Dungeons and Dragons Campaign Hook and Big Bad

What Was the Hook?

So let’s quickly refresh, what was the hook for my Dungeons and Dragons campaign. The players went with (and I helped decide on) plot hook #4. You can see all of them here.

No one would mistake you for the heroes of old. They are now something of legend as were the monsters they faced. The demons of old were locked away. How do you know, because you live right outside one of those dungeons. Something strong is starting to happen around the dungeon though. The terrain is changing and you don’t know why. Some thing it is a sign that the seals are weakening. But if that’s the case, who is supposed to stop them. You are tasked to find those heroes from one of the larger towns and are sent out with provisions, a map, a well wishes.

The Big Bad

Demons, this is going to be one where there are demons in it. Though, since it is something of legends, and with how long elves live, this happened ages ago. That means that what is known as demons doesn’t have to be demons, that is just what the legends call them.

The First Story Arc

I think the first arc is pretty simple, it is really the hook of the story. But I want to set it up in an interesting way. And you can read up on how I want to use story arcs and recommend people use them in their campaigns here.

The first big arc is going to be what I call The Realization Arc. This arc is going to be about figuring out what is happening. I’m not actually going to tell the players which story they are playing. I am just going to set-up some for the world, I’ve gotten my buy-in, but when we do character creation I’m going to give them a few parameters and that’ll be it. So what is this arc going to look like?

The Realization Arc

The first session is going to be a jump straight into action. But let’s break it down a little bit more.

• The inciting incident
• Town in panic
• Investigation
• The Annals
• We Need To Find Heroes

So what is the inciting incident going to be? Well, it’s going to be an attack of some sort, not on the town but around the town. An example of what I mean is think of the start of the Wheel of Time series. There is an attack on the town but it starts with attacks on the farms and the town and strange things happening near the farms. So the characters are going to learn about it and have to help with it.

Now, I want to dive into this further right now and talk about it, but let’s then talk about that second arc that we’ll be setting up as well. Because the next article is going to be working on world building first and the following one on that session one.

Dungeons and Dragons Full Campaign Arcs

So, I said I wanted to talk about the next one. But there is more than that, I want to deal with arcs that are going to show up in the campaign. Now as I write out all of these, this is not the whole campaign. I expect more arcs to occur, but these are some of the pillar arcs that I think need to happen for the story.

• The Realization Arc
• A Fond Farewell
• Traveling to the City
• We’re Here, Now What?
• Gaining Trust
• ??? I expect more arcs in here
• How Do You Seal a Demon?
• ??? More arcs
• It’s Now Or Never

The Groundwork For A Fond Farewell

So, when I look at this, I want to start laying the groundwork for that next arc. And that next arc is going to be a short arc. A Fond Farewell should be a session or maybe two. It is a chance for the characters to build up more relationships and define who they are as characters. So I want to start creating NPC’s that the characters will interact with. One thing, though, that I want to do is give the players each a note card or two with my NPC template on it. And during session zero, each player is going to make an NPC that they are closely connected to.

What does that look like? You can see that here in my Dungeon Master Tools – World Building Article. But simply put name, defining feature, brief description. And I think I want to add in one in this case. What is the connection to the players. For a small village, everyone is going to be connected. So I want to see the players create meaningful NPC’s who are connected deeply with their character. It is not going to be a lot of work, I just want one or two per player.

How I’ll Use Them

So, when I get those NPC’s how do I want to use them? Firstly, those are going to be the main points of contact for the characters in the town. At least one of them is going to be part of the inciting incident. An important rule of Dungeons and Dragons is put every meaningful character in harms way at some point in time. And if I start with it, that is great. Not all of them will be, but if some make sense, that I want to put them in harms way.

I want to create tension too for the upcoming farewell. The town mayor or village elders, whomever is in charge, is going to send out the player characters. Why, because they are the saviors of the village and the ones who maybe can survive the journey to a town or city. I hope that someone creates a NPC who is a single parent, or maybe even a child who is going to be left behind. I want it to feel. And if they don’t, I might create one for them.

Final Thoughts on A Story Arc in Dungeons and Dragons

I like where this Dungeons and Dragons campaign is going. When I world build coming up here soon in a new article, I want to create the frameworks that this first arc will work in. That means I want to create that the land is like. Is it going to be a hunter gatherer type of setting or more agrarian in nature? That is the fun of world building. And I think my arc works well in any of those.

But as I do that, I want to keep it focused on this first arc. If I plan out too much, such as the nations and city they are going to go to, that is a lot. It is important to only know the large rules for the world. For example, is it high or low magic. And that is not going to affect this first arc too much, just character creation. For this first arc, I want to give the players a description of the town, surrounding area, and not much more. As always, I want to remember, keep it simple, stupid. And in this case, I am stupid.

