Everything tabletop gaming since 2005
And I’m sick and tired of trying to “fix this”, I’m currently unhappy with our 4e games but was at a loss about turning things around until mid-week.
…and when it’s all said and done, an unhappy Dungeon Master is the surefire sign of a dying campaign/gaming group.
Amazingly, the Gnome Airship was still intact when the PCs own ship set in formation near it (along the Melorian’s living airship, and the Warforged chaos-propelled aerolith). Viscount Daven Sakran was joyously awaiting for them, all smiles and virginal innocence under the malvolent look of our semi-railroaded Goliath Warden.
Brought together to oversee the security of crucial peace talks, the PCs are faced with sabotage at 20 000 feet over the jagged surface of a world torn by 8 years of global conflicts. One of the diplomat factions turns on the other while demon-summoning clockwork bombs explode on the Gnomish airship housing the peace negotiations. Our heroes have to keep the negotiators alive.
The game’s action will occur entirely on board a Feywild grown, Clockwork-powered gnome airship called The Briarthorn Needle owned by ‘neutral’ fey privateers. The last warring factions of Sikkara (our Clockowork D&D gameworld) have agreed to meet on it to negotiate a peace accord and put an end to 8 years of global war.
Upon freeing themselves from the Fomorians, the gnomes knew that they could not rely on the other, more powerful races, to guarantee that they would not fall back into slavery. While many champions of the Gnomish causes have risen in the last centuries, the masters of trickery have created their own tricks to ‘convince” the world’s best heroes and scoundrles to help them.
The arrival of sentient machines in an already explosive political situation plunged the whole world into global wars among economic, religious and opportunistic alliances. The auto-clanks (humanoid machines) ended up obtaining their emancipation at a horrendous price of scrap metal and blood. They took the name “Warforged” as to never forget how they won the right to exist as free beings on this hostile world.
There they learned of a pact made between the Gith seeking to eradicate the Elemental Chaos influence on the world of Sikarra and Melora’s Eco fanatics who were unable to channel the power of their Nature god to avenge this dying world. The Gith brought a large artifact, a Psi-Crystal so powerful that it could channel power sources throughout a world to a select few. The artifact was mounted on Sirrakas highest mountain range where a fighting monastery was built.
As the party schemed, hidden behind a pile of Warclank (i.e clockwork mechas) spare parts near the gigantic pile of humanoid corpses, the ghouls and blasphemes continued their Dance Macabre, the ghouls trying to snatch pieces of relatively fresh “meat” from the pile while the reconstructed undead kept them at bay with beams of death-laced energies.
The one rule I gave myself was “Shape the adventure based on the questions your players ask you” and “When in doubt, ask for a skill check”.
It worked wonderfully. So much so that my first true sandbox dungeon adventure probably felt like a seamless linear adventure narrative to my players who probably thought they were just following the path I had made for them.
The Titan Clank hit by the Avenger’s abjure undead power was eventually bloodied. In a cloud of greasy smoke, it stopped functioning and let out a badly battered undead humanoid made of mismatched stitched parts! It was wearing some sort of military leather harness filled with poisoned knives!
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