#The Quickstar Cypher

[dailyadventureprompts]

Wilderness: Down the Sentinels’ Way

Since a time before empires the sentinels have stood, stone colossi guarding the old road against an unseen threat from beyond the horizon. Time has thinned their ranks but seems unable to conquer them completely. 

Setup: Stretching from a high mountain pass to the lowlands sheltered within the heart of the continent, the Sentinels’ way is perhaps one of the most ancient roads in existence. The sentinels in question are giant statues, ranging between four to twenty stories tall, erected in the dawn age by some long forgotten empire for an unknown means, each depicting a warrior standing ready and proud. 

Well over eighty and a hundred miles long, the actual “way” of Sentinels’ way ranges from well traveled roads between settlements, crumbling cobbles half swallowed by the land, and long drowned sections of the path washed out by encroaching rivers and lakes, navigable only by boat. Still, this ancient highway is well traversed, and the party can expect to have many adventures as they traverse it in search of greater adventure. 

Adventure Hooks

Caravans of merchants and pilgrims make their way up and down the Sentinels’ way constantly, connecting isolated temples and backwater towns in a vast network of support. A party can earn good coin as guards on these circuits, getting to know the caravanners, the watering holes, and the people who frequent the route. Exploring and mapping out their own routes through the Way could make up the arc of an entire campaign, ensuring the party is familiar enough with the terrain, people, and politics to launch into a really in-depth war adventure, or an in-depth drama involving trade disputes, sabotage, and rival business interests. 

The party comes into possession of a very abstract treasuremap, depicting three sentinels facing the viewer, and a top down view of a particular highland valley & lake. Only one of the statues is actually NEAR this valley, where as the other two are scattered miles away from one another. A clever surveyor may understand that the secondary two statues actually look out over the landscape at different angles, and that by overlaying this intersecting angle on the original map (anchored by a few more symbols) their intersecting views can point the way to a buried vault of treasure. Asking around for the location of these statues may draw unwanted attention, as rival treasure hunters will be eager to steal the map, or to jump the party once they’ve  made the claim. 

A rivertroll has been harassing the barges along one of the flooded sections of the way, demanding tribute in exchange for not sinking the boat or snacking on any of the oarsmen.  Though investigation the party learns that the troll has a particular fondness for alcohol, and that by staging a bargewreck ( as well as somehow acquiring enough hooch to do the deed) they may be able to get their quarry drunk enough to properly ambush, negating both its sharp senses, and its titanic strength. 

( This adventure can be part of a larger adventure arc, which I’ve outlined HERE, feel free to check it out. ) 

[dailyadventureprompts]

Hey there I’m a big fan of the work you do! I was wondering if you have a directory or tag of some sort that compiles your work on the different planes in d&d or a summary of how you handle the planes of existence? I’m thinking of running a game that focuses on hopping through and visiting the different planes and would love to know what sort of framework you would use for it as well as some interesting ways to handle the planes. Thank you for your time and all your hard work 😊

Hey friend! I’d advise looking through my planescape tag, along with the individual searches for “Astral”, “Feywild”, “Shadowfell”, “Underdark”, “Portals” and the like. 

Here’s the quick summery of how I treat each of the planes: 

The Astral Sea is an infinite expanse of imagination, where powerful mages can think palaces into being, and gods sculpt new realities.  It is also the plane of dreams and thoughts, and all things related to the mind. It also connects to all the other planes. 

The Feywild is the source of all life and vitality, representing the primal wilderness that fuels all living things. It is also a  liminal space, existing just behind the skin of the material reality and often acting as a reflection of it. 

The Shadowfell is the the literal shadow of existance, existing on as a ghostly afterimage of the material plane, where ruins and ghosts linger. I also have the shadowfell act as the underworld, haunt of wraiths and those lingering souls who seek a peaceful existence in one of the plane’s many necropoli

I also have the Underdark as its own plane, rather than a network of tunnels under the material world. This allows underdark portals to show up in unexpected places which I find to be a delightful addition to my adventure-building toolbox.  The underdark ( or the tectonic pandemonium as I’ve been calling it) is an ever shifting labyrinth of caverns, crypts, and stone, at once immensely solid and at the same time deeply unstable. It is the source of all wealth and substance on the material plane, and acts the greatest of all dungeon delves. 

