ok so my groups DM is planning to fire up a brand new Dragonlance campaign. It will take place right before the War of the Lance. We will not be interacting with the Heroes ... Caraman, Tanis, Raistlin etc etc and will not have anything to do with there quest during the war. My DM needs an adventure hook that kicks off at the same time as Chronicles book 1 kicks off right before the war, he wants our group to run an epic quest of our own to help during the Dragonlance war and for it not to affect what the heroes did themselves.
We plan to start off in a small homegrown village and 30-35 miles north-east of Solace. Were figuring something big will happen while were in the village that leads off into an epic quest that will last throughout the war. He wants to do a campaign where our actions also help shapre the outcome of the war.
anyone wanna jump on this?
I told Jeff ... our DM I would see what ideas I could gather up from here from you guys for him to look over.
Was Goldmoon the ONLY cleric at the beginning of chronicles?
Yep. Not only that, she did not actually become a cleric until she learned how to use the power. (i.e. she isn't a cleric at the begining of chronicles.)
The dodgy thing is that there are already a few evil clerics at that time. However, the evil clerics are working in secrecy.
I would say that your initial plot hook could be to have someone ask the PCs to investigate the mysterious monks that have been seen travelling around at night. (These monks are the initial draconian spys who are searching for Goldmoon, but with the draconians not having exact information, there should really be dozens - if not hundreds of these guys trying to catch her.)
I think you could take the background level of war preparation from Chronicles and use it as the basis of the amount of aggro that your PCs get to deal with.
There is no reason why there couldn't be other things that Fizban wants to nudge people towards fixing, so you could actually use him to do a small amount of "railroading" that puts your group's PCs in the way of some sort of group that should be hunting for the Heros of the Lance. For example if "someone" was to make sure that a magical staff fell into the hands of a bunch of adventurers and then sent them on a quest across Ansalon, they would probably attract the attention of one or two draconian spys (and therefore lead the spys away from the Heros of the Lance).
So you could create a group of characters that (without their own knowledge) becomes the "Heros of the Xerox" and have the forces of Takhisis waste time trying to catch them and/or block any missions they try to carry out. :P ;)
If you do things that way then your groups PCs don't need to have any sort of contact with the HotL and could even accidentally solve a few of the problems that the HotL have to deal with in the DL adventures.
(Plus it would be really cool if later on the deeds of your adventures get attributed to the Heros of the Lance or if people ask your group's elf if his name is Tanis or if other similar things happen. :P )
Damaja & bigmac,
I also wanted to add that this an awesome idea for a Dragonlance campaign. My friends and I are playing D&D 3.5 in a pre-War of the Lance setting (the summer before the Autumn if you will). We also wanted avoid playing the Heroes but at the same time make a sizeable contribution for the good guys towards the war effort.
As the DM, so far I've just had the PCs protect small villages from draconian, goblin and human raiding parties looking to pillage and plunder. Just to build up their experience. But we'll soon need something more substantial.
I was trying to remember what are the good aligned things that happened in Chronicles that were not properly explained (which my PCs could potentially take credit for). Not much unfortunately since the authors covered everything pretty well.
But I really like the two ideas mentioned: investing the mysterious monks (draconian spies) and distracting Takhisis forces by having the PCs pretend to be the Heroes.
If anyone has any other suggestions, I'd be glad to hear it.
Cheers.
I think one cool aspect that people often overlook is the simple omnipresence of the gods. I think it would be entirely plausible for Mishakal to have granted a small handful of other people ( maybe disconnected from each other ) the ability to heal and such. I've always seen it this way- say you read about a huge fire that occured one night. Well you will get all the details, who was there- an interview with the fire chief , the damage done - etc. Now to say that was the only fire that occured in the entire world that night is a fairly insular view. Rather; you were simply privy to what was maybe the largest, or the most damaging. There are ideals in Dragonlance that hinge pretty solidly on Goldmoon being a singular leader of faith, but I just dont see anything saying other people couldnt have tried- and maybe failed to accomplish similar goals. We hear so much about the Hero's- but so little of the failures. Besides it's YOUR game.
Always forgetting Taladas.
Shortly after the cataclysm Mishakel did return power to some of her followers on that continent.
It would not be unreasonable for her to have done the same on Ansalon (provided there is a similiar situation as Goldmoon's).
Perhaps someone had found an artifact of hers that granted a deeper connection to her than normal.
Yes, I will agree that there should not be clerics running around indroves and healing potions and scrolls should be amongst the most rare items.