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Post by Scott on Jun 28, 2018 6:23:39 GMT -5
I’ve been working off and on on a small sandbox setting around a small village west of Fax on the Wild Coast. Ultimately I’d like to expand it, especially through player interaction, to all the land around the Woolley Bay, from the Pomarj to the Nyr Dyv. I plan on having a few towns sacked by raiders of one sort or another to give the players more opportunity to develop land. The primary starting points will be Greyhawk City and the nearby dungeon for a dungeon crawl type game, and my Village west of Fax, tentatively called Uskendell. I’d like to drop three small adventure locations within three miles of the village: one would be the DMG Moastery, another would be a small “abandoned” adventurer’s keep, something like the dungeon in Crucible of Freya. And something else. Any ideas? Also, scatter around a few lairs, and a few NPC sites: a Druid, a few fighters and magic-users of various alignments, etc. Any suggestions or input would be welcome.
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Post by geneweigel on Jun 28, 2018 7:17:02 GMT -5
In the entry for Suss forest it mentions it being a highway from the Pomarj to the North and that logging parties were driven off. There could be an old camp in the removed "leagues" of Suss thats haunted by the former residents of that branch of the Suss with a dungeon underneath that was once intentionally deep in the woods but all the efforts to cut back the Suss exposed it,etc.
Temple or a magician's lair. Or both in nearby vicinity.
Perhaps, with this same concept, an old "last exit" before the Welkwood, once a pit stop for humanoids now underground or hidden in a large copse of those dark trees that the loggers missed when they abandoned the efforts.
A few official outpost thorp/villages of Fax with a petty noble that patrols check in with and they have their own local patrol.
Perhaps farther out have some "standard" (60% likely) brigand fortifications which have their own patrols (DMG 182-183).
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Post by Scott on Jun 28, 2018 9:15:52 GMT -5
Yeah, I was planning on adding large bandit and brigand gangs as reoccurring encounters, starting with small scout parties/patrols.
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foster1941
Warlock
Duke of California, Earl of Los Angeles, Knight Bachelor
Posts: 475
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Post by foster1941 on Jun 28, 2018 13:36:53 GMT -5
This is definitely the area with the highest density of interesting/adventure-oriented stuff, and is where almost all of my recent thought and creative efforts have been centered as well.
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Post by grodog on Jun 28, 2018 14:18:53 GMT -5
Scott, if you haven't yet, you should check out EOTB's Groat's End town that he began to put together @ knights-n-knaves.com/phpbb3/viewtopic.php?f=11&t=14914I really enjoyed the brief 3.x campaign that we played in the Wild Coast while I still lived in CA. The DM (Marc Tizoc Gonzalez) set it just prior to the fall of the Pomarj to Turosh Mak, and he made the setting come alive in lots of fun ways/details (even if it was 3.x ). Allan.
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Post by Scott on Jun 28, 2018 17:08:46 GMT -5
Maybe as the third initial adventuring area could be a fallen elf stronghold, something like the caves that Thranduil and the wood level of Mirkwood lived in, but now overrun by humanoids. This would be a larger dungeon that could be returned to over time.
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Post by davegibsongreyhawkdm on Jun 29, 2018 9:02:47 GMT -5
Chagmat?
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Post by GRWelsh on Jun 29, 2018 9:08:25 GMT -5
I've always wanted to use some of the classic modules as inspiration for the area, so per the A series there are yellow-sailed reavers in the Woolly Bay, who raid coasts and also other ships to take slaves. Humanoids also go on raids and take slaves, and use the forests surrounding the Wild Coast as a highway to creep north from the Pomarj. The Pomarj has a functioning harbor at Highport, but it is a ruined, corrupted town overrun with humanoids, half-orcs and evil or mercenary humans. The pirates and slavers likely have other strongholds on small islands in the Woolly Bay as well as across the Bay on the rocky coast bordering the Bright Desert. The Ghost Tower of Inverness in C2 may be but one example of other out-of-phase structures not just in this area but across the Flanaess -- towers and other buildings that appear and disappear similar to Moorcock's "The Vanishing Tower." You could do an "against the pirates" campaign or series of of adventures in the Woolly Bay, inspired by but not exactly the same as the A series, with some weird or extra-planar environments added for flavor. And throw in some of the monsters from those modules, as well as new ones inspired by them (aspis, boggles, firebats, etc.), which could be fun details for the fans of the original modules to pick up on. Being along the coasts and at sea, there could even be a cameo made by monsters from another series like the Kuo-Toa...