Other than that, I keep most of my planes as oneoffs, adding or subtracting them as necessary for what the campaign might need, as trying to be too comprehensive tends to lead to rigidity with no room to tell a good story. 

As for a planehopping campaign, I was considering doing one of them myself, centered around The Nacrebright Sanctum,  a meeting place for travelers stranded in the astral sea, taking the form of a monastery/asteroid field operated by the Gith. 

In this campaign, the players would be earning their keep in the monastery by escorting the monks on trade trips/pilgrimages throughout the planes, while at the same time perhaps individually searching for a way back to their own worlds. You could even take my Quickstar Cypher campaign idea and retheme each of the subsequent adventure prompts as it’s own “worldlet”. All the while the Party is Hounded by astral pirates, eventaully dealing with the corruptive influence of the plane of leng. 

If you’re going to be doing a planehopping game, its important for you to practice your starwars technique:   “ This is the _____ plane, it has X striking environment, and serves Y social function, these two elements combine to explore pulp adventure trope Z in a fresh and interesting way.” 

[dailyadventureprompts]

Hey there! I just had a campaign premise hit me out of nowhere- the players are barely-first-level young acolytes of a temple, being sent out on pilgrimage with a chaperone to learn about other pantheons and ways of worship in a series of journeys meant to broaden their educations and enlighten them. Of course, no journey through a fantastical holy land can ever be that simple. What might be some relatively easy but hair-raising adventures to tempt them with along their way?

Drafting an Adventure: The Quickstar Cypher

I love this campaign idea, I love it so much that a) I want to run it myself b) I wrote a whole excuse about the potential challenges to running it below the cut because with any campaign I run, I’d want to make sure I do it right. c) I’m probably going to use it as inspiration for an upcoming themeweek.

With that all said, lets get into the fun bit: theming and story structure. 

The Meta Plot: While I love the idea of a group of acolytes traveling about on a journey to enlightenment, we’re going to need to dangle something with a bit more bite in front of our players if we want them to set out on this odyssey. Just before the acolytes set out on their appointed journey of discovery, three blue comets appear in the sky, starting off as little more than unusual stars, and slowly growing brighter and brighter over weeks, their tails becoming more and more visible. This is an omen, though of what none but the high-priests of the faith know about.   Our chaperone/mentor character is in fact an agent of these high priests, and has been dispatched to carry an important message to the leaders of an allied faith while using the annual pilgrimage as cover. People are USED to seeing an elder priest traveling the land with acolytes in tow, and so the enemies of the faith are less likely to suspect that a coordinated effort is being made against them. 

First Adventure: Establish the default, the party has been on the road for a couple weeks now and they’ve fallen into the rhythm of life on pilgrimage, perhaps they’re traveling with a caravan, or resting by a local shrine. Introductions to the characters and the setting are made, and the party face challenges typical of travelers, IE bandits or wandering monsters.  This adventure ends with gaining entrance to a city that functions under the same faith as the party, which lets them get a feel for what their “cultural default” is, and see the precepts of their faith interacting with the world. 

Second Adventure: passage to the next stop on their journey is challenging, the terrain is harsh and the roadblocks ( monstrous, political, environmental etc) are difficult. They may need to scale a mountainrange to access a far removed temple, or avoid/defeat a monster that haunts a particular stretch formerly prosperous countryside. This is also the time to start foreshadowing the metaplot, highlighting people’s reactions to the strange new stars, and hinting at our chaperone’s secret plan. 

Third Adventure: with a few challenges under their belt, now is time to cement party bonds, because we’re going into the unknown. I recommend setting this adventure on a seabound ship, a caravan traveling across dangerous terrain, or some other means by which you can keep the party in close contact giving them lots of opportunity to roleplay while fending off threats/overcoming challenges. Eventually we reach an exotic new locale, ruled over by an allied ( but different) faith, and just as the party is getting used to this new, unsteady ground, they are attacked by an enemy faction with the intent of stealing the message the mentor is carrying. 

