Brian Rogers (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
subplotkudzu) wrote2008-11-03 07:44 pm
subplotkudzu) wrote2008-11-03 07:44 pm
Entry tags:
Emirikol Creativity
We had the lastest Emirikol session last weekend, where they did indeed slay Bluebeard the dragon after much trial and tribulation. Cambias asked me later how much of my plot for this - the backstory the PCs unearthed about the redacted city included a gnomish bard hero, Vajik Dardai, who had tricked and bamboozled the dragon long enough to save his gnomish communtiy and very nearly killed the beast - came from a module. Fair question considering the other modules I've used
The answer, this time at least, was "very little". The dragon and the redacted city were on the fly stuff in session 15 when the players didn't go the way I'd expected: I thought they'd be borrowing Aslan Nightshade's airship. Instead they looked for a "perilous shortcut". So I came up with the city that had been torn down for rebellion against the republic and replaced with a magically-grown wood. Dragons in Emirikol are focal points of human sin - greed, sloth, wraith, gluttony, envy, lust and vanity in one giant reptilian package - so it was logical that there be one there after such a set of circumstances.
Knowing they were going back in after the dragon I dug through old my old modules for a good woodland map. That produced "Eye for an Eye" by Patrick W. Ross from the September/October Dungeon magazine. His module included a backstory (almost entirely irrelevant to the actual plot of the module) of an evil wizard's stronghold being torn down and a druid magically creating a forest and swamp over the spot to prevent people from looting it. There was also a handy map of the wizard's underground lair if the PCs in the module wanted to explore it after they'd dealt with the real threats. Serendipity? Nothing new under the sun? Who can say. But the maps were helpful.
The answer, this time at least, was "very little". The dragon and the redacted city were on the fly stuff in session 15 when the players didn't go the way I'd expected: I thought they'd be borrowing Aslan Nightshade's airship. Instead they looked for a "perilous shortcut". So I came up with the city that had been torn down for rebellion against the republic and replaced with a magically-grown wood. Dragons in Emirikol are focal points of human sin - greed, sloth, wraith, gluttony, envy, lust and vanity in one giant reptilian package - so it was logical that there be one there after such a set of circumstances.
Knowing they were going back in after the dragon I dug through old my old modules for a good woodland map. That produced "Eye for an Eye" by Patrick W. Ross from the September/October Dungeon magazine. His module included a backstory (almost entirely irrelevant to the actual plot of the module) of an evil wizard's stronghold being torn down and a druid magically creating a forest and swamp over the spot to prevent people from looting it. There was also a handy map of the wizard's underground lair if the PCs in the module wanted to explore it after they'd dealt with the real threats. Serendipity? Nothing new under the sun? Who can say. But the maps were helpful.
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(Anonymous) 2008-11-04 01:03 pm (UTC)(link)Cambias
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I keep finding that the background details fo this campaign are full of perfectly functional adventure seeds. Vajik Dardai is a full fledged hero - sometimes hard to see in a Gnome Bard - who could easily have been star of his own campaign.
Likewise I also really enjoyed playing the venerable Guildmaster Bholm taking about his time as an adventurer raiding the basements of crypts of the redacted city in the magical forest. That's as good a "kids from a small town off hunting for adventure" campaign premise as I've ever developed, but for here it's just a throwaway backstory on an NPC who will likely appear in thefirst half of next session and then never again.
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(Anonymous) 2008-11-05 01:54 pm (UTC)(link)Cambias