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  1. - Top - End - #1
    Orc in the Playground
     
    Dr paradox's Avatar

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    d20 DM Help: Starting a Campaign

    Hey, folks, I'm four rounds into a grapple on this problem, and I'm getting frustrated.

    In about two weeks I'm going to be starting a new 5e D&D pocket-campaign - due to be 10-20 sessions in a setting I've been using for a lot of similar games, an oversized Black Sea analogue. This one is due to be a swashbuckling campaign against a pirate fleet that formed after a nasty naval war about four years earlier. Recently the pirate fleet stormed a town and took enough captives to crew their rowing decks, turning clunky sailboats into dangerous warships. They'll be eighth level, all new characters, and the structure of the campaign will have them with a small ship tracking down targets of opportunity looking for a way to get at the pirate queen.

    The Opening is giving me trouble, for a few reasons. My instincts as a DM point me toward Realism or Horror, but I want this to be swashbuckling fun - I'm trying to set the tone for that by having things flare up without time to get bogged down in preparation, but then be easy and cool enough that they come through it without NEEDING to prepare much.

    My players have expressed interest in two points that are key for this. First, they want to be self-motivated rather than recruited to the fight by another person or organization. Second, they want to form the party in the first session rather than already knowing each other, though some of them might already be traveling together by the time their groups link up.

    I'm having a devil of a time piecing all this together. Possibly I'll need to wait until they get back to me with more of their motivation and backstory before I can lay brick conclusively, but there's a tension between the momentum called for from swashbuckling and the context called for from party-building.

    My closest idea now is this...

    The Carrack "Peacock," captained by the Half-Orc "Wide-Heel" Rinat, has come to the island port of Izen to deliver terms of tribute, in exchange for which the Crimson Fleet won't destroy them. We open on his ship as he's disembarking, trading a few barbs with a scumbag ranger they kicked out of the fleet and now have in cage hanging off the aftcastle (This is a PC).

    With Wide-Heel gone along with a sizeable portion of his fighters, the rest of the party springs forth to take the ship - a short and easy fight ensues, they save the ranger, alliances are made (A risky move in the abstract, but my players are good at navigating that kind of thing). The ship seized, they set off into the town to track down Wide-Heel before he can extort the Beylik, giving a little space for party chatter and navigation challenges.

    BUT! A fight right at the top skips the "getting to know you" phase for four out of five players, leaving their first meeting off screen, and combat in D&D is generally a poor way to work out character dynamics. BUT, if I open it sooner, say, the four of them all notice the Peacock coming in, start approaching, and bump into each other, they're likely to WAY overthink the fight on the boat (I may have inadvertently trained them to seek out chokepoints, defensive advantages, and killboxes. Smart for a realistic and dangerous tone, bad for swashbuckling).

    Finally, because I'm way overthinking this, I'm trying to work out a greater justification for five eighth level characters to show up here at the same time. That's my pettiest and most pointless discipline.

    If anyone has thoughts on how they'd open this campaign, I'm open to suggestions. Maybe I'm just posting this to exorcise the problem from my brain.
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  2. - Top - End - #2
    Bugbear in the Playground
     
    Composer99's Avatar

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    Default Re: DM Help: Starting a Campaign

    If your players have bought into the premise of the campaign, it seems to me that you could lean on them to come up with reasons why their characters would journey to your Black Sea equivalent.

    At any rate, the opportunities to obtain wealth seem like a pretty big draw, as do the opportunities to crack heads for those who are so inclined. Revenge would also be a great motive.
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  3. - Top - End - #3
    Dwarf in the Playground
     
    Stonehead's Avatar

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    Default Re: DM Help: Starting a Campaign

    So you want the other 4 to meed mid session, not before it. But you're worried that if they do, they'll overthink the strategy of the battle, and ruin the "swashbuckler" vibes?

    Maybe you could somehow make it so that the best strategy is a "swashbuckler"-ey one. Like, maybe there's a lookout and they need to wait for a distraction (the first player) or something.

    Also, what if they don't all meet each other before the fight? Maybe multiple groups decide to stalk the ship, but while the strategists are planning, the golden opportunity of your first player arises.

    I dunno, just some ideas.

  4. - Top - End - #4
    Titan in the Playground
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    Default Re: DM Help: Starting a Campaign

    Each of those four characters must include in their backstory a family member or close friend having been murdered or kidnapped by this pirate fleet, or otherwise have a bond that involves wanting revenge against them. They also know that aboard each of the more important ships is a mcguffin for calling in reinforcements, so it wouldn't be a good idea to take the landing party immediately.

    This establishes first of all that they all have beef with these pirates, and second that they'll want to sneak aboard and disable the crew so there won't be any backup for the ones who went ashore. This may also be a good reason for them to need the ranger alive, he knows how to disable the mcguffin.

  5. - Top - End - #5
    Barbarian in the Playground
     
    DwarfBarbarianGuy

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    Default Re: DM Help: Starting a Campaign

    A few thoughts...

    • the ship they start on is part of the pirate fleet they will be battling. They were pressganged at a previous port, and so their various personal backstories are less relevant to the start of the campaign. They can mutiny, gaining the ship and a moderately loyal crew, only having to remove the captain and his officers, who the crew all hate anyway.

