Post/Author/DateTime	Post
scissors 05-19-05, 08:13 PM	..starting up a baseline for a new Eberron campaign. I've seen other threads like this before but I feel way behind, because I don't even know where to start! I own the ECS, Sharn: City of Towers and Races of Eberron. I've read through them all and I'm still even struggling with the starting location. At first I thought I'd run the Forgotten Forge and the three after it, but I'd much rather start something entirely my own and get the real feel for it... but I'm stuck. I've thought about starting it in the Principilaties but I don't know. I do eventually want to use the Sharn source book, but I don't want to start the adventure there, rather fuse it in around lower-mid level. One idea I have thought about recently is using the Aerenal as a base for the campaign and focusing on using agents such as the Stillborn. Are these in a sourcebook? I haven't found them anywhere yet except the novel The Crimson Talisman. I've run games before, but most of those ideas do not seem they would work in Eberron.. they've all been Realms or Exalted games recently. Basically I want to do something other than run characters from hook to hook. I want a story line as I have had in other games, but Im struggling with story arc and metaplot ideas. All I know is, I do eventually want to incorporate Heroes of Battle into it, making an overall epic tale ( though probably not until around 8-10th level ). Any ideas? I'm up for anything! Thanks in advance. Scissors.
Kaleanae en'i Mori 05-20-05, 01:45 AM	the 3 modules are linked in a sense. We run Forgotten forge and its a good intro to Eberron and Sharn. I would staty in Sharn and that book itself can help with many adventure ideas. I make use of it and have my group after they did the modules now inthe Cogs up against Cavallah and the Daask and then onto Drooam.... Don't beat your self up over it. I suggest usign the modules as they give you a good feel and then start writing. Works for me.
Cloud Divider 05-20-05, 01:49 AM	..starting up a baseline for a new Eberron campaign. I've seen other threads like this before but I feel way behind, because I don't even know where to start! I know the feeling - there's so much cool stuff to do, I really have a hard time deciding what to do next. In fact, I'm goofing off right now by posting here, rather than finally deciding between 3-4 different adventure seeds (of my own design) and fleshing it out by Saturday... Do I do the conspiracy thing, or the horror game, something more straightforward...Then there's that whole ir'Tain gala masquerade ball I wanted to do for a session. Which story arc to lead in to? There's that whole Darguul civil war arc. Or the Dreaming Dark arc. Or the Sharn gang war arc. Then there's that whole "dueling spymasters" thing I want to explore... Or that mystery man I introduced back in the beginning... And that tie-in I wanted to do with the Next War...and the Last War, too! And didn't the Lord of Blades (or his minions anyway...) just show up a session ago? See, and the cool part, is that I could tie all of those things together, if I wanted... Gah! Too much good stuff! Can't focus! Basically I want to do something other than run characters from hook to hook. I want a story line as I have had in other games, but Im struggling with story arc and metaplot ideas. All I know is, I do eventually want to incorporate Heroes of Battle into it, making an overall epic tale ( though probably not until around 8-10th level ). I don't have Heroes of Battle, but I'm going to guess that it has something to do with mass combat. There's some interesting potential there... Any ideas? I'm up for anything! Thanks in advance. Scissors. My honest recommendation? Start simple, and have fun with the genre. Go all pulp noir action movie, and make sure you leave enough loose ends so you can take it in (almost) any direction you want later. Pick out some kind of cool "set piece" action scene, and work your way backwards. Interested in Sky Pirates and airships? How about more ...down to earth (er, water) nautical swashbuckling action with some Lhazaar pirates? How about an all-out running battle across a Lightning Rail? Or a Fifth Element-inspired high-speed skycoach chase in Sharn? That's what I did, and it worked phenomenally. I started with something simple: the frontispiece art in Sharn:CoT (a skycoach battle with gnolls on soarsleds) was my big inspiration. Throw in an arbitrary kidnapping, and cut to a zoomin'-an'-divin' Skycoach chase through the towers of Sharn, right down to having PC's dangling dramatically from the side of the fleeing Skycoach, and flying through parade banners (and through underpasses and breezeways)! It rocked mightily! Sure, there was a reason for the kidnapping, but honestly, it was more than vague enough to tie it into whatever plotline I may eventually decide upon (we're 4-5 sessions in, and we've still never quite gotten that resolved). Other possible campaigns that hit the proverbial "cutting room floor" by my desk: "The Voyage of the Vandenburg" (Korranberg Chronicle Headline) A consortium between the Lyrandar, Cannith, and Zils have constructed