Forth Adventure: Things get complicated, the mentor explains the secret orders they were given, and their intention to travel beyond the normal bounds of the pilgrimage once they are done treating with the allied faith. The party will be free to return home, as was the plan, or continue on with them even though doing so will put them in even greater danger. While the party takes in the sights at this exotic locale and contemplates their options, they become embroiled in local goings on just long enough for the enemy faction to attack and slay the mentor. The message however was hidden, and is turned over to the party by an ally. They now have the option of taking up the mentor’s mission, or returning back home to safety, and leaving the future up to chance. 

Fifth Adventure: The finale of this adventure arc. Taking place in a wasteland of broken faith. This is a place where the gods failed, their worshipers suffered, and the land changed to reflect that horror.  The party will need to travel through this wasteland without the guidance of their mentor, relying only on one another, the lessons they’ve learned, and their faith to guide them. The last ally exists in a stronghold beyond the wasteland, and should they get the message there ( harried all the while by the enemy faction) they will have truly completed their pilgrimage. 

I hope you’ll forgive me for being somewhat vague, but detailing a whole multistep campaign is too much for one prompt. Below I’ve got some more ideas about how you might run this campaign, as well as some suggestions on how to nail the worldbuilding. . 

Some Concerns: 

Immediately I’m going to say that I love this campaign premise and would 1000% run it myself, but that most groups would have a hard time doing the emotional buy-in necessary to run a story centered around enlightenment and faith as a vehicle for self betterment.  Most of the d&d fandom exists within a very anti organized-faith comfort zone, whether that be because of Gen X cynicism or the varying degrees of religious trauma most of us get growing up in the west. If you wanted to run this, I’d highly advise asking your playgroup whether they think they can get on board with a story where religions and religiosity will feature heavily. If not, move onto a more earthly form of heroics, and save this campaign for another time. 

On the Subject of Pantheons:

Religions and pantheons are one of the hardest things to world build, which is why most fantasy settings end up either doing “ Christianity with the serial numbers filed off” or “ Its the Greek/Norse  gods.. but not”, as those shortcuts allow the audience’s assumptions/familiarity with the subject matter to do most of the worldbuilder’s work for them. D&D actually does the laziest thing by default, by introducing the idea of gods as a thing™, but doing very little to actually discuss how they should be implemented in the default setting. Building a mythos, charting its interactions on the world/culture, and having to figure out a cosmology that supports this a LOT of world that not even published authors get right, so we’re going to have to do work if we want to get this solid for not one but MULTIPLE faiths, I’d highly advice you do some research. 

Unless you’re like me and have been slowly building up your own portfolio of deities and demigods that pass muster, I’d HIGHLY encourage you to steal one.  The Theros  setting has an AMAZINGLY fleshed out pantheon, and includes its own mechanics for piety that are worth looking over even if you don’t want to take anything else. In this case, the pilgrimage can involve traveling between different centers of faith for allied city-states, and seeing which of these powers might speak to the acolytes ( nothing against worshiping different non-hostile gods in a pantheon system, right? ) 

Alternatively, grab a book or two on Norse/Greek/Celtic mythology, ( Neil Gaimen has a great one recounting the myths) and read the hell out of them. Don’t just read the myths, read about how the faith was practiced and how it impacted the lives of people. Then read a few other books on the spiritual lives about people from elsewhere on the globe ( not just Pagan Europe) until you have a vague understanding of how faith impacts culture.   Then, get some d&d gods, and graft their iconography ( dwarves, magic, odd concepts like undeath) ONTO your understanding of the original myths, thereby producing a unique hybrid mythology that’’ll be unique to your campaign. I’ll warn that this is a quick and dirty solution to building your own mythology and won’t stand up to publication, but will work wonders for making your home game seem rich and immersive. ( I also specifically chose mythologies that weren’t closed practices, because holy hell, do NOT grab someone’s sacred text and adapt it to to your fantasy roleplaying games) 

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[dailyadventureprompts]

Theme Week #5: The Quickstar Cypher Campaign 🌠

Sometimes you just get an idea and have to run with it.  That was the case when an asker shared their idea for a campaign that started out with the players as a group of pilgrims making their way between shrines of different faiths, learning and growing as they did. I loved the concept, and added an overarching structure, subplots,  and a few hypothetical adventures, in this prompt right here, which  you might want to keep handy as a reference when browsing the rest of these as it puts them in a greater context.  

