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Okamigekido
2019-12-06, 11:03 AM
So I'm a player who is part of a 5 person campaign, and we're all good friends of the DM, who is starting our second Campaign (her second time making one, too). I am helping her out with making it, mostly story stuff, but not too much, so that I don't have a lot of spoilers, but I will help a lot with dialogue.I need help from your guys' comments, as we have the start and the end, but not really anything in between.
Our start is us entering a tavern, and our rogue is getting picked on by the patrons/bartender, who automatically assumed he stole something. We immediately start battle to defend him, and after a couple rounds a bunch of paladins barge into the tavern and slaughter our enemies. We find out that a patron slipped out before they were noticed, and alerted the group of a fight, and they came to stop the "terrorists", but they mistook the locals for us. Turns out the "Gucci Gang", as they were known, were a bunch of dumbasses. We explained that the locals instigated it, and we were defending ourselves, so they automatically assumed themselves as our allies, and it kicks off from there.
The end is a lot less detailed, and we (the DM and I) plan on the party having an epic battle with a beholder, who plans on absorbing the souls of every being in the realm, and becoming a dark god.

Again, I would greatly appreciate any ideas for story in between, even side quests (if you see any comments you think would go good with yours, let me know if you would like your idea before or after it in the campaign, better descriptions for the timeline would be better)

Edit: The Gucci Gang isn't your typical group of paladins, the beholder cursed them to be stupid dumbasses, so they don't have the mental capacity to figure out how to stop him. They also aren't about righteousness, but they are all after fame, glory, and wealth (still good people though). They aren't authority figures of any kind, just a wandering group, sort of like a "guild" Of sorts. And throughout the story, we plan on a group of cultists causing trouble in multiple areas, trying to kill everyone as offerings to the beholder, we're just having trouble come up with the details. We plan on it being a long campaign, so if you think we should travel to different planes in search of artifacts or whatnot, let us know please.

Thanks for the tip Anxe.

Anxe
2019-12-06, 01:01 PM
That opener is a weird. A bar fight is a pretty traditional opener.
But why did it escalate to lethality? Why did the law enforcement not know who was local? Why did they immediately resort to lethal measures as well? Once they realized their mistake why didn't they use their same draconian tactics on the out-of-towners?

As for the ending. It sounds like all you really know is you want a meglomaniacal beholder as the villain. There isn't really much to build off of or advise there. You have to give us more to work with to be able to help you. Otherwise we're just writing your campaign for you.

Anxe
2019-12-09, 05:11 PM
Cool! That's more to go on. So the first step would be getting the cultists introduced as evil people. That's pretty easy, maybe they're killing people while robbing them on a highway.

What do the cultists get out of their relationship with the beholder?
How does the Gucci Gang progress on the campaign? Do they become villains? Do they overthrow the beholder's control?

Dr paradox
2019-12-11, 06:37 AM
Hmm.

I like a piece of DMing advice I read a while ago, where it's desirable for the foe being trounced directly to be foreshadowed directly like five times in an adventure, their boss to be referenced something like twice, and the Big Bad of the game to be referenced once. I like this not as a hard and fast rule, but as a means of helping to visualize the structure of the campaign's org-chart that helps players feel like they're accomplishing something valuable in the immediate sense AND in the larger arc of the campaign.

That in mind, I'd advise coming up with a Main Lieutenant active in the area who knows the big-bad-beholder's plans in the broad strokes, and a petty underling beneath them interested in bullying the party. You've got a general idea for the Beholder's endgame, so you need to come up with a means for a lieutenant to contribute to that plan at a scale approachable by the heroes (Expect them to defeat this lieutenant at level 5 or so).

Here's my first stab at the idea. The Lieutenant is a Hobgoblin slave-master who's been directed to the area to seize control of the local highwaymen and bandits and begin directing captives to one of the Beholder's secret lairs, for use in experiments for siphoning souls. As a sideline, the Hobgoblin (Let us call him Maligant) is using his payments to amass mercenaries and consolidate power to take over the region.

This suggests the first foe of the party could be the leader of a band of highwaymen that now answers to Maligant. This highwayman (Let us call her Cadwallader) learns that this group of Paladins and Adventurers just slaughtered two of her operatives while they were taking a break in town. Naturally, Cadwallader assumes, they're targeting her operation. Pulling out isn't an option anymore - she's got quotas to meet and a chain of command to please. Her only option is to kill them - or better yet, take them captive and send them to Maligant so he can figure out who they're working for.

Cadwallader's plan to capture the party could be as simple as sending an operative to tell them about where the highwaymen will be, letting them walk into a trap. This'll give the party an opportunity to ask around town about Cadwallader's gang, what they've been up to, how their behavior has changed recently, and how that reflects on the state of the countryside as a whole. The bandits are using oddly made weapons and armor that might be recognized as goblin-made. There might be a Bugbear or two tagging along with Cadwallader's merry band as extra muscle or extra insurance that she toes the company line. Ultimately, when Cadwallader surrenders and tells all, she also shows the brand that Maligant forced on her - that of an eye, shot through with lightning-like veins.

Something along those lines. You can imagine all kinds of hooks on from there - Following Cadwallader's directions to a drop-off site for her prisoners, chasing other local accounts of abductions in the area, and so on. Once they've traced matters back to Maligant and foiled his plans for a barony of his own, they can then follow the trail of the abducted peasants to the city down the coast, where a well-to-do wizard in town has made some unorthodox allies...