anmgarmvits
2012-04-07, 06:02 AM
With summer fast approaching, I need something to do with my friends who are all going to be coming in from far and wide back to our hometown from college, so I decided to get started on a campaign I've been working on for about a year. It follows the heroes on a great journey, doing missions for the Pathfinder society, while unknowingly working toward a final artifact. Back-story is crucial with this campaign, but telling it is always a drag because honestly, who wants to hear me blather on about A lineage or Faction for a half an hour.
So I wrote up an introduction for my players which is below and wanted an opinion on it, what I can change or improve with it.
I took most of the information from the Seekers of Secrets resource.
Also, because they are training and doing various classes over their initiation, I wanted there to be some sort of interaction, so they don't feel it's just fluff. So I also need help figuring out what skills/feats/ability scores I can give to my players based on a roll (Something I will also need help on, because I don't know what they would roll), to show validity in their training.
They would be starting at first level.
Any help, comments, concerns, or anything else, feel free to post.
For one reason or another you find yourself at the gate to the Grand Lodge of Absalom. The journey to get here was itself, an adventure for another time, but after months, maybe even years of work and travel, you are here. Money, power, fame, revenge, and knowledge all worth goals, one of which inadvertently lead to you here today with one intention: Gaining entrance as a Pathfinder. You are taken into the Lodge and present yourself to the “evaluation team”, all of whom were once what you are trying to become. After much scrutiny and what seemed like hours of eons of waiting, you are asked to step back into the hall. An older gentleman stands up and gives you a large smile, telling you that you that you have are to be allowed to take the Oath of the Initiate.
You are stripped of your cloths, your boots, and your other basic equipment, all in safe keeping they assure you, and are given a nondescript gray outfit to match the other Initiates. Some old, some small, some of races you’ve heard in stories told by travelling bards, and a few of those too. Your quarters are sparse; Desk, Bunk, a lockable chest. Your life, as you would soon find it, was run by the three masters.
Marcos Farabellus, Master of Swords: Black beard, broad shoulders, and a numerous amount of scars make him easily distinguished among most of the people you find here. His boisterous laughter often fills the training halls, not so much teaching the initiates how to fight, more like how to stay alive. Always with an endless supply of war stories to tell to his “Little brothers”, what he refers to you, and your friends as, he is easily favored master.
Aram Zey, Master of Spells: A thin Kele****e wizard, long black hair, and slightly singed eyebrows mark this master. For those with arcane inclinations, you found his lessons helpful, his knowledge vast, insightful, and way of thinking out of the box, and revolutionary. For those who didn’t, he made sure you got the basic knowledge of how to handle magical items, and identifying spells as quickly as possible, being ‘forced’ into the position of Master of Spells more or less against his will, he finds little patience for students who aren’t up to the task. Despite his acerbic wit and general cantankerousness, Aram continues to accept his position year after year, for reasons no initiate has yet to fathom.
Kreighton Shaine, Master of Scrolls: An elf who, as you and all of the other initiates quickly found out, has such a wide girth of knowledge, it’s no surprise he’s less than sane. Encouraging his students to undertake whatever branch of linguistics or history they find most interesting, his lectures are often spattered with information people have long since forgotten, and when not lecturing, has been spotted meandering the gardens with one shoe, or talking to himself about antiquate experiments that only he could ever know the full depth of. Anyone who spends a significant time with the scholar finds his insights and observations uncannily astute.
When not working under the masters, you are given jobs and tasks by appointed full Pathfinders working under them. But, you and your friends, along with another group, seem to outshine most of the initiates, the Masters allowing you into upper level classes much more quickly than anticipated, and at a much more advanced pace.
A second group of initiates formed around the time yours did, none of which had any outwardly spite toward you or yours, beyond a friendly competition, but you and your friends often found yourselves fighting for the workspace and precious time of the masters with them, never even learning their names.
After nearly two years of taking every order, cleaning the floor of the grand hall with a toothbrush twice, tasks upon lectures upon meetings, you’re finally called into the grand hall. You and your friends finally get called in for your Confirmation.
And this is where our story begins…
So I wrote up an introduction for my players which is below and wanted an opinion on it, what I can change or improve with it.
I took most of the information from the Seekers of Secrets resource.
Also, because they are training and doing various classes over their initiation, I wanted there to be some sort of interaction, so they don't feel it's just fluff. So I also need help figuring out what skills/feats/ability scores I can give to my players based on a roll (Something I will also need help on, because I don't know what they would roll), to show validity in their training.
They would be starting at first level.
Any help, comments, concerns, or anything else, feel free to post.
For one reason or another you find yourself at the gate to the Grand Lodge of Absalom. The journey to get here was itself, an adventure for another time, but after months, maybe even years of work and travel, you are here. Money, power, fame, revenge, and knowledge all worth goals, one of which inadvertently lead to you here today with one intention: Gaining entrance as a Pathfinder. You are taken into the Lodge and present yourself to the “evaluation team”, all of whom were once what you are trying to become. After much scrutiny and what seemed like hours of eons of waiting, you are asked to step back into the hall. An older gentleman stands up and gives you a large smile, telling you that you that you have are to be allowed to take the Oath of the Initiate.
You are stripped of your cloths, your boots, and your other basic equipment, all in safe keeping they assure you, and are given a nondescript gray outfit to match the other Initiates. Some old, some small, some of races you’ve heard in stories told by travelling bards, and a few of those too. Your quarters are sparse; Desk, Bunk, a lockable chest. Your life, as you would soon find it, was run by the three masters.
Marcos Farabellus, Master of Swords: Black beard, broad shoulders, and a numerous amount of scars make him easily distinguished among most of the people you find here. His boisterous laughter often fills the training halls, not so much teaching the initiates how to fight, more like how to stay alive. Always with an endless supply of war stories to tell to his “Little brothers”, what he refers to you, and your friends as, he is easily favored master.
Aram Zey, Master of Spells: A thin Kele****e wizard, long black hair, and slightly singed eyebrows mark this master. For those with arcane inclinations, you found his lessons helpful, his knowledge vast, insightful, and way of thinking out of the box, and revolutionary. For those who didn’t, he made sure you got the basic knowledge of how to handle magical items, and identifying spells as quickly as possible, being ‘forced’ into the position of Master of Spells more or less against his will, he finds little patience for students who aren’t up to the task. Despite his acerbic wit and general cantankerousness, Aram continues to accept his position year after year, for reasons no initiate has yet to fathom.
Kreighton Shaine, Master of Scrolls: An elf who, as you and all of the other initiates quickly found out, has such a wide girth of knowledge, it’s no surprise he’s less than sane. Encouraging his students to undertake whatever branch of linguistics or history they find most interesting, his lectures are often spattered with information people have long since forgotten, and when not lecturing, has been spotted meandering the gardens with one shoe, or talking to himself about antiquate experiments that only he could ever know the full depth of. Anyone who spends a significant time with the scholar finds his insights and observations uncannily astute.
When not working under the masters, you are given jobs and tasks by appointed full Pathfinders working under them. But, you and your friends, along with another group, seem to outshine most of the initiates, the Masters allowing you into upper level classes much more quickly than anticipated, and at a much more advanced pace.
A second group of initiates formed around the time yours did, none of which had any outwardly spite toward you or yours, beyond a friendly competition, but you and your friends often found yourselves fighting for the workspace and precious time of the masters with them, never even learning their names.
After nearly two years of taking every order, cleaning the floor of the grand hall with a toothbrush twice, tasks upon lectures upon meetings, you’re finally called into the grand hall. You and your friends finally get called in for your Confirmation.
And this is where our story begins…