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I’ve been working on a campaign based in Sterich focused around the Istivin Trilogy for some time now. The structure is based on Dungeons adventure path style of 12 adventures that take PC’s from 1st to 20th level with some side-trek/mini adventures weaved in based on the PC’s goals and motivations. For a better Idea of what I’m planning you can check out this thread on these boards at: http://paizo.com/paizo/messageboards/dungeon/generalDiscussion/istivinTrilo gyTheHarrowingOtherQuestionsPossibleSpoilers
While I’ve been working on the campaign a few issues have come up that I would like to get a better perspective on.
1) Currently I have a rough outline of my twelve adventures, as I look over them I feel like I have a collection of relatively unconnected adventures that while it would form a campaign in its own right, my actual goal is to have something a little more connected and interlinked like how the Savage Tides adventure path outline in Dungeon issue 138 details. Any ideas on how I can go about accomplishing this task? For some reason I have it stuck in my mind that the “Azure Prince” detailed in the LGG has some major role to play in the campaign as well as the Malgoth entity from the Istivin Trilogy and perhaps even Lolth.
2) What exactly is the process used in creating an adventure path? I feel like I’m trying to shoehorn adventures into a campaign instead of there being an actual flow of adventures that leads to a cohesive story arc. Many of the seeds I’m using are culled from the Istivin Trilogy and a few other sources (mainly Dungeon, Dragon, and the LGG).
3) Since this campaign is set in the World of Greyhawk, and entirely within Sterich (with possible planar adventures) I’ve been struggling with ways of making the campaign have more of a Greyhawk feel to it. I’ve considered using the remnants of the Slave Lords, but unlike the FR or Eberron settings there doesn’t seem to be a lot of material (especially in Sterich) to work with. Any ideas on how to put the “Greyhawk” in this Greyhawk campaign?
Creative Director
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1: Although you can create a pretty cool campaign by stringing together several unconnected adventures, unless you go in and do some major rebuildings of plots and NPCs, there's not much you can do to make a campaign like that feel more organic. I'd suggesst when you're building a campaign in this manner that you'd pick adventures that feature the same location and the same types of villians. For Sterich, using teh Istivin trilogy is a great backbone. Expanding from there using adventures that feature giants, drow, themes of madness and insanity, kaorti, and the Underdark is the way to go.
2: The process of creating an adventrue path is a long and complicated one. I talk about it a bit in my editorial for issue #140, but basically it involves coming up with the main plot and then splitting the stages of that main plot into 12 seperate adventrues.We may take inspiration from existing adventures, but the adventures themselves are built from scratch.
3: Back in the 2E days there was a pretty cool adventrue called "The Liberation of Geoff" that not only updated the G series of adventrues to 2nd edition, but added a whole new set of giant-related adventrues in Sterich. The most important part, thoguh, was that this adventure also doubled as a Sterich sourcebook. It's filled with cool adventure hooks and plots. Posting here's also a great way to get more ideas; I'd also suggest heading over to Canonfire to make a few posts there as well.
I feel your pain, Savage_Screenmonkey! I have put together a number of campaigns in this very fashion. James has some good points in that if the adventures are not custom built then you are going to have some major overhauls to do. Still, it is not impossible. Here are some suggestions that have helped me in the past!
1- James suggested using adventures that feature the same locations. I would agree that this helps. If you are doing a seafaring campaign, adventures that feature sinking ships, small harbor towns, strange and mysterious islands are all great choices! This helps to maintain the overall outward continuity of the campaign!
2- Second, try to make connections between the individual adventures in terms of themes and such. If one of your low level adventures pits the PCs against an NPC party, and features a race through deserted ruins in search of a specific item, (similar to 'Fiend's Embrace' from Dungeon 121), then do your best to connect both the item and the NPC party with your central story arc! Perhaps the NPCs are seeking the item for the overall evil master, or perhaps they are simply interlopers who are seeking the item for personal fortune! In that same regard, try to combined all of the badguys from your individual stories into one or two organizations (perhaps compeating for the same goal - perhaps not).
