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Organized Play Member. 13 posts. No reviews. No lists. No wishlists. 2 Organized Play characters.


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Homebrew Campaign - Rise of the 12 Kingdoms

Wow. We started our campaign this weekend with a character creation session. It was so much fun.

I made some tweaks to what I originally posted (http://paizo.com/threads/rzs2q4uw?Would-you-want-to-play-this-campaign) though not nearly as many as I had intended to make, but the players were excited and thats what I wanted.

I know I can fill in the rest as we move along.

I dont know how typical character generation sessions go, back in my AD&D days we made characters on our own and then met to play at a friends house.

As I have a lot of inexperienced players I didnt want to overwhelm them and as I have no experience as GM I didnt want to overwhelm me, so we kept it to the core races and base classes.

For about 15 minutes or so it looked like I was going to have an entire party of half-elf rogues.

I tried not to influence their decisions too much. I told them that if the entire party wanted to be the same race that was fine with me. And I also told them that I wasnt worried about having one of every class in the party.

if there was a class missing we would work thru it and that would be part of the fun of the game.

As it turns out, i have a party of humans and half-elves. 2 rogues, one cleric, one paladin and one ranger.

We still have one more guy to get a character for as he couldnt make the session. And I will let him play whatever he wants without influencing his decision.

Being as I am new to GMing, I hope to be able to pick the brains of all you creative types on here.

I have some plot points and story ideas but I am going to need help fleshing them out and making them make sense.

I also have several character background stories I need to work with and connect.

One of the most challenging is a pre-written background that I offered my players and one took the hook. the back ground is:
"The last thing you remember is waking up this morning. You have no idea who you are or where you came from and a strange tattoo covers your left arm. All you have are the clothes on your back and and torn piece of parchment stuffed in your pocket written on in a language you dont understand."

The guy that took this is playing a paladin. He came up with some suggestions about what might be in his background but I will also be looking to see what I can do with it.

Any thoughts?
Would you want to play this campaign?

Ok so I am relatively new to Pathfinder having only played a handful of PFS games at my local gaming store over the past year. However, I did play AD&D in high school, though I never took a turn "behind the screen".

Now I have my daughter and a few of her friends interested and I am itching to take the reigns and tell a story. They all have less RPG experience than I do, having just started when I got my daughter going, and none of them have any of the books. So it should be relatively easy to run a campaign for them because the bar is set low with the lack of experience.

However, I have some great experiences on the player side of the table and want to be sure that when our campaign ends they have some of those same experiences and fond memories.

So, here is the setting for the campaign I am looking to start. Now I have to be honest, I am a little nervous putting my idea out here for all to see, so please be gentle with your comments.

The Rise of the 12 Kingdoms:

Its been over fifteen hundred years since the last dragon was seen in the world of Aruelan. The Dragon Wars are just fairy tales now but the results are still evidenced. Once great castles and strongholds and temples are today layers of rubble and dust. Great mountains have risen and deep caverns were formed at the scenes of mighty dragon battles.

In the Dragon Wars, dragon fought against dragon, races fought amongst themselves, and brother fought against brother. It was a bloody, civil war that scarred the land and all who dwelt in it.

No one remembers the cause of the Dragon War and fewer still have an idea of who won.

The only thing people are sure of is that the dragons are gone and the world is still trying to repair itself.

Immediately after the Dragon Wars was a time of chaos and strife. During the chaos the race of Gnomes was eliminated.

But in the fifteen hundred years since the end of the war a peace has finally settled over the lands. Dwarves, Elves, Humans and Haflings all get along and trade easily together. There is even an elven settlement outside one of the dwarf kingdoms. Because of this, there is rarely a settlement that doesnt have a mix of races living and working peacefully together.

The Elves and Dwarves have both re-organized their societies. The Dwarves divided into 3 mountain kingdoms and the Elves settled into their own forest kingdom. The halflings of the world have created small pockets of societies but no central ruler, preferring instead to stay within reach of one of the human strongholds or even the elf and dwarf kingdoms.

Only the humans seem to be having trouble unifying under a central ruler. Instead, over the years, 12 human strongholds have sprung up, and while not all of the rulers of these areas strive to be the King, each one has an opinion about the matter. Still, these strongholds trade easily and work together to keep the peace, often coming to each others aid should the need arise. However, some might say its the Merchant Guilds that truly hold the power, keeping trade between the strongholds open and pushing for military support when one area is in danger.

And danger still comes in many different ways.

From the north are the Kobold and Gnoll tribes, to the south the Goblin kingdoms. Over the Mountains of Kaldarol to the east are the Orc and Ogre hordes as well as the frost and hill giants that call the mountains their home. And finally in the oceans of the west are the pirates and the end of the world. Although somewhere to the west also lies the island home of the Minotaurs; fearsome sailors and renown warriors.

Flat as it is, everyone knows that if you sail to far west you will fall off the edge of the world into the deadly Astral Sea, and if you could cross over the Mountains of Kaldarol, you would eventually walk off the edge into that same Astral Abyss.

In the night sky over Aruelan are abundant stars and constellations and the ever present NightMoon. And during the day, the Sun is guided by the DayMoon.

And such is the world as you know it.

So that is my starting point. I have many plot lines that I am hoping to explore with the players and I was thinking I might 'crowdsource' some of those by posting here for additional comments and creative help.

Any way, what do you think? If you read this as is would you be interested in playing?
Clerics domain granted powers

I haven't played an RPG since college, back in the early 90's, and am trying to get a handle on Pathfinder.

I was looking thru the CRB at the Cleric and their Domain Granted Powers.

My question is, do these 'granted powers' work as spells or are the separate from spells?

If I have the Fire Domain, do I get to cast Fire Bolt as well as my other spells or do I have to choose Fire Bolt as one of my first level spells?

Sorry if this seems a bit to obvious to everyone else. I just want to make sure I am reading the description correctly.

thanks for the help