the largest airship to date! The Vandenburg has a crew of 25, but has room for over 70 passengers in ultimate luxury! The Vandenburg has just been christened at the skydock in (pick a Zil city...Korranberg or Zilspar or whatever), and is making it's maiden voyage tour across that major cities of Khorvaire! The passenger list on this maiden voyage is a veritable Who's Who of the elite of Khorvaire, making this mighty ship the place to see and be seen! You could run a fairly sizeable campaign around this. The PC's would either be guests of honor (maybe by mistake...or maybe by design), or just hired help. But just look at the possibilities: - Assassinations of VIPs to thwart! - Back-room deals and intrigue between the elite of Khorvaire - How 'bout some Darguul "terrorists" or other sky pirates decide to hijack the vessel? - Industrial espionage as other shipbuilders and nations/guilds/etc try to discover the secrets and capabilities of the mighty ship - Missions of mercy as the Vandenburg makes last-minute detours to help deliver supplies and healers to a remote village suffering from a plague - And my favorite hidden twist: This isn't really a "goodwill" mission, as far as the Consortium is concerned. It's a subtle show of force. It wouldn't take much to retrofit a ship this big to be a veritable dreadnought of the skies! And if the Consortium can build one...they can build more. Five Nations' Mission Impossible: The PC's belong to an elite extranational clandestine operations group. They've got all of the magical tools a Wacky Excoriate Cannith Artificer codenamed "Q" can come up with! Little do they know that "M" is actually a Silver Dragon of the Chamber... Sure, I'm mixing my superspy metaphors here, but stick with me! If big, mass battles are what you're ultimately after, you might consider a metaplot where Khorvaire is screaming towards the Next War, right down to a rebellion among the (mysteriously) well-armed refugees in New Cyre, who are more than happy to carve a bloody nation out of eastern Breland and Darguun. How about a rogue Karrnathi general, building a secret army which he plans on occupying Thronehold with? If you want a little more desperation and grit, how about "homesteaders" in Q'barra or Xen'drik being surrounded by an "indian"/lizardfolk/drow/giant uprising? Or how about a mysteriously organized uprising among Khorvaire's Aberrations; orchestrated naval assaults masterminded by Aboleth, coordinated with aerial assaults by Yrthak "strike fighters" providing close air support for Beholder "armor platoons" which in turn support Dragon Below Cultist footsoldiers led by Illithid generals? That'd make for a pretty scary battle... So there's a great big Economy Sized grab-bag of ideas. I've fleshed out a lot of them in various ways for my campaign (I've even got a sketched flight plan for the Vandenburg somewhere). PM me for more details - I've got players who lurk here, so I can't give away too many trade secrets...:)
Marshall Stone 05-20-05, 02:31 AM	..starting up a baseline for a new Eberron campaign. I've seen other threads like this before but I feel way behind, because I don't even know where to start! I own the ECS, Sharn: City of Towers and Races of Eberron. I've read through them all and I'm still even struggling with the starting location. At first I thought I'd run the Forgotten Forge and the three after it, but I'd much rather start something entirely my own and get the real feel for it... but I'm stuck. I've thought about starting it in the Principilaties but I don't know. I do eventually want to use the Sharn source book, but I don't want to start the adventure there, rather fuse it in around lower-mid level. One idea I have thought about recently is using the Aerenal as a base for the campaign and focusing on using agents such as the Stillborn. Are these in a sourcebook? I haven't found them anywhere yet except the novel The Crimson Talisman. I've run games before, but most of those ideas do not seem they would work in Eberron.. they've all been Realms or Exalted games recently. Basically I want to do something other than run characters from hook to hook. I want a story line as I have had in other games, but Im struggling with story arc and metaplot ideas. All I know is, I do eventually want to incorporate Heroes of Battle into it, making an overall epic tale ( though probably not until around 8-10th level ). Any ideas? I'm up for anything! Thanks in advance. Scissors. I must admit I had a similar problem when I began to run Eberron games. Thier is just SO many possibilities it's hard to narrow it down to just one. But to begin... I'd suggest you first begin with what kind of campaign you want to run. In the back of the ECS theirs a chapter on this; Scavenger Hunt, Mystery, Intrigue, Exploration, etc. Then take into account the characters your players want to run after you've told them the kind of campaign you are running. Then pick one of the power groups: The Aurum, Blood of Vol, the Chamber, A Nation, the Dreaming Dark (a personal favorite), etc. And use them as your overall bad guys, like the Nazis in the Indianna Jones movies. That should narrow down