Plot/World Building for Campaign

[Navarre]

Oh, screw someone's idea of what Drow sound like and how they spell. This is your world, not theirs. Apostrophes w'hat'e'ver.  

Now, do you..when voicing your NPCs do you do accents? I royally suck at accents.

Yes. I practice often to give each of my NPCs a unique "voice".

I too suck at accents. But keep in mind you are not doing French or British or some African thing. Those aren't places in your world. So you can sound any way you want so long as it is consistent among characters from that region.

It is also not only the accent. It is tone, inflection, pacing, grammar, and vocabulary choice.

For example, in my irl game I have four notable female NPCs who are from a region where the accent sounds French. If I don't do a perfect French accent I still can't be wrong because I am doing the accent of Southron Isle of the Sabbathyr Dominion, not the accent of France.

But more so, it is important to me to distinguish one of those females from the other. So the tone, inflection, pacing, grammar, and vocabulary choice of each is different.

I make every attempt to be able to speak for any notable NPC in such a way that even if I were to suddenly speak without the Player knowing who was speaking they would recognize the NPC. I have had players, including sab, tell me they could do exactly that; as well as how fluidly I can switch from persona to persona even if the NPCs are having a discussion together.

I practice to do that. I have spent part of this morning, by myself, speaking for one of my important clerics who is about to be met, just to get a feel for that character.

Go for it.

[Lutharian]

Possible names for a Drow necromancer lieutenant:

Dauhl (pronounced like "Dowl") Shadowyn

As my wife pointed out...Dauhl sounds to much like drow his race and would get confusing. I still like Shadowyn though.

[Navarre]

No problem. Just throwing ideas out there.

But, if you like Shadowyn, maybe you're halfway to a name then?

I think the first name should be a single syllable name though, since the surname is more complex.

"Bob Shadowyn" doesn't have much of a scare factor to it, unless he sells insurance door-to-door.

[Gaumer]

http://inkwellideas.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/us-map-hexographer.png

Cool idea for a campaign map I found.

[Navarre]

Interesting.

One of my friends was interested in DMing a post-apocalyptic modern setting using D&D rules. This would make for a nice addition.

[Navarre]

In this week's upcoming irl game session, the party is returnign to one of the PC's home towns to talk to Marianna Rochet. Marianna assisted in the birth of the hybrid tiger/human baby that her descendant, the high priest Isabella, recently had. Word of this has gotten out and Marianna is in trouble; labeled a heretic and witch.

I expect the party will arrive to find the women to whom they need to speak is a bit unavailable, as she has been perhaps put in stocks in public or imprisoned in the local jail or something.

But I need something interesting for the game session in the way of events. It could be directly related to the above or a short sub-plot. I need some good combat or something tricky or whatever to keep the players entertained.

Any suggestions?

[Alisha Mynx]

Any suggestions?

Perhaps they come across a group of fanatics coming to kill her for her heresy?  Doesn't have to be a large group with any deep background, but it wouldn't be too far fetched to think there might be a fanatical splinter faction of any group that might see things in a slightly more skewed way (thinking that since she's a heretic, she obviously deserves to die). Or another similarly fanatical group looking to find information about the baby for their own nefarious purposes (similar to the many cults that sought out Connor after his birth on "Angel").  It is perhaps a bit cliche, but this is the sort of situation where that sort of thing works well.

[Navarre]

Hey! Do you actually read all these crazy Play-by-Post section threads? That's awesome that you've read and replied. 

Yeah, I definitely think the clerics of Spring, the main religion in the city of Garden Cathedral, will have serious issue with Marianna. She's lived there her whole life but there is recent evidence that she has been growing poisonous flowers in her flower garden as well as being involved in that unnatural hybrid baby her descendant, Isabella (who is head of the city), just gave birth to.

Isabella isn't around to speak for Marianna and the main villain has discovered Marianna is an old foe of his. So he's taking advantage of the situation by stirring up public sentiment against her.

I'm thinking the party will arrive to find the city in an uproar. After all, their high priestess just gave birth to a tiger baby, now she's missing, and her "aunt" Marianna is found out to have been involved.

