First session - setting the tone? - Downloaded from the Wizards Community, all coding removed by Solauren

First session - setting the tone?

Post/Author/DateTime Post
#1
ansob
Sep 05, 2008 20:20:47 Come this October, I'll be running a 4E campaign, set pretty much in the default setting (Arkhosia, Bael Turath, all that jazz - no biologically impossible half-elves, though). This'll be my first game run in a fair while (last time I GM'd was in 2001), so I'm planning four or five sessions in advance (which means that I may have to throw out an entire session's worth of notes if the players do something completely unexpected, but I'd rather come prepared - I can always reuse bits and bobs later).

The campaign plot itself is based on the metaplot of the Half-Life series: in short, world-that-thinks-itself-advanced gets invaded by an unholy union of creatures that would normally never work together; players get to be the Resistance for about ten sessions, then the campaign goes off plane as the players search for the powers behind the invasion: a dimension-spanning empire that has a habit of conquering whole galaxies to strip-mine them and turn their population into either slaves or cannon fodder. In my case, an army made of angels and demons working together invade the Core setting, and the players are forced to cope with this before setting off to find out that an interplanar empire of aboleths (or as its title is within-setting, the Sovereignty) has managed to conquer most of the planar cosmology. The players eventually face the aboleth Sovereign itself and destroy it, then return to their world to rebuild, thinking they've put an end to the Sovereignty, once and for all...

The idea is that for a good majority of the campaign, the players should be left in the dark as to what is actually happening. Eventually, they'll find out what the Sovereignty actually is; at first, all they'll know is the name, and the fact that they have angels and demons working side by side (and seem more interested in conquest than destruction). Hopefully, the glaring number of odd things floating around should be enough for the players' sense of curiosity to push them to find out more about the Sovereignty itself.

This brings me to the question I'm actually posting this to ask: the players will be established characters (starting at level 5) in a large town/small city by the name of Haven (cliché, I know; that's half the point of this part of the campaign, being that it's based on the Core setting), which used to be a bustling port city in the empire of Nerath and is now its own city-state; Haven is one of the few places that still hold true to the empire's vision and attempts to maintain its part of the complex and expensive infrastructure of roads that the first emperor built. In short, Haven's lands are in themselves slightly-lighter-than-the-rest (all twenty square miles of them), and Haven is a point of light.

The campaign will actually start halfway through the first session, when planar gates open in the skies to disgorge hosts of angels, demons and other nasties. Haven, being one of the larger towns on the continent, is one of the immediate targets for the invasion force, as is the nearby forest home of the elven theocracy (which'll probably end up being about the size of Germany's Schwarzwald) due to their political clout - Haven is bombed from the skies, and the forest is set on fire.

Now, I have two choices as to where the players might be during this initial stage of the invasion: I can either have a runner show up and declare that the forest is on fire, and the PCs are among those that go check it out (or drum up a similar reason to have the PCs outside town when the Sovereignty attacks); or I can have them in the city itself when all of a sudden, things start exploding around them.

My problem is that I'm not sure which one to pick. On one hand, being in the city lets me set the scene from the start - buildings exploding, people dying in the street, the whole Independence Day shtick; however, I'm struggling to justify why the PCs would leave town, considering they all held respected positions and have ties to the locals. On the other hand, having them out of town makes their leaving make much more sense, as well as allowing me to instill doubt within the characters' minds as to the well-being of civilian X or Y (and maybe set up a cool encounter or two - like a bunch of elven rangers clearly running away from something, sporting quite a few burn wounds; a trained Heal check can reveal that these wounds seem to have come from both fire and radiant damage, itself an oddity). Either way, the players end up running into a level 10 encounter once they're outside the city, which they're supposed to run away from.

Given that the early games are meant to set up a healthy fear of this all-powerful Sovereignty as well as entice the players to acts of revenge against the invaders, which one should I go with?
#2
stevesteam
Sep 06, 2008 16:19:56 This sounds cool. Props on the half-elf treatment as well; I also don't use half-elves as cross breeds (they are "fey-touched" humans in my campaign).

