Post/Author/DateTime	Post
#1 grahamwills Jul 31, 2008 22:30:16	I am starting a new 4e campaign for two groups. It is set in a large city, where the upper crust (the "light" group) are super-rich and not only do not meet common folk, they are not even remotely aware they exist. Even their servants' servants are far above commoners. The power folk are all Tiefling nobility. Later, I will start running the "dark" group, which will be more grim and, well, dark. They will likely be mostly human, but other scum will be vailable too. They will not even remotely be aware that there is any being as lofty as the Tieflings. They might just have heard of rumors of the Tiefling's serants' servants as near godlike beings. The main thrust of each arc will be more knowledge of the true state of the world, the REAL history, as opposed to what each group has been told, and decisions about who to be loyal to. Classic coming of age stuff. Anyone who is also running their own campaign might be interested in the adventure sketches, which should have fairly well fleshed out encounters, and can be found via my main games page: http://willsfamily.org/games The campaign is "City of Light, City of Darkness". It will be less combat-intensive than appears to be standard in D&D nowadays, so expect more tricks, riddles and skill challenges in the encounters. The first set of encounter is available at: City of Light: The Library A sample encounter from these pages is the following: Encounter 5: Hiring some diggers (400xp) Skill Challenge: Complexity 4 (10/5) Primary skills: Bluff, Healing, Streetwise, Insight, Intimidate The House of Ekkaral is the source for all well-trained silver-torc servants. They have a sales hall complex in the market area of the city where individual trainers bring candidates. The servants there are highly moivated as being employed by a major house gives them protection and a chance to advance to become a gold-torc. They will therefore compete and do pretty much anything to present themselves as valuable candidates. The sales room is near the surface, slightly cool for Tieflings, and uncomfortably warm for everyone else. There, gold-torc servants will seat the players, bring them sherbert, wine and other drinks, masseurs, dancers and a variety of other minor entertainment. In about half an hourglass, a set of seven dwarves are brought out. The players will need to hire three to make a team, and choose one to be the team leader. The dwarves are as follows: Torek, a young, gangly, enthusiastic male dwarf. Hits 25, Skill 4. Gnarth, a old, grumpy dwarf with a big scar from a fight. Hits 15, Skill 7, but if not in charge, he will have skill zero, as he really wants to be in charge. Beorth, an old, resigned female. Hits 15, Skill 6. Borran, a charmismatic middle-aged male. Hits 20, Skill 4, but if made leader, will be effectively 9 as he increases team effectiveness. Akra, a young female desperately in love with Torek. Hits 25, Skill 12 if working with Torek, 2 otherwise. Deagor, a very old male dwarf who talks himself up very well. Hits 10, Skill 2. Karn, a very old male dwarf who despises Deagor. Hits 10, Skill 8 if not working with him, 4 if he is. The following are the primary uses of skills. Each skill can, at most, be used on each dwarf once. If a skill has no effect, give trival information, but do not count it as success or failure. All DCs are 15 except as noted. Dungeoneering: Rolled secretly to discover skill ability. Success gives the best possible skill they have. If they fail, then the difference between the roll and 15 is tha mount they are off by, with negative dice rolls meaning low, positive high. So if the roll is '3' for a total of 10, then the estimate will be low (the '3') by 5 points (15-10). Bluff: Enthusiastically describing the job, talking up your team, or whatever, gets a dwarf to volunteer information on another dwarf. If they don't have a preferred target to give info on, pick one randomly. Healing: Torek is not really in control of his body well. Deagor has never worked hard. Karn seems very fit for an old guy. Akra is in good shape, but appears to be distracted by something. Streetwise: Gnarth likes to be the boss. He'd be good at it. Borran is prime leader material, probably useless if not leader though. Beorth is a solid worker. Nothing will changer her work ability. Insight: Gnarth and Borran want to be leaders. (DC 5) Akra is in love with Torek. Deagor is more talk than action. Karn despises Deagor. Beorth doen't care about anything. Intimidate: Torek cries. Gnarth argues that he should be leader or he won't work at all (making the dealers unhappy!). Beorth just does whatver she is told. Borran kow-tows and appears very willing to be lead. Akra bursts into tears and declares that if Torek is with her she will work night and day, as hard as she can, to do watever her employers want. Deagor will admit he is useless. Karn will denouce Deagor. The team's total skill, and their hit points, will be used later in the adventure. - Graham
#2 fodigg Aug 01, 2008 11:28:25	Sounds interesting. And yeah, aren't tieflings just begging to be set up as elite nobility? I've been doing something similar in my own campaign, and the Bael Turath stuff in 4-core lends itself well to the concept.
#3 cormanthor Aug 01, 2008 18:38:58	Great idea ! I suggest that you use 3.5 for your campaign as 4.0 is less suited for that kind of game IMO and more suited for high-combat games. Your skill challenge is also very interesting and I like how you describe the NPC instead of just making stats for them. Keep up the good work and keep us informed on your 2 campaigns !