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#1 CraggleRock Dec 31, 2009 11:50:56

One of my favourite parts of the 4E suppliments such as DMG2 are the suggested campaign arcs running all the way from Heroic to Epic tier. I find these good sources to feed the imagination, if not borrow wholesale for games. I did a few quick search for a similar resource of suggestions on the forums, but failed to turn up anything, but if this already exists, please feel free to point me in that direction. If however such a resource is lacking... 1. The Toys of Men and Gods I felt inspired by this thread to come up with an overall toy themed campaign arc. Used as a whole, this may raise some issues with using warforged as a PC race (at least early in arc) without some significant reflavouring of their origins (at least from that presented in the Eberron setting). It is presented here with a starting tie in to the toys, but ideally it would grow "organically" from the players suggesting creating toys as in the thread that gave the inspiration. Heroic Tier: Thinking Outside the Toybox At the start of the campaign, the party are residents of the small village of Brookmeet; a mostly inauspicious site but it does lie along one route leading from the capital city of Morrille to the bordering kingdom. One, several, or all of the party are apprenticed to Gustavus Petto, a crafter of puppets and toys beloved by the local children, but all of the party have something that set them apart from the other villages. These defining attributes make them the ones that that villages turn to when their village is overrun by bandits. The bandits aim to use Brookmeet as a stage for an ambush on the caravan of Lord Canate Warvale (the brother to King Abulus) when he returns from his diplomatic mission in the neighbouring kingdom, with the aim of ransoming the noble for a rich reward. Through their own talents and marshalling a resistance from the villagers, the party drive off the bandits before the arrival of Lord Warvale and secure that the caravan passes without incident, but during their retreat from Brookmeet the bandits take several hostages, including Gustavus. The party may attempt to elicit aid from Lord Warvale's guards when the pass through Brookmeet uncontested, but they dismiss the safety of the villages as insignificant compared to the defense of their lord, so the burden falls to the party to mount a rescue of their friends and family. During their adventures into the forest in which the bandits make their lair, the party come across an Enchant Item ritual used by one of the bandit's mages (if the party does not already possess such resource). While this can be used to supply them with arms and armour, the party should be encouraged to see the potential to enhance the toys produced from Gustavus' workshop once they have succeeded in their rescue mission. Creation of such toys--animated wooden animals, battling chess sets and toy soldiers--should be able to be produced without expenditure of party resources. Indeed, the toys could even generate enough profit of a small treasure parcel of the party's level. At a time that the party may be considering taking their wares to a larger audience, an emissary from the King arrives at Brookmeet. He informs Gustavus and his apprentice(s) that the King has received word of their fantastical and wonderous toys and wishes to employ them (at a handsome wage) to produce entertainments for his amusement. Gustavus may insist that the party go in his place, as he has taught them all he can and considers this his time to retire, although he could potentially accompany the party to the capital, becoming a companion character or even a new PC himself. Once the party arrive at the palace in the capital city of Morrille, the party may start to gather that there are intrigues afoot in the court. The King's brother, Lord Warvale, feels that diplomacy with their neighbouring kingdoms is a futile exercise and that a show of force is what is required. He grows weary of his brother's idle frivolity, but Lord Warvale does take an interest in the toys the party starts to produce. Meanwhile, Motley, the court jester and once favourite entertainment of King, feels his position threatened by the arrival of the party. He stages an ill-advised plot against the party, utilising the latest spell devised by Cornellum, the court mage, which shrinks the party down to just a few inches in height. Run off magic from the spell warp the enchantment on the amusements they were building for the King, causing them to become mallignant to such an extent that the party now find themselves having to battle their own creations, now of equivalent size to themselves and make their escape from their own workshop. At this time, Lord Canate stages a coup to depose his brother and ascend the throne in his place. Motley the jester is mortified and realises that he needs to help the party return to their regular size to aid his king, but not before the party must contend with the (to them) oversized fauna of the palace (see, a house cat can still potentially kill the party wizard!). On reaching Cornellum's tower and managing to regain their old stature, they learn that the new King has branded them traitors responsible for ensnaring the former King's mind with their enchantments. They must flee the palace, and eventually the kingdom, with the entire royal army hunting them down. Paragon Tier: Toy Soldiers The party kicks of the paragon tier heading into foreign lands, where they need to find shelter and allies, all while being hounded by the false rumour that they are responsible for the assassination of King Abulus, a murder being pinned on them by the treacherous Canate. As they struggle to establish themselves, stories of the new army of King Canate reach the group: unwavering automaton soldiers and constructed beasts of war are crushing opposition. Warvale has harnessed the toy constructions of the party coupled with the size altering ritual that he had Cornellum research to create a devestating new type of weapon. Now the party must travel through the foreign kingdom's and unite them against the encroaching forces, but to have any true hope of success, they will need to raise their own automaton army. In order to recreate the spell to make their creations life sized, the party need a similar focus to that used when they returned themselves to normal within Morille; unfortunately, that focus was a beholder's eye. Eventually, the party are able to marshal a force that can withstand Canate's onslaught and over the course of several battles, the tide of the war begins to turn. With the party approaching the epic tier, they eventually find themselves confronting Canate only to discover that he has developed powerful psionic abilities. It becomes evident that the man has long since been the puppet of some alien intelligence which has utilised his position to drive the entire continent into a ruinous war. The party may even succeed in exorcising the force from the man, but he is left a broken shell of his former self. Worse still, there is evidence that suggests similar forces may be at work possessing other individuals in the world. The party is going to have to track down the source of the possessions and ensure it can bear no further threat. Epic Tier: Gods Do Not Play Dice The party's first clues lead them to believe that the gods themselves may have their hand in affairs on the material plane and so they seek access to the celestial realms. On arrival, they find themselves in the midst of another war. It seems that even the gods themselves are not immune to the machinations of the alien intelligence that the party hunts, although the gods are unaware that one of their own having been turned is the impetus of their woes. The possessed god has managed to sow dissent amongst several factions and it will be down to the party to identify the god no longer in control of their own actions. With the perpetrator identified, they will then need to persuade the other factions to cease their hostilities towards one another. Eventually, the gods (or enough of them to sway the tide of battle) and the party unite against the true foe amongst them, but the only course of action in order to expunge the alien presence from the gods mind is to kill the possessed. Fortunately for the celestial balance, the god had contingencies in place in case of their "death" and now the party must gather the portions of the god's essence in order to resurect them, a quest that will lead them across reality and into the depths of the Elemental Chaos. Without the lost god, naught but chaos will reign in the celestial realm. On restoring the god they had been forced to taking a hand in destroying, the party receives their final clue as to their true adversaries: the god, though now cleared of the taint of the possessing intelligence, still retains memory of the alien force. A race of creatures even more ancient than the gods was accidentally touched by the mind insane warlock decades earlier, allowing them to tap into his conciousness and take control. With the warlock in their thrall, they were then able to reproduce the ritual to possess the minds of others, eventually possessing individuals powerful enough to travel the planes and enthrall one of the deities. The alien creatures despise all life other than their own and took great delight in using the minds that they harvested as playthings to turn the peoples of the realities against one another. As other realities have crumbled, the walls seperating the alien creatures from other life have begun to weaken and now will be the time that the party and their deific allies will need to breach the reality of the alien invaders and destroy them once and for all.