"This idol appears to be of a hither-to unknown and ancient sea-goddess... The name inscribed upon the base is --" "Don't say it, you fool!" "-- Blibdoolpoolp!"
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Post by geneweigel on Jun 29, 2018 10:10:50 GMT -5
In my 80's original campaign originally pre-Greyhawk, PCs migrated from "the city" to the wilderness of "the North" which was analogous to my reality going back and forth to the massive mountain forest my Grandfather had owned in the Western Catskills then as we adapted to World of Greyhawk it was a shift to the South at the Wild Coast by most people DMing but my games still migrated to the North despite a large body of water in the way (Nyr Dyv) so I eventually abandoned all those areas to start anew in the Wild Coast for random stuff. Then somehow it became very busy with all the alternate DMs that I just went back to the North (So most areas that I had big dungeons in were Nomads, Bandit Kingdoms, Rovers and the Horned Society and Iuz were mostly avoided.) and also other dimensions. The Wild Coast started devolving into pirate talk by the other people DMing at one point and I think that was my incentive to migrate away in the late 80's and 90's.
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Post by GRWelsh on Jun 30, 2018 0:20:25 GMT -5
I think there are definitely pirates and buccaneers in the Woolly Bay and Sea of Gearnat such as with references to the likes of Blidg Fangr, yet still with plenty of room for creative fantasy weirdness. Like for example the slavers using the aspis... what’s up with that? And places like Highport have potential as reverse civilizations where half-orcs are the norm and other demi-humans are suspect. And there are sea monsters, underwater adventures, ruins in the Bright Desert and Pomarj, dragonnels and their riders, evil beneath the Drachensgrabs, Earth Dragon Cult, mysteries of what is corrupting the Suss Forest, lost city of the Suss, and schemes of the Scarlet Brotherhood. So there’s a lot going on here for a creative DM to build off of. The pirates are there, but may serve to be the introduction to weirdness.
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Post by geneweigel on Jun 30, 2018 9:02:29 GMT -5
I put a finger on it. It was the end of the map-making era for most of them and it was quick grabs only. So after clunkng out on a few DRAGONLANCE, FORGOTTEN REALMS and generic typist's heaven adventures. They started hitting DUNGEON Magazine,BOOK OF LAIRS, BOOK OF LAIRS II , LORDS OF DARKNESS, etc for mini adventures. And I don't know if it was the first "pirate freak out" but DUNGEON MAGAZINE #23 (MAY/JUNE 1990) "OLD SEA DOG" is what broke the camel's back for me. I felt like I was getting sucked into a puffy shirted hell. Plus that it had too much Italian naming that just irked me a lot. The thing that had cemented it was that my brother Richard had a similar nickname to the name of the town "Chardon" (Richard nicknamed "Chardo")so they ate that up. So thats why I was like I'm getting the fuck out of here. I remember something about a beach that was bad. Can't find it though. I think this is when I started using the RAVENLOFT dimensional stuff which was just as terrible but I "peeled and deveined" a lot of it.
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Post by GRWelsh on Jul 1, 2018 6:45:16 GMT -5
Oh, I know what you mean. Pirates being in a campaign can lead to the lazy stereotypes of circa 18th century puffy shirts, muskets, eyepatches and parrots that can totally derail any medieval fantasy feeling. Yeah, that can happen.
"I thought we were in the World of Greyhawk. How did this become the PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN ride?"
"Avast, matey! If it isn't 'Peg-leg Weigel' and his shoulder parrot 'Captain Squawk'! Now tell us where ye buried that treasure, ye scurvy dog!"
