Dr. Mercury
01-02-2007, 03:53 AM
This weekend, I ran three sessions of the WLD campaign in two days. (I'm counting yesterday as two sessions, since Origen had to leave early for a party.) Three of our regular players couldn't make it, our buddy who comes up from Olympia to run his homebrewed system bowed out because of illnesses among his household, but we had Whimsical and Detritus playing two uber characters.
DaiOni, Origen, Blastum, Whimsical, hidufel and Detritus can add their recaps. I tweaked the adventure on the fly for Whimsical's character, which was created on the fly, but it went very well. The party went off the map, mainly because we all saw a passage that the WLD writers didn't expand upon or even identify. They needed to find an end run around two divisions of the BBEG's army, so they went up the passage.
This was one of four passages off a huge cavern where driders, overseeing drow slaves, operated a flesh golem factory. The driders left it unguarded, and none of the drow went near it. Of course the PCs just had to explore it, MUAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAA!!
Essentially, I explained away the sudden presence of Whimsical's and Det's PCs as being part of the good guys' army but holding down other fronts. The focus of the WLD campaign is on one partcular party, which is the advance guard of this army.
hidufel set up the WLD campaign as being a divinely-driven quest to stop the WLD from falling to an unspecified evil. We never found out what that evil was before he turned the reins over, so I improvised when I took over. Given that the party advances faster than the WLD's pre-designed monsters do, I've found that amping the monsters and/or ad-libbing segments works far better than going by the book.
hidufel never told me what his WLD premise was, so here's mine, based upon adventures I ran that took the characters from 12th level into Epic:
Bastille Celestiál existed on its own demi-plane for millennia before a series of earthquakes damaged it. Rivers of magma and vents of steam warmed the dungeon. While the celestials did not expect an ecosystem to develop, they welcomed it—and, indeed, added mountains and wilderness to their demi-plane as they repaired their prison.
However, the later series of devastating earthquakes allowed both the unspeakable evils within it to escape, and the army of a power-mad ur-priest to enter. Celestial soldiers guarding the dungeon sealed it off from the Multiverse and began a centuries-long last stand. Because of the powerful epic wards placed upon the dungeon, it required divine power—or the appropriation of such—to enter and exit.
As the celestials’ last stand failed, the deities convened a congress and recruited champions from the ranks of mortals…
As the first of the mortals delved deeper into the dungeon, they discovered the scale of the devastation. Within a few generations of the last big quake, minotaur guardsmen were reduced to barbarism and eventually destroyed each other. Lantern archons were few and far between, and most of the celestials the adventurers could find had been reduced to bone and ash. Inevitables, seemingly incorruptible constructs that aided in defense of Bastille Celestiál, either fought under delusions or retreated out of apathy. Armies of undead roamed the halls at the behest of a warlord named Iccudras Odiug—whose minions exploded upon death. Living officers and soldiers in that army inexplicably polymorphed opposing soldiers into small canines—and, simply by equipping them with expensive magic items, transformed them into fearsome weapons!
As a result of both a “reality storm” and the initial clashes between the vanguard of champions and the invading army, the deities convened another congress and drafted more mortal champions, using their power to insert an army of their own into the Bastille Celestiál. More than a thousand soldiers entered, many of them capable of repairing and crafting the magical weapons that the invaders enjoy targeting for destruction. The Army of Iccudras Odiug still boasts ten thousand troops, but the adventurers have captured a regimental commander’s journal and denuded the army’s main advance force of its horde of war chihuahuas.
(Don't laugh. The PCs have learned to fear the mighty war chihuahua. Yo quiero death throes!)
The adventurers have learned the following from the journal: Iccudras Odiug is a warlord from the wastelands west of Kraznyktyabr who denuded his people’s treasury to fund his quest for the Bastille Celestiál. Upon finding a way in, his retainers unleashed the last series of earthquakes and transported the army to the dungeon’s demi-plane. They spent three generations scouring the northern wastelands and laying siege to the northeastern citadel. Odiug’s goal is to free all the prisoners, open a portal to his ancestral home near Ihsak, and rule the southwestern steppes with Bastille Celestiál as his capital. He has hundreds of sorcerers and necromancers at his disposal, and he himself is a powerful ritualist or spell-caster.
