Gaius Hermicus
2021-06-23, 09:26 PM
Hello,
It has been a very long time since I have run a proper D&D campaign. Due to Covid I haven’t been at a gaming table until very recently, and before that I mostly ran dungeon crawls or published campaigns. But I have been doing a fair bit of world building recently, and now that I have the beginnings of a personal setting I’d like to design an original, dynamic campaign to place in it. Since I haven’t designed a lot of campaigns before, I figured it was worth crowdsourcing ideas and advice to build on what I have planned.
The beginning of the campaign involves the ruined mansion of Gudrun Hammergard, a dwarf miner who struck an unexpectedly rich vein of silver and fled the mines to become an oligarch. Gudrun died about sixty years ago, and his only son, Konrad, has become an adventurer and was unavailable to inherit. So the manor was abandoned, until Konrad returned to reclaim it recently. He set off to the manor with his adventuring party, and never returned.
The players are hired to find out what happened to him. As it turned out, a gang of bandits had taken over the manor, using it as a base of operations for their robberies. In the past months, the bandit gang has been taken over by a spined devil, summoned by Victor deNante (the primary villain of the beginning of the campaign).
The city in which Victor lives has been at war with a clan of barbarians for over a decade, to deleterious effect on both parties. The barbarians lack the manpower to sack the city, while their nomadic lifestyle makes it very difficult for an army to corner them in a straight battle. Victor cut a deal with the mayor of the city, promising him that he could force the barbarians to surrender within a year, and in exchange would be granted their territory as his own kingdom. Victor’s plan to accomplish this involves secretly summoning devils (a capital crime by the city’s laws) and using them to slaughter raiding parties or barbarian clans, and assassinating political rivals within the city.
As per their orders, this devil has been leading the bandits in raids against the barbarians, and when Konrad’s party arrived at their hideout, quickly dispatched the adventuring group. Konrad was killed and his soul transformed into a lemure (not technically how lemures work, I know, but rule of cool) and the sole surviving member of his party is a prisoner to the bandits.
The players will clash with bandits, swarms of rats, and the spined devil itself (I’ve stuck the devil in the cellar to prevent it from making full advantage of its flight abilities and hidden a silvered weapon elsewhere in the manor, plus there are a few potential allies, so hopefully the devil isn’t too difficult a fight for a 1st leave party. Among other things, in the devil’s possession are its written orders to raid the tribesmen and a ledger of raids conducted, plus correspondence with other devils detailing an attack that will occur against a primarily civilian target in a week’s time. Ideally the players will head into the wilderness to prevent this massacre. They should reach level 2 once they finish clearing the Hammergard Manor.
Currently Chapter 2 is a lot less fleshed out than chapter 1. Assuming the players decide to prevent the planned attack against the under-defended camp, they’ll have to travel a few days into the wilderness (good opportunity for a random encounter/plot hook) and then convince the chieftain that they’re not trying to trick him or sabotage his tribe. If they can convince the tribe to at least consider what they have to say, they’ll be taken to an ancient burial mound a few miles from the camp. The meat of this chapter occurs at the burial mound, where the clan’s totem spirits will be summoned and will judge the PC’s intentions. If they’re found particularly worthy, they may even bestow special temporary blessings upon them to help with the defense against the devils. If the PCs agree to help defend the clan (bribes may be dispensed to help persuade them), they’ll have to organize a skeleton crew of warriors left behind. The bulk of the clan’s warriors were either killed by devils on the way back from a raid, or enslaved by those same devils and forced to attack their kin. This may lead to some interesting ethical quandaries when those same warriors come back to attack the camp, along with four spined devils, which focus on taking out the chieftain and other potential leaders of the tribe, causing terror and chaos that will force the barbarians to surrender. The players will need to fight at least two spined devils (separately) as well as subdue a few of the enslaved tribal warriors. If they succeed in fending off the attack, the chieftain (or replacement leader) asks them to bring an end to the diabolical attacks on their tribe, and offers to negotiate an end to the war if DeNante is out of the picture.
