The Battle for Iltkazar

 Well, it's been a hot minute, but the dwarf game is still going, and here I am to update the blog about it.

Since last, the party descended deep into the earth, through rune-carved portals, and came upon an ambush site. Tracking led them to a lair of spider-riding goblins and web-wrapped dwarves, their vitality sapped by spider venom. They drove off/killed the goblins and their spiders, and freed the goblins' victims. These dwarves spoke a dialect of Dethek (Dwarven) so old that it was nigh-unintelligible, and the dwarves were badly weakened. They found evidence that the goblins had been caching supplies here, unprecedently close to the strange dwarves' home.

 

In return for helping them home, the victims showed the party the half-ruined road to the ancient city of Iltkazar, now a nigh-ghost town, with a small town's population left, the citizens slowly preparing for their eventual end from sheer attrition.

On the long trip, the party was able to learn the basics of Auld Dethek, and understand their new companions. Welcomed for their valor in returning the wounded dwarves, and delivering intelligence of the goblin threat to the Council of Regents, the party was introduced to the city and granted extraordinary access to the Council, at the Hall of the Sleeping King.

[As those familiar with the lore of FR may have guessed, the Sleeping King and Council are elements I kept from the canon Realms, though not unchanged! In fact, some of it I changed quite significantly. Once again, not going to go into details due to players not having Found Out, they're still in the prior stage. XD Details of the story so far on my game website, though.]

The party, as unaffiliated (or to some, expendable) newcomers, were of great interest to everyone on the Council. Quite a lot of politics, espionage, and roleplaying ensued (including the Warmaster and Chief Librarian being charged with treason, and the revelation that the Sleeping King is a dragon), until (sadly) the party were Extremely Tired Of It. Nuuuuuuuu, my faction planning! T_T

I had actually planned for further skullduggery, but decided to turn a side quest into a more significant part of the story. ...Unfortunately, it was largely composed of puzzles, which the party also hated. T_T

Still, they returned triumphant with not only the Founder's Hammer and helm (and gauntlets), but clues as to the true nature of the situation of Shanatar, and Iltkazar. I completely restructured this part of the campaign around their mini-quest, and it will have far-reaching implications, as will their decision as to whether to keep, donate, or leverage the Hammer in the politics of Iltkazar. ...Yeah, I can't resist.

This was not only a good levelup time (yeah, I completely ditched the "one adventure per level" idea, that's just too slow in PBEM), but also a chance to slap some 52-in-52 soul-loot and scalars into their hot little dwarven hands for loot that will scale with their levels, haha.

Now the party is headed back to Iltkazar... but nefarious dealings have still gone on in their absence, and a great threat faces them all!

As always, if anyone has juicy resource or inspiration recommendations, PLEASE do comment with them.
 

TIL NEXT TIME!

Heirs of Deep Shanatar

All right, I've finally done it. I've built a campaign from scratch. Not my Epic 6 prehistoric campaign, or Eberron-esque ecoterrorist Warjack campaign. I decided to start with a simpler idea - dwarves returning to their ancient homeland to reclaim it. A nice traditional trope, whose baseline I can then riff on. Start small, right?

I decided to set it in the Forgotten Realms (20 years after the Thunder Blessing - in my games the demihumans age at the same rate as humans until maturity, but aren't considered adults by their communities until their respective adult category ages), simply because I have so much 2e and 3e material for it, and as it was my first campaign world experience, I have a fondness for it. Thus, the plot:

A small band of dwarves have been carefully selected by a near-unknown sect of the Morndinsamman, who have read the portents after the Thunder Blessing and decided that it is time for dwarves to return to their ancient empire of Deep Shanatar, and restore dignity and respect to their race. The signs suggest that only the heirs of that ancient empire can do this mighty task, and it must fall to none other. The sect has spent centuries following bloodlines back, looking for the true heirs - and now the time has come for that patient work to pay off.

(In game terms, this small band is of 6-8 player characters, since player attrition is a real problem in online games, and also because there are 9 subkingdoms of ancient Shanatar, so not counting clan Duergar - perfect match?)

The theme is that dwarves have been in decline for ages, and their empires have all fallen - while it's not a stretch, it's not strictly canon for the FR, so I did some tinkering with the setting.

Since I've actually worked out this campaign, I don't want to give away the details until my players have encountered them, but the game started with a journey from Eshpurta to the Omlarandin Mountains, with opportunities to get to know each other and the theme of the game. Bankrolled by the sect for this introductory stage of the adventure, the sect is so small and unknown that their power and resources are quite limited - but the gods help those who help themselves, do they not? Honest toil and hearty valor are dwarven virtues, and the party must not balk at taking on this quest alone.