It could be that Marianna has been locked up for her own protection but that it seems several groups might try to kill her in any manner from a mob to something more subtle. So it could just be a "break Marianna out of jail so we can talk to her" plot.

That would work but I have an upcoming arc that involves the party breaking into the world's maximum security prison. So I was trying to think of something else here so it wouldn't seem redundant.

Marianna did have an item that the main villain wants (his primary goal, in fact). He would expect her to have it but one of the player characters actually found it earlier in the game and took it.

So maybe there's something going on in the way of getting this item, or at least trying to find it?

[Gaumer]

How about you flip it on its head?

Have the town treat her as a returning hero. This will seem odd to the party. They investigate and you have a necromancer who has magically brainwashed the town for his own evil purposes, and wants to recruit the PC and the party to his evil organization.

You can have just some magical item doing the brainwashing and have it guarded by some badass monsters or something, but the fun comes in to how to turn off the brainwashing item without turning the entire town into a bunch of zombies, with the actual key to stopping the item isn't to destroy it but to just simply carry it far away from the town; the item and the town are specifically linked. You destroy the item the town becomes irreversible zombies; they just carry the item out of a range and the town is cool.

So, after the party deals with whether or not to join the necromancer, they have to decide on how to deal with the item, and what to do with the town, who they can easily enslave or free them and have them hate the party for the reasons you laid out.

[Navarre]

Very interesting idea.

Here are a couple of things we might build on here:

One of the players discovered that Marianna has a dozen bodies, all versions of herself from previous centuries, buried beneath the city's temple. They have been preserved in a necromantic salt called sodium nephros. One of the ingredients of this salt is the poisonous flower Marianna's been growing in her flower garden.

I planned on her periodically transferring her consciousness/soul from one body as it gets old into a new clone. But the former bodies retain "flesh memory" so she uses them as conduits to remember things from previous lives she may have otherwise forgotten over the centuries.

She also has two magical items. One is a lyre called Crescendo that actually contains the essence of the Goddess of Summer. It has magical abilities but they haven't been defined yet.

The other item is a component to this thing the villain wants to reassemble. It is this which he is looking for. We'll just refer to it as the Component.

Both Crescendo and the Component are in the possession of one of the player characters. She doesn't know what they do though.

Marianna doesn't know what happened to them, just that they've been stolen. But the villain thinks Marianna still has them and thus is trying to find the two items.

How could we work this in?

[Navarre]

How about this? :

I know Marianna has lived in Garden Cathedral for almost 1800 years, since the beginning of the empire. She retired from adventuring then to start a simple life.

She was the original owner of Crescendo, the magical lyre that contains the essence of the Goddess of Summer. She had it sealed in a vault beneath the temple where her descendant (and high priest of Spring) Isabella gave birth to the tiger baby.

The Component sought by the main villain was also sealed below the temple in the same location, along with a dozen former bodies of Marianna. One of the PCs learned of all this and took off with Crescendo and the Component without telling Marianna or anyone else, including her own party.

Maybe the reason Marianna stayed in this location was because there was already some ancient evil force that had ensnared the populace. She couldn't defeat it on her own but she found that the presence of Crescendo soothed it. After all, the lyre contains Summer, the essence of liberty (in this case, liberation from the enchantment of the evil presence).

So when the PC took off with the lyre the presence has reasserted itself. This would be a strong statement toward PC "heroes", who tend to run off with anything they find, without investigating the context of things or seemingly caring that the item belongs to someone else.

The party needs the lyre at this point though for the main plot resolution. So they can't just leave Crescendo in Garden Cathedral. Instead, they would have to aid Garden Cathedral by defeating this evil force so they could, in fact, continue on with the lyre.

How does that sound? Any ideas on developing this?

[Navarre]

So, it's been a while since I posted in this thread but, hey, welcome back!

The party in my irl game just hit 11th level. Somewhere around 12th or 13th level they will leave the mortal plane to travel to the Faerie Kingdom.

I have had three custom game worlds featuring a Faerie Kingdom, yet in none of them has the party traveled to it. This time they will.