possible starting locations. Now, caused you asked for an idea... War breaks out between the Talenta Plains Halflings and the Valenar. How? A prominent tribe of halflings, named, oh...the Dakota's, is led by a well respected Lath (aka Cheif) named Paul. Paul has a son named Peter who is a great warrior, handsome, and fully expected to take over as Lath one day. Peter has the affections of a beautiful halfing girl named Dawn. Now, another halfling, named Cain, is jealous of Peter and wants Dawn for himself. So Cain, goes and makes an arrangements with a changeling clan from Lhazaar. Cain will go on a patrol group with Peter, the Changeling clan will disguise themselves as Valenar elves and attack the patrol, the Changeling/Valenar manage to capture Peter, especially with all the help Cain provided before hand and betraying the patrol. Cain wanted Peter killed, and then make it seem like he fought off the Valenar and that way come home something of a hero thereby getting the girl and the presitge. The Changeling clan however figure they can ransom back Peter for a lot of gold. The Dakotas however blame the real Valenar for this act of war. The real Valenar didn't do it of course and are insulted by the accusation. The Dakotas decide to try and steal some Valenar horses and then use the horses as leverage to get Peter back. Meanwhile the Dakotas go to the Lathon (Cheifs of all chiefs) Halpum and express thier outrage. Karrnath offers to help in whatever way they can. Things beging to escalate, skirmishes begin to break out, until a full on War is almost certainly assured. A last hope for peace has the Valenar and the Plainsman agreeing to travel to Sharn to see if they can hammer out thier differences...So on and so on. Hope that helps
Gurv 05-20-05, 11:42 AM	I know the feeling - there's so much cool stuff to do, I really have a hard time deciding what to do next. In fact, I'm goofing off right now by posting here, rather than finally deciding between 3-4 different adventure seeds (of my own design) and fleshing it out by Saturday... It is so good to know that I'm not alone. I have to run two games this weekend, but here I am giving suggestions to someone else for creating a game. I should really get around to doing my own. Scissors: I had the same problem when I started my own campaign (which has not split into two groups, as stated above). I didn't know where the start them, or what kind of adventure to run. Starting them in Sharn seemed overwhelming. My solution was to have them hired at the beginning by an organization that would send them from place to place dealing with problems. That would allow me to run whatever adventures wherever I wanted them; the "redline travel" concept of Eberron is one of the best tools in a DM's arsenal. My suggestion is to pick one of your favorite villains from the ECS (I went with the Emerald Claw, but it could easily be a Cult of the Dragon Below, the Lords of Dust, the Aurum, etc). This will be the ongoing BBEG for your campaign, although the PCs may face others from time to time. Then choose a patron for your group (mine was The Twelve because it meant that missions for any of the Dragonmarked Houses would be an option, but any group works). Pick an out-of-the-way starting location. This should be a place that is not detailed in the ECS too much, but has advantages like good location, resources, etc. It can be the headquarters of the patron, but it doesn't have to be. It might actually be a place where the patron has limited influence, meaning that the PCs are an attempt to increase that power. (I used First Tower because I was sending them to Xen'drik early on. I regret not using Passage, which is ideally located in the center of Khorvaire and has great travel options). I don't recommend Aerenal, simply because so little is known about it, and because it is so far away from everything else; the elves like to be very isolated, which is about what we know about them. Have them all meet in the starting place, using whatever method you prefer (I had them all responding to a help wanted poster, because that automatically means that they have similar goals). Have the patron send them on their first mission. This mission could be a "fetch" mission, or a "bodyguard/caravan guard" mission, or it could be entirely exploratory. Whatever they are trying to do, the villain group is trying to do the opposite, and the mission should be important enough to the bad guys to make them hate the PCs forever if they get in the way. After the first mission in complete, the players should be wondering who the bad guys were and why they were there in the first place. If the PCs failed to stop the bad guys, they should be wondering what they are going to do about it now. Send the PCs on the next adventure that interests you, or if the PCs are interesting in investigating the BBEG, let them. They may or may not conflict with the bad guys, but if they do, make sure that the antagonistic relationship continues to grow. The bad guys begin to watch the PCs, wanting to know what is up with them and whether they are going to continue to oppose them. The PCs may or may not notice this