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The Session

So, I didn’t have much time to plan anything for this session I was kept busy with a toddler and making dinner before people showed up but it was still a fun session which changed some things up again. You can catch up on what happened in what I called Session 22. But the players immediately jump back into it filling in Assendial on more of what had happened.

They were also curious about what was going on with the Winter Court. It turns out that the member of the winter court has been trying to broker and agreement with Strawgoh to use some students to deal with a Rainman. The group, Barrai, Bokken and Kip immediately volunteer. And try and broker a deal which the school actually takes care of for them. They wanted 60 gold for it but ended up getting 250 which they do agree to split 4 ways with Thrain.

They kill a little bit of time with Bokken getting another fight scheduled at the bar and Barrai wrote a letter to his patron. But Kip puts the time to good use and researches what Rainman are. They are fey creatures who hide in the rain and aren’t fully corporeal. But more so, they try and drown you with their aqueous form and that will turn you into a puddle.

Going over to the embassy of the Winter Court in the town they set-up a trap for the Rainman. They make it look like the powerful fey princess of the Winter Court is standing out in the courtyard talking. Bokken spots the Rainman who is watching what is going on, but has realized that something is off. Mainly that the rain is still rain not snow like it’d be turning into surrounding a member of the winter court. So the Rainman is looking around for someone who is controlling this illusion. Bokken charges and the group gets into battle.

Things didn’t go completely as plan. Barrai does a great job opening up a barrage of magic missiles on the one of the Rainmen. And that’s where the issue really is, while the Winter Court had thought there was one Rainman there win in fact two that had been stalking the embassy. They initially focus on Kip because he looks like he’s the smallest and weakest. But when Barrai uses his magic missiles which is way more effective against them, the second one switches it’s focus to try and drown Barrai. Unfortunately for Barrai he rolls a 0 (1 with a -1 modifier) when it grapples him and he gets hit hard with a lot of damage. Eventually he becomes a puddle.

Bokken finishes off the last Rainman and feels very guilty about letting Barrai die. Some of that also due to the fact that one of his attacks had dealt damage to Barrai while he was trapped inside the figure. Kip and Bokken manage to get the puddle that was Barrai into a water skin and they rush his puddle to Assendial whom Bokken had seen use the reincarnation spell before. She is able to use it on him, but he comes back not as a Tiefling but as a forest Gnome.

Behind the DM’s Screen

Like I said, this was a lightly planned session. When they started asking about the member of the Winter Court, I knew that is the direction that I’d been taking the session and two Rainman were going to make a hard/deadly encounter for the three of them. Turns out it was in fact deadly.

And Barrai, and the player, actually got to pick between two different races. Normally you just get whatever you roll but because Kip had used prestidigitation to help get the puddle form of Barrai into the water skin. I decided to make it more interesting than just a straight roll. The player could have picked between human and forest gnome. Thematically they decided that it made more sense to be a forest gnome after all the torturing of Dorin that he had done over the school year.

Have you had a character die and become reincarnated in a game before?

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Recap

After getting their first level and class by doing the test of the tower, or group joined up to a school to get more training and more access to the tower where they can level up. In the school there were two spies they were supposed to try and find, but it turned out one, Addruss was actually just a spy.

They managed to find both of them but then when Addruss’s cover was blown things went sideways. Since that happened the group has been tasked to try and figure out what is going on with these scarabs that attracts dragons and Addruss. They found his contact Nahzir and stumbled across an Arcane Stalker who was waiting for Nahzir to show back up.

This is the point where they then found the person who was keeping on eye on Nahzir’s apartment who led them down into the tunnel beneath the city that runs oddly enough from the Tower to a bar at the end of town.

The Session

The group decided to follow the person into the tunnel finding a few stops along the way. One was a bathhouse which they took note of, one was between two outhouses near Nahzir’s apartment and one led into the courtyard where they went after going into the tower. But there was another option as to where to go, they could go back into the tower.

What they found there was a way to shortcut into the training level of the tower. That is the level that when you go through it, you end up leaving with a class, or at least that is what it did before. They realized that this maybe wasn’t the best plan as they had to go through everything again. Now, at a higher level with their gear this level of the tower was nowhere near difficult. It was built to be a challenge for level 0 characters and they were level 5.

However, what was interesting, is at the end, they had to drink from one of six chalices again. And these chalices were something that influenced what class they went into. Now, the tower took into consideration what the players want to play, but also added in some randomness. And this time, with the players having levels, it begged the question, did the players remember what they had to drink from before.

One of the tricks of the tower is that you kind of forget what is going on. And that was the case, the players forgot that there had been a a fourth, named Steve, with them the first time. And then there was a question as to how to get past the monster in the last room which had them drinking tea or fighting. Could they have taken this monster in a fight, maybe, but tea was a safer bet.