I'd say let the players define their back story and reason for being together, emphasizing what is important to them and make sure it gets the "Independence Day" treatment. In short, you can have a vicious invasion force brutalize something that they are helpless to prevent in either setting. For example, generously let them be from the Haven aristocracy and have town hall vaporize with relatives inside. I think it depends whether your group decides to be country mice or city mice.
#3
ansob
Sep 09, 2008 11:47:28 Yeah; I don't like true-breeding mortal half-breeds - stuff like Dark Sun's Muls (sterile half-human half-dwarves) is fine, though. I also tend to be okay with half-angel/demon/devil/elemental/dragon/etc., as those come from creatures that have a habit of disguising themselves as humans and have powerful magic at their command.

In other news, I think I'll make one more change to the PHB races - tieflings will be practically human save their projecting a tainted aura that makes people distrust them and having a slight fiendish trait that manifests every now and then when you aren't quite looking (vertical pupils, smell of brimstone, that sort of stuff - but very discreet). Mechanically, they'll be identical to the current PHB Tieflings; they'll just look different.

Instead, I'll make the MM Tieflings (who get to look like they currently do) into half-demons, and explain their lack of level compared to Cambions by the fact that demons don't usually breed except accidentally.
#4
fodigg
Sep 10, 2008 12:06:28 Why the half-elf hate? Any human with an elf ancestor is a "half-elf" until it's so many generations ago that it doesn't matter.

What's the problem?
#5
ansob
Sep 10, 2008 13:01:01
What's the problem?

They can't breed.

Unless otherwise specified, elves and humans aren't the same species. If they're not the same species, they can't breed. Genetics 101.

Well, more accurately, they can produce sterile offspring under certain circumstances, but it boils down to the same: no true-breeding half-elves (or -orcs, or -dwarves). I make an exception for non-mundane creatures that have reasonable cause to breed with humans (generally, the ability to shapeshift into a humanoid form and the desire to mess with things).
#6
fodigg
Sep 10, 2008 13:15:17
Unless otherwise specified, elves and humans aren't the same species.

Isn't the fact that they can breed said "specification"?
#7
ansob
Sep 12, 2008 20:39:14
Isn't the fact that they can breed said "specification"?

Hardly. It's proof of stupidity, or ignorance if you're feeling generous. Half-elves existed in AD&D2 and 3.x when elves lived hundreds of years longer than humans (it used to be they lived 'til 2000, but 3.x decided 500 was more like it, for some unknown reason), where they were explicitly stated to have been different species (elves being the first race, and all that).

Human/demi-human hybrids can exist in a setting in which elves and humans are different races or sub-species rather than species, but none of the official settings so far have ever fallen into that category. That said, if you were to argue that 4E makes no such statements and that given the new low, low life expectancy of elves/dwarves/eladrin, one might take that to mean that they're genetically closer than in previous editions, I'd be forced to concede... I'd still want half-orcs and Muls before I propped half-elves up, though (especially considering their rather weak racial).
#8
arthurhoneyhill
Sep 12, 2008 23:24:14 Never are the races referred to as "species". They are always "races".

Haven't you ever seen half-asians? Or half-natives? Or anything? The two races are so similar that I don't see how they couldn't have offspring. Look at how different some breeds of dog are, but they can still reproduce together.

Otherwise, I like what you have set up. [I myself have used Haven as a town name...]
#9
ansob
Sep 13, 2008 5:58:12
Never are the races referred to as "species". They are always "races".

And up until 4E, they've always been described as being species. Different creation at different times by different gods, etc., which further compounds my clains of designer ignorance. ;)

Anyway, some further thoughts about the meta-setting - I've decided to incorporate the two gith races quite heavily; it's going to be another one of those points that experience players (seems like half the group will be made of veterans, and the other half of newbies) will do a double-take on, as they'll have recently unified (what could push githzerai and githyanki to forgive each other and work together again? Why, the return of the Illithid as a pan-dimensional force, of course, although as mere pawns for the aboleths). They'll handily provide the hard, military core of the Resistance, whilst the players end up infiltrating planar landmarks (since humans/elves/etc. exist in relatively every Prime, whereas the githyanki and githzerai are a single species that exists throughout the whole Wheel, much like the mindflayers and aboleths).

I'm also going to toss a wrecked Sigil at the players - besieged and destroyed by the Sovereignty about 25 years ago, which marked the turning point in their invasion of the Wheel. Now that they have several gods under their thumb and have access to the astral plane at will (setting note: the "astral sea" is just a domain in the astral plane where the gods of the core setting reside; the astral plane is what connects every Prime and the whole of the Wheel together), they've moved out of the City of Doors, which is just an empty ruin. I might give it a Mad Max flavour, with what's left of the different factions eking out a living as gangs. It could be fun.

