Oh what a tangled web of plot I weaved for this campaign! The campaign ended up going through phases:
Phase 1: Small town Tholme with nearby elemental evil
Phase 2: (modified Emerald Spire) Obsidian Fang missions
Phase 3: figuring out the Ryali/Kennara/Shar mysteries/plots
The phases sort of fit into the “heroic tier” concept of play, going from small town to larger region to world/universe problems. I feel that, at times, I had made the antagonists' plans too subtle or too hidden for the players to be sure where to go to track them down. Other than the forced Obsidian Fang levels/quests, I ran this campaign as very player-centric with lots of player agency. I wonder if, sometimes, I gave them too much leeway with deciding where to go and what to do because we ended up with some hours spent just kind of roaming around shopping and talking with NPCs without, from my point of view as DM, much focus (for where I thought they should be in the campaign) but the players were happy and having fun and that’s what really matters.
And oh what fun we had! Some of the highlights to me, were:
*Playing with the word “murder” representing a group of ravens;
*mimicking Hommlet and TOEE with Tholme and its problems;
*stealing ideas from the Emerald Spire mega-dungeon, especially the deadly magma dragons;
*making silly NPC shamans/clerics as sub-bosses/antagonists;
*reusing familiar locations from the previous universe, but refreshing them (I'm looking at you, Floshin Family);
*the “Barbarians at the Gate” adventure;
*having 2 Puffs without the players realizing there were 2 of him;
*playing Kennara as one of those evil people who thinks they are doing good;
*letting lose super powerful enemies such as Klauth and the tarrasque;
*being pleasantly surprised when the players finished off the plots before I thought they would.
This will go down in history as our first big campaign that didn’t go all the way to level 20. We finished at level 17, but we were done. The big plots were dealt with and there wasn’t a point in making up some more things for them to do after that. I’m glad that, over a year and a half ago, I realized I could have some fun with some word play of “For You” and “4U” to get this thing started as a transition from our universe that we had been playing in for FOREVER, to get us to something new. To my players, this campaign was 4U.
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