Resettling an ancient land (campaign design)

[Blake Hannon]

I've been thinking recently about my DMing history, and I noticed that I've only ever run one type of campaign. Its always intrigue-filled conspiracy thrillers with secret cults, alien infiltrators, and hidden organizations corrupting society from the inside. Even the two-shot dungeoncrawl I ran for my friends two summers ago ended up being all about black operations and hidden agendas. I'm starting to get tired of it, and I think my recurring players are beginning to find it predictable.

So, I now want to design a campaign/setting that's pretty much the opposite. Exploration, dungeoncrawling, minimal intrigue (but still plenty of social interactions). Open world. But with a plot.

...

One of my biggest fantasy disappointments in recent years was The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword. The premise of the game was that you would explore the long-lost Surface and cleanse it of evil, which would enable your people to settle there and found the great kingdom of Hyrule (its a prequel to the other games in the series). Unfortunately, the game missed some huge opportunities there. Instead of actually leading your people to a new land, you just fly back and forth between your one town and the various wildernesses and dungeons that you need to do stuff in. Lame. I've decided I'm going to try and tell a similar story, but do it properly.

The PC's are part of a group of refugees seeking a new homeland. At the beginning of the campaign, they land on an ancient and mysterious landmass, full of centuries-crumbled ruins overgrown by wilderness and infested with monsters. As the PC's explore the land and fill in the map, they also make it safer for the NPC's to settle in new areas. Clear a dungeon full of murdertrolls, and the surrounding forests now become safe and some NPC's build a new village there. Recover the magic bullcrap diamond from the Dungeon of Nope, and the NPC's can use its powers to make their crops flourish and cause the main settlement to expand. This in turn will have benefits for the PC's as well; more villages means more resources, which in turn means better-stocked shops full of higher quality gear with lower prices.

Another videogame inspired thing is that I want this campaign to have Metroidvania elements. Exploring an area gives the PC's the tools that they need to access a different area. While leveling is the obvious mechanic for getting past new obstacles in DnD (at high enough level, you have the right spells or high enough skill bonuses to get into anything), I'd like to have exploration, rather than XP grinding, be the main catalyst for progress. Keys, maps, and magic items that let the PC's backtrack or push forward in new directions, available a few levels BEFORE they get the necessary spells to just brute force it.

...

Some of the things I want to do with this campaign are covered very thoroughly in the DMG, and others have been explored by various third party devs and bloggers. However, there are some aspects that I'm going to have to figure out on my own, not to mention tying it all together. Some obvious questions to begin with:


1. How important are the PC's, at least to begin with? They can't be the only group of explorers trying to map the wilderness and recover the goodies from the dungeons. How do I make their actions feel significant to the settlement process from the beginning, before they have a chance to level up and become the resident superheroes?

2. How should I track and manage the success of the settlers? How many factors (population, safety of roads between X and Y villages, etc) do I need to keep track of?

3. How to pace this campaign? I don't want this just to be a laid back "yeah, lets go raid a dungeon, its been a while" sort of not-campaign (though it can have relaxed segments). I want there to be stakes, rising and falling tension, and escalation. Ultimately the campaign will need a BBEG, and while I have some ideas they're still pretty vague.

4. I don't want EVERYTHING the PC's meet outside of the towns to be a mindless beast, but at the same time I don't want this to turn into a story about European colonists genociding the natives and taking their land. Would like to find a way for the PC's to have social interactions with intelligent creatures that don't have to pit the latter against the settlers.

5. How will the PC's get around? I want travel time and geography to play a role in their exploration, but I also don't want to bog the campaign down with something as insipid as "____ chance of random encounters per hour on the road." Most exploration games have warp points or the like. New shortcuts between areas, preferably ones that don't feel like obvious DM intrusions and actually make sense in context.

6. What is there to explore in this freaking place anyway?

...

I have some possible answers for at least some of these questions already, and will share them shortly. Before I do though, I'd like to see what you Playground Giants come up with on your own; it may inspire me.

[Yora]

Oh, my favorite type of fantasy.

Instead of making the PCs the resident superheroes, make them resident veteran heroes. You don't send out green kids to do important tasks in an unexplored and dangerous wilderness. In most RPGs starting characters are already pretty capable people, assuming ordinary NPCs are actually using the stats for normal people of the given rules system. When every blacksmith is a 6th leven fighter and every tavern owner a 7th level thief, it's your own fault if 1st level PCs have to spend some weeks grinding XP before they stop being helpless noobs.

Personally I am not a fan of the idea of making the progress of the campaign a "financial accounting mini-game". There are several RPG books with various systems to track resources of settlements and organizations, but I think they are a complete waste of time that adds very little. Your campaign concept is wilderness exploration, not start-up investment. My advice is to leave these things to the chiefs, mayors, and their advisors and just handwave it without using any numbers. If the players discover new resources and make them accessible to the settlement, just add some small changes that you think reflect that, like an updated list of weapons and armor that can be bought, or increase the number of militia warriors that the PCs will be able to command when they have to defend the settlement or need backup when assaulting a monster lair.

How to structure such a campaign is indeed a very big question. I think it's very important that the players have some kind of goal they are working towards to. All too often sandbox campaigns are presented as a mix of land surveying and Diablo-style loot collecting, but I think that get's boring pretty quickly. When doing exploration, I think it works much better if the players are looking for something specific, and their adventures are stepping stone to get there. Finding maps or sages who can tell them where they need to go, and acquire special items and allies to overcome the obstacles that are in their way. First present them with a door and then send them out to search for the key. That's much more fun than aimlessy wandering through a dungeon and finding a door at the very end and realizing that one of the random junk items they found on their way is actually a key to open it. The players also need to know what they want to accomplish when they leave the settlement.

When it comes to populating the wilderness, one thing I am using a lot are spirits. Into which you can easily include trolls, dragons, and goblins, depending on the style of your world. Going with your idea of finding and developing a new homeland for a group of settlers, one possible scenario that seems quite neat to me would be to have a small local population of natives that are hard pressed by a supernatural threat that is about to whipe them out and they are mostly willing to share the land with the settlers if they can help defeating the threat. They don't have to be all nice and you can have a few tribes who are evil raiders that threaten both the settlers and other natives, which lets you have another enemy to fight and defuses the threat of turning into an imperialist colonization scenario. And the friendly natives would be a huge help in letting the players learn things about the region and use the knowledge to aid the other settlers.
I personally love the idea of evil undead kings from the past who return from their tombs to make war against the living. Perhaps under the leadership of an ancient sorcerer or even a demon god.

Travel is something I never really figured out how to do well in an RPG. I think it really only works in situations where time is important. When you have all the time in the world, any encounter on the way is merely a distraction and then you camp until everyone is in perfect shape again. Once you have a time element, this changes quite a lot. Players will have to decide whether to take a route that looks safe or one that looks fast. Healing should be limited at least so much that a fight either means they will have to make a break and lose time, or to keep going with reduced health. A very important part is that the players must be able to make informed choices. Random encounters must only be random in whether and when they happen, but not in where they happen and what the players encounter. Taking a shortcut through a valley and the being attacked by wyverns is lame. Coming to a fork in the path and having the option to take a shortcut through the hunting grounds of the wyverns makes a huge difference. Do they want to risk wyverns? Or rather not? And maybe they know of that shortcut in advance and may delay their departure for a day to go to a shaman who can provide them with wyvern antivenom? Now it's getting really interesting for the players. Any time the players can connect an encounter to a decision they knowingly made, it will be a lot more fun. But they need to be able to see that they had a choice and that you're not just making something bad happen based on whatever option they picked. Which is why the random dice roll is important. Chosing to go through the wyvern valley should not mean that they will have one encounter with wyverns. Then the decision mostly comes down to try to figure out what unfair fights amuse the GM. Chosing that path means that there is a chance for one, two, or even no encounters with wyverns. And maybe there is an encounter, but it's not actually wyverns. (Though when you make a big deal about the path leading through wyvern territory, the chance that an encounter consists of wyverns should be pretty high; say 60-80%.)
You can also chose to track food. Every day each character needs one unit of food and when they run out they will have to stop and find more, which will cost them a day of travel time. In that case you also need to track how much stuff they carry and how fast they travel basd on that. Tracking encumbrance by weight, as D&D does, is completely impractical though, which is why nobody does it. It can be enough to say that a character with 12 strength can carry 12 items "of considerable weight", like a weapon, a suit of armor, food for 1 day, water for 1 day, or a shovel, or a rope, and everything else is not counted. (Clothing, writing material, potions, scrolls, and so on.) If they have more, their speed is halved. Highly abstract, completely unrealistic, but so simple that you can actually use it during play.

If you're willing to make a small investment, I have two books to recommend. Both dirt cheap as pdfs.
"X1: The Isle of Dread" is one of the very oldest RPG adventures ever. And despite being really thin and leightweight, it's really good for a campaign like this. It's not really an adventure like we understand it today, but more a very small campaign settin that has most of the map left blank for the GM to fill in with his own ideas. And it's really good at that. It's cheap, it's short, and I think completely worth it to look into, for anyone interested in open world exploration campaigns. It doesn't really have a plot, but plenty of good ideas how to make a setting foe such a campaign.
The other one is "Red Tide", which people have been gushing about a lot. And it's justified. Not quite as cheap and much bigger, it's part a lightweight sample setting and part guidebook on how to prepare and organize open world campaigns. I very much recommend it.

[Nobot]

Sounds cool, I'll take a shot at it!

1. How important are the PC's, at least to begin with? They can't be the only group of explorers trying to map the wilderness and recover the goodies from the dungeons. How do I make their actions feel significant to the settlement process from the beginning, before they have a chance to level up and become the resident superheroes?

This is your easiest question, I think. Just link this to the level of experience they begin with. Are they level 1 (or system-equivalent thereof) then they should be significant only to themselves. They land in a new world so if they manage to survive and build a base of operations, that should be significance enough for the early game. Alternatively, pair them up with some settlers, maybe 10 or so, who they'll have to help with exploration and building a settlement.

