Updating my post about looking for campaign advice

Apr 4 (edited) • Advice

Feel free to read the background below, you'll see I took many of your suggestions (had to simplify some for my beginner level GM thought processes) but this is the current status: The adventuring group has gone ahead through a time portal about 100 years with the help of the time staff. The time period they are in is a grim setting, Moander has huge influence and power there although details are light on that right now. Once there they learned that the Paladin's grandfather has likely been kidnapped by the Revenant Occupation from the custody of the Temporal Authority (time cops). The Revenant Occupation (RO) is a group of dwarves & elves who want to purify their race, part of it is they put forth they want to eliminate time travel. The players don't know though that they actually just want time travel for themselves and that is why they kidnapped the grandfather, the idea being to sacrifice him to try to access this magic in a ritual. They believe they know where the grandfather is but have heard that he is safe temporarily.

The group became extremely suspicious of the time cops (I wasn't expecting that), so they are working on infiltrating them by becoming recruits and getting more information. They've also realized they don't have much money so they took up an offer to battle in an arena against psychic, mutant, dinos. I'm planning to have them hopefully win some gold and a dino egg as a prize and see where they go with that. (I unconsciously realized I got this idea from dungeon crawler carl)

My thought is that as they infiltrate the time cops they will find spies there from the RO and could get more info on the grandfather and time travel in general. They will also learn about how I'm framing time travel in this campaign, I might have gotten this idea here, more that time travel creates different universes so you can't go back in time and change things. I'm afraid of keeping track of things if stuff gets too bonkers with that. They'll learn this in the training process as recruits.

So soon they'll have money and maybe a job. Through this process I imagine they'll meet other factions I created to maybe join up with to help save the grandfather to start. Hard to have a handle on how many threads to have for them to pull on without making a mess but so far it's going well. If anyone has any thoughts or suggestions on keeping things cohesive or even just generally let me know, I'll probably add in the comments next time any updates.

Old Post: Working on developing my first campaign. Looking for general advice on how to tie it all together, have appreciate the advice I have received so far but I feel like I needed to make some sort of general plot concept to start to look into those resources more. This is long so no need to read or reply but if you have the time and interest I appreciate it! I mostly want to know if my general plot actually makes sense in some way outside my own mind!

Started with Dragons of Stormwreck Isle DnD starter set with the idea of having a time portal appear at the end.

PC’s include

Paladin Aasimar-goal is to find his grandfather (or more likely information) who was allegedly carried away from the island by a dragon a long time ago

Tabaxi Rogue-No clear goal yet but following the will of Bast, ((ancient Egyptian goddess of home, domesticity, fertility, childbirth, and protection)) was suggested here to help her find a powerful form of catnip

Sword-wielding human Wizard-being chased by a Wizards guild because they don’t like him pursuing training in sword fighting etc. Guild is called The Trust of the Song

Warlock with a patron called the Deity Moander, which I’m just learning is an actual deity in DnD materials. Warlock wants to find some dirt on his patron so he can no longer be manipulated by him. How can you find dirt on a deity? Or am I missing something? Can they just kill him in a future time period?

Sorcerer-occassionally when he rolls on the wild magic table he gets pulled to the elemental plane, so he would like some type of power to stop doing this. and/or maybe learn additional wizard magic more easily.

The idea is they have just defeated a dragon (in a clifftop observatory) that wanted to perform a magic ritual during a celestial event, they have gotten rumors of some type of time portal potentially opening up during this event.

So the next scene would be they’re in the observatory with the dead dragon, and they see the celestial event cause the observatory and telescope to glow and they see someone appear holding a large staff. This is a wizard human named Ebeneezer holding a time staff (I found online has certain stats etc.)

Ebeneezer more or less tells the Paladin that his grandfather has been trapped by a guild of Wizards called the Trust of the Song, because he seemed to be able to travel through time without the staff and for no known reason and they were afraid of his power. In the far distant future this guild has become very powerful, rich, with a hoard of spell scrolls (that our sorcerer might be interested in), and seems to be getting resources from the deity Moander. Ebeneezer was a former high wizard in this guild who defected when he saw how the grandfather was being treated amongst the guild’s green and corruption. ((I think this would help the whole party be motivated to find dirt on Moander))

So they decide to use the time staff and go save grandpa to start. I guess I’ll have them go to some time in the future. I’m going with the idea there are different time periods but also parallel timelines. This group has mentioned interest in spaceships, so I’m thinking I’ll use some of the materials recommended on another thread to work that in. They’ve also mentioned liking dinosaurs. I was thinking of working that in at a later date or there being some type of jurassic park style place somewhere in this setting.

So does this make general sense? Any suggestions for tying things together more or potential encounters? Open to any thoughts at all, thanks!

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