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What's the best campaign you can make using adventures from Dungeon magazine? In other words, pick your favourite scenarios that will take a group of players from 1st level to 12th level (or higher, if you prefer). They won't make a neatly stitched-together story, obviously, but it should be possible to link each to the next without too much work. The emphasis should be on the quality of each individual adventure rather than a nice story arc. If you have a choice, use 3.5E adventures rather than 3E ones.
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The Githyanki "Incursion" described in Dragon 309 serves as a good over-arching plot to tie together a bunch of Dungeon adventures and culminates with "Lich-Queen's Beloved" at level 18.
Picking one Dungeon adventure per level (or so), here's what I'd string together:
1 - Mad God's Key
2 - The Devil Box
3 - Unfamiliar Ground
4 - Fiend's Embrace
5 - War of the Wielded
6 - Tammeraut's Fate
7 - Forsaken Arch
8 - Vile Addiction
9 - Spawn of Sehan
10 - Dread Pagoda of the Inscrutable Ones
11 - Touch of the Abyss
11 - Shadow of the Abyss
12 - Wrath of the Abyss
12 - Death of Lashimire
13 - Interlopers of Ruun-Khazai
14 - The Mud Sorcerer's Tomb
15 - Seekers of the Silver Forge
15 - Chambers of Antiquities
17 - The Greater Halls
18 - Diplomacy
18 - The Lich Queen's Beloved
So, I'd start the campaign in Saltmarsh (as described so well in Dungeon Master's Guide II) and have my PCs go about their adventures, encountering signs of Githyanki as described the Dragon article.
Per that article, at level 7-ish, the Githyanki make their full first invasion, which would make for a nice surprise when the PCs return from the distant lost city in the 'Seeds of Sehan' series.
Lashimire, Ruun-Khazai and Silver Forge are all Githyanki-related adventures and could be tied in easily.
At level 13, the Githyanki begin consolidating their power. The PCs have been doing the same while gaining political power in Sterich in the 'of the Abyss' series.
Maure Castle is too cool NOT to include, so it needs to have some purpose in this campaign, and Diplomacy can serve as a "gathering allies" phase before the big assault on the Lich-Queen.
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...neat stuff...
That's a hell of a path, very cool and now I want to run it. lol
I made a path for my group in college that was admittedly more of a series of linked plot arcs because I just ran them as written but we had fun.
Seeds of Sehan
- Vile Addiction
- Spawn of Sehan
- Dread Pagoda of the Inscrutable Ones
Istivin, City of Shadows
- Touch of the Abyss
- Shadows of the Abyss
- Wrath of the Abyss
Vampires of Waterdeep
- Blood of Malar
- Dungeon of the Crypt
- The Fireplace Level
The whole thing started when one of the players was reading Monster Manual II and ran across the yakfolk and their weirdness. No one could pass up the opportunity to play a yakfolk story. They still call it my yakfolk campaign even though they only feature in the first arc.
That's a great campaign, Fletch - I like your idea about using the Githyanki invasion as a theme that starts to develop in the later stages. I believe that many of the adventures in Dungeon provide enough XP for a party of four to advance through more than one level (although I haven't actually done the maths for the adventures you've chosen). But I don't suppose that matters much, anyway - if you want to run your players through a particular set of adventures, don't give them XP, just tell them they've levelled at appropriate points!
The beauty of elves is there longevity. I DM'd my wife through a solo campaign that lasted about eleven years realtime (400 years in her character's elven life). Her character was charged with shepherding a human family to power and ruling with elven sensibilities. This took place in Cedarspoke, in the Gulthmere Forest on Faerun. Here is the published material I used (I updated all pre-3.5E to 3.5) in the order we played them:
Thieves' Challenge
Fish Story
Wedding Bells
Sinkhole
Gluttony
The Witch of Serpent's Bridge
Lust
The Last Hunt
The Stink
Isle of Dread (1E module)
The Shalm's Dark Song
Forest of Blood
Beast of Burden
Blind Man's Bluff
Sinister Secret of Saltmarsh
Danger at Dunwater
The Final Enemy
Life's Bazaar
Dragon Hunters
Rage
Bloodlines
Flood Season
Zenith Trajectory
Woe to Mistledale
Wings, Spikes, and Teeth
The Statue Gallery
The Jackal's Redemption
The Demonskar Legacy
Keep on the Borderlands
Test of the Smoking Eye
The Raiders of Galath's Roost
The Excavation
Swamp Stomp
Puppets (2E module)
Return of the Blessed Damozel
Headless
The Black Egg
The Lost Caverns of Tsojcanth
Maure Castle (Dungeon #112)
Secrets of the Soul Pillars
Interlopers of Ruun-Khazai
Prison of the Firebringer
Beyond the Light of Reason
Heart of the Iron God
Quadripartite
White Plume Mountain
Expedition to the Barrier Peaks
Valley of the Snails
Vanity
Tammeraut's Fate
Racing the Snake
The Chasm Bridge
The Storm Riders
The Black Courser
Blood Charge
Lords of Oblivion
Foundation of Flame
Thirteen Cages
Strike on Shatterhorn
Worms in the Exchequery
Scourge of the Slave Lords
The Twisted Run
Test of the Warlords
Steading of the Giant Chief
Glacial Rift of the Frost Giant Jarl
Glacier Season
Hall of the Fire Giant King
Descent into the Depths of the Earth
Shrine of the Kuo-Toa
Vault of the Drow
Queen of the Demonweb Pits
The Razing of Redshore
The Storm Lord's Keep
Glacial Inferno
Strike on the Rabid Dawn
Tomb of Horrors
Asylum
For my 7 year old:
Town based on "Wedding Bells" and "Buzz on the Bridge"
The basic concept is that this town was protected by adventurers (my former PCs), and they are getting old. The town needs new protectors.
