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View Full Version : DM Help Fishing for ideas for my Isle of Dread campaign



Yora
2020-04-24, 02:47 PM
I've started a new campaign on the Isle of Dread, playing D&D 5th Edition. As a starting adventure to give the players some kind of goal while they are figuring out their characters' personalities and the dynamics of the party, I am currently running Against the Cult of the Reptile God.

The backstory for this campaign is that civilization has been eroded away by a century of severe typhoons. And while the humanoid kingdoms are declining and collapsing into fractured city states, the ancient serpentmen believe that their time has come again to emerge from the jungles and return to rule the world. Their dream is hopeless, but one group of serpentmen has returned to the ruins from Dwellers of the Forbidden City, which is located within the extinct volcano on The Isle of Dread.

The serpentmen send one of them to the mainland to establish a base and gather information on how these lands have changed in the millennia that have passed since their rule. She moved into caves near the town Orlane from Against the Cult of the Reptile God and used a magic mask to turn townspeople into cultists to worship the Great Serpent, with herself as the high priestess. I want to play this as a completely straight ripoff of Conan the Barbarian when we play next on monday. I don't care what Evil Overlord List #34 says. :smallbiggrin:
(If the players take the mask, it lets them cast the charm person spell three times per day. The priestess already had the natural ability to cast the suggestion spell, and I am saying the mask amplified that power to become a permanent charm. Both the wizard and the warlock could learn charm person as a 1st level spell, so it's not really a powerful item but still comes with great flavor, I think.)
The important change that I have made is that townspeople who have resisted the charm were not killed, but instead are being taken as slaves to the Isle of Dread. The slaves are being transported by the pirates from the Isle of Dread. When the priestess is dead, the surviving cultists will return to normal and tell the players that the other missing townspeople have been send to the home of the priestess.

This provides two motivations for the party to travel to the Isle of Dread. Rescuing the slaves and to find out what the serpentmen are planning. One of the PCs is also a warlock who had been given a vision by his patron to disrupt whatever the serpentmen are doing. The players have been very cooperative so far and I don't think there will be any hesitation to travel to the Isle of Dread. But once they arrive at the isle I want to be really hands off and let them do as they please.

I see two ways the players can get to the Isle of Dread. Either they go to the next port and somehow get a ship, or they simply wait for the pirates to come and get the next shipment of slaves and take their ship.
But I want to make the journey to the isle more eventful and so there will be further complications. The exact location of the isle is unknown, so the party has to make a stop at a pirate port that is located in the general area. In this port I want to give them an opportunity to get a navigator who has been to the Isle of Dread many times, get sea charts that show the location of the isle and the reefs that surround it, and steal a magic conch shell that will get them free passage from the fishmen that inhabit the reefs near the isle.

This is where the first open questions appear: I already know that for the retrieval of the navigator, I will be using Escape from Meenlock Prison. Instead of an old vineyard where dangerous criminals are being held, it will be a small island where the pirate queen keeps her enemies until she decides what to do with them. Meenlocks have been driving prisoners insane and in the confusion four prisoners escaped and killed the guards. Unfortunately they have no boat and the water is full of shark, so when the party arrives they trick them into going to get their prisoner and then escape with their boat, leaving the party to deal with the meenlocks.
But I don't have any good ideas what to do with the sea charts and the magic conch. Having multiple possible approaches would be great. Breaking into some house and stealing them would be one option, but I think it also would be fun if the party could somehow make an interesting trade instead. Or maybe something completely different.
They need at least the charts or the navigator to get to the isle.
If they don't get both the map and the navigator, their ship will crash on the reef and sink.
If they don't get the conch, their ship will be attacked by fishmen just before they reach the isle.

My plans on what exactly they will find on the Isle of Dread are not very specific yet. As mentioned, I want to have Dwellers of the Forbidden City as the ruins inside the central volcano. I think it could also be fun to adapt Master of the Desert Nomads and The Temple of Death to a jungle setting and use them as the journey to the Forbidden City and as the compound of the serpentmen inside the Forbidden City. That would make it the ultimate David Cook campaign. :smallwink:
Because of this, I want to have the biggest magical artefact trader on the isle be a cook named Zeb. :smalltongue:

I also feel that with just a slight reflavor, The Caverns of Thracia would make a nice location somewhere on the isle. It's considered a great classic adventure of very early D&D and I always wanted to try it out. Another old module I have my eye on is The Forgotten Temple of Tharizdun. I was thinking that maybe the temple is what the serpentmen really are looking for on the isle, as they think the ancient magic that is sealed beneath it will help them to take over the world.

For the inhabitants of the isle, I want to give the role of the rakasta to tabaxi (which really are the same thing) and replace the phanatons with aaracockra, and the aranea with chitines. Similar enough, but I like their style more (and I already have stats straight from the books).
I am a huge fan of aboleths and I think they are basically redundant with the kopru (and David Cook created them both, just one for AD&D and one for B/X). But I think they need to be hugely expanded beyond just a monster encounter in a tunnel leading into the Forbidden City.

This is what I got so far. Even though it being D&D, I want to keep demons and devil out of this campaign. I think there is already enough going on with ancient serpentmen, fishmen, and perhaps also aboleths. Does any of this make ideas spring into your minds what other things would fit into this campaign? I am drawing quite heavily from both Morrowind and Elric as inspirations go, as well as Dark Sun. The party more or less consists of Dunmer, a Melnibonean, and a Half-Giant.

I am currently working on the pirate port where the players will need to get the means to take their ship to the Isle of Dread. Any suggestions how to flesh that part out would be particularly useful.