members of the empire, but not all is as it seems.

PCs play as a group of low-level villagers living in the town of Oxdrift when it is brutally attacked by a group of soldiers. For one reason or another they survive the onslaught, and find one of the soldiers, wounded and left for dead by his comrades. He beckons the players over to him, telling them that the attack was ordered by Saint Warrick “for the good of the empire”. He says that Warrick isn’t what he seems and something terrible is coming. His last words before he dies are “Saint Warrick must die!”, which is coincidentally the name of the campaign.

...and that’s all I have for now. I’m getting dm’s block on what to do next. Does anyone have any ideas?

False God
2019-10-12, 08:05 PM
So lets say Soldier Zero was the "good cop" in the corrupt police department. Nobody liked him, and this attack was their moment to get rid of him.

But Soldier Zero wasn't so much a good cop as he was a great reporter. He kept a journal, detailing all the reasons why things were going funny in the empire. But the player's only clue to this journal is (thank you Gravity Falls) the fact that this guy's journal has a big "2" on the front of it, and barely any notes (a few pages, enough to be quite incriminating, but light on details and no mention the other soldiers didn't like him), indicating that they need to locate his previous journal if they want to get more details on it.

Where is the party most likely to start? The garrison where this soldier's branch is stationed.
The soldiers there are of course, not friends of Soldier Zero and also looking for Journal 1.
-But because life isn't easy, Journal 1 obviously isn't at the garrison (yay more clues!).
The party obviously needs to get there without being found out as members of Slaughtered Town.
-Different NPCs may be more or less helpful to the party depending on if their "survived the attack" status is known.
--An Underground Resistance of some sort could come into play here. Wanting the Journals of course for their own uses. They may want to overthrow Saint Warrick, but their goals may not be so great themselves.
---A couple of different "Resistance" factions could be useful in this regard, whichever one the party ends up aligning with opening up different resources, "safe houses" and methods of securing the other Journals.
****This part will likely be repeated several times throughout the game. The party will run errands to gain trust or locate clues, dodging guards along the way, uncovering both Saint Warrick's secrets and the goals of whatever faction they're working for. Each time raising the stakes a little bit and both shedding light on what's going on, but also creating doubt.
-The particulars of how you go about this really depend on you.

Oh and as always: always prepare a "blood and glory" alternate path in case your players decide to murder everything in their path.

King of Casuals
2019-10-12, 08:53 PM
While I wasn’t completely keen on having the journals with big numbers on the front (knowing my luck my players would recognize and make fun of the obvious Gravity Falls reference), there is a lot of cool stuff here! I’ll make sure to shamelessly steal some of these plot points.
Also I was planning of naming the soldier Oscar as an homage to Oscar of Astora from Dark Souls 1, but the name “Soldier Zero” is too good to not use somewhere. Maybe the code-name he uses in his journals or with contacts?

Lemmy
2019-10-12, 09:12 PM
You don't need a big number on the cover... Just have the text within the journal subtly (but clearly) allude to the existence of other books of the same kind.

e.g.: Maybe the author makes a quick comment of always keeping a journal since he joined the army. And this one is too short to be his only one.
Or maybe it has some sort of "like I mentioned before" text. E.g.: maps or information with attached to a quick note saying "compare to maps/info in page X; journal Y".

King of Casuals
2019-10-12, 09:41 PM
You don't need a big number on the cover... Just have the text within the journal subtly (but clearly) allude to the existence of other books of the same kind.

e.g.: Maybe the author makes a quick comment of always keeping a journal since he joined the army. And this one is too short to be his only one.
Or maybe it has some sort of "like I mentioned before" text. E.g.: maps or information with attached to a quick note saying "compare to maps/info in page X; journal Y".

I was thinking of doing something similar.

False God
2019-10-12, 09:48 PM
While I wasn’t completely keen on having the journals with big numbers on the front (knowing my luck my players would recognize and make fun of the obvious Gravity Falls reference), there is a lot of cool stuff here! I’ll make sure to shamelessly steal some of these plot points.
Also I was planning of naming the soldier Oscar as an homage to Oscar of Astora from Dark Souls 1, but the name “Soldier Zero” is too good to not use somewhere. Maybe the code-name he uses in his journals or with contacts?