I think that two of the players did end up drinking from the chalice that they did before, but this time, the chalice only went based off what was in the chalice. It didn’t take into consideration what they had gone into before. So Bokken drank from one that was white and fizzy and ended up getting a level of Paladin. Thrain drank from the same one as the first time, so just got another level of Warlock. Kip, whom hadn’t as a player gone through this process since he joined part way through drank the red smoky one and got a level of Sorcerer. And finally, Barrai drank from a clear and calm one and got a level of Cleric.

They got out of the tower, found themselves in the courtyard, and decided to head back to the school with their new abilities. Also to take a long rest. They find Castillia just waking up in their barracks and Bokken talks with her. He fills her in on some of the details because they’ve always been able to trust her before. So he doesn’t think it’s likely to have changed, and that’s where we ended the session for the night.

Behind the DM’s Screen

They had a couple of options here. Firstly, a bit of investigating would have told them that the person didn’t go into the tower. While the courtyard wasn’t obviously the route that he went, because there were tracks, recent, still leading into the tower, they could have checked it out more.

In the tower, I wasn’t completely sure what I wanted to do. So I decided to do a callback to what had happened the first time. There were opportunities for things to be different. There were rooms they hadn’t seen before they could have gone to. They also could have gone into different areas than before, but they don’t know how to do that yet, or what might be different with skipping the whole first room.

Then, I thought it’d be fun to give them the option to multiclass. Now, I say option, if they picked wrong they were going to multiclass. And three of them did, though Kips player correctly guessed what the two classes were for one of them, so he knew to avoid it.

So it was a weird session, but is it one that you’d want to play in?

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The Session

At the end of last session the group had just killed off the Arcane Stalker, found another scarab, and found that someone was keeping an eye on Nahzir’s hotel room. So, they had a lot of things to take care of. They started out by heading out and taking the scarab, in a nightstand drawer, and the Arcane Stalker, in a trunk with them. Kip sent Kraig, his raven familiar, to follow the guy.

Thrain catches up with them as they have ditched the hotel and are trying to figure out their next move. They decide to split up with Barrai and Kip following after the person keeping an eye on Nahzir’s hotel room. Bokken and Thrain would take the drawer and the trunk to the school and Assendial.

Barrai and Kip track the mysterious figure to the bazaar where he seems to be meeting up with random people. They sneak up close enough so that Barrai can cast read thoughts. He basically finds out two people whom the guy is interested in finding and that this person, while they seem to be working with Nazhir is also frustrated with Nazhir. Things go really well for them and they are able to snag a couple of notes of the guy before spooking him. Kraig follows but loses him in a dark alley way, but the guy never comes out.

They light up the alley way in just enough time to see some dust settling. They find a trapdoor that reminds them of the one on the school. They fail to pry it open so they send for Bokken, being the strongest by sending Kraig to find them at the school.

Meanwhile, at the school, Bokken and Thrain see Tormin and Daedelous talking to a familiar looking figure to the one Bokken had seen in a flower shop, in fact, the same wispy and pale looking elf dressed in finery who had tried to buy him. Bokken goes and talks to them for a moment. She is a bit confused and they make some connection to the flower shop though Bokken denies being the display. It ends with him asking where Assendial is, and Tormin lets them know and to send her out to join them.

They show Assendial everything and she is more interested in going through everything in the drawer and studying the scarab than going out to meet someone She sends them to find out who it is and it turns out that the woman is a member of the Unseelie Courts which rule over Autumn and Winter. And the Arcane Stalker was part of the Winter court. So now they have another issue.

Assendial has them take Nazhir’s trunk to their barracks in order to avoid suspicion or make it obvious they’d murdered a member of the winter court. Kraig catches up to them there and gives them directions to the alley way where Kip and Barrai are. Bokken doesn’t have to pry open the trapdoor like Kip and Barrai were trying to do, but finds the spot that releases the trapdoor. They realize that the tunnel they are about to go down into leads from the school to the tower. But towards the school no one has gone recently. The tower on the other hand, there is definitely more traffic that way.

Behind the DM’s Screen

Not much to talk about behind the DM’s screen. There was some made up on the fly and some that I had been planning. The person the roof was always going to work with Nahzir, not be Nahzir himself. And the Lady of the Winter Court, that was something I decided to add. Some of it is because I don’t know all the answers to everything myself, so this allowed me to add in more things I can use.

Players also are now level 5, so the fighter has his extra attack, we’ll see how combats go now.

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I don’t think that matters if they already have. Dungeons and Dragons is a great spot to borrow, steal, and ask the players to help create your story with you. I talk about this often, Dungeons and Dragons is a cooperative story telling game, and that means that you can tell whatever story you want. Even if you are ripping off something else, go for it.

But You Want It To Be Original?

I get that, I really do. When I say rip something off, I don’t mean fully do that. Stealing a whole story is not going to be nearly as interesting as stealing pieces that you like. But using pieces that you like, that makes it easier on you. You don’t need to come up with everything yourself. I use stuff that I’ve read all the time, because it is cool. If there is a giant set piece in a story that I like, I will use that to create a combat or encounter in my game.