Now, I intend Sigil to come a few months in, in terms of gameplay; at the very least about two months (at one session a week), since that's how long I foresee the guerilla-warfare-in-Nerath arc to last. I also intend to have the players transit through the City of Brass at one point, probably doing a few errands for the underworld, since the city will have been entirely (and somewhat peacefully) subjugated for a few years.

Not sure which order I should place the City of Brass and Sigil in, though. Can anyone think of any other planar locations that might be fun for the players to visit?

Edit: oh, and Haven and Bastion are very convenient names. >.>
#10
colindownes
Sep 13, 2008 23:45:31
They can't breed.

Unless otherwise specified, elves and humans aren't the same species. If they're not the same species, they can't breed. Genetics 101.

Well... usually. There are examples of hybrids that breed true:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mariana_Mallard
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pomarine_Skua
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lonicera_fly
#11
fodigg
Sep 16, 2008 10:48:58
Hardly. It's proof of stupidity, or ignorance if you're feeling generous. Half-elves existed in AD&D2 and 3.x when elves lived hundreds of years longer than humans (it used to be they lived 'til 2000, but 3.x decided 500 was more like it, for some unknown reason), where they were explicitly stated to have been different species (elves being the first race, and all that).

Human/demi-human hybrids can exist in a setting in which elves and humans are different races or sub-species rather than species, but none of the official settings so far have ever fallen into that category. That said, if you were to argue that 4E makes no such statements and that given the new low, low life expectancy of elves/dwarves/eladrin, one might take that to mean that they're genetically closer than in previous editions, I'd be forced to concede... I'd still want half-orcs and Muls before I propped half-elves up, though (especially considering their rather weak racial).

Never are the races referred to as "species". They are always "races".

And up until 4E, they've always been described as being species. Different creation at different times by different gods, etc., which further compounds my clains of designer ignorance. ;)

Meh. "edition history" is not "setting history". If you're going to judge 4E half-elves, judge them according to the edition/world/setting they exist in. If they don't fit the context of a previous edition, so what?

And I have never seen it stated that they are different species in 3rd edition, and certainly not in 4th edition, which is what we're evaluating. "Race" is a game term anyway.