3- Try to avoid the temptation to save all of the good stuff for the end of the campaign. Be sure to take ELEMENTS from the final stages, and sprinkle hints of them into the early adventures. If your enemies are trying to open a gate to the heavens, but require three precious artifacts before they can open the portal, the PCs might find one of the artifacts early on amid the ruins of an ancient order of stargazing druids (hint, hint)!
Information found among the druids (perhaps an astrological map of Xoth; whu-huhuhuhu!), could be the first tip-off that the plot will involve astrological events! Later discoveries need to support this concept (while there should also be a couple red herrings to chase)
4- Lastly, be sure that your campaign is not too linear in terms of going from point 'A' to 'B'. Throw in some offbeat enemies that take the story in an unusual direction. Perhaps a complication in the plans of the badguys - they might capture one of the three artifacts in one adventure leaving the PCs wallowing in defeat, but in the next session the PCs discover that the artifact carries with it an enervating curse, and the same badguys who were talking smack as they escaped are now rotting away in the desert with the artifact left unattended! This is where you tie in that adventure with the were-jackles that didn't quite seem to fit with the rest of the campaign elements.
And that's how it's done! The adventures you use are the building blocks, but it is up to you to connect the dots - add, subtract, and edit some of the information to construct the story you want to tell. After all, back in the day these adventure things WERE called 'modules' - and they were called that for a reason.
Good luck, yo!
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Creative Director
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Good points, but I disagree a little on the concept of not being too linear. One of the most common complaints we've recieved about Age of Worms and Shackled City is that a lot of DMs and players simply didn't enjoy adventures that weren't part of the main plotline. It's not that those adventures were bad... it's just that the PCs were so heavilly invested in the main story arc that doing something off to the side seemed like a waste of effort.
For a big campaign, being linear is actually an asset. Give the PCs an obvious road to follow, and in my experience they'll follow it. As long as that "road" isn't on rails and the PCs feel that they can take side treks off the path whenever, it won't feel like railroading.
In campaigns where the DM has a particular story in mind but doesn't provide this obvious roadmap for the PCs, you can bet that the PCs will wander and cavitate and sputter. They'll likely all pick on different adventure hooks or elements to focus on, and suddenly you have four (or more) players who all want to do something different and can't agree on what they want to do. At this point, if the DM swoops in and tries to force them back onto the path of the campaign, it can't help but feel like railroading.
Giving the PCs focus is a good thing for story-driven campaigns. If you have a group of players who prefer to set the story themselves and are quick to accuse DMs of railroading, you probably shouldn't be building an Adventure Path style campaign. Instead, I'd recomend gathering a nice, sizable stable of adventures, perhaps three or four per level, that you can pick and choose from based on the decisions the PCs make during play.
Hey S_SM
I ran a Iuz campaign around 10 years ago in the same fashion, using about half published modules and half dungeons I made from seeds in the Iuz the Evil souecebook. Very time consuming! I say if you got a published dungeon and you wanna save time then use it. Connecting the dungeons isn't as hard as you might think once you have a basic plotline hashed out. First things first:
1) Get your campaign plot. If you haven't already, try reading Monte Cooke's "Plotting the Campaign" articles starting in Dungeon#121 (the one with Graz'zt and Iggwilv on the cover). There are some good tips on developing your story. I usually pick the main villain/monster I want the players to face at the finale of the campaign and go from there. I'll choose three or four published dungeons that are "must play" material for the campaign (a low, mid and high level). With that I'll start fleshing out key NPCs, events, monsters and so on.
2) Once you got the framework, start picking out a bunch of different modules you like of varying levels that could fit into your campaign. If your a longtime player or own a lot of Dungeon issues then there should be no shortage of good material. You'll have to link them together but this isn't as hard as you think. Typically key NPCs or a certain magic item will do, it all depends on your plotline. It may seem like a collection of unrelated dungeons strung together because they are! When using published material for your own campaign this is unavoidable but you can still tailor them to fit, taking what you need and discarding what you don't. As important as the little details are for consistency, it's the big things the players will remember (the boss battles, the wild locations, the cool magic items and yes, the compelling story). The beauty of D&D is that it sticks with you long after finshing a game. It is then your players will go"... oh yeah, I get it now!" If you gotta hit them over the head with a sledgehammer to see the big picture, chances are your story needs work.