2. How should I track and manage the success of the settlers? How many factors (population, safety of roads between X and Y villages, etc) do I need to keep track of?

You can come up with a kind of safety score for settlements, which also dictates the maximum size of a settlement and what the level of technology it can achieve. Keep track of abundance of food and water, safety of immediate vicinity, safety of the settlement's larger area, and how easily and safely the next settlement can be reached. I would also factor strength of the local rule of law, militia/garrison, the settlement's fortifications, watch posts established in the area, warning systems, patrols, settlement hygiene, fire control, and other stuff like that in the safety score, especially as settlements grow larger. Obviously subtract from the safety score depending on the local flora and fauna and their human-eating/-killing habits and hostility.

Once safety score increases, a settlement can grow to a new maximum size safely through migration or natural growth (problem with the latter is that it takes a long time). If a safety score decreases, there will be a crisis, and the PCs will catch word of it. In that event, you should allow them to intervene and restore the safety score to its previous number, or do nothing and allow the settlement to decline. If you use this kind of mechanic, you could consider explaining to your players how it works and make it into a sort of mini-game that allows them to acquire palpable rewards besides XP, loot, and exploration.

3. How to pace this campaign? I don't want this just to be a laid back "yeah, lets go raid a dungeon, its been a while" sort of not-campaign (though it can have relaxed segments). I want there to be stakes, rising and falling tension, and escalation. Ultimately the campaign will need a BBEG, and while I have some ideas they're still pretty vague.

This one, I think, depends more on your storytelling skills than anything else. All the ingredients are there: entire populations are at risk: famine, disease, war, expansion of hostile groups, you name it. BBEGs abound, as your players are basically invading and settling lands that do not belong to them. Also, maybe they're being driven away from some other place and the cause of that migration could be an epic threat to face as well; maybe they're settling this land just to regroup and strike back.

4. I don't want EVERYTHING the PC's meet outside of the towns to be a mindless beast, but at the same time I don't want this to turn into a story about European colonists genociding the natives and taking their land. Would like to find a way for the PC's to have social interactions with intelligent creatures that don't have to pit the latter against the settlers.

Why not? Sounds like an interesting angle to explore. But if you want to stay away from that, you could consider having intelligent creatures live in places that the PCs and the other settlers will not be interested in. Maybe they live in caves, underground, in an impenetrable forest, or maybe they're aquatic or build eyries in the mountain peaks. But if you're gonna settle for a race of intelligent creatures that have the same living conditions as humans (assuming your PCs/settlers are humanoid), I don't think it would be very realistic if everyone gets all friendly-rainbow-sunshine with each other.

5. How will the PC's get around? I want travel time and geography to play a role in their exploration, but I also don't want to bog the campaign down with something as insipid as "____ chance of random encounters per hour on the road." Most exploration games have warp points or the like. New shortcuts between areas, preferably ones that don't feel like obvious DM intrusions and actually make sense in context.

There are a few ways you can do this:

• Uneventful road travel: once an area is 'safe,' travel through it is unhindered and you can just fast forward the story. It is practically the same as a warp point, only it costs time and supplies; or
• The Ancient Gates of the Forebears of Blah: gates in the ruins built by something or other, find crystal/key/mysterium ore to unlock fast travel; or
• Flying mounts: once tamed, local fauna can be used to fly around on. Awesomeness abound, encounters in the open skies can be a lot of fun; or
• Safety-score related fast travel: once a settlement is big enough (i.e. has a high enough safety score) local entrepreneurs or a large company will set up a mode of fast travel. This can be airships, magic trains, teleport gates, giant flying creatures, or just a catapult that flings you to a strategically placed pillow in the next town (massive disclaimer agreement to be signed before using).

And I'm sure there are people with more/better ideas.

A way to keep it fresh is to stay away from random encounters and keep the environment dynamic. The next time the PCs travel by this road, someone's opened an inn in the old abandoned watchtower or maybe they find foot-/pawprints of some creatures that set up a new lair nearby. Or you can get your abandoned shrine, cave-that-was-previously-concealed-under-a-heap-of-leaves-shed-in-autumn, traveling weapons merchant, site of a terrible murder, or small barrow with wight on, but don't roll on a random encounters table, that's always a bit immersion-breaking.

6. What is there to explore in this freaking place anyway?

Well, the ruins, but you probably already have that box checked. Some more ideas:

• Some of the trees in the giant forests have their roots connect deep below the earth: they are actually one massive organism that controls wild animals/creatures in some way (maybe something in the fruits they shed) and may respond in a hostile way to PCs/settlers, depending on the perceived threat. They can act on such a perceived threat by having their minions attack, or by simply waiting until the settlers come under their control. Killing the tree-organism (or negotiating with it) requires PCs to descend into the deep caves through which the roots of the trees grow.
• There is a desolate area (I'm thinking swamp with bubbling poisonous wells and thick fog) that you can map out like a maze. PCs will have to map a safe route through it to get to a stretch of fertile land on the other side, or maybe it is home to a plant with certain healing properties that they need (maybe even to counter the mind control of the tree creature above).
• Crashed spaceship. Not suited for a lot of campaigns, but can be a lot of fun if it's your thing.
• You could consider getting some floating islands up in there. Again, not appropriate for every type of campaign, but it matches nicely with the flying mounts idea above. Floating islands could be a great place to settle, as they are very isolated and easily defended. You could fill the floating islands with old ruins, intelligent (or perhaps degenerate remains of intelligent) beings, hostile flora and fauna or caves.
• Mountain passes! Vital to discover if you need to get past a mountain range and can be filled with all sorts of caves, ruins, evil mountain tribes, highwaymen, dragons, and other stuff.
• You could also consider having your players find some old maps in the ruins that depict the landmass they're currently on in a vastly different way, as if parts of it sank beneath the waves while others were raised from the seas. Maybe they'll need to retrieve <insert artifact needed to unlock a next area, fast travel mode, etcetera> from a sunken city or area, resulting in an underwater adventure, which is almost as good as a flying adventure. Also, uncovering the mystery of the landmass' previous dwellers is an adventure in and of itself.
• There could be an area inhabited by fey/fairy-like folk. You can read up on fairy-stories and compile a few into an adventure. It's always fun being haunted by strange wisps and fairies while camping in the forest or being the target of a mischievous elf.
• Or you could draw from some Greco-Roman mythology. Get your satyr on and have river gods that need to be placated so they won't flood a new settlement, dryads that need to saved or else the forest will wither, spirits of the land that will need sacrifice or else the crops will be ruined.

And so on! Sounds like a lot of fun.

[Mechalich]

3. How to pace this campaign? I don't want this just to be a laid back "yeah, lets go raid a dungeon, its been a while" sort of not-campaign (though it can have relaxed segments). I want there to be stakes, rising and falling tension, and escalation. Ultimately the campaign will need a BBEG, and while I have some ideas they're still pretty vague.

Pre-industrial settlement is a thing that happens slowly. Population growth is low, land clearance is slow and methodical and requires a lot of labor by hand, and major setbacks are common. The migration of a people from one area to another is likely to unfold over decades. So that's going to be a thing to manage and might even require some sort of generation-spanning system.

4. I don't want EVERYTHING the PC's meet outside of the towns to be a mindless beast, but at the same time I don't want this to turn into a story about European colonists genociding the natives and taking their land. Would like to find a way for the PC's to have social interactions with intelligent creatures that don't have to pit the latter against the settlers.

This is actually rather tricky. Without an agriculturalist or pastoralist society in place, anything opposing your hypothetical settlers is going to exist at very low densities. Your PCs actually wouldn't have to clear out all that many beasts to open up a vast area for agricultural settlement because your settlers will occupy the landscape at a much higher density. For example, the amount of wilderness needed to sustain an adult dragon - a massive apex predator with high food intake requirements when active - might contain enough arable land for ten thousand human settlers or more.

Otherwise Nobot's suggestion is a good one - have whatever intelligent beings are occupying the land utilize different resources than your human settlers. There are a fair number of truly weird but not especially hostile intelligent monsters in the various manuals that can work for this purpose. Fey, in particular, seem well suited for this sort of nebulous interaction.

[avr]

At a slow rate of settlement your settlers can absolutely be acceptable to many existing inhabitants, especially if you bring trade or skills which they didn't already have. It's decades later on when waves of thousands arrive that you're looking at serious conflict, not so much when the first explorers and frontiersmen walk in.

Also remember that a chunk of the empty country visuals you may be imagining come from new diseases having recently depopulated the Americas when the settlers arrived. With magical healing around this may not be the case! If that's so you'd need to change the space available by taking on unfriendly monsters of some kind, be they goblins or dragons. Alternately maybe some other disaster has struck and there is empty country available.

[Tiktakkat]

My current campaign doesn't go that far in migration, but it is based on recovering a "lost" land previously overrun by orcs. So:

1. How important are the PC's, at least to begin with? They can't be the only group of explorers trying to map the wilderness and recover the goodies from the dungeons. How do I make their actions feel significant to the settlement process from the beginning, before they have a chance to level up and become the resident superheroes?

I wanted to explore a bunch of "optional" rules in the D20 rule set, so I had the PCs start out as Apprentices, as per DMG II, of the "actual" leaders of the expedition, who "coincidentally" got called away for an emergency when the PCs hit 6th level.
Then tie the various quests the PCs undertake to specific elements of the settlement expansion. Depending on what sort of tracking system for settlement growth you use, this can relate to securing critical resources needed for construction and sustaining the population, or for getting certain buildings built - recover the iron mine, organize the militia, and such.

2. How should I track and manage the success of the settlers? How many factors (population, safety of roads between X and Y villages, etc) do I need to keep track of?

