Kara's Starting a Home Campaign and Needs Help

[Klcp]

Oh man, I forgot how much you guys crack me up!! Just reading these posts is hilarious.

Okay back to the point. I've been asked -coughforcedcough- to run a home campaign for my brothers and a couple of our friends and I'm completely stuck. I can't come up with a story at all.
I'm supposed to run tomorrow night but I have no clue what to do with their characters or where to go with the plot.

So far I've got a Vesten who knows Lærdom, an Avalonian pirate without a crew or ship, a Montaigne commander who insists on attackg enemies from horseback, and an Eisen who is part of Die Kreuzritter (who also refuses to read more than a few pages out of the Die Kreuzritter sourcebook).

I've got an intro/background story written for each of them which sets them up so I can basically start them anywhere in Theah that I want however my brother has insisted that I don't use the cliché bar/inn to get everyone together (to be honest I hadn't even considered that until Daniel had mentioned it and now I can't think of anyone else). They also want me to start them each off with little solo hour-long adventures so they can get acquainted with their characters before the game actually officially starts.

You guys are really good with that writing-languagey-idea stuff so could you please help me. Even if it's after tomorrow I still don't know what I'm doing for a long-run plot.

[Black Jack Rackham]

Alright, I mentioned this privately, but so that others can add to it, or so you can refer back to it later, here it is again.

Ok here's my first thought. It's not going with your brother's suggestion of a couple of solo events first but what the hey. They all start on a deserted island. None of them knows why they are there or how they got there. Or even if they are enemies allies, etc..

The first session or so is them all trying just to survive, small agressive critters, maybe islanders who use hit and run tactics, etc. Finally, all of them meet at some interesting place. Along with them, of course is some horrific gigantic monstrosity.

Nothing like a little superordinate goals to get them working together. I figure once they get used to fighting off the monsters on this island they'll next start looking for a way to escape. Maybe they find pirates, maybe a ship shows up, maybe they finally find the natives who've been sniping them this whole time.

Since one of them is a pirate, if you choose pirates, the ones who show up won't be the friendly kind. If it's a ship of some other kind, it should be a ship from a nation independent of all the heroes. For example, Vodacce. Unless your DK is vodacce.

The Vodacce could be smugglers, who find the heroes on THEIR island. This is the place where they have all their stuff hidden. whoops... Heroes have to take ship but learn about a Secret Hidden treasure. No one but the captain knows where the hidden treasure is on the island, and unfortunately for the heroes, they just killed him taking the ship. muhahahaha!

The treasure is hidden in an old syrneth site and their bringing in 'something' or forgetting to bring in the right gizmo sets the old stuff to working again

So they finally get to escape (remembering of course, that with just the few heroes they have, they will not be able to sail a ship (no less a Vodacce ship)). But they still don't know why they were there in the first place. It could be they all pissed off the same person (say a Porte mage who has a permanent hole to this island)could be they were using a Porte hole and opened their eyes. Could be their ships all sailed simultaneously into the 7th Sea. Though I have to say I prefer explanations where there's a bad guy involved. Alternately, the smugglers could be working for one of the important Princes. And killing the crew/taking the ship made them very mad.

That should be enough to get you started at least.

Mark

[salamanca]

I am always a fan of giving them an old map and watching them try to figure out what it leads to while avoiding those who want to take it from them. But you really should think about what aspects of a game you have trouble handling and include those as practice. Mark's idea will require a ton of on the spot improvising. Mine will need even more. You also need to create 4 returning characters for them to face to practice creating personalities that will advance the role aspects of the game. I am totally exhausted right now (and at work) so details are not in my head. But, GOOD FOR YOU for getting a game going.

[Klcp]

I'm at school so I don't have it with me right now but I actually have stirrups for each of the characters along with their backgrounds. Ironically, one of the characters actually has a treasure map background and he bought it do that the villain has another piece of it.

[Black Jack Rackham]

I actually have stirrups...

Stirrups? Really?

WAIT A SEC, FORGET I SAID ANYTHING. I DO NOT WANT TO KNOW...

[Sister Sonya]

I actually have stirrups.

That's a start! Next are forceps and a cattle prod.

[salamanca]

Of course she has stirrups, it's the birth of a new campaign. Or we can go with the traditional western interpretation and comment that she needs them to ride herd on her players. Or we could just accept the fact that Kara relies entirely on autocorrect and just figure it out in our heads.

[Black Jack Rackham]

Ok Sal, I'll play along. Stirrups is really Stories? So she has stories and background for her characters?

[Rebecca Iavelli]

Well, I think she actually mis-spelled the word. I think she wanted Stir-Ups, as in she is going to be stirring up the players and getting them into a nice mess they have to work themselves out of. You Go Girl!

[Black Jack Rackham]

SO??? How did it go?

[salamanca]

It is start ups. She has start ups for the characters.

But mark has a point, how did it go and where are you taking it to next session?