DaiOni, Origen, Blastum, Whimsical, hidufel and Detritus can add their recaps. I tweaked the adventure on the fly for Whimsical's character, which was created on the fly, but it went very well. The party went off the map, mainly because we all saw a passage that the WLD writers didn't expand upon or even identify. They needed to find an end run around two divisions of the BBEG's army, so they went up the passage.
This was one of four passages off a huge cavern where driders, overseeing drow slaves, operated a flesh golem factory. The driders left it unguarded, and none of the drow went near it. Of course the PCs just had to explore it, MUAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAA!!
Essentially, I explained away the sudden presence of Whimsical's and Det's PCs as being part of the good guys' army but holding down other fronts. The focus of the WLD campaign is on one partcular party, which is the advance guard of this army.
hidufel set up the WLD campaign as being a divinely-driven quest to stop the WLD from falling to an unspecified evil. We never found out what that evil was before he turned the reins over, so I improvised when I took over. Given that the party advances faster than the WLD's pre-designed monsters do, I've found that amping the monsters and/or ad-libbing segments works far better than going by the book.
hidufel never told me what his WLD premise was, so here's mine, based upon adventures I ran that took the characters from 12th level into Epic:
Bastille Celestiál existed on its own demi-plane for millennia before a series of earthquakes damaged it. Rivers of magma and vents of steam warmed the dungeon. While the celestials did not expect an ecosystem to develop, they welcomed it—and, indeed, added mountains and wilderness to their demi-plane as they repaired their prison.
However, the later series of devastating earthquakes allowed both the unspeakable evils within it to escape, and the army of a power-mad ur-priest to enter. Celestial soldiers guarding the dungeon sealed it off from the Multiverse and began a centuries-long last stand. Because of the powerful epic wards placed upon the dungeon, it required divine power—or the appropriation of such—to enter and exit.
As the celestials’ last stand failed, the deities convened a congress and recruited champions from the ranks of mortals…
As the first of the mortals delved deeper into the dungeon, they discovered the scale of the devastation. Within a few generations of the last big quake, minotaur guardsmen were reduced to barbarism and eventually destroyed each other. Lantern archons were few and far between, and most of the celestials the adventurers could find had been reduced to bone and ash. Inevitables, seemingly incorruptible constructs that aided in defense of Bastille Celestiál, either fought under delusions or retreated out of apathy. Armies of undead roamed the halls at the behest of a warlord named Iccudras Odiug—whose minions exploded upon death. Living officers and soldiers in that army inexplicably polymorphed opposing soldiers into small canines—and, simply by equipping them with expensive magic items, transformed them into fearsome weapons!
As a result of both a “reality storm” and the initial clashes between the vanguard of champions and the invading army, the deities convened another congress and drafted more mortal champions, using their power to insert an army of their own into the Bastille Celestiál. More than a thousand soldiers entered, many of them capable of repairing and crafting the magical weapons that the invaders enjoy targeting for destruction. The Army of Iccudras Odiug still boasts ten thousand troops, but the adventurers have captured a regimental commander’s journal and denuded the army’s main advance force of its horde of war chihuahuas.
(Don't laugh. The PCs have learned to fear the mighty war chihuahua. Yo quiero death throes!)
The adventurers have learned the following from the journal: Iccudras Odiug is a warlord from the wastelands west of Kraznyktyabr who denuded his people’s treasury to fund his quest for the Bastille Celestiál. Upon finding a way in, his retainers unleashed the last series of earthquakes and transported the army to the dungeon’s demi-plane. They spent three generations scouring the northern wastelands and laying siege to the northeastern citadel. Odiug’s goal is to free all the prisoners, open a portal to his ancestral home near Ihsak, and rule the southwestern steppes with Bastille Celestiál as his capital. He has hundreds of sorcerers and necromancers at his disposal, and he himself is a powerful ritualist or spell-caster.