I have many thoughts on what I can do for my upcoming Dungeons and Dragon’s campaign, so I figured I would write some of them down. Some of these are almost certainly going to happen. Others?… Who knows?

Almost Certain Ideas

Dragons

I may have mentioned in a previous post that I have created a group of dragons for my campaign. This group considers the island to be too dangerous to be left in mortal hands unsupervised. As such, at least one magic item the party retrieves will be deemed “too dangerous” by the dragons. As a result, one of the dragons is dispatched to retrieve the item. This encounter can play out in one of several ways. Diplomatically, as the dragon does not seek to harm the players they will be willing to trade. Chase, the party may try to flee, and based on what magic items/spells they have this may be an actual option. Fight, if they players are reckless and don’t hear out the dragon they may attack. Whatever they do, they will become aware of this secondary faction and may have gained a new ally or enemy.

Unicorn

One of the dungeons I have in my back pocket was born of two simple ideas. First, I want a relatively low level encounter with a creature that has a lair. For those unfamiliar, some creatures can permeate an area with so much magic as to make it their own. This alters the terrain and adds some potentially nasty effects to deal with. The other idea was as follows: Didn’t Europeans in olden times mistake Rhinos for Unicorns? That might make a fun encounter. So the primary hunt is for an evil Unicorn, with all of the positive traits of a Unicorn flipped to negative. But also in the encounter I want the party to see a shape in the distance, and if they don’t roll well enough mistake it for a unicorn. But it is in fact a couple rhinos charging them at full speed.

Assault

At several points in the campaign I am going to have something attack the adventure’s town. In one case it will be a “Trojan Horse” monster, an outer shell designed only to breach/bypass the walls so those inside the creation can get in the town and wreck stuff. The Player’s objectives will be to mitigate damage and then help deal with any aftermath. But another time, the threat perceived will very much be real. What is the thing? The terrifying Tarrasque? A mighty demon? A horde of chittering abominations? I am uncertain what the party will be facing, but it will certainly be out of their weight class… at least if they faced it alone. But whatever it is, it is attacking an entire town of adventures, so the party will have plenty of back up.

Less Certain Ideas

Now for something completly diffrent

One of my early ideas for a “dungeon” was for the party to be transported to a manor. Complete with guests, servants, and all the amenities expected of such a place. BUT, someone has been murdered, and suddenly the party is in a murder mystery. They must solve the mystery and apprehend the killer if they wish to acquire the magic item at the center of this dungeon. But are these people even real?

Suspicion

Another idea is for the party to enter the dungeon and be forced to go through some portal/teleportation circle/contrived conveyance one at a time. And once they are on the other side, they discover that at least one of them has been replaced with an imposter. The imposter is a perfect replica with all the abilities and memories of the person they replaced. And at first they may not even realize they are the imposter. How will the party find the fake? Will they need to rescue the displaced party member? Is there even a fake in the first place or have they been lied to? I have no idea how I would pull this all off, but I would love to do it.

Back for some more Dungeons and Dragons campaign design talk. This time about how I have crafted what characters I have already, and how I plan to go about making more.

Starting With the Beginning

The first character I created for this setting was a result of a simple question: How do the players know where to go? Giant island, randomly spawning dungeons, unmapped (possibly changing) terrain, they need some kind of guide. This is when pulled from a backstory I had written for a past character of mine. This character had come from a clan that studied magic, believing that no magic had inherent morality. So, this new character had two traits: guides the party and studies all magic regardless of “risks”. Obviously I needed them to be a Wizard. Of elven ancestry because of the clan (more background, don’t worry about it). And I needed him to be in a position of authority. And so I had my first character.

You may be asking “what is this character’s name?” A reasonable question, to which I reply “Does it matter?” Because honestly, does it actually matter what the character’s name is at this point? At some point, sure, he needs a name. But at the point of populating a location the character’s individual names don’t matter that much.

Fleshing things out

So I have a character to drive the main plot forward, what now? First was to develop this character a little with a second character, namely his wife. Where my elven wizard was very intelligent I wanted his “other half” to be very wise. Given the wizard’s family his partner would have to be some flavor of spell caster or magical being. Then I had a character build idea that just fit everything I needed from this character and just slotted that in. And so Wroxi was born.

Wroxi is a Fairy Druid/Monk, this fits all the requirements. Spell caster? Check. Magical being? Check. Wisdom being a prominent stat? Check. Now I may hear some of you saying “Why does she have a name already and not the Wizard?” Quite simply because I played this character in a one-shot and she needed a name. I ended up liking the name and stuck with it.

But from here things get a bit harder.

Everyone Else

While I have a few ideas for other characters I don’t have much in the way of fleshed out characters. Mostly I have roles to fill and the outline of a character to fill some of them. Some of these character ideas include: a bearish barkeep that is almost exactly what he appears to be. A jovial fat man of a merchant that is almost certainly hiding something. A roaming goblin that is just trying to get by. And a group of dragons trying to make sure the adventures don’t unleash anything too dangerous. A few more positions need to be filled, but I don’t even have an outline of what will take that spot: civilian leadership, defense force leadership, other adventuring parties.