Tuesday, July 16, 2013

Campaign ideas

I haven't had any motivation to work in the toolset, after pounding away at things for 2 years (Path of Evil), and then immediately another 2 years and a few months (Crimmor). Here are some ideas I've tossed around at various points. In no particular order.

A sequel to Path of Evil, with the player playing Tan, the tiefling companion from the first Path of Evil. The idea would be the PoE pc granted Tan's request, and now Tan is free to seek his revenge. This would be a high level campaign set in the Abyss (and possibly a short stay in Sigil to transition there, as the PoE stronghold has access to Sigil). Starting level would be 16-18. Instead of the open world and "blank" PC of PoE, the story would assume the player is Tan the Tiefling, so it would be more story focused than PoE. The PoE companion Carcarin the wizard also has unfinished business on the Lower Planes, so she may come along as a companion.

Merchant: The player would be a merchant trying to build and run a merchant company. This would take advantage of the customizable SoZ trade system I published. You'd probably start as a merchant apprentice, and work for a merchant company before striking out on your own.

Asmodeus successful: Official lore has Asmodeus repeatedly trying to drag Abeir-Toril into his plane of the Abyss, as part of plots to increase his own power. This campaign would start after Asmodeus has succeeded. Waterdeep, or some other suitably large power, would call Faerun's powers together to try to get Abeir-Toril back to the Prime, and provide portals to whatever locations were necessary to do so. You could easily have good and evil characters working towards this goal, since the evil Faerun powers would be facing existential threats from being in the Abyss (or being there is simply inconvenient to their own plans). Obviously this would be an epic level campaign as the most power people in Faerun would get called for the effort.

Generic adventuring without an overarching story, based out of Crimmor. This would let me reuse the Crimmor maps as the base, and this would resemble Wyrin's White Plume Mountain of different areas on an OM to have adventures.

Dark Sun: I'd love to do something here, but it's basically not doable as too much custom work would need to be done to do the setting justice.

4 comments:

  1. I'm going to be the first to chime in here.

    The entire time playing crimmor ( was recording for bug fixes so a little distracted) I kept thinking two things. This is a great different concept for a game, going the very narrow (1 rogue) but very deep set of options (you can do pretty much anything to get a result).

    The other thing I kept thinking is a place this detailed seems almost a waste to not use in another campaign. And I was thinking in the more traditional party sense. The barrel emporium seems like a catchy landmark for dozens of quests. I have yet to see more than one city adventure, and that city quite honestly felt more like a town.

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  2. I've released the areas I made for Crimmor. Anyone who wants can feel free to use them.
    http://nwvault.ign.com/View.php?view=NWN2PrefabAreas.Detail&id=637
    or
    http://neverwinter2.nexusmods.com/mods/272/?

    Anyone could also take the Crimmor campaign and remove the campaign stuff and use all the areas, including those I used that were prefab.

    Using Crimmor itself has two caveats, the city does not have graveyards inside the city (Per Ed Greenwood: the populace, except for the very rich, are cremated to prevent undead problems. The very rich are buried outside the city), and the city has no human enterable sewer system to keep sewer monsters down (Ed didn't mention this, but it makes sense given the graveyard information).

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  3. Campaigns are difficult to get right. Too little to do and they become too much of a wandering affair. On the other hand, too much and the main goal is lost along the way. The one "objective" I strive to achieve when designing a campaign, which I like to see in other campaigns is this: Have a campaign start with less information about the main goal, but have a compelling reason to move into the campaign proper as the PC adventures. In this way, the campaign story grows as the PC develops to be able to handle it.

    The downside to this, however, (especially in cases like my own) is if it takes the builder too long to develop. i.e. Too big gaps between modules and the "pace" could be lost. I fear this will be my problem ... unless, of course, you have a very patient and forgiving audience.

    Bottom line, as long as the campaign is large and detailed enough, and released at the correct rate (of modules), then all is good ...

    Lance.

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  4. I'd like to say something as well here. Congratulations on your previous works first of all. A PoE sequel would be really good and anticipated since its announcement. But I would go for something brand new. I would like to see more campaigns with epic scope, meaning travelling through the planes, meeting deities and what not. But as Lance said, and I agree, one of the most important thing in a big campaign is the little information in the beginning. I as a player, like to think during the whole story "why did this guy said that, and why did this happen". Some cliffhangers here and there. And reaching the end, all the pieces get together and make sense.
    I don't really think there is a downside to it. After all, we build in the engine of a game that was exactly like that and we loved the infinity engine games that were also like that.

    Andy.

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