the_gneech (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
the_gneech) wrote2006-05-03 03:35 pm
the_gneech) wrote2006-05-03 03:35 pm
Entry tags:
Thinking Too Much [gaming]
So when D&D Third Edition came out, back in 1998 or whenever it was, and I started my game, the backstory behind my homebrew campaign was this:
It was into this world the original Jaer, Tateland, Kyriela, and Dragor were born; my campaign concept was that the ancient elvish wizard whose apprentice had become Lolth was reincarnated as Solas, an elf cleric obsessed with Shirianri without knowing why (the subject of pre-Elfspire history was forbidden to all but the most elite of the new elvish leadership, to prevent the creation of any more evil demigods). Solas, acting on instinct and tantalizing clues, hired the PCs to help him find Shirianri, knowing only that it was vitally important for him to do so but not why.
The idea was that as the PCs delved deeper into the Shirianri "megadungeon" they would be levelling up rapidly, and that by the time they reached the actual drow-populated city (around 20th level) they'd be able to take on Lolth and destroy her all epic-style, thus redeeming Solas and making the world safe for men, elves, and dwarves alike. Or at least, safer than it was at the beginning of the game.
Problem was, I was so fixated on the exciting "The End" of them getting to Lolth and having the big battle with her, that I had absolutely no idea what to do with all the tedious "explore endless dungeon" part that led up to it. So I flailed around. I came up with two solid dungeon levels, tried to come up with some interesting drow- and drider-themed mysteries that ended up not working so well, and in the end got sick of it and started teleporting them all over the place so I could just use stand-alone dungeons and be done with it.
Finally, when 3.5 came out, I decided the best thing to do was to chuck the whole thing, retcon the game so that the characters were wandering adventurers in Greyhawk, and start over small. My idea was that I'd run more-or-less unconnected adventures (mostly from Dungeon magazine) with the only common thread being that Evard the Black was doing the standard Megalomaniacal Necromancer thing and would be a recurring problem.
How well I've succeeded at that, I can't really say, you'd have to ask my players. I do know that there has been a recurring "that hook sounds interesting but we can't deal with that because this is more urgent" thing going on, particularly with the Evard-related adventures, that I'm trying to cure myself of. The problem is that, well, Evard is working on a schedule! He'd kinda have to be to organize an invasion, after all. I've made notes for myself of how much progress Evard will make if and when he completes X, Y, and Z, and as the players either thwart him, or not, I adjust his timeline accordingly. They dealt Evard a major blow by slaying his son (the infamous "load-bearing priest"), but on the other hand they've consistently ignored a different iron he's got in the fire, and that's going to come back and be a problem soon.
The important thing for me, tho, is to stay focused on the moment rather than to put too much thought into the end. I want their heroes to be the stars of the show, not my backstory nor all the little world bits going on around them. To that end, I need to remember to think about the adventure at hand as the important thing, and its relation to the long-term plot as a side-issue. This is one reason why I haven't included another "long-term plot important NPC" to the group. By the end of my Shirianri concept, it would have become all about Solas -- no good!
"Kill your darlings," as the writers say. If an NPC is so important that the campaign can't work without him, kill him immediately because he's more important than any of the players' characters are!
-The Gneech
Something like 3,000 years before the beginning of the campaign, the elves lived in a vast underground complex, called Shirianri. They had a prosperous, roughly Hellenic-era culture that was more or less ruled by the wizard/scholars; they would occasionally come into conflict with other underground cultures but were mostly peaceful. Their main rivals were the dwarves.
Then came the mind-flayers, who invaded the world from somewhere "outside," perhaps space, perhaps another plane, who knows? The mind-flayers quickly dominated the early humans, but the elves and dwarves fought back, the elves with magic and the dwarves with martial prowess. The dwarves bore the brunt of the fight, but it went badly for the elves too, and after five hundred years of fighting it looked like all was going to be lost.
In a desperation move, the greatest of the elvish wizards and his apprentice (and lover) began delving into dark and forbidden lore (don't they always) in the hope of finding something, anything, that could turn the tide against the illithid. They finally found rituals that would grant god-like powers; when they presented the facts to the rest of the elvish leaders, they were told to grant the powers to the wizard, believing him to have the strength of character to keep from being corrupted.