3) The one thing I find about Greyhawk that distinguishes itself from other settings is the grittiness. There isn't a lot of cute, flowery things in GH and that's what I like about it. It just has a slightly darker, edgier feel than to it than FR or Eberron. Try and keep this in mind when running your game.
One last thing, check out Dragon # 312. It's got a cool article about an abyssal entity called The Ebon Maw that reminded me of The Malgoth. Maybe you can use it, maybe not...
Good luck!
One of the most common complaints we've recieved about Age of Worms and Shackled City is that a lot of DMs and players simply didn't enjoy adventures that weren't part of the main plotline.
Touche', James!
I hadn't considered that, but in retrospect I have picked up on an excessive amount of complaining in regards to the Hall of Harsh Reflections, so that makes sense...
I guess the point is then to add some diversity whenever you can, but be careful not to allow sidetrek-type stuff to become a distraction from your central story arch!
A good idea in plotting out a campaign is to think of relations between adversaries. Decide on a theme for the campaign and then brainstorm the kinds of villains and opposition that would clearly relate to that theme
On a page of ruled paper, number the lines from 1 to 20. On each line, list all of the themed adversaries you came up with by the corresponding Challenge Rating. Look at how they spread out and use templates, character levels, and grouping of multiples to fill in the skimpy levels. Then use each creature's environment to suggest where the campaign should go.
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A pretty good example of a campaign that keeps the party focused without railroading them is The Night Below boxed set. For most of the adventure, there is the one major goal of saving the wizard's apprentice. This goal brings many adventures to the group, but everything is important to the end goal. An interesting side to this is that saving the wizard's apprentice ties the entire adventure together, but that is far from the most heroic thing the party does. By the end of the adventure the party has pretty much saved the world, but this smaller goal is what has led them to do it.
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Thanks for the great responses! Especially to you James, do you ever sleep? It seems like your constantly posting on these boards (not that I’m complaining mind you). I was also hoping to be able to pick your brain on how I could use and adapt your “Headless” adventure from Dungeon #89, I still haven’t received the back issue I ordered but I expect it any day now. What made you choose Sterich as the location to set it in? I also have your Lord of the Scarlet Tide (Issue #85) that I thought was pretty cool. I was thinking that it might be interesting to see some sort of spread of it into the Hellfurnace/Sterich underdark area (just noodling with different ideas at this point).
One of my goals as a DM for this campaign was to flex my novice DM muscles and write/create some of my own adventures(possibly for a Paizo Dungeon query), but not have to create a campaign whole cloth. Dungeon Magazine has provided the backbone (or at least a solid start) to the process.
My second DM goal is to use a grounded setting (Greyhawk) instead of the mishmash under constant construction homebrew settings that have been the basis of my D&D playing career.
Thirdly, by writing some of my own adventures I hope to have a less rigid structure than the AP’s so that my players feel they can explore the setting a little and accomplish their own PC and Player goals within the campaign and not feel like they have to follow the planned out path. However, you make a good point James about the players wandering to far a field from the story. My goal was more to let them wander to a degree but then rally them with various subtle (but not to subtle) adventure hooks.
I do agree with James on the adventures that don’t seem to follow the core plot bit, my experience playing in the Shackled City AP (just starting the Soul Pillars adventure) has been a great one, but sometimes I just get the feeling at points like “OK this is a cool adventure but shouldn’t we be following up on the bad guys here!” But also by playing in the SCAP I’ve found that are group really enjoys and responds best to the smaller adventures that can be completed in 3-4 sessions and then continue onto the next adventure in the campaign. The AP adventures are great because they provide a sense of accomplishment but also the required motivation to continue onto the next adventure and discover/disrupt the evil maniacal bad guys plot.
Man thers alot of posts on the CanonFire fourms! Seems like lost of good stuff there. I've been told to check it out before but I never really looked at the message boards before, but Im glad that I fianlly did. Thanks for the recomendation!