Pathfinder has a set of Kingdom Builder rules, and a campaign path based on recovering wilderness as well.
The Birthright setting had a set of rules for kingdoms, though it was heavily linked to a particular alternate power system.
If you can handle a lot of calculations, Sid Meier's Civilization series games are kingdom builders.
I ultimately kludged together ideas from all of them onto a Birthright base.
How many factors to track is ultimately up to you.

3. How to pace this campaign? I don't want this just to be a laid back "yeah, lets go raid a dungeon, its been a while" sort of not-campaign (though it can have relaxed segments). I want there to be stakes, rising and falling tension, and escalation. Ultimately the campaign will need a BBEG, and while I have some ideas they're still pretty vague.

That is probably the biggest issue, as standard advancement in D20 will level the PCs out of caring about the details of building villages in short order. I am trying to resolve that by giving the PCs Leadership for free, along with "extra" cohorts, and having them assign those cohorts to low-level adventures.
Effectively that means everyone is playing 3-5 low-level PCs following one high-level PC, with a lot of flipping between parties. So far it hasn't collapsed for me.

4. I don't want EVERYTHING the PC's meet outside of the towns to be a mindless beast, but at the same time I don't want this to turn into a story about European colonists genociding the natives and taking their land. Would like to find a way for the PC's to have social interactions with intelligent creatures that don't have to pit the latter against the settlers.

Give them a mutual enemy - ancient, imprisoned horrors; other, more obnoxious, migrants; random volcano; whatever, as long as it presents a threat to both.

5. How will the PC's get around? I want travel time and geography to play a role in their exploration, but I also don't want to bog the campaign down with something as insipid as "____ chance of random encounters per hour on the road." Most exploration games have warp points or the like. New shortcuts between areas, preferably ones that don't feel like obvious DM intrusions and actually make sense in context.

As JMS said when asked what speed the space fighters traveled at in B5 - "The speed of plot."
Have it take as many days as you feel necessary to get between encounter areas, with as many random encounters as you want to run, and don't worry about it.
If you really need it, just have a portal system in the ruined cities for the PCs to reactivate. That's what TSR did in the Jakandor setting.

6. What is there to explore in this freaking place anyway?

Anything!
Everything!
Just no big civilizations.

[Blake Hannon]

Thank you all for the thoughtful responses. Some of your suggestions are very similar to what I already had in mind, but others were novel and called attention to potential problems that I hadn't considered.


1. Is still something of an issue. The simplest solution is to simply start the PC's off at level 3 or 4, making them a Big Deal to begin with. Another option would be for them to just be one of several groups of explorers; going this route, an important game mechanic in the first few levels could be exchanging gear and information with NPC explorers.

Actually, an even simpler option would be to start the campaign off with doing things around the landing site. The PC's distinguish themselves in the first session while taking part in a big battle against (low level nasties that hang out near the beach), and that gets them chosen to do their first inland expedition. By the time that first little adventure is done, they should be level 2 or 3, and thus powerful enough to make themselves progressively more important.

2-3. Yora is definitely right: I don't want an accounting minigame.

Nobot's "safety score" is a good idea. Simple and functional. I think I'll use that as a base.

Mechalich, avr, and Tiktikkat raise a good point about the slow rate of settlement. This is something I had already been thinking about, since I really want the players to be able to see the new civilization expand in response to their actions. Easiest solution is for more refugees to arrive periodically. Say, whenever something really good happens, word gets out, and within a few weeks a few more ships arrive. Actually, maybe it should be the SAME ships moving back and forth, and the PC's can maybe find materials to upgrade them at some point in the campaign to make the journey shorter and/or safer.

This will necessitate me thinking more about the situation that the refugees are coming from, if there are more of them who can be brought over months after the initial settlement (ie, they're not all dead).

4. I was already thinking that nature spirits should be a thing in this campaign, and since so many of you came to the same conclusion I think it probably is the best answer. Befriending or appeasing the nature spirits and small gods (or exorcising evil ones) could be an important part of taming the land.

In fact, I think that this should be connected to the fall of the previous civilization, the one that left all the ruins. The last king of that civilization committed some terrible act that offended the spirits, maybe even disrupting the natural order itself. This led to the collapse, and also left the nature spirits distrustful toward human(oid)s.

Actually, lets go even further and say that the last king was a mighty sorcerer who stumbled on something along the lines of Dark Sun's defiler magic. Confronted by some outside threat, and perhaps already embittered against the spirits for some other reason, he - against the council of his priests and shamans, drained the life from some of the sacred wildernesses and turned them into deserts. The spirits in those corrupted lands were changed into monstrous forms, and even the others became mistrustful if not outright hostile towards people.

You know what? We've gone this far already, so lets just go FULL Dark Sun. The king was a ****ing dragon.

In the centuries since the Fall, some of the deserts have healed and become green again, but some areas remain cursed and dead. These can be higher level adventure zones.

So, different groups of nature spirits. Some friendly, most standoffish or hostile until their trust can be earned, and some still twisted and evil as a consequence of the disaster. Maybe there can also be some remnants of the old kingdom, living as primitive tribes in the remote areas that are neither protected by the remaining angry spirits, nor haunted by the corrupted monstrous ones. These tribes can be befriended, or even integrated, if the PC's rid them of the dangerous monsters one way or another.

Some other intelligent race that lives way up in the mountains or whatever and didn't compete with either the old kingdom or the new settlers could also be a minor player.

5. Tracking food and water as the limiter on travel time and distance is the best suggestion offered thus far, I think. The strength system suggested by Yora should work.

I'll increase the cost of food in this campaign a bit, so that this becomes a non-negligible expense. As more agriculture is done, the prices of food will drop. Rediscovering an old salt mine might be a major food-cheapening mission, as might chasing away a sea monster or appeasing a sea god that makes fishing easier.

I was thinking about an ancient teleportation system. Rediscovering it can make time-sensitive missions much easier. Maybe also a river (underground river, maybe) that lets you quickly raft downstream.

Flying mounts at high level like Nobot says could also be great. Maybe have a flying enemy start appearing at low-mid level, and then in the late game the PC's eventually find an item that lets them command them, or an ancient tome that says how to tame them. An obstacle becomes an asset.

6. Looking at the answers and ideas so far, a few terrain zones/dungeons are coming to mind.

Ruined cities and palaces, overgrown by the forest or sunk into the swamps.

A blasted, sandy desert left behind by the defiler magic.

A deep, enchanted forest, maybe with something like Nobot's tree creature.

A tall, rocky mountain, maybe with snow on top, that has some friendly or at least indifferent intelligence living on it.

An eerily intact temple, overgrown with trees and vines, that survived from the era when men and spirits lived in harmony.

Fey caverns underground.

How all these areas connect is another major question.

...

Anyway, I think I have a good foundation now. Next step I think is to plan out some key areas, dungeons, and quests, and then let the rest of the setting expand around those key points.

Also, I think that the final enemy will be undead. Undead are usually motivated by spite and envy toward the living, right? Maybe the spirits of the dragon king and his forces are especially bitter about seeing someone else succeed where they failed, and if they couldn't have this land then no one can. The more the settlers prosper, the more angry undead arise from their tombs, until eventually the PC's must defeat a dracolich and its army in the catacombs below the royal palace and lift the curse for good.

[Blake Hannon]

Coming up with areas now. Will try to draw a map soon, once I've figured out where everything should be in relation to each other.


1. The landing site. I'm thinking a sheltered, rocky coast at the edge of a river delta. There should probably be ruins nearby, since natural anchorages with fresh water would have been useful to the ancients as well. The settlers will probably want to put a little bit of distance between themselves and the ruins until they've proven safe.

Being at a river mouth will help the PC's with getting around the map. If they can get to the river from where they are and throw a raft together, they can ride back to town fairly quickly. Of course, some tributaries may need to be unblocked or cleared of monsters before they can be safely used.

The ruined port city will give the PC's an early ruin to explore, and could provide clues of other interesting things to seek further inland. I don't want the port city to be too grand, though; I'd like the later ruins to be more impressive and larger than the early ones. Maybe its a very small natural bay, so the port city was more of a port town.

I think an early adventure can involve a horde of giant enemy crabs. In one of the monster manuals, there are these creatures called crauds that are basically big crab/shrimp things that tend to get aggressive when the natural world is out of wack. Maybe there's a nest of crauds lairing in the half-sunken harbor buildings and shipwrecks of the nearby ruin, and they start causing trouble soon after the settlers arrive. After the PC's find the crab queen and attack its weak spot for massive damage, they discover that it was lairing around a ruined shrine of a sea spirit. Researching that spirit and learning how to appease it can be an important sidequest.

Like, killing that craud nest makes them no longer a threat to the town, but they're still a random encounter that can happen anywhere near the coast, and later on there's a sea cliffs/grotto dungeon further from the settlers that has another whole nest in them. The PC's can keep fighting crabs whenever they're near the shore, or they can please the sea god and just make the crabs go away.

Also, the initial crab battles should allow the PC's to prove themselves and stand out, hence justifying them being sent on important missions for the rest of the campaign.


2. The grottos. Probably not TOO distant from the landing site, but far enough away to not be an immediately obvious exploration site. There are more giant enemy crabs in here, as well as perhaps some stronger nasties.

These grottos (or the clifftops accessible through them) should actually contain the main sea shrine. The minor site that the PC's discover in the ruined port should give them a hint about this place, and then they can find another clue later that sends them back here. Finding and restoring the sea god's temple can have a bunch of benefits, like making the waters calmer, increasing fish yields, and making the giant crabs a nonissue throughout the entire campaign area.

I think some sort of boss monster should be guarding this. An insane, undead priest, perhaps, or a massive natural creature or spirit that was attracted to the site.


3. A majestic city and castle built in the shadow of a tall mountain, with a huge waterfall cascading through it. I'm thinking this was the capital city of the ancients, and should have at least one major dungeon beneath it. I'm not sure if the FINAL dungeon should be here, though. That might be too predictable. The dracolich's tomb might be beneath more of a fortress type installation, probably in the cursed desert.