Post/Author/DateTime	Post
#1 ansob Sep 05, 2008 20:20:47	Come this October, I'll be running a 4E campaign, set pretty much in the default setting (Arkhosia, Bael Turath, all that jazz - no biologically impossible half-elves, though). This'll be my first game run in a fair while (last time I GM'd was in 2001), so I'm planning four or five sessions in advance (which means that I may have to throw out an entire session's worth of notes if the players do something completely unexpected, but I'd rather come prepared - I can always reuse bits and bobs later). The campaign plot itself is based on the metaplot of the Half-Life series: in short, world-that-thinks-itself-advanced gets invaded by an unholy union of creatures that would normally never work together; players get to be the Resistance for about ten sessions, then the campaign goes off plane as the players search for the powers behind the invasion: a dimension-spanning empire that has a habit of conquering whole galaxies to strip-mine them and turn their population into either slaves or cannon fodder. In my case, an army made of angels and demons working together invade the Core setting, and the players are forced to cope with this before setting off to find out that an interplanar empire of aboleths (or as its title is within-setting, the Sovereignty) has managed to conquer most of the planar cosmology. The players eventually face the aboleth Sovereign itself and destroy it, then return to their world to rebuild, thinking they've put an end to the Sovereignty, once and for all... The idea is that for a good majority of the campaign, the players should be left in the dark as to what is actually happening. Eventually, they'll find out what the Sovereignty actually is; at first, all they'll know is the name, and the fact that they have angels and demons working side by side (and seem more interested in conquest than destruction). Hopefully, the glaring number of odd things floating around should be enough for the players' sense of curiosity to push them to find out more about the Sovereignty itself. This brings me to the question I'm actually posting this to ask: the players will be established characters (starting at level 5) in a large town/small city by the name of Haven (cliché, I know; that's half the point of this part of the campaign, being that it's based on the Core setting), which used to be a bustling port city in the empire of Nerath and is now its own city-state; Haven is one of the few places that still hold true to the empire's vision and attempts to maintain its part of the complex and expensive infrastructure of roads that the first emperor built. In short, Haven's lands are in themselves slightly-lighter-than-the-rest (all twenty square miles of them), and Haven is a point of light. The campaign will actually start halfway through the first session, when planar gates open in the skies to disgorge hosts of angels, demons and other nasties. Haven, being one of the larger towns on the continent, is one of the immediate targets for the invasion force, as is the nearby forest home of the elven theocracy (which'll probably end up being about the size of Germany's Schwarzwald) due to their political clout - Haven is bombed from the skies, and the forest is set on fire. Now, I have two choices as to where the players might be during this initial stage of the invasion: I can either have a runner show up and declare that the forest is on fire, and the PCs are among those that go check it out (or drum up a similar reason to have the PCs outside town when the Sovereignty attacks); or I can have them in the city itself when all of a sudden, things start exploding around them. My problem is that I'm not sure which one to pick. On one hand, being in the city lets me set the scene from the start - buildings exploding, people dying in the street, the whole Independence Day shtick; however, I'm struggling to justify why the PCs would leave town, considering they all held respected positions and have ties to the locals. On the other hand, having them out of town makes their leaving make much more sense, as well as allowing me to instill doubt within the characters' minds as to the well-being of civilian X or Y (and maybe set up a cool encounter or two - like a bunch of elven rangers clearly running away from something, sporting quite a few burn wounds; a trained Heal check can reveal that these wounds seem to have come from both fire and radiant damage, itself an oddity). Either way, the players end up running into a level 10 encounter once they're outside the city, which they're supposed to run away from. Given that the early games are meant to set up a healthy fear of this all-powerful Sovereignty as well as entice the players to acts of revenge against the invaders, which one should I go with?
#2 stevesteam Sep 06, 2008 16:19:56	This sounds cool. Props on the half-elf treatment as well; I also don't use half-elves as cross breeds (they are "fey-touched" humans in my campaign). I'd say let the players define their back story and reason for being together, emphasizing what is important to them and make sure it gets the "Independence Day" treatment. In short, you can have a vicious invasion force brutalize something that they are helpless to prevent in either setting. For example, generously let them be from the Haven aristocracy and have town hall vaporize with relatives inside. I think it depends whether your group decides to be country mice or city mice.
#3 ansob Sep 09, 2008 11:47:28	Yeah; I don't like true-breeding mortal half-breeds - stuff like Dark Sun's Muls (sterile half-human half-dwarves) is fine, though. I also tend to be okay with half-angel/demon/devil/elemental/dragon/etc., as those come from creatures that have a habit of disguising themselves as humans and have powerful magic at their command. In other news, I think I'll make one more change to the PHB races - tieflings will be practically human save their projecting a tainted aura that makes people distrust them and having a slight fiendish trait that manifests every now and then when you aren't quite looking (vertical pupils, smell of brimstone, that sort of stuff - but very discreet). Mechanically, they'll be identical to the current PHB Tieflings; they'll just look different. Instead, I'll make the MM Tieflings (who get to look like they currently do) into half-demons, and explain their lack of level compared to Cambions by the fact that demons don't usually breed except accidentally.
#4 fodigg Sep 10, 2008 12:06:28	Why the half-elf hate? Any human with an elf ancestor is a "half-elf" until it's so many generations ago that it doesn't matter. What's the problem?