There's a war that has been going on for 18 years and the party is going to go there to stop the war and to defeat this epic big-bad monster called Terminus that is laying waste to everything.

The Faerie Kingdom is ruled on one side by a unicorn queen. They are being warred against by the minotaur, for whom Terminus is their "ultimate weapon" as it sucks the magic from its surroundings. Obviously this is kind of bad for a plane built on sheer magical energy.

I have yet to make up the rest of the Faerie Kingdom in terms of races and culture or anything at all really.  I want something very magical to emphasize that aspect of the world and how different it is from the medium-low magic world from where the PCs hail.

Any suggestions on interesting races, terrain, cultural things, anything at all?

[Revenant Sorrow]

When I thnk of magic in terms of races pixies and gnomes come to mind. Maybe the gnomes protect them selves by crafting and imbuing war forged. The pixies could have a horde of animated objects defending their lands. Beholders are always fun if you're looking for a stronger magical creature.

 Blink dogs make for a fun creature possibly used as part of the univorn's army. Followed by a squad of dryads to protect the forest the unicorns queen's palace is. Maybe round out her forces with satyrs.

The Minotaur could call a gorgon his stead. Surrounding him self with strong allies such as the mind flyers and orge mage's. shadow mastiff's could finish out the rest of his army.

I see the war as the Minotaur driving across the lands trying to secure the nutrel areas and force them into his service as he advances into the unicorns territory. The unicorns forest holds more magical properties then any other area known.

Don't hesitate to throw in a few shield guardians when needed. Possibly guarding a chamber to the minotaur's one and only weakness.

The neutral races are open to outsiders but always use force when allowing people into their city's. weapons are not allowed and magical restraints are commonly use to ensure peace in their city. Any armor or weapons purchased in the city are transported to the gates.

That's about all I've got for now. Just some of my ideas feel free to use all or none of them.

[Navarre]

You have mentioned a few things I hadn't thought of yet. Animated objects, blink dogs, gorgons, and shield guardians are all creatures that had not occurred to me. Thanks!

I'm trying to think of some interesting physical features of the faerie Kingdom too, both in terms of terrain and maybe physical properties.

I do know the sky is orange and the sun is purple (being the contrasting colors of our own world). So I was thinking maybe a forest where the leaves are red instead of green. Maybe the leaves are made of sharp crystal and are so thin they resonate in the breeze. The forest is thus called the Singing Forest or the Bardswood.

I also thought maybe for some reason a mountain was ripped from the ground and inverted high in the air before shattering. Below at ground level, a race of hawk men live in the inverted cones of the mountain shards that penetrated the earth in the explosion. But part of the mountain still remains in the sky.

This Aerie is a fragmented inverted mountain shard with a cave system running through it. The hawk people's shamans live in the mountain, which now floats freely about the world, as the hawk men protect the land.

Those were a couple of passing ideas. Any others come to mind?

[Revenant Sorrow]

Well if you want to be all picky and make me include terrain i suppose i can do that too. 

I like the idea of a river with rapids that turns into are waterfall. This water way is not frozen solid in fact the party could go into it and swim as if it were normal water. The water it self has no movement. Like it was frozen for a moment in time and left that way forever. It could be fun to have it so if/when the party interacts with it if they move around some of the water by splashing or using some sort of boat where ever they push the water the drops move until an appropriate distance and when they come to rest stay frozen mid air or even on land.

I also like waterfalls that fall from the sky. Feed by nothing or maybe a tiny island that has an impossibly never ending supply of water. These waterfalls would function normally.

Instead of homes and cities being built from materials we use such as wood and stone. Their homes could be built out of hallowed out gems. Gems so large they could easily house an entire family of medium creatures with out a problem.

Maybe a city of actual living creatures. The walls and and towers build of some sort of creature. Maybe bring in the shield guardians and put runic guardian's next to them. Or maybe Gelatinous Cubes that have been trapped in a wall of force and stacked on top of each other.

That's about all I can come up with for now and as you can see my mind is drifting when it comes to a city that has some special property.