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View Full Version : The Basin of Deadly Dust! (Need opinion on campaign/advice as DM)



Adumbration
2008-02-05, 02:28 AM
SoD, stop reading this thread right now. It contains spoilers for a possible adventure. Thank you.


All right, I'm fairly new to DnD. An Australian exchange student friend of mine introduced me to it, and he's been our DM for now, but within 5 months, he'll be gone. Another friend of mine is going to take a shot at DM'ing, and I figured I might as well. I'm merely playing with ideas at the moment, though, so I'm not sure if I will get to DM at some point. I would appreciate opinions and advice for a starting DM, though.

This is my campaign/adventure idea. A Greenstar Adept (NPC) has discovered through scrying a quite ancient site of a comet crash, but since a) he is part of a city council and is a busy man and therefore can't go adventuring, b) has had his entire adventuring party slaughtered in front of him, and is afraid to go adventuring again, c) both. So he hires a group of PCs to do it for him. As a reward he is going to let the PCs take one magic item each from his treasury, where he keeps among other things the equipment of his former party.

This is where the self-made part ends. I would use the Basin of Deadly Dust from Sandstorm - modified as being the starmetal appropriate for a GSA - as the adventure. The requirement is that the PCs bring everything made out of starmetal to the Green Star Adept - they can keep every other loot.

I would make the items available at the GSA's treasury pretty much according to WBL the PCs usually get, maybe reducing initial wealth of the PCs to allow for more powerful items. Depending on how many players I'd get, the PC level would be 5-7.

If the adventure would go well, I might continue DM'ing, introducing a Walker in the Waste or Sandshaper invasion, eventually, once they reach appropriate levels.

What's your opinion on this? Would you play this campaign? Any specific advice concerning this adventure, any general advice?

EDIT: More information on the Basin of Deadly Dust:

It's a pretty interesting adventure, in my opinion. Basically someone else also found the starmetal comet - actually two somebodies. A wizard/merchant fellow and the asheratis. The wizard had no idea that the asherati were there, and eventually the asheratis came in during the night and killed all of them. The story also involves starmetal dust with strange properties, and nightmares.

Now the basin is in state of degradation with the human structures, and there are tainted/corrupted asheratis all-around! The PCs will also find about this through the Adept - at least some background - and a small piece of diary of the wizard.

Holocron Coder
2008-02-05, 08:19 AM
As an overall summary, it sounds interesting enough to me :smallsmile: Probably need to fill in the details of what will occur on the journey to and from the site. That's what will be the bulk of the interesting stuff for an otherwise simple "retrieval" journey.

At least, that's my opinion (taken with a gallon o' salt). :smallbiggrin:

Adumbration
2008-02-05, 08:24 AM
The pre-made "The Basin of Deadly Dust" at the end of Sandstorm contains pretty much all that. It's a pretty interesting adventure, in my opinion. Basically someone else also found the starmetal comet - actually two somebodies. A wizard/merchant fellow and the asheratis. The wizard had no idea that the asherati were there, and eventually the asheratis came in during the night and killed all of them. The story also involves starmetal dust with strange properties, and nightmares.

Now the basin is in state of degradation with the human structures, and there are tainted/corrupted asheratis all-around! The PCs will also find about this through the Adept - at least some background - and a small piece of diary of the wizard.

EDIT: Probably should add this to OP as well..

Adumbration
2008-02-05, 10:50 AM
Could use some more opinions!

Pretty please? :smalltongue:

Human Paragon 3
2008-02-05, 11:02 AM
Sounds like fun to me. Go for it, I'm sure your group will have fun with it.