IME: players will always get the references you don't expect them to, and never get the ones that you make obvious. When Avengers: Infinity War came out I had a Wizard capable of casting "Wish" and whenever I talked about using it, I'd snap my fingers. For months nobody got it. But I made one accidental reference to some random episode of Stargate SG1 and the whole table goes nuts. Turns out, all of my players were super SG1 nerds.

"Zero" as a code-name always sounds cool FYI.
-Likewise, "numbered" code names can make for a simple system to use in a secret society. They're easy to remember, AND it saves you the trouble of having to invent dozens of actual names!
--Perhaps each member keeps their own journals (perhaps not all as obvious as books) and the party will need to cross-reference information between them to find out what is true or not.
---This could tie in to the different factions, who may have already gotten their hands on the books, leading to "convenient" meetings between the party, the soldiers and the Factions as they each try to puzzle out what the Secret Society knows.
----PLOT TWIST: the Secret Society has already been infiltrated by agents of Saint Warrick or worse, is completely orchestrated by him! (villains are often the best at orchestrating their own downfall)

Anyway, the references can be obvious like a pattern or symbol on the cover, or referential within the work itsself as Lemmy suggests. Even the simple fact that Journal 2 seems so "new" and lacking information may be enough to make the players (depending on the sort of players you have) suspect there are additional books somewhere.

daremetoidareyo
2019-10-17, 10:50 PM
Do i have this right? St. Warrick gains strength, literally, from the belief power of his nation state? What are his goals?

What do you foresee the corruption is? Maybe knowing this big detail will allow us to put in a cast of lieutenants of various alignments, and from there we can shake out who the defectors are. From there we can build clue paths.

Lvl 2 Expert
2019-10-18, 02:33 AM
Do i have this right? St. Warrick gains strength, literally, from the belief power of his nation state? What are his goals?

What do you foresee the corruption is? Maybe knowing this big detail will allow us to put in a cast of lieutenants of various alignments, and from there we can shake out who the defectors are. From there we can build clue paths.

This would be helpful. Is our false saint guy "just" using small false operations to secure his own hold om the empire against another faction, or are these blood sacrifices with which he wants to call the empire of his evil blood dragon mistress to this realm, sending the whole continent it lands on to hell so she can rule the world forever? It makes a bit of a difference.

Mordante
2019-10-18, 09:31 AM
So here’s the pitch for this campaign:
The setting is a country similar to the Renaissance era British Empire (known as the Drakish Empire), with a large group of territories either colonized or conquered around the world.
The Drakish Empire has a patron living-saint, Saint Warrick, who gains divine power from the belief of the members of the empire, but not all is as it seems.

PCs play as a group of low-level villagers living in the town of Oxdrift when it is brutally attacked by a group of soldiers. For one reason or another they survive the onslaught, and find one of the soldiers, wounded and left for dead by his comrades. He beckons the players over to him, telling them that the attack was ordered by Saint Warrick “for the good of the empire”. He says that Warrick isn’t what he seems and something terrible is coming. His last words before he dies are “Saint Warrick must die!”, which is coincidentally the name of the campaign.

...and that’s all I have for now. I’m getting dm’s block on what to do next. Does anyone have any ideas?

Really depends on your party. Is your party sneaky. Maybe they can infiltrate the cult of Saint Warrick. If they are fighters have them join his army so that they can work from the inside.

Or let them go abroad find allies to overthrow him

Start an underground resistance.

Let them do research into the Tr00 nature of Warrick etc.

A lot depends on the aprty.

Tawmis
2019-10-19, 12:50 PM
So here’s the pitch for this campaign:
The setting is a country similar to the Renaissance era British Empire (known as the Drakish Empire), with a large group of territories either colonized or conquered around the world.
The Drakish Empire has a patron living-saint, Saint Warrick, who gains divine power from the belief of the members of the empire, but not all is as it seems.

PCs play as a group of low-level villagers living in the town of Oxdrift when it is brutally attacked by a group of soldiers. For one reason or another they survive the onslaught, and find one of the soldiers, wounded and left for dead by his comrades. He beckons the players over to him, telling them that the attack was ordered by Saint Warrick “for the good of the empire”. He says that Warrick isn’t what he seems and something terrible is coming. His last words before he dies are “Saint Warrick must die!”, which is coincidentally the name of the campaign.

...and that’s all I have for now. I’m getting dm’s block on what to do next. Does anyone have any ideas?

You could easily build off of this.

Why would Warrick do this?

