Post/Author/DateTime	Post
#1 NazzerDawk Dec 05, 2011 20:02:22	I am starting a new campaign with friends and I am looking for some feedback on my homebrew world and it's hook. Below is a short version and a long version. The short version is in bold. So, my campaign is called Flightwood Chronicles. It concerns a set of magic items with genuinely strange properties. Things like music boxes that induce the urge to dance, or a parchment that, when written on, translates all languages, but only to some unknown language. These items themselves are generally pretty innocent, but no one is ever able to find out their origin. If you buy it from someone, they will always lead you on a wild goose chase of happenstance acquisitions, misplaced packages, and other merchants who lead you on just as much. Basically, they seem to have passed through an infinite number of hands. But in reality they have their origin in a deep, dangeous forest called Flightwood, the kind of place where people go in, but either never come out or they come out insane. The setup for the plot is that the players stumble accross the journal of a man who has been investigating these items... and also some similar items that aren't quite so innocent. Things like chains that bind creatures in time. Or goblets that cause drinks to become fizzy like carbonation... only drinkers will die in a few hours after drinking from them. These items also cause horrible corruptions in creatures, like making innocuous dirtworms to grow to monstrous sizes and ruin the crops of a whole village, or making beholders grow more eyestalks and phase through walls. Any feedback? I think this could be a pretty easy campaign to make somewhat episodic, and I can make it flexible: a new villain one week, a crazy monster the next. And players can have fun with the items I come up with. The adventure centers around a set of innocent and strange items, called "Flightwood Relics". These are odd trinkets, mystical arms and armor, and even goblets and silverware, that have unnatural, but innocuous effects. For example, there's a music box that makes listeners dance, a goblet that turns water into a sweet fruit juice, a lantern that reveals hidden text, and a parchment that translates any language written on it into a strange unknown language. The players come accross these items while traveling. The first session is written as follows: They have entered a settlement that is commonly known for playing host to travellers from all over. Once they arrive, their carriage is assaulted by rioting villagers. They find out that the crops have been failing, and the local government doesn't want to help. Their carriage needs repairs, and there is little food left in the town, so they have no choice but to help. Upon investigation it turns out that the problem started with a dirtworm infestation in the largest farm, one owned by a young farmer with little experience that only aqcuired the farm because his father went missing, and the dirtworms, a homebrew creature that eats roots, have been impossible to get rid of. They find a burrow under the farm, but the dirworms have grown to become unnaturally huge and aggressive. While in the burrow, they find a place where the burrowhas run into a basement. In this basement, they are startled by a statue of a beholder and find a hidden study that belonged to the young farmer's father. There is a journal that begins to chronicle an investigation into some arms and trinkets found on the father's far travels. It turns out that these items are all over the world. Well, that's just fine since they don't do any real harm... except that it turns out that some of them are not quite so innocent. There are some items that do horrible things, like a goblet that at first appears to merely make drinks fizzy (like carbonation), but later the drinker dies painfully, or shoes that let people walk through walls... but also randomly make people fall through floors unexpectedly. In fact, there is even a set of chains that freeze people in time, though their minds are still free to continue working. And the beholder statue they found before is revealed to be a real beholder, just chained with these items. Additionally any time creatures are exposed to these items for extended time periods, the evil item's aura produces horrible corruptions, and that's why the dirtworms grew so large. Any suggestions?
#2 yellowdingo Dec 05, 2011 21:11:26	Scary Elves I once did a small forest called 'crooked wood' where the elves were more of a predatorial meat eating species happily gutting any idiot foolish enough to venture into the wood. A party might be walking along thinking 'isnt this a gloomy place' and the next they turn around and find one of their own is on the ground with an elf of crooked wood squatting in the warmth of his open belly chewing a liver. unfortunatly because they are focused on this scary elf - they dont see the other comming in from their blind spot like a Velociraptor. Behold! the Lord of Elves This fellow looked like an elf except that he wore fancy robes of cloth and had what looked like a peacock fan of feathered eyes behind his head as part of the garment - the peacock fan eyes were in fact Eyestalks of a Beholder and this guy was an immortal Beholder God. He escaped imprisonment.
#3 NazzerDawk Dec 06, 2011 19:58:07	That sounds good. I was considering having a "no eladrin" house rule, and then have Eladrin be the source of the Flightwood relics, but then I decided that I really don't like Eladrin too much. Some kind of canibalistic elf species is a decent replacement, too, but I'm really wanting something more exotic than even that.