These last few days of #RPGaDay2019 are rough!
Day #30 is "Connection," and I've stared at this one since before day one. Lots of potential topics, but soon enough, earlier days were better fits for those stories.
So as I rule against an old, reliable topic, I'll look to a future campaign with "How Saltmarsh Gets Its Groove Back" ... canonically speaking in my homebrew campaign world.
It's one of those things that I say ad nauseum over the years: my players recognize I keep a campaign tight. No plot line lays in stasis, no NPC is restricted by its initial role.
Like the real world, I try to ensure my campaign worlds evolve over time, a mixture of the PCs actions and the logic of whatever fantastic world we're playing in. Something happens to the rescued princess, dishonored knight, or even the upstart stable boy they slapped when no one was looking. It doesn't need to the gravitas of an epic climax, it simply needs to progress.
I have been running some iteration of my homebrewed World of Georic since 1989. Systems change, maps can change, but I've always tried to tie in some notes of the previous campaigns. After my campaign with my army buddies collapsed, I moved the campaign calendar ten years for my college game. In the village of Eding, the damage from the goblin wars had been repaired, new fixtures and people built, but the surviving personalities remained, and the castle in the swamp was re-populated by lizardmen, even if it did sink another 3 or 4 foot into the mire.
More importantly, the army game PCs who stayed to accept their dishonor and punishment. Some became bitter, others were re-accepted into the community... even if the community hadn't accepted them in the first place.
With a positive ending for the college game, I moved the timeline 60+ years for my first Hackmaster game. The actions of the college PCs made a significant impact in the kingdom, but seventy years tames even the most heroic deeds, the new noble lineages... and in this campaign, even allows a prophesied empire come to life and fall apart into its successor states.
By the time this group of heroes arrived at the original village, near the end of the campaign, Eding had changed its name, the most recent Baron was a late middle-aged grandson of the young man who fought during the apocalypse. The goblinwood had been cleared of goblins, and routinely cleared for lumber and local businesses changed hands numerous times. The only bone I threw for the players that were in both the college and Hackmaster games was a simple glimpse of the beloved Chateau. Trees overgrown, with the cooing of pigeons behind the back.
I've done my best recently to connect my distant high school games to the currently mythology by writing the Lost Dispatches of Feraso. We collectively cared less about connections, encumbrance, or even geography than the present, and to link things up in a logical way, years before the other campaigns has been an amusing exercise. Lost Dispatches probably has another five or six months of weekly entries before it covers my entire campaign from '89 to '97, but I will admit that I've found a huge plot hole between the campaigns and good ol' Sir Elsderth (Millbottom) Greyhawk, is just the character to fix that lapse in canon.
So, where does Saltmarsh fit into this? Before The Journey of Mutumbo visited the village of Eding, the same group had visited Saltmarsh... and got forcefully kicked out by the town guard. For the PCs, it was time to move on, until they reached the village of Orlane and half the party got kidnapped in the middle of the night.
Apparently it was the half of the party the surviving half could care less about, because they fled and recruited a new batch of heroes, who continued to move away from Orlane. Now, a player of one of the kidnapped characters rolled up the brother of that character, but even he was easily swayed by the others to "finish the mission" before returning to search for the missing. A near-TPK ended that campaign and started the far more successful "Burning Trogs Rule!" campaign on the other side of the continent.
Now, I've been playing in a 5e online game as a player and have had a blast. I only own three 5e products: the Starter Set, the PHB, and most recently Ghosts of Saltmarsh, a collection of the classic U-series of modules with a healthy dose of other scenarios.
As always, I have a lot of campaign ideas, but the self-contained storyline of Ghosts does seem appealing, even if I'm not a fan of the hardcover campaign book.
I have zero connections to Greyhawk anymore, so it's natural to set this twenty years in the future of my Saltmarsh... and keep all the connections either replacing plot elements, or augmenting them.
"But ViscountEric," you might ask, "the group got kicked out years ago? How is there a connection?"