Tower of the Gods is a great example of this, you can find what is happening in that in the Friday Night D&D Posts. What is stolen in there? Well, first off, the whole idea of the tower, that is 100% stolen from the LitRPG series Arcane Ascension and Towers of Heaven. Heck, I named my campaign Towers of the Gods, it’s a bit on the nose. But I didn’t steal the whole plot of either of them.

How Do You Keep the Balance?

That is the trickier part, keeping a balance so that you don’t rip off everything. I think it’d be easy to just try and create the beats from either of those stories and see what happens. However, if someone already knows the story, that isn’t going to be interesting to them. It would be like playing through the Lord of the Rings trilogy. If Frodo still needs to throw the ring into Mount Doom, that’s boring. And never give your players the One Ring, they will abuse the power.

Instead, pick and choose a few things. In Tower of the Gods, I took the leveling up or getting the class power from the tower from Arcane Ascension. In that book, you go into the power and you get a power of some sort and that is where it starts for the main character. But, I also took the idea of potentially fighting over the tower, but that was from Towers to Heaven. Two separate story ideas that I wove together.

Borrow Lightly

So, with that example, borrow lightly. From Arcane Ascension, I took the leveling and the school idea. The plot that I run is very different. On the flip side, Towers to Heaven, I introduced the idea of fighting over the tower. But how I run that is exceedingly different than how the author of that book wrote it.

Like I was saying, grab nuggets of things. A concept or a image that you really like from a story. Weave that into your game and it saves brain power for you. But just borrow a little bit, even if people don’t know what. Because I want to tell my own story, and most DM’s are going to want to tell something that is fairly well their own.

Steal Moments

This is basically the same thing as borrowing lightly. Don’t steal everything. But it is totally okay to steal things that stuck out to you. If there is an important moment in the story, such as the luck of the draw when getting your class in Arcane Ascension, steal that. I 100% just took that and put it into my story. They drink from a cup when they are about to exit the tower. My players picked a cup to drink from and that determined what class they got.

So that imagery, I really liked. It made sense to me for how you’d end up getting a class. Now, it totally went against how Dungeons and Dragons normally does it, but it was a fun way change things up for people who know D&D pretty well. I made it work different than it did in the book, though, giving the players more agency in potentially picking what class they ended up with.

Beg For Help

Now, this sounds silly, but asking the players to help will cause your story to verve at times towards story and tropes that have already been done. Most people who play Dungeons and Dragons know fantasy. You and I know all sorts of books, movies, and television shows that are fantasy. Whether we actively think about them all the time or not, that doesn’t matter, we know them. So when you ask for help in creating a location or character, you will find that tropes start to show up or ideas from books show up.

This is a good thing. Grounding your fantasy world and story into what people know is important. It means that you and the players are more connected to the world and can more easily understand what is going on. I get the idea to do something extremely out there and unique, but that isn’t always great. Sometimes it can take people out of the story, instead of keep them in.

Putting It All Together

So how much should you or shouldn’t you beg, borrow, and steal? That is a great question. For some stories, it might be a fair amount that is pulled in from other places. Or there might be chunks of the story that are and other chunks that aren’t.

In Tower of the Gods, the whole Dorin subplot, trust me, there is no way that is any published book. Or if it is, there is no way that I’d have made it to that part of a book, because it is just so weird. So while I borrow from Arcane Ascension and Towers to Heaven, there are other parts that you can blame the players for, or myself as the DM for letting it get there.

So don’t steal everything, people will know when you have the novel on the table with you. But borrowing a little bit, all of that is good. Stealing a memorable moment, that is amazing. And asking for help means that players will be even more engaged. Don’t be shy about it because what you do will never be exactly like that book, movie or television show.

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A quick recap of what is going on. The party has finished up their first year at school and after breaking Dorin, they decided it would be good to help him. This was after they had helped investigate two dragon attacks on the school. Kip was left behind to clear up a few details. Things went sideways on the trip as they were attacked by goblins multiple times, but they did get an Owlbear that Bokken named Fukuro Kuma.

The Session

Things started off not being as restful as the group would have hoped. The lands in which they were camping didn’t turn out to be too nice as the sunset and they were attacked by four specters. Things actually go really well. Even though Bokken can’t hit spirits the hardest, Barrai enhances his abilities and Thrain gives him protection from good and evil.

Now, I say it goes pretty well, Barrai is still knocked unconscious after taking down the first of the specters and drawing their ire. But Thrain is able to stabilize him with spare the dying and that worked out. Kip hearing the fight is able to join up with the party who are camping off the road. He has taken care of what he needed to in town and hurried to catch up with them. He joins as Dorin, who has his hands tied behind his back is taking off running away from the spirits.