I kind of think there should be a canal control thing here. Like, an ancient aquaduct hub that the PC's need to repair (or just open) to bring potable water to a prospective village site.


4. Working off of the previous, an inland ruin, smaller than the major city, with some hugely valuable resource nearby. This is where the aqueduct leads to, and getting the water flowing again so that the resource can be easily harvested can be the quest that sends the PC's to the waterfall city.

Not sure what the resource should be, though. A mine of some kind is the most obvious, but those tend to be in the mountains, and this needs to be at a lower elevation than the capital. I guess lowland mining can be a thing, in rocky soil. Alternately, the resource is actually good soil for farming that just needs hydration.

Having it be an old mine does create extra opportunities, though. Say, PC's go to scope out the mine because of a clue they discover elsewhere, or just to kill the monsters that are emerging from it to cause trouble. They clear the mine, and discover it still has shinies in it. A group of settlers come to start digging for shinies, but the lack of clean drinking water makes the mine expensive to maintain and limits the number of people who can live at the site; if the PC's go fix the aqueduct, that problem can be solved as well. Getting a mine running can have huge benefits for the PC's in the longrun, especially if its an iron or copper mine that can reduce the cost of equipment and beef up the NPC militias.


5. An enchanted forest. I'm thinking part of it should be all bright and alive, and part of it should look like Mirkwood. Its full of fey spirits, but the ones in the bright part are mistrustful, and the ones in the darkened part are downright monstrous. Creatures like wendigos or werewolves can be emerging from the forest to cause trouble. There should be some sort of quest to lift the curse on the darkened half of the forest. Say, an undead treant or something is causing the corruption.

Maybe the darkened part also borders on the cursed desert. The undead treant was undeadified by the defiler magic in proximity.

Deep in the forest, there should also be another temple structure. Restoring this one will make most of the fey more friendly, and might make the outskirts of the forest safe for lumber jacks so long as they harvest in moderation and leave offerings for the forest gods in exchange for the trees they cut.

Maybe a root cave system under much of the forest, or even connecting it with smaller woodland areas scattered throughout the nearby plains. Like an underground roadway for forest spirits. Using it is dangerous until the temple is restored, at which point it becomes safer than aboveground travel.


6. The defiled desert. I don't know much of what to put here yet, except that it should have some nasty ruins in it, and that I'd like for sand dunes and flowing rivers of sand to be a terrain element. Think along the lines of Metroid Prime 2's desert area.

Final dungeon should be in here, I think, so probably lots of undead throughout this entire zone.


7. A snow-covered mountaintop, maybe above the waterfall that flows through the ruined city. Don't know what I want there to be up here yet, just that it should exist and contain a plot point.


I guess my biggest question at this point is gating. How to ensure that the PC's don't get into high level dungeons at low level, and how to encourage them to explore these areas in an order that creates a satisfying story while still leaving them plenty of freedom to chart their own course.

I'd also like there to be plenty of backtracking. Sub-sections or dungeons in familiar areas that can only be opened up once the PC's tame the surrounding area, and then come back with a key from somewhere else.

[Sky]

I LOVE this idea. Do you mind if I use parts of it for a campaign that I'm starting?

One way to prevent the PCs from wandering into high-level areas could be to let them know that some areas are higher-level than others. If they start wandering into one, let them find something that's obviously way above their pay grade, then they can escape or sneak past it somehow and come back to fight it later. They don't necessarily have to find a dragon, but they could find knocked-over trees, giant burned areas, the remains of prey, or something like that.

One way to encourage backtracking could be to let them find maps/books/inscriptions/whatever that let them know they didn't find everything in a "cleared" dungeon. Also, you could have them come across doors that they just can't open. These doors could contain a clue to where their key is, or you could just rely on the PC's memory to recognize the key when they do eventually find it.

[Blake Hannon]

I LOVE this idea. Do you mind if I use parts of it for a campaign that I'm starting?

Thanks.

I have absolutely no way of stopping you from using my ideas, and as I don't plan to profit from them I'm not sure why this would bother me. Go ahead.

One way to prevent the PCs from wandering into high-level areas could be to let them know that some areas are higher-level than others. If they start wandering into one, let them find something that's obviously way above their pay grade, then they can escape or sneak past it somehow and come back to fight it later. They don't necessarily have to find a dragon, but they could find knocked-over trees, giant burned areas, the remains of prey, or something like that.

One way to encourage backtracking could be to let them find maps/books/inscriptions/whatever that let them know they didn't find everything in a "cleared" dungeon. Also, you could have them come across doors that they just can't open. These doors could contain a clue to where their key is, or you could just rely on the PC's memory to recognize the key when they do eventually find it.

The "evidence of powerful monsters" thing can work, but only if the players have already learned that the monsters in question are too tough for them. Getting this across to them requires an early "scripted" encounter that they can easily escape from, which is doable...but it'll get transparent if I use that tactic more than once. Higher level monsters can be a critical barrier once or twice at most.

Maps and inscriptions are a fairly obvious way to "open" new areas. An area doesn't need to be literally locked away if the players don't know to go to it in the first place; their ignorance can serve as the barrier to entry, and the map or old writing that gives directions the key. That doesn't neccesarily work for backtracking though; some more literal barriers are going to need to come into play from time to time. Preferably not too many actual locked doors though, as those are easy to circumvent after level 3-4 or so.

[Blake Hannon]

Did a bit more work on the important events and basic order. Still not sure about gating and catalysts, but maybe you guys can help me think of those now that I have a basic framework.


Event one (level 1): giant enemy crabs attack the landing site. The PC's go to the nearby coastal ruins to clear out the crab hive, but this is only a temporary solution: they find evidence that the aggressive crabs are a symptom of the sea god's jimmies being rustled.

Event two: PC's continue exploring the coastal ruins to look for clues (or at least valuables), and find a map or inscription that directs them to a hidden temple in the sea-caves across the bay.

Event three: PC's go to the grotto temple to unrustle some divine jimmies. Jimmies are unrustled, giant enemy crabs are a thing of the past, fishing gets better, more settlers arrive. PC's should also get an item or a key or a map or SOMETHING that will guide them somewhere else.

Event four: A new village gets attacked by some kind of monster. PC's help out, and chase the monsters back to an abandoned mine. They clear the mine, but there's not enough clean water nearby for a viable mining town...but there is an old aqueduct.

Event five: The PC's go to the ruins of the capital city to restore the water flow into the aqueduct. There, they find something that sends them elsewhere.

Event six: Something something enchanted forest, another temple gets rededicated, a new village gets created near or in the forest. More immigrants arrive.

Events seven-nine: something that sends them into a snowy mountain. Something that sends them into the defiled desert. Undead start getting more aggressive.

Event ten: Some final triumph of the PC's provokes the undead into a major fit of spite. Tons and tons of badly rustled undead jimmies. A big attack is launched against one or more of the new towns.

Event eleven: PC's go into the final dungeon under the ruined capital and bag themselves a dracolich. A winner is you.


Those are just some adventures or events that I want to include, in more or less the order that feels right. There should be plenty of other stuff in between, and some adventures should be doable in any order (or be completely optional; I'm going for sandbox, after all). One thing that there isn't enough of on this list is backtracking; I want there to be at least a couple of major events that send the PC's back to a place they've already explored to open up a new area. I'd rather have the catalysts be player driven whenever possible, with only a minimum of "NPC tells you to go do X now."

In terms of the sequence, events 1-3, events 4-5, and events 10-11 form obvious self contained arcs, but anything could happen between them.

So, yeah, I'm open to ideas.

[Nobot]

Many jimmies were rustled, I see

Looks like this is evolving nicely. My thoughts and suggestions below (a bit all over the place, but hey)!

Event one (level 1): giant enemy crabs attack the landing site. The PC's go to the nearby coastal ruins to clear out the crab hive, but this is only a temporary solution: they find evidence that the aggressive crabs are a symptom of the sea god's jimmies being rustled.

Event two: PC's continue exploring the coastal ruins to look for clues (or at least valuables), and find a map or inscription that directs them to a hidden temple in the sea-caves across the bay.

This one is fairly straight forward and more original start than goblins or kobolds, I like it.

Bonus points/extra reward if they take the crab carcasses back to the settlement for food? Killing 10 or so giant crabs should do wonders for the stockpile is all I'm saying.

As for the 'evidence' they find, here are some suggestions:

• Old inscriptions/books/stone tablets among the ruins depict the sea god sending legions of crabs to deal with sailors and coastal cities.
• The crabs had captured a few settlers. One of them is held at the ruins and tells the PCs that the others were taken away by the crabs the previous night (to sacrifice to the sea god). The prisoner can then point the PCs in the right direction and/or they can follow the crab tracks.
• (Don't know if the crabs are sentient enough. If not, please ignore) one of the crabs is a priest of the sea god and tries to smite the players in the name of his god. The PCs can find the map/stone tablet/inscription you describe below in his personal quarters/sanctuary.
• A few crabs flee out to sea and make for a small island (you'd have to move the temple to here). The PCs will need to get a boat to follow them and finish the job.
• The coastal ruins are connected to the temple via an underground passageway (either built by the ruins' previous inhabitants or dug by the crabs for convenience.

Event three: PC's go to the grotto temple to unrustle some divine jimmies. Jimmies are unrustled, giant enemy crabs are a thing of the past, fishing gets better, more settlers arrive. PC's should also get an item or a key or a map or SOMETHING that will guide them somewhere else.