Easy.

If he has soldiers attacking his own followers, then his followers will turn to him more, asking for his protection - thus feeding his power and energy.

Warrick may be tired of just being a Saint - and is now looking to step up his game.

By forcing more people to believe in him - he can try to take down a god, perhaps, or another Saint and acquire their followers.

Forward and onward, taking down more Saints, showing them that his followers who come to the rescue - are the reason they survived.

King of Nowhere
2019-10-19, 03:16 PM
did the first session already happen?

because if it didn't and that was just your plan, I can guarantee a good chance that the players will finish off the wounded soldier, thus stopping the very plot hook that started it.

As for the rest, i second level 2 expert: you need to come up with the full plan from this saint warrick. what is his endgame? what are his goals? how does he intend to go after them? what are his resources?

once you establish that, his full plan should flow naturally from it. and then you have to figure out places for the players to interfere with it (if they are the kind of party that needs to have directions), or you cna just leave them stumbling until they interact with it (if they are the kind of party that prefers to have free rein)

King of Casuals
2019-10-20, 03:41 AM
did the first session already happen?

because if it didn't and that was just your plan, I can guarantee a good chance that the players will finish off the wounded soldier, thus stopping the very plot hook that started it.

The first session has not happened yet, I’m going to wait until I have a better idea of what the campaign will be before I start gathering players. Yes, there is a chance for the players to immediately kill the soldier, but if I use the earlier suggestion and have him have a journal of some kind on him that will give them the plot hook anyways, then it shouldn’t matter.

King of Casuals
2019-10-20, 03:43 AM
You could easily build off of this.

Why would Warrick do this?

Easy.

If he has soldiers attacking his own followers, then his followers will turn to him more, asking for his protection - thus feeding his power and energy.

Warrick may be tired of just being a Saint - and is now looking to step up his game.

By forcing more people to believe in him - he can try to take down a god, perhaps, or another Saint and acquire their followers.

Forward and onward, taking down more Saints, showing them that his followers who come to the rescue - are the reason they survived.

This idea is pretty badass, I very much like it and will probably steal it for the campaign.

Tawmis
2019-10-20, 11:46 AM
This idea is pretty badass, I very much like it and will probably steal it for the campaign.

Glad to be of service. :smallbiggrin:

Duff
2019-10-20, 09:54 PM
You don't need a big number on the cover... Just have the text within the journal subtly (but clearly) allude to the existence of other books of the same kind.

e.g.: Maybe the author makes a quick comment of always keeping a journal since he joined the army. And this one is too short to be his only one.
Or maybe it has some sort of "like I mentioned before" text. E.g.: maps or information with attached to a quick note saying "compare to maps/info in page X; journal Y".

One of the PCs is a merchant (or part of a merchant house) from the neighboring friendly nation of Vertilon (PC X). Soldier 0 has letters from his family in Vertilon which mention the safe receipt of his letter and previous journal.
The PCs notice a distinctive sergent (Sergeant Alpha) who seems to know what the troops need to do. Capture the prophecied one? Find the missing prince? Kill the spy who's trying to get to the "pope"? Maybe the Maguffin is in the village and Sergeant Alpha knows there must be no other survivors? That last one would suggest the "Band of traitors" are going to be annihilated in an ambush on the way home.

And then Sergeant Alpha hires PC X to guide him to a small town in Vertilon...



One thing to think about is the role of Saint Warrick in building the empire? If he's led the conquest of many nations it may be obvious to anyone who doesn't equate "Drak" with "good" that the sainthood isn't all that.
Is Warwick the most recently appointed Saint and there were other saint's who did the conquering? See above

Did The Empire grow under emperors, then become good after saints started running things?

Is Warwick making supernatural deals to return to the "glory days" of growth? Is he facing a threat and feels he's "doing what he must to protect the empire"? If the threat is sinister enough, you may be able to run a moral ambiguity story. The party start out wanting to oppose St Warwick, but then realise he's less evil than the real BBEG.

patchyman
2019-10-21, 04:52 PM
there is a lot of cool stuff here! I’ll make sure to shamelessly steal some of these plot points.


If you want to take this idea in a different direction, have the players be the inhabitants of one of the colonized areas. Suddenly, it’s less *Gasp, the patron saint of our Empire was a villain all along* and more *After years of fighting for a losing cause, we finally have a clue about the villain’s weakness!*.