    • the ship should be smaller than the average pirate vessel, but faster. Allowing them to run away as needed while they are low level. At higher levels they can acquire a bigger, fightier vessel.
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  6. - Top - End - #6
    Firbolg in the Playground
     
    Man_Over_Game's Avatar

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    Default Re: DM Help: Starting a Campaign

    Best way to make allies is to be threatened by a common enemy.

    Best way to force someone to go forward is to break off their chance of retreat.

    So you need to force players into working together while also making them into adventurers at the same time. Could be that the ship was just transporting some goods and some folk when the town they were going to dock into was revealed to be captured by the enemy and the players are then being chased by an enemy ship. The enemy didn't realize that the ship's civilians were heavily armed, gets captured and interrogated for information, and the players find motivation for fighting back with promise of gold, vengeance, and glory.

    Without any kind of allowance for a player's motivations to be tied to something outside of the adventure (since they can't go to where they were going, and they can't go back to where they were), they are forced to focus solely on the adventure and each other. This is actually how a lot of pirates got their crew (pretending to be trade ships, and then revealing the truth once they were too far to go back). It also has the benefit of not caring what the players' current motivations are.

    Honestly, though, it's kind of a **** move on their part to expect you to build them into a party while also wanting to do it of their own motivations. You're not a friggin' mind reader or a fortune teller. So I say screw their current motivations and instead conscript them through good storytelling.

    As for the high-level thing, you could even blame it on fate. Hint at it, with wise people acting like they know of some kind of prophecy that a band of accidental heroes will take down an army. Who needs verisimilitude when you have magic?
    Last edited by Man_Over_Game; 2021-04-13 at 11:55 AM.
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  7. - Top - End - #7
    Pixie in the Playground
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    Default Re: DM Help: Starting a Campaign

    As a DM my thought process tends to be: Where do I want the party at the end of the session? From your intro, I assume you are looking for the following:
    1) a diverse group of INDIVIDUALS now travelling together.
    2) the group free to go out in a sandbox manner
    3) the group owning a ship or other nautically appropriate transportation device.

    So I am thinking: Plague Ship.

    Adventure starts out in a port. PCs are on the docks for various reasons (drinking at the dockside bar, waiting to get on a ship to homeland, having been impressed... whatever the player's backstory decides.) Into port comes a ship at full sail that crashes (ex. Demeter from Dracula.) Out from the ship come zombies that try to do typical zombie things. Key here is they try to spread out into the town. The PCs are NOT a group and can be kept apart. This is a good time to set up what swashbuckling combat you are expecting through little vignettes (zombie threating innocents but there is a some crates hanging over them, barrels knocked over rolling down the pier, inexplicable fire breaks out and the only path to safety seems to be running along the posts of the pier, etc.)

    After sufficient combat the town guard arrives with pikes. Anyone who was involved with the fight may be infected they fear. So the guard orders everyone to go onto the ship and be towed out to sea for a week long quarantine. If (when) the players balk, have the harbor master explain to them that after a week the ship is TECHNICALLY salvage. So if they are still alive on it after a week the ship will belong to them. So free ship if they do it.

    Onboard the ship is where the roleplay element kicks in as the PCs shake out who is in charge, what all their individual goals are, etc. As everyone on the docks is forced on the ship, you have a reason for a wide range of personalities for NPCs and PCs. All you need is a reason to have been at the docks and in a port town, everyone goes to the docks for something.

    Now from here you got a bunch of plot hooks you can bait for the PCs to go after or ignore. The captains log indicates the ships last stopped at an unknown island, is it the source of the zombies or were they burying some treasure? In the ship's hold is a mysterious stone sarcophagus, does it hold some undead master or is it the body of some noble being transported to its ancestral home (who's family is going to want it back) or cursed pirate gold? Strange scratching noises from the bottom of the ship, is there something in the bilges or is something crawling on the underside of the ship? Or even, local pirates see ship out to sea flying plague ship colors decide it must be easy pickings.

    The key here is that the PCs are stuck on the ship and the only thing they are NOT allowed to do is go back to port and go their separate ways. They can even strike out on their own and never return to the port, the authorities will assume they sunk after dying of zombie plague. If they try to return to port before a week then a armed ship sails by to check on them and fires warning shot if they head towards the port.

    You will need to decide on the source of the zombie plague but if the PCs aren't interested then it was because of some magic ring that was picked up by the captain. The captains log details his succumbing to the item and turning the crew. He was one of the zombies at the harbor and the ring is at the port on his corpse, not aboard ship for the PCs to deal with.

    If you need a sting in the tail at the end of the session, when they get back to port after a week they discover that not all the zombies were caught. The city is now a ghost town and the players have to move on aboard the ship.

  8. - Top - End - #8
    Halfling in the Playground
     
    MindFlayer

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    Default Re: DM Help: Starting a Campaign

    My first thought is to jump straight into the action and borrow heavily from the Pirates of the Caribbean movie.
    The players are all residents or visitors to a port town and the game starts when they are woken in the middle of the night by the town bells.
    A pair of pirate ships have snuck into the harbour and the crew are already swarming through the town when the alarm goes off.
    Have a few scenes dealing with fires, pirate raiders who are more interested in looting than fighting, rescuing prisoners and organising a defense while pushing the pirates back to the sea.
    Being eighth level there's a fair chance they'll catch the ship/ships and get their own vessel, if not there can be a suitable one in the harbour that was just coming out of repairs and managed to avoid being fired.
    Work with the players to pick an NPC, item that the pirates stole or killed during the raid and you've got a hook to go hunt down any survivors/ find the main pirate group.

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