So, I'm thinking there could be multiple approaches to the unrustling here. The players will need to be able to defeat the sea god in combat. It's difficult to kill a god but you could achieve this by having the sea god be severely weakened. I think it would be a cool idea to have his power bound to the next location (the mine) in some way and that binding has weakened him considerably since the original citizens died out. Or maybe the inhabitants of the city bound him to cull his power, or to use him as a source of magical energy, or maybe he allowed himself to be bound to the city and its people because they descended from him, kind of in a Greek-god-fathering-human-children-way, and that they could profit from his divine ability. Either way, the city's decline and extinction of its population has weakened the sea god to the point of mortality,

If the players fight their way out of the encounter with the sea god, the sea god will die, and with him the sea and life within it will wither and provide less sustenance. But at least the denizens of the sea will no longer pose a threat. Maybe the players will also get really good loot, because the sea god has a trident of +1 fishthings or whatever. Among the sea god's possessions they could find a map or a book that shows them the way to the stone city to which he was bound (which is interesting to the PCs because it is near the mountains and a source of iron).

If the players talk their way out of the encounter with the sea god, maybe the sea god will ask them to travel to the stone city and destroy the magical doodad that binds him to the city and that's keeping him weak and suppressed. This is obviously the altruistic choice as they won't get his awesome loot, but the sea god promises the sea will be bountiful and calm to the settlers if they succeed. That way, fishing will yield much more food than it ever could if they killed him and the way in for new settlers is much safer as there will be less or no storms to harass travelers.

So that would set up access to the next area, the stone city near the mountains, which should still be partially intact. If the players clear the city, some settlers will flock to it because a) they don't have to build their own mud huts and b) there is an operational mine where they can get iron to make tools and trade them with the settlers of the coastal settlement for food or whatever.

Event four: A new village gets attacked by some kind of monster. PC's help out, and chase the monsters back to an abandoned mine. They clear the mine, but there's not enough clean water nearby for a viable mining town...but there is an old aqueduct.

I think the step towards a new village is a bit quickly made here. You could follow my suggestion above to get to the point of settling the stone city (which then gets attacked by a monster) or you could come up with something else (maybe this village was settled by a bunch of settlers who came in on a different ship and landed elsewhere).

Either way, a few ideas for your abandoned mines:

• Maybe do an abandoned mines and earth elemental combination: something has upset the earth elementals and it might have to do with your big bad dracolich. Or maybe they're created/summoned by a half-slumbering earth spirit/deity that remembers the mistakes of the past inhabitants of the stone city who worked in the mine and 'defends' itself against what it perceives as a new threat;
• Maybe the mines also contain your first teleporter? Maybe even the aqueduct itself is a teleporting system that was used to get water from the capital city to here and ore from here to the capital (would also solve any gating problems to the capital city area). The teleporter's energies have attracted some magical creatures that maybe worship it as a god, or feed off it, or that want to study it. These creatures are hostile to the new settlers, which they perceive as a threat. Or it could also just be a bunch of dumb mountain humanoids that worship the glowy thingy.
• Or you could go with an infestation of hostile fungi/plants. Every night, they grow out of the caves and spread a little further, lay dormant during the day in the sunlight, and then resume spreading when night falls again. They spread poisonous gases, work as flytraps by trying to lure humans into their mouths (perhaps even through magic) and slowly spread throughout the entire region. Inside the cave is the motherplant, which the PCs have to vanquish. After that, they'll discover the remnants of the old aqueduct.

Event five: The PC's go to the ruins of the capital city to restore the water flow into the aqueduct. There, they find something that sends them elsewhere.

I would definitely consider having multiple adventures in this place. To gate it multiple locations in the city, you could even consider making it a highly magical city with multiple wards, some extraplanar. Players have to explore one ward to unlock the teleporter gate to the next ward. There could be e.g. a ward on the plane of water for the water supply (explaining the (magical) aqueduct) and a ward on the plane of fire for fuel and power. That way, you could even consider having the capital city in the middle of the defiled desert, as the inhabitants got their water and food from extraplanar sources. If course, unlocking the wards and getting the city 'up and running' again could be a major boost to repopulating the area.

Or, if that's a bit too much, you could just make it into a regular city, but have the PCs open up several locks in different districts to restore water flow. They'll have to deal with some of the baddies that have settled the place and might even find some good loot. In order to keep the locks operational, they'd maybe have to get some settlers to permanently guard the area?

That's all I have time for today!

[Blake Hannon]

Thanks for the long reply!

Bonus points/extra reward if they take the crab carcasses back to the settlement for food? Killing 10 or so giant crabs should do wonders for the stockpile is all I'm saying.

I was already thinking of something like this. While a giant crustacean is probably going to have poor quality meat (crabs and lobsters tend to get less tasty as they age), their chitin has got to be useful, especially before the settlers start mining for metals to build tools with. I'm also thinking that giant crab eggs might be useful for something, so bringing back the brood of a crab queen can get the PC's a reward.

• Old inscriptions/books/stone tablets among the ruins depict the sea god sending legions of crabs to deal with sailors and coastal cities.
• The crabs had captured a few settlers. One of them is held at the ruins and tells the PCs that the others were taken away by the crabs the previous night (to sacrifice to the sea god). The prisoner can then point the PCs in the right direction and/or they can follow the crab tracks.
• (Don't know if the crabs are sentient enough. If not, please ignore) one of the crabs is a priest of the sea god and tries to smite the players in the name of his god. The PCs can find the map/stone tablet/inscription you describe below in his personal quarters/sanctuary.
• A few crabs flee out to sea and make for a small island (you'd have to move the temple to here). The PCs will need to get a boat to follow them and finish the job.
• The coastal ruins are connected to the temple via an underground passageway (either built by the ruins' previous inhabitants or dug by the crabs for convenience.

I don't really see the crabs as being sentient. Just wild animals that happen to be sensitive to the disposition of the local sea spirit. As such, the sacrifice and holy smite ideas don't really fit, but the pictograph depicting the crabs being sent by the god does. The burrow/tunnel idea could also fit; either leading to the hidden temple itself, or just leading into important sites within the ruined coastal city where clues can be found.

Putting it on an island is also cool, I might do that.

So, I'm thinking there could be multiple approaches to the unrustling here. The players will need to be able to defeat the sea god in combat. It's difficult to kill a god but you could achieve this by having the sea god be severely weakened. I think it would be a cool idea to have his power bound to the next location (the mine) in some way and that binding has weakened him considerably since the original citizens died out. Or maybe the inhabitants of the city bound him to cull his power, or to use him as a source of magical energy, or maybe he allowed himself to be bound to the city and its people because they descended from him, kind of in a Greek-god-fathering-human-children-way, and that they could profit from his divine ability. Either way, the city's decline and extinction of its population has weakened the sea god to the point of mortality,

If the players fight their way out of the encounter with the sea god, the sea god will die, and with him the sea and life within it will wither and provide less sustenance. But at least the denizens of the sea will no longer pose a threat. Maybe the players will also get really good loot, because the sea god has a trident of +1 fishthings or whatever. Among the sea god's possessions they could find a map or a book that shows them the way to the stone city to which he was bound (which is interesting to the PCs because it is near the mountains and a source of iron).

If the players talk their way out of the encounter with the sea god, maybe the sea god will ask them to travel to the stone city and destroy the magical doodad that binds him to the city and that's keeping him weak and suppressed. This is obviously the altruistic choice as they won't get his awesome loot, but the sea god promises the sea will be bountiful and calm to the settlers if they succeed. That way, fishing will yield much more food than it ever could if they killed him and the way in for new settlers is much safer as there will be less or no storms to harass travelers.

So that would set up access to the next area, the stone city near the mountains, which should still be partially intact. If the players clear the city, some settlers will flock to it because a) they don't have to build their own mud huts and b) there is an operational mine where they can get iron to make tools and trade them with the settlers of the coastal settlement for food or whatever.

I like the multiple outcomes here, as well as the sea spirit giving the PC's another task that sends them somewhere else and catalyzes a new adventure. I'm somewhat less keen on the PC's actually fighting the god in person, for two reasons. One is that they'd probably be level 2 or so at this point, and even a minor godling seems like something they should be a few levels higher before fighting. The other is that I want the major theme of this campaign (I think?) to be restoration. I'd also like to foreshadow that undead will be the ultimate bad in the campaign.

So, I think what might work is that when the dragon used its defiler magic, the local gods turned against him, and he responded by trying to force them into compliance. He killed the shaman who guarded the sea temple and used his aforementioned magic to bind the sea spirit. When the dragon was killed shortly thereafter, the sea god was no longer compelled to serve, but remained bound to an object that was taken inland; as a result, he is in constant discomfort and lashing out.

The altar of the sea temple is haunted by the undead remains of the shaman (the campaign's first undead encounter, and a harbinger of things to come). Once the PC's defeat it and restore the altar, they are able to get a message from the sea god telling them where to go to release him.

Killing the undead shaman and worshipping/sacrificing at the shrine is enough to make the crabs stop attacking. Unbinding the sea god will increase fishing yields and improve the coastal weather.

Anyway, their first trip to the ruined capital can be to recover the item that the sea god is bound to. While there, they can find a map that shows the location of the mines (or some other site of interest/value).

I think the step towards a new village is a bit quickly made here. You could follow my suggestion above to get to the point of settling the stone city (which then gets attacked by a monster) or you could come up with something else (maybe this village was settled by a bunch of settlers who came in on a different ship and landed elsewhere).

Either way, a few ideas for your abandoned mines:

• Maybe do an abandoned mines and earth elemental combination: something has upset the earth elementals and it might have to do with your big bad dracolich. Or maybe they're created/summoned by a half-slumbering earth spirit/deity that remembers the mistakes of the past inhabitants of the stone city who worked in the mine and 'defends' itself against what it perceives as a new threat;
• Maybe the mines also contain your first teleporter? Maybe even the aqueduct itself is a teleporting system that was used to get water from the capital city to here and ore from here to the capital (would also solve any gating problems to the capital city area). The teleporter's energies have attracted some magical creatures that maybe worship it as a god, or feed off it, or that want to study it. These creatures are hostile to the new settlers, which they perceive as a threat. Or it could also just be a bunch of dumb mountain humanoids that worship the glowy thingy.
• Or you could go with an infestation of hostile fungi/plants. Every night, they grow out of the caves and spread a little further, lay dormant during the day in the sunlight, and then resume spreading when night falls again. They spread poisonous gases, work as flytraps by trying to lure humans into their mouths (perhaps even through magic) and slowly spread throughout the entire region. Inside the cave is the motherplant, which the PCs have to vanquish. After that, they'll discover the remnants of the old aqueduct.

