Have any of you ever merged many prewritten adventurers into a unified campaign and setting to be used for years? looking for stories and advise on the matter. I'm not sure what I should know about doing it.
no, because i dont play games
>>97757681This is basically the purpose of Adventure Paths and Society Modules in Pathfinder.
>>97757681No but i like the concept. At the end of a module you can offer players to keep their characters for the next one or make new ones. You do have to give them ample downtime and following long travel between modules. So about 1 or 2 sessions of bullshit of your own making so they can spend whatever end of module reward they got.
If you try that with 5e you'd be hard pressed to find an adventure that starts at the level the previous one left them. Everything is 1-7 or 1-10, it's one of the reasons why D&D players But if you go for an OSR/NSR or more generic style, there's a shit ton of modules that don't need levels. I usually just chain together Mothership modules with some stuff designed for the particular characters in game.
>>97758024>it's one of the reasons why D&D playersSure is
>>97757934Pretty much this, sadly. Age of Worms is good and has a 5e conversion. ACKS has a series of modules that line up, level wise, The AX modules, starting with The Sinister Stone of Sakkara.X1 Isle of Dread says 3-7, but can work for a whole campaign. You can also do a megadungeon campaign, like Arden Vul or Rappan Athuk. Lots of options!
>>97758606Age of Worms is amazing. Savage Tide is too, and it even features the Isle of Dread!
>>97757681>Running other people sessions, instead of my ownWhy would I do that?
>>97760069It's nice for sandboxes, you plug in content that's preprepped.
>>97757681I'm not a fan of official prewritten modules; I'd rather just use my own material anyway.It's what everyone says to do anyway, when there's something you don't like in a TTRPG or something's missing.
>>97758910>>97758606love age of wormslove isle of dreadsimple as
>>97760077What if the preprepped content doesn't have what fits you and your group?
>>97763459idk, use different content. I am speaking generally, that you can throw together a nice big campaign in Forgotten Realms, via just plugging in prewritten material for it.
>>97763690>idkSo what, you've always run modules, rules as written?
>>97763905Well I've never tried to connect them together.
>>97757681Ooh, I love anthology books! I tried to run a continuous campaign with Tales from the Yawning Portal, but I didn't have much luck. Infinite Staircase and Dragon Delves are solid, though.
>>97757681It turns out that the Essentials Kit actually starts in Phandalin as well. That makes it really easy to run Lost Mine of Phandelver & Dragon of Icespire Peak together.
>>97767678The problem is that Lost Mines is pretty decent and Icespire peak is fucking garbage.
>>97757681Sorta. I strung some low level adventures together to get my players up to the right level to run The Red Hand of Doom in the 3.5 days. The D&D website had a bunch of freebies back then so I just nabbed some o' those, one or two pathfinder modules, and bob's yer uncle.
>>97767694My group started with base Phandelver to start, but I plan on incorporating some stuff from Icespire once my players have found the mine. I'm hoping that the "WoW quest board"iness of what I've read from Icespire can be worked around and ends up being a little more natural given that by that point my party are proven heroes that have demonstrated an ability to get things done, and of course I'll make changes to make things less video gamey and fit the overarching narrative the players are forging. I'm also setting the groundwork to expand out into a greater overarching campaign involving Tiamat being summoned to the Mortal Plane, so I will likely pull some stuff from Tyranny of Dragons as well, but that'll be more conceptual than actual bits from the module.
>>97768783Similar to the ideas I have. I want the cultists of the elemental princes of the apocalypse to be working toward summoning tiamat, and the dragon in icespire peaks to be the first success of that group.
>>97769926I think this speaks to what modules are good for in general. You can use them as a springboard for other ideas, or a source of ideas for something else you're already working on.
>>97757681I still have no clue what “Phandelver” is. The only 5e I played was with some friends where over a few sessions we traveled to Phandalin, cleared out the manor of bandits, and then did two side quests that the DM blatantly winged with Dark Souls style boss monsters, and then a drow sorcerer attacked the town.
>>97767694I managed to make Icespire Peak work early on. First, I made sure not to go to the dwarven ruin until the other two jobs were done. Second, I made sure Cryovain was a credible boss fight for the end by splitting the difference between the young and adult white dragon stat blocks and giving him legendary actions.