#5 ansob Sep 10, 2008 13:01:01	What's the problem? They can't breed. Unless otherwise specified, elves and humans aren't the same species. If they're not the same species, they can't breed. Genetics 101. Well, more accurately, they can produce sterile offspring under certain circumstances, but it boils down to the same: no true-breeding half-elves (or -orcs, or -dwarves). I make an exception for non-mundane creatures that have reasonable cause to breed with humans (generally, the ability to shapeshift into a humanoid form and the desire to mess with things).
#6 fodigg Sep 10, 2008 13:15:17	Unless otherwise specified, elves and humans aren't the same species. Isn't the fact that they can breed said "specification"?
#7 ansob Sep 12, 2008 20:39:14	Isn't the fact that they can breed said "specification"? Hardly. It's proof of stupidity, or ignorance if you're feeling generous. Half-elves existed in AD&D2 and 3.x when elves lived hundreds of years longer than humans (it used to be they lived 'til 2000, but 3.x decided 500 was more like it, for some unknown reason), where they were explicitly stated to have been different species (elves being the first race, and all that). Human/demi-human hybrids can exist in a setting in which elves and humans are different races or sub-species rather than species, but none of the official settings so far have ever fallen into that category. That said, if you were to argue that 4E makes no such statements and that given the new low, low life expectancy of elves/dwarves/eladrin, one might take that to mean that they're genetically closer than in previous editions, I'd be forced to concede... I'd still want half-orcs and Muls before I propped half-elves up, though (especially considering their rather weak racial).
#8 arthurhoneyhill Sep 12, 2008 23:24:14	Never are the races referred to as "species". They are always "races". Haven't you ever seen half-asians? Or half-natives? Or anything? The two races are so similar that I don't see how they couldn't have offspring. Look at how different some breeds of dog are, but they can still reproduce together. Otherwise, I like what you have set up. [I myself have used Haven as a town name...]
#9 ansob Sep 13, 2008 5:58:12	Never are the races referred to as "species". They are always "races". And up until 4E, they've always been described as being species. Different creation at different times by different gods, etc., which further compounds my clains of designer ignorance. ;) Anyway, some further thoughts about the meta-setting - I've decided to incorporate the two gith races quite heavily; it's going to be another one of those points that experience players (seems like half the group will be made of veterans, and the other half of newbies) will do a double-take on, as they'll have recently unified (what could push githzerai and githyanki to forgive each other and work together again? Why, the return of the Illithid as a pan-dimensional force, of course, although as mere pawns for the aboleths). They'll handily provide the hard, military core of the Resistance, whilst the players end up infiltrating planar landmarks (since humans/elves/etc. exist in relatively every Prime, whereas the githyanki and githzerai are a single species that exists throughout the whole Wheel, much like the mindflayers and aboleths). I'm also going to toss a wrecked Sigil at the players - besieged and destroyed by the Sovereignty about 25 years ago, which marked the turning point in their invasion of the Wheel. Now that they have several gods under their thumb and have access to the astral plane at will (setting note: the "astral sea" is just a domain in the astral plane where the gods of the core setting reside; the astral plane is what connects every Prime and the whole of the Wheel together), they've moved out of the City of Doors, which is just an empty ruin. I might give it a Mad Max flavour, with what's left of the different factions eking out a living as gangs. It could be fun. Now, I intend Sigil to come a few months in, in terms of gameplay; at the very least about two months (at one session a week), since that's how long I foresee the guerilla-warfare-in-Nerath arc to last. I also intend to have the players transit through the City of Brass at one point, probably doing a few errands for the underworld, since the city will have been entirely (and somewhat peacefully) subjugated for a few years. Not sure which order I should place the City of Brass and Sigil in, though. Can anyone think of any other planar locations that might be fun for the players to visit? Edit: oh, and Haven and Bastion are very convenient names. >.>
#10 colindownes Sep 13, 2008 23:45:31	They can't breed. Unless otherwise specified, elves and humans aren't the same species. If they're not the same species, they can't breed. Genetics 101. Well... usually. There are examples of hybrids that breed true: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mariana_Mallard http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pomarine_Skua http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lonicera_fly
#11 fodigg Sep 16, 2008 10:48:58	Hardly. It's proof of stupidity, or ignorance if you're feeling generous. Half-elves existed in AD&D2 and 3.x when elves lived hundreds of years longer than humans (it used to be they lived 'til 2000, but 3.x decided 500 was more like it, for some unknown reason), where they were explicitly stated to have been different species (elves being the first race, and all that). Human/demi-human hybrids can exist in a setting in which elves and humans are different races or sub-species rather than species, but none of the official settings so far have ever fallen into that category. That said, if you were to argue that 4E makes no such statements and that given the new low, low life expectancy of elves/dwarves/eladrin, one might take that to mean that they're genetically closer than in previous editions, I'd be forced to concede... I'd still want half-orcs and Muls before I propped half-elves up, though (especially considering their rather weak racial). Never are the races referred to as "species". They are always "races". And up until 4E, they've always been described as being species. Different creation at different times by different gods, etc., which further compounds my clains of designer ignorance. ;) Meh. "edition history" is not "setting history". If you're going to judge 4E half-elves, judge them according to the edition/world/setting they exist in. If they don't fit the context of a previous edition, so what? And I have never seen it stated that they are different species in 3rd edition, and certainly not in 4th edition, which is what we're evaluating. "Race" is a game term anyway.