Post/Author/DateTime	Post
#1 F.Favre Oct 06, 2014 19:00:59	Hi everybody,   So yeah, now that 5th edition is out, it is time to play DnD again.   I want to run a campaign with mostly undead ennemies with an undead / evil mage / lich / Death knight as the main Antagonist.   Problem : i need inspiration   And here i am, on the forum. I want to ask you what's your idea for an ''Undead adventure'' ? What's the hook ? What's the developpement ? Who's you main antagonist?   Is there already some pre-made advenures i could buy ?     Thank you.   Regards. F.
#2 Nevvur Oct 06, 2014 20:41:17	F.Favre wrote:
#3 Ansbach Oct 06, 2014 21:06:42	One of the best resources if you can find it is an old AD&D Forgotten Realms supplement by Ed Greenwood called Lords of Darkness.  It had ecologies on about a dozen different undead and different adventures to go with each.
#4 Llenlleawg Oct 07, 2014 6:19:48	The resources for the Ravenloft setting is really your best friend here, even if you don't want to have a campaign set in Ravenloft as such. The Van Richten guides (particularly the VRG to Vampires, to Ghosts, to the Ancient Dead, and to Liches, all available here for purchase on the official D&D Classics site, and the VRG to the Walking Dead, which is no longer in print, but copies can still be found) will give you lots of inspiration, both thematically and mechanically (you'd have to convert a little from 2e [and for the Walking Dead 3.5]) for tweaking undead and giving you a lot of variety in using them. The same site above also has the old Ravenloft Mounstrous Compendiums, which have some interesting undead, including special demihuman (i.e. elf, dwarf, gnome, halflng, and even kender vampires) undead. The other Van Richten Guides are also very much worth your time, esp. for closely related monsters, e.g. werebeasts, golems, shadow fey. You can also look at Children of the Night: Ghosts, and Children of the Night: Vampires, for some interesting villains.   The Ravenloft modules are...well, a mixed bag. They tend to be very railroady, often manipulating the PCs (and not just in good ways, but just to get certain events to happen no matter what the PCs do), and depending on the adventure, are easier or harder to adapt outside of the Ravenloft setting. There are some interesting (and adaptable) adventures in Chilling Tales (a Ravenloft adventures). While the "Grand Conjunction" series is very Ravenloft-dependent in its overall structure, some of the specific modules, esp. for your undead-fighting purposes Night of the Walking Dead (low level, zombie-themed), Touch of Death (mummy-themed), Ship of Horror (ghost ship, necromancer), Feast of Goblyns (not as undead-heavy, but importantly featured), and of course, the great father of all Ravenloft adventures, Ravenloft (either the original I6 or the interesting 3.5e adaptation as a mini-campaign, Expedition to Caslte Ravenloft). You may (will!) want to adapt these, but then I always found that Ravenloft's strength was in its inidivdual monsters and a few set-pieces, not in the overall (heavily railroaded) story arcs.   I hope that helps!
#5 MrRob Oct 07, 2014 6:52:22	Thought/suggestion: don't tell the players your plan, start them on the most vanilla beginning you can: have them all meet up in a bar/inn and have the first couple adventurers have nothing to do with undead, then start sprinkling in NPCs talking about an undead attack somewhere. Do a slow build, but know your cause (Evil god, lich, uber necromancer, whatever). Do it slow enough that as they build up, they have favorite towns and NPCs that eventually get taken over/destoryed by the undead menace!
#6 TheGimper Oct 09, 2014 12:28:20	There's an adventure called Dead Haven in Dungeon #218. You might want to take a look at it for some ideas.
#7 Drycanth Oct 09, 2014 12:54:53	http://www.fraternityofshadows.com/ and http://www.kargatane.com/   both are ravenloft fan sites that have a bunch of good referance material. Lots of the adventures are what most consider on rails since they have chain events leading from event to event with little to no variation possible. You can still find some of the old modules available online and there is a lot of fan material that you can adjust. Figure out what type of adventure you want and you can probably get some good recomendations on what to pick up. With an old 1E 2E modulre and a 5th MM you should be able to modify the adventure to the current editon.
#8 GrrHero Oct 09, 2014 16:08:41	In a campaign I played in, the DM had the players do a handful of quest from a shady patron that lead up to us unleashing the undead. The patron paid us with more gold and platium than we could spend between quest. That made us want to continue to work for the greasy guy even though some of us knew it was going to end badly. By making the players fall into the trap, the DM hooked us into wanting to right our wrong, and defeat the raised army of undeath.