>>97758910I loved running IoD back in the day. I bet I ran that at least 15 times and every time it ended up differently. I would use different monsters to switch it up, but even the monsters that came in it were pretty good. Picrel
>>97757681Use LMoP as the base campaign. Extend the campaign to level 10. Add Dragons of Stormwreck Isle and the Cryovane Starter Set to the mix. Use the Phandelver side quests and additional content as a filler "quest board" which lets your players choose to engage with what interests them. Venomfang is a new arrival in Cryovane's territory. Have the Black Spider escape WEC so you get round 2 against him with Cryovane.Your adventure will look something like this:Level 1 Get to PhandalinLevel 2 Finish two LMoP questsLevel 3 Redbrand ambush and Icespire and Stormwreck questsLevel 4 Redbrand ManorLevel 5 Icespire and Stormwreck questsLevel 6 VenomfangLevel 7 Wave Echo CaveLevel 8 Remaining questsLevel 9 Icespire PeakLevel 10 CryovaneAdd or cut content as your group needs, beef up encounters by adding HP/enemies/damage to account for player levels, and have your players hit level 10 before fighting Cryovane & the Black Spider so they can flex their muscles. It gives you tons of content to mix with LMoP and Phandalin will be a second home your players will remember fondly. This structure allows you to drop the weaker quests from the modukes and add the strong ones to LMoP's excellent structure.
>>97780076I like you. You can fuck my sister
>>97780076My idea is using the Keep on the Borderlands off the town of Red Loach, there sits a mine known as Phandelver at the base of Ice Spire Peaks. The cultists of Elemental Princes of the Apocalypse are actually working toward summon Tiamat, their first success are the dragons of Icespire Peaks, and their second are the dragons that accost the town of Red Loach and the Keep. I already have ideas for Tiamat being made a mortal human, and becoming a paladin in the next campaign but I am getting ahead of myself.
>>97780365I like this idea
>>97757681Bump
>>97780365I figure that the Caves of Chaos could be all around Ice Spire Peak, and one of the entrances would be the Lost Mine of Phandelver?
This one has a expansion pack
Yes, I've always wanted to do this in D&D but what >>97757934 said is right, too lazy to build your own thing? APs are great for this.
i mean yeah, that should be what modules are for. i get that it's tricky when they have pre-set railroaded 'plots', but supposedly Wizards have gotten better about that lately.i was running Hoard of the Dragon Queen (a pretty godawful on-rails adventure, the worst excesses like 'the dragon flies away when it's dramatically appropriate' and 'if the players defeat the NPC they're not supposed to, he has a half-brother with the same stats').anyway, during the long caravan journey, the PCs passed some area of the Sword Coast where there was a mountain and i ran a spooky Death Frost Doom jaunt for Halloween. total nightmare converting it to 5E, but they had so much fun they stopped giving a shit about the Cult of the Dragon or whatever. just exploring a dungeon, in Dungeons & Dragons? figuring stuff out, CHOOSING where to go? whoa.OP, just draw up a hex map and plop 3-5 of those book locations you have on there. don't be afraid to just ask them AS PLAYERS 'where will you be heading next session, so i can prepare?' (if they're indecisive, they shouldn't be playing D&D).fun fact: the writers of these 5E books are paid by the word. they aren't writing all this useless fluff because it helps the game in any way.
>>97796175My impression of adventure paths are just the same thing as adventure modules? the thread is about merging the adventures together, combining elements, and making them tie into one another back and forth.
>>97796314I'm all for non-linear sandboxes, but it's important to me that the adventures are merged and play out simultaneously impacting one another.
>>97796455i get you, but i think you can make that organically happen during play. whatever system you use, two things i always recommend: 1. this blog articlehttps://thealexandrian.net/wordpress/4147/roleplaying-games/dont-prep-plots2. the 'faction turns' from Stars Without Number (there may be a newer/fantasy version in Worlds Without Number).if you think of it in terms of character/faction wants <thing> and they have <intent>, your players can and will encounter them and alter their course, making friends and enemies along the way. the SWN faction turns are like a little mini-game you run between sessions to see how the movers and shakers of your world are progressing. if you have a pre-published setting, either use the factions in it or find-and-replace them with ones you're already using.dirty little secret: if you just follow basic cause-and-effect rather than writing a scripted plot, your players will have their minds blown that Y happened because they did X. it's how D&D should be (IMO) and it's actually EASIER to run games this way!
>>97796450Why do you think the first 3 overlap in level range haha
>>97798082I don't, they will need encounter scaling
>>97757681Yeah I have sort of done this with my group for the past year or so. I took a bunch of single adventure sessions and sewed them all together and it came out surprisingly well.
>>97798082Rereading this hours later I now realize what you meant, those were meant to be combined weren't they
>>97796970My prep for my current Phandelver run is based on that article and something similar to your second point from a book called "The GM's Guide to Proactive Roleplay" that was gifted to me. That book frames things for NPCs in terms of factions and invites both those factions and the players to think in terms of short, medium, and long-term goals. My initial prep was setting up the factions I knew my players could encounter at first, some of the principal players in that faction, and what those goals were. Each session is a matter of updating where those factions are in relation to their goals based on what the players are doing chasing their goals. I can also figure out what new factions might show up based on my players' goals and incorporate them into everything as well.
>>97767678SOVL
>>97808210WotC does put out some impressive box sets lately.
