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Entromancer
Senior Scribe
USA
388 Posts |
 Posted - 24 Feb 2015 : 18:20:01
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I'm working on a campaign pitch that involves my homebrew for the Sembia and owes its inspiration to Richard Lee Byers' Brotherhood of the Griffin and Year of Rogue Dragons series.
I want something that feels epic, yet also allows me to take a gardener's approach as a DM. Gardener meaning that I can allow for any tangents my players may take and bring the party from point A to point Z. Here is the pitch:
The Paladins of the City have united the ideals of Bahamut and Tiamat into the City and brought an end to the war between the dragon gods.
Settlements throughout the City—as Sembia is now known, playing host to regions of sterility and constancy brought on by literal interpretation of Bahamut’s teachings and regions of fertility and instability arising from literal interpretation of Tiamat’s teachings—are ravaged by plane-touched demons.
Chosen of the Gods declare that the Sembians’ denigration of magic arcane and diving through mass-produced wands making magic accessible to all is the cause of the Realms’ troubles. Harper agents in service to the Chosen are sent in to eliminate the holdings of the Sembian Wandbarons
The Paladins of the City bicker with one another while the plane-touched attacks grow in frequency even as the Sembians suffer the consequences of the Harpers’ destruction of their economic threshold. Their fears give demagogues believing that the Genasi—those mercenaries that journed into the Elemental Chaos to bring about Tiamat’s downfall—are responsible for the plane-touched demons a threshold that leads to acts of violence targeting the Genasi.
So there's a few things in here my players could latch onto: the plight of the Wandbarons, that of the Genasi, or that of the Sembians suffering from the Harpers' involvement.
My endgame is that the party realize that the source of the plane-touched demons are Genasi veterans of the Tiamat-Bahamut War that were disenfranchised by old conservatives that hated the disruption to the status quo presented by the Genasi fighting for both Tiamat and Bahamut as armchair activists that needed a kind of self-validation that comes from making blanket assumptions about a group of people that are different from them.
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"...the will is everything. The will to act."--Ra's Al Ghul
"Suffering builds character."--Talia Al Ghul |
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Jeremy Grenemyer
Great Reader
USA
2717 Posts |
Posted - 24 Feb 2015 : 19:57:09
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"Wandbaron." I really like that word.
Your campaign endgame does not grab me. The realization does not sound epic enough. That is, there's no tipping point that the PC's actions can bring about, or final problem they need to solve to save the day.
Demons attacking a city sounds fun from a combat perspective, and the PCs might get to be heroes. Thwarting stuffy Paladins sounds fun too.
Naming a whole country the City would be confusing to me. However the idea of uniting a nation under the combined ideals of major draconian deities sounds really cool. |
Look for me and my content at EN World (user name: sanishiver). |
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Entromancer
Senior Scribe
USA
388 Posts |
Posted - 24 Feb 2015 : 20:58:59
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@Jeremy: Thanks for your suggestions on the endgame. I'm sure I can find a suitable big bad somewhere within my plot hooks.
I sort of want stuffy Paladins, though not in the sense of being pious or holier than thou. The Paladins will be reactive, responding to the plane-touched threats in their own ways. Their bickering is one of methodology after having fought alongside one another in the field. The arguments will be focused around how their spells and tactics threaten the equilibrium between Tiamat and Bahamut. Some of the Paladins will start conscripting citizens, others the wandering wandslingers (and this use of freebooters and bounty hunters will be a major point of contention, as some citizens will fear that these groups want to upset the equilibrium of the City or leave them vulnerable to the Harpers).
Like, Paladins favoring Tiamat might have transmog temples, where they allow the citizens to undergo treatment that will give them plane-touched features and the ability to gain control of some of the weaker plane-touched demons roaming the land (these transmogs are basically manufactured Tieflings). Paladins favoring Bahamut might object to the forced transmogrification, or the use of mercenaries as test subjects for the transmog science-sorcerery.
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"...the will is everything. The will to act."--Ra's Al Ghul
"Suffering builds character."--Talia Al Ghul |
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Wooly Rupert
Master of Mischief
USA
36860 Posts |
Posted - 24 Feb 2015 : 21:07:26
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quote:
Originally posted by Entromancer
Chosen of the Gods declare that the Sembians’ denigration of magic arcane and diving through mass-produced wands making magic accessible to all is the cause of the Realms’ troubles. Harper agents in service to the Chosen are sent in to eliminate the holdings of the Sembian Wandbarons
"Chosen of the Gods" kinda sticks out there. Is that an individual, a group that isn't Chosen but calls itself that, or a bunch of Chosen?
Also... Thay was the country that was doing the mass-producing of magic. I don't have an issue with someone claiming that this was the cause of a lot of problems, but blaming it on Sembia when Thay was doing it is problematic, at best.
Not only that, but Sembians hearing this will inevitably think of Cormanthor. Sembians and the elves of Cormanthor have long been unfriendly to each other. Hearing that lots of magic caused the upheavals, they're going to think of the folks weilding lots of magic and living in a magic city in the forest, and will likely hold them accountable, instead. |
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Entromancer
Senior Scribe
USA
388 Posts |
Posted - 24 Feb 2015 : 21:31:53
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I changed Thay a bit for this brew. I kept the general idea of a nation of the undead, but wanted to find a practical use for the undead. So they're used in mining operations that would be too dangerous for humans, as well as for experiments in biological warfare. Undead given military application are being tested as vectors for parasites found fossilized within the foothills and mountains of Thay. Dating the fossils indicates that these existed when primordial roamed Toril, so the Zulkirs have decided to stake their claim in the parasites and created a specialized group of researchers dedicated to the resurrection and study of these parasites, the Red Druids.
While some Sembians would still blame the elves (and the elves would, in turn, send in elf-changelings to fire up the anti-elf Sembians against the more enlightened Sembians to let the anti-elf group essentially be the source of its downfall), others would key in on the differences in the elemental sorcery of Tiamat and Bahamut as opposed to the magic of the elves. That said, I did have an elf, dwarf, goblin, and orc as members of a villains' group that opposed the Wandbarons and their quest for equality..these could be the self-proclaimed Chosen of the Gods. Heroes from the usual modest background that let the prejudices of their Wise Mentors cloud their minds, encouraging ignorance over learning...
I should say that these changes came about after my detailed account of my homebrew Sembia in another thread: http://www.forum.candlekeep.com/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=19979 |
"...the will is everything. The will to act."--Ra's Al Ghul
"Suffering builds character."--Talia Al Ghul |
Edited by - Entromancer on 24 Feb 2015 21:32:50 |
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Gardener's Approach to Running a Campaign?