When the rituals were actually performed, however, the apprentice (who had long since fallen to corruption on her own) twisted them so that the powers were bestowed upon her instead, transforming her into Lolth, the spider-queen. She led the elves to victory against the illithid, but at the price of turning her followers to even more depraved evil than that of the mind-flayers. The wizard, horrified at what his love had become, rallied the remaining elves of good heart against her, and there was civil war. Eventually, the wizard was slain and the good elves lost, fleeing Shirianri forever. The surviving good elves built a new, ziggurat-like home called "The Elfspire," and slowly tried to rebuild.
Meanwhile, the dark elves, now calling themselves the drow, sealed off Shirianri from the surface world; their dark natures now made the sun and open air painful to them. To satisfy their bloodlust, Lolth led them again to war against their primary competitors for resources underground: the dwarves. As the dwarves had already been weakened in the war against the mind flayers, over the next five hundred years the drow obliterated them almost entirely, leaving only a few small pockets of survivors.
It was into this world the original Jaer, Tateland, Kyriela, and Dragor were born; my campaign concept was that the ancient elvish wizard whose apprentice had become Lolth was reincarnated as Solas, an elf cleric obsessed with Shirianri without knowing why (the subject of pre-Elfspire history was forbidden to all but the most elite of the new elvish leadership, to prevent the creation of any more evil demigods). Solas, acting on instinct and tantalizing clues, hired the PCs to help him find Shirianri, knowing only that it was vitally important for him to do so but not why.
The idea was that as the PCs delved deeper into the Shirianri "megadungeon" they would be levelling up rapidly, and that by the time they reached the actual drow-populated city (around 20th level) they'd be able to take on Lolth and destroy her all epic-style, thus redeeming Solas and making the world safe for men, elves, and dwarves alike. Or at least, safer than it was at the beginning of the game.
Problem was, I was so fixated on the exciting "The End" of them getting to Lolth and having the big battle with her, that I had absolutely no idea what to do with all the tedious "explore endless dungeon" part that led up to it. So I flailed around. I came up with two solid dungeon levels, tried to come up with some interesting drow- and drider-themed mysteries that ended up not working so well, and in the end got sick of it and started teleporting them all over the place so I could just use stand-alone dungeons and be done with it.
Finally, when 3.5 came out, I decided the best thing to do was to chuck the whole thing, retcon the game so that the characters were wandering adventurers in Greyhawk, and start over small. My idea was that I'd run more-or-less unconnected adventures (mostly from Dungeon magazine) with the only common thread being that Evard the Black was doing the standard Megalomaniacal Necromancer thing and would be a recurring problem.
How well I've succeeded at that, I can't really say, you'd have to ask my players. I do know that there has been a recurring "that hook sounds interesting but we can't deal with that because this is more urgent" thing going on, particularly with the Evard-related adventures, that I'm trying to cure myself of. The problem is that, well, Evard is working on a schedule! He'd kinda have to be to organize an invasion, after all. I've made notes for myself of how much progress Evard will make if and when he completes X, Y, and Z, and as the players either thwart him, or not, I adjust his timeline accordingly. They dealt Evard a major blow by slaying his son (the infamous "load-bearing priest"), but on the other hand they've consistently ignored a different iron he's got in the fire, and that's going to come back and be a problem soon.
The important thing for me, tho, is to stay focused on the moment rather than to put too much thought into the end. I want their heroes to be the stars of the show, not my backstory nor all the little world bits going on around them. To that end, I need to remember to think about the adventure at hand as the important thing, and its relation to the long-term plot as a side-issue. This is one reason why I haven't included another "long-term plot important NPC" to the group. By the end of my Shirianri concept, it would have become all about Solas -- no good!
"Kill your darlings," as the writers say. If an NPC is so important that the campaign can't work without him, kill him immediately because he's more important than any of the players' characters are!
-The Gneech
no subject
As for what Evard is really up to, well, we'll find out eventually. There will reach a critial mass point where we realize "hey, he's over there and he's got to be stopped now!" Until then, we haven't a clue what's really going on, so keep doing what we feel needs to be done, based on what we know about the things we discover.
We'd love to take it to Evard, if we could. The problem is we have not idea where to look. In Kyriela's mind, everything we deal with has something to do with him, unless proven otherwise. -Frisk