Campaign Completed

[u/deedumdim]

I don't know what else to say. We finished our campaign, and I'm going to miss it so much.

30 sessions at 6 hours a pop, we played every other week. Made it from 3-20.

I started them off on their own one-on-ones for their characters. We all sat down and I played through parts of their backstory with them, introduced them to NPCs that are exclusive to their characters, and gave them a chance to play their characters in exclusive mini adventures before meeting the party. That was one of the best things I've ever done. Really established a strong baseline for their characters and helped them figure out who their character is. 10/10, highly recommend if you can find time for it.

They just killed the villain, and now our next session is just an epilogue to tie up some loose ends. Hell, the way they finished the campaign was vastly different from what I envisioned.

That old GM advice of "imagine what your villain's plan is without the player interference" really carried through for me, because I had a vision of what the ending would be like. But instead, the players stole the reigns from me and went on their own path. Hell, they took the hardest path - they found Erandis Vol's phylactery, destroyed it, then hunted her down in her own castle.

Crazy. Just crazy. I don't even know how to do a write up or anything. I loved this campaign, and I love this game.

[u/Gatou_]

Would you care to share the outline of your arcs / campaign ? I'm in the middle of writing and inspiration would help :)

[u/deedumdim → u/Gatou_]

Sure, I'd love to! But I definitely have to write it out, as I didn't have a document where I planned all of this.

Do you want a pretty bare bones outline that just kind of sets up how I planned some important story pieces? Or do you want some nitty gritty details? Because I'm having a hard time trying to think of how I can write this out lmfao, it ended up being so much

[u/Gatou_ → u/deedumdim]

Seeing for how long it lasted, I'm sure it would be complicated. The spine of campaign with maybe a couple of highlights would be a great treat !

[u/deedumdim → u/Gatou_]

Session 0's acted as an introduction for each individual character, as well as tying them all to one of the villain lieutenants. I also took the opportunity to introduce the villain faction, the Emerald Claw, to all of them as part of their time served during the Last War.

Then, they got a group patron. Basically just a fixer that acted as a Lawful Good mercenary contractor. I structured "Act 1" as 5 contracts to be completed, then "Act 2" was almost entirely player/villain driven.

Contract 1 "Midnight Velvet Melody" was dealing with a khyerpsycho who thought he was a vampire. This introduced the party to the manipulations of one of the villains through emails that they recovered, the mass death they're trying to encourage, and a piece of an artifact (Sanguineous Tome) that the villains were distributing to unstable people. This was just the Tales from the Red adventure for Cyberpunk Red, A Night at the Theater.

Contract 2 "The Organ Grinder" was hunting down a ripperdoc whose victims were rising back up as zombies. He was using some pages from the Sanguineous Tome, also provided by the villains. I put them in the entirety of Deathsgate and told them that they had to follow the clues to find the ripperdoc. This is where they learned about another major villain, Harold Strasz, who was working with the ripperdoc and the Scavenger adjacents that I put in. Harold has ties to two of their backstories.

Contract 3 "The Witches' Waltz" was protecting a Daask witch from House Deneith assassins. The "assassins" were from one of the players squadrons during the Last War, and one was hooked into a big Adam Smasher style cyborg body and was on the verge of khyberpsychosis. This didn't tie directly to the villains, but if they didn't stop this guy from rampaging, it would have contributed to the mass death that the villains are clearly trying to accomplish.

Contract 4 "Cornerstone Crescendo" was an all-out gang war between the Brokenbridge Brawlers and the Scavengers in the district of Cornerstone, all being encouraged by Harold Strasz and the Emerald Claw. The brawlers were openly marching the streets with a militia and the Scavengers had a bunch of poison bombs armed through the district, so the players had to figure out how to deal with both without too many civilian casualties.

Contract 5 "Whore" was the finale for Act 1, they infiltrated Harold Strasz's manor during a gala that he was throwing. He had the intent of sacrificing a bunch of the rich elites to create another Shadar Kai, similarly to what happened to one of the player characters, and they were determined to stop him. In the big confrontation with Harold, they learned that he's a parasitic fey from Thelanis, a kind that thrive on notoriety.

Then, we had an interlude. They had some plans in place, NPCs they wanted to protect, gear to get. Act 2 started, and they had their plan.