Combining the teleporters and the aqueduct makes sense. Ashamed I didn't think of it myself. The capital and the mine should have the first two warp points.

Plant monsters in the mines makes sense, especially if I make the mine adventure a prelude to restoring another temple in the enchanted forest. Mine can be near the forest, and the plant monsters could have come from the latter (and be pacified, just like the crabs, when the forest god is appeased).

I do like an earth god being involved with the mine as well. Maybe appeasing him later in the campaign gives the PC's a spell or item that they can use to backtrack to the mines and open up a new area deeper underground (with better shinies, of course).

I would definitely consider having multiple adventures in this place. To gate it multiple locations in the city, you could even consider making it a highly magical city with multiple wards, some extraplanar. Players have to explore one ward to unlock the teleporter gate to the next ward. There could be e.g. a ward on the plane of water for the water supply (explaining the (magical) aqueduct) and a ward on the plane of fire for fuel and power. That way, you could even consider having the capital city in the middle of the defiled desert, as the inhabitants got their water and food from extraplanar sources. If course, unlocking the wards and getting the city 'up and running' again could be a major boost to repopulating the area.

Or, if that's a bit too much, you could just make it into a regular city, but have the PCs open up several locks in different districts to restore water flow. They'll have to deal with some of the baddies that have settled the place and might even find some good loot. In order to keep the locks operational, they'd maybe have to get some settlers to permanently guard the area?

The extraplanar thing doesn't feel right. Not sure why. I'll try to think about it.

I definitely want the ruined capital to be revisited several times. Several different sub-areas or dungeons can be contained therein, including probably the final one (like I said, the dragon's tomb should be either here or in the desert).

Gating within the city is going to be a major issue though, barring something like the extraplanar portal idea. I guess part of it (the undercity?) could be unlocked by the same Earth God artifact that lets them access the lower mines, and the castle might be impervious to anything short of flight or teleportation (with their corresponding level or item requirements), but other than that I'm not sure.

That's all I have time for today!

Thanks! You've helped me quite a bit already. Looking forward to more suggestions or thoughts from you as I continue.

[Blake Hannon]

So, with the above in mind, and some new sudden inspirations, I think I have the basics down.

Bringing the water from the capital to the mining town could be a great way to introduce the teleportation system overall. I might have it so that the PC's find a teleporter or two prior to this, but don't know what it is. Once they do the water quest, they'll realize that those other teleporters can be activated as well, and they'll start hunting for additional ones.

I've figured out what to do with the mountaintop. There's a thunderbird that nests up there, and it causes periodic storms. If the PC's go up there and do a certain quest, they can recover the "storm talisman" that lets them command (or at least befriend) it. The bird will then stop causing random destructive storms, and start providing favorable sailing winds and making it rain over the desert to accelerate its recovery. There might also be some sort of barrier that can only be destroyed by a lightning strike that it would let them bypass (provided this is before they become high enough level to cast Call Lightning on their own). I also had a vague idea about the storms opening up some secret grotto back near the coast; I'd like some sort of late game backtracking to that area.

If the thunderbird has babbies, these can also serve as the previously hostile flying mounts that Nobot suggested earlier.

I'm thinking the mountaintop quest should be near the end of the campaign, for a few reasons. One is because its kind of hard to top that. Another is because few things say "you have finally tamed this land" like being able to control the damned weather, and its also a major enough thing that it could serve as the catalyst for the dracolich waking up (triggering the endgame). Finally, just the view from the mountaintop suggests dominance; being able to look out over the entire region from above feels like it should be a symbolic moment. That said, I want there to be another quest or two after the thunderbird and before the endgame, so that the players get a chance to appreciate their newfound impact on the world before the zombiepocalypse brings them back down to earth. Maybe the undead START getting more aggressive after the thunderbird quest, but it takes the dracolich a while to rally his forces for a real attack.

I decided that tying the mine adventure and forest adventure together works well, but I don't know if clearing the mine should happen before or after restoring the forest temple. Its either "you've cleared the mine, but more monsters will keep coming from the forest until you do something about it," or "you've restored the forest temple, but the evil spirits that once haunted it have now fled into the mines." Not sure which is more satisfying, or even whether they should take place directly after one another. Also, I want the PC's to initially be out of their depth when they first go to the forest; make restoring the temple seem much more urgent, and take them down a peg after their recent string of successes and remind them that there are serious dangers yet to be neutralized. Having them get chased by nasty monsters in the forest that trap them until they can solve the problem feels right.

Still not sure what to do with the defiled desert. I feel like there should be one adventure there before the thunderbird quest, and another one afterward once parts of the desert have been changed by rain and floods.

I also like the idea of a tunnel-making artifact that can be used to open a deeper area beneath the mines. Or, alternately, the artifact is found IN the mines and used to open a new area somewhere else. Would like it to be tied to an earth god, somehow. Not sure what to do with this idea yet.

I've decided that the dracolich's lair should be under the capital, beneath the ruins of his old castle. The PC's will have backtracked through the capital several times by the end, so putting the final boss there will feel appropriate and climactic. Also, their previous visits will give me lots of opportunities to give them a bad feeling about those ruins and hint at something sinister lurking there, so the final threat won't seem like it came out of nowhere.

Taking a cue from The Angry DM's megadungeon project, I put my tentative plans on a spreadsheet. Each "event" is a cycle of rising and falling action that leads to some kind of resolution; some events will take multiple play sessions, while others might be just one or two encounters. This is all very tentative, and pretty much everything is subject to change.



Note that the question marks can be filled in with any number of additional events. Those are just there to mark where I don't know how to transition between the things on either side.

Of course, there should be at least a couple of events that can be done in variable order, and some sidequests that aren't part of the critical path.

As always, feedback, suggestions, and criticism are all welcome.

[Blake Hannon]

Still stuck on how to fill those blanks. I have come up with a few more ideas, though.

For one thing, the mountainsides will be infested with birdlike creatures. These guys can be a pain in the ass throughout the entire first half of the campaign, as small groups of them will periodically fly over the central plains and coastlines to attack vulnerable-looking people or steal food and valuables. This will give the PC's some incentive to scale the mountain and wipe these pests out, and once the path to the mountain climb is open (not sure how to gate it just yet) this will give them a sidequest to do on the way to getting the storm talisman. Alternately, once they get the talisman maybe they can just use a strategically placed thunderstorm to chase the bird things out.

For another, I've figured out much more of the backstory. I now have a pretty good explanation for why the dragon king went nuts and pissed off the nature spirits, why he used defiler magic within his own lands, and why there's an important adventure site in the middle of the defiled desert.

Finally, I more or less finished conceptualizing the sacred grotto adventure.

...

Backstory:

In its early days, the ancient kingdom lived in harmony with the natural world, and its piety and reverence for the gods and spirits ensured its prosperity. Even after the dragon conquered this nation, it and its henchman adopted the local customs, and life continued much as it had before. In fact, the dragon's strong leadership and impressive arcane knowledge made the kingdom greater than it had ever been before, and its cities and industries grew manyfold.

However, success brought complacence, and wealth materialism. The people and their draconic ruler both came to take the spirits less seriously over time, and when a new conqueror came from further inland the dragon was shocked and outraged when some of the small gods favored the invaders. Seeing that he couldn't win conventionally, the dragon used ancient, forbidden magic that it had unearthed to drain the life from the small patch of land that the invaders had claimed, and reduce the fortress that they had taken to rubble. His plan to send a clear message to the invaders backfired, as his destruction of the land caused many more of the local gods to turn against him. Refusing to admit he was in the wrong, the dragon king attempted to force the spirits back into compliance, binding them magically and compelling them to keep his kingdom wealthy and prosperous. This proved a much longer and harder process than he had hoped, and it bought the invaders time to regroup. In the end, both mortal factions were forced to abandon the land they had fought for, as a combination of defiler magic, angry nature spirits, and old fashioned wasteful burn-and-pillage warfare destroyed everything worth fighting over.

In the end, the dragon and his most fanatical soldiers died hiding in a vault beneath the burning capital city, and their spirits still haunt the land, spitefully determined that even centuries later, no one else will ever get to take what was once theirs.

...

Sea temple:

After the PC's track the giant enemy crabs to the coastal ruins, they see that a large section of the city has collapsed and fallen into the ocean; on closer inspection, they see that there are some sunken ships down there as well. They can't interact with the sunken structures for now, but the adventure will call attention to them.

The PC's find and slay the crab queen in what was clearly once a palace shrine. Murals on the wall depict three moray eels cavorting below the waves. One of the murals shows a cleric kneeling on a rock besides the sea with the eels looking back at him. Another shows the eels surrounded by a horde of giant enemy crabs, clearly commanding them. Finally, there is some imagery of a rocky bluff that looks exactly like those of the island just inside the bay.

When they get back to town, the PC's are told that the crab attacks have stopped, for now, but the settlers can still see them scuttling angrily here and there along the beach; there must be additional colonies under the water, and its only a matter of time until they grow bold enough to attack again. Furthermore, the settler shaman has been trying to supplicate the local sea spirits for good fishing and protection from the crabs, but they don't seem to be responding; the natural order must be out of balance for some reason.

Presumably, this will give the PC's both the clues and the motivation they need to check out the island. They find an expansive, half-artificial grotto there, and at its center a limestone altar on a raised platform above a half-flooded cavern. Here, they encounter a small group of undead priests; these guys were killed by the dragon when they attempted to stop him from binding the sea spirits, and they have been cursing their gods and defiling their shrine ever since in directionless rage for not protecting them in return. The undead are clearly charred and blackened, and there is evidence around the cave of it having been seared by a great fire long ago; these are the players' first hint about the campaign's final boss.

