Backbone of my Eberron campaign [Archive] - Wizards Community

Backbone of my Eberron campaign [Archive] - Wizards Community

Post/Author/DateTime Post
Flashboy
09-18-05, 08:36 AM Hi guys,

I'm GMing an Eberron campaign here and I needed to define
the backbone on the whole story, so I thought I could send it to you
and have your oppinion. This is going to be quite sketchy anyway.

I have the following characters: a changeling thieve from Sharn, a
swashbuckler-sorcerer wannabe, and a druid and a shifter scout from the
Eldeen Reaches.

The characters met in the north of Thrane and solved a mistery in a
small village there where a couple of kobolds where looking for a tiny
chain devil and two imps who scaped a box prison they held them (it's
an adventure from Dungeon mag); I introduce demons in an early stage.
After that they joined a caravan and scorted them to Wroat, in
Breland, where they're playing the first module of "The witchfire
trilogy" (Privateer Press). There they'll see how a monk fiend
working with the Lords of Dust retrieves a powerful sword and gets
away with it.

They should chase him to the north of Breland and arrive to the Black
Pit, where we'll play "Servants of Darkness", a Ravenloft adventure
from 2nd edition. After that I'll keep them hanging around until the
big story begins and I start running my own adventures. Meanwhile they
keep learning news from the Graywall mountains: the brelish army is
always fighting Drooamite monsters, now more intenselly than ever.

During the Race of the eight Winds in Sharn, they'll be contacted by a
young girl. She's the secretary of a P.I. who was looking for an
exotic dancer dissapeared not long ago. The P.I. was originally
contracted by a man from house Orien, but now the P.I. is gone too.
They'll have to investigate around, get in touch with halfling mafia
and other stuff. They'll be contacted too by two elves from house
Phyarlan and a girl who's somehow involved with the Chamber. They're
keeping the PI safe, but he's inconcious and in danger. They
discover that the girl came from one of the tribes of Argonessen. She
is needed in her island before the dragon is born or something
cathastrophic might happen, they don't know where she is, but the P.I.
does!. The only way to cure him is to prepare an infussion from the
dragon egg the girl was keeping... in Argonessen!

Once they get to the island they find everyone almost dead. They only
eat food purifyed by that girl, and they're starving now... and then
the little dragon breaks the egg and of it goes. After that and some
jungle adventure, the mother dragon comes. She is a golden dragon who
explains how important are the characters for the coming events and
so, they must rescue the girl. She'll get in touch soon.

They come back to Sharn, heal the P.I.... and learn that the girl was
originally kidnapped by someone who might be that monk from the Lords
of Dust again. His ship was attacked by pirates and those pirates sold
the girl as a slave and ***** to the halfling mafia from Sharn. They kept her
dancing in low-life bars untill someone from above saw her and bought
her freedom, the guy from house Orien. But now she's gone again. The
monk has re-captured her again and took her to Drooam. They arrive
just in time to see how the monk kills the girl with the sword they where
chasing around a few weeks ago, and they fight a few medusas and
cockatrices and stuff. There they learn that the Lords of Dust are
behind all those skirmishes in the Graywall mountains, instigating
each side agains the other... but they don't know why yet.

After a non related adventure more, Breland declares official war on
those mountains, they plan to pacify them for good, and they're
seaching allyances. Then the gold dragon gets to them again (they
won't know it's the dragon), she tells them that the war should not
take place as the draconic prophecy said. In the last days of the war
against demons, the dragons imprisoned a powerful demonic being in those
mountains, a powerful white dragon went imprisioned willingly too with the
fiend to guard it and a Quatl binded his soul to keep them both in
slumber forever. But if too much blood is shed over those mountains, the devil
might rise again.

They will try to stop the war, but they'll eventually fail. When the
battle begins it will imply Breland and the Silver Flame from Thrane in one side
and Drooam in the other one, while the other nations remain neutral,
except by Karnnath who is forced by the Vol people to help Drooam. And
leading the Drooamite armies, our monk friend from the Lords of Dust!.

They learn that to bind the devil again when/if it rises they need an
artifact that is in a ruined church in the Mourland. They retrieve it
after facing some people from the Lord of the Blade. The artifact
works with one of each kind of dragonshard, they have two of them, the
third is broken; but it exists an exact duplicate in the Demon Wastes.

Only a very ill Illithid, about to die and with
nothing to loose knows about that particular dragonshard. He tells them
that he'll tell them who has it if they let him taste a last delicatessen before he dies: the brain of an innocent child (that is sooo mean, I know!). However they solve it, the dragonshard is in the power of another illithid, who happens to be a direct enemy of the now not-so-ill mindflayer...