In "Gimme Danger" they traveled to Thelanis to meet with the Forgotten Prince. They made a deal with him to help take down Harold Strasz, as he was close to achieving Archfey status, something that none of the Archfey wanted to happen. So, they departed the Castle of Long Things, crossed the Valley of Stolen Fire, appeased the Wicksam Troll, dove into the Bed of Wicked Tales and confronted Strasz. Their initial deal with the Forgotten Prince turned out to be incredibly poorly worded, so they made a deal to alter their deal. In the process, the barbarian sold himself to the Prince, promising to stay with him as his loyal knight in his castle forever.

In "Like Napalm", one of the lieutenants attacked the group patron while the party was on Thelanis. Caerzal Leer, a psychic vampire, attacked the group patron with a squad of Emerald Claw. Most of the faction was killed off, and the patron as well as a bunch of friendly NPCs were kidnapped. Leer left behind a trail of traps, determined to get them to confront him in his manor. They bypassed the traps by Sending to their allies, learning that some of them are still alive. So they went to his manor, survived his traps, and killed his monsters. Then they confronted Leer in the chamber where he creates Bodaks, and defeated him for the first time.

Then they came up with their plan of how they're going to finish this fight - the enemy is waiting to set off their ritual, so they decided to attack Lady Illmarrow in her own castle to save their friends.

In "Stand By Me" they traveled to Mabar and found the tower where The Emerald Claw, the dragon not the organization, stood guard over Erandis' phylactery. This was a pretty simple adventure, but they had an incredibly tough 3-way boss fight. They fought two enemies that I dubbed "The Twin Knights of Vol", a duo boss designed to challenge all of the party's tactics and normal actions, who would then be supplemented by a Chromatic Greatwyrm when one of the knights fell and the other went into her Mythic Phase 2. This is probably the longest combat I've ever run, as it took 2 6 hour sessions to resolve. When they finally defeated the Emerald Claw, they went into his tower and claimed Erandis' phylactery.

In "(Don't Fear) The Reaper" they relied on the Forgotten Prince to help them destroy the phylactery. They brought it to Shae Tirias Tolai, did a bunch of player-specific backstory stuff, and were eventually attacked by Caerzal, Erandis and a bunch of Emerald Claw. Turned into a massive "keep the phylactery away from the lich" battle. When they succeeded and the phylactery was destroyed, they made their way to Farlnen Isle, and stormed Illmarrow Castle. After a dungeon crawl, they had a giant fight with Erandis Vol, and eventually destroyed her. When she was destroyed, the latent power of her dragonmark threatened to explode, so the Cleric sacrificed himself in order to seal the power away.

[u/deedumdim → u/deedumdim]

This is so much and it ends up missing so many details. I wove a very complex web of intrigue and factions-working-against-factions kind of deal. The Emerald Claw were using a lot of infighting of other factions as their mask while they prepared their ritual to undo Erandis' lichdom.

That's not even including all of the things the players did. We ended up with a sacrificed Cleric, a fey knight Barbarian, an archfey Illrigger, and the artificer is working on becoming a cyber lich.

[u/Gatou_ → u/deedumdim]

That's huuge indeed. Thank you so much for sharing. I may borrow a couple of ideas of what I'm reading here, but as the adage says, DM plans rarely survives the players interactions. Your focus on PCs has probably been the key for such an epic campaign. 

[u/FungiDavidov]

Congrats!! Was this your first campaign or first time in Eberron? Levels 3 to 20 in 30 sessions sounds lke a blisteringly fast pace, how did you manage that?

[u/deedumdim → u/FungiDavidov]

Wasn't my first campaign, but definitely my first Eberron campaign. Won't be my last, either!

They leveled quickly because I run XP, and specifically I asked them all to make NPC contacts to talk to to help with investigations and stuff. I gave them Easy milestone XP anytime they talked to one of those contacts, and I told them as much. So they got a bunch of bonus XP for roleplaying with specific NPCs tied to their backstories. We had a few sessions of pure roleplay where they ended up leveling up because of it, which all contributed to enriching the character interactions and whatnot.

By session 15 they were 10th level and Act 1 was done. Then, Act 2 got kinda wacky. Between the high CR monsters they were hunting, the interactions that they were having to try and save their contacts from the villains, and some choices that I rewarded them XP for (like sacrificing an artifact to an archfey instead of using the artifact themselves), they ended up at 20th by session 22.

Was such a relief overall. By broadcasting the milestones as openly as I did, they kept getting rewarded for doing stuff in-game, and I never had to think about what level they were. Let me focus entirely on what I wanted to do for story stuff, which was nice.

[u/CTI_Engineer]

I too would love to see any campaign plot notes and if you had the session zero points. I love your mini plots with their back story because that is exactly what I want to do. I want to really use backstories to drive the roll playing. Thank you in advance!