Bokken sends Fukoro Kuma after Dorin to fetch him, but realizes that something might have been lost in translation between him and the Owlbear. This is in fact the case and Thrain, Bokken, and Kip, riding on the back of Bokken take off after Fukoro Kuma. With some dexterous grace, Kip launches off of Bokken getting into range to cast sleep on Fukuro Kuma, but it doesn’t work, he does manage to put both his bird Kraig and Dorin to sleep. This makes Dorin way easier for Fukoro Kuma to catch and he just destroys Dorin to the point that Dorin is starting to bleed out.

Thrain, being the slowest of the group, makes it up there after Bokken has distracted Fukoro Kuma with some rations. They get Dorin back to the unconscious body of Barrai and decide to settle in for the night. Bokken takes Fukoro Kuma with him to make sure that no one finds them and that the owlbear won’t eat Dorin.

The next two days were a whole lot more uneventful with Kip trying to teach Dorin how be a better pirate. Teaching him how pirates love treasure and booty, which Dorin of course will take the wrong way. They untie him to bring him into town and find out that his family actually own a textile wholesale company. This works out decently well for the group as Bokken is able to get help making armor from the goblin’s leather for Fukoro Kuma.

They send Dorin out so that they can talk to his father running the shop. They get some information including that this textile company is the one that provides the fabric to the shop where they bought their fancy clothes and where they got the clue on that wizard whom Addrus was working with. Things seem to be settling down when they hear some noises from down the street. Dorin has found his way into a bar and has picked a fight after harassing a patron. Fortunately, Bokken can squeeze into this gnome only establishment, at least built for that, and that basically does the trick.

The night ends with them finding an animal handler that Bokken leaves Fukoro Kuma with. He pays for a few months of training for Fukoro Kuma so that there won’t be a situation where the owlbear will try and kill someone in their party again. They send Dorin back off to his family and settle in for the night.

Behind the DM’s Screen

The person playing Kip was back this week. The question that came up with that is how do you get him back to the group. I’d narrated that he’d spent the day before dealing with stuff at the school. The sirens from the previous night could have been Kip had the player been able to make it to that session. So the plan was, with the amount of time wasted on finding Dorin, that’ll give Kip time to catch back up. And it worked, I just needed a reason for him to be able to find them off the main road. Having specters scream seemed like a simple solution.

Then Dorin’s home town of Castleveinea. I’m not sure that we’re done with everything that is going on there. but I’ve been dropping more hints about this textile place or really driving home the point that they gave them the address for Addruss’s friend, the wizard. So we’ll see if they go down that route or what their plan is, I feel like they are going to leave Castleveinea next session and probably think about picking up that thread (all cloth puns intended).

What do you think of this session? Have you played a game where you’ve needed to do an escort mission before? Or as a DM, have you played where the players have picked up a pet that can fight in combat. What did you do with that?

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The Idea

This is something different, normally I pitch campaigns, this time I want to do something different. This would be three one shots that all come together at the end. I would put together three groups of two players, maybe three players, and take them through the opening part of the race. Let them get to the tower, but when you can see the tower, that is when you end the session. Then you get all three of the groups together and let them fight over and all the way up into the tower.

The trick for running this will be timing. It’s pretty unlikely that all the groups would arrive at the tower at the exact same time. In fact, I think in the one shots you’ll have to be keeping track of timed elements to figure out who makes it to the tower first. Of course, getting up the tower won’t be easy, and you can do things to delay the first group more than the other groups. Then that last session, you have the groups arrive at different times, tell people to start at different times. So if one group was fast, they get there and get an hour to get as far into the tower as they can. Or maybe half an hour, then the other groups show up. Of course, now that the first group has cleared the tower to a point that makes it really fast for the other groups to catch up with them. Now it’s a question of, will any of them survive to the top. Will they work together or will it all fall apart?

So that first session, what would be the plan for that? I think that it should be about finding where the Wizard’s Tower is. create a general map of the lands, and create some points of interest, different ones for each group that they have to get through. One should be focused on combat, give them a number of small missions and then a clue for where the tower is. The next one could be about puzzles and riddles, again getting a clue for where the tower is when they complete it. Another could fall more into skill challenges, and you guessed it another clue. I think that three things would be solid for a one shot, you want them to do enough and lose some hit points, spend some resources, but not have so much to do that you’d need two or three sessions leading into it. The wizard’s tower is magical, so it can get hidden anywhere, so the whole race, I think, makes sense to take place in a day or at most two, so that the players are a bit resource poor leading into the final session.

Then that last session, we’re going to be staggering when people arrive to the table, like I said. The fastest group will do the job of clearing part of the tower. And then it can be a free for all as players and groups try to make it to the top of the tower. I would make this session as crazy as possible. Make nuts puzzles with high checks for things like dexterity and strength. Give really open ended challenges and just see what the players decide to do to solve them. Let PvP happen if the players want it to happen. Or they can work together. Because when they find the top of the tower, there will be a giant monster for them all to fight or get devoured by. I’m thinking like how it’s a monster in the vault in Borderlands that you need to fight. Let them spend resources and just have a blast with it. Who knows, maybe no one will make it to the top.