They visited Clan Ghalmrin of the Starspires, who laid claim to being the "last true blood of Shanatar" - a visit they handled astonishingly well, avoiding making an enemy of the Ghalmrin at this early stage. They were beset by dwarf bandits, a sorry sign of the state of disrespect and undignified behavior the race is falling to without the unity of their traditions and knowledge. And finally, they reached the Gate to the Deep, where an adventuring party awaited. The Company of the Dragon's Tooth were the adventurers who had found the hidden entrance to the warded section of the Underdark that Shanatar's dwarves had once claimed, then destroyed all knowledge of as they fled their enemies of ages past. The adventurers will have a significant role to play, but it's too early to reveal what.

(Making the section of the Underdark that Shanatar lay in inaccessible due to rune-warding and hidden entrances was one of the biggest changes I made to the canon setting assumptions.)

That's as far as they've gotten as of yet, but with the last two character introductions in the gate challenge, they'll be set to speed up the pace of the game.

Well, relatively...

At PBEM speeds, the game is slow going, but I'll try to update this blog now and again to reveal plot points and party actions. Hopefully all that work researching the history, geography and quirks of the setting and race, and piecing together what I hope is a compelling backdrop for the players to weave a story, will pay off!

More resources

It's been a while! Here are more links I've found useful in building campaigns and adventures:

Adventure Achievements (pdf explanation) by Komoda
Adventure Achievements (xls file) by Komoda

How to Create Blockbuster Box Office Hits with Your Players – Every Adventure by Brad Allen

Resource list for DMs/GMs

Here's a list of articles and resources I've found valuable. Maybe you will, too. I'll probably return to it and add some new links now and again.

The Alexandrian:
The 3 clue rule

Node-based scenario design

Advanced node-based scenario design

How to use published 3rd edition modules

3-point plotting


Critical hits:
The 5x5 method compendium


Everyman Gaming:
The Math Behind CR

XP rewards for fun and profit


The Gneech:
Page 42 for Pathfinder (Tables with various CRs for traps/hazards/skill challenges)


I Waste The Buddha With My Crossbow:
The adventure funnel


James Beach:
A hard look at the alignment system (This was written back in the day for 2e, but it has interesting ideas (and further links) about the definitions of alignments.)


Keith Davies:
Rethinking Pathfinder cleric subdomains


My 20-sided life:
 Failing heroically


Improved Initiative:
5 tips for playing better base classes/races (Pathfinder 1e focused)

A year gone by, and I've been thinkin'...

...about reviving the idea of this campaign. While I don't have a lot of experience in campaign design, as may be obvious by my previous posts, I've been thinking that maybe I'm attacking this the wrong way. As a game intended for pbp/pbem, maybe I should be weighting the mechanics less, and the roleplaying aspect more. I'm just not sure of how to go about that, when the party will be doing so much traveling through the wilderness, without many NPCs, especially on the first leg of their journey. Should I add an NPC to the party? Increase the population of the world so that they run into others more often? Make the primary foes (aberrations) intelligent? Those last two kind of break the sense of the world that I want to convey, and I'm always leery of inadvertently steering the party with an NPC. Steering should be left to the PCs, in my opinion.

On the other hand, when I run a published campaign, I still do it as pbem, and the roleplaying occurs between the PCs just fine (though of course there are more NPCs to work with). So maybe I'm overthinking this. Anyone have any thoughts on that?

I'm considering posting some of all the fluff I have for the background, but I need some time to iron it out. Maybe next year, huh? :P

Some P6 rules reference

http://p6codex.com/ - Non-Core feats and suchlike.

That is all.

Reference, where art thou?

Besides The Quest for Fire, The Clan of the Cave Bear series, and an adventure from GURPS Ice Age, I don't actually have much media reference for a prehistoric game. Oh, wait, and 10,000 B.C.

I dunno, I feel like there might be inspiration for some of my encounters hidden somewhere in the media's Ice Age. Or maybe even outside of it, particularly for the bits I'm having the most trouble with. Political intrigue? I think there are some RPG books for that. Overcome the obstacle of a ruined city overrun by enemies? I Am Legend comes to mind, as does The Day After Tomorrow, if only for the weather imagery. So, my question is: Where would you look for inspiration?

P.S. - The Many Colored Land is not something I wish to plow back into, nor did I find Thomas Covenant or whatever his name was particularly interesting. Just sayin'.