[Klcp]

Omg...yeah that was an autocorrect fail. I actually meant write ups for their backgrounds but whatever.

Well, I wasn't able to run last week because my weekend was insane and have me no time to work on it or homework so I had to cancel so I could get some work done.

Lessee...they all kind of wandered around for a while trying to find food and shelter. The Montaigne was attacked by a pack of wolves and was rescued by the Black Cross but the two heard howles and tried to barricade themselves inside a small cave (they only had a couple minutes to do this) and then more wolves (driven rabid by the weird reactions going on inside the nearby Syrneth ruins) came and attacked them and they had some fun getting used to their martial skills. Meanwhile, the Vesten single-handedly managed to take down a large bear (stats from the bestiary in the GMs Guide) and then crudely skinned it and is now walking around in a bloody pelt (don't worry, there will be repercussions for this later). Finally, the pirate climbed a tree and saw a small village and made his way over there, only to take an arrow to the knee (heehee), shoot down a man in a tree, and be chased through the woods by a large group of angry natives until the Vesten saw some idiot running half-naked through the forest screaming like a 15 year old girl (ie, my little brother). We left off with the Black Cross wandering off in the middle of the night to find the Syrneth ruin that he was brought here to investigate, the Montaigne trying to sleep in that little cave, and the pirate sleeping in the branches of a tree above the wounded Vesten after giving up trying to communicate with him.

Oh, and all characters have at least two dramatics, three of which are crippled.

[Klcp]

Btw, I don't feel like proof reading my posts at 2 in the morning so I'm fully willing to take whatever witty teasing you all throw at me (assuming that you all are witty enough to be able to figure out my meaning despite the autocorrect fails).

[Sister Sonya]

What!?

You mean http://www.guildofsanmarcos.net doesn't have spellcheck and gramatik?

[Black Jack Rackham]

Alright, now that you've got them all together, I have to ask, are you an EVIL GM? Well do you wanna be one? Well then, here's what you gotta do. Make sure that as a group they encounter something (could be a chest full of paperwork or a dying sailor, what have you) that makes the implication that there is an insider amongst the heroes who is helping the enemy to exact revenge on the heroes (and thus why they are here)...

[salamanca]

step two is the village... is it just natives or a few mainlanders that have decided to stay? does somebody have a means of leaving the island (we can call that guy or gal the "wizard of Oz") or will the players need yet another outlet?

Is the village only antagonistic or will they be adopting the heroes as their new protectors? (possibly from seafaring neighboring islanders who would have transport)

I like the paperwork thing. Nothing but piles of Castillian or Montaigne red tape files that need to be properly sorted out to figure out what it is hiding back home. that could be a whole new leg to this campaign of dealing with politics, nobility, wealth or inheritance. Alternately, it could be state secrets and evidence of somebody doing something very wrong but with all their bases covered in terms of being accused forcing the heroes to work outside the law to create justice.

Little did Kara realize she just started writing a season of Burn Notice.

[Klcp]

Not quite how it worked out.....

[Black Jack Rackham]

step two ...Is the village only antagonistic or will they be adopting the heroes as their new protectors?

See I was thinking, both. They are antagonistic because they assume the heroes to be in league with the bad guys who are have the treasure map (that I mentioned in the first post). They villagers try to kill them until the Bad Guys show up and then they discover they have a mutual enemy.

[Klcp]

New plan: never start a campaign during the school year. This sucks. I got halfway through tonight's session and had to stop because I ran out of stuff. Okay, the village is being controlled by a man named Nico Contiello di Fontaine who secretely owns the entire island (Isola Segreto). The players all got captured by the villagers and, as they were escaping, Contiello shows up with several of his guys and taunt them for a bit before the players run. Now they've managed to find a river, follow it upstream, climb a mini-mountain and find a doorway that only the Black Cross knows is a Syrneth ruin. They futzed around for a while until night when duin his watch, the BC went back to the doorway and found it open (doorway opens only at night). Now he is following a long, smooth corridor with walls that are almost hot. The pirate and the Vesten are following about a half hour behind and the Montaigne decided to wait outside and when the sun rose, the door of course shut, lockin him out an the others inside. And I didn't have time to plan any further than this. Oh!! Also!! All the players are 1 dramatic away from being knocked out except for the BC who spent a drama die to remain conscious.

[Black Jack Rackham]

First, SPOILER ALERT

Ok before we get to the "Ideas for what's in the tunnels" I have to ask, Why is the DK scrounging around in a Syrneth Site? He should be keeping the other idiots the heck out of there. He knows full well what humanity is up against, why on earth would he risk the possibility that they could give the strangers a boost?

When you answer that, you'll most likely know what to put inside.

[Sister Sonya]

If you have your villain clearly defined and described (he has a complete character sheet and history, showing all of his Advantages, Skills and Knacks, Backgrounds, etc.) plus a shorter writeup for henchmen and key NPCs, you can ad.lib.

Just remember to write down what happens, so that you don't forget it...