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Post by geneweigel on Jul 2, 2018 11:03:20 GMT -5
There is a fine line between a Scottish accent and pirate talk too. I actually have a pirate dwarf miniature from 1982 or 1983 so that didn't help (Ral Partha set of non-standard dwarf player characters. The others were dwarf gladiator, dwarf "prince" in plate, and dwarf samurai.).
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Post by davegibsongreyhawkdm on Jul 5, 2018 14:12:50 GMT -5
Since this thread started, I have taken out Chagmat again to look over, and possibly insert into the current campaign...it might be my favorite adventure that I saw published in The Dragon/Dragon? Certainly I used this one more than once...
So then I started looking back through The Dragon/Dragon magazines at other adventures...I remember using The Chapel of Silence and The Pit of the Oracle also...
I see that there were a couple of other adventures published in Dragon just after I ended my subscription, Citadel by the Sea & Barnacus: City in Peril...has anyone gamed these before? Are they good or not?
Any other adventure recommendations you all have that are from The Dragon/Dragon magazines?
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Post by geneweigel on Jul 5, 2018 15:27:05 GMT -5
I played all of these back in the day ones but nothing leaps out at me. I would have to go through them all
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Post by geneweigel on Jul 5, 2018 16:16:35 GMT -5
I just grabbed that from one of those Dragon indexes (that is why it lists the Slaver tournament comments). I don't really recall any Polyhedron adventures looking through them except those ones that were repackaged for the R series and the C4-C5 adventures and those were plenty bland.
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Post by davegibsongreyhawkdm on Jul 5, 2018 17:01:31 GMT -5
I just grabbed that from one of those Dragon indexes (that is why it lists the Slaver tournament comments). I don't really recall any Polyhedron adventures looking through them except those ones that were repackaged for the R series and the C4-C5 adventures and those were plenty bland. Gotcha - also The Halls of Beoll-Dur in Dragon #41, but I never tried that out... The Chapel of Silence is in Dragon #50.
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Post by davegibsongreyhawkdm on Jul 6, 2018 9:11:32 GMT -5
I skimmed through various low-level Dragon adventures:
'Chagmat' is my favorite. 'The Chapel of Silence' is a different change-of-pace. 'Citadel By the Sea' I just skimmed through for the first time and it looks like it could be decent to use - it's weird that it recommends no 1/2orc PCs - that is what makes it most interesting to me: an evil intelligent/ego orcish weapon that one of the two 1/2orc PCs in the current party could try to use and be overcome and attack the two Elvish PCs?
I even skimmed through 'The Creature of Rhyll' from Dragon #55 - pretty insubstantial...
Was gonna skim through 'Betrayed!' next - not familiar with this 3rd through fifth level adventure?
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Post by GRWelsh on Jul 6, 2018 12:24:47 GMT -5
I also have a fondness for "Chagmat," partly because it was in the first issue of DRAGON that I ever bought -- #63 in 1982. I'd been playing for a while by that time, and I'd seen DRAGON before, but that was the first issue I owned. "Chagmat" has a lot of the elements that I like in an AD&D adventure, with the classic set up of damsels in distress, a mystery, distinctive terrain, and a new monster. I like a lot of the early adventures from that magazine for the glimpse they give into the early days, when things were less standardized and more raw and often tailored to someone's own campaign.
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Post by davegibsongreyhawkdm on Jul 6, 2018 12:44:29 GMT -5
I believe I had a three year subscription to Dragon, starting roughly in mid 1980 through mid 1983.
I remember starting soon after Dragon #37 (might have been right after the anti-paladin issue of Dragon?), because I have an old copy from a friend's Dragon of 'The Pit of the Oracle'. I think Dragon #75 may have been the last issue I received (includes 'Can Seapoint be Saved?') before letting my subscription expire in 1983?
It had to be about the last issue, because I don't remember Dragon #78's 'The Citadel By the Sea' adventure, which I just skimmed through now for the first time...
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