Premise of this Game was to create a base for people who didn't have much experience with DnD and were new to the lore, create a base where each of them could bring a character with as much lore prep as they each wanted and not feel like coming to the table less prepared than someone else.
For that I brought together three very different characters in a place that seemingly has no connection to the current lore. This way there was only what lore they found there and the lore they brought with them.
Correspondingly the underlying themes of our campaign were "Communicate, Learn, Help, Advance" with "The World might be shit but you can change it. You don't have to do it alone, or at all."
The tone is noble dark, the world might be terrible but it's not all wicked and evil. It's one of my favourite tones. We all feel overwhelmed at times, feel that everything is bad and turned or turning against us and that we can't do anything about it.
For campaings I love to start like this for the feeling of you can actually change it for the better. One question, one roll of the dice at a time.
"This place doesn't have a name. It's just the village. The only one for a whole long while, so it doesn't need a name."
In a place built on long forgotten ruins, three adventurers, with backgrounds as different as they can be, find themselves at a crossroads between what they are after and what they need to surpass in order to continue on their journey.
The ruins our Nameless Village is built on used to be a Containment Facility, that had been built centuries ago, to examine, exploit and contain a crash site beyond the Endless Wastes. What seems to have been an enormous spelljammer, had offered an abundant source of information, resource and technology but whatever happened, the Containment Site has fallen into such ruinous state with no records surviving. The Crash Site is still there, contaminating and changing the land, flora and fauna.
The Key Locations:
The Nameless Village
The inhabitants of our Nameless Village are surprisingly diverse, both in residency and in background. There are several families that have been here for generations and several smaller groups and individuals that stranded here through the rare traffic, which has dried up some time ago.
While there is an abundance of space and building material, food might be plenty but limited in diversity. Especially during winter and ever more so since the climate got drier with each passing year.
The Orc Tribe of the Wastes
The Orc Tribe is one of many tribes that used to roam the Endless Wastes, raid and pillage the settlements to the south, around the Mountains of Copper and towards the Brightstar Lake, not unlike the Huns. They even robbed caravans on the Golden Way. The Climate changes and contamination of flora and fauna has hit them much harder after already affecting them much earlier than the Nameless Village. Ressources dropping and rising infighting forced them to band together, take over or leave. What is left of them is a pale shadow of their former might and the last couple of years made one tribe target our village a lot more frequently.
The Crash Site
Even the roaming Orc Hordes only knew distant tales about this place, the remnants of them only know the consequences. The enormous spelljammer-like ship had something not unlike a reactor leak and wild arcane energies surged, touched and contaminated everything, wind, weather, land and beast, twisting and perverting even the blades of grass to turn the area not just uninhabitable but dangerous to anything and anyone.
Over the years the influence seemed to have taken another step up and it will become a problem for any faction to force them to make important decisions. Cope, solve or leave.
Isamu Shin a human hustler and rogue, on the run from the law and looking for the former glory his family line claims. Turning against the smugglers he was travelling with, he tricket the villagers and managed to become their hero in defense against the criminals.
Jelnelis Cilthar a woodelven paladin orphan, found by a Knight of the Cobalt Watch as a young child, alone in a ghost town, with no memories whatsoever. Inducted into the order of a knowledge hording doomwatch, he was sent out to find out about a facility to the east as his journeywork for claiming rank in the order.
Krsk is a half ork barbarian from the far south-east. Losing her tribe of naturalistic recluses in an attack that seemed aimed at her mother, she now travels with an amulet and her mother's last words, looking to make sense of it, take revenge and find a place for herself.
As for character connection and ties: Shin wants money and power and has that in the limited form that the village provides. Jelnelis wants to know where the facility is that he was supposed to contact or find and for that search he can use the power that Shin has over the village. While Krsk, a barbarian from the wilds, is the most autarkic of the three, she is the most lost on her task, too, and using the knowledge and ties of Jelnelis might be her best chance to find out about the amulet.
While these three have already been actively playing for three months, minus exam period, there are three more to join as soon as their character building is complete and a fitting opportunity arises.
Since all three of the coming players are not only new to DnD but to Pen&Paper itself, their characters will be created by me on their base ideas.
Separately I'm running a second group of four, consisting entirely of first time players, who will embark on a short 3-4 session game where they play the last moments of the spelljammer ship before it crashed into the Endless Wastes.
While they won't be able to stop the catastrophe, no matter what they do, the manner in which they handle it will influence certain criteria in the main campaign. The integrity of certain machinery and energy cores and maybe even a message to transcend the ages.
While the main campaign is the classic high fantasy DnD, with a few tweaks where the mechanics are lacking or lore is a little bent to fit a character or story arc, the fewshot plays in more of a science fantasy time. A time before a fall from their technological advancement, where magic was used with technology just as space/aether traversing spelljammer ships.
On finishing their adventure they might turn into a second group, support and guest play in the main campaign or set up a new playing group tied to the GameDev Regensburg e.V. and its plans to found a non-profit Gaming Club alongside the Dev Club.
