New GM/Ideas

[CrazyKhajiit]

So, my friends and I have messed around a fair amount in D&D 4e, and We've finally decided to try a more advanced and in depth system. After looking around and talking to some long-time role playing friends of mine, We've settled on pathfinder as our system of choice. I have a fair amount of experience with GM'ing 4e, and have read through and understand the Pathfinder Core Rule Book.
My current Campaign design is the adventurers starting off in a desert camp, (Tents, travelling merchants, etc.) where they can look around with their small amount of remaining gold(after armor and weapon buys). Then, they will be met by an old man with a glass eye, and taken to his tent. There, he will explain that the desert here was once a thriving continent, and it could be restored by the adventurers. (Whole story here)

Spoiler

Show

Long ago this desert used to be a thriving Continent, controlled by 3 powerful sorcerers, Beythral, Yingfeh, and Kanzhu. These three kept the land in balance, Giving water, fire and earth to the animals that lived there, using they're magic to keep The world safe.

As the story goes, they were very close friends. They grew up together, studied together and even adventured together for a while. Then, after Millenia of ruling the land together, disaster struck. Kanzhu's sister, his closest relative, became very sick. Kanzhu thought Yingfeh the only one with the power too save her. But the illness was so strong there was nothing she could do.

Kanzhu was enraged. He blamed Yingfeh and Beythral for his sisters death. He turned his wrath against the land they had created. The forests burned. The rivers boiled away into nothing. The dwarves sealed themselves in their mountain halls and the elves withdrew to their own shadow realms. Many humans perished, the old, the weak, and those the wizards couldn't protect.

Beythral and Yingfeh tried to calm him, but he would not listen. They tried to kill him, but his anger was too strong. Together they used the last of their strength too lock him on another plane, but something went wrong, and they were trapped inside with him, doomed to fight until the end of time.

All the adventurers have to do is find 3 temples, as indicated by a map the man gives them, and complete the challenges to find the scrolls. Then, they must go to the center of the desert and use the scrolls to open the portal and free the 'good' sorcerers.

I have more or less decided that the man will actually be lying too them, so they get the scrolls and use them, but they instead open a door to the hells, that an army of demons will pass through.

I may tie in later that the glass eye was actually the Oculus of Abaddon, but have not yet decided.

So. Any ideas on how I can improve the story, or just generally on how I can make the gameplay more interesting? Any comments or criticisms are greatly appreciated.
Thanks in advance,
CrazyKhajiit

[nakedonmyfoldin]

Unfortunately i won't be very helpful as far as the Pathfinder game is concerned. But I can caution you about using three temples each with a item the PCs are supposed to fetch. This is permissible for one temple, but I think that you should alter the way that the other two artifacts are acquired. I'll just drop a few ideas that you can use for inspiration, or ignore, don't make no difference to me

-One of the temples could be mostly empty, looking like it took a massive offensive from an army or a powerful wizard. Bits of bone and flesh from whatever encounters were just there. Holes blasted in walls, scorched outlines of creatures, whatnot. Maybe a few surviving creeps could describe the people or person who came in to take the artifact. so the players have to track this guy down by gathering info or whatever.

-was i right to assume that the guy with the glass eye has one of the artifacts already? maybe he keeps this a secret from the pcs. when they acquire the first two bits, he could mug them and steal the pieces he needs to unlock the big treasure/glory vault. maybe he lets the pcs do all the work, rituals, fighting, then he emerges as a powerful entity and reaps the reward. Now the players have a bigger enemy just as they think they've won.

-A savage tribe may have found one of the relics and use it as a symbol of power.
-Somehow one of the relics is a prize for some kind of tournament or game

I gotta go, but you see what i mean. I hope this helped and wasn't to ramble-y

[CrazyKhajiit]

Thanks a lot! I was a little worried about the repetitiveness, but thought it would be okay for a lvl 1 dungeon crawl/grind. I may take some of your ideas and use them, especially the tribe one. Does the story sound like something a player will believe, or will they just ignore it and do there own thing, sidetracking the whole adventure?

[Dyllan]

My experience is that players NEVER trust quests like this that are just handed to them. Sooner or later, they guess (usually with NO evidence) that the guy giving them the quest is the bad guy. Often times when he isn't.

So, here's a trick that can give them choices and still let you control things. Have a second person reach out to them at some point (maybe after they have the first artifact) - who ALSO wants the artifacts, and claims they are for a different purpose, and that the guy who hired them wants to use them for nefarious means.

Now, here's where it gets sneaky. Set up two stories for each of the two quest givers. One in which they're the good guy, and one in which they're the bad guy. Make sure neither of them acts in a way that makes either story impossible to be true. Then, once the party chooses who to side with, you can institute the story you want (to make them help the bad guy on accident, or help the good guy). They think they're choosing, but really you are.

As for the three temples, that does make sense, but you'd want them to be VERY different. A suggestion for the first temple - copy what was done in Sunless Citadel. The temple's been breached (or at least PART of it has), and there are warring tribes of goblins and kobolds in there now. In Sunless Citadel, you had a chance to side with the kobolds against the Goblins, or you could just kill both groups. It gives more options to the players, and makes it a more dynamic dungeon crawl.

In fact, you could just use the Sunless Citadel, if you flavored the artifact as the cause of the Gulthias tree. It's probably the best low level adventure I've ever seen for any game system - it has traps, puzzles, diplomacy, tactical ambushes, allied NPCs and even moral quandries (one party I ran through it slaughtered the women and children goblins, another tried to keep them alive, for instance). It's a 3.0 adventure, but I ran it with no real conversion in Pathfinder and it worked fine. You can get away with that with low level adventures.