Once the undead are defeated and the PC's get a chance to study the chamber a bit more, they find more depictions of people bowing before the shrine, burning incense on it, and throwing food offerings into the water. When the PC's try to do the same (or more likely, bring an NPC priest from town to do it) the atmosphere in the cave seems to lighten, and a large, bioluminescent moray eel appears in the water below. It introduces itself as the Gardener of the Corals, and says that for restoring its temple, it will command the crabs to calm their tits. However, it once shared this temple with its two brothers (also divine eels, logically enough); one of them was imprisoned by foul magic, and the other fled into the depths. The Gardener can sense that its brother is sealed in an enchanted gem in a crumbling tower beneath a waterfall. If the second eel is released, the two of them will then cause the fish population to flourish, and in exchange for regular prayers and offerings they will send them into the settlers' nets.

The PC's will have already seen the spectacular waterfall that falls from the mountain further inland. Next mission is to go there, get the pearl, and bring it to the sea. While they're there, they find something else that leads them to their next point of interest. Releasing the second eel and keeping them placated increases the settlers' food supply to the point where a second wave of colonists can be brought in (leading to the establishment of a new village site somewhere inland).

Later in the campaign, the PC's will discover that the third eel god, the one who ran away, was the magician of the trio, and he can be called back with the right sort of offering. Unfortunately, he was known for being the pickiest of the three; his favorite food is bullete (you know, those giant rhinoceros landshark beasts). If the PC's hunt a bullette and throw its meat from the altar, he'll return to the temple and teach them a spell that lets them breath underwater (at a lower level than they'd normally have to be to cast it). With this ability, they can now explore the underwater shipwrecks and sunken harbor buildings back at the coastal ruins where they fought the crabs, which by then will have been revealed to contain another useful (possibly plot critical?) item.

...

Are you guys still reading this? I'd really like feedback on this, especially my fleshed out sea temple adventure(s).

[Nobot]

Good going so far! Some more ideas from me below.

Re the event spreadsheet:

• 4 idea 1: I would consider tying the ‘old mines’ quest in with the settlements’ need for resources. Maybe the map with waypoints found under 3 reveals the location of the mines and it is clear that minerals can be found there. The PCs can then volunteer to explore. This is the simplest one, I think.
• 4 idea 2: The sea spirit/deity could be linked in some way to an earth spirit that is trapped in the mines (perhaps because some foul creatures bound him to the digging artefact you mentioned in an earlier post). The sea deity asks the PCs to free the earth spirit to further restore balance and tranquillity to the region. This could tie in to your digging artefact (which serves to gate the PCs into new areas) by having the freed earth spirit voluntarily offer to let the PCs use him to power the artefact.
• 4 idea 3: Essentially, the PCs have now unlocked a section of the capital, right? That’s where they got the spirit. You could stage the next adventure there, then. I always greatly enjoy an ‘interlocked, magical towers’-type dungeon (depends on if this matches with how you want the capital to look), but you could consider staging this part of the adventure in the capital city’s former mage academy: several spires that reach to the clouds, interconnected by bridges and teleporters. It’s basically a dungeon that goes up instead of down, but that will be highly magical in nature, with dazzling heights, bullrushing opponents off bridges that span the skies, towers that collapse when disturbed, ancient tomes with great recipes for curry, and all that kind of good stuff. The PCs’ hook for this quest can be that they need to get in there to find more information on why and how the water spirit was captured/find a cure for the strange Lovecraftian Shadow-Over-Innsmouth-type curse that some villagers (or even PCs) suffer from after eating the crab meat (which turned out to be a bad idea after all)/to find an antidote for a local plague that affects the settlers/get the materials to set up a mage guild or college among the settlers.
• 9+10 idea 1: You could consider linking 9 and 10 to the map found under 3. Now that the PCs know of the existence of ‘port points, they can perhaps unlock the gate to a next area. What I see ‘missing’ so far is interaction with civilized locals. 9 Or 10 could be about following a ‘port point to a settlement of intelligent creatures (maybe fey, or underground beings, or maybe even a last, uncorrupted remnant of the dragon’s civilization). You can use the village for foreshadowing (players can learn legends of the dracolich) and also to offer the PCs access to a new shops/unconventional magic items/tutors that can learn them feats or abilities that are unique to the area and/or give access to other specific knowledge of the area. Of course, the villagers will require the PCs’ aid, maybe to deal with a pocket of undead resistance or a former general of the dracolich gone rogue? Or maybe they need help with placating local spirits that have taken to haunting the villagers’ habitat (and make this the horror/ghost session). All of this can be filed under foreshadowing: the PCs get their first taste of the ‘true enemy.’
• 9+10 idea 2: Round about now, the storms should become a serious problem, right? So maybe the thunderbird doesn’t like the newly reopened mines. Maybe the mines are actually in his mountain and he decides to do something about it. His motivation (considering he’ll be an ally later on) can be fear of the settlers and humans in general (having pretty bad experiences from the past). He makes it rain, like crazy, and the village floods (or maybe the dragon’s servants built a dam or something nearby and the thunderbird smashes it with lightning, causing a flood, go crazy). The PCs are involved in the rescue operations to evacuate the new mining village. It’s a different kind of adventure from ‘go into dungeon and retrieve X’ and might shake it up, especially if you put some difficult moral choices in there (save this group of rich villagers who’ll reward you more handsomely or save this group of villagers who can offer no reward but are actually productive and contribute to the settlements). Once the villagers are saved, your PCs will have an obvious hook: they need to stop the storms or whatever’s causing them. The next step would be then to consult the spirits/deities they’ve befriended so far to find out what’s causing the storms. Of course, these spirits/deities will require the PCs to do them a favor before they’re willing to rat on the thunderbird, which could lead your players into a new area (maybe the sunken city). Either way, at the end the spirits/deities will explain what’s causing the storm and you have your hook to get the PCs onto the mountain path.
• 11: I would consider doing something with the earth elemental/spirit the PCs encountered in the mines here. Alternatively, the PC’s could go a-questing for a scroll or magic item that will be able to blast open the passage (maybe they’ll find that item in the capital’s mage academy as well, in a section they had previously left unexplored because there was something sinister guarding it, or a skybridge was out which they now have the means to cross? It would be more backtracking, so that’s good, right?).
• 12: You could consider making the mountain partially unclimbable, requiring the PCs to enter the mountains’ bowel (natural caves or dungeons) or even use their digging apparatus to make their way to the top. I’d imagine they would be harrowed by flying critters, barbarian tribes that live in the mountains and worship the thunderbird as a god (you can make this the nice, tribal flavored part of the campaign). The players might even discover an ancient grave site where they discover more dracolich hints and history. Maybe the PCs uncover that there is something powerful they need to find in the sunken coastal ruins.
• 13, 14 + 15: Once the thunderbird is subdued, I would have the players discover the desert a little further and adventure in it for a while before it is ‘greened’. Unless, of course, you’ve already thrown them an adventure in the desert at this stage.

That’s it for now on those points.

Re the backstory:
I like it a lot. I would feed it to the PCs in chunks as the story progresses. But I bet you already thought of that.

Re the Sea temple:

• I think the hook you give them is good, hinting at the eels’ dominance over the crabs and having a shaman able to inform the PCs that something is out of order is a very good idea. Consider including fishermen who went out pretty far (near the island in fact) to find a good place to fish and were beset upon by a horde of the crabs; perhaps the single survivor spotted one of the undead priests.
• Good on the appearance of the eel priest’s spirit, but I think the link to the waterfall is pretty weak. Chances are your players were either a) not paying attention when you described the waterfall; b) forgot about it already (it’s the unfortunate truth about most players). I would give them a clearer hint about the whereabouts of the spirit they need to retrieve. You could consider going so far as the eel priest simply telling them where his brother is.
• Also, will the players not ask the eel priest’s spirit what happened? How will he respond? Can he be interacted with at all?
• I also like the idea of the third spirit unlocking the underwater region. Maybe a fleet of invaders once sank (thanks to the dragon) just outside the coastal city and the players can uncover some powerful gear there, made especially for fighting the dragon and his fanatical followers in the shipwrecks, if they manage to overcome the angry spirits of the invaders that still roam there.

[Blake Hannon]

Good going so far! Some more ideas from me below.

Re the event spreadsheet:
[LIST][*]4 idea 1: I would consider tying the ‘old mines’ quest in with the settlements’ need for resources. Maybe the map with waypoints found under 3 reveals the location of the mines and it is clear that minerals can be found there. The PCs can then volunteer to explore. This is the simplest one, I think.

Agreed. Once the initial site is no longer being threatened and has a surplus of food, it would make sense for them to want minerals and timbers next. If the mine is near or beyond the forest, those could coincide nicely.

[*]4 idea 2: The sea spirit/deity could be linked in some way to an earth spirit that is trapped in the mines (perhaps because some foul creatures bound him to the digging artefact you mentioned in an earlier post). The sea deity asks the PCs to free the earth spirit to further restore balance and tranquillity to the region. This could tie in to your digging artefact (which serves to gate the PCs into new areas) by having the freed earth spirit voluntarily offer to let the PCs use him to power the artefact.

While that makes perfect sense, I was hoping that discovering the digging artifact would bring the PC's BACK to the mines later in the campaign. I guess I could just put it in the mines and have the PC's use it to backtrack to somewhere else, but at this stage in the campaign the options for "somewhere else" that they've already been is limited. Maybe in the capital or something.

Need to think about this one.