Down the Sentinels’ Way: A long stretch of ancient highway that can serve as the backbone of a campaign dedicated to travel and pilgrimage, featuring treasure maps, old ruins, and the comfort of an old campfire shared with friends and strangers alike. 

Ascend to the Temple of the Foretold: Seeking to raid a monetary full of prophecies, a sphinx inadvertently set off a mystical defense in this mountain pass, convoluting local spacetime and creating a dimensional labyrinth that attempts to snag anything that passes through. The creature now hunts the surrounding roads and countryside for an answer, while a maddened future version of the same monster lords over an empty library and desperately tries to escape. 

Odyssey to the Thundering Isles: Located in an isolated stretch of ocean that most sailors well know to avoid, these blasted cliffs serve as the forge of the storm gods and vaults for their many tempestuous weapons. Whether shipwrecked and seeking shelter or out to plunder the fruits of divine ingenuity, the party will need to deal with the stormgiants that call the region home, as well as the construct creatures wrought by lighting and godly hammers. 

Idisimar of the deep wells, the city without a prayer: Venture to a hanging garden-city on the edge of the desert, prosperous in all things but riven by theological strife. The rulers of the city have enacted a harsh ban on priests of foreign faiths entering the city, and all the while a darker threat grows beneath the city’s foundations. 

Rathion’s Well, and the Unquiet Blight: A stretch of shifting, necromantic forest brought to life by an ancient curse, haunted by a crystalline plague that animates the body of any who shed blood within its bounds. A terrifying and mystical place, one that can host any number of great villains for your campaign, or provide a few of its own. 

[dailyadventureprompts]

Been trying to make a planehopping campaign based around the Nacrebright Sanctum, but can't figure it out

Campaign: Cosmic Gate Pilgrims

doesn't that title just make you want to put on a prog/pych rock album and just float away on a 17 minute guitar riff?

So I've had this idea bouncing around for a while, mainly because of how neat an idea a world hopping campaign could be, and partially because It served as a great framing device to visit a bunch of diversely different biomes without having to abandon a central cast of characters. I've also been growing increasingly interested in the astral sea as a setting, and think it makes a great backdrop to these sorts of journeys.

Setup: centered around The Nacrebright Sanctum,  this campaign sees the party as a group of planear travelers cast adrift from their own worlds by fate and chance, who have all come to live in an interdimensional monastery that shelters pilgrims, exiles and refugees. By working as security and able hands for the monks who maintain the Sanctum, the party get to visit many worlds, which may one day let them discover a way home across the impossible cosmic vastness.

The actual story kicks off when a strange star appears in the astral sea, somehow visible across a smattering of distant worlds and acting as a portent of some long-forgotten doom. A sage of the monastery decides to go on a fact-finding mission, and the party is sent along on their various outings as an escort. From here follow the events of my Quickstar Cypher campaign, retheming each of the subsequent adventure prompts as it’s own “worldlet”. Eventually it's revealed that this strangely burning star is an ancient, worldkilling weapon turned loose across the cosmos by unseen hands, and the been the cause of mass destruction and countless refugee crisis throughout the ages ( perhaps creating some of the very same dead worlds the players originated on). Figuring out how to diffuse a moon-sized planetoid is difficult enough, but throughout their journey the party is Hounded by astral pirates, eventually dealing with the corruptive influence of the plane of Leng. and a sinister intelligence bent on taking control of the weapon or at least selling it off to the highest bidder.

Gameplay: Journeys out into these different planes can take as long as they need to, but having the Sanctum always just a portal away allows them to interspurse the loneliness of long wilderness exploration sessions with a truly "homey" feeling cast of NPCs.

Also, If you’re going to be doing a planehopping game, its important for you to practice your starwars technique:   “ This is the _____ plane, it has X striking environment, and serves Y social function, these two elements combine to explore pulp adventure trope Z in a fresh and interesting way.”

Art