scrutiny. Continue to send the PCs on whatever adventures you think would be fun. This is the time for you to use up the adventure hook ideas for the area they are in. They can stumble onto the plots of other major bad guys, and stop whatever local trouble they are causing. Make sure your adventures don't leave too many loose ends though; a few are fine if you want them to generate future adventures, but too many will leave the PCs unwilling to move on or deal with other, larger issues. Occasionally have them run into minions of the BBEG, who may be spying on them or trying to steal the action. Drop a hint every game session about whatever activities they have been up to. Eventually, the players will realize that the BBEG is a pain in the :censored:, even if he hasn't actively opposed them for a while. The PCs should also be figuring out what they are up to (which should be something major, like creating an eldritch machine, or building an army). It should be obvious enough that the PCs decide to do something about it. At this point, the BBEG should be ready with a nefarious plan to put them out of the game. He might be working with another Evil Group that the PCs have butted heads with, or whatever you want. They should spend quite some time dealing with this problem of an enemy on the offensive. (In my game, this is the fact that the EC has kidnapped the party patron and brought him to Farlnen; by the time they get there, they'll be seeking resurrection magic to save him). By the time the PCs are in any position to deal with the BBEG again, the Evil Plan should be ready to go. This could involve anything. I don't have Heroes of Battle, but if you want to use it, then now would be the time. How the campaign goes from here is up to you. But the idea is to have as many adventures as you can dream up, while having an overwhelming plot and enemy that exists along the way.
scissors 05-20-05, 11:53 PM	First off, I appreciate everyone taking the time to write such informative and helpful ( and long!) posts. The ideas were very good, and I plan on bookmarking this post and using them in the future. I spent most of today jotting down notes of some brainstorming, and this is what I've come up with so far. I must warn though, I apply exceptions to my campaign, perhaps not as mind shattering as a half-elf Mark of Passage holder, but there are some. Such as the patron in the beginning, who is Aerenal, and a member of House Phiarlan, but hasn't cut off her ties to Aerenal livelihood. She is also a devout follower of the Undying Court. Her name is Aphael Pel Talath d'Phiarlan, and she's basically an import from Forgotten Realms, where she was an Evereskan Conjuror 14. Well, now in Eberron she is a CG Female Bard 6. I've also imported her uncle, who was a tomb guardian, one of those good liches.. can't remember the name of the template right now... Marion Pel Talath. Her main dealing is hiring the PC's as escorts to find the remains of her uncle, who is under stasis as a pile of ash and half a skull in a mystically altered urn. So I've decided to start in the Lhazaar Principilaties and making the first of the campaign water based. Stillborn and Saughain (sp) abound. Turns out, only a family member bearing the Dragonmark can free him from his stasis, but the urn was stolen by pirates as part of a larger booty a few years prior. The pirates had no idea what the urn entailed, and they were soon killed in a spute and the treasure forgotten. Although, I'm not sure how I will explain Aphael knowing the whereabouts of the treasure, yet. I will probably put it admidst some makeshift temple built by saughain who worship it like a god... perhaps led by a low level saughain necromancer. The overall picture is, however, The Blood of Vol is interested in stopping the revival of Marion Pel Talath and have been making assassination attempts on Aphael using the Stillborn. I'm still working out the details on why they want to stop it, and why bringing him back is such a big deal. Eventually, I want this to escalade into something epic, using the Heroes of Battle sourcebook later on, and moving onto bigger areas of interest. What do you think? I like using the Aerenal as they have always intrigued me, and reading The Crimson Talisman got me interested in the Stillborn. Any fillers you guys can add in will be welcomed, unless you just think it's a crappy idea. :) Thanks in advance! Scissors
Edymnion 05-21-05, 12:05 AM	Here's the basic idea for how I'm starting my new Eberron game, but I need to keep it rather vague because one of the players reads the boards here (at my request). There's only two of them, so I'm likely going to ask them to make characters that can already be a team. They're going to start out in the city of Passage (good location, fair sized without being overwhelming, major stop on the Lightning Rail because it has the main repair station for the coaches), and will be hired by House Cannith to track down an item of importance. Standard opening for Eberron, really, but it'll eventually lead into issues that will be taking them into the Mournlands and Xen'Drik, and there's no telling what they'll run into before that.