Where There's a Woad, There's a Way

Hey guys, I've actually been a DM for awhile but this is my first time being active in a forum sense. I thought I would share one of my favorite go-tos for a starter campaign or even as a fun change of pace from the typical 5e setting. It's a combo of Pict lore style village and Thirteeth Warrior theme, it fits pretty naturally into Faerun or any fantasy campaign really, which is great for any game system.

First, a few stipulations so you know whether this sounds like a fun campaign for you and your group. This campaign sets your group out as champions from a village that has pretty limited outlook on magic. Magic being mostly limited to seers or mystics (so you would have the primal magic such as that of rangers and druids) you may have the occasional warlock or magic touched sorcerer but a wizard or someone that studies magic would be sorta unheard of. The second caveat I made is, I limited the race list significantly. Obviously, feel free to ignore this entirely maybe your village is one that is broadly accepting of all races or just certain races, whatever you'd like. I went with Humans, Half-elves, and Half-orcs for my initial run.

The purpose for these limitations is to first, really exercise the diversity of skills in martial classes; they could all be fighters for example but the fighter using a bow is now viewed as the guy that can shine when a distance shot needs to be made or the eldritch knight now can't handwave magic but makes the player develop a specific background on how their character gained the ability. Second, it makes this feel like a close knit superstitious feeling community your players are coming from. Welcoming the players to see other races they encountered strange and unusual which spurs on great roleplay opportunities.

Next let's talk campaign hooks, when you have a setting like this outsider and change are so much fun to use as a story telling device. This can range from anything as simple as a magic device is sold in town and everyone believes it to be cursed to the more tragic epics like a plague strikes the village causing the party to seek a cure. Wild game could become scarce or the crops don't grow and our heroes need to seek out the god of these things in their legendary place of worship.

The particular hook I used was inspired by DMB episode  17 and 108, and I made the sun stop rising making the world a cold, and place where anything with sunlight sensitivity now ran amok. Luckily, my players village seer had a particular prophecy about this day:

"When darkness forever sweeps the land,
Lots call five heroes, close at hand;
Away from the village, North they make,
Cut through the cavern of the great snake;
Crest the mountains of the Frost Men,
Make those short and stout not fear fire again;
Then find the fallen dim lit star,
Take it to the temple where chief is czar."

I had the seer call a town meeting and then cast lots(dice) naming class and race based on the rolls (naturally it was rigged to make my players volunteer arms but not the point). They then had a long adventure where they encountered a cavern of nagas, climbed a mountain ruled by frost giants, saved a city of dwarves from the tyranny of a red dragon, and recovered a holy symbol of Pelor and returned it to a distant desert temple.

The best thing this campaign promotes is for your players to relive their sense of wonder in the fantasy world as well as maybe that sense that new things are usually dangerous. I know my players enjoyed beating "magic men" as they called them in combat, with a party that had to use martial process to overcome magical devices. I also allowed and encouraged them to spin their own stories on the origins of other races to bring back to their village since they were some of the rare few to venture out and hopefully return.

Well, hope you guys enjoy this idea and bend it to fit your own campaign to it.