Other chapters to come.
It has been a very long time since I have run a proper D&D campaign. Due to Covid I haven’t been at a gaming table until very recently, and before that I mostly ran dungeon crawls or published campaigns. But I have been doing a fair bit of world building recently, and now that I have the beginnings of a personal setting I’d like to design an original, dynamic campaign to place in it. Since I haven’t designed a lot of campaigns before, I figured it was worth crowdsourcing ideas and advice to build on what I have planned.
The beginning of the campaign involves the ruined mansion of Gudrun Hammergard, a dwarf miner who struck an unexpectedly rich vein of silver and fled the mines to become an oligarch. Gudrun died about sixty years ago, and his only son, Konrad, has become an adventurer and was unavailable to inherit. So the manor was abandoned, until Konrad returned to reclaim it recently. He set off to the manor with his adventuring party, and never returned.
The players are hired to find out what happened to him. As it turned out, a gang of bandits had taken over the manor, using it as a base of operations for their robberies. In the past months, the bandit gang has been taken over by a spined devil, summoned by Victor deNante (the primary villain of the beginning of the campaign).
The city in which Victor lives has been at war with a clan of barbarians for over a decade, to deleterious effect on both parties. The barbarians lack the manpower to sack the city, while their nomadic lifestyle makes it very difficult for an army to corner them in a straight battle. Victor cut a deal with the mayor of the city, promising him that he could force the barbarians to surrender within a year, and in exchange would be granted their territory as his own kingdom. Victor’s plan to accomplish this involves secretly summoning devils (a capital crime by the city’s laws) and using them to slaughter raiding parties or barbarian clans, and assassinating political rivals within the city.
As per their orders, this devil has been leading the bandits in raids against the barbarians, and when Konrad’s party arrived at their hideout, quickly dispatched the adventuring group. Konrad was killed and his soul transformed into a lemure (not technically how lemures work, I know, but rule of cool) and the sole surviving member of his party is a prisoner to the bandits.
The players will clash with bandits, swarms of rats, and the spined devil itself (I’ve stuck the devil in the cellar to prevent it from making full advantage of its flight abilities and hidden a silvered weapon elsewhere in the manor, plus there are a few potential allies, so hopefully the devil isn’t too difficult a fight for a 1st leave party. Among other things, in the devil’s possession are its written orders to raid the tribesmen and a ledger of raids conducted, plus correspondence with other devils detailing an attack that will occur against a primarily civilian target in a week’s time. Ideally the players will head into the wilderness to prevent this massacre. They should reach level 2 once they finish clearing the Hammergard Manor.
Currently Chapter 2 is a lot less fleshed out than chapter 1. Assuming the players decide to prevent the planned attack against the under-defended camp, they’ll have to travel a few days into the wilderness (good opportunity for a random encounter/plot hook) and then convince the chieftain that they’re not trying to trick him or sabotage his tribe. If they can convince the tribe to at least consider what they have to say, they’ll be taken to an ancient burial mound a few miles from the camp. The meat of this chapter occurs at the burial mound, where the clan’s totem spirits will be summoned and will judge the PC’s intentions. If they’re found particularly worthy, they may even bestow special temporary blessings upon them to help with the defense against the devils. If the PCs agree to help defend the clan (bribes may be dispensed to help persuade them), they’ll have to organize a skeleton crew of warriors left behind. The bulk of the clan’s warriors were either killed by devils on the way back from a raid, or enslaved by those same devils and forced to attack their kin. This may lead to some interesting ethical quandaries when those same warriors come back to attack the camp, along with four spined devils, which focus on taking out the chieftain and other potential leaders of the tribe, causing terror and chaos that will force the barbarians to surrender. The players will need to fight at least two spined devils (separately) as well as subdue a few of the enslaved tribal warriors. If they succeed in fending off the attack, the chieftain (or replacement leader) asks them to bring an end to the diabolical attacks on their tribe, and offers to negotiate an end to the war if DeNante is out of the picture.
Other chapters to come.