First Time DM loose campaign log
Jan 21, 2021 2:16:43 GMT
joatmoniac and Chickadee (DM Trish) like this
Post by wheretheresawil on Jan 21, 2021 2:16:43 GMT
I've finished the first long arc of my campaign. The goal was to put my players on the path from zeroes to heroes, let them get a feel for their characters and plant some story seeds for me, and introduce the big bad at the end of it in a dramatic way to put the fear of god into them. Here's the set up:
In the first session the players witnessed a procession of regional heroes, designed to be like any high level D&D party in a "that could be us" kind of way, passing through town on the way to some quest line. The players took a quest to find a missing teenager in the town, only to find a hidden cave with evidence of a ritual sacrifice. Over the next few levels, they did some typical low level stuff; cleared a fort of goblins, took a delivery quest, that sort of thing.
Eventually they wound up in my modified version of Waterdeep, where a "Tournament of Heroes" was being held, and the party entered and one member managed to win. The tournament had been a way for the lord of Waterdeep to find new recruited local heroes because the high level group the players saw back in their first session never came back. Now their quest for level five was to follow the trail after the high level heroes, find out what happened to them, and finish the mission they never returned from. The mission was essentially a wellness check on a wizard friend of the ruler of Waterdeep.
I sent my players on a week long journey to the half-destroyed wizard's tower, and their first major dungeon (after the training wheels that was the goblin-infested fort). One of my dungeon master goals was to build my dungeons around a theme or motif, a la post-2000 Legend of Zelda titles, also taking inspiration from Nintendo's level design philosophies; teach new mechanics in a safe space, then progressively iterate on them. One of my players, our previous dungeon master, built some fun and interesting dungeons but they almost never felt consistent or believable as "real" places, hence my goal. But I digress. Upon entering the wizard's circular tower, the players were greeted with a square room with nothing but a pedestal with a crystal ball in it. If one player touched the pedestal, they would experience a memory of a previous occupant of the room: a member of the high level party they were searching for, and it would show them how to access the hidden exit of the room. This also clued the players in to the TARDIS-like interior of the wizard's tower. They encountered another crystal ball pedestal further up the tower that required two players to interact with it at once. Then a pedestal missing its crystal ball, encouraging the players to explore the floor to search for it and find some loot and potential information. Eventually, the players reached the top of the tower, an obvious boss fight room. 35 feet across, perfectly round, debris everywhere, with one last crystal ball pedestal clearly marked to be interacted with by five people. And all five of them enter the same memory as a member of the high level party.
At which point I emailed them all new character sheets.
What the players hadn't realized along the way is that I had been keeping track of which PCs had interacted with the crystal balls, and that they had determined themselves which member of this high level party they would ultimately be controlling. I got a pretty good spread of clashing classes, too! The Artificer became a Wizard, the Sorcerer/Warlock a Paladin/Fighter, Rogue a Druid, Barbarian a Rogue, and the Cleric a Barbarian/Monk.
Anyway, the players as this level ten party see the room whole again, about a dozen people in it, including the runaway teenager from their first session and the wizard they were looking for. At the far end of the room there's a huge portal on the floor and out of it emerges a huge white tarantula. Roll initiative. Now, the tarantula had plot armor but everything else was fair game. The high level party got wiped, adequately selling the big bad as a major threat, and let me have the fun of doing a TPK without actually putting my PCs in real danger.
I did nearly kill my wife's Artificer with a gelatinous cube, though.
Next arc I think is going to be about exploring my PCs' back stories and developing personal stories for them. I've got some fun idea seeds, some of which my players don't even know they provided!
In the first session the players witnessed a procession of regional heroes, designed to be like any high level D&D party in a "that could be us" kind of way, passing through town on the way to some quest line. The players took a quest to find a missing teenager in the town, only to find a hidden cave with evidence of a ritual sacrifice. Over the next few levels, they did some typical low level stuff; cleared a fort of goblins, took a delivery quest, that sort of thing.
Eventually they wound up in my modified version of Waterdeep, where a "Tournament of Heroes" was being held, and the party entered and one member managed to win. The tournament had been a way for the lord of Waterdeep to find new recruited local heroes because the high level group the players saw back in their first session never came back. Now their quest for level five was to follow the trail after the high level heroes, find out what happened to them, and finish the mission they never returned from. The mission was essentially a wellness check on a wizard friend of the ruler of Waterdeep.
I sent my players on a week long journey to the half-destroyed wizard's tower, and their first major dungeon (after the training wheels that was the goblin-infested fort). One of my dungeon master goals was to build my dungeons around a theme or motif, a la post-2000 Legend of Zelda titles, also taking inspiration from Nintendo's level design philosophies; teach new mechanics in a safe space, then progressively iterate on them. One of my players, our previous dungeon master, built some fun and interesting dungeons but they almost never felt consistent or believable as "real" places, hence my goal. But I digress. Upon entering the wizard's circular tower, the players were greeted with a square room with nothing but a pedestal with a crystal ball in it. If one player touched the pedestal, they would experience a memory of a previous occupant of the room: a member of the high level party they were searching for, and it would show them how to access the hidden exit of the room. This also clued the players in to the TARDIS-like interior of the wizard's tower. They encountered another crystal ball pedestal further up the tower that required two players to interact with it at once. Then a pedestal missing its crystal ball, encouraging the players to explore the floor to search for it and find some loot and potential information. Eventually, the players reached the top of the tower, an obvious boss fight room. 35 feet across, perfectly round, debris everywhere, with one last crystal ball pedestal clearly marked to be interacted with by five people. And all five of them enter the same memory as a member of the high level party.
At which point I emailed them all new character sheets.
What the players hadn't realized along the way is that I had been keeping track of which PCs had interacted with the crystal balls, and that they had determined themselves which member of this high level party they would ultimately be controlling. I got a pretty good spread of clashing classes, too! The Artificer became a Wizard, the Sorcerer/Warlock a Paladin/Fighter, Rogue a Druid, Barbarian a Rogue, and the Cleric a Barbarian/Monk.
Anyway, the players as this level ten party see the room whole again, about a dozen people in it, including the runaway teenager from their first session and the wizard they were looking for. At the far end of the room there's a huge portal on the floor and out of it emerges a huge white tarantula. Roll initiative. Now, the tarantula had plot armor but everything else was fair game. The high level party got wiped, adequately selling the big bad as a major threat, and let me have the fun of doing a TPK without actually putting my PCs in real danger.
I did nearly kill my wife's Artificer with a gelatinous cube, though.
Next arc I think is going to be about exploring my PCs' back stories and developing personal stories for them. I've got some fun idea seeds, some of which my players don't even know they provided!