Challenges

Now, I think this could be a good game to run. However, this is a very challenging game to run. You need more buy in from the people playing in the game. In a normal campaign, you can pivot a little as you realize what the players are really looking for in the game. But with this, it’s going to be harder, the game is almost on rails, though stuff like picking which spot to checkout first is going to be up to the players. If they fight the other groups, that’s going to be up to the players. But this would be more coordinating. How I’d probably do it is that I’d run the first session on the way to the tower over a single week and then that weekend, Saturday afternoon, I’d plan to meet up at a local FLGS that has food and drinks and make an afternoon and into an evening out of it.

Timing everything up as well is going to be interesting as well. I think that getting 30 minutes off of another groups time makes sense, so if one group is really late, they start an hour later than the others in terms of making it to the tower. Now, you could have everyone arrive at the same time, but it’d be kind of fun to have the groups show up to that last session at a staggered times to kind of create more of the feel of what happened in the game. Again, that makes it a bit trickier as you are trying to coordinate times.

Would You Run This Game?

Even for me, this game is a hard sell to run or play in. I like the concept a lot, but of all the people I have ran D&D for locally, I don’t know that I have enough to pull off a game like this. I’d really like to do it with nine people, three groups of three, and I could maybe make that work, but getting schedules to work together, that’d just be tricky. Even for six players, three groups of two, that is tricky. And I thought about this maybe at a con setting, but to commit to two sessions of a single game is a lot for a lot of players who really want to just get to trying as many things as possible.

How about you, would you run a game like this? Would you play in a game like this?

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But this idea, it isn’t that type of game. The world is peaceful and the characters lead normal lives. No one goes out adventuring to stop anything, there are no wars that need to be broken up. Goblins are nice, Chromatic Dragons are peaceful, deomons aren’t even a thing that cross people’s minds.

This, however, isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. And it kind of needs to be that way, because otherwise it’s a boring game. If there is no danger, what is going to push the players out adventuring? What is going to keep them going out instead of just starting a nice little school for adventurers? Where do you get even the skills for adventuring?

The Perfect World

The lands of Calagathra are beautiful. The crops grow and there is always enough food. While people get old and pass away, no one has died of an accident or illness. There are no wars between the neighboring rulers. Everything is amazing.

The players start out in the capitol city of one of the lands, and everything is amazing. They are part of a school which is focused on teaching about the history of the lands. But the lands of Calagathra only seem to go back about 1000 years. Before that, besides the creation story, there is no information. But there are rumors of ruins, at the edges of the Silver Mountains, in the middle of the Swamps of Carthak, and deep below the blue waves of the Estidial Sea.

That is the jumping off point for the campaign. The players, either because they are required to or because they want to, will pick one to go investigate. What they find is going to be a world that doesn’t match the rest of Calagathra. Going to the place is not a sanctioned activity, but a Professor can ask them to assist or investigate something if they need motivation. But the ruins are banned for people to go to, for some reason. But everything else is so perfect that no one cares. Most people who study are doing so because technology, magic, and knowledge of the natural worlds is growing at an amazing rate.

The Ruins

The ruins should tell the players that something isn’t what it seems. Which ever one they pick, it is going to be the first spot they encounter danger. The further they go into the ruins, the more danger there is. We are talking skeletons in some areas, traps in other areas, but also just injury, checks they need to make to avoid accidents. If you make a trap, maybe make it a poison or a disease.

With that, though, the player characters learn about the world as well. They find out that the perfect lands of Calagathra might not have been so perfect before. The ruins contain signs of battles, they find remains, unanimated, of people, they see ghosts and specters who either attack or beg for help. And the characters should be unprepared for this. I would let the characters buy weapons, but when they start, roll for gold instead of letting them pick equipment. Weapons outside of something like an axe or knife don’t exist in this world or are just toys.

The further the go into the ruins, the more weird that they find, like I have said. But what’s in the middle? I think there needs to be something that captures their attention. The adventure is kicked off by whatever they find. Bind a spirit of something powerful and hide it away deep in the ruins.

Break The World

That spirit, that is a good spirit. Or it was a good spirit anyways. The spirit tells a lie about why it was trapped and some of the truth when pressed. It was trapped along with three of it’s kin to create almost a protective field around the lands of Calagathra. Nothing bad is allowed to come through, no murders, no robberies, no diseases, no accidents, nothing of the sort. The players, by stepping foot into this area, are now free of the compulsion to be good, however. In fact, anyone who steps into the ruins, any of them will lose that compulsion.

The spirit asks to be freed. Basically talking about all the pain, suffering and agony that it is taking on, the stuff that could be happening to the people. Not that will, but that could happen, all the possibilities, and how it is slowly tearing it apart. The spirit promises to help them, promises to try and keep as much calamity at bay as it can, in exchange to being freed. It should only promise twice though.