[*]4 idea 3: Essentially, the PCs have now unlocked a section of the capital, right? That’s where they got the spirit. You could stage the next adventure there, then. I always greatly enjoy an ‘interlocked, magical towers’-type dungeon (depends on if this matches with how you want the capital to look), but you could consider staging this part of the adventure in the capital city’s former mage academy: several spires that reach to the clouds, interconnected by bridges and teleporters. It’s basically a dungeon that goes up instead of down, but that will be highly magical in nature, with dazzling heights, bullrushing opponents off bridges that span the skies, towers that collapse when disturbed, ancient tomes with great recipes for curry, and all that kind of good stuff. The PCs’ hook for this quest can be that they need to get in there to find more information on why and how the water spirit was captured/find a cure for the strange Lovecraftian Shadow-Over-Innsmouth-type curse that some villagers (or even PCs) suffer from after eating the crab meat (which turned out to be a bad idea after all)/to find an antidote for a local plague that affects the settlers/get the materials to set up a mage guild or college among the settlers.

I love this idea, but it sounds like something that should happen at higher level.

I'm thinking that the storms could be a good gate here. The skies above the capital are constantly buffeted by gale force winds that make the skybridges impassable. Pacifying the thunderbird can open up two new areas; the city towers, and something in the desert.

Alternately, the thing that they need to get into the mountains can be in one of the towers. Actually, screw it, I'm putting the digging artifact in the towers.

Okay, so: one of the towers has the diggy machine. PC's have to navigate the dangerous, storm-beaten bridges to get it, and there are some side areas they just can't access at all. Diggy opens up the mountain path, and also lets them open up a new area under the mines. They can do these in either order. Once they do the thunderbird quest, the storms end, and those extra towers now become accessible if the PC's want to go back and get more goodies.

No no, SCRATCH THAT. The PC's get the digging artifact in the towers, use it to open the new area under the mines, and THERE they meet the earth god who tells them about the thunderbird and storm talisman. They put that together with the winds that prevented them from exploring the rest of the towers, and off they go.

So, towers are now Event 9 or thereabouts. Event 10 is the new area/earth temple under the mines. Once the PC's both have the diggy artifact AND know about the thunderbird, they have everything they need to send them up the mountain for the next major quest.

[*]9+10 idea 1: You could consider linking 9 and 10 to the map found under 3. Now that the PCs know of the existence of ‘port points, they can perhaps unlock the gate to a next area. What I see ‘missing’ so far is interaction with civilized locals. 9 Or 10 could be about following a ‘port point to a settlement of intelligent creatures (maybe fey, or underground beings, or maybe even a last, uncorrupted remnant of the dragon’s civilization). You can use the village for foreshadowing (players can learn legends of the dracolich) and also to offer the PCs access to a new shops/unconventional magic items/tutors that can learn them feats or abilities that are unique to the area and/or give access to other specific knowledge of the area. Of course, the villagers will require the PCs’ aid, maybe to deal with a pocket of undead resistance or a former general of the dracolich gone rogue? Or maybe they need help with placating local spirits that have taken to haunting the villagers’ habitat (and make this the horror/ghost session). All of this can be filed under foreshadowing: the PCs get their first taste of the ‘true enemy.’

I was thinking that the mountaintop could have a hidden tribe of friendlies on it. The forest could also have root caves under it that contain gnomes or some such. I'll definitely have any friendlies that the PC's meet give them bits of info about the undead and dragon.

The port points need to be reactivated from both sides, I think

[*]9+10 idea 2: Round about now, the storms should become a serious problem, right? So maybe the thunderbird doesn’t like the newly reopened mines. Maybe the mines are actually in his mountain and he decides to do something about it. His motivation (considering he’ll be an ally later on) can be fear of the settlers and humans in general (having pretty bad experiences from the past). He makes it rain, like crazy, and the village floods (or maybe the dragon’s servants built a dam or something nearby and the thunderbird smashes it with lightning, causing a flood, go crazy). The PCs are involved in the rescue operations to evacuate the new mining village. It’s a different kind of adventure from ‘go into dungeon and retrieve X’ and might shake it up, especially if you put some difficult moral choices in there (save this group of rich villagers who’ll reward you more handsomely or save this group of villagers who can offer no reward but are actually productive and contribute to the settlements). Once the villagers are saved, your PCs will have an obvious hook: they need to stop the storms or whatever’s causing them. The next step would be then to consult the spirits/deities they’ve befriended so far to find out what’s causing the storms. Of course, these spirits/deities will require the PCs to do them a favor before they’re willing to rat on the thunderbird, which could lead your players into a new area (maybe the sunken city). Either way, at the end the spirits/deities will explain what’s causing the storm and you have your hook to get the PCs onto the mountain path.

Putting the mines in the thunderbird's mountain messes a bit with the geography I've been putting together, but it might be worth it.

Anyway, the storms becoming a problem...actually, instead of that, I'll use those evil bird people raiders that I mentioned before. As the settlements grow, they start attacking more aggressively. The PC's or villagers learn that there's something hidden under the collapsed mines that can protect them, and they get the diggy artifact from the towers to open that area. In the under-mines, they find a ruined shrine to an earth god, and upon being placated he tells them about the thunderbird who once kept the skies free of such raiders.

Hmm. Still needs work. Storms, bird people, the location of the mine in relation to the forest and mountain...I have a bunch of decisions to make here. You've definitely helped, I just need to narrow it down to one of the possibilities.

[*]11: I would consider doing something with the earth elemental/spirit the PCs encountered in the mines here. Alternatively, the PC’s could go a-questing for a scroll or magic item that will be able to blast open the passage (maybe they’ll find that item in the capital’s mage academy as well, in a section they had previously left unexplored because there was something sinister guarding it, or a skybridge was out which they now have the means to cross? It would be more backtracking, so that’s good, right?).

Heh, already stumbled into this one as a consequence of your earlier suggestions.

[*]12: You could consider making the mountain partially unclimbable, requiring the PCs to enter the mountains’ bowel (natural caves or dungeons) or even use their digging apparatus to make their way to the top. I’d imagine they would be harrowed by flying critters, barbarian tribes that live in the mountains and worship the thunderbird as a god (you can make this the nice, tribal flavored part of the campaign). The players might even discover an ancient grave site where they discover more dracolich hints and history. Maybe the PCs uncover that there is something powerful they need to find in the sunken coastal ruins.

This is more or less what I'd already envisioned. Not sure what the mountaintop friendlies should be, but its a good place for them, and they can give a major infodump to the PC's about the backstory (since the endgame is coming up soon anyway).

The sunken ruins/shipwrecks...feels like it should come before thunderbird. I want tbird to be near the end of the campaign, after all. Maybe after the mines, the PC's go into the desert, and while there they find out that there's something they need from the shipwrecks. The fringes of the desert might also contain the beast that they need to hunt to attract the final eel. On the other hand, the sunken ruins could also be a "timed" adventure that the PC's need to complete after the undead invasion begins. In which case, yeah, it could come at the end.

Might also make that beast more huntable after the desert is greened, and have the shipwrecks contain something useful against the undead. You raised the possibility that the shipwrecks came from the dragon's enemies, so it would make sense for them to have anti-dragon weapons. Okay, yeah, this works.

Tentative outline is now thus. A few things still need work (the undermines need more detail, the forest could do with another visit at some point, and I still haven't decided if the thunderbird will be causing disasters or just letting the bird people have free reign), but its a much better start than I had before:

Re the backstory:
I like it a lot. I would feed it to the PCs in chunks as the story progresses. But I bet you already thought of that.

Thanks. And yes.

I'm thinking that the nature spirits only really know about events that concern them and their domains, and that their intelligence is largely reactive. The eels, therefore, only know the parts of the story that concern the sea. The forest and earth spirits would know more.

Good point about the PC's needing a better hint about where to find the imprisoned eel. The reason I can't have the first eel just tell them where to find the second is for the reason above; if he knew that much about inland affairs, he'd be able to spoil the entire plot from the beginning.

So, need a better lead for the PC's to follow toward the capital after meeting the first eel. Dunno.

[Blake Hannon]

Critical story path is MOSTLY figured out now. There's just a few weak spots, and a kind of finniky bit involving the shipwrecks (which the PC's can theoretically do at any time after restoring the second eel; get sacrifice, attract third eel, gain water breathing. Or just level up to the point where they can do it themselves. I might have the undead claim the shipwrecks if the PC's wait for too long to do it, to ensure that its a challenge at any level). But anyway, I should start thinking about optional stuff now.

I really like Yora's idea about having a safety score for each new settlement, and the sidequests should mostly be about raising those scores. I think that any time the PC's do something that improves Safety, they should get a hefty XP award on top of whatever material benefit they might gain from having more shops with better and cheaper supplies/equipment. In fact, I think that most of the XP in the campaign should come from raising safety scores of existing settlements or allowing new ones to be built. Obviously, any time the PC's appease a god, clear a dungeon that monsters have been attacking from, or secure a new resource, this will raise Safety scores, so XP rewards and story waypoints coincide nicely. I'm thinking the PC's can also get XP by learning more about the ancient civilization and adding new things to their map, but slightly less. Defeating enemies only gives them a little bit, unless the enemy in question was a personal threat or obstacle to the settlements (like the crab queen in the intro adventure).

This also means that if the PC's do all the sidequests, they'll have the best possible gear and be the highest possible level by the time they confront the dracolich. If they hardly do any, they'll only have whatever mediocre equipment the beleaguered settlers can spare and they'll be lower level, so the final boss will be extremely difficult. I currently have the dracolich and his elite minions statted up as level 11-13, so the PC's should be at least level 10 (if they skimp on sidequests) and at most level 13 (if they do everything) by the time they face the big bad. So, three levels worth of optional XP should be available throughout the campaign, most of which should come from improving the Safety scores of new villages.

Coming up with the safety system should be next on the agenda. There are a lot of factors to take into account (local population size, nearness to resources, ease of travel to other settlements, proximity and threat level of local monsters, etc), so this could be tricky. Would appreciate any help or insights here.