Here is the rough idea that will instigate the campaign: a half dead nomad wanders into the streets of Tyr ranting and raving. The man is clearly delirious and mad with fever. However as he collapses to the streets he countinuously repeats about an 'endless green'. These ravings would normally be attributed to the rantings of a mad man however on the wanderer's person is a damaged map that seems to point of Athas that no one has really mapped, and the writings on the wanderer's person seem to point this area (for those that can read that is).
The possibility of treasure, water and hope soon lights up the population of Tyr and quickly expiditions are thrown together with people signing up in search of this fabled 'endless green'. The PCs soon find themselves part of one of these expiditions on a seach for this supposed lost land of green.
Now I would like to ask my fellow forumites to critique and assist me in fleshing this out into the start of a campaign. The way I see this is that after the initial event of the wanderer collapsing the PCs will have to quickly ally themselves with a patron for the expidition or be left in the dust. However the merchant houses and nobles of Tyr wont just let anyone into their expiditions so the PCs will have to prove their worth in someway. Various quest suggestions here would be nice.
The part is starting at level 8 and each character will be (in)famous to some degree in Tyr. So keep that in mind when providing feedback.
Thank you all in advance for your advice!
-Warzark
Your idea sounds neat, tell us more when you get more.
I would go check the old 2nd edition ROAD TO URIK module. In it, the PCs have to woo various factions to get them to contribute troops/support to the war effort against Urik. Each faction has a kind of mini-quest that could woo it (and obviously the field is open for that to be expanded...you could be running a dozen quests for each faction if the DM wants to design them). For example, one noble family might need raiders chased away from their fields. Another might want you to sabotage a third family. A merchant house might need you to protect a caravan, or retrieve exotic goods. The Veiled Alliance might want an artifact recovered (or hidden away forever). A few quests are detailed in the adventure, but a DM can make up tons more.
You could structure your game like that. Lift some of the factions and quests from RTU, throw some away, add some of your own, rewrite others, etc.
1) I don't like the idea of the mindless individual wandering the streets, as I don't see such a raving lunatic making it past the guards at the city gates. To me, I think it'd feel more natural if it was someone found outside the city, ie. on the road, or wandering near the city-state.
2) Seems to me that information of this sort has a tendency to stir up unwanted attention (ie. templars looking to stop the spread of the information, or to take advantage of it). Most indivuals interested in this kind of info, therefore IMO, would be intelligent enough to keep it close to their vest. Therefore, I don't see the information spreading to the degree you've gone with. I'd keep it dialed down a little, keep it simple, and maybe even use the idea that some party's would seek to hide or take advantage of the info (ie. possible protagonists).
This all assumes that the information is taken seriously, which is hard to do coming from a raving lunatic, not to mention that for it to be an unexplored region means lots of money to get an expedition to said point. Remember, Tyr is a very long way from any unexplored areas.
3) The problem, I feel, with making the PCs prove their worth, after other groups have already been hired on (especially if you plan on having a number of different adventures to do so), is it allows for too much time to pass. The other groups start with a large head start, meaning the PCs don't get their first, meaning any smart emplorer already drops his reward, etc. etc.....Simple fix is to just have it be someone who the PCs have already proved their worth to, such as in the adventures building up to your proposed idea. Otherwise, a couple things come to mind....Either something happens to the groups that go out first (even better is something happens that prospective employers in Tyr can learn about, thus providing reason to call upon the PCs), or, more tricky, is carefully allocating the time spent for the PCs to prove themselves....I'm kind of thinkiing it might be best to limit the groups to 1 or 2, at most, as well.
That's about all my tired brain has in it...hope you find something that works out for you and your group, cuz' in the end the enjoyment of the game is all that counts.....My 2 cp
@Squidfur-: I wanted the opening act of this game to be a very hectic 'cats-out-of-the-bag' scenario, because ambition, and more specifically the cost of ambition, was going to be a very central theme to this game. Once the merchant houses and nobles of Tyr hear of the possible existance of an 'endless green' in the southern wastes of Athas, there will be heated competition as an all out race begins to see who can uncover the clues left by the Wanderer to the exact location of the 'endless green'. There will be acts of sabotage, assassination, raids, and that is not even taking the desert environment into account.
However, given your suggestions I might consider moving the start of the campaign to another city-state. Given the high-adventure feel and my eagerness to use the Silt Sea I might use Balic instead. I originally picked Tyr due to a greater knowledge of it than the other city-states.
@zeratulcraft: That was one of the mini-quests I was thinking of using. Having one house require the party to go and do some sort of shady work for them, either having them shake down a store owner who owes them some 'protection' money or raiding an outlying shipment to a rival house. Something that isn't exactly legal. Another idea might be to have the party go and 'discover' some precious treasuer in the Under-Tyr. More specifically 'discovering' this treasure in the underground vaults of the city's nobles.
Other quests I was thinking of using were driving out criminal gangs that are threating a houses' shops and wares and helping a trader aquire a relic from a ruin.
You'll have to go a lot further than you might think to the south. The Dead Lands lie in that direction, and beyond it the land of the s'thag zagath. You'll have the PC's battling through hordes and hordes of undead (some of them in the epic level range), followed by hordes of hulking insects.