When they get back to Breland the war has already began. The more
blood is shed the biggest the danger... At some dramatic point, they see how an old and bizarre red dragon rises from the ground with a horde of devils.
During the years of prision, the devil has fought psionicly the white
dragon guarding him, and won... and has slowly changed the very
essence of the dragon turning him into an abyssal drake
(Draconomicon). Big battle, and when everything seems lost, a few
dragons appear to fight the devils.... and when the first dragon dies,
the devil arises!... they have to activate the machine and near from
the devil, invoque the soul of the Couatl... And then....we'll see...

What do you think?, is it too bizarre?. Any comments will be appreciated.
TheRedRobedWizard
09-18-05, 09:13 AM Be prepared to have your entire campaign plan scrapped at any given moment. PCs are great at that. Instead of planning months worth of stuff ahead of time, just do two sessions. Have an idea of where the story might go, but don't put so much of it down that it keeps the PCs from doing what they will.

It also seems to rely a lot on NPCs leading them around by the nose and having NPCs do the saving of the day at the end.

Kids hate railroading and NPCs saving the day. Don't plan everything out ahead of time, or they'll throw a wrench in it. Tis what PCs do best.

-TRRW
cerberuspuppy
09-18-05, 11:31 PM You'll have to be careful not to lead the Players around by the nose. For one thing, you can't plan out everything in advance, and for another, if things happen following a pre-set plot right down the rail, they will get pretty frustrated pretty quickly. No offense, but it sounds like you're making too many assumptions about what will happen and what the players will do.

I could point out some examples, but this one sticks out the most- How do you know they will fail to prevent the war? Players can be very crafty, and they outnumber you. If they put their minds to it, they can solve problems in ways you never anticipated. What if they come up with some brilliant plan to stop the war- something that would clearly work, and you can't make it not work without pulling some giant deus ex out of thin air and ruining the believability of the whole plot. Do you do that, and basically cheat the players out of their victory?

While if it really seems like they could have stopped it and didn't, that's much better. Did they dally on a shopping trip? Oh, look, they're a day too late.

There's lots of good advice in the DMG, but I will add my own opinion: Plot = character + action. What's the plot? It's what the characters are doing. War, famine, disaster- all that big picture type stuff isn't plot; it's backdrop- setting, really. Granted, the plot is usually set into motion by the villains, and the heroes find themselves re-acting, but still...

To build the plot, start with the characters. What do they want, and how are they going to go about getting it? Or what will they do if they can't get it? The big evil wizard is going to try to open up a portal to let the demon out? Okay, what is he going to need? Think about the steps he will have to take, the missions upon which he will send his lackeys, etc. If it helps, write a flow chart or timeline of what he will accomplish when.

That is, if he isn't stopped. Seems that stupid goblin failed to retrieve a rare spell component because some elves and a human got to it first. :D Well, then, he will have to find another one, or send a better lackey to steal the first one away from those meddlers.

In that sort of way, the agendas of the PCs and the BBEG clash, and create conflict. A good default is to start the party out as general pro-adventurers who are out to "fight evil and get gold". Then, they make natural enemies of others competing for the same resources and many evil creatures they happen across in their travels. It develops organically.
Flashboy
09-19-05, 08:20 AM Thank you guys for your comments.

In fact, I pretty much assume what you both say in your posts. I've been GMing for almost 20 years and I have a good idea of how a campaign develops and how players run around your plans. But I don't like series of random adventures without a defined plot line to follow. I want to know where my campaign starts and where it leads and eventually, where it is going to end. I think that a good GM knows how to direct the interests of the players while leaving them lots of room to decide their own path (or at least, let them think they do :D ), and improvise and generate a brand new interesting plot line on the spot if needed.

Obviously my players can totally ignore what's going on around them. They can decide that they want to go and chase gold in Xen'drik, but when they get back home loaded with gold, they'll find their places devastated by devils and horrors from Kyber; because that is what is going to happen in the world whether they do something about it or not. If they stop the war as it is planned, great, they'll become heroes; if not, shadow will fall over the middl... err..sorry, Korvaire; and they'll have to deal with that too. I like to believe that this meta-plan is designed to make great epic heroes out of them, which I think is one of the main stepping stones of Eberron campaign-wise.

So, let's look at this thread from a different point of view; ignore the fact that I'll be running this campaign and think of it as a summary for an Eberron novel. Do you think it would work? does it make sense with the world? do you think the enemies and factions are placed in the right spot and used properly? do you think it is an interesting set of events to be involved in?