Now, there are a few things that can happen. The players can free the spirit. If they don’t, someone else can free another spirit. Maybe have the professor leading one team and the players going on another. Either way, when one spirit is freed, you can either have the other two freed or all the pain and everything can crash into those two causing them to explode or something along those lines.

Either way, when the players come back to town, or come back to the world of Calagathra, things are going poorly. People are getting sick and something like a common cold is now a big deal because no immune system has had to deal with anything for years. People break a leg and that does them in because no one knows how to heal. The weather starts to become unpredictable versus a light shower most mornings and then sunny in the afternoon with a mid 70’s high. Basically the world is breaking up.

Where To Go From There?

There are so many ways you can go with this. Villains arise, dragons start to horde again and attack, demons could even show up. And of course, the players will be blamed at least in the capitol and at their school for what happened. So put the players on the run. Also, the good spirit, make it fey, and it didn’t promise three times, and it said it’d help as much as it can. However, the other two spirits did not. So even the helpful spirit, which should bounce between our realm and the fey realm needing to recharge, shouldn’t be that helpful.

The decision or the players asks if they should capture, basically torturing the spirits again, or if there is another answer. As well as they should be on the run, and they need to try and stop some power hungry people who happen to be ahead of the curve when it comes to being the ones in control.

At the end of the campaign, I think the players will face a decision that can go a few ways. They can capture spirits again and learn to trap them. Or they can do a never ending job of stopping power hungry wizards or dragons, but there will be a big bad who is going to try and destroy the world. That can be the one they focus on at the end of campaign and need to stop.

Heck, even make it their Professor who is stepping in wherever they create a power vacuum by stopping someone else, pretending to be good. Make it their scheme that set this all in motion. The Professor can monologue about how they had gone to the ruins before and been enlightened. They knew that they need a fall person to free the spirits, someone who everyone would blame. They could then be the good person coming in after, but really, they wanted to destroy it in a way where they ruled everything.

And that is the Perfect World campaign. Is this one that you’d be interested in running? As a player would you want to play in a game like this? Now, it hits some traditional things later on, how would you role play in the perfect world?

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The Session

So last session the group deciphered the code, and by that, I mean, they figured out how the code was going to work and I sent what they’d translated to them via e-mail, the information is at the end of the post.

They decide to take some of the information to Assendial, though they decide to hold a fair amount back just in case they need it. After a little bit of convincing, Assendial agrees to let them talk to Addrus. A few good rolls happened here, and some decent enough reasoning. Assendial, however, came along as an observer on the outside.

She cast zone of truth on the room where Addrus is, it also gets the area that she’s watching from. And half the party makes their saving throw against it and half fails. Barrai and Thrain are no longer able to lie, but Bokken and Kip take over with the interrogation with Bokken leading the way into a bloody mess. They slowly figure out that Addrus doesn’t seem to know anything about the dragon attack which they’d begun to expect from the notes that were passed back and forth between him and Kazhir. Things go sideways as Addrus decides to use a poison capsule after Bokken stabs him in the eye with a needle.

Assendial decides that was enough and goes in and casts cure wounds, but they tell her that he’s poisoned himself and she casts a lesser restoration on him to cure the poison. And she pulls Thrain and Barrai aside to question them, because their line of questioning had dropped the name of Kazhir and the fact that Addrus might not be from Adanac as originally thought.

Bokken and Kip continue their questioning and find out that Addrus and the people he was working with, their plan was to figure out how to make the towers go away. Bokken thinks back on what he knows about Carlsbekistan and what side they were on in the war. They were a loner country that really fought for itself during the war. While Adanac teamed up with a few other countries as the war went on, and they mainly opposed another two countries who allied together, Carlsbekistan always worked on it’s own until the four countries were able to beat the two countries, at which time Carlsbekistan fell into line.

Meanwhile, in the other room, Barrai and Thrain are asked questions about how they know this all and where they got the information. Assendial eventually gets most of the information out of them, because they have to tell her the truth, or not answer. But they manage to keep from her that Addrus had a medallion for the Crescent Ravens in his lock box as well.

As the interrogation wraps up and they head back to the school, they decide that it might be time to take Dorin back to his people and finally drop off the trunk with him in it. But of course, they decide to deliver it themselves. They also think that maybe what Addrus was dealing with and plotting might be less to do with their dragon issues and more to do with something at the national level. So it’s side quest time, that the players chose.

Before they head out, there are some fights that Bokken takes part in at the bar they attend, sanctioned fights. Barrai makes some money doing some fortune telling. And they decide to go buy some fancy clothes. They fine a shop that looks extremely fancy and has a long name, Lincoln Montgomery, Frazier, Alheim, Ostervold. It seems familiar to them and Bokken realizes that it’s the initials that were sown into the cloak that they’d found that the wizard, whom they now believe to be Kazhir, had dropped. They go in and it’s expensive but Bokken and Barrai get some fancy clothes and also get an address from the store for where they might find Kazhir, but that information cost them even more.