As I said before, I try to find a logical conclusion or a result, even after the party forgets. Once it was determined that the party wasn't actively seeking out the missing members, I resolved the kidnapping in Orlane. Heavily dictated by dice rolls, rather than DM fiat, the perfect order of characters broke free of the grip of the "Reptile God" and plotted with other kidnapped NPCs to make an escape. Somehow, arrogant wizard (and former PC) Dalmar Sworin led them to freedom. And after putting a disguise (and muzzle) on the half-ogre barbarian Thundarr, they worked back to Saltmarsh and solved the haunted house.
With Orlane in chaos from the Reptile God fiasco, Saltmarsh was left to its own devices... and the heavy influence of Dalmar Sworin. This new adventuring party, based out of the mansion, cleaned up corruption, protected (most) of the innocent and essentially took over the joint.
And then, right around the same time as his brother died in the TPK for Journey of Mutumbo, Dalmar bit it fighting on a ship, as I ran the group through U2: Danger at Dunwater.
Luckily, he had managed to shack up with an elf woman who was as crafty as Dalmar thought he was. She continued to build power in the region, eventually developing the area of Saltmarsh and Orlane into an independent Duchy of Sworin. One of the former members of the Journey did eventually return as part of a solo adventure, but outside of quick side trek with Thundarr the Barbarian, she left this new group to find out what "really happened" to the rest of the group.
Their little rogue Duchy survived for 5 years. The King of Crosedes would eventually install a true priest of Akana to act as a Military Governor and bring in troops to crush the dissent, but the group was "long gone", but it appeared that the region's new name of Sworin would stick among the masses.
So, moving the timeline twenty years ahead, everything that Ghosts details can happen, but a few new NPCs related to the Duchy days might still influence the political groups in the region. Twenty years gives plenty of time for the group to abandon the mansion, and have an ill-fated alchemist take over... and smugglers reclaim it.
I'll need to reference my notes, but I believe that Thundarr died pretty early in the timeline (half-ogres barbarians of low Int and Wis tend to do that), but I do have an interesting assortment of NPCs who could influence matters in the town.
And, of course, there's the issue of Dalmar Sworin's love child and if he's an influencer in town, a pirate element, or some hard-drinking, hard-loving rake like his father's distant lineage.
Day #30 is "Connection," and I've stared at this one since before day one. Lots of potential topics, but soon enough, earlier days were better fits for those stories.
So as I rule against an old, reliable topic, I'll look to a future campaign with "How Saltmarsh Gets Its Groove Back" ... canonically speaking in my homebrew campaign world.
It's one of those things that I say ad nauseum over the years: my players recognize I keep a campaign tight. No plot line lays in stasis, no NPC is restricted by its initial role.
I have been running some iteration of my homebrewed World of Georic since 1989. Systems change, maps can change, but I've always tried to tie in some notes of the previous campaigns. After my campaign with my army buddies collapsed, I moved the campaign calendar ten years for my college game. In the village of Eding, the damage from the goblin wars had been repaired, new fixtures and people built, but the surviving personalities remained, and the castle in the swamp was re-populated by lizardmen, even if it did sink another 3 or 4 foot into the mire.
More importantly, the army game PCs who stayed to accept their dishonor and punishment. Some became bitter, others were re-accepted into the community... even if the community hadn't accepted them in the first place.
With a positive ending for the college game, I moved the timeline 60+ years for my first Hackmaster game. The actions of the college PCs made a significant impact in the kingdom, but seventy years tames even the most heroic deeds, the new noble lineages... and in this campaign, even allows a prophesied empire come to life and fall apart into its successor states.
By the time this group of heroes arrived at the original village, near the end of the campaign, Eding had changed its name, the most recent Baron was a late middle-aged grandson of the young man who fought during the apocalypse. The goblinwood had been cleared of goblins, and routinely cleared for lumber and local businesses changed hands numerous times. The only bone I threw for the players that were in both the college and Hackmaster games was a simple glimpse of the beloved Chateau. Trees overgrown, with the cooing of pigeons behind the back.