Cheers,

DVD
Sir Elton
09-19-05, 09:07 AM Keep your campaign ideas. Run your campaign, have fun. Just let the players control the pacing and do what they want.

Structure is good. But Robin basically said to keep it in the background in his T.V. Campaign article in Dragon.

Post/Author/DateTime	Post
Flashboy 09-18-05, 08:36 AM	Hi guys, I'm GMing an Eberron campaign here and I needed to define the backbone on the whole story, so I thought I could send it to you and have your oppinion. This is going to be quite sketchy anyway. I have the following characters: a changeling thieve from Sharn, a swashbuckler-sorcerer wannabe, and a druid and a shifter scout from the Eldeen Reaches. The characters met in the north of Thrane and solved a mistery in a small village there where a couple of kobolds where looking for a tiny chain devil and two imps who scaped a box prison they held them (it's an adventure from Dungeon mag); I introduce demons in an early stage. After that they joined a caravan and scorted them to Wroat, in Breland, where they're playing the first module of "The witchfire trilogy" (Privateer Press). There they'll see how a monk fiend working with the Lords of Dust retrieves a powerful sword and gets away with it. They should chase him to the north of Breland and arrive to the Black Pit, where we'll play "Servants of Darkness", a Ravenloft adventure from 2nd edition. After that I'll keep them hanging around until the big story begins and I start running my own adventures. Meanwhile they keep learning news from the Graywall mountains: the brelish army is always fighting Drooamite monsters, now more intenselly than ever. During the Race of the eight Winds in Sharn, they'll be contacted by a young girl. She's the secretary of a P.I. who was looking for an exotic dancer dissapeared not long ago. The P.I. was originally contracted by a man from house Orien, but now the P.I. is gone too. They'll have to investigate around, get in touch with halfling mafia and other stuff. They'll be contacted too by two elves from house Phyarlan and a girl who's somehow involved with the Chamber. They're keeping the PI safe, but he's inconcious and in danger. They discover that the girl came from one of the tribes of Argonessen. She is needed in her island before the dragon is born or something cathastrophic might happen, they don't know where she is, but the P.I. does!. The only way to cure him is to prepare an infussion from the dragon egg the girl was keeping... in Argonessen! Once they get to the island they find everyone almost dead. They only eat food purifyed by that girl, and they're starving now... and then the little dragon breaks the egg and of it goes. After that and some jungle adventure, the mother dragon comes. She is a golden dragon who explains how important are the characters for the coming events and so, they must rescue the girl. She'll get in touch soon. They come back to Sharn, heal the P.I.... and learn that the girl was originally kidnapped by someone who might be that monk from the Lords of Dust again. His ship was attacked by pirates and those pirates sold the girl as a slave and ***** to the halfling mafia from Sharn. They kept her dancing in low-life bars untill someone from above saw her and bought her freedom, the guy from house Orien. But now she's gone again. The monk has re-captured her again and took her to Drooam. They arrive just in time to see how the monk kills the girl with the sword they where chasing around a few weeks ago, and they fight a few medusas and cockatrices and stuff. There they learn that the Lords of Dust are behind all those skirmishes in the Graywall mountains, instigating each side agains the other... but they don't know why yet. After a non related adventure more, Breland declares official war on those mountains, they plan to pacify them for good, and they're seaching allyances. Then the gold dragon gets to them again (they won't know it's the dragon), she tells them that the war should not take place as the draconic prophecy said. In the last days of the war against demons, the dragons imprisoned a powerful demonic being in those mountains, a powerful white dragon went imprisioned willingly too with the fiend to guard it and a Quatl binded his soul to keep them both in slumber forever. But if too much blood is shed over those mountains, the devil might rise again. They will try to stop the war, but they'll eventually fail. When the battle begins it will imply Breland and the Silver Flame from Thrane in one side and Drooam in the other one, while the other nations remain neutral, except by Karnnath who is forced by the Vol people to help Drooam. And leading the Drooamite armies, our monk friend from the Lords of Dust!. They learn that to bind the devil again when/if it rises they need an artifact that is in a ruined church in the Mourland. They retrieve it after facing some people from the Lord of the Blade. The artifact works with one of each kind of dragonshard, they have two of them, the third is broken; but it exists an exact duplicate in the Demon Wastes. Only a very ill Illithid, about to die and with nothing to loose knows about that particular dragonshard. He tells them that he'll tell them who has it if they let him taste a last delicatessen before he dies: the brain of an innocent child (that is sooo mean, I know!). However they solve it, the dragonshard is in the power of another illithid, who happens to be a direct enemy of the now not-so-ill mindflayer... When they get back to Breland the war has already began. The more blood is shed the biggest the danger... At some dramatic point, they see how an old and bizarre red dragon rises from the ground with a horde of devils. During the years of prision, the devil has fought psionicly the white dragon guarding him, and won... and has slowly changed the very essence of the dragon turning him into an abyssal drake (Draconomicon). Big battle, and when everything seems lost, a few dragons appear to fight the devils.... and when the first dragon dies, the devil arises!... they have to activate the machine and near from the devil, invoque the soul of the Couatl... And then....we'll see... What do you think?, is it too bizarre?. Any comments will be appreciated.