Mad God Key (except she chased a werecat thief)
Huddle Farm (changed leprechaun to redcap)
Buzz in the Bridge (caused by same redcap)
Fluffy goes to Heck (modified to keep the fey theme)
and planning on (order TBD):
Wedding Bells
The White Boar
(and Ak from Pathfinder: Goblins #5 as a helper NPC)
The Moathouse (From Village of Hommlet)
Caves of Chaos
I want to integrate the hill giant random encounters from the Crown/King of the Kobold King.
The older Dungeon magazines have some great adventures for younglings.
Well, this is what I do for fun as a DM -- make campaigns from older adventures. I used to enjoy just rewriting them when mushing them together but now I have more fun trying to keep them as identical-as-possible to the original while still making it "my own" campaign.
Too many over the years to list (remember) but here's one I just started -- we've played one session and session two is this Sunday (I'll start a Campaign Journal in a week or so.)
Dungeon 42 "Lady of the Mists"
Dungeon 25 "A Rose for Talakara"
Dungeon 1 "Lost Tower of Cabilar"
Pathfinder Module "The Midnight Mirror"
NPCs from Carrion Crown -- mostly "Ashes at Midnight"
NPCs from Second Darkness -- mostly "Endless Night"
...and as the Campaign develops I may add more. Some possibilities include,...
Dungeon 61 "Night Swarm"
City of the Spider Queen
Dungeon 52 "My Lady's Mirror" (sequel to "Lady of the Mists")
maybe a bit from Shattered Star
I did something like this for a short-lived campaign that I was going to run while a friend was on a stateside break from being in the army. It got eventually dropped in favor of Rise of the Runelords when he revealed he wasn't leaving any time soon, but here's how it was planned to go:
Devil of Dark Wood
The Fall of Fairhaven
Hungry Are the Dead
Dawn of the Scarlet Sun
The Baleful Coven
Under Frozen Stars
Crucible of Chaos
Doom Comes to Dustpawn
Guardians of Dragonfall
(I forget the name - paladin fortress with a demon possessing a relic)
Blood of Dragonscar
(something else I can't remember)
Bastion of Broken Souls
We only got to the beginning of Fairhaven before the little jaunt ended. Just as well, I was really having trouble GMing twice a week on two different campaigns.
I GM two groups (really the same players, mostly). In my "pick up" games (when I have an extra weekend I can play), the kobolds PCs play through a patchwork of adventures from Dungeon magazine and Pathfinder modules:
1. Started with a chase through caverns modified from The Bandits of Bunglewood
2. The Devil Box, situated in the Keep on the Borderlands. Lumbie became the (bumbling) party cleric afterwards.
3. Siege of the Spider Eaters
(a random encounter with the zombie kobold shaman from Crown of the Kobold King)
4. They summoned Krampus, decided it was a bad idea, and put him back. (I forgot where I found the stats for Krampus)
5. The Lizardfolk Lair from Blackwall Keep from Age of Worms
And next up:
6. The Lumberjack camp from Revenge of the Kobold King (modified so the lumberjacks are the bad guys)
7. The dungeon from Crown of the Kobold King
8. Hungry are the Dead
Sharn Consulting Detective Agency:
Mad God's Key
Shut In
Fallen Angel
Murder in Oakbridge
Chimes at Midnight
Steel Shadows
Voyage of the Golden Dragon (non-Dungeon adventure: published module)
Quoth the Raven
And Madness Followed
The Styes
Hell's Heart
The Weavers
Swords of Dragonslake
And something dramatic to finish it off when we get there.
We're currently midway through Murder in Oakbridge.