Havard's Blackmoor Campaigns Overview

[Havard]

New session today. Zombies took over the town and the Evil Cleric got away. The PCs managed to save the Monk Grandmaster though and brought him back to the Monastery where he can recover. On the other hand travelling south to rescue the Monk meant that they could not save the last Elven Cleric who was brutally killed by the Warlord's minions.

:twisted:

-Havard

[Havard]

Holy Player Recruitment Techniques Batman! hock:

Three additional players have joined over the last year. We now have a total of five players plus the DM (me)! This is pretty cool for a face to face campaign. We'll see if the new guys stick around, but they seemed to be enjoying the game alot last night. Lots of laughs and excitement.

-Havard

[RobJN]

The more the merrier!

[Havard]

5. Chronicles of the Last Elves (Unknown Date).
My 5th Edition Campaign tells the story of a group of Woodland creatures on the run from Hordes of Evil. The discovery of an ancient Tome brings a sense of hope to the group.

There has been alot more development with this campaign since I wrote this. It has become clear to me that the campaign is set in a very distant future of Blackmoor. As far as the heroes know, the elven race is disappearing from the surface of the planet. Blackmoor is but an ancient memory now, but certain artifacts from that ancient time do show up every so often. Among them a certain book, the Book of Ordana, has been discovered and the group believes that through this book the elven race may once again be restored.

On the other hand, war-mongering followers of Tyhrm (see the DAB Sourcebook), are also looking for this book, as they know that the book can be used for destruction as well as for bringing life.

I like how this campaign has developed. Rather than me making up the framework from the beginning, I gave the players free reigns in what they wanted to play and asked them to come up with a backstory and reasons for why they knew eachother. So in that sense I did not really know where and what the campaign was to be about, although with every session we play it becomes more clear to me how it fits into the timeline. One connection to Blackmoor that I did bring in from the start though was that we used the Blackmoor Gods rather than the 5E ones.

It has now been revealed that the reason why the elves have disappeared is because they have all been murdered and used in a dark ritual, extending the life of certain War Lords so they have been able to live for centuries. This has also caused magic to go awry in the region, producing a number of unpredictable effects.

As war rages in the south, the group is on the quest to find ancient scrolls and lore to decrypt the books they already have, hoping to find a way to reverse this dark magic.

The group now includes:
1) Elven Monk
2) Elven Ranger
3) Gnome Cleric of Ordana
3) Dragonborn Sorcerer (Unique, magical being)
4) Tiefling Sorcerer (Visitor from another plane)
5) Human Monk (NPC)
6) Elven Ranger (NPC)
7) Human Fighter (NPC)

-Havard

[Rafael]

Hey, pal!

Come, tell more about the Elven campaign! Sounds a lot like what I did for the "Witches' Cauldron" game - though in my game, the Elves had rather left, similar to Tolkien's Elves. - So, how DOES your game fit into the timeline?

[Havard]

Hey, pal!

Come, tell more about the Elven campaign! Sounds a lot like what I did for the "Witches' Cauldron" game - though in my game, the Elves had rather left, similar to Tolkien's Elves. - So, how DOES your game fit into the timeline?

Hi there!
Thanks for asking

I have kept many of these things vague so far. The main reason for this is that I wanted this campaign to be about the player characters and the backgrounds the players created for them. That said, those ideas are gradually being absorbed into my own cosmology. There is no way around that

The campaign is currently set in a very distant future. I say currently, because Time Travel might very well come into play later on.

There are two reasons why the elves have been disappearing. One is that magic is slowly being drained away from the world. This has caused many elves to depart for other planes. Others have died as a result of this.

Another reason more specific to the region we are playing in is that the main villain has been able to extend his lifespan by a kind of magic drawn from elven blood. He is also experimenting on recreating this magic based on the blood of other magical beings now that there are only a few elves left.

The PCs are looking for some magic that could reverse all of these effects and hopefully bring back the elves, but we shall see if they can be successful. It looks pretty bleak at the moment.

-Havard

[Rafael]

Sounds like a nice outline. I personally would perhaps leave out the blood sacrifice thing - but then again, it has its advantages, because it is so very tangible to the players. It gives them something to investigate, which is always a great treat.

Do you have any specific locations you're using, or does the story take place in the usual generic "Great Kingdom" that I liked to use for a while?

[Havard]

6. Ivan's Riders (6000+ years into Blackmoor's future. 36 years into Mystara's future)
A group of expert relic hunters begin digging into the past in order to save the future. They will discover that King Uther's Legacy is the key to saving their world.

[Yaztromo]

Sounds good! Where are you with Ivan's Riders, right now?

[Havard]

Sounds good! Where are you with Ivan's Riders, right now?

Just getting started. It might be ambitious, but I see this campaign pulling in a lot of elements from all of my previous Blackmoor and Mystara Campaigns since the 1980s. Some of the PCs have strong reasons to explore the past which may lead to time travel in some form or other. We'll see how many of my ideas I am able to bring into actual play, but I have tons of ideas for this game. The cool thing is my players are really psyched for this game. On the down side this game will likely not see too frequent play because some of the players live quite far away. I hope to do a combination of face to face and various online interractions, but we'll see how realistic that is.

-Havard