First time running a 5e campaign, help me develop this and give me general pointers

[leon666]

But what if he eats only the souls of those who are truly evil? If it's evil to destroy evil then most adventuring groups have serious problems.

Or, maybe he is a little evil, devouring the occasional annoying junior professor. But he doesn't have the typical evil lich goals. He's all about learning and teaching. He wants to lead only in his little world of academia. He doesn't try to dominate others or bend their wills as that would inhibit their ability to learn and teach new truths. He might be evil but he runs a top rated school and keeps the research money pouring in so everyone shrugs it off. If someone made a move against him, the local government would come down hard on them.

Many evil characters could also be enlightened despots, where intelligence and long term planning drastically reduce the amount of slaughter and destruction. Suppose you have an old dragon. Like most dragons she's all about the hoard. But she gets bored on long flights and tires after a few hours. So, instead of roaming the continent looking for treasure, she forms a plan to make treasure come to her. She advertises having the best collectibles around and offers to trade; her intelligence means that she usually gets the better end of the deal and her collection grows over time without having to leave her hoard unprotected. Very few are stupid or powerful enough to try to rip off a dragon. Sure, she could be evil and kill someone who comes to trade. There would be short term gain but if she got caught doing that even once, everyone would stop coming to trade with her. After decades of safe trades, others also come here to trade with each other under the safe protection of a dragon. She allows this for a fee. With this many people coming to trade, it makes sense to open an inn. Make it high end to attract more rich traders and suck even more money from them. Over time, the lair transforms into an exclusive boutique and spa where rare items can be purchased. With so many comings and goings, she hears rumors of other exotic items. Between that the the library section of her hoard, she has leads on many old tombs and evil temples, many of which are annoyingly subterranean with tight confines. Rather than bother digging them out, it's more comfortable to hire adventuring teams to investigate and bring back the choice items for rewards. She's so busy acquiring wealth and running the resort that she doesn't have time for petty evil.

So after reading the above reply on the "good aligned bad guys thread" I have been thinking about a game with this premise at the heart of it.

I shared the above paragraph with a couple of friends who agreed it sounds like a fun concept and would like to play. I developed the concept a little with one of the players and he is now kinda important to my plan which I will explain below.

So after many years of running this treasure boutique our gold dragon has acquired much, one such item is a "statue" of some forgotten guardian (one of the Players warforged of the forge) which seeming of little value is cast aside in a treasure pile for a hundred years. For some reason or another he is going to be rediscovered and finally brought back online, he is actually a few thousand years old and has been dormant for most of it. His name is "Smith" and he wishes to return "Home" which is an ancient dwarven mine a long distance away which was raided by one of the gold dragons adventuring parties a few hundred years ago, they found a vault they were unable to open so instead brought the only thing the thought looked valuable to them, the "statue".

The key to the vault is actually the Warforged though due to his decaying for so long he doesn't remember this, just his strong urge to go "Home".

I was going to start it at lvl 5 and have the rest of the party be at the boutique to trade an uncommon item they have found (I'm giving them 2 each in their starting gear as I want this to be quite a high power adventure). So now I need a hook to bring them together to go on this quest with the warforged to find his home (and hopefully open the vault for the gold dragon).

This will, as I said in the title be my first game of 5e I run, any general advice for that over 3.5 would be appreciated and helpful.

I'll add more when I think about it, all help is appreciated

Also, much praise to "Stan" for inspiring me to finally run a game of 5e

[bid]

Boxxy T. Morningwood or Momonga-sama are typical of that class.