Coherent Campaigns and Warcraft Zones

Screenshot from World of Warcraft source

Things to Bear in Mind for Long Campaigns

This is not my first consideration of the topic of long campaigns as I first pondered it with regards to Norwold.  However, the idea of an epic campaign can be applied equally to other places in Mystara, including Karameikos and nearby nations.  You can still have storylines that take the same PCs from 1st through to 20th or higher levels in a series of connected adventures. For this to work there are various factors that need to be taken into consideration:

1) What the players want and what they end up doing. Some players are open to suggestions from the DM, and if offered an adventure hook they will bite. Others  are much more independent minded with their own ideas about what their characters want to do. Whatever the DM or scenario author has mapped out, it is unlikely the PCs will follow it exactly as expected. This feeds into the age-old debate of railroading vs sandbox campaigns. Although in principle I prefer the sandbox approach, I am aware this requires either a lot of preparation (some of which won't be used) or else a lot of improvisation.

2) Geography. Mystara is a whole planet, and even the Known World from X1 / Mentzer Expert set is quite a big region. If adventures are scattered all over the place then getting from one to the other could be an adventure in itself. Having one module take place relatively close to the previous module makes things both easier in terms of travel and more plausible. 

3) Progression through levels. This is never easy to anticipate, partly because even given the XP available in an adventure, it is by no means certain that the PCs will gather it all, whether it be missing a major treasure hoard or fleeing from a big bad evil guy rather than defeating him. And then of course there are different classes advancing at different rates, at least for B/X D&D. So you could have a thief, a cleric, a fighter and an elf all with 3000xp under their belts from shared first adventures. The thief and the cleric are now 3rd level, the fighter is at 2nd level and the elf is still at level 1. So what level module or scenario should the DM choose? Personally I would go for the average party level, in this case level 2, but it is not always easy to decide. I’ve realised that this is one of the reasons published modules are presented as suitable for a range of levels - it is not just that the DM buying the module can fit it in to his campaign more easily, it’s because the party of PCs are unlikely to start playing the module all at the same level. Nonetheless an adaptable DM should be able to find stop-gap adventures and side treks so that PCs can earn enough XP to be ready to face the next major module in the campaign. PCs dying may also change the pattern of PC levels in the party, particularly if a new PC is lower level than his more established fellows.  This is not a problem in my campaign as adventures can always be adapted for slightly lower levels than expected. 

4) Player Consistency & Continuity: Another thing to bear in mind is established players leaving the campaign and new players joining, and new characters not being the same level as the long-standing ones. I've experienced this in my own DMing campaign. More importantly than levels, new players are missing a lot of information that has gradually been built up over the course of play, from background to NPC contacts to stories of what the PCs have done in particular encounters. "Onboarding" new characters and new players is always doable but when when you lose players (college work, new job, travel problems) you also lose a part of the campaign up to this point. Then there is the problem of a player missing out on several sessions in a row but then coming back. If another player has access to the character sheet then the first player may delegate their PC to the other player who temporarily runs two PCs at a time. But if the character sheet is not available then the PC is considered to be catatonic, unable to join in the adventure until the player returns and the character miraculously recovers from their previously inert state. But either way the returning player (and possibly the character) has missed out on vital information. 

A Possible Campaign Outline

Here is a possible campaign outline that starts in Karameikos and uses a mix of both published modules and my own scenarios. 

• Level 1: The Captured Cleric. Followed by The Hunting Lodge
• Level 2: B2: The Keep on the Borderlands (officially for levels 1-3)
• Level 3: Raiders of Guido’s Fort. Followed by B5: The Horror on the Hill (officially for levels 1-3)
• Level 4: Slave Raiders! after which they will hopefully acquire a ship, the Ocean Manticore
• Level 4-5: X1: The Isle of Dread (officially for levels 3-7) but when they leave rather than heading north back home to Karameikos they are forced by storms far to the west and the Serpent Peninsula. 
• Level 5: The Lizard King’s Encampment
• Level 6: X6: Quagmire (officially for levels 4-10), after which the PCs make their way north to Sind, and straight into…
• Level 7: X4: Master of the Desert Nomads (officially for levels 6-9) 
• Level 8: X5: The Temple of Death (officially for levels 6-10)

This may well be overly ambitious and I am sure the XP awarded during these adventures won’t track exactly with the progression I have suggested. X1: The Isle of Dread in particular and to a lesser extent X6: Quagmire are less of a single scenario and more like hex-crawl mini-campaigns within particular geographical areas. And of course the PCs may decide to do something completely different. 

