I'm running a campaign for a couple friends, one a female drow warlock 7, the other plays a male half-orc inquistor 7 and a male half-ogre barbarian/fighter/warhulk (from Miniatures Handbook) with some mommy issues.
It's just a diversionary campaign when our regular group can't get together. We started at 6th level, with just a vague mission to clear out some tunnels of darkfolk and a dark naga by the matron mother. The dark naga escaped.
I don't know where to go with this campaign. I'm not a huge fan of the underdark, but someone wanted to play a drow, so I started it out in the underdark. I'm considering focusing on either the aberrations (naga) or fleshing out a quasi-India/SE Asia campaign (naga)....based in the city of Nagapura (Fantasy version of Singapore).
Or I can have them go through a gate and end up in some other kind of campaign.
Help!!!
Transport them to an isolated Halfling village in the wilds of Varisia that is under constant siege from an Orc/Ogre band by day and Drow by night.
Arriving first to defend the villagers they have to overcome the halflings' inherent fear and fight off the invaders only to ultimately discover the leader of the aggressors is a psychotic halfling rogue who blames them for not helping when his mother was slain a dozen years ago and so convinced these two groups to go to war against his own people.
Depending on the alignments involved they could also work to infiltrate the village and bring it down from within for the rogue.
Either way in the end it turns out the whole thing was a secret test of character by the inquisitor's god to make sure they were ready for the invasion of extraplanar beings that's happening oh...about now just outside of town where a halfling cleric (the real big bad) has been constructing a permanent gate to allow the outsiders of your choice entry to the material plane and if it isn't stopped now it could spell doom for the region.
Would parts of Second Darkness AP be helpful? I don't have it and haven't played it, so that may not be much help. I have run campaigns (in Forgotten Realms) that spent a great deal of time in the Underdark (and Undermountain) but not exclusively. I wouldn't want to run/play in something that was wholly underground.
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How is their alignment situated? There was a 2nd edition Underdark boxed set that I vaguely recall had all sorts of rules and such for adventuring in the underdark from the drow perspective (at least that's what I recall, it was so long ago I might have it totally wrong).
If they're sticking around the Underdark how about have them adventure to advance the matron mother's house in whatever drow city you're using. There's artifacts from ancient surface empires to learn about and retrieve. Humans that are interrupting vital drow trade lines that happen to get too close to their sewer system with a connection to the Underdark that need to be dealt with and maybe that connecting sewer needs to be closed. A thief from the surface pulled off an amazing bit of thievery and grabbed something vital to the matron mother's plans to wipe out a rival house and the group needs to fetch it.
You've got all sorts of plot hooks right there from the matron mother in question. I always found that running games set in the Underdark was similar to running games set in surface locales. You have the same formula that works in either location, but the scenery is kind of bland (or nonexistent for those without darkvision) in the Underdark.
They are a grab-bag of Neutrality. Chaotic, True, and Lawful.
The warlock wants some juicy grasshoppers (she's doing a bat motif--and really gets into the dietary peculiarities of the animals her PCs are based on--her catfolk ranger in our main campaign enjoys milk, raw fish, and mouse soup--with extra tails!), so we might head out to the surface.
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They are a grab-bag of Neutrality. Chaotic, True, and Lawful.
The warlock wants some juicy grasshoppers (she's doing a bat motif--and really gets into the dietary peculiarities of the animals her PCs are based on--her catfolk ranger in our main campaign enjoys milk, raw fish, and mouse soup--with extra tails!), so we might head out to the surface.
I'm thinking grigs. They're kind of like grasshoppers and it'd be funny. Have a tunnel lead them out to a fey-inhabited forest far from any other civilization. Orcs, ogres and drow aren't going to be the most welcome visitors to a place like that so you can pit the PCs against a small army of fairies. The drow can munch on some grigs while the half-orc and half-ogre eat a few brownies. Later, they can wash it all down with some sprites.
They are a grab-bag of Neutrality. Chaotic, True, and Lawful.
The warlock wants some juicy grasshoppers (she's doing a bat motif--and really gets into the dietary peculiarities of the animals her PCs are based on--her catfolk ranger in our main campaign enjoys milk, raw fish, and mouse soup--with extra tails!), so we might head out to the surface.
I'm thinking grigs. They're kind of like grasshoppers and it'd be funny. Have a tunnel lead them out to a fey-inhabited forest far from any other civilization. Orcs, ogres and drow aren't going to be the most welcome visitors to a place like that so you can pit the PCs against a small army of fairies. The drow can munch on some grigs while the half-orc and half-ogre eat a few brownies. Later, they can wash it all down with some sprites.
Oh My Gawsh!!!!!!! That's horrible!!!!! I'm going to have to use that!!!!!! Especially since I usually serve brownies when I host games...
Anyways, I was thinking of maybe putting the PCs in the middle of three-way dispute with factions of garuda, naga, and rakshasa. Maybe LE/CN/NG?
Underdark is fun because you can throw so much weird stuff into it. You can have anything from political intrigue (slavery plots, clandestine drow manipulations, assassinations, war maneuvers between different underdark tribes) to all out nasty nasties (shadow dragons, eldritch horrors, aberrations of all kinds) to random stuff in between (wild magic zones, lands of hallucinatory underground mushrooms).
