4th & Dragon : Dungeons and Dragons...and stuff

With all the talk of airships and looking over SPQR’s blog, I have come up with a concept for my campaign that borrows heavily from both and adds a little something.

Currently my group is going through the Eberron converted Keep on the Shadowfell. Once this is completed, I will have a small band of adventurer types come to get the Sinister Third rib from them. These adventurers will be a part of the airship’s crew that goes around doing one mission at a time as a behind the scenes way of keeping the Five Nations at peace.

I am thinking that these missions should not be tied to a single house, but rather a checks and balances for the houses. Having watched the movie “Wanted” recently, I am thinking that something similar to the loom might be the way that the missions are given out.

One major mission that I am thinking that I will lead up to is the cause of the Mourning. I am thinking that King Boranel is the cause. He brought peace by use of the shock of killing off an entire nation. In his eyes this was less casualties than it would have been if the war had continued.

The PCs might be sent to protect him and find out the situation. I am going to have an opposing group try and off the King in some way. The kicker will be that the opposing group will be past campaign PCs (the ones that were used in my Xen’drik campaign).

Long story short, I feel that this is a decent way to let my player explore different parts of the continent and gain a feel of Eberron, as well as stay interesting, diversified and eventful.

Any suggestions on any aspect would be wonderful.

I like mercenary type campaigns from a DM’s perspective.  It makes designing adventure hooks easy.  Honestly, I think I would like it as a player too because sometimes I get a bit frusterated trying to figure out why my character would want to go on a specific quest.

Bump for some more help now that we are nearing the point that I will be placing the seeds of these ideas.

Forgive me if some of this sounds random, but I figured I would post some ideas that I will most likely incorporate at some point in this campaign:

Goblin designed blimp, which is different from the current-day elemental bound airships and more as a lost piece of Dhakaan “technology.” This blimp is used by goblins in an effort to be a rival group to that of the organization I mentioned above.

The Blimp will use two power sources:

1. a small chamber containing caged Fire Beetles that generate heat (when feeding) hot air is pumped into the overhead balloon - will cause levitation.

2. the motion forward is generated by a back mounted propeller which needs to be manually turned (the goblins have the Bugbears taking turns) - the PC will have to make strength/endurance checks to keep the blimp flying.

The idea is to make it a very crude, experimental, goblin-styled device which will also be a bit of a riddle to the PCs.

?v=0

The goblins also use hang gliders for scouting ahead of the blimp. These are not the most effective gliders around…

I’m working on a handout for the party’s first mission. It’s not quite done, but you get the gist of it:

*Edit: removed the link and posted the updated version in a later post.*

You could have the missions handed out by a whispering that comes from the bound elemental on the airship that is translated by a gnomish girl.

I’ve always liked the idea of one of the rulers causing the day of morning due to the fact that the death toll may have been less then if the war continued.

In my Eberron games I use a group called the Children of Galfier (sorry about the spelling) who are trying to do basically what your mercenary group is trying to do in the hopes of unifying Khorvaire once again.

A fun group of people to use in this kind of campaign is the Daughters of Sora Kell. They always want to have a hand in what is going on in the world, yet need some people to be their face so that the world isn’t scared of them right away.  And it would be pretty interesting if the horrible monsters knew what a brave knight did to destroy a whole nation.  Especially with King Bronells hatred towards the Daughters.

Hope that helps at all.

Good gaming.

I’ve always liked the idea of one of the rulers causing the day of morning due to the fact that the death toll may have been less then if the war continued.

The “nuclear option"…

I posted the completed version of my handout for hopes of being critiqued (be gentle, this is my first time, lol). I have not decided on the vessel name yet, but will before the handout is given. I also post in both .doc and .pdf format, since the .doc seems to look better due to having the textures, but the pdf will be more universally compatible.

Critique away.

It looks good, pretty basic but dose what it needs to do.

An idea I just came up with is have the mercenary group have to go into hiding for a while so they can’t openly meet the party so they have to send their messages secretly.  They could use the Korranberg Chronicle to send out the missions using a code the players have to figure out.

Thats a good briefing Talae.  I like the cloak and dagger bits and the premis of the uneartherd data.  Are you going to have some documents on hand for them to read through after they find them?

SPQR Anarchy - 06 September 2008 09:02 AM

Thats a good briefing Talae.  I like the cloak and dagger bits and the premis of the uneartherd data.  Are you going to have some documents on hand for them to read through after they find them?

I actually hadn’t thought that part through yet, but will indeed. I will have to think more about what purpose I want the documents to serve me as the DM. Off the top of my head, I think that they might start a wild goose hunt for some siege weaponry left over from the war (and scattered about the continent) all the while dropping subtle clues at ties to the Mourning.

andrewk - 06 September 2008 06:50 AM

They could use the Korranberg Chronicle to send out the missions using a code the players have to figure out.

I actually did something like this in my last face-to-face campaign.  I used the Sharn Inquisitive instead, but it was essentially the same idea.

What do you think about the “other group” that I mentioned above being illustrated as such:

I have begun to create a wiki page for this campaign. The players will most likely not be using it, but it seemed handy enough for helping me flesh out ideas and stay organized:

The site is Obsidian Portal (I picked it because it was mentioned in another thread on this site, but also in an article by Chatty DM and so I figured it would be a good one to go with).

The campaign is titled “All Around the Five Nations” (complete thievery from SPQR)

I have been working on building up the above said wiki...any suggestions/critiques on what I have to so far?