TheRedRobedWizard 09-18-05, 09:13 AM	Be prepared to have your entire campaign plan scrapped at any given moment. PCs are great at that. Instead of planning months worth of stuff ahead of time, just do two sessions. Have an idea of where the story might go, but don't put so much of it down that it keeps the PCs from doing what they will. It also seems to rely a lot on NPCs leading them around by the nose and having NPCs do the saving of the day at the end. Kids hate railroading and NPCs saving the day. Don't plan everything out ahead of time, or they'll throw a wrench in it. Tis what PCs do best. -TRRW
cerberuspuppy 09-18-05, 11:31 PM	You'll have to be careful not to lead the Players around by the nose. For one thing, you can't plan out everything in advance, and for another, if things happen following a pre-set plot right down the rail, they will get pretty frustrated pretty quickly. No offense, but it sounds like you're making too many assumptions about what will happen and what the players will do. I could point out some examples, but this one sticks out the most- How do you know they will fail to prevent the war? Players can be very crafty, and they outnumber you. If they put their minds to it, they can solve problems in ways you never anticipated. What if they come up with some brilliant plan to stop the war- something that would clearly work, and you can't make it not work without pulling some giant deus ex out of thin air and ruining the believability of the whole plot. Do you do that, and basically cheat the players out of their victory? While if it really seems like they could have stopped it and didn't, that's much better. Did they dally on a shopping trip? Oh, look, they're a day too late. There's lots of good advice in the DMG, but I will add my own opinion: Plot = character + action. What's the plot? It's what the characters are doing. War, famine, disaster- all that big picture type stuff isn't plot; it's backdrop- setting, really. Granted, the plot is usually set into motion by the villains, and the heroes find themselves re-acting, but still... To build the plot, start with the characters. What do they want, and how are they going to go about getting it? Or what will they do if they can't get it? The big evil wizard is going to try to open up a portal to let the demon out? Okay, what is he going to need? Think about the steps he will have to take, the missions upon which he will send his lackeys, etc. If it helps, write a flow chart or timeline of what he will accomplish when. That is, if he isn't stopped. Seems that stupid goblin failed to retrieve a rare spell component because some elves and a human got to it first. :D Well, then, he will have to find another one, or send a better lackey to steal the first one away from those meddlers. In that sort of way, the agendas of the PCs and the BBEG clash, and create conflict. A good default is to start the party out as general pro-adventurers who are out to "fight evil and get gold". Then, they make natural enemies of others competing for the same resources and many evil creatures they happen across in their travels. It develops organically.
Flashboy 09-19-05, 08:20 AM	Thank you guys for your comments. In fact, I pretty much assume what you both say in your posts. I've been GMing for almost 20 years and I have a good idea of how a campaign develops and how players run around your plans. But I don't like series of random adventures without a defined plot line to follow. I want to know where my campaign starts and where it leads and eventually, where it is going to end. I think that a good GM knows how to direct the interests of the players while leaving them lots of room to decide their own path (or at least, let them think they do :D ), and improvise and generate a brand new interesting plot line on the spot if needed. Obviously my players can totally ignore what's going on around them. They can decide that they want to go and chase gold in Xen'drik, but when they get back home loaded with gold, they'll find their places devastated by devils and horrors from Kyber; because that is what is going to happen in the world whether they do something about it or not. If they stop the war as it is planned, great, they'll become heroes; if not, shadow will fall over the middl... err..sorry, Korvaire; and they'll have to deal with that too. I like to believe that this meta-plan is designed to make great epic heroes out of them, which I think is one of the main stepping stones of Eberron campaign-wise. So, let's look at this thread from a different point of view; ignore the fact that I'll be running this campaign and think of it as a summary for an Eberron novel. Do you think it would work? does it make sense with the world? do you think the enemies and factions are placed in the right spot and used properly? do you think it is an interesting set of events to be involved in? Cheers, DVD
Sir Elton 09-19-05, 09:07 AM	Keep your campaign ideas. Run your campaign, have fun. Just let the players control the pacing and do what they want. Structure is good. But Robin basically said to keep it in the background in his T.V. Campaign article in Dragon.