There are notable gaps for certain levels, both in the range of published modules and also in my own collection on this blog.  CM1 Test of the Warlords, the first adventure for Companion level PCs, says it is for PCs “of levels 15 and above”. I haven’t yet seen a B/X module for levels 10-14, what might be called upper-level Expert play when PCs are reaching Name levels and may be thinking about establishing a domain for themselves, taking them into Companion level play.  That’s the main reason my list above ends at level 8. On the other hand this gap could be filled, possibly by me, or other enterprising gamers. 

Warcraft Zones and D&D

In World of Warcraft and similar MMOs the game world is split up into zones, with each zone being geared towards a certain range of PC levels. For example, the human starting zone of Northshire is for WoW characters of level 1-5, with suitably easy opponents and comensurate small rewards for completing quests. After reaching level 5 the PC is ready to move on to the slightly more difficult and dangerous Elwyn Forest for PCs of levels 5-10 for bigger rewards and better loot. Quests provided by NPCs for the PCs to complete are sometimes connected, and may involve dealing with the same group of enemies more than once. Although each quest might be small and simple ("Kill the kobold leader Goldtooth and bring back the pendant he stole from the farmer's wife"), a chain of connected quests  can give the feeling of following a story of sorts, or at least being in a consistent game world. This is something I have considered applying to D&D. 

This pattern is repeated in the expansions for WoW, though there are also metaplots that affect the region or maybe the world that arc across the expansion and all the zones it contains, such as the rise of the Lich King or the rampage of the dragon Deathwing across much of Azeroth. These will sometimes form the background to the quests that the PCs focus on. 

It is perhaps tempting for me to impose this sort of structure on a D&D world such as Mystara. I could say that Karameikos is for characters of levels 1-4, Rockhome for levels 4-8, Ylaruam for levels 8-12, Thyatis for levels 12-16 and Norwold for levels 16-20. There are pros and cons. 

Pro: 

• It makes things simpler for the DM and if the PCs understand this premise they are less likely to get into encounters and situations they have no chance of winning or conversely enemies are so weak there is no challenge for PCs. That does not mean they will win every encounter or there is no danger, simply that the challenge will be approximately proportionate to the characters abilities. Or if there are foes they have no chance against then at least they can avoid or evade them. PCs don't need to know the exact level range for each zone, only whether or not they are prepared to travel there to find adventures. "So you've defeated the orcs around Threshold and proven yourselves in combat against the gnolls around Rifllian. The captain of the guard suggests you travel north to Selenica where they have had trouble with bugbears..."
• Each nation or "zone" could have its own mini-campaign, with ongoing villains and local NPCs, and perhaps connected adventures. By the time the PCs are ready to leave the nation they can feel they have got to know at least the place where they are based, and how things work there. If they have been helpful to NPCs they may have established friends, patrons and allies. They may also have defeated a regional villain or organisation through a series of connected adventures. 
• To some extent there are hexcrawl adventures such as X1: Isle of Dread and X6: Quagmire (mentioned above) where this idea of zones has already been done. Players and maybe their characters kind of know you don't venture into the Serpent Peninsula or onto the Isle of Dread without enough combat clout to deal with some big nasty monsters. You could argue that the Isle of Dread is a zone for characters of levels 3-8. 

Con: 

• It makes the DM more reluctant to put high level adventures into zones that are nominally low level. For example, if I decided everything in Karameikos was for characters of levels 1-4 then I would have to remove the Tomb of the Frost Shamans as well as several red dragons. And I don't like my creativity being restricted like that. 
• It can all seem a bit artificial and a little choreographed. I can imagine players wondering why all the relatively weak monsters like orcs and bandits are in one nation like Karameikos while not far away in Ylaruam there are much tougher mummies, manscorpions and rogue fire elementals that will obliterate low-level characters with ease. In other words it could be detrimental to verisimilitude and suspense of disbelief. 
• I like the idea of each region or nation being capable of hosting a wide range of adventures, both in terms of character levels and also play styles and themes. In previous posts I have said I believe it is possible to run adventures for 1st level characters in areas that would not normally be deemed suitable such as Alphatia or Norwold. Imposing expected levels on each area certainly squashes this particular dimension of choice. 

What about a compromise? This could be done implicitly rather than explicitly, and I think this is sort of done in official products. The DM doesn't tell the players that Karameikos is the starting zone and that after that they will be moving to more difficult adventures in the southern Sea of Dread. Instead the PCs find themselves getting involved in their first low level adventures in Karameikos, after which plot hooks (such as finding a map of a barely charted island) takes them sailing south into the Sea of Dread. There can be very dangerous creatures in Karameikos such as the aforementioned frost giants and red dragons, but the DM makes sure the PCs do not encounter them at least until they can survive the encounter, or the PCs are determinedly and suicidally stupid.