I know what I'd do were I in your shoes is flesh out to some degree the naga realm and maybe one other realm nearby (in case the PCs take an alternate route). Work on some interesting political and social hazards as well as enemies in the naga area, put other hazards in the alternate area (random example, slavers or a wild magic zone surrounding an inactive portal to Limbo). Give the PCs the opportunity to pursue the Dark Naga and deal with the stuff going on in the Naga lands, giving them a couple story hooks to follow--but if they decide not to, they can find the other interesting stuff instead. I would just outline everything at first and flesh stuff out in depth after you and the players feel more strongly.
Another thing, maybe even better: ask your players. They're playing unusual characters, what are their hopes and goals for their characters and what are their characters' goals? Sometimes a player has a cool idea that can make for a great plot hook that you never would have thought of--and if you build directly on their goals, they'll feel super invested in the story.
I think I might have the PCs track the naga through a cave system filled with chokers (with choker rogue bosses), morlocks (with morlock barbarian bosses), cloakers, and ruled by an aboleth illusionist, probably with morlock mooks...I want to combine colorspray and blinding rays with some sneak attack nastiness.
Then, ideally, the naga will escape to Nagapura and plunge the PCs into a better written adventure with some actual characterization and plot!
Tonight's game went pretty well. They fought a couple cloakers, chased one into a lava chamber with a couple of choker rogues in it, then chased one of the choker rogues into a chamber with some morlock barbarians. They rested, found a secret vault of treasure, discovered a chamber filled with giant glowing mushrooms, and fought some regular morlocks....as well as some illusory morlocks. Then the inquisitor fell through the illusory floor into the lair of an aboleth wizard. The aboleth then dominated the half-ogre, the half-ogre threw the inquisitor in the water, the inquisitor got slimed and couldn't breathe water. The inquisitor then dropped his falchion and used his dagger to stab at the aboleth. The warlock then dipped into the water, hit the aboleth, and then the used a truestrike to hit the shielded, mirror imaged aboleth and kill it with his last round of his bane ability.
Might I suggest MASSIVE influence, given the fact an aboleth as already been encountered, of Dark Tapestry and Cthulu-esque themes? That way you can throw any number of aberrant abominations at them. Perhaps the a small faction of Aboleth want to reclaim the surface and decide that another Star Stone event is JUST what they need. Problem is, this has pissed off the other Aboleths, who contract your PCs to go deal with the problem, fearing another problem like, say, the falling space rock is bigger than they planned.
All of this, of course, is very subtle and clever manipulations by a local group of Illithids, who just so happen to be manipulating the rogue aboleth faction into pulling the body Mhar left behind in the dark tapestry to Golarion, at just the right time for it to collide with the body it formed within Golarion in the Mhar Massif mountain (the moubtain you just so happen to be under). All in an effort to resurrect the Great Old One to wreak glorious destruction all across Golarion!
The naga, of course, being a servant of the rogue Aboleth faction.
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I'm running a campaign for a couple friends, one a female drow warlock 7, the other plays a male half-orc inquistor 7 and a male half-ogre barbarian/fighter/warhulk (from Miniatures Handbook) with some mommy issues.
It's just a diversionary campaign when our regular group can't get together. We started at 6th level, with just a vague mission to clear out some tunnels of darkfolk and a dark naga by the matron mother. The dark naga escaped.
I don't know where to go with this campaign. I'm not a huge fan of the underdark, but someone wanted to play a drow, so I started it out in the underdark. I'm considering focusing on either the aberrations (naga) or fleshing out a quasi-India/SE Asia campaign (naga)....based in the city of Nagapura (Fantasy version of Singapore).
Or I can have them go through a gate and end up in some other kind of campaign.
Help!!!
That right there says it all. The entire campaign is summed up nicely. The half-Ogre has mommy issues. GOLD!!!
One cloaker escaped, and it was escaping towards where the naga was, so they probably fled together.
I'm thinking of advancing the cloaker into the Shadowdancer prestige class, and just adding sorcerer levels to the naga.
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Check out How to Host a Dungeon a solo game of dungeon creation where you build a dungeon through its history from the dawn of time. It's a handy tool for underdark world building. Also the site hosts lots of resources and links for a dungeon campaign. (Here's the free limited content version without pictures or formatting and fewer civilizations and villains)
In a similar vein, if you do not quite know where to go with this, check out Word Mill Publishing's Mythic Game Master Emulator and Mythic Variations, two pdfs that can help any DM very much. (Here's a review on RPGnet.)
For online use check out the Flash-Based-GM-Emulator, you'll need the GMulator pdf (and from what I've read the Variations pdf too) to get the hang of the system though.
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Word Mill Publishing's Mythic Game Master Emulator and Mythic Variations
Forgot/corrected the link.
Thanks for the advice!
But I think the campaign is gonna end up outside, under the stars soon.
I plan on the naga they're chasing to eventually die and come back as a Worm Thats Walks....or Worm That Crawls....But Differently Than The Way That Regular Worms Crawl....