The Coded Messages

Kazhir
In place will contact shortly nothing to report
Addrus

Addrus
Keep an eye out there is rival as well
Kazhir

Kazhir

Any details who should I be looking for
Addrus

Addrus
No details keep an eye out prepare for phase one
Kazhir

Kazhir
Phase one is started the dragon attack messed things up will need to meet with contact again
Addrus

Addrus
Continue as planned I will look into the attack
Kazhir

Kazhir
Phase one is complete will await directions for phase two there are three students who are aware something might be wrong
Addrus

Addrus
Keep an eye on them hold off on phase two until I give the word
Kazhir

Behind the DM’s Screen

This was very much a wing it episode. I could have seen this going a number of ways. And I wanted to give them some options. Now they picked going to Assendial immediately, I could have also seen them trying to track down Kazhir somehow, or just deciding to take Dorin to his home, which might have had a name before but is now Castleveinea.

I also didn’t expect Bokken to immediately escalate their interrogation, though they have been prone to violence. It was an interesting thing because my first roll against their deceptions, persuasions, and intimidations was okay and then I went 1, 1, 20, 19, 20, 1, 16, and 20. So I hit extremes everywhere on my rolls, though that last 20 Bokken used an inspiration because it was his charisma (which is -1) Addrus which is +2 and it ended up being natural 20’s facing off and thinking they were about done questioning the player decided to use it and got up to a 24 (so rolled a five) which caused him to be Addrus’s check.

It’ll be interesting to see what happens on the side quest that’s coming up. I need to figure out my plans for it, because it could just be a straight up side quest where not much happens, there could be things happening at the school in the town while they are gone that will progress the story, it could be that the side quest yields some very useful information, we’ll just have to see.

So kind of a different session, but would you play in one like this?

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The Inspiration

Right now in Minnesota we’re going through a massive deep freeze, in the southern part of the state, we might not get above 0 Fahrenheit for several days, and the lows have been very low, -14 with -30 wind chill (-25 and -34 centigrade). So how can you create a game around something like that, and that is where The Frosts of Rhime come in.

The Setting

A deep magic, something long forgotten, has awakened throwing the lands of Rhime into an ice age. Frost Giants harrow the lands removing the smaller folks, humans, elves, halflings, and even breaking down into the dwellings of the dwarves deep below. A white dragon of an ancient stature sits on the remains of the largest city in the lands.

Deep deep below the rending claws of the dragon and delving of the Frost Giants, pockets of people huddle, always trying to dig deeper below, get closer to the center of the lands and further away from the ever increasing cold that is seeping down.

The Campaign

The player characters come from one of these pockets of people left down below. Just from that setting and telling them to come from one of the groups of people together is enough for the creation for a lot of good backstories.

Their goal, of course, is to return the lands to the ways that they were or at least stop them all from freezing to death. This means beating back Frost Giants, the ancient White Dragon, and more creatures of the cold before they freeze to death. Freezing is actually going to be one of the timers of the game. Unless they can make it back to one of the under ground settlements in time, which are moving, exhaustion becomes a real thing. This is a deep cold that even a magical resistance can only slow down a little.

There are two ways you can drop the players into this game. Firstly, start at level 1, give them small battles leading up to leveling up where they can start to deal with the bigger threats in the world. Or you drop them in at a higher level and let them start to deal with the bigger things. This is one where I might start at the higher level. I don’t know that survivability of low level characters is going to be that likely, even the most heroic.

When I talk about exhaustion, I’m talking about using those D&D rules where eventually you can die. Players at higher levels are going to have creative ways to deal with it more than characters at lower levels and they might be able to stay out for more prolonged times. It might be too deadly for lower level characters. I do want to tweak, a little how exhaustion hurts the players, instead of making their check for it at the end of the day, this is something from the middle of each day. And you need to spend a full day out of the elements deep below the ground to shake it. So no magical housing is going to get it out of your bones unless, maybe, the players spend a full 24 hours in there.

The players are going to battle their way up until they are eventually facing off against an ancient white dragon. At level 20, them versus the ancient white dragon should be in their advantage, but bring in some of the allies that the white dragon seems to have, like the frost giants.

Before that, they will need to get something, the mcguffin, something that the white dragon has used, somewhere in the lands to bring down this frost. Most likely at the top of a mountain that is treacherous to get up and could cause them to die just from exposure. So at the mid levels/early part of the campaign, make it about figuring out where that item is, what that item is, and how to undo what has already been done. Then as time goes on and they get better and stronger, let them go up there, deal with Frost Giants who are guarding the items for the white dragon.

How does this game sound to you? Do these post apocalyptic style of games where survival is key seem interesting to you or do you prefer more focused on high fantasy?

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