I've done my best recently to connect my distant high school games to the currently mythology by writing the Lost Dispatches of Feraso. We collectively cared less about connections, encumbrance, or even geography than the present, and to link things up in a logical way, years before the other campaigns has been an amusing exercise. Lost Dispatches probably has another five or six months of weekly entries before it covers my entire campaign from '89 to '97, but I will admit that I've found a huge plot hole between the campaigns and good ol' Sir Elsderth (Millbottom) Greyhawk, is just the character to fix that lapse in canon.
So, where does Saltmarsh fit into this? Before The Journey of Mutumbo visited the village of Eding, the same group had visited Saltmarsh... and got forcefully kicked out by the town guard. For the PCs, it was time to move on, until they reached the village of Orlane and half the party got kidnapped in the middle of the night.
Apparently it was the half of the party the surviving half could care less about, because they fled and recruited a new batch of heroes, who continued to move away from Orlane. Now, a player of one of the kidnapped characters rolled up the brother of that character, but even he was easily swayed by the others to "finish the mission" before returning to search for the missing. A near-TPK ended that campaign and started the far more successful "Burning Trogs Rule!" campaign on the other side of the continent.
Now, I've been playing in a 5e online game as a player and have had a blast. I only own three 5e products: the Starter Set, the PHB, and most recently Ghosts of Saltmarsh, a collection of the classic U-series of modules with a healthy dose of other scenarios.
As always, I have a lot of campaign ideas, but the self-contained storyline of Ghosts does seem appealing, even if I'm not a fan of the hardcover campaign book.
I have zero connections to Greyhawk anymore, so it's natural to set this twenty years in the future of my Saltmarsh... and keep all the connections either replacing plot elements, or augmenting them.
"But ViscountEric," you might ask, "the group got kicked out years ago? How is there a connection?"
As I said before, I try to find a logical conclusion or a result, even after the party forgets. Once it was determined that the party wasn't actively seeking out the missing members, I resolved the kidnapping in Orlane. Heavily dictated by dice rolls, rather than DM fiat, the perfect order of characters broke free of the grip of the "Reptile God" and plotted with other kidnapped NPCs to make an escape. Somehow, arrogant wizard (and former PC) Dalmar Sworin led them to freedom. And after putting a disguise (and muzzle) on the half-ogre barbarian Thundarr, they worked back to Saltmarsh and solved the haunted house.
With Orlane in chaos from the Reptile God fiasco, Saltmarsh was left to its own devices... and the heavy influence of Dalmar Sworin. This new adventuring party, based out of the mansion, cleaned up corruption, protected (most) of the innocent and essentially took over the joint.
And then, right around the same time as his brother died in the TPK for Journey of Mutumbo, Dalmar bit it fighting on a ship, as I ran the group through U2: Danger at Dunwater.
Luckily, he had managed to shack up with an elf woman who was as crafty as Dalmar thought he was. She continued to build power in the region, eventually developing the area of Saltmarsh and Orlane into an independent Duchy of Sworin. One of the former members of the Journey did eventually return as part of a solo adventure, but outside of quick side trek with Thundarr the Barbarian, she left this new group to find out what "really happened" to the rest of the group.
Their little rogue Duchy survived for 5 years. The King of Crosedes would eventually install a true priest of Akana to act as a Military Governor and bring in troops to crush the dissent, but the group was "long gone", but it appeared that the region's new name of Sworin would stick among the masses.
So, moving the timeline twenty years ahead, everything that Ghosts details can happen, but a few new NPCs related to the Duchy days might still influence the political groups in the region. Twenty years gives plenty of time for the group to abandon the mansion, and have an ill-fated alchemist take over... and smugglers reclaim it.
And, of course, there's the issue of Dalmar Sworin's love child and if he's an influencer in town, a pirate element, or some hard-drinking, hard-loving rake like his father's distant lineage.
No comments:
Post a Comment