Homebrew Campaign - Rise of the 12 Kingdoms

[mrunderhill]

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?

[mrunderhill]

So I have talked to the player for this character and here is what he is 'requesting' for his background:

His family lineage is riddled with heroic warriors and paladins. His parents are of some considerable 'power' (not yet defined ie: magic, wealth, demi-gods, whatever).
He was on a dangerous mission that went wrong and now finds himself with no memory of who his is or where he comes from.

any one care to help flesh this out?

[Conman the Bardbarian]

He's Jason Bourne.

[mrunderhill]

Wish me luck.

Tonight is our first game in my "Rise of the 12 Kingdoms" campaign and my first time as GM.

We have a Human Ranger, an Elf Ranger, a Human Rogue, a Half-Elf Cleric, and a Human Paladin.

I am super excited. I just hope everything goes well.

[mrunderhill]

What a fun night, although it looked like the evening would be a bust for a while.
At our designated start time I had only the cleric and human ranger at my house ready to play. 30 minutes later the human rogue texted me that he wasnt coming and we never could get in touch with the elven ranger to see where he was.
About an hour after start time the human paladin showed up and fortunately he brought his girlfriend and we were able to hand her a character to 'play'.

Everyone had fun and the ranger and paladin did some awesome roleplaying.

I can honestly say I have a new appreciation for all my past DM's and GM's.

I realized throughout our game how much more preparation I needed to do. I never had moments of um or uhh but i could have used more notes for getting ALL of the story across.

And I did hear a comment from a player that got me rethinking the direction of the game.

So last night started with the players stumbling upon an ambush. A small merchant and his two wagons were under attack by a small group. The players were easily able to turn the tide and as it turns out the merchant was traveling to the same little thorp the players were headed to.

I was going to have the merchant settle in the town as there is no "general store" and have the town grow as the characters make it their base of operations.

but one of the players last night mentioned that he wanted to get a job as a guard for the merchant and another player said that sounded like a good idea.

I do have a large merchant guild as a controlling organization that the players will run into every now and then but now I am wondering if it should take over as the more prominent story line.

Any one have any ideas?

[mrunderhill]

So, after traveling to the town with the merchant and joining the town in an annual celebration dinner, the party was awoken in the middle of the night (they were sleeping outside by the fire pit where dinner was served) by strange sounds in the distance. Turns out the town is on a delapadated castle site and some skeleton minions were trying to dig up some graves.

The party destroyed the minions but instead of trying to find the kobold shaman who was controlling them they decided to dig up a few graves themselves to see what they skeletons might have been after.

Discovering nothing of importance in the first few graves the rangers soon found the kobolds tracks and started after him.

It wasnt long before they discovered a gnoll hideout and fortunately for them the main contingent was out on a caravan raid. After killing all but one of the remaining gnolls they have decided to set an ambush for the gnoll raiding party when it returns.

Some back ground development:

A cyclops has taken over and is uniting the gnoll tribes of the north and at the same time taking kobolds for slaves. The cyclops has been in written contact with the merchant guilds private security force and they have agreed to provide quality weapons and armor in exchange for the attacks on caravans traversing the northern parts of the human kingdoms (this takes the private security force out of harms way and there is less evidence to point back to the merchant guild).

The kobolds have approached a necromancer living in their territory for help and he has told them of a powerful artifact that will give them victory over the gnolls. In truth this artifact will help raise a long dead evil king who the necromancer will set up as a general over his forming undead armies.

This is where I am so far. Any plot line or story help is greatly appreciated.

[Eltacolibre]

Cyclops usually look for ancient secrets/magic artifacts and ruins. Maybe the cyclops is trying to use the gnolls to excavate some ancient ruins of Cyclopean origins. If you want to add a twist, a tribe/group of Great Cyclops live in these ruins. While your Cyclops is expecting a friendly welcome, he would be surprised to come face to face with the degenerate great cyclops...more brute than he can chew.