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An Epic-Scope Campaign: Any ideas?

   
Start slow and be flexible.

For example, when Frodo decides to take the Ring to Elrond, he takes a shortcut thru the Old Forest. There he has many adventures that don't involve the Ring. It's only when they get back to the Road, when Frodo reminds them, "But perhaps the delay will prove useful -- it may have put them off our trail," does the story turn back to the main plot.

Not ever problem and adventure your PCs have will have to be about foiling the main villain.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Devacorian View Post
Epic-scope fantasies tend to have a primary antagonist or faction that serves as the driving force behind the story. The need to defeat this enemy shapes the actions of the heroes and the events of the world. Tolkien's Sauron, Jordan's Shai'tan, and Martin's
White Walkers, for those of you who've only watched the show and not read the books
Others all serve this purpose.
In a Song of Ice and Fire, the Others show up in the very first scene (the prequel) but they take very much a back seat for the entire first book, and then some. They're not really the "big bad guys", or at least they haven't been so far, so I would say that even just with that as an example, it's quite possible to have an epic narrative without a single major bad guy. You can also do the "one up" thing where the big bad guy turns out not to be as big as you thought, or there's a bigger one, etc (don't really want to give examples for spoiler reasons ).

That said, I agree that it's more typical, and probably easier.

I would suggest looking at Elder Evils, which Dalar mentioned. It's got a bunch of big bads you can use right out of the book, with some ideas for a lot of foreshadowing at lower levels and so forth. Of course, you can create your own, but that might give you some ideas.

You could do it with the avatar of a deity who doesn't reveal his power until his respective deity decides it's time and work into the PC's finding out who he actually is through a total destruction of a village or town by the avatar or something else.

Perhaps the avatar is searching for a particular artifact that can actually destroy it and the PC's are in a race of time to find and use it against him?

Other ideas could be the restoration/exploration of a region or whole continent recently wiped out by a natural disaster or magical disaster. That's epic in itself and could include crazy things like magic dead zones, wild magic zones, a lot of undead, or even a portal that has opened up into the abyss and the whole place has been taken over by demons and must be taken back.

I have a pretty solid fantasy storyline that I could let you borrow. Has a couple notable major villains and certainly goes epic grade eventually. All you need is one character to play the princess. Everyone else can be worked in easily enough along the early stretch of the plot.

My buddy ran one where it was a demigod leading a group of cultists leading a nation. Took forever to figure out what was going on.

A leader of an outlawed band makes money by kidnapping prominent officials and holding them for exorbitant ransoms.
Rumors of his humane treatment towards his hostages and his extreme cruelty towards disloyal men and emissaries has earned him a mixed reputation.
After years of antagonizing governments he got imprisoned for years.
He gets out hardened and more ambitious then ever.

(You could go several ways with this)

Okay, so you seem to want a sort of world-spanning epic game.

First off: Good luck with that. They are hard to pull off convincingly.

As far as a BBEG goes, you want something over CR 20, but not unbeatable. How about a balor who is aspiring to godhood? Maybe he's taken the form of a man and now commands a vast army. The final step in his process is that ten thousand innocents must die. So he's gathering children and using them in a huge labor camp until the planets align or what have you.

Or maybe your BBEG is a lich king long thought destroyed, but a power-mad queen broke into the liches resting place and unearthed his phylactery. The lich has taken this queen as a bride and now means to triggger a zombie apocalypse in your game world. Armies of the dead, rising like a storm across the lands. Always good stuff.

If that fails, Bestiary Four has stats for Cthulhu...

Quote:
Originally Posted by TheFred View Post
Nobody has stats for Cthulhu...
But they do! And they are awesome... I think he's like a CR 27. All kinds of instant death and insanity effects, and he self-resurrects.

I have a D&D 3.5 campaign that I've run about five times now that starts at 3rd level (since 1st level sucks for PCs) and ends around 18 - 20th level for the characters. I run it in three parts, and the completion time for the campaign (in real life) has taken between 18 months to up to three years. The first part starts off in a backwater desert town that recently came under a new political regime. Miners from the town begin going missing, and the heroes are hired by a high level paladin who wants them to investigate on his behalf since he doesn't have the time to spend on it given his high level duties (and higher profile investigations/adventures). The primary plot of Part 1 has virtually nothing to do with the remainder of the campaign, but it involves a lot of plot twists and political intrigue. Instead of involving the characters directly in the overarching plotline, a few notable NPCs from the first town convince one or more players to help complete some tasks for them as subplots. It turns out that these subplots are what ultimately re-awaken/reincarnate an evil dead deity that the party is now responsible for raising unknowingly, and they don't realize it until the end of Part 1 when an aspect of the deity confronts them directly and forces them on a new set of quests. The remaining two parts of the campaign are basically the party suddenly becoming wrapped up in this larger plot involving the deity and trying to find out how to thwart the goals of the god while serving his immediate needs and accomplishing the new quests.

That's basically an ultra-high level skeletal structure of the plotline. I've been working on a novel version of it for a few years but haven't really dedicated the time to complete it. I typically use a module for Part 3 of the storyline and re-flavor it to fit the needs of my campaign. There are a couple of modules I've used in recent times.




 

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