In all truthfullness, if there was a land of plenty on athas, it seems to make sense it would be at one of the poles. In the soon-to-be-released Secrets of the Dead Lands (a DS product from athas.org; its 3e mechanics - just a little bit, though - with mostly fluff material) it hints at the idea that the southern portions of the region were very close to the south pole.
That being the case, however, I'd advise taking the PCs in that direction until they were MUCH higher in level.
You also mentioned the idea of moving it from Tyr to Balic, though this doesn't really solve the issue of location...To explain:
If you take the PCs to the south, from any of the city-states (or surrounding regions), then you run into the problems above.
If you take them to the west, then you run into the Jagged Cliffs region (not too terrible), followed by the Thri-kreen Empire (think swarms of massing thri-kreen; something akin to the Starship Troopers movies). The thri-kreen Empire is quite massive, in all probability larger than the area shown in the base map by many times over.
To the north is the Trembing Plains region, the Scorched Plateau, and the Last Sea region. So, the explored regions extend quite far in that direction.
...and to the east lies the Sea of Silt. This is probably the best way to go to find an unexplored area - its certainly the closest. However, the problem of getting across the Sea of Silt is always a dicy situation. Remember, unless the characters have access to powerful magic, a fall into the silt almost certainly spells instant death.
As for the crazed dude....I think I'd give him connection with someone important, ie. someone who can vouch for his credibility. To me there's not a lot you can give him, possession-wise, that can make an athasian person go "Wow, that makes me want to spend lots and lots of money, to go trecking a very very very long way, through the harsh athasian wastelands, battling huge and horrible beasts, so that I can find some greener plants....all because this crazy wandering dude says so". Therefore, you need to give a prospective employer a little more to go off of, ie. credibility on the account of the crazy guy, and much more incentive, to start.
..."window.parent.tinyMCE.get('post_content').onLoad.dispatch();" contenteditable="true">The man is clearly delirious and mad with fever.
Change it to sunstroke and you immediately remind them they're in a desert world.
(for those that can read that is).
How do your players read it? It's nothing but squiggles. Are you guaranteed to have a literate member of the party? If not and the party goes to a templar or noble, what incentive do they have to actually let the PCs go investigate this mythical place?
The possibility of treasure, water and hope soon lights up the population of Tyr and quickly expiditions are thrown together with people signing up in search of this fabled 'endless green'. The PCs soon find themselves part of one of these expiditions on a seach for this supposed lost land of green.
How does anyone know where to go? Or are they just going to travel in random directions? If this place can be found by aimless random wandering, why haven't more people already found it?
Various quest suggestions here would be nice.
Really? We're going with that hackenyed plot-hook yet again? Sorry. We just got SO many of those "prove your worth to us" quests in LFR that I just intrinsically hate them. My suggestion would be to pull one of the players aside and ask them if they'd like to be a bastard noble child. They aren't a full noble, so they probably don't know how to read. But they do have ties with a noble house so they can get a benefactor.
Your problem now becomes in getting the players to work as a cohesive whole (not an easy task in Dark Sun). You need a quest that brings them together, working with each other. I'd recommend travelling a caravan to one of the city-states. On the journey they're attacked by gith who steal a merchant's son whose leading the caravan. The merchant offers a reward to anyone who goes and rescues his boy. The PCs all work together and go to save the boy. Once they reach the city they're about to say their goodbyes when walking through the gates comes the sunstroke victim, collapsing at their feet.
The part is starting at level 8 and each character will be (in)famous to some degree in Tyr. So keep that in mind when providing feedback.
I did not keep this in mind when I offered you my advice. This only reinforces my "don't use the complete a series of tests" quest and instead use an alternate means of connecting them to a benefactor. Perhaps the merchant wagon they were travelling with has ties to a noble house and offers the PCs a place in his expedition for a greater share of the treasure (due to saving his son and being infamous).
There starts the adventure.
Might just have to yoink this one for myself.
Yoink!!!
Afterwords, the party met up with the Tyr city guard and have learnt that several scouts were sent out to investigate leads that King Tithian found while going over some of Kalak's notes. The notes seemed to suggest that a large portion of land in northern Athas might be verdant still. However the scout that they assisted was the only one to have come back, and the scout's notes point to an abandoned ruin south of Tyr called Gal'Ulie that was once a center for knowledge on Athas. Since the scout did not survive his injuries, the PCs have been tasked with with investigating the ruins for what ever evidence might still be in there.
I ended the session with the party making some skill challenges to navigate the sand wastes outside of Tyr on their way to ruins of Gal'Ulie. So far the campaign is going about how I wanted it to. It is tougher than most D&D games my friends have played in. For one I'm using item break rules suggested in Dark Sun, as well as penalizing the failed survival checks with loss of healing surges, but the players seem to like the challenge and chage of pace.
So once again, thanks for all of the input everyone. I'll keep you all posted with future developments as well as any future questions I might have.
Actually now that I think about it, does anyone know if there any rules about armor breaking? I know Dark Sun has rules for weapons breaking, but it didn't say anything about items breaking. I know about sundering in the Players Hand